Behind the tech, Scythe Rand entered the snarl of branches. Even the prospect of her was better than a blow-by-blow description of his dazzling incineration.
“You’re not here to talk to him,” Rand snapped.
Immediately the tech caved like a scolded pup. “Yes, Your Honor. I’m sorry, Your Honor.”
“Give me the gag and get lost.”
“Yes, Scythe Rand. Sorry again. Anyway, he’s good to go.” He gave her a thumbs-up, she grabbed the gag, and he retreated with his shoulders hunched.
“How much longer?” Rowan asked Rand.
“It’s about to start,” she told him. “A few speeches and you’re on.”
Rowan found he had no heart left to banter with her. He could not be cavalier about this anymore. “Will you watch,” he asked, “or look away?” He didn’t know why he cared, but he did.
Rand didn’t answer him. Instead she said, “I’m not sorry to see you die, Rowan. But I’m annoyed by how it’s going down. Frankly, I just want it to be over.”
“So do I,” he told her. “I’m trying to figure out if it’s worse knowing what’s going to happen, or if it would have been better not to know.” He took a moment, then asked, “Did Tyger know?”
She took a step back from him. “I’m not letting you play your little head games on me anymore, Rowan.”
“No games,” he said honestly. “I just want to know. Did you tell him what was happening to him before you took his body? Did he have at least a few moments to make peace with it?”
“No,” she told him. “He never knew. He thought he was about to be ordained as a scythe. Then we put him under, and that was that.”
Rowan nodded “Kind of like dying in his sleep.”
“What?”
“It’s how they say all mortals wanted to go. In their sleep, peacefully, without ever knowing. I guess it makes sense.”
Rowan supposed he said too much, because Rand put the gag on and tightened it.
“Once the flames reach you, try to breathe them in,” she told him. “It will go faster for you if you do.”
Then she left without looking back.
* * *
Ayn could not get the image of Rowan Damisch out of her head. She’d seen him incapacitated before—tied up, tied down, shackled, and restrained any number of ways. But this time it was different. He wasn’t plucky or defiant; he was resigned. He didn’t look like the shrewd killing machine Goddard had turned him into. He looked like exactly what he was: a frightened boy who got in over his head.
Well, it serves him right, Ayn thought, trying to shake it off. What goes around comes around, isn’t that what mortals used to say?
As she walked out onto the field, a wind swooped through the bowl of the stadium, fluttering her robe. The stands were just about full now. More than one thousand scythes and thirty thousand citizens. A capacity crowd.
Rand sat beside Goddard and his underscythes. Constantine would not miss the gleaning of Rowan Damisch, but he didn’t seem any more pleased by this than Ayn did.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Constantine?” Goddard asked, clearly to goad him.
“I recognize the importance of an event around which to rally the public and present a unified North Merica,” Constantine said. “It’s a strong strategy and one that is likely to mark a turning point in scythe affairs.”
It was complimentary but didn’t answer the question. A perfectly diplomatic response. Goddard read through it, though, as Ayn knew he would, picking up on Constantine’s disapproval.
“You are nothing, if not consistent,” Goddard told him. “Constantine the Consistent. I do believe that is how history will come to know you.”
“There are worse attributes,” Constantine told him.
“Did you at least extend a personal invitation to our ‘friends’ in Texas to attend?” Goddard asked.
“I did. They didn’t respond.”
“No, I expect they wouldn’t. Shame—I would have much liked them to see the family they’ve chosen to exclude themselves from.”
The agenda for the evening had the four other North Merican High Blades giving speeches—each one carefully written to hit a certain point that Goddard wanted hit.
High Blade Hammerstein of EastMerica would lament the many souls lost on Endura, and the other unlucky scythes so brutally ended by Scythe Lucifer.
High Blade Pickford of WestMerica would talk about North Merican unity and how the alliance of five out of the six North Merican scythedoms made life better for everyone.
High Blade Tizoc of Mexiteca would invoke the mortal age, point out how far the world had come, and leave the audience with a veiled warning to other scythedoms that not aligning with Goddard could bring back the bad old days.
High Blade MacPhail of NorthernReach would give credit to all those involved in putting this event together. She would also highlight members of the audience, scythes and ordinary people as well, whose favor it was worth currying.
And then finally Goddard would deliver an address that would wrap it all up in a nice bow before he set the pyre ablaze.
“This will not just be the gleaning of a public enemy,” he had told Ayn and his underscythes. “It’s a bottle of champagne smashed upon a ship. This shall mark the christening of a new time for the human race.” It was as if Goddard looked upon it religiously. A burnt offering to purify the path and appease the gods.
* * *
As far as Goddard was concerned, this day was just as important as the day he revealed himself at conclave and accepted his nomination for High Blade—even more important because of the reach. The event would stream out to billions, not just a gathering of scythes in conclave. The reverberations of tonight would be felt for a long, long time. And the scythedoms that had yet to align with him would have little choice but to do so.
Support was growing in leaps and bounds now that he focused most gleaning on the margins of society. Ordinary citizens had no great love of the fringe anyway, and as long as one wasn’t part of that frayed edge that needed trimming, one needn’t worry about gleaning in Goddard’s world. Of course, with the population ever growing, there was no shortage of people to push to the margins.
It was, he had come to realize, a matter of evolution. Not natural selection, because nature had become weak and toothless. Intelligent selection was more like it, with Goddard and his acolytes at the helm of the intelligentsia.
As the hour neared seven, and the sky became dark, Goddard cracked his knuckles repeatedly and bounced his knees, his body expressing a youthful impatience that didn’t show on his face.
Ayn put a hand on his knee to stop the motion. Goddard resented it, but obliged. Then the lights in the stands dimmed and brightened on the field, as the pyre began to roll out from the bull pen.
The anticipation of the crowd was palpable. Not so much cheers and whoops as gasps and a building rumble. Even unlit, the pyre was a sight to behold—the way its branches caught the light, a dead forest woven for an artist’s eye. A lit torch waited at a safe distance, ready to be touched to the corner of the pyre by Goddard at the proper moment.
As the other speeches began, Goddard ran his own speech through his mind. He had studied the greatest addresses in history: those of Roosevelt, King, Demosthenes, Churchill. His would be short and sweet, but full of quotable moments. The kind that would be engraved in stone. The kind that would become iconic and timeless, like those he had studied. He would then take the torch, light the fire, and, as the flames grew, he would recite Scythe Socrates’s poem “Ode to the Ageless,” a world anthem if ever there was one.
Hammerstein’s speech began. He was perfectly mournful and lugubrious. Pickford was regal and eloquent; Tizoc, direct and incisive; and MacPhail’s gratitude for those who made this day possible felt honest and real.
Goddard rose and approached the pyre. He wondered if Rowan knew the honor that Goddard was bestowing on him today. Cementing his place in history. From now until the end of all thi
ngs, the world would know his name. He’d be studied by schoolchildren everywhere. Today he would die, yet in a very real sense, he would also become immortal, belonging to the ages in a way that few are.
Goddard touched the button, and the lift raised Rowan from within the pyre to its peak. The rumble of the crowd grew. People stood. Hands pointed. Goddard began.
“Honorable scythes and respected citizens, today we commit humanity’s last criminal to the cleansing fire of history. Rowan Damisch, who called himself Scythe Lucifer, stole the light of so many. But today we take that light back, and use it as a clear and ever-present beacon of our future—”
There was a tap on his shoulder. He almost didn’t feel it.
“A new age where scythes, with measured joy, shape our great society, gleaning those who have no place in our glorious tomorrow—”
Again, a tap at his shoulder, more insistent this time. Could it be that someone was interrupting his address? Who would dare do such a thing? He turned to see Constantine behind him, upstaging him with that eye-assaulting crimson robe, even more gaudy now that it bore rubies.
“Your Excellency,” he whispered. “There appears to be a problem….”
“A problem? In the middle of my speech, Constantine?”
“You should look for yourself.” Then Constantine drew his attention to the pyre.
Rowan squirmed and strained against his bonds. He tried to scream through the gag, but the screams would not be fully realized until the gag burned off. And then Goddard realized…
The figure atop the unlit pyre was not Rowan.
The face was familiar, but it wasn’t until Goddard looked to the giant screens placed around the stadium, which showed the man’s anguished expression close up, that he realized who this was.
It was the technician. The one in charge of preparing Rowan for his execution.
* * *
Ten minutes earlier, before the pyre was rolled out, Rowan tried to relish the moments remaining in his life. Then a trio of scythes approached him, weaving through the forest of branches. None of their robes were familiar. Nor were their faces.
This visit was not on the program—and, all things considered, Rowan was relieved to see them. Because if they were here to exact personal revenge on him, unwilling to wait for him to burn, it would be an easier end. Sure enough, one of them pulled out a knife and swung it toward him. He braced for the sharp pain and the quick extinguishing of consciousness, but it didn’t come.
And it was only after the blade cut the bonds on his hands that he realized it was a bowie knife.
31 Damisch Control
Goddard felt his body’s reaction before his mind could truly grasp what he was seeing. It came as a tingling in his extremities, a churning in his gut, and an aching tightness in the small of his back. Fury surged upward with volcanic intensity until his head began to throb.
Everyone in the stadium already knew what he had only now just seen, that the prisoner at the peak of the pyre was not Scythe Lucifer—for over the past three years the world had come to know Rowan Damisch’s face. Yet this was the face being broadcast and streamed. It filled the expansive screens all around Goddard as if to mock him.
His grand moment was not just robbed from him—it was subverted. Twisted upon itself like something obscene. The rumbles from the audience sounded different than they had only a second ago. Was that laughter he heard? Were they laughing at him? Whether they were, or not, was of little consequence. All that mattered was what he heard. What he felt. And he felt the derision of thirty thousand souls. It could not stand. This monstrous moment could not be suffered to live.
Constantine whispered in his ear. “I’ve ordered the gates locked, and the entire BladeGuard has been alerted. We’ll find him.”
But that didn’t matter. It was ruined. They could drag Rowan back and hurl him onto the pyre, but it would make no difference. Goddard’s shining moment would be the greatest casualty of the day. Unless. Unless…
* * *
Ayn knew things were heading to a very bad place the moment she saw that imbecile atop the pyre.
Goddard would have to be handled.
For when his anger took control, all bets were off. It was bad enough before, but ever since acquiring Tyger’s body, those youthful impulses—the sudden endocrine surges—gave Goddard a terrible new dimension. Adrenaline and testosterone might have been charming when managed by a harmless blank slate like Tyger Salazar; they were merely winds beneath a kite. But under Goddard, those same winds were a tornado. Which meant he would have to be handled. Like a beast that had broken out of its cage.
She let Constantine be the one to run out to him and deliver the bad news—because Goddard loved to blame the messenger, so better Constantine than her. Only after Goddard had turned to look at the hapless tech did Ayn go to him.
“The feeds have been cut,” Ayn told him. “It’s no longer streaming. We’re on damage control now. You can turn this around, Robert,” she said, cajoling him as best she could. “Make them think this is intentional. That it’s part of the show.”
The look on his face terrified her. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her until he said, “Intentional. Yes, Ayn, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
He raised the mic, and Ayn stepped back. Perhaps Constantine had been right. It was always in these moments of dismay that she could corral him. Control him. Fix what was broken before it became irreparable. She took a deep breath and waited, along with everyone else, to hear what he was going to say.
* * *
“Today was meant to be a day of reckoning,” Goddard began, spitting the words into the microphone as he spoke. “You! All of you who came here today nurturing a thirst for blood. You! Whose hearts quicken at the prospect of a man being burned alive before your very eyes.
“YOU! Did you think I would indulge you? Did you believe we scythes were so base as to pander to your morbid curiosity? Offering you a circus of carnage for your entertainment?” Now he screamed at them through gritted teeth. “How DARE you! ONLY SCYTHES may take pleasure in the ending of life, or have you forgotten?” He paused letting that sink in. Letting them feel the depth of their transgression. Had Rowan not vanished, he would have been happy to give them their show. But they must never know that.
“No, Scythe Lucifer is not here today,” he continued, “but YOU, who were so eager to witness the spectacle, are now the object of my eye. This was not a judgment on him; it was a judgment on YOU, who have, on this day, damned yourselves! The only way back from perdition is penance. Penance and sacrifice. Therefore, I have selected YOU on this day to be an example for the world.”
Then he looked to the thousand scythes dotting the audience of the stadium.
“Glean them,” he ordered with contempt for the crowd so great that he bit his own lip. “Glean them all.”
* * *
The panic was slow to build. Stupefied people looked to one another. Did the Overblade actually say that? He couldn’t have said it. He couldn’t have meant it. Even the scythes were unsure at first… but an order could not be refused if one didn’t want their loyalty questioned. Bit by bit weapons were pulled out, and the scythes began to look at the people around them with a very different expression than they had before. Calculating how best to achieve the goal.
“I am your completion!” proclaimed Goddard, as he did at all his mass gleanings, his voice echoing throughout the stadium. “I am the last word of your unsatisfied, unsavory lives.”
The first people began to run. Then a few more. And then it was as if a floodgate had opened. The panicked spectators climbed over seats and over one another to get to the exits—but scythes had quickly positioned themselves in the neck of the funnel. The only way past them was through them, and the gleaned were already beginning to block the narrow paths to freedom.
“I am your deliverer! I am your portal to the mysteries of oblivion!”
People began hurling themselves over railings, hoping that sp
latting before they were gleaned would save them—but this was a scythe action. From the moment Goddard gave the order, the Thunderhead was helpless to intervene. All it could do was watch through its many unblinking eyes.
“I am your Omega! Your bringer of infinite peace. You will embrace me!”
Scythe Rand begged him to stop, but he pushed her away, and she stumbled to the ground, knocking over the torch. It glanced across the edge of the pyre, and that’s all it took. The pyre ignited—purple flames rushed around the base.
“Your death is both my verdict upon you, and my gift to you,” Goddard told the dying crowd. “Accept it with grace. And thus farewell.”
* * *
The best view of Goddard’s Armageddon was from the top of the pyre—and with the smoke drawn away by exhaust fans below, the tech could see everything… including the outer rim of purple flame, which had moved up the pyre, turning blue.
In the stands, the scythes, each glittering with jewels embedded in their new-order robes, dispatched their victims at an alarming rate.
I will not be alone today, thought the tech as the flames drew closer, burning from green to bright yellow.
He could feel the soles of his shoes beginning to melt. He could smell the burning rubber. The fire was orange now, and closer. The screams all around him from the stands seemed far, far away. Soon the flames would turn red, the guncotton gag would burn away from him, and his own screams would be the only ones that mattered.
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