Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,107
that.” Scythe Curie glanced out of the window. No one was coming yet, but there was a tension in her voice that wasn’t there before. “I’m afraid I won’t be coming with you, Citra. If I am to clear your name, I need to go back home and rally as many scythes as I can.”
“But the local Chilargentine Scythedom . . .”
“What can they do to me? I’m breaking no commandment. All they can do is wag the ‘naughty’ finger at me, and refuse to wave good-bye as I drive to the airport.”
“So . . . when you get home, you’ll have to tell everyone the truth about that journal entry?”
“I don’t see what other choice I have. Of course Xenocrates will claim that I’m lying to protect you, but most will take my word over his. Hopefully, that will embarrass him enough to withdraw the claim.”
“So where can I go?” asked Citra.
“I have an idea about that.” Then Scythe Curie reached into a drawer and pulled out the rough-woven burlap frock of a Tonist.
“You want me to pretend to be part of a tone cult?”
“A lone pilgrim. They’re very common in this part of the world. You’ll be a nameless, faceless wanderer.”
It wasn’t the most glamorous of disguises, but Citra knew it was practical. No one would look her in the eye for fear of getting an earful of Tonist twaddle. She would hide in plain sight and come home just before Winter Conclave. If Scythe Curie hadn’t cleared her name by then, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t about to spend her whole life in hiding.
Then the Chilargentine scythe burst in again, this time much more agitated than before.
“They’re here,” Scythe Curie said. She reached into her robe and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper, pressing it into Citra’s palm. “There’s somewhere I want you to go. Someone you need to see—the address is on that paper. Consider it the final part of your training.” Citra grabbed the frock, and while Scythe Curie hurried Citra out of the room and to the back door, the Chilargentinian scythe went to a weapons wardrobe and quickly filled a sack with concealable blades and firearms for Citra, the way a worried mother might fill her child’s bag with snacks.
“There’s a publicar in a shed at the bottom of the hill. Take it, and head north,” Scythe Curie said.
Citra opened the back door and stepped out. It was cold, but bearable.
“Listen to me carefully,” said Scythe Curie. “It’s a long trip, and you’re going to need your wits about you to get where you’re going.”
Then Scythe Curie went on to give Citra the instructions she’d need to make a journey of many thousands of miles—but she was cut short by the sound of a car pulling up in front of the house.
“Go! As long as you keep moving, you’ll be safe.”
“And what do I do when I get there?”
Scythe Curie met her eye with a hard gaze that revealed nothing but added importance to her words. A Tonist might call it “resonance.”
“When you get there, you’ll know what to do.”
Then there came that all too familiar pounding on the front door.
Citra bounded down the snowy hillside, careening off of pines in her way. The aches in her joints reminding her that she was still a few hours shy of a complete healing. She found the shed, and the publicar was there just as Scythe Curie had promised. It powered up for her as she got in, and it asked for a destination. She wasn’t foolish enough to give it one. “North,” she told it. “Just north.”
As she sped off, she heard an explosion, and then another. She looked back but all she could see was black smoke just beginning to rise above the treetops. Dread began to fill her. A man wearing a robe similar to the one Scythe Curie’s friend wore burst from the trees and into the road behind her. She saw him only for an instant, then the road took a sharp turn and he was gone from sight.
Only after the publicar had wound its way down the mountain pass and was on a main road did she look at the paper that Scythe Curie had given her. For a moment it felt as if her bones had spontaneously reshattered, but the feeling passed and settled into jaded resolve. She understood now.