Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,40
on Citra’s shoulder. “And you don’t warrant anyone’s respect until after you receive your ring.”
The boy seemed to shrink by about three inches. “Honorable Scythe Faraday! I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” The girl took a step away as if to distance herself from him.
“Best of luck today,” he told them with a magnanimous gesture that they didn’t deserve.
“Thank you,” said the girl, “but if I may say, luck plays no part. We’ve both trained long and have been taught well by our scythes.”
“Very true,” Faraday said. They nodded respectful good-byes that bordered on bows, and left.
After they were gone, Faraday turned to Rowan and Citra. “The girl will get her ring today,” he said. “The boy will be denied.”
“How do you know?” asked Rowan.
“I have friends on the bejeweling committee. The boy is smart, but too quick to anger. It’s a fatal flaw that cannot be tolerated.”
As annoying as Rowan found the kid, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity. “What happens to the apprentices that get denied?”
“They are returned to their families to take up life where they left off.”
“But life can never be the same after a year of training to be a scythe,” Rowan pointed out.”
“True,” said Faraday, “but only good can come from a keen understanding of what it takes to be a scythe.”
Rowan nodded, but thought, for a man of such wisdom, that seemed very naive. Scythe training was a scarring endeavor. Purposefully so, but it was scarring nonetheless.
The rotunda became increasingly crowded with scythes, and the marble walls, floor, and dome made voices echo into a cacophony. Rowan tried to hear more individual conversations, but they were lost in the din. Faraday had told them that the great bronze doors to the assembly room would open promptly at seven a.m., and the scythes would be dismissed at the stroke of seven p.m. Twelve hours to accomplish any and all business. Anything left undone would have to wait four months until the next conclave.
“In the early days,” Scythe Faraday told them as the doors opened to admit the throng, “a conclave would last for three days. But they discovered that after the first day, it became little more than arguments and posturing. There’s still plenty of that, but it’s curtailed. It behooves us all to move through the agenda quickly.”
The chamber was a huge semicircle with a large wooden rostrum at the front where the High Blade sat, and slightly lower seats on either side for the Conclave Clerk, who kept records, and the Parliamentarian, who interpreted rules and procedures if any questions arose. Scythe Faraday had told them enough about the power structure of the Scythedom for Rowan to know that much.
The first order of business, once everyone was settled, was the Tolling of the Names. One by one, in no particular order, the scythes came to the front to recite various names of people they had gleaned over the past four months.
“We can’t recite them all,” Scythe Faraday told them. “With over three hundred scythes, it would be more than twenty-six thousand names. We are to choose ten. The ones we most remember, the ones who died most valiantly, the ones whose lives were the most notable.”
After each name spoken, an iron bell was rung, solemn and resonant. Rowan was pleased to hear Scythe Faraday reciting Kohl Whitlock’s name as one of his chosen ten.
• • •
The Tolling of the Names got old very quickly for Citra. Even reduced to ten names each, the recitation lasted for almost two hours. It was noble that the scythes saw fit to pay homage to the gleaned, but if they only had twelve hours to complete three months worth of business, she didn’t see the sense of it.
There was no written agenda, so there was no way for her and Rowan to know what came next, and Scythe Faraday only explained things as they happened.
“When is our test? Will we be taken somewhere else for it?” Citra asked, but Faraday shushed her.
After the Tolling of the Names, the next order of business was a ceremonial washing of the hands. The scythes all rose and lined up before two basins, one on either side of the rostrum. Again, Citra didn’t see the point. “All this ritual—it’s like something you’d see in a tone cult,” she said when Faraday returned to his seat, hands still damp.
Faraday leaned over to her and whispered. “Don’t let any of the other scythes hear you say that.”