Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,99

one, but she was an instant too late. He pulled out a jolt baton and jammed it into her side. Her own body suddenly became her enemy and she went down, hitting her head hard enough on the ground to knock her out.

When she came to, she was in a car, locked in the back, with a splitting headache that her pain nanites were struggling to subdue. She tried to lift a hand to her face, but found her hands restrained. There were steel clamps cinched on both hands and connected by a short chain. Some awful artifact from the Age of Mortality.

She pounded on the barrier between the front and back seats until finally one of the guardsmen turned to her, his gaze anything but peaceful.

“Do you want another jolt?” he threatened. “I’d be happy to give you one. After what you did, I wouldn’t mind turning the voltage into the red.”

“What I did? I haven’t done anything! What am I being accused of?”

“An ancient crime called murder,” he said. “The murder of Honorable Scythe Michael Faraday.”

• • •

No one read her rights. No one offered her an attorney for her defense. Such laws and customs were from a very different age. An age when crime was a fact of life, and entire industries were based on apprehending, trying, and punishing criminals. In a crime-free world, there was no modern precedent for how to deal with such a thing. Anything this complex and strange would usually be left for the Thunderhead to resolve—but this was a scythe matter, which meant the Thunderhead would not interfere. Citra’s fate was entirely in the hands of High Blade Xenocrates.

She was brought to his residence, the log cabin in the middle of a well-kept lawn that spread across the roof of a one hundred nineteen–story building.

She sat in a hard wooden chair. The cuffs on her hands were too tight, and her pain nanites were fighting a losing battle to quell the ache.

Xenocrates stood before her, eclipsing the light. This time Xenocrates was neither kind nor comforting.

“I don’t think you realize how serious this charge against you is, Miss Terranova.”

“I know how serious it is. I also know it’s ridiculous.”

The High Blade didn’t respond to that. She struggled in the blasted things cuffing her hands. What kind of world would make such a device? What sort of world would need one?

Then out of the shadows stepped another scythe, robed in earthtone brown and forest green. Scythe Mandela.

“Finally, someone reasonable!” said Citra. “Scythe Mandela, please help me! Please tell him I’m not guilty!”

Scythe Mandela shook his head. “I’ll do nothing of the sort, Citra,” he said sadly.

“Talk to Scythe Curie! She knows I didn’t do this!”

“This is too sensitive a situation to involve Scythe Curie at this time,” said Xenocrates. “She will be informed once we’ve determined your guilt.”

“Wait—you mean she doesn’t know where I am?”

“She knows we’ve detained you,” said Xenocrates. “We’re sparing her the details for now.”

Scythe Mandela sat in a chair across from her. “We know you’ve been in the backbrain, attempting to erase records of Scythe Faraday’s movements on the day he died, to foil our own internal investigation.”

“No! That’s not what I was doing!” But the more she denied it, the more guilty she appeared.

“But that’s not the most damning evidence,” said Scythe Mandela. Then he looked to Xenocrates. “May I show her?”

Xenocrates nodded, and Mandela pulled out from his robe a sheet of paper, putting it in one of Citra’s cuffed hands. She raised it to read it, not even imagining what it could be. It was a copy of a handwritten journal entry. Citra recognized the handwriting. There was no question it was Scythe Faraday’s. And as she read, her heart sank to a place she didn’t know existed in this, or any other world.

I fear I’ve made a dreadful mistake. An apprentice should never be chosen in haste, but I was foolish. I felt a need to impart all I know, all I’ve learned. I sought to increase the allies I have in the Scythedom who think as I do.

She comes to my door at night. I hear her in the darkness, and can only guess her intentions. Only once did I catch her entering my room. Had I actually been asleep, who can say what she might have done?

I am concerned that she may mean to end me. She’s shrewd, determined, calculating, and I’ve taught her the many arts of killing far too well. Let