The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,120

by the invading Tonists. They lit the colonnade and upper suites in the angry, shifting light of frenetic flames. The flames turned every shadow into a figure lurching from the darkness—but those shadows also provided Jeri with enough cover to dupe the pursuers and double back.

Jeri ducked into another suite but, not being used to the robe, snagged it on a doorjamb. Before Jeri could get it free, the Tonists were there, brandishing weapons that they clearly were not trained to use. Jeri was no scythe, but had experience with fighting weapons. There had been a time, in fact, when Jeri would go to fighting clubs. People loved to see Madagascans fight—somehow the ambiguity made the battle more intriguing.

And today, these Tonists picked the wrong Madagascan.

Anastasia had left a blade in one of the pockets of the robe. Jeri pulled it out and fought like never before.

x. Libera Me

Anastasia missed. Blast it! She missed the curate!

A young Tonist, seeing that her curate was about to be gleaned, pushed him out of the way and took the bullet herself. And the curate, gripping the stub of his arm in pain, ran. He ran like a coward, into the mob of Tonists still flooding the grand foyer.

Tenkamenin was dead. So were Makeda and Baba. The Tonists who had seen her attack the curate were still stunned and unsure what to do. She was about to glean them all in fury but stopped herself, because gleaning in anger was not the scythe way. And there was a more pressing matter: Jeri.

She turned and ran up the stairs. No one pursued her. They were too busy setting fire to anything that would burn.

She followed the sound of fighting to one of the unused guest suites. There were a few deadish Sibilants and a trail of blood on the floor. She followed the trail to a bedroom, where three more Tonists were attacking Jeri. Jeri was on the floor, fending them off, but was outnumbered and was losing the battle.

Anastasia gleaned the three Tonists with their own weapons and dropped to the floor, quickly trying to assess Jeri’s wounds. The turquoise robe was soaked with blood. She pulled it off and ripped it, trying to use pieces as a tourniquet.

“I… I heard gunshots,” Jeri said.

Jeri’s wounds were too severe for healing nanites to handle. They would not mend without help. “Tenkamenin is dead,” Anastasia said. “He died protecting me.”

“Perhaps,” Jeri said weakly, “perhaps he was not as bad as I thought.”

“If he were alive, I think he’d say the same about you.”

Thick smoke was already billowing through every open door. She helped Jeri out into the colonnade overlooking the atrium. Everything below them was burning. There was no way to get down the stairs. Then something occurred to her. A way out—perhaps the only chance they had.

“Can you climb?” she asked Jeri.

“I can try.”

Anastasia helped Jeri up to the next level, then through another suite to a balcony. Beside the balcony were ladder rungs embedded in the stone, which she had seen workers use to access the bronze dome that covered the palace. One rung at a time, Anastasia got Jeri all the way up to the edge of the dome. It was designed with a gentle slope and patterned with textured divots and nubs that would give them footholds—but to Jeri, already exhausted from blood loss, it must have looked like Mount Everest.

“H-how will climbing up there—”

“Just shut up and move,” demanded Anastasia, not having time to explain.

The dome was hot from the fire in the atrium below. Its glass skylights were already beginning to explode from the heat and belch forth black smoke.

When they reached the pinnacle, there was a weather vane in the shape of the symbol of the scythedom—the curved blade and the unblinking eye—that pivoted left and right, not sure which way the winds were blowing, because the heat was making the wind blow directly up.

And now, finally, the scythedom helicopter arrived. It headed straight for the heliport, the pilots not yet knowing that it had been overrun by Tonists.

“It won’t see us,” said Jeri.

“That’s not why we’re up here.”

Then an ambudrone buzzed past them, and another, and another. They dropped toward the rose garden, which was littered with deadish guards and Tonists. “That’s why we’re here,” Anastasia said. She tried to grab a drone, but it was moving too quickly and wasn’t close enough to grasp.

Then below, the helicopter made a grievous error. Seeing the ambudrones buzzing around it,