The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,144

repeatedly and rapidly until the tone it yielded resonated within the bones of everyone in the compound. It didn’t matter anymore whether it was deemed A-flat or G-sharp. Everyone knew it was an alarm.

Secretly the members of the Tallahassee Tonal Monastic Order had hoped to avoid the wrath of the scythedom. They were not a sibilant sect. They were peaceful and kept to themselves. But Overblade Goddard did not distinguish between the sibilant and the serene.

Scythes broke through the gate, in spite of the fact that it had been reinforced against them, and flooded the grounds. They wasted no time.

“Scythes are not the problem, but the symptom,” their curate had told them in chapel the night before. “What comes cannot be avoided—and if they come for us, we must not cower. In showing our courage, it will reveal their cowardice.”

There was a total of eleven scythes that morning—a number deeply unpleasant to Tonists, for it was one short of a twelve-note chromatic scale. Whether this was intentional or coincidence, they didn’t know, although most Tonists did not believe in coincidence.

The scythes’ robes were flashes of color within the earth tones of the monastery. Blues and greens, bright yellows and vermillion, and each one was speckled with gems that glittered like stars in an alien sky. None of the scythes were celebrated ones, but perhaps they hoped, through this gleaning, to gain renown. Each had their own method of killing, but all were skilled and efficient.

More than 150 Tonists were gleaned in the monastery that morning. And although immunity was promised to their immediate families, scythe policy had changed. When it came to immunity, the North Merican Allied Scythedom had adopted an opt-in paradigm. If you were owed immunity, you had to approach the office of the scythedom and request it.

When the scythes’ business was done, the few Tonists who had not had the conviction to stand in defiance came out of hiding. Fifteen. Another number that was unpleasing to the Tone. Their penance would be to collect the dead, all the while knowing that their bodies should be among them. But as it turned out, the Tone, Toll, and Thunder had a plan for them, too.

Before they could even count their dead, several trucks showed up at their gate.

An elder Tonist stepped out of the monastery to greet them. He was reluctant to be a voice of leadership, but had little choice under the circumstances.

“Yeah, we got an order on our system to pick up some perishables,” one of the drivers told him.

“You must be mistaken,” the elder Tonist said. “There’s nothing here. Nothing but death.”

At the mention of death, the trucker became uncomfortable, but stuck to his orders and showed his tablet. “Right here—see? Order was placed half an hour ago. Directly from the Thunderhead, high priority. I’d ask it what the order was for, but you know as well as I do that it ain’t gonna answer.”

The Tonist was baffled until he took a second look at the trucks and realized they all had refrigeration units. He took a deep breath and decided not to question. Tonists always burned their dead… but the Toll had told them not to, and the Thunder had sent these vehicles. All that remained was for the survivors to be moved by the spirit of the Tone and prepare the dead for this unconventional journey to the Higher Octave.

Because the trucks had come, and they most certainly could not be avoided.

* * *

Curate Mendoza was a practical man. He saw big pictures that few saw and knew how to play the world, stroking it and gently turning its attention toward whatever he wanted it to see. Attention, that’s all it really was. Caressing people just enough to make them focus in on something specific within the vast visual field of their lives, whether it was blue polar bears or a young man clothed in purple and silver.

What he had accomplished with Greyson Tolliver was remarkable. Mendoza had come to believe that this was his purpose. That perhaps the Tone—in which he truly believed on good days—had set him in Greyson’s path in order to transform him into a conduit for its will. What Mendoza had done for Tonism would have earned him canonization in mortal religions. Instead it had left him excommunicated.

He was back to being a lowly and humble Tonist, riding trains in sackcloth, with people turning away rather than acknowledging his existence. He had considered going back to his monastery in