The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,152

forks continued to toll out mournfully for their dead.

“It will not be the end of us, but a beginning,” the survivors of the attacks would say. “The Tone, Toll, and Thunder are paving a path to glory.”

There was a public outcry, but it was lost in a flood of competing outcries. People had begun taking so much issue with scythes, each one seemed lost within the shadow of another. One hundred points of darkness, and no one could agree which one to rally around. Scythedoms that still maintained conscience and integrity condemned Goddard’s call for a Tonist purge and refused to allow it in their regions—but that still left half the world vulnerable.

“Future history will view this with the same contempt as the mortal purges,” High Blade Tarsila of Amazonia declared. But future history gave neither solace nor respite from the brutal now.

* * *

While Scythe Anastasia would not allow her honorable self to be led blindly, Citra Terranova allowed her beleaguered self to be swept up in the Toll’s mission. The Thunderhead, according to Greyson, would fly their entire entourage to Philippi’Nesia, and from there they would be given a cargo ship and set sail for Guam.

“But that’s not the final destination,” Greyson told her, apologetic and annoyed. “The Thunderhead still won’t tell me where we’re going—but it promises that we’ll know everything once we get there.”

Even before they left Britannia, however, word reached them of a Tonist gleaning in Birmingham, not far away from where they were. An elegy of new-order scythes had paid a midnight visit to an enclave, and several hundred were gleaned—many in their sleep.

Which is worse, she wondered, to take the lives of the innocent as they sleep, or look them in the eye as you cut them down?

Against Greyson’s objections, she insisted that they both pay a visit to see the damage themselves.

Scythe Anastasia knew how to face death. It was her job as a scythe to do so, but it never got easier. When the survivors saw the Toll, they were awed. When they saw Anastasia, they were furious.

“Your kind did this” was their bitter accusation as they gathered the bodies of the dead.

“Not my kind,” she told them. “My kind are honorable scythes. There is no honor in the ones who did this.”

“There are no honorable scythes!” they claimed, and that was a shock to hear. Had Goddard dragged them down so far that people truly believed all scythes had lost their integrity?

That was days ago, and only now that they were in the middle of the Pacific, halfway around the world, could she feel the weight of all these things fall off the edge of the horizon. She now understood the allure the sea held for Jeri. The freedom to leave your darkest shadows behind, and the hope that those shadows might drown before they could find you.

* * *

Jeri, however, never saw the sea as an escape. Because even as the world receded, there was always something new on the horizon ahead.

Jeri had officially stepped down as the captain of the E. L. Spence, and said farewell to the crew before leaving with Anastasia and Possuelo.

“You’ll be sorely missed, Captain,” Chief Wharton had said. This was a man who never shed a tear, but now his eyes were laden with them. This crew that took so long to warm to their young captain were now more devoted than any crew Jerico had ever seen.

“Will you be back?” Wharton asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeri had said, “but I feel Anastasia needs me more than you do.”

Then Wharton gave Jeri his parting words. “Don’t let affection cloud your judgment, Captain.”

It was wise advice, but Jeri knew that was not the case here. Affection and fondness were two different things. Jeri knew from the beginning that Anastasia’s heart belonged to her bleak knight. Jeri could never be that and, to be honest, didn’t want to be.

Once they had left Britannia, bound for the South Pacific, Greyson posed the question openly and directly.

“Did you fall in love with her?” he asked.

“No,” Jeri told him. “I fell in love with the idea of falling in love with her.”

Greyson laughed at that. “You, too, huh?”

Greyson was a pure soul. He had no guile in him. Even when he pretended to be the Toll, it was honest pretension. You could see it in his smile; it was simple and unambiguous. He had only one smile, and it meant the one thing a smile was supposed to mean.