The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,129

list. Then one day he showed up at an airport, uncertain of where to go next – and lo and behold, a ticket was already in the system for him. The Thunderhead had taken over his travels, sending him to sects the Toll had reformed, so he could visit them and leave behind a mural to honor the Toll. That’s how Ezra knew he was part of the Toll’s entourage, part of his story, even if the Toll didn’t know it.

Then, when he was caught in Amazonia, he had to believe it was also part of the Thunderhead’s plan. But on the other hand, if it was just bad luck, the Thunderhead had ways of using that to its advantage, too.

While the entire SubSaharan scythedom was searching for the Sibilants who had killed their High Blade, it was an Amazonian scythe who knew where they were – thanks to a single Tonist in Scythe Possuelo’s custody.

“We caught him painting a scene of the Toll turning into a flock of birds, on the wall of our High Blade’s residence,” Scythe Possuelo told Anastasia.

“It’s what I do,” Ezra said with a smile.

They were all safely aboard Possuelo’s plane. Possuelo had even brought a brand-new turquoise robe for Anastasia. It felt good to be clothed as herself again.

“Punishment for defacing scythe property is gleaning,” Possuelo said, “but High Blade Tarsila didn’t have the heart to glean an artist. Then he told us what he’d been doing.”

“I could paint you, Scythe Anastasia,” he offered. “It won’t be as good as a mortal artist, of course. I’ve come to accept that, but I’m less mediocre than most.”

“Save your brushes,” she told him. Perhaps it was vanity on her part, but the last thing she wanted was to be immortalized by an artist who was “less mediocre than most.”

“He’s been in our custody for several months – but then two tickets appeared for him on the global travel system after Tenkamenin had been killed,” Possuelo told her. “One to Onitsha, a small SubSaharan city – but the second one was baffling. It was a tour ticket to a protected wilderness where there hadn’t been tours for over a hundred years. The Ogbunike Caves.”

To that, Ezra shrugged and smiled. “I’m special. Sure you don’t want a portrait?”

The fact that the tickets showed up in the system after Ezra was in scythe custody could really mean only one thing: The Thunderhead wanted the Amazonian scythedom to know where the Sibilants – and the Toll – were.

“Normally it would be a short flight,” Possuelo told Anastasia, “but we’ll have to take a roundabout route – engaging first in some bogus business elsewhere – otherwise, we might inadvertently lead the SubSaharan scythes right to the Toll.”

“That’s all right,” Anastasia told him. “I need time to dig into the backbrain again for my next broadcast. I’m close to something on the Mars disaster.”

“And the orbital colony?” Possuelo asked.

Anastasia sighed and shook her head. “One catastrophe at a time.”

“ There were 9,834 colonists on Mars. Even more than had lost their lives on the moon in the world’s first mass gleaning. And there were extensive plans to make our sister planet a home for millions, eventually billions. But something went terribly wrong.

“Have you done your homework on Mars? Have you scanned the list of names of those doomed colonists? I don’t expect you to remember or even recognize any of them – not even the ones who were famous at the time, because fame comes and goes, and mostly their fame is gone. But look again, because there’s one name I want you to see.

“Carson Lusk.

“He was there when the disaster occurred, and was lucky enough to be one of the few survivors. He was in the right place at the right time, and managed to get onboard the one escape vessel that wasn’t incinerated when the colony’s reactor blew.

“There was a big celebration when that small group of survivors finally made it back to Earth, but after that, Carson Lusk disappeared from public view.

“Or did he?

“Let’s back up a bit to three months before the reactor took out the colony. If you look at the transport records for craft coming to and from Mars, you’ll see a name that I’m sure you’ll find familiar. Xenocrates. He was a young scythe at the time – and the only one known to ever visit the Mars colony. It was controversial, because it implied that scythes would continue their business on the red planet.