The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,157
Rising Sun scythes value elegance in our gleanings. Grace. Those who use blades will often employ ancestral samurai swords. Honorable. Refined. But the bowie knife? It is suitable to gut a pig, not glean a human. It is an ugly thing. As uncouth as the region that wields it.
—From an interview with
Honorable Scythe Kurosawa
of the Region of the Rising Sun
46
East Toward Nowhere
From the moment he was revived, Rowan was a prisoner.
First he was the Amazonian scythedom’s captive, then Goddard’s, and now the LoneStars’. But if he was going to be honest, he had become a prisoner of his own rage the instant he donned the black robe and became Scythe Lucifer.
The problem with setting out to change the world was that you were never the only one. It was an endless tug-of-war with powerful players pulling – not just against you, but in every direction – so that whatever you did, even if you made progress against all those vectors, at some point you were bound to go sideways.
Would it have been better not to try at all? He didn’t know. Scythe Faraday did not approve of Rowan’s methods, but he hadn’t stopped him, either, so even the wisest person Rowan knew was steeped in ambivalence. All Rowan could say for sure was that his time pulling relentlessly on that rope was over. And yet here he was in the Region of the Rising Sun, with his eyes on yet another scythe, ready to end his existence.
There was an odd justice to it. Not so much live-by-the-blade/die-by-the-blade; it was more becoming the blade, and losing oneself. Scythe Faraday had once told him and Citra that they were called scythes rather than reapers, because they were not the ones who killed; they were merely the tool that society used to bring fair-handed death to the world. But once you’re the weapon, you’re nothing more than a tool for someone else to wield. The hand of society was one thing, but the hand wielding him now was that of the LoneStar scythedom. He supposed, now that he was out of their grasp, that he could disappear – but what would become of his family then? Did he trust Coleman and Travis and the rest of the LoneStar scythes to keep their promise and protect them, even if he went AWOL?
If there was one thing Rowan had learned, it was that no one could be trusted to stay true. Ideals eroded, virtue tarnished, and even the high road had dimly lit detours.
He had set out to be judge and jury – the consequence for those who knew no consequences. And now he was nothing more than an assassin. If this was what his life was to be, then he would somehow learn to make peace with it. And if so, he hoped Citra would never find out. He had managed to see some of her broadcasts and knew she was out there doing good in the world, revealing Goddard for the monster he truly was. Whether it brought Goddard down was yet to be seen, but at least she was fighting the good fight. Which was more than Rowan could say about his current ignoble mission.
A part of him – that childish part that struggled for breath beneath the crushing weight of Scythe Lucifer – still dreamed that he and Citra could magically be millions of miles away from all this. Rowan hoped that voice would die soon. Better to be numb than plagued by longing for something that could never be. Better to move forward silently toward the scene of his next crime.
Scythe Kurosawa reminded Rowan a bit of Scythe Faraday in stature and the way he had let some gray creep into his hair – but Kurosawa’s demeanor was far different. He was a boisterous and bloviating man who took pleasure in ridiculing others. Not an endearing trait, but not a gleaning offense.
“If we gleaned every asshole,” Scythe Volta had once told Rowan, “there’d be virtually no one left.” Volta – who had self-gleaned right before Rowan’s eyes. It was a painful memory. What would Volta say about his current mission, Rowan wondered. Would he tell Rowan to self-glean before it was too late, and he had lost his soul?
Kurosawa liked to glean in crowds – not mass gleanings, just one individual a day. His method was elegant. A single sharpened fingernail dipped in neurotoxin derived from the skin of the golden frog. A flick on the cheek would end a