The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,163

it.

Damn all formal decorum, she would have thrown herself into his arms, but as she approached him, he knelt before her – this, perhaps the greatest of all scythes who had ever lived, was kneeling before her. He clasped her hands in his and looked up at her.

“I was afraid to believe it,” he said. “Munira told me you were alive, but I couldn’t let myself hope, because if it proved untrue, I would not be able to bear it. But you’re here! You’re here!” Then he lowered his head, and all his words became weeping.

Citra knelt down to him and spoke gently. “Yes,” she said. “I’m alive now, thanks to Marie. She saved me. Now let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Munira watched Faraday leave with Scythe Anastasia. She had brought Faraday here, but the moment he saw that turquoise robe, Munira was forgotten. She didn’t have the power to bring him back from his self-imposed exile – but all it took was invoking Anastasia’s name, and he left his solitary islet. Three years Munira had spent tending to him, putting up with him, making sure he didn’t languish away into nothing, and he discarded her without a backward glance.

She left the docks before she knew what was even in the crates. Before Sykora, Loriana, or anyone else could give her an assignment. She was never really a part of this community to begin with, so why act like she was now?

When she got home and saw the work order still pulsating on every electronic surface, she hit the circuit breakers, killing power to the house, and lit a candle.

Let the cargo be loaded onto the ships. Let the ships be launched. Let it all be over. Then finally she could go back to the library. Back to Alexandria where she belonged.

Habitable Exoplanets Less Than

600 Light-Years from Earth

48

We Will Traverse That Expanse When We Come to It

As the population of the atoll got to work, and Anastasia went off with Scythe Faraday, Loriana took Greyson, Jeri, Morrison, and Astrid to a building on the island’s only hill. They climbed up a winding stair to a large circular room at the top. The room was all windows, like a lighthouse, and nothing had been built to obstruct the view, so it had a 360-degree vista of the atoll.

Loriana pointed to hundreds of names engraved into the support columns. “We built the Viewhouse as a memorial for the Nimbus agents who died when we first arrived. This is the very spot where the laser turret that killed them stood. Now it’s a meeting place for important matters, or at least the matters certain people felt were important. I wouldn’t know, because I was never invited.”

“From what I can see,” said Greyson, “yours was the work that actually mattered.”

“Important work,” Jeri quipped, “often loses the spotlight to self-important people.”

Loriana shrugged. “I got more done without the attention anyway.”

Outside they could see things getting underway. Crates being opened down by the docks, vehicles large and small already heading for the launchpads, as well as small boats traversing the ten-mile lagoon toward the far-flung islands of the atoll.

“We should help them,” said Jeri, but Greyson shook his head wearily.

“I’m spent,” he said. “We all are. It’s all right to let the people here handle this part – we can’t do everything.”

“Fine with me,” said Morrison. “I’d rather sail with the dead than have to unload them.”

“You’re a scythe!” Astrid reminded him. “Death is your business.”

“I deal it, I don’t wheel it,” Morrison answered. Greyson would have rolled his eyes if he’d had the strength.

“It’s just thirty-five per person,” Loriana reminded them. “With twelve hundred people working, it won’t be too much for them to handle, once they get over the initial shock of it.”

“Thirty-five is five Tonist octaves,” Astrid pointed out. “Just saying.”

Morrison moaned. “It’s nothing mystical, Astrid; you divide the dead Tonists by the number of people on the atoll, and that’s what you get.”

“Atoll!” Astrid countered. “The very name of our prophet is embedded in this place! Just saying.”

“Or,” Jeri said, “it’s a word that existed for thousands of years before our dear friend Greyson Tolliver was born.”

But Astrid wasn’t done. “Forty-two ships,” she said. “Exactly six octaves on the diatonic scale. Just saying.”

“Actually,” said an unfamiliar voice, “forty-two is simply the number of islands on the atoll large enough on which to build a launchpad. But on the other hand, all things do