Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,64

play, but some would actually pretend to be scythes, fooling others, granting false immunity. Everything short of gleaning.

There are laws against impersonating workers in any profession, but no law preventing anyone from impersonating a scythe. Since the Thunderhead has no jurisdiction over the Scythedom, it cannot pass any laws concerning us. It was an unforeseen glitch in the separation of Scythe and State.

However, it wasn’t a glitch for long. In the Year of the Stingray, at the Sixty-Third World Conclave, it was decided that all such imposters shall be gleaned on sight, publicly, and most violently.  While one might expect such an edict to produce a bloodbath, very few gleanings ever took place. Once word got out, the posers shed their false robes and vanished into the woodwork of the world. To this day the edict remains, but rarely needs to be invoked, because few are foolish enough to impersonate a scythe.

And yet now and again, I hear at conclave the rare tale of a scythe coming face to face with an imposter and having to glean them. Usually the conversation is about the inconvenience of it. How the scythe must then track down the imposter’s family to grant immunity and such.

But I wonder more about the imposter. What was it they hoped to achieve? Was it the lure of the forbidden? Were they enticed by the danger of being caught? Or did they simply wish to leave this life so badly that they chose one of the few direct paths to annihilation?

—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

* * *

21

Branded

The party continued for another day. A festival of excess on all levels. Rowan joined in the revelry, but it was more out of obligation than anything. He was the center of attention, the celebrity of the moment. In the pool beautiful people bobbed toward him, at the buffet guests cleared the way so he could always be at the front of the line. It was awkward, yet heady. He couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that enjoyed the surreal nature of celebratory attention. The lettuce elevated to a place of honor.

It was only when the other scythes in attendance shook his hand and wished him luck in his mortal competition against Citra that he sobered and remembered what was at stake.

He borrowed brief snippets of sleep in the cabana, always awakened by music, or raucous laughter, or fireworks. Then, late in the afternoon of the second day, when Scythe Goddard had enough, he merely whispered so and word spread quickly. In less than an hour the guests had left, and servants began to clean the detritus of revelry from the eerily silent grounds. Now only the other residents of the estate remained: Scythe Goddard, his three junior scythes, the servants, and the girl, Esme, who peered out of her bedroom window at Rowan like a wraith, as he sat in Goddard’s cabana, awaiting whatever came next.

Scythe Volta approached, his yellow robes rippling in the breeze. “What are you still doing out here?” he asked.

“I have nowhere else to be,” Rowan told him.

“Come with me,” Volta said. “It’s time to begin your training.”

• • •

There was a wine cellar in the basement of the main house. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of bottles of wine rested in brick alcoves. A bare minimum of bulbs lit the space, casting long shadows and making the alcoves seem like portals to undisclosed hells.

Scythe Volta led Rowan to the central chamber of the cellar, where Goddard and the other scythes waited. Scythe Rand produced a device from her green robe. It looked like a cross between a gun and a flashlight.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

“It’s a tweaker,” Rowan told her. He’d had the occasion several years ago to have his nanites tweaked when his teachers decided his moodiness had crossed the line into depression. That was five or six years ago. The tweaking was painless, and the effect subtle. He hadn’t noticed much of a change, but everyone agreed that he had begun to smile more.

“Arms out, legs spread,” said Scythe Rand. Rowan did as he was told and Scythe Rand passed the tweaker all over his body like some sort of magic wand. Rowan felt a mild tingling in his extremities that quickly faded. She stepped back, and Scythe Goddard approached.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘being made?’” asked Scythe Goddard. “Or being ‘jumped in?’”

Rowan shook his head, noticing that the other scythes had positioned themselves around him, leaving