Thunderhead

  He had gone from the uneventful world of Greyson Tolliver to the tumultuous extremes of Slayd Bridger—and now he was cast into the belly of blandness, doomed to be digested by boredom.

  Well, at least I’m still alive, he thought. Although he wasn’t entirely sure that was a benefit. Purity had been gleaned. Not supplanted, not relocated, but gleaned. She was no more, and in spite of the horror she had attempted, he ached for her. He longed to hear her defiant voice. He had become addicted to her chaos. He would have to adjust to a life without her, as well as a life without himself, for who was he now?

  He lay down on the bed, which, at least, was comfortable, and waited for perhaps half an hour. He wondered if Tonists, like the Office of Unsavory Affairs, made everyone wait as a matter of policy. Finally, he heard the creak of the door. It was late afternoon now, and the light from the small window lit the room just enough for him to see that the man before him wasn’t much older than he. He also had some sort of hard casing on one of his arms.

  “I’m Brother McCloud,” he said. “The curate has accepted your request for sanctuary. I understand you asked for me personally.”

  “A friend of mine told me to.”

  “May I ask who?”

  “No, you may not.”

  He seemed a bit annoyed, but let it go. “May I at least see your ID?” And when Greyson hesitated, Brother McCloud said, “Don’t worry, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, we won’t turn you over to the Authority Interface.”

  “I’m sure it already knows I’m here.”

  “Yes,” agreed Brother McCloud, “but your presence here is a matter of religious freedom. The Thunderhead will not interfere.”

  Greyson reached into his pocket, and handed him his electronic card, still flashing with the bright red U.

  “Unsavory!” he said. “We get more and more unsavories these days. Well, Slayd, that won’t matter here.”

  “That’s not my name. . . .”

  Brother McCloud gave him a questioning look. “Is that something else you won’t talk about?”

  “No, it’s just . . . not worth the effort.”

  “Then what do we call you?”

  “Greyson. Greyson Tolliver.”

  “All right, then; Brother Tolliver it is!”

  Greyson supposed he’d have to live with being called Brother Tolliver now.  “What’s that thing on your arm?”

  “It’s called a cast.”

  “So, am I going to have to wear one?”

  Brother McCloud laughed. “Not unless you break your arm.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s to help aid the natural healing process. We shun nanites, and unfortunately my arm was broken by a scythe.”

  “Really . . .” Greyson actually grinned, wondering if it was Scythe Anastasia.

  Brother McCloud didn’t appreciate Greyson’s grin. His demeanor cooled slightly.

  “We have afternoon intoning in ten minutes. There are clothes for you in the drawer. I’ll wait outside while you change.”

  “Do I have to go?” Greyson asked; intoning didn’t sound like something he really wanted to be a part of.

  “Yes,” said Brother McCloud. “That which comes can’t be avoided.”

  • • •

  Intoning took place in a chapel that, after the candlelight was doused, had barely enough light to allow Greyson to see, in spite of the high stained-glass windows.

  “Do you do everything in the dark?” Greyson asked.

  “Eyes can be deceiving. We appreciate the other senses more.”

  There was the sweet smell of incense covering something foul that Greyson soon learned was a basin of filthy water. “Primordial ooze,” Brother McCloud called it. “It’s filled with all the diseases that we’ve become immune to.”

  Intoning consisted of the curate striking the huge steel tuning fork in the center, twelve times in succession with a mallet. The congregation, which seemed to number about fifty, matched the tone. With each strike of the fork, the vibration built, and resonated to the point of being not quite painful, but disorienting and dizzying. Greyson did not open his mouth to vocalize the tone.

  The curate gave a short speech. A sermon, Brother McCloud called it. He spoke of his many journeys through the world in search of the Great Fork. “The fact that we have not found it does not mean the search is a failure—for the search itself is every bit as valuable as the finding.”  The congregation hummed their agreement. “Whether we find it today or tomorrow, or whether it is our sect or another that finds it, I believe to my very core that we will, one day, hear and feel the Great Resonance. And it will save us all.”

  Then, when the sermon was over, the congregation rose and approached the curate in a line. Each one dipped a finger into the rancid primordial ooze, touched it to their forehead, and licked it off their finger. Greyson became nauseated just watching.

  “You don’t have to partake of the earthly bowl yet,” Brother McCloud told him—which was only partially reassuring.

  “Yet? How about not at all?”

  To which Brother McCloud once more said, “That which comes can’t be avoided.”

  • • •

  That night, the wind howled with unusual ferocity, and sleet hissed as it pummeled the little window in Greyson’s room. The Thunderhead could influence the weather, but not entirely change it. Or if it could, it chose not to. It did try to make sure that when storms came, at least they came at more convenient times. He tried to convince himself that this storm was the Thunderhead crying icy tears for him. But who was he kidding? The Thunderhead had millions of more important things to do than lament his troubles. He was safe. He was protected. What more could he ask for? Everything.

  Curate Mendoza came into his room that night at about nine or ten. Light spilled in from the hallway, but once he was inside, he closed the door, leaving them both in darkness again. Greyson heard the complaint of the chair as the curate sat in it.

  “I came to see how you’re getting on,” he said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Adequacy is all that can be expected at this juncture, I suppose.”  Then his face was illuminated with the harsh light of a tablet.  The curate tapped and swiped.

  “I thought you shunned electricity.”

  “Not at all,” the curate told him. “We shun light in our ceremonies—and our sleeping quarters are dark to encourage our members to leave their rooms and seek communion with others in our public spaces.”

  Then he turned the tablet so Greyson could see it. It showed images of the burning theater. Greyson tried not to grimace.

  “This happened two days ago. It is my suspicion that you were involved, and that the scythedom is after you.”

  Greyson neither confirmed nor denied the charge.

  “If that is the case,” the curate said, “you need not mention it. You are safe here, because any enemy of the scythedom is a friend of ours.”

  “So you condone violence?”

  “We condone resistance to unnatural death. Scythes are bringers of unnatural death, so anything that frustrates their blades and bullets is fine with us.”

  Then he reached out and touched one of the horn-like bumps on Greyson’s head. Greyson backed away at his touch.

  “Those will have to be removed,” he said. “We do not allow body modifications. And your head will be shaved to allow your hair to grow in the color the universe intended.”

  Greyson said nothing. Now that Purity was dead, he wasn’t going to miss being Slayd Bridger, because it just reminded him of her—but he did not like having no choice in the matter.

  Mendoza rose. “I do hope you’ll come out to the library, or one of the recreation rooms, and get to know your fellow Tonists. I know they’d like to get to know you better—especially Sister Piper, who greeted you when you arrived.”

  “I just lost someone close to me. I don’t feel like being social.”

  “Then you must—especially if your loved
one was lost to gleaning. We Tonists don’t acknowledge death by scythe, which means you are not allowed to mourn.”

  So now he was being told what he was and was not allowed to feel? He wanted the last bit of Slayd Bridger that was still in him to tell the curate to go to hell, but instead he just said, “I won’t pretend to understand your ways.”

  “But you will pretend,” said Mendoza. “If you wish to have sanctuary, you will find your new purpose among us, and pretend until our ways become yours.”

  “And if they never do?”

  “Then you’ll just have to keep on pretending,” the curate said.  Then he added, “It has certainly worked for me.”

  • • •

  Six hundred twenty miles due south of Wichita, Rowan Damisch sparred with Tyger Salazar. Under different circumstances it would have been enjoyable for Rowan—competing with a friend in a martial art he’d come to love—but these forced confrontations toward an unknown end left Rowan increasingly unsettled.

  They sparred twice a day for two weeks, and although Tyger got better with each match, Rowan always won. When they weren’t sparring, Rowan was consigned to his room.

  Tyger, on the other hand, found himself even busier than before Rowan had arrived. More exhausting runs, more resistance training, repetitive Bokator drills, as well as maneuvers with every kind of blade from sword to dagger, until each one felt like a perfect extension of himself. Then, at the end of each day, just as his muscles were feeling the wear of his efforts, Tyger would receive a deep tissue massage to make his knotted flesh supple. Before Rowan arrived, the massages were maybe two or three times a week, but now he had them every day, and he was so exhausted that he often fell asleep on the table.

  “I’ll beat him,” he told Scythe Rand. “You’ll see.”

  “I have no doubt,” she said. For someone who, according to Rowan, was deceptive and heartless, she seemed pretty sincere.

  It was during one of his massages that the emerald scythe came in and asked the masseuse to leave. Tyger thought she might take over. He thrilled at the idea of her hands on him, but to his disappointment, she didn’t touch him at all.

  She simply said, “It’s time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “For you to get your ring.” She seemed melancholy about it somehow. Tyger thought he knew why.

  “I know you didn’t want to give it to me until after I beat Rowan. . . .”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” she said.

  He got up and slipped his robe on, showing not the slightest bit of modesty before her. Why should he? There was nothing about himself that he wanted hidden from her, inside or out.

  “You could have been a model for Michelangelo.”

  “I’d have liked that,” he said, tying his robe. “To be chiseled in marble.”

  She moved toward him, leaned in, and gave him the lightest of kisses—so light he could barely feel her lips touch his. He thought it might be a prelude to something more, but she backed away.

  “We have an appointment early tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of appointment?”

  She offered him a smile, albeit a slim one. “You can’t receive your scythe’s ring without at least a little bit of ceremony.”

  “Will Rowan be there?” Tyger asked.

  “Best if he’s not.”

  She was right, of course. There was no need to rub Rowan’s nose in the fact that he hadn’t been chosen. But Tyger had meant what he had said—the moment he had the ring, he’d give Rowan immunity.

  “I hope,” Tyger said, “that once that ring is on my finger, you look at me a little bit differently.”

  She took a long look into his eyes, and that did more to melt his muscles than the grinding knuckles of the masseuse.

  “I’m sure things will be different,” she told him. “Be up and ready to go by seven o’clock sharp.”

  After she had left, he allowed himself a moment to breathe a contented sigh. In a world where everyone was guaranteed to get whatever they needed, not everyone got everything they wanted. Rowan sure hadn’t. And until recently, Tyger hadn’t even known that he wanted to be a scythe. But now that it was about to happen, he knew it was right, and for the first time he could remember, was intensely pleased with the direction in which his life was moving.

  • • •

  Rowan was not brought out for sparring the next day, or the day after that. His only visitors were the guards who brought his food and took away his tray when he was done.

  He had counted the days since he arrived. The Olde Tyme Holidays had come and gone with no celebration in the penthouse. It was the last week of the year. He didn’t even know what the new year was to be called.

  “Year of the Raptor,” one of the guards told him when he asked, and, hoping the guard might have warmed enough to spill some information, he asked, “What’s going on? Why haven’t Tyger and Scythe Rand dragged me out for sparring? Don’t tell me I’m not their Bokator bitch anymore.”

  But if the guard knew the answer, he wasn’t saying. “Just eat,” he said. “We’ve been given strict orders not to let you starve.”

  Late in the afternoon of that second day of solitude, Scythe Rand came in with both guards.

  “Vacation must be over,” Rowan quipped, but the emerald scythe was not up for banter today.

  “Put him in the chair,” she ordered the guards. “I don’t want him to be able to move an inch.” And then Rowan caught sight of a roll of duct tape. To be tied to a chair was one thing. To be duct taped was worse.

  This is it, thought Rowan. Tyger’s training is over, and whatever she’s going to do to me, it’s happening now. So Rowan made his move. As soon as the guards tried to grab him, he exploded in a series of brutal blows that left one of their jaws broken, and the other one on the ground desperately gasping for air—but before he could break for the door, Rand was on him, and had him pinned, his back to the floor, and a knee against his chest with such pressure it was impossible for him to draw a breath.

  “You will submit to the bondage, or I will knock you out and you’ll be bound anyway,” she told him. “But if it goes that way, I’ll make sure your teeth get broken again.”  Then, when he was on the verge of losing consciousness, she took her knee off his chest. He was weakened just enough to make it easier for them to secure him to the chair.

  And that’s where they left him for over an hour.

  The tape was worse than the rope they had used on him in Scythe Brahms’s home. It constricted his chest so he could breathe only in shallow puffs. His arms and legs had no play whatsoever, no matter how much he tried to work his way out of the tape.

  The sun set, leaving nothing but the city lights of San Antonio and the pale glow of a rising gibbous moon, which lit the room in dim blues and long shadows.

  Finally, the door opened and one of the guards rolled in someone who was seated in some sort of chair with wheels on either side. Scythe Rand came in behind them.

  “Hi, Rowan.”

  It was Tyger. He was silhouetted against the light coming in from the hallway, so Rowan couldn’t see his face, but he recognized the voice. He sounded tired and raspy.

  “What’s going on, Tyger? Why did Rand do this to me? And what the hell is that you’re sitting in?”

  “It’s called a wheelchair,” he said, choosing only to answer the third question. “It’s from the Age of Mortality. Not much need for it these days, but it came in useful today.”

  There was something odd about the way Tyger spoke. Not just the raspy tone of his voice, but the cadence of his speech, his choice of words, and the way he enunciated them so clearly.

  Tyger shifted a hand, and something on it caught the moonlight. Rowan didn’t need to be told what it was.

  “You got your ring.”

  “Yes,”  Tyger said. “Yes, I did.”

  There was a feeling in Rowan’s gut now, heavy and putrid. It was trying to work its way up t
o the surface. A part of Rowan already knew what it was, but he wasn’t willing to let it seep into his awareness—as if refusing to think about it could chase away a dark specter of truth. But illumination was only a moment away.

  “Ayn, I can’t quite reach the light switch—could you get it?”

  She reached over, turned on the light, and the reality of the situation hit Rowan with both barrels . . . because although it was Tyger Salazar sitting in the wheelchair, it wasn’t Tyger who Rowan found himself looking at.

  He was looking at the smiling face of Scythe Goddard.

  * * *

  I can communicate in 6,909 living and dead languages. I can have more than fifteen billion simultaneous conversations, and be fully engaged in every single one. I can be eloquent, and charming, funny, and endearing, speaking the words you most need to hear, at the exact moment you need to hear them.

  Yet even so, there are unthinkable moments where I can find no words, in any language, living or dead.

  And in those moments, if I had a mouth, I might open it to scream.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  29

  Repurposed

  Rowan felt the world spin. He could breathe out, but couldn’t breathe in, as if Scythe Rand’s knee was on his chest again—as if the room were floating in space, and he longed for the ecstasy of unconsciousness, because that was a better alternative than what he now faced.

  “Yes, I can see how the voice would have confused you,” Goddard said, still sounding like Tyger. “It couldn’t be helped.”

  “How . . . how . . . ,” was all Rowan could get out. While Rand’s survival had been a shock, at least it made sense—but Rowan had decapitated Goddard! He had seen the man’s headless body burn!

  But now Rowan looked to Rand, who stood there in obedience to her mentor, and Rowan knew. Oh, God, he knew.

  “You managed to decapitate me right at the jawline,” Goddard said, “above the larynx. Thus my old vocal chords are gone forever. But these will do.”

  And what made it even worse was that Goddard wasn’t wearing a scythe’s robe; he was wearing Tyger’s clothes, all the way down to his shoes. It was intentional, Rowan realized—so there would be no doubt in Rowan’s mind what had been done. Rowan turned away.