Then, a few minutes later, as they were loading the grocery bags into a publicar, the scythe looked across the parking lot.
“There,” he said, “you see that woman? The one who just dropped her purse?”
“Yeah,” said Rowan.
Scythe Faraday pulled out his phone, aimed the camera at the woman, and in an instant information about her began to scroll on screen. Naturally ninety-six years of age, physically thirty-four. Mother of nine. Data management technician for a small shipping company. “She’s off to work after she puts away her groceries,” the scythe told them. “This afternoon we will go to her place of business and glean her.”
Citra drew in an audible breath. Not quite a gasp, but close. Rowan focused on his own breathing so he didn’t telegraph his emotions the way Citra had.
“Why?” he asked. “Why her?”
The scythe gave him a cool look. “Why not her?”
“You had a reason for gleaning Kohl Whitlock. . . .”
“Who?” Citra asked.
“A kid I knew at school. When I first met our honorable scythe, here.”
Faraday sighed. “Fatalities in parking lots made up 1.25 percent of all accidental deaths during the last days of the Age of Mortality. Last night I decided I would choose today’s subject from a parking lot.”
“So all this time while we were shopping, you knew it would end with this?” Rowan said.
“I feel bad for you,” said Citra. “Even when you’re food shopping, death is hiding right behind the milk.”
“It never hides,” the scythe told them with a world-weariness that was hard to describe. “Nor does it sleep. You’ll learn that soon enough.”
But it wasn’t something either of them was eager to learn.
• • •
That afternoon, just as the scythe had said, they went to the shipping company where the woman worked, and they watched—just as Rowan had watched Kohl’s gleaning. But today it was a little more than mere observation.
“I have chosen for you a life-terminating pill,” Scythe Faraday told the speechless, tremulous woman. He reached into his robe and produced a small pill in a little glass vial.
“It will not activate until you bite it, so you can choose the moment. You need not swallow it, just bite it. Death will be instantaneous and painless.”
Her head shook like a bobblehead doll. “May I . . . may I call my children? Scythe Faraday sadly shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. But we shall pass on any message you have to them.”
“What would it hurt to allow her to say good-bye?” Citra asked.
He put up his hand to silence her, and handed the woman a pen and piece of paper.
“Say all you need to say in a letter. I promise we shall deliver it.”
They waited outside of her office. Scythe Faraday seemed to have infinite patience.
“What if she opens a window and decides to splat?” Rowan asked.
“Then her life will end on schedule. It would be a more unpleasant choice, but the ultimate result is the same.”
The woman didn’t choose to splat. Instead, she let them back into the room, politely handed the envelope to Scythe Faraday, and sat down at her desk.
“I’m ready.”
Then Scythe Faraday did something they didn’t expect. He turned to Rowan and handed him the vial. “Please place the pill in Mrs. Becker’s mouth.”
“Who, me?”
Scythe Faraday didn’t answer. He simply held the vial out, waiting for Rowan to take it. Rowan knew he wasn’t officially performing the gleaning, but to be an intermediary . . . the thought was debilitating. He swallowed, tasting bitterness as if the pill were in his own mouth. He refused to take it.
Scythe Faraday gave him a moment more, then turned to Citra.
“You, then.”
Citra just shook her head.
Scythe Faraday smiled. “Very good,” he told them. “I was testing you. I would not have been pleased if either of you were eager to administer death.”
At the word “death,” the woman took a shuddering breath.
Scythe Faraday opened the vial and carefully removed the pill. It was triangular with a dark green coating. Who knew death could arrive so small?
“But . . . but I’m only ninety-six,” the woman said.
“We know,” the scythe told her. “Now please . . . open your mouth. Remember, it’s not to swallow; you must bite it.”
She opened her mouth as she was told, and Scythe Faraday placed the pill on her tongue. She closed her mouth, but didn’t bite it right away. She looked at each of them in turn. Rowan, then Citra, then finally settled her gaze on Scythe Faraday. Then the slightest crunch. And she went limp. Simple as that. But not so simple at all.
Citra’s eyes were moist. She pressed her lips together. As much as Rowan tried to control his emotions, his breath came out uneasily and he felt lightheaded.
And then Scythe Faraday turned to Citra. “Check for a pulse, please.”
“Who, me?”
The scythe was patient. He didn’t ask again. The man never asked a thing twice. When she continued to hesitate, he finally said, “This time it’s not a test. I actually want you to confirm for me that she has no pulse.”
Citra reached up a hand to the woman’s neck.
“Other side,” the scythe told her.
She pressed her fingers to the woman’s carotid artery, just beneath her ear. “No pulse.”
Satisfied, Scythe Faraday stood.
“So that’s it?” Citra asked.
“What were you expecting?” said Rowan. “A chorus of angels?”
Citra threw him a half-hearted glare. “But I mean . . . it’s so . . . uneventful.”
Rowan knew what she meant. Rowan had experienced the electrical jolt that had taken his schoolmate’s life. It was awful, but somehow this was worse. “What now? Do we just leave her like this?”
“Best not to linger,” Scythe Faraday said, tapping something out on his phone. “I’ve notified the coroner to come collect Mrs. Becker’s body.” Then he took the letter she had written and slipped it into one of the many pockets of his robe. “You two shall present the letter to her family at the funeral.”
“Wait,” said Citra. “We’re going to her funeral?”
“I thought you said it was best not to linger,” said Rowan.
“Lingering and paying respects are two different things. I attend the funerals of all the people I glean.”
“Is that a scythe rule?” Rowan asked, having never been to a funeral.
“No, it’s my rule,” he told them. “It’s called ‘common decency.’”
Then they left, Rowan and Citra both avoiding eye contact with the dead woman’s coworkers. This, both of them realized, was their first initiation rite. This was the moment their apprenticeship had truly begun.
Part Two
NO LAWS BEYOND THESE
* * *
The Scythe Commandments
1) Thou shalt kill.
2) Thou shalt kill with no bias, bigotry, or malice aforethought.
3) Thou shalt grant an annum of immunity to the beloved of those who accept your coming, and to anyone else you deem worthy.