The Toll: Part Three

I know that there are still those among you who, like the recalcitrant LoneStar region, are not sure that mine is the right path.

They will still be stewards of
 your respective regions, responsible for local administration—however, they will now be free from the burden of more cumbersome policy decisions. Those larger issues are left to me.

Whether or not any of these things were true didn’t matter. He acted as if they were. Which meant it was Goddard’s truth—and what was true for Goddard became true for the world. Or at least every part of the world where he had smudged his indelible fingerprint.

Though helping Anastasia escape Amazonia was fraught with strife, that strife had receded to the horizon behind the Spence—which was now, Jerico mused, no longer a salvage ship, but a rescue vessel.

As far as the North Mericans know, Anastasia is weaving a circuitous route south by train all the way to the Land of Fire, where the region’s High Blade is supposed to have offered her sanctuary.

Northern scythes saw Amazonians as too simple to concoct such a ploy, and the Land of Fire, Jeri knew, would be suitably uncooperative with the North Mericans. The scythes down there were obstreperous to an extreme.

Jeri trusted the crew of the Spence implicitly; they had grown fiercely loyal to their captain.

It seemed that the only way to effectively guard the willful scythe was to do it personally.
“She’s going to be a handful,” Chief Wharton said.

“Honestly, though, it’s a family name that has no bearing on the story of Jericho. But if you find it off-putting, you can call me Jeri. Everyone does.”

Rowan did not know any of the things that had transpired during his three-year absence.

“Conscience is a tool, just like any other. If you don’t wield it, it wields you—and from what I can see, it has bludgeoned you senseless. No, the world needs the unity that I offer far more than it needs your simplistic understanding of right and wrong.”

This time Goddard wasn’t so cavalier as to leave Rowan alone in his room. Two guards were assigned to be in there with him.

In mortal days, Port Remembrance had been known as Monrovia, but the Thunderhead decided that the region’s dark history of subjugation and slavery, followed by poorly planned repatriation, warranted an entirely new name that would offend absolutely no one.

“So much ado about a junior scythe!” he said in a booming, genial voice as he greeted her.

And that freed Jeri to keep an eye on Anastasia, and the High Blade, who seemed a little too ingratiating.

Tenkamenin, who went by Tenka to those close to him, had a disarming and effusive nature to go with his deep voice—a voice that resounded even when he whispered.

The palace was, like Tenka himself, stylish and the epitome of good taste.

The anachronistic uniforms of the staff were all from different historical eras.

As he rolled down boulevards and main streets, there was always a view of him for the gauntlets of lookie-loos on either side.

Hadn’t gleaning by fire been outlawed? Goddard must have reinstated it. Or maybe he brought it back just for this one special gleaning.

He would suffer like the heretics and witches of more ignorant times.

Tenka was the consummate host, greeting everyone personally and granting immunity left and right.

“Do I seem wastefully self-indulgent to you?” Tenka asked her. “Am I a horribly hedonistic High Blade?”
“Goddard throws parties like this,” she pointed out.

“Don’t be modest. Tell me your dream in all of its garish glory!”

“Because if we truly are to emulate death as it once was, it must be fickle and capricious,” he said.

Anastasia gasped when the first stone hit the car, but Tenkamenin was unperturbed. “Don’t worry—they can’t do any damage, and they know it. I’m sorry you have to see this.”

“Do not cast aspersions on my crew, Your Excellency,” Jeri said. “They are loyal to a fault. Can you say that of the people you surround yourself with?”

That raised the High Blade’s hackles, but he did not defend his entourage.

“They wish to see it, and I wish to provide it. Who are we to deny them their catharsis?”

Goddard spouted erudite gibberish with such regularity, Rand had learned to turn her ears off to it.

There were scythes and ordinary citizens in the crowd—and although the scythes did have a special entrance, they had been encouraged by Goddard to sit in among the rabble.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Constantine?” Goddard asked, clearly to goad him.

It was as if Goddard looked upon it religiously. A burnt offering to purify the path and appease the gods.

It was, he had come to realize, a matter of evolution. Not natural selection, because nature had become weak and toothless. Intelligent selection was more like it, with Goddard and his acolytes at the helm of the intelligentsia.

He was perfectly mournful and lugubrious.

Pickford was regal and eloquent; Tizoc, direct and incisive; and MacPhail’s gratitude for those who made this day possible felt honest and real.

It came as a tingling in his extremities, a churning in his gut, and an aching tightness in the small of his back. Fury surged upward with volcanic intensity until his head began to throb.

Were they laughing at him? Whether they were, or not, was of little consequence. All that mattered was what he heard. What he felt. And he felt the derision of thirty thousand souls.

“It’s no longer streaming. We’re on damage control now. You can turn this around, Robert,” she said, cajoling him as best she could.

“No, Scythe Lucifer is not here today,” he continued, “but YOU, who were so eager to witness the spectacle, are now the object of my eye. This was not a judgment on him; it was a judgment on YOU, who have, on this day, damned yourselves! The only way back from perdition is penance. Penance and sacrifice. Therefore, I have selected YOU on this day to be an example for the world.”