More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He bowed to her. He actually bowed. She recalled that bowing began as a way to show fealty—offering a royal your head for decapitation. While some scythes loved the groveling, Marie found it ridiculous and awkward. She wondered if any scythes ever actually beheaded someone who bowed to them.
Even now she was getting sideways looks of scythes who clearly disapproved of her choice of robe, a vibrant, bright violet. She had chosen such a vivid color as a way to secretly spite her Tonist parents, who abhorred anything that wasn’t faded earth tones. Now she was regretting it, because of the unwanted attention it drew.
She had toyed with the idea of dyeing her hair that same color—but the hairdresser had made a face, and said her single, beautiful braid would get lost against the fabric. “Silver!” he had suggested. “Oh, how striking that would be!” And so Marie took the advice.
She thought he might come closer for a few more personal words, but instead he moved away. “Good to see you, Marie.” She wondered if he could sense how her heart dropped.
“You’re a scythe now. It’s time you learned to be opinionated.” “No one wants to hear what I have to say.” “Ha! No one wants to hear what anyone has to say, but you say it anyway. That’s the way it is around here.”
“We can’t deny that the Scythedom and the Thunderhead are two sides of the same coin. If one is threatened, then so is the other!”
“I’m not here for everyone’s entertainment.” Scythe Streisand gave her a judgmental glare. “Honestly, kid, if you can’t handle a little smackdown, you have no business being a scythe.”
“Scythes are figures of action,” Faraday had told her during her apprenticeship, then had added with an impish grin, “and not just because they make action figures of us.” He was right. A scythe needed to act decisively and without hesitation—even when it was difficult.
Washington was still a place to be respected, but only in the way that we respect crumbling antiquity.
Now only the executive branch remained, the president and his cabinet clinging on like stubborn leaves defying the fall….
“Your weapons aren’t even loaded.” “You don’t know that.” “Of course I do. The Thunderhead doesn’t allow anyone to have loaded weapons. Only scythes can. You’re lucky the Thunderhead allows you to play with those toys at all.”
Perfection required the Thunderhead. And scythes.
“The Thunderhead would have been happy with that—and if you had agreed to that before today, I wouldn’t be here. But you didn’t accept exile. And I don’t work for the Thunderhead.” “You will come to regret this,” he told her. “Mark my words—if there’s one thing I know it’s that you will rue the day you made this choice. And when you do—” But any soliloquy he planned was pruned at the root with a single stroke.
“The future is unfettered. Long live us all!”
It wasn’t that he disliked dogs—he loved dogs. But, like children, they were better seen than heard.
but dogs had short natural lives, and the cost of revival and resetting their age doubled every time. Eventually when it became too cost prohibitive, many people opted to let their pets pass.
