The Toll

Tenka believes the monumental information Citra is uncovering should be made public by Anastasia herself in public broadcasts. In her first short broadcast, Citra announces that she is alive. The broadcast airs at the same time the 30,000 people are gleaned in Mile High City.

Tenka tells Citra the tragic news and the story of Rowan’s escape. Citra’s joy at Rowan’s escape is muddled by horror at the senseless killing. Tenka tells her that it is now even more important for her to keep up with the broadcasts, as she is the people’s voice of hope in horrific times. In her second broadcast, Anastasia announces that she will soon present incontestable evidence that Rowan did not sink Endura. She will also show who really was responsible for the drowning.

Watching the broadcast in his chalet, Goddard has a meltdown. He tells his underscythes to bring Citra to him so he can force her to self-glean (scythes cannot technically be gleaned). Goddard’s fury rises when he is told that the Toll may still be alive. After all, his body was never recovered.

In another broadcast, Anastasia says that the scythedom has committed unthinkable acts, even before Goddard was born. The Nectaris Prime colony on the moon collapsed in the Year of the Lynx, supposedly because of a catastrophic atmospheric failure, but her research shows that the Thunderhead had calculated the chances of atmospheric failure that day to be next to nothing. Moreover, she has also found a statement from the Thunderhead, which says, “Lunar event beyond Thunderhead jurisdiction” (356). Everyone knows that one of the key areas away from the Thunderhead jurisdiction is scythedom. Just as the broadcast concludes, Tenka gets a call from his father that the palace is under attack. Everyone must flee immediately.

Meanwhile, the LoneStar (Texan) scythes bring Rowan to Texas. Texas, like Madagascar, is one of the Thunderhead’s charter regions. Rowan learns Constantine has joined the LoneStar scythes and planned Rowan’s escape. Rowan notices that though Constantine wears the crimson robes of MidMerican scythes, they no longer sparkle with jewels, the stamp of Goddard’s acolytes. Constantine and the Texan scythes saved Rowan so he could glean 50 pro-Goddard scythes and make the world a better place. Rowan does not want to glean anymore, but when the scythes suggest bringing in Rowan’s family—most of whom are alive—to persuade him, he reluctantly agrees.

The attack on Tenka’s palace is by extremist Sibilant Tonists and is described as a 10-part requiem or a musical piece played at a funeral. The attack is revenge against all scythes for the Mile High City gleanings. Tenka collects precious items before fleeing the palace; Jeri grows impatient as he can hear the sounds of blasts from the city. As Sibilants begin to scale the palace walls, Tenka, Jeri, Citra, and a few others rush to the heliport, but turn back when they see the grounds overrun.

Tenka makes a final stand to protect Citra and his people but is shot dead. Badly injured, Citra and Jeri manage to flee to the palace’s ramparts, but their injuries need immediate attention. To attract the attention of an ambudrone, Jeri makes a sacrifice that renders Jeri deadish.

An entry from Da Vinci’s journal shows the founders are divided, eight to four, between creating scythedom or reintroducing human disease in the world as population control measures. Da Vinci says both options are risky, but he chooses to side with the scythe leader Prometheus in establishing scythedom.

In the aftermath of the SubSaharan attack, SubSahara allies itself with Goddard, believing that only the Overblade can protect them from the Tonist threat. Greyson decides he must directly stop the Sibilant threat lest more people turn to Goddard. The Thunderhead flies Greyson and his entourage to the Ogbunike Caves in SubSahara, where the Sibilant faction behind the attack on Tenka’s palace is hiding.

At the caves, Greyson converts the Sibilant faction by revealing information about the group only the Thunderhead would know. The Tonists submit before him, indicating that they renounce violence and serve Greyson from now on. Greyson still orders Morrison to glean the leader of the group, the mastermind behind the palace killings. Greyson later asks the Thunderhead if he was right in having the curate gleaned. The Thunderhead says Greyson’s action was both right and wrong. The Thunderhead can understand the curate in a way Greyson cannot because the Thunderhead sees all sides of every picture.

An ambudrone whisks Jeri and Citra to a revival center in SubSahara. Possuelo arrives at the revival center with important information: He has apprehended a man who knows the exact location of the Toll. Possuelo believes the Toll is not an impostor and they must join forces with him.

The man is the artist Ezra, now known as Brother Ezra. With the Thunderhead’s help, Ezra has been traveling the world in Greyson’s footsteps, painting guerilla murals of Greyson’s “miracles” among the Tonists. His most recent mural is from the Ogbunike Caves. Meanwhile, Citra makes another broadcast, this time about the colony on Mars. The colonists on Mars were gleaned in the world’s first mass gleaning. Anastasia’s research shows Xenocrates arriving at the colony shortly before the gleaning, and being assigned a young personal valet named Carson Lusk. However, videotapes of Xenocrates’s arrival show that Carson Lusk is none other than High Blade Goddard.

Possuelo’s party reaches the SubSaharan forest. Citra and Greyson—meeting for the first time since events in Thunderhead—walk off for a private chat. In Thunderhead, Greyson had saved Citra’s life, and it was she who had asked him to hide in a Tonist monastery to save himself from scythes. The two now feel a sense of kinship as they are both symbols of hope for humanity. Citra asks Greyson for help in locating the Scythe Dante Alighieri, who holds crucial information about the Mars disaster. However, the Thunderhead tells Greyson that though it knows the man’s location, it cannot reveal this directly because of the prohibition on meddling in scythe activity.

Greyson realizes he needs a trialogue, a three-way conversation between a Nimbus Agent, a go-between, and the Thunderhead, to get answers. He chooses Jeri as the proxy. The conversation starts as a free-wheeling chat about Jeri’s origins. Greyson can tell when the Thunderhead’s innocuous observations and questions offer a possible hint. When the Thunderhead mentions that Jeri might like living in a city furthest from the sea in any region, and lists places where Jacarandas grow, Greyson triumphantly concludes Alighieri is in a city furthest from the sea in the region of Brittania, one of the regions where Jacarandas are found.

Scythe Dante Alighieri has been alive for 260 years, though he has “turned the corner” or reset his age nine times, so he is frozen at the age of 30. Resetting this often has lent his skin a strange, stretched appearance, but Alighieri still loves to look at himself in the many mirrors in his home in Warwickshire in Britannia. When Citra and the others drop in on him, Alighieri leers at Citra and is rude to Jeri, deriding Jeri’s genderfluid identity. Citra appeals to Alighieri’s sense of vanity and asks him probing questions about his life, especially the NewHope catastrophe.

Convinced by Anastasia, Alighieri makes an explosive broadcast. He confesses that he was present around the NewHope orbital colony when it was destroyed. A group of scythes took control of a space shuttle and crashed it in the colony to achieve a mass gleaning. The motive behind the gleaning was self-preservation; if off-Earth colonies became a way to manage the Earth’s population, the need for scythes would end. Alighieri also announces that all further questions about the NewHope operation must be addressed to its mastermind, Scythe Robert Goddard.

Goddard rolls around in the many tribute scythe diamonds spread on his bed. When Ayn tells him Constantine has defected to the LoneStar charter, Goddard appoints her third underscythe in his place. Goddard tells Ayn that he is going to go after the Tonists, who after Dante Alighieri’s broadcast are turning the commoners against him.

The Toll’s inner circle now includes Jeri and Citra. The Thunderhead is troubled and speaks to Greyson in his deepest sleep. It confesses that though it is free from error and fear, it is terrified that it is going to make a mistake in its audacious new plan, which it shares with Greyson.

The next morning, Greyson announces that Goddard has declared open war against Tonist enclaves, but the Tonists must not retaliate. The Thunderhead wants the Tonists not to cremate their dead, as per their custom. Mendoza disagrees and presses for violence. Greyson dismisses him and defrocks him, quelling a mutiny. An irate Mendoza leaves Greyson. In private, Greyson tells Citra that the Thunderhead wants them to collect Tonist corpses. 

The peaceful Tallahassee Tonal Monastic Order is invaded by Goddard’s scythes and over 150 Tonists are massacred. However, when the survivors come out into the courtyard and gather the corpses so they can burn them, mysterious trucks arrive to collect an order. An elder Tonist sees that the trucks contain refrigeration units and understands that they are here to transport the dead.

Mendoza is now a lowly monk again but vows to create a new spin that shows Greyson is a false prophet and to prove his own worth.