Death's Handmaiden

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘I’ll see what I feel like when I’ve got changed,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Good plan,’ Nava said. ‘Flexibility in planning is a very useful habit to get into.’

  ‘Flexibility is always good,’ Mitsuko said as she stepped out of the car. Nava suspected that planning was the last thing on her mind when she said it.

  ~~~

  ‘Do you think she’s chickened out?’ Courtney asked. She was lying on a lounger on the patio in a bikini which managed to be conservative and risqué at the same time. The briefs were high-hipped and thong-backed, but the top was a moderately covering sort of bandeau-with-halter-string affair. However, the material was a fine-weave nanofibre which was not entirely opaque. Kyle seemed to like it. Quite a lot.

  ‘Who?’ Kyle asked. ‘Mel?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘It’s been thirty minutes,’ Mitsuko said, rather giving the game away. ‘I’d have expected her here if she wasn’t going to try.’

  ‘I think you’re underestimating her capacity for prevarication under these kinds of circumstances,’ Nava said. ‘However, I think she’s going to try.’

  ‘I feel kind of superfluous at the moment,’ Kyle said.

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ Courtney countered. ‘You’re providing excellent eye candy in those tiny little trunks.’

  ‘Your eyes are closed.’

  ‘Mine aren’t,’ Mitsuko said.

  ‘Nor are mine,’ Nava added.

  ‘And I can see you, even with my eyes closed,’ Courtney said, grinning.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m just a piece of meat to you all.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kyle considered for a moment and then he shrugged. ‘I guess I can live with that.’

  ~~~

  As Nava had predicted, it had taken Melissa a good twenty-five minutes to finally decide on her course of action. She had then stood outside the door to Rochester’s room for a couple of minutes before screwing up the courage to knock. She did it a little tentatively, just in case he really was napping and not just avoiding all the naked flesh out on the patio.

  The door opened and Rochester was standing there, looking a little surprised to find Melissa there. She went ahead with her plan – if ‘plan’ was the correct word – before she could change her mind. ‘Hi, Chess. Could I come in. There’s something I need to discuss with you.’ She was wearing a yukata-like robe which had been provided for her, primarily for walking to the mansion’s bathhouse. There was very little skin on display, so Rochester would have no reason to balk on those grounds.

  ‘Of course,’ he said after a second.

  Melissa walked in, crossing the floor to stand in front of one of the windows. Rochester had closed the shades, either because the light was bright or he was trying to make it look like he was sleeping. His ketcom was lying on the stand beside the bed, its screen open to show what looked like a metaphysics text. That was just like him.

  The room itself was more or less identical to Melissa’s, aside from the colour scheme. Her room was predominantly yellow with some gold and red mixed in, while his was predominantly red, with some gold and yellow. Aside from that, there was a large bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a desk/dresser, and a door which no doubt led to a bathroom. The carpet was just as plush under her bare feet as the one in her own room.

  ‘What did you want to discuss?’ he asked, walking around the bed to close his ketcom.

  Now or never. ‘I wanted your opinion on something.’ Keeping her voice steady was getting harder. She was determined not to stammer.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what–’ Rochester turned around to discover that Melissa had dropped the robe. Beneath it was a red teddy. A red, lacy teddy. The fabric over her large breasts was actually more opaque than the main body of the garment which was fairly conservative for lingerie. The hips were not especially high and there were frills around the leg holes. Melissa had wondered whether the frills were a bit much, but Mitsuko and Courtney had persuaded her that it worked for her. Right now, Melissa was not entirely sure because Rochester was just standing there, his mouth open and his eyes sort of bulging. She moved, putting her arms behind her back. This had the effect of pushing her chest out, but that was a side effect; the real reason she had done it was so that she could clasp her hands together and stop herself hiding.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked, trying for a suggestive tone she was sure she had messed up.

  ‘I-I-I… It’s… You look…’

  Melissa started a slow walk toward Rochester. She was going for ‘prowling,’ though she suspected she looked indecisive. She came to a stop with her lace-covered breasts almost touching his shirt. She looked up into his eyes. She was almost fifteen centimetres shorter than he was, and her heels usually made up most of the difference, but it seemed right now that looking up into his eyes was appropriate.

  ‘Chess, I like you,’ she said.

  ‘W-well, I l-like you,’ he replied.

  ‘Good. That’s what I hoped you’d say. Now, I’d like you to demonstrate how much you l-like me. Physically.’ She kicked herself for breaking on the third from last word, but she just kept her eyes fixed on his.

  ‘Physically?’ It was almost a squeak.

  ‘Physically,’ Melissa confirmed. ‘Intimately.’

  ‘I… I’ve never…’

  ‘Well, that makes two of us. We can work it out together.’

  ~~~

  ‘Mission report?’ Nava asked. It was after dinner and she had managed to get Melissa off to one side where she could talk, even if it meant keeping her voice low.

  ‘Huh,’ was the response.

  ‘How was he?’

  Melissa’s cheeks turned scarlet as though a switch had been flipped. ‘Who says–’

  ‘Your cheeks say, for one thing. There was also the air of smugness you were wearing when you came to dinner. And the slightly bemused look on Chess’s face. Kind of like he’d spent a week under artillery barrage.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I suppose if we were that obvious… It was a bit of a disaster at first. He was over-excited and neither of us really knew what we were doing. He was embarrassed and I said it was fine and we’d just try again and he said he knew how to make it up to me and–’

  ‘Breathe.’

  ‘And he did know how to make it up to me. You know how he is, he may have little practical knowledge, but he’s read all the manuals.’

  Despite her normally ironclad lack of expression, Nava had to force herself not to burst out laughing. ‘I see.’

  ‘Then we tried again and it wasn’t so much of a disaster, but it wasn’t exactly perfect either. But the third time was the charm and then we took a shower and, um, well, you know. And then I went back to my room for another shower because if we’d done that again, I wouldn’t have been able to walk.’

  ‘He’s got stamina.’

  ‘I think it’s more enthusiasm. He’s coming to my room tonight.’

  ‘Just remember to get some sleep.’

  235/5/11.

  ‘So, that’s three couples banging away under the old home’s roof,’ Mitsuko said. They were actually on a break, lying together with Nava’s head on Mitsuko’s shoulder.

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘You’re forgetting your parents.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m purposefully declining to consider them as that sort of couple. My mother is a nun.’

  ‘I don’t believe that to be true. Your mother is a beautiful woman and your father would be an idiot if he wasn’t–’

  ‘She’s a nun and that’s all there is to say about it.’

  ‘They have four children.’

  ‘We were manufactured in cloning tanks.’

  There was enough silence for Mitsuko to start wondering whether she had said something wrong. ‘That’s actually not funny,’ Nava said.

  ‘I– I’m sorry.’ Mitsuko was
unsure why it was not a good joke, but it did sound like Nava was upset by it. You could tell nothing from her face, of course, but she would not have said anything if it was all okay. Perhaps she would have said nothing at all if someone else had said it. Nava was a mystery, but she was opening up, just a little, when she was alone with Mitsuko.

  ‘It’s nothing important. I’m sure you can think of a way to make it up to me.’

  Rest time was over. ‘I’m sure I can.’

  Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery.

  ‘Do you think we should have invited them over to use the spare room?’ Mitsuko asked. She was putting clothes away in the wardrobe in her apartment’s bedroom. Nava was languishing on the bed. They were all back at school having left the mansion after lunch. The ‘them’ in question was Melissa and Rochester, who had headed off to their own apartments with a look about them which suggested they would get no further than Melissa’s bed. ‘From personal experience, we both know that there can be insufficient clearance in those bunks.’

  ‘That’s mostly your problem for being so tall,’ Nava replied.

  ‘Chess isn’t that much shorter than me!’

  ‘Five or six centimetres. I suppose Mel will have some difficulty if she wants to be on top. However, I think they’d be far too embarrassed to take you up on the offer.’

  ‘Perhaps. Maybe we could invite them over here every so often and then just… suggest they stay because it’s late.’

  ‘Flimsy, but it might work.’

  ‘I’m glad they finally got their act together.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nava agreed. ‘And we have every hope they’ll pass through the novelty phase quickly enough to not be irritating.’

  Mitsuko giggled. ‘I haven’t got over it yet.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you over here, ravishing me?’

  With a slightly exaggerated motion, Mitsuko tossed aside the dress she had just put on a hanger and turned toward the bed. ‘That’s a very good question…’

  235/5/13.

  Nava stood in combat simulation room three, dressed in her school combat suit, with the rest of class 12C. There was a MagiTag pistol in her right hand which she was largely ignoring while her classmates examined theirs with interest or outright glee.

  The room was basically a gymnasium with a bunch of embedded magical devices allowing the instructor to create illusory obstacles and obstructing force walls wherever they wished. It was employed for combat practice. Today would be the first that the class was to receive actual instruction in the practical use of magic and the tactics it demanded. Truthfully, Nava considered it pointless: she was about to spend an afternoon having fun rather than learning anything.

  ‘All right, listen up.’ The instructor was a big man, muscular and powerful with the general air of a drill instructor about him. His hair was probably dark, but the precise colour was hard to tell since he kept it shaved to near baldness. His eyes were blue, and he came with a solid jawline and aquiline nose which likely marked him as coming from European stock, but his skin was a darker shade of brown. His name was Mathias Statham Mendel, which made him a clansman of their theory teacher, but the two men were entirely different, it seemed.

  The class grew quiet and Mathias continued. ‘In these lessons, you’re all going to learn what it is to actually fight, using sorcery to gain advantage over your opponents and defeat them. You’re all on the support stream, but that doesn’t mean you can assume that you’ll never have to fight.’

  So, even some members of the faculty were under the impression that people selected the support stream to avoid combat. Of course, that was not entirely untrue. Both Melissa and Rochester, and likely others in the class, had no plans to end up on a battlefield. They might end up in the ASF’s naval forces where magical technicians were an integral part of any warship’s functions, but close combat was something they were unlikely to see. Still, Nava had to agree that some combat experience was useful, it was just that, by the time her classmates came to really use what they were learning, it was fairly likely that they would have forgotten their lessons.

  ‘We’re going to start with something you’ll probably find fun, but I’ll be assessing your abilities while you’re enjoying yourselves. I want everyone in teams of three. Then we’ll get started.’

  Nava did not even bother turning around. She knew that Melissa and Rochester were flanking her. She had a three-person fireteam practically built in and none of the others were going to try to break them up.

  ~~~

  Nava watched the goings-on below from the training room’s observation area, considering her strategy. The tactics were not an issue, but the strategy was another matter.

  She had spent the first couple of matches watching the instructor. Her assessment was that he was an arrogant man who did not want to be bothered with teaching students who did not want to learn how to fight. He was not ex-military. The military would have knocked some of the edges off the man. Besides, he was too young to have had a military career and then gone into teaching. Practically, people did not tend to retire from the ASF until they had to. Mitsuko’s father was something of an exception since family duties had compelled him to leave the service. The same was true of the services the clans organised for system defence. So, Mathias was a man with no real combat experience who looked down upon those who wanted none. Nava was considering strategies for shaking up the man’s mindset.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, keeping her voice down but loud enough that Melissa and Rochester could hear, ‘here’s the plan. This is a simple Capture the Flag scenario, he’s just reforming the playing area between each round to keep us on our toes. We have two ways of winning, namely, eliminate the other team, or take and hold their starting area along with our own for two minutes. Practically, it’s easier to wipe out our opponents, though I think the three of us could do it the other way.’

  ‘With you doing the attacking, I’m sure either way would work,’ Melissa said. ‘We’re really just holding you back.’

  ‘Subjectively, that might seem true, but you’re neglecting the tasks we need to perform to successfully win. I suppose, if I were alone, I could sit on my home location and take out the opponents as they attacked, but that’s the kind of thing which leads to stalemate. It so happens that, with the three of us, we have a near perfect arrangement for this kind of scenario.’

  ‘W-we do?’ Rochester asked, clearly quite genuinely sure that he was superfluous.

  ‘We do. You have a licence to use Sorcerer’s Eye.’

  ‘Uh, yes. It’s useful for–’

  ‘It’s useful for scouting. You’ll sit at our home base and send out your senses to discover what the opposing team is doing. When we know whether they’re holding their position or sending out attackers, or both, I’ll know what I need to do to take them out. Mel has a permit for Force Wall.’

  ‘Yes, but I can only make the weakest kind,’ Melissa said.

  ‘MagiTag pistols fire a spell equivalent to a Concussive Force spell at rank two, but without the actual force. Your Force Wall is quite capable of blocking an attack at that level and, at rank three, you have the coverage to put a wall around our flag area. They’ll have to smash their way through it to take the two of you out. And, if they managed that, they’d need to contend with the two of you shooting at them when they broke the barrier.’

  Melissa gave a little start at that. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. Most people don’t have the strength to shoulder through a Force Wall.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ Nava agreed. ‘I’m a little surprised that none of the other students have used one.’

  ‘Didn’t he say that Armour wasn’t allowed?’

  ‘Force Wall is a different spell. He forbade Armour because plenty of people could make themselves immune to the pistols using it. If he meant to deny us the use of Force Wall, he should have said so. Anyway, if Chess has them located and I do my job right, none of them will get close enough to try.’

  ‘You make
it sound easy,’ Rochester said.

  ‘We’re not fighting seasoned professionals, Chess. This will be easy.’

  ~~~

  A horn sounded just after Nava took out the last of the opposing team with a headshot from twenty metres. The opposition had decided on an all-out-attack approach with all of them charging through the maze of illusory walls the instructor had set up. Presumably, the plan was to use overwhelming force to take out Nava’s team before they went down themselves. It had partially been successful since Nava had had to double back to get the last one. He had been frantically trying to shoot Melissa and Rochester through a translucent wall of energy which was not going to budge.

  Mathias was scowling when he came down to the floor of the training room, the rest of the class behind him. He pointed a finger at Nava. ‘Why are you in the support stream?’

  Nava wondered briefly whether any of the teachers talked to each other. She had explained this before… Then again, Mathias seemed like someone who would not have been interested in the opinions of the support stream teachers. And it seemed like he needed a customised explanation. Or maybe she was just feeling vindictive.

  ‘Because killing people is easy,’ Nava said. ‘Keeping them alive is hard.’

  ‘I specifically stated that use of the Armour spell was not allowed.’ Apparently, he did not have an answer for Nava’s point.

  ‘But not Force Wall. MagiTag tournament rules allow the use of force barrier protection spells and mandate Concussive Force rank five or lower for use in the demolition of such barriers. Since you didn’t mention Force Wall, I assumed you were testing whether anyone would be competent enough to use it.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone knew it. Otherwise–’

  ‘Melissa Connelly’s permit to use Force Wall is part of her school records. You didn’t read the data on your students before starting to teach us?’

  Mathias stared at Nava for two more seconds. Nava stared back. He was a big man, probably used to his stare making students back down, or maybe cower in fear. Nava had been stared at by people a lot more impressive than Mathias Statham. He gave up, turning away as though she was not worth his time.