‘So, I’ve stepped into a dead woman’s shoes,’ Nava said. ‘Hopefully, her vengeful ghost won’t come around to complain.’
‘If it does,’ Melissa said, ‘you’d just kick its butt. Compared to the Harbinger, the ghost of a schoolgirl would be easy.’
‘You used to be such a sweet and innocent young woman, Mel,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Now you’re advocating kicking ephemeral butt.’
Melissa shrugged. ‘Almost a year of knowing Nava… That kind of thing changes you.’
One of Nava’s eyebrows shifted slightly upward. ‘Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?’
‘Do you really expect me to give an honest answer to that?’
235/11/10.
Rain did weird things around magic schools. You could not tell unless the rain got really heavy, but today it was obvious. The storm had rolled in around six in the morning and it was still throwing rivers of water down as the students walked to their morning classes. Several thousand Umbrella cantrips were up to shelter the magicians from the rain, each a little bubble of invisible force redirecting the raindrops. In places, the shields intersected and the water formed rivulets along the seams. Where three or more came together, pools could form. Those could result in accidents when the spells were dropped, but they added to the weird interplay of water and sorcery in interesting ways.
‘Another unpredicted weather event,’ Nava commented as she watched a pool form between herself, Mitsuko, and Melissa.
‘They predicted rain today,’ Melissa said.
‘Not like this. A millimetre or two, not a downpour.’
‘True.’
‘Well, it’s due to end around lunchtime,’ Mitsuko said. ‘This afternoon should be clear.’
‘I’ll be stuck in script reviews anyway,’ Nava said.
‘Ah, the price of stardom,’ Melissa said. The wistful tone was undoubtedly sarcastic.
The water between the trio had now filled up the space available and was overflowing across the barriers Nava and Melissa had up. Mitsuko’s was, of course, higher than her companions’ so it was flowing away from her. ‘Don’t think I won’t make sure all that water falls on you when we get to the door,’ Nava said.
‘Spoken like a true diva,’ Melissa replied, grinning. Despite that, she stepped away from Nava to let the water fall harmlessly before they got to the door of the teaching building.
~~~
The rain was still falling with no signs of it easing off. In Nava’s estimation, it formed a suitable backdrop to the boredom she was experiencing. As far as she could tell, the primary goal of her co-stars was to increase the number of lines they had along with their time on stage and in the spotlight. She listened as suggestions were made and, mostly, rejected, but the conversation largely went past her. Despite the fact that the entirety of her outward appearance was an act, Nava was not an actor and she had little interest in listening to actors argue.
‘I simply feel that Constant would need to work harder to persuade Yuki to allow him to stay,’ Yoshirō was saying. He was trying to persuade Terence to extend the meeting scene where Constant first entered the Ice Queen’s castle. More specifically, he wanted to add extra lines where Constant the knight begged Yuki to allow him to stay. He had suggested a few lines and they were horrendously melodramatic. Whatever Yoshirō’s acting ability might be, his writing sucked.
Terence appeared to be getting a little fed up. He tried a new approach. ‘Nava, do you have an opinion? You’re the one who’ll have to react to Constant’s additional dialogue.’
Nava pulled herself out of contemplation of absolutely nothing and looked across the circle at her director. After a second, he looked like he wanted to leave the room. ‘Additional dialogue is unnecessary,’ she said. ‘I assume the writer felt that what’s written is enough. Whatever he says, she’s going to allow him to stay, otherwise the plot can’t progress.’
‘This,’ Yoshirō said, raising a hand dramatically toward Nava, ‘is why we should have a professional actress in the role of Yuki.’ His gaze, posture, and tone shifted just slightly to fully communicate his patronising attitude. ‘You have to see your character as a person, Nava. She’s a real human who you give voice–’
‘Yuki is a character in a play,’ Nava said flatly. ‘She’s a plot device. She’s required to do what she does. If she doesn’t allow Constant to stay, he can’t seduce her, and the plot ends a few minutes into the second act.’
Terence looked pained. ‘Yoshirō is right, Nava. You’re quite correct about the need for the characters to act as they do for the plot to progress, but you have to empathise with your character. Understand her. Feel what she feels. Otherwise your performance will come over as stiff. Try to imagine yourself in Yuki’s position. This man she’s never met comes to her castle and asks to stay. What does she feel?’
‘What does she feel?’ Nava looked between the two of them, a little confused. It actually took her a second to realise that they actually believed that Yuki was a realistic character. ‘She doesn’t feel anything. I don’t think you understand why I think of the Ice Queen as a character in a play.’
‘Well, because you’re not an actress,’ Yoshirō said. ‘You’re not–’
‘No, it’s because she doesn’t make sense as a real, living entity. She’s a plot device made up by someone trying to make a point about humans trying to fight the forces of nature. If she were to be made real, there’s no way the story would work out as it does.’
Terence frowned. He spoke before Yoshirō could get another word in. ‘Please explain.’
Nava shrugged. ‘The Ice Queen isn’t human. She was never human. She’s existed for centuries before the events of the play, ruling over her land of ice and snow, alone. If you’re capable of that, some random knight turning up isn’t going to change anything. Do you really think she’s never seen an attractive man before? She’s supposed to be beautiful, the ultimate icy beauty. Not a single person has ever thought, “I wouldn’t mind some of that,” and made a play for her? No one before Rosamund and Constant has ever tried any form of diplomatic mission to appease her? No, she’s not human. She’s a force of nature. Yuki is the embodiment of the icy lands she rules over. She’s powerful enough that, when Constant betrays her, she consumes the entire world in her winter. She’s a goddess.’
‘Even a goddess could get lonely,’ Twyla suggested.
‘Centuries alone,’ Nava replied. ‘I like my alone time. One of the reasons I’m in the Flight Club is that it gives me an excuse to spend an hour or two at high altitude, away from people. Yuki’s taken that to the next level. She doesn’t need other people. She’s managed for centuries on her own. I get that Rosamund and Constant would think she’s lonely, but that’s humans trying to understand something inherently inhuman. What does she feel when she looks at Constant? Nothing. She might let him stay because she doesn’t care what he does. That works. Nothing he says is going to change her mind either way. Whether she’s a character in a play or the incarnation of winter, the only reason she’d act the way she does is because it’s what’s going to happen. I prefer to view her as a character because her actions don’t make sense to me unless she has no choice about them. There’s no way a real Yuki would fall for Constant. She wouldn’t feel betrayed by his actions because she wouldn’t care what he did.’ Nava paused and gave another shrug. ‘The only way it makes sense for a real Yuki would be that she knows how the whole thing is going to play out. She knows that it ends with her ruling everything, so she goes along with it. The only problem then is the ending. It’s written as her taking revenge, but forces of nature don’t revenge wrongs done to them. She might well freeze the world, but she wouldn’t need to rub Constant’s nose in it. She would just be acting according to her nature. That’s what I mean. Yuki doesn’t make sense as written, so if you want the play to go as it’s supposed to, it doesn’t matter what Constant says to her.’
‘That’s–’ Yoshirō began.
‘Interesting
,’ Terence said. Nava was not entirely sure she liked the spark in his eyes. ‘That’s very interesting. Let’s table this for now and I’ll think about it. We’ll move on to the next scene.’
Nava returned her attention to a spot on the ceiling. Across the circle of chairs, Yoshirō prepared to argue that his part was not big enough again. If Terence had been listening to a thing she had said, he would drop the discussion of Yuki entirely to have his think. Somehow, Nava suspected that she would not be getting to leave early.
~~~
To Simone Beck Beyer, the Drama Club was a hobby. She was a fourth-year combat student. Doing something which had absolutely nothing to do with fighting was, as far as Simone was concerned, a necessity. If you spent all your waking hours considering strategy, tactics, and how to use sorcery to kill people, you were not a magician – you were a weapon. Also, you were an idiot.
So, Simone spent some of her spare time in the Drama Club. She was no great actress, but she had been in a few productions, generally as an extra. Her passion was the wardrobe. She knew their stock of costumes in considerable detail and she was quite capable of adjusting what they had to fit whoever needed to wear it. She enjoyed the technical details. She loved getting a character’s costume just right. She was not especially enjoying working on The Ice Queen. Terence was, for want of a better term, a control freak. He had a vision and his production was going to fit that vision, even if it killed everyone in the club to manage it.
Thankfully, Simone’s expertise had met the challenge as far as most of the cast went. Rosamund and Constant had been outfitted without enormous difficulty. That was if you excluded the rounds of Terence disliking various solutions only to eventually decide on the costume Simone had first suggested. The man was irritating in the extreme. And for Yuki… Well, nothing would do. Terence had concept art! He was about as artistic as a blind sloth, but he had handed Simone a bundle of pages, each with a badly drawn sketch of the kind of thing he wanted for the Ice Queen. Most of them were impractical. A couple had been borderline pornographic. They had settled on something which would not have the student council and the administration breathing down their necks and Simone had agreed to have a friend of hers draw up some better illustrations to work from. It was going to need to be fabricated from scratch. What Simone could not fathom was why Rexanne had agreed to spend so much on a costume which was probably going to be unusable for anything else.
With the meeting over for today, and having obtained Terence’s approval in front of witnesses, Simone was now taking the approved costumes back to storage until they were needed. That meant going down into the theatre’s basement where there were various Aladdin’s caves of theatrical goodies to be found. It was quiet; no one went down there unless they had specific reason to. It would get busier as the performance date got closer, but for now, Simone had the under-stage area pretty much to herself.
Or, she thought she did. The figure she saw standing in the main hallway was unexpected. More unexpected was that the woman was not in school uniform. And she was standing there, looking lost. It was as if she had arrived there by accident and was entirely unsure how to go about leaving.
‘Excuse me,’ Simone said. That got no reaction. Simone walked closer, at least partially because she was going that way anyway. ‘Excuse me, can I help you?’
Closer up, Simone could not help but take in the woman’s outfit. A long white dress, split to the hips at the sides. The torso was tightly fitted, corseted in fact, with boning to narrow the waistline and embroidery over the stomach. White, shimmering cloth was attached under the arms and looped over her arms to give a scarf-like effect. There was a high collar with a silvery train extending down from the back of it. That was the kind of thing Simone would have dressed the Ice Queen in.
There was still no reaction from the woman. ‘Hello. You really can’t be down here. Excuse me.’
Now the woman turned, and Simone came to a stop. The woman was tall and slim with a moderate bust – attractive, but nothing out of the ordinary. Her hair was a mass of white, falling over her shoulders in waves. Her skin was abnormally pale, but her lips were a dark cherry red – a stark contrast. It was her eyes which brought Simone to a stop. Cold, icy-blue irises stared at Simone out of black sclera. No normal woman had eyes like that. No human had eyes like that. The woman stared at Simone for maybe three seconds, and Simone felt as though all the blood in her body had turned to ice water. Then the woman turned and walked away… through the wall.
Dropping what she was carrying and running back the way she had come was not the kind of thing Simone felt was fitting of a combat student. On the other hand, how many combat students had come face to face with the Phantom of the Drama Club? Simone dropped the costumes and ran.
235/11/11.
‘And what can I do for you today, Nava?’ Fawn Tyrell looked out of Nava’s ketcom screen with a fairly cheerful look on her face. Then again, she was generally a fairly cheery person. ‘No more vanishing corpses, I hope.’
‘None that I’m aware of,’ Nava replied, ‘though there are some rumours floating around that the school has a ghost.’
‘That… wouldn’t surprise me at all.’
‘Mm. I called to ask about the weather.’
‘I’m not the weather service.’
Nava nodded. ‘It is the weather service’s accuracy which is in question. We had a storm yesterday which lasted until after dark. It was supposed to be light rain and over by lunchtime. This seems to be a trend.’
‘And you want to know whether the ASF is investigating. Yes, but it’s being handled by the standard planetary security force. Not my area, so I don’t know how they’re progressing. To be honest, from what I’ve heard, this can’t be sorcery.’
‘So everyone keeps saying, but Hoshi Horne said that the storm which hit Jukai might have been controlled somehow. She felt resistance when she put up a Weather Dome spell. I don’t think anyone from the ASF has asked her about that.’
Fawn frowned in thought. ‘I guess I could find out who’s in charge and suggest they talk to Hoshi Horne… Maybe I could ask how the investigation’s going while I’m at it. They might tell me.’
‘Do I detect some interdepartmental friction?’
‘Friction, no. They probably won’t like me sticking my nose in without good reason, however.’
‘You have a good reason,’ Nava said. ‘You have information which may be pertinent to their investigation.’
‘Somehow, I don’t think they’ll see it that way.’
235/11/12.
There were things more frightening than ghosts. Actually, Nava had sat through several horror vids with Mitsuko and Melissa, and not one of them had ever managed to get her pulse above its resting rate. She was quite confident that a ghost would not scare her unless, like the Harbinger she had faced earlier in the year, it was capable of doing real harm. Even then, she would not be scared. She would be rightly concerned for her survival. Not the same.
Ballroom dancing was an entirely different matter. ‘I am going to make a total fool of myself,’ Nava grumbled as she waited with Melissa and Rochester for the session to start. To make matters worse, the lessons the student council had organised for those who had never been to a ball before were taking place in one of the combat simulation rooms, but Mitsuko had forbidden Nava from taking weapons in with her.
‘I’m sure we all will,’ Rochester said. ‘Better now than at the ball.’
‘That is a valid point which I do not wish to hear right now. Besides, Mel has graciously agreed to be your partner for this exercise. Suki is instructing. I am going to end up prancing around with someone I’ve never seen before.’
‘Given the people here, that seems exceptionally unlikely.’
‘Okay then,’ Mitsuko said from one end of the room, ‘let’s get this thing going.’ Silence descended and everyone turned to look at the student president. ‘We’ve put these lessons together so that those of us who have never been to
a formal dance before can get through the winter ball without so much worry. It won’t be none. Believe me when I say that even those of us forced to endure dance lessons before now will be nervous for a variety of reasons.’
There was a rumble of laughter and Mitsuko waited for it to die away. ‘What we’re going to do is to work our way through the steps of various common dances. We have five Mondays between now and the ball, so we should be able to get the most common dances covered. We’re going to kick off with the foxtrot because it’s relatively slow, in four-four time, and it doesn’t require body contact. I believe, technically, we’ll be teaching what used to be called American Social Foxtrot and I’m not going to bore you with the historical stuff my instructor told me when he was explaining it. We’ll move on to a couple of styles of waltz and then the tango for the adventurous. If we have time, we’ll squeeze in another style or two at the end.’
There were a few mumbles around the room suggesting that the tango was going to be tough. Nava figured they were including it to test how far they could go with the rookies.
‘Now, you’re all going to need partners,’ Mitsuko went on. ‘You don’t need to be mixed couples, but doing this solo is going to be difficult. If you don’t already have a partner, take a few minutes to sort one out. We should have enough people for everyone to pair up…’
Nava looked around, wondering who she should ask to partner with her. She suspected that there were a number of men here who would like the job, if only because she was now a high-status clan member and on the attractive side.
‘Hi there.’ Nava turned to find Skylar Keyes standing behind her.
‘Hi, Sky,’ Nava replied. ‘What–’ Revelation sank in in an instant and Nava gave a slow nod. ‘You don’t have a partner and Suki suggested me.’
Skylar’s grin was a little timid, which looked entirely wrong on the tall, powerful woman. ‘Uh, yeah. Yeah, she did. I mean, if–’
‘No, that makes perfect sense. I’m going to have to get used to dancing with a woman taller than me.’
Bitter Wind (Death's Handmaiden Book 2) Page 17