Bitter Wind (Death's Handmaiden Book 2)

by Niall Teasdale

  Nava lifted into the air. ‘I am never going to understand humans. That goes double for actors.’

  Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery.

  ‘She was wired into the machine?’ Melissa asked. ‘Like, wires into her brain connecting her to the computer?’

  ‘That was what Hugo Milton said,’ Nava replied. ‘I can definitely say that there seemed to be a big cable attached into her skull. She said she could get out of it, so I assume there was some sort of plug.’

  The report Nava had written for Fawn, for consumption by those with an official reason to read it, was finished. Nava was giving a slightly different story to Melissa and Mitsuko. She was, in fact, telling them what really happened. The report was basically true, but it was missing a few details and it suggested some things which were not entirely correct. Mitsuko had asked about Nava’s mission and Nava was unwilling to lie to her friends, even if she was reluctant to burden them with the truth.

  ‘He described it as a coprocessor,’ Nava went on. ‘It seemed like he had built a learning machine which worked out how to supplement the precise way an individual magician processes spells. Once it had done its stuff, the magician would become a component in a magical device. Winter Glass was the transmitter. The machine provided the processing power and she provided the organic component needed to turn that process into reality. Perhaps you could say that she also provided the intelligence to direct it.’

  ‘But think what you could do with it,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Winter Glass was able to create a hurricane, but she could have just as easily stopped one. Someone could stop an earthquake with a machine like that. You could–’

  ‘Wipe out more or less anything you wanted,’ Nava interjected. ‘I did a little math while flying back to school. If you put me in that device, I could generate a Magic Burst roughly equivalent to the explosion which destroyed it. Hugo Milton was talking about making one ten or a hundred times as powerful. With that, I become a nuclear weapon. My estimate was somewhere around half a megaton.’

  ‘Yes, but–’

  ‘And how do you think this would be used? I’m sure that some would use it at least somewhat ethically, but the precedent is hardly stellar. Magicians are already required to work shifts to maintain communications between the worlds in this Alliance. Hugo Milton came up with a way to multiply a magician’s power and keep them awake and working for days at a time. Winter Glass had to be conscious and maintaining her spell the entire time that heatwave was over the school. She was literally a part in a weather machine for fifteen days. Nutrients in and out through tubes. It would start, as with her, with volunteers. People would be willing to sacrifice their freedom to save lives, I’m sure. It would start with only the best of motives. Mostly. Mitsuko Trenton, are you willing to sit there and tell me that it would stay that way?’

  Mitsuko was silent for several seconds. ‘So, you killed them. All of them. To be sure the technology remains lost.’

  ‘I’m not that naïve,’ Nava replied. ‘The idea is out there. My hope is that, by the time someone replicates Hugo Milton’s machine, it’s possible to do it without physically attaching the operator into it. The technology used in my pistols suggests it may be possible at some point. Personally, I’m not sure humans should ever be allowed that kind of power, but I can at least hope we don’t have to sacrifice the lives of magicians to make it work.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Melissa said. ‘I think the way it was used right here shows that we aren’t ready for that kind of power yet. I… I’m not sure all of them had to die because of it, but…’ She paused, grimacing a little. ‘He really came to Shinden to do this because he got rejected from SAS-squared?’

  ‘He wanted a good place to hold for ransom and Alliance City is such a place,’ Nava replied, ‘but I got the impression that his choice was at least partially influenced by revenge for that perceived slight.’

  Mitsuko lifted her ketcom. ‘I looked him up. He was tested in November of one ninety-eight. He didn’t have anything close to the minimum capacity for a position here. He did exceptionally well on the metaphysics paper, but he was never going to be much of a sorcerer.’

  ‘And because of that, he carried around a grudge against the school for almost forty years,’ Melissa said, shaking her head. She sighed. ‘You know what they say: when life gives you lemons…’

  Nava had no idea what ‘they’ said, and she waited patiently for at least three seconds for Melissa to finish the quote. Finally, she decided that she needed to provide a prompt. ‘When life gives you lemons, it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth?’

  ‘No! You’re supposed to make… Though, I suppose, if you use the wrong recipe…’

  ‘I’m confused.’

  Part Four: Tests, Trials, and Tribulations

  Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery, Shinden, Clan Worlds Alliance, 235/12/9.

  ‘Next is… Nava Greyling Sonkei.’

  Nava walked up to the front of the classroom where one of the senior teachers was waiting to give her her sorcery capacity test. The teacher, and a machine about the size of a full-height refrigerator which would be measuring impact potential. Capacity tests were both scientific and kind of slipshod. They were also fairly easy to fool, which was great for Nava.

  ‘Let’s start out with a calibration test,’ the teacher said. He tapped at the screen mounted at the top of the machine and it displayed a spell schema. Nava’s eyes flicked over it, but she remembered it well enough from the year before. ‘Tap start when you’re ready to begin. You’ll have ten seconds to complete the test.’

  Reaching out, Nava tapped the screen where a button had appeared, labelled ‘Start’ in large, friendly letters. She lifted her hand toward a circular aperture in the box as she focused her mind on the spell. The spell was a fairly basic force-effect projectile spell, something like Concussive Force, but with a very short range, calibrated such that each rank required exactly one Tammy to cast. They were asking for a rank sixty spell here. Every student was required to be able to cast that when they matriculated.

  ‘That’s great,’ the teacher said. ‘No problem at sixty. Let’s try seventy.’

  Seventy Tammys was the passing grade. Technically, there was no failing grade, but if you had not improved by ten points over the year, they would put you in for additional training in the second year. Rochester had passed with eighty. Melissa had capped out at ninety. Nava announced that she could not manage a one hundred and forty Tammy spell, which put her just inside the expected range for a second year. Sixth years were expected to leave with a capacity of one hundred and ten to two hundred and twenty Tammys and there was no way Nava was going to reveal that she could already beat that.

  A hundred and thirty was still impressive, though most of her class were not showing signs of being impressed when she turned around. Actually, most of them appeared to be kind of proud, as though they had expected something like this and thought it reflected well on themselves, or at least their class. There was also a portion who looked really happy, and about an equal number who looked annoyed.

  ‘They were taking bets,’ Rochester explained. ‘The unhappy ones thought you’d beat the second-year range.’

  ‘As I understand it,’ Melissa said, ‘no one was willing to bet you’d be under a hundred.’

  ‘Huh,’ Nava said. ‘Next year I’ll take requests. It sounds like a great way to make some additional money.’

  Rochester lowered his voice and leaned closer. ‘Do you know what your actual score is?’

  ‘Actually, First Lieutenant Fawn Tyrell requested an update on that recently, so we did it while I was handling the debrief on Sunday.’ The ASF had read Nava’s report and then asked her to come in to clarify a few things. Fawn had let slip that she had told her superiors it was a waste of time, but a couple of intelligence officers had grilled Nava on the details for a couple of hours anyway. Nava had only been bothered that she was missing a good afternoon for flying. ‘I topped out at two hundred a
nd seventy. That sounds a lot, but Winter Glass could manage four hundred and seventy, according to her records.’

  ‘Wow,’ Melissa said. Well, it was more like she breathed it. With wide eyes.

  ‘Have you heard how Suki has done?’ Rochester asked.

  Nava checked her ketcom. ‘Not yet. I’m sure she’s going to pass, though.’

  ~~~

  ‘One hundred,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I’d have liked to go a little higher, but it’s a passing grade and I’m improving.’

  ‘I thought you’d beat me by more,’ Melissa said. ‘I bet you had an easier time casting the spell than I did. My knees were shaking when I finished. I had to sit down and rest.’

  ‘I won’t say it didn’t take any effort, but I probably did have it easier. I could stand up after the test, for example.’

  ‘I was okay,’ Rochester said, ‘but I failed faster.’

  ‘What’s your capacity, Hoshi?’ Melissa asked. It was dinner time and Hoshi was there. She was actually somewhat interested in the results, though her class did not really rely on that kind of sorcerous ability.

  The academic blushed. ‘A hundred and thirty. That’s the last time it was measured, but I don’t think I’ve improved over the last year.’ She glanced at Nava. ‘I assume you faked a lower capacity than you have?’

  ‘Big time,’ Melissa answered before Nava could. ‘Something like a factor of two. No one would’ve believed it if she hadn’t got the highest score in the class.’

  ‘It is something of a balancing act,’ Nava said. ‘As Mel said, no one would believe it if I exhibited too low a capacity, but I don’t want them knowing the real one either. Perhaps I should’ve gone a little higher…’

  ‘Wait and see what the overall results are like,’ Mitsuko suggested. ‘If there’s no one better than you in the year, I think you can say you picked about the right score.’

  235/12/10.

  Nava stood naked in her dressing room while one of the makeup people dusted her with diamonds. Well, the effect was kind of like her skin had a very thin covering of frost and she had to admit that it worked really well with her dark tones. When the lights hit her, she sparkled. Terence had been keen to use more of the foundation powder. He had been talked down after the rest of the cast and most of the production crew had taken to wearing sunglasses during the dress rehearsals. Now, it was subtle, even if the method of applying it – a fairly large airbrush – was not.

  The door opened and Rexanne slipped inside without a knock or approval. ‘Terence asked me to check that everything was going okay,’ she said before anyone could object. ‘That is, he wanted to come in here and I had to just about physically restrain him.’

  ‘Almost finished here,’ the makeup tech said. She was kneeling beside Nava, spraying her left ankle.

  ‘Once the foot is done,’ Nava said, ‘I just have to stand here for ten minutes to be sure it’s dry.’

  Rexanne grinned. ‘The things we do for our art.’

  ‘I’ll remind you that this isn’t my art.’

  ‘Tonight it is.’ There was a slight pause. ‘You’re ready for this, aren’t you, Nava? The success of the play really rests on–’

  ‘I promised Terence a performance, Rexanne. I can’t speak for how well it will go because I’ve never acted on a stage before, but I will give you what I promised to the best of my ability.’

  The tension in the Drama Club’s chairwoman was obvious. Her fists clenched. ‘It’s just that we’ve never really seen you act…’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘We have?’

  ‘To you, this is an art. To me, it’s a survival instinct. You think you’ve never seen me act, Rexanne, but the truth is that you’ve never seen me doing anything else.’

  ~~~

  The theatre was not exactly full, but there were not many empty seats below the top level which had such a lousy view that people avoided it whenever they could. Tickets for the show were not sold, but they were given out to those requesting them and entry was not allowed without them. This was primarily an accounting process: it let the club know how popular the production was. According to the figures Rexanne had sent to Melissa, this was the most popular production in the last five years.

  Melissa was in the front row, sitting beside Mitsuko with Courtney on the other side. The whole student council was there, in fact. Mitsuko had the harder job given that she was sitting beside the principal. The VP was on Auberon Ewart’s right, looking like she would have preferred to be reading a good book. Auberon was in white: a white, three-piece suit with a sparkling waistcoat and tie. Apparently, he was dressing for the occasion, but the colour was not a great choice given his very pale skin. You could certainly say he stood out.

  ‘I am really looking forward to seeing what Nava Greyling can do,’ Auberon said, kind of throwing it out there for anyone who might respond.

  ‘It should be a learning experience,’ Joslyn Harris – the VP – replied. ‘For us, I mean. I’m not sure anyone’s ever seen her smile.’

  ‘I have,’ Mitsuko said. ‘She smiled when she was presented to the clan. Of course, that was because she was expected to.’

  ‘She is a very interesting woman,’ Auberon said, ‘with an interesting circle of friends.’ Mitsuko glanced at the small man, wondering how she should take that. ‘Of course, I’m also interested in the illusions. The yearly production is a way to see what the current generation of students can really do.’

  ‘Nava has been quite tight-lipped about the production. Annoyingly so, at times. She said that she was impressed by some of the special effects and illusions. If it all works, it should be spectacular. She also said I’d like her costume. I’m not entirely sure how to take that.’

  ‘Well, it can’t actually be indecent.’

  ‘Uh, no.’

  ‘Not that that wouldn’t make for a very memorable play…’

  ~~~

  The first scene Nava was in did not happen for about twenty minutes. The production’s illusions and special effects took care of Yuki’s early appearances as a sort of animated movie played out across the stage to provide the backstory: the summer nation and the ice kingdom, the Ice Queen’s yearly reign over the land as her snows swept south in winter, never quite reaching the core of the human-held summer nation. First Twyla as Rosamund and then Yoshirō as Constant appeared so that the princess’s plot to remove Yuki could be expounded. Then Yoshirō got to play out Constant’s trek into the mountains at the end of autumn so that he could arrive at Yuki’s castle in time for the weather to turn really wintery.

  The art team had created quite the set for the ice castle’s forecourt. Forced perspective created a space much larger than the stage, all composed of glistening black stone. The walls appeared to be covered in a considerable thickness of ice; the stone beneath was little more than a shadow. The black cobbles on the ground were covered by a couple of centimetres of snow. Constant left footprints in the snow as he stumbled, cold and half-dead, into the courtyard and then collapsed.

  There was a pause and the more observant members of the audience likely spotted the snow beginning to collect on the knight’s clothes and hair. Then, from the right side of the stage, a swirl of denser snow swept in, thickening and gathering into a shape which might have been humanoid as it approached Constant. The density of the column grew and the shape became more obvious until it was clearly a woman composed entirely of snow standing over the body. Just as the snow woman grew entirely opaque, it exploded and Nava was standing there in all her glory. The panels of her skirt swirled about her legs briefly and the lights caught the metallic particles on her skin, making her sparkle as though she was actually made of ice.

  Mitsuko gasped softly. Beside her, Melissa was a little louder about it. As Nava slowly circled the fallen knight at her feet, incidentally giving a good view of her entire ensemble, Mitsuko had to admit that she liked the dress.

  ‘A human?’ Nava – or rather Yuki – said. Her voice was disp
assionate, cold. ‘A human, in my home, at this time. What brings him here? Why would a human risk my mountains with winter coming?’

  She turned her head as a flurry of snow swept in, circling her head and then flying away. She seemed to be listening to it. ‘Yes, he might be dangerous,’ she said. Another flurry blew in from the other side and she turned to listen. ‘No. No, I don’t think he poses a threat himself, but no human is ever alone.’ The snow came in from various sides now, swirling about Nava like a tiny, chaotic tornado. Finally, she seemed to snap. ‘Enough!’ The snow recoiled from her, becoming a far wider circle close to the ground and surrounding both Yuki and Constant. ‘Take him to a room. Have a fire made up there. I’m intrigued by this unseasonal visitor and I’ll see how things proceed. Those are my orders. Now see that they are done.’ The snow twisted up around her again, sheathing her in white. Then it blew away on the wind, leaving only Constant lying in the snow.

  ~~~

  Nava cancelled her Invisibility spell a couple of strides after leaving the stage. Terence was waiting in the wings and there was no point in avoiding him. He was looking cautiously pleased combined with slightly shocked. ‘That was… good,’ he said as Nava approached him.

  ‘You could sound less surprised,’ Nava commented.

  ‘It’s more like relief. I’ll admit that I was worried.’

  ‘I’m aware. I said you’d get a performance tonight.’

  Terence nodded. ‘You did. I suppose I shouldn’t have doubted you.’

  ‘No. I do as I say I’ll do, without trickery or concealment.’ Nava walked past the director to check with the special effects team. So far, they were doing a perfect job as far as she could tell, and she wanted to tell them that and check that she was hitting her marks.

  Terence watched her retreating back, wondering about her last remark. Was it possible that she knew what he and Rexanne were up to?

  ~~~

  Mitsuko leaned toward Melissa and spoke in a low voice. ‘Have you ever heard her raise her voice before?’