Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions
A Death’s Handmaiden Novel
By Niall Teasdale
Copyright 2020 Niall Teasdale
Amazon Kindle Edition
Contents
Part One: The Chūnibyō in Class 14D
Part Two: Dirty Fighting
Part Three: Quis Custodiet
Part Four: One-Woman Army
Epilogue
Part One: The Chūnibyō in Class 14D
Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery, Shinden, Clan Worlds Alliance, 236/1/10.
The sun was warm and that was a plus. January on Shinden could be a particularly icy month and this January day was pretty typical. It had dawned bright and clear with a sub-zero temperature thanks to the clear skies the night before, but the sun was giving it a boost and there was every possibility that the temperature would be bearable by the time Nava Greyling Sonkei had to brave it in uniform. Currently, she was wearing a thick sweater under a coat and opaque hose under a short skirt, and she was already looking forward to changing back into something similar following the graduation ceremony.
Not that Nava was graduating. Her second year at the Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery – SAS2 to its friends – would be starting in two days. Graduation was five years in the future. However, she had acquaintances who were graduating this year, she was in school anyway, and not attending the ceremony might have seemed churlish.
Before the ceremony, however, there was the arrival at her new accommodation. This was why Nava was taking the unusual step of walking through the school to the area known as the Estate. Generally, the Estate was where the school’s staff lived. There was no reason students could not rent a house there, but student apartments were cheaper and there was a convention of sorts which kept the Estate and the nearby apartment buildings to postgrads, faculty, and ancillary staff. In particular, the Estate was really designed for couples and families, but that kind of rule had done nothing to stop Nava’s friend and lover, Mitsuko Trenton Sonkei, from arranging to rent one of the larger houses. With the combined power of Nava’s and Mitsuko’s allowances, and a little help from Melissa Connelly Avorn’s far less abundant funds, the three of them were moving into a four-bedroom house which Nava had yet to see. Mitsuko and Melissa had been working to move everything in for about a week, but Nava had had other duties to take care of before today.
The Estate was a maze. Technically, it was more like a forest, but the effect, if you were driving, was maze-like. Curving, dead-end streets branched off from a couple of main roads. Smaller streets branched from the branches. Nava assumed that someone had designed the layout; presumably it had been someone who had failed a course in civil planning. If you were on foot, things were a bit better. Various paths cut through between the streets allowing for a considerably more direct route to most places, but the house Mitsuko had selected turned out to be on the far side of the Estate, quite some distance from the main school buildings. From the helipad where an Alliance Security Force transport had dropped Nava off, she felt as though she had walked through the entire school to get to her destination.
That said, upon arrival it seemed as though the house was worth the walk. Situated on the end plot of one of the cul-de-sacs, the house was a low, broad building with big windows facing the street and a warm, pale-yellow render on the walls. There was a lawn at the front with a short, flagged path up to an entrance portico. Much to her pleasure, the door recognised her ketcom when Nava waved the device over the intercom and, dragging her lone suitcase, she stepped into an entrance hallway where she was faced with a stack of boxes, one large black case, and a collection of footwear lined up at one side.
She was also, almost immediately, faced with an oncoming Mitsuko who rushed out of a door on the right. There were no words, because Mitsuko did not allow time for them. A second after seeing the tall, beautiful student president, Nava was balancing on her toes as Mitsuko lifted her into a very enthusiastic kiss.
‘I missed you,’ Mitsuko said when she finally had to break for breath.
‘I would never have guessed,’ Nava replied. ‘With such a lacklustre greeting, I should suspect that you’d forgotten me in the eight days since you last saw me.’
‘Eight days is a long time when you’re horny,’ Melissa said from the doorway Mitsuko had entered through. ‘It’s good to see you again. How was your ASF training?’
‘Boring to the point of aneurism. A lot of lectures on procedure and how they operate in practice.’ Nava gave a slight shrug. ‘It’ll be useful, eventually. It’s nice to be back here where I may learn something useful to me now.’
‘Well, we’ve left your stuff for you to put where you think is good.’ Melissa indicated the boxes which contained all of Nava’s worldly belongings, except what was in her suitcase. ‘First, we should probably show you the house.’ Melissa grinned. ‘I told my parents about it and they asked who I’d had to sell my body to to get it. I think they were joking.’
‘You didn’t sell it to anyone,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Really, it’s more of a rental agreement… Let’s do the tour!’ She pointed to the back of the hall where there was another door. ‘That takes you straight to the back of the house. There’s a door off it into the sento.’
Nava held up a hand. ‘Wait. We have a sento?’
Mitsuko grinned. ‘When I saw that, I just had to have this house. Apparently, they put them into most of the larger houses. The more recent builds anyway. It’s more like a large bath than a proper sento, but you can get three or four people in it and it’s got separate washing facilities.’
‘It’s pretty nice,’ Melissa agreed. ‘We have two shower rooms with toilet and such as well, so we shouldn’t have conflicts over usage too often.
