Oh, so Courtney was annoyed that Nava was in the room? ‘That matches what I saw, yes. The freshman strikes me as a street fighter, used to winning at all costs. The use of Hand of Flame was unexpected, and his reaction seemed… excessive. And I think you may have broken his ribs, not cracked them.’
‘Right… I’ll get a stretcher over here and get him shipped out. Then I’ll want statements. None of you are to go anywhere.’
‘I’ll be happy to stay, Courtney Martell,’ Nava replied. ‘I believe I’d like to try my luck against this judoka.’
‘Fine. Just remember not to kill him. Okay?’
~~~
‘I hear you had an eventful afternoon,’ Rochester said at dinner.
Inwardly, Nava sighed. The school had a rumour mill as efficient as any professional news media organisation. Probably better, in fact. ‘Someone got a little overenthusiastic in the judo demonstration. I happened to be there to see it.’
‘I heard that you beat the judo instructor,’ Melissa said.
‘Actually, Rene and I were fairly evenly matched. We called it a draw.’
‘Rene?’ Melissa was grinning. She thought she knew something, and Nava was almost sorry to disabuse her.
‘Rene Garver Morgan, one of the club’s senior members, not an instructor. He allowed me the honour of calling him by his first name. Actually, he said, “When you’ve had a man’s head between your thighs, you’ve earned the right.” I think he was being suggestive.’
Melissa made some sputtering noises. ‘No, really?’
‘I had him in a scissor hold. That’s all. He also agreed that there was little point in me joining the Judo Club. He did offer to spar with me whenever I felt the need. I think he was being suggestive there too. However, he’s too old.’
‘He is? He can’t be that old if he’s a student here.’
‘He’s eighteen. We could date, certainly, but anything beyond kissing would be illegal, which seems a waste if he’s going to let me use pins like that on him.’
‘Oh, I, um, see what you mean.’
‘If he was closer to my age it would be fine, but as it is, no. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with flirting. Anyway, Courtney Martell took our statements when she got back and there was nothing more to say about it.’ Nava frowned slightly as a thought crossed her mind. ‘She did say that the man who started it all had calmed down by the time she got him to a secure location. He was very apologetic. She said he seemed unsure of what had come over him.’
‘He would be apologetic,’ Rochester said. ‘Inappropriate use of combat spells could be grounds for expulsion.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You think it was something else?’
Nava gave a shrug. ‘I don’t have enough information to give an opinion. It’s Courtney Martell’s problem anyway. Nothing for any of us to worry about.’
235/2/2.
Politics was not something Nava had ever paid much attention to. In the last couple of weeks her lack of interest had grown, but she had also decided that paying attention to it now might be useful. It was student politics, but that seemed to be just as cut-throat, perhaps worse, than the adult variety. Out in the real world, the ‘politicians’ were the heads of families or their representatives. Here, they were students and the successful ones got elected into their positions. Nava was going to get to vote.
Since she was going to need to vote, Nava was going to do the research, which was why she was standing in a courtyard listening to a speech. Someone named Tracey Spears Cook was droning on about school pride and great achievements which needed to be bettered. Droning was probably being unkind. Tracey had a fair voice and she knew how to use it, but she was not really saying anything. Nava could have got the same information with a network search, and then it would have come without the biased commentary.
Vaguely, Nava wondered whether Mitsuko Trenton would be just as worthless as a candidate. The tall beauty had seemed fairly down to earth, but then Nava had done a search on her. The Trenton family was high up in the ranks of the Sonkei clan. Mitsuko was a princess, if such a thing existed in the Clan Worlds. Politics was in her blood. Nava was just wondering what that actually meant when the world went a little crazy.
There was a sound which Nava immediately recognised. It was a tearing sound, like a series of very rapid, very small explosions one after the other. The sound came from the brief passage of a beam of light through the air. It ionised the gases in the atmosphere, heating them and causing them to expand violently. When it hit the backwall of the little stage that had been set up for the speech, it exploded a small section of that too. Nava turned, tracing the ionisation trail to the roof of one of the habitation blocks maybe eight hundred metres away. She looked back to see Tracey diving for cover, and then the courtyard was descending into chaos and Nava was too busy dodging other people to see more.
~~~
‘No one there when we got to the rooftop,’ Courtney said. She was back at the scene of the speech now, looking over it once again with the member of the committee who had been there when it happened. ‘Do we have the target secure?’
‘She’s in her apartment. We locked it down pretty thoroughly.’ Courtney’s colleague was Kyle Maynard House and he was in his last year at the school. He knew his way around weaponised magic and military tactics. ‘Someone tried to kill her with a Laser Strike spell. She’s a little shaken.’
‘A little shaken?’
‘She’s a third year in the combat stream, boss. She’s not a hardened soldier, but she’s working on it.’
‘Huh.’ Turning from the hole the spell had drilled into a poster of Tracey Spears, Courtney looked around and her eyes fell upon Nava, standing at one side of the stage and watching Courtney and Kyle. ‘We
