Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions (Death's Handmaiden Book 3) by Niall Teasdale (best summer reads txt) 📕

to find Melissa and Courtney standing just inside the bedroom door. There was no large-scale destruction and no Harbingers of any kind. She did feel a bit weird. Lightheaded. ‘I’m okay. You can let go now.’

Mitsuko did not let go. ‘What happened? When I came to, you were almost bent in half. Like you were in a lot of pain. And you were hot. Really hot. Humans are not supposed to be that temperature.’

‘Not human,’ Nava said. ‘I know I have to remind you at times.’

‘You’re not not-human enough to be that hot!’

‘Okay, okay. I’ll avoid jokes since you’re clearly worried.’ Nava looked around at Courtney and Melissa. ‘Did I wake you? Was I screaming or something? I was dreaming about… Not sure. Something bad.’ The dreams were, in fact, fading from her memory rather rapidly. Had there been a Harbinger in them?

‘I don’t know what woke me,’ Melissa said. ‘One moment I was asleep and the next I was awake. Like…’

‘It felt like something had tripped my fight-or-flight response,’ Courtney said. ‘I woke up ready to run or kill something. Then I heard Suki shouting.’

‘Pretty much the same,’ Melissa agreed, nodding.

‘Weird,’ Nava said. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s anything to–’ She cut off as a Harbinger materialised in the room right beside her bed.

Trudy immediately held up defensive hands as Nava raised an arm to blast her. ‘I felt the threshold shift! I came to see what caused it! Don’t kill me!’

‘Trudy? Sorry, I had a bad dream. I think there might have been a Harbinger in it.’

‘You shouldn’t just materialise in someone’s bedroom like that,’ Melissa said.

‘My apologies,’ Trudy said. ‘But–’

‘What’s a threshold shift?’ Nava asked.

Trudy stared at her for a second. It was not an entirely comfortable thing to have happen to you. ‘Young Harbingers can undergo sudden large changes in their sorcery capacity. It’s a developmental thing. We call them threshold shifts because what you call sorcery capacity, we called manipulation threshold.’

‘I’m not a Harbinger, Trudy,’ Nava pointed out. ‘For one thing, I’m not blue. Though that may change if I don’t put some clothes on soon.’

‘The climate control is still set for sleeping,’ Mitsuko commented, rather pointlessly.

‘You’re not a Harbinger,’ Trudy said, ‘but there’s no reason why a human couldn’t undergo a threshold shift, I’d imagine. And your capacity has increased. Markedly.’

‘Markedly?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never bothered to work out a conversion between our units and your Tammys. However, I’d calculate an approximate increase of thirty-seven percent.’

‘That’s a lot,’ Melissa said.

‘Thirty-seven percent?’ Nava asked. ‘That’s… something like three hundred and seventy Tammys, based on my last test.’

‘That’s a lot,’ Melissa repeated. She looked a little wide-eyed.

‘I think,’ Mitsuko said, ‘that we should go back to bed. We’ll call Hoshi in the morning. Early. I’m sure she can get us access to a capacity-testing machine. Privately, obviously.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ Nava said. She looked at Trudy. ‘You’re still staring at me, Trudy. Is something wrong?’

‘No. Nothing. Just something Carina told me. If it means anything, I’ll let you know.’ And with that, she vanished.

‘I hope she’s not going to make a habit of that,’ Courtney said.

‘She hasn’t up until now,’ Nava pointed out. ‘I guess whatever happened to me, it spooked her. Maybe she thought there was another Harbinger here.’

‘She said that only happened to young ones,’ Melissa said. ‘I don’t think she’d be expecting a young Harbinger to turn up here.’

‘Good point. I’m going to get some sleep now, so…’

‘Right,’ Courtney said. She turned and walked out, heading for her own room.

Nava settled down, pulling the sheet back over herself. A second later, Mitsuko was curling up against her back. ‘You were worried about me?’ Nava asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I know. There is one thing that bothers me a little, though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well… well, you’re not a Harbinger, but you’re not entirely human either. And you don’t know where those weird genes came from.’

Nava was silent for a while. ‘They can’t be Harbinger chromosomes, Suki. How could they have possibly got their hands on the genome of a Harbinger?’

Mitsuko’s body relaxed against Nava’s. The tension had not really been noticeable until it was not there. ‘No. You’re right, of course. It’s not possible. Goodnight, Nava.’

‘Goodnight, Suki.’

Nava closed her eyes and tried to relax into sleep. In the morning, she would find out whether any of this was true. But that would be something for when the sun came up.

~~~

‘That’s three seventy,’ Hoshi said, looking at the monitor. ‘You don’t think you can go higher?’ She tapped at the screen, just in case, and a new schema appeared.

Nava stared at it, trying to push her mind into the shape required for the new spell. ‘No. Won’t fit. She was right. That’s a little over a thirty-seven percent increase since my last test. And I think my quintessence reserve has got bigger.’

‘That’s a lot,’ Melissa said. Nava gave her a look.

‘A “threshold shift,”’ Rochester said. His arms were crossed over his chest. Sort of. He was stroking his chin with one hand, looking like an old professor faced with an interesting problem. ‘I’m not aware of anything in the literature regarding that kind of event.’ He glanced at Hoshi.

‘No,’ Hoshi said. ‘Me neither, but I’ll do some research while you lot are in lessons.’ It was seven forty in the morning. No one had eaten breakfast yet. And of course Rochester had been with Hoshi when they called. Aside from anything else, what idiot would sleep in one of the tiny capsule apartments when their girlfriend had a spacious postgraduate apartment?

‘Uh, it goes without saying,’ Nava said, ‘but I’ll say it anyway. I’d rather this was kept strictly on a need-to-know basis. And no one else needs to know.’

‘Of course,’ Hoshi replied.

‘My lips are, as usual, sealed,’ Rochester said.

Courtney gave a shrug. ‘What’s one more secret to add to the long, long list?’

~~~

Practically speaking, Nava’s sudden increase in capacity made little difference. She would find it easier to work spells from scratch, and she could use more complex ones that