Daughter of Nox

Chapter Twenty-Four

The two friends spent the better part of an hour fumbling blindly through the dim basement before they found a stairwell leading up and out. Relief flooded Freya as they climbed the two flights, though the feeling died in her chest when they emerged from the door leading onto the second floor hallway.

The place smelled like the inside of a waste scow–a sour, musty odor that made Freya's stomach do a summersault. Grime stained the ancient looking walls, while trash covered every visible centimeter of floor.

"Slag the stars, this can't be the right place," Freya said. "No way in flaming hell this is the right place."

Etta trudged dawn the hall a few steps to the nearest barracks room and looked over the door. "Room numbers start with two," she said. "I'm thinking this is the right place."

Freya walked down the hall, eyeing the door numbers until she found to their assigned rooms. Piled boxes sat on the floor between the two rooms, and paper notices clung to both their doors. Freya tugged one down and read it aloud as Etta looked on.

"Due to demands on Academy's Esque workforce, Novices in Raymond Hall will be responsible for housekeeping services until further notice. Supplies will be provided. Inspection by Ministry officers will occur in two days. Failure to meet the minimum expectations for cleanliness will result in punitive action. Signed, Commandant Reynard." The notice fluttered to the ground as Freya's arm fell to her side. "What is 'punitive action' supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," Etta said. "Thumb screws maybe?"

Freya groaned. "This has got to be some kind of joke."

"For sure." Etta bent down and drew an aerosol can with a flower printed on the side from one of the boxes. "They even provided us with fake cans of cleaner, just to really drive the joke home. And this," she tossed one of the cans to Freya, "is the punchline."

Freya and Etta spent the rest of that day and the next picking up an entire garbage barge's worth of trash from the floor, stopping only to grab quick meals from the mess hall nearby. As Freya had grown up with a staff of servants at her father's estate, the act of finding and picking up actual trash from the actual ground was a new experience. An experience, she quickly decided, that she loathed. The work was tedious at best, disgusting at worst, and required so little focus that her idle brain began dragging up unpleasant or anxiety-provoking memories from the dark corners in her skull before shoving them to the forefront of her attention.

Freya used two fingers to pick up what might have been a vomit stained shirt when the memory of her Aunt Sigyn's claims about her history with Freya's father shoved its way to the forefront of her attention. Anger simmered in her stomach at the thought. If Freya believed her aunt–and given her father's reluctance to explain his side of things, she did–then her father had lied about the nature of his relationship with Sigyn Averni. The thing was, Freya couldn't puzzle out his reasons for it.

Obviously the thought of a young Rúnda Airm trying to elope with her mother's sister was a thousand kinds of weird, but didn't people do weird things all the time? Freya wouldn't have judged him for it. Actually, she admitted quickly, she might have judged him a little. But even with the judgement, she would have appreciated knowing that her father, master of Doing the Right Thing, had acted so utterly stupid and human at one point in his life.

Freya had been avoiding waving him since they'd last spoken. Her final words made Freya want to cringe hard enough that she might fold in half, but that wasn't the only reason. Some part of her still clung to anger–partly about the stuff with her aunt, and partly because of how he'd lied to her about his involvement in peace talks with the Separatists. Sure, he dressed the lie up in a sharp suit of honor or duty, but it was still a lie. And, Freya thought as her blood began to rise, he sure as flaming hell had never mentioned anything about her taking over the work after Ascension, or about any of his enemies wanting to vaporize her body into a fine pink mist.