The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening (16 page)

Tsubame hummed. All that in mind, maybe she did know what to do with the girl.

17

MaLeila wished she hadn’t agreed so quickly to be the council’s concealed weapon as they bullied Fathi and Tsubame into agreeing to their terms. Sure Fathi wasn’t a saint, having helped wage a war in his own country with no regard for civilian casualties, but at the very least his intentions were clear. That wasn’t always the case with the council. MaLeila always had to take their word for it while being prepared for the inevitability of ulterior motives surfacing later, most times less than noble.

Still, MaLeila thought she had done a good job of hiding it except for to Devdan, Bastet, Marcel, and maybe Irvin when she got a chance to talk to him when he didn’t have to keep up appearances with his mother. So MaLeila had been unnerved when Tsubame was able to exactly peg how she felt about the entire situation, how even though Tsubame hadn’t been specific, she knew that there was something keeping MaLeila here beyond the fact that her boyfriend was here.

“I think you’re all worrying too much about Tsubame,” Marcel said to not just MaLeila, but Bastet and Devdan when they expressed concern about the fact that they sat and had dinner with Tsubame.

“I think you’re not worried enough,” MaLeila said. “How can you be so relaxed around her?”

“Because that’s how Tsubame is. She likes to play games with people. This whole thing with Fathi, it’s just a game before the real politics begin for Tsubame. I wouldn’t put too much stock into what she said to you.”

“You say this as if you know Tsubame,” MaLeila said.

“I don’t, but I’m trained to observe people exactly how Tsubame seemed to observe you. Not only did she outright say it, it was obvious. Ask Bastet, she knows how to peg people just like this. She probably pegged me,” Marcel replied.

MaLeila turned to Bastet who shrugged and said, “He’s right. I did. Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to know that you probably don’t like the council and that you might have gotten into something you didn’t count on.”

“Like we told you in the first place,” Devdan pointed out dryly.

Of all people MaLeila thought would be on her side on this one, MaLeila thought it would be Devdan. With his comment though, she rolled her eyes and made her way out the room without bothering to change out of her jeans and top, making it abundantly clear that even though they were due to have another meeting soon, she wasn’t going. Not like the Magic Council needed her in the meetings, not to mention that MaLeila had no interest in listening to the council pretend to care about humanitarian concerns as they guided Fathi into what kind of laws and structure he’d have in his government. She made her way downstairs and into the lobby at the back of the hotel with the intention of finding the mall that she’d looked up on the internet.

She rounded the corner from the elevator, running into the back of a big man who she realized in the next few seconds was Fathi and his guard. She opened her mouth to apologize until she heard him say something in what sounded like an Arabic language that MaLeila had no doubt was rude, particularly when she heard him say “nigger witch” in his own language.

MaLeila narrowed her eyes and said, “I can assure you that I’m much more than a witch. Would you like me to demonstrate for you?”

MaLeila wouldn’t have done anything to be truthful, but Fathi seemed to take it as enough of a threat by the way he scrunched up his face in disdain at her. He said something else that MaLeila didn’t understand, but that she was sure was another insult. Before she could say anything or Fathi could say more, Tsubame appeared next to MaLeila, causing the girl to jump. Tsubame had done that at the market. It wasn’t that she was even hiding her aura, it was just that for some reason MaLeila couldn’t sense her presence until the woman was right on her, almost like her aura blended in with the magic that natural that charged the atmosphere. Only when the woman was right on her could she ever distinguish her.

“Fathi, don’t be rude to her. She might decide she doesn’t want to spend the day with me,” Tsubame said, now in orange and yellow garbs with a scarf that looked more like a very large hood.

Fathi’s face softened and he said something to Tsubame in his native tongue before Tsubame replied in kind. Then Fathi laughed in amusement before bidding the woman on her way. Tsubame locked arms with MaLeila, as though they were old friends, and they made their way back to another set of elevators where her maids were waiting.

“I’m not spending the day with you,” MaLeila said, trying to pull away from the woman.

“Just the morning and lunch then.”

“No,” MaLeila said.

Tsubame sighed and said as though dealing with a small child, “Now you wouldn’t want me to tell Fathi that you angered me and influence him to forget these peace talks, would you?”

MaLeila started to say that she didn’t care if the peace talks went up in flames, but then she remembered what she got out of this deal. And if she ruined them, if they messed up because of something MaLeila had done and could have prevented, it would give the council certain grounds to take back their promise to give her access to every known magical library there was.

MaLeila sighed, tugging her arm from Tsubame, but following her onto the elevator with her maids regardless. She resisted looking at the smug smile on Tsubame’s face the entire ride, and when they were in her suite Tsubame promptly went to lounge on the buttery leather sofas in the large living room where there was tea and coffee on a glass coffee table with a tall clear vase of water with floating candles.

“Which one do you prefer, MaLeila? Tea or coffee?” Tsubame asked taking one of the cups.

“Coffee I guess,” MaLeila said.

Tsubame nodded and poured the girl a cup of coffee while asking, “Cream and sugar?”

By that time MaLeila had come to sit across from the woman and said, “I’ll do it. Most people put too much in it.”

Tsubame nodded and slid the cup across the table to her while pouring herself a cup of coffee also. MaLeila made her coffee, keenly aware of the fact that the woman was carefully watching the way she made her coffee even as the woman made her own. She sat her spoon down on the platter under her cup and took a sip, all the while watching Tsubame watch her.

MaLeila sat her cup back down and waited for Tsubame to say something, but the woman was perfectly comfortable with the silence between them. It unnerved MaLeila. Being around Tsubame was like being around Devdan the first few months he would pop up for a visit. He would always watch her like he wanted to kill her, could kill her, but hadn’t decided if that’s what he wanted to do with her yet. When she told Devdan that after they rode on the elevator with Tsubame the first day of the talks, he admitted that’s exactly what he had been thinking and that he hadn’t known she picked up on it and that the only reason he hadn’t killed her was that he didn’t want to hurt her mother. MaLeila hadn’t been able to pry out of him what had stopped him from killing her after her mother died. Regardless, Tsubame made her feel that way, especially after the woman told her she had decided what she would do with her after MaLeila and Marcel had dinner with her.

Finally, Tsubame sat her coffee down and began to stir it with her right hand as if she was restless and needed something to do. Then she said, “You know, when I first learned of you, I thought we were as different as night and day.”

“Learned of me?” MaLeila asked.

Tsubame nodded. “I might have first met you when I fell out that portal, but I didn’t learn of you until much later and dear, there’s no shortage of stories about you in this world. Mostly about no matter what the council has thrown at you, you’ve shoved it back in their faces, given them the proverbial fuck you and pissed off the powers that be by your unorthodox manners. I upset the status quo like that in my youth. It eventually made me queen, but it didn’t win me any friends. I had to win the friends much later and it was much harder to win those friends when I was already at the top than it would have been for me to win those friends if I had tried on my way to the top. In my defense though, I didn’t know I would end up queen.

“You, on the other hand, seem to have a little sense. Give the council what they seemingly want and get what you want out of it. A devious little plan if you ask me, especially when we both know that your powers have no effect on me,” Tsubame pointed out.

“You don’t know that,” MaLeila said. She had only tried one attack on Tsubame. For all she knew, Tsubame was only immune to MaLeila’s wind magic. MaLeila wasn’t sure what the woman’s magic aligned under, but she assumed that the woman might be like Devdan, so closely attuned to yin magic that yin magic didn’t easily work against her, especially when the attacker was weaker. Or that the woman’s magic aligned with a magic that had a strength over wind like moon magic. Either way, she had been prepared to only use magic and abilities that aligned with yang if the time came to fight her.

“Call it a hunch,” Tsubame said. “Regardless, I’m sure you didn’t tell the council that particular fact before you so readily agreed to fight for them. Yet you did so in such a way that they have to keep their end of the bargain so long as you try to help them.”

MaLeila hadn’t thought of it like that at all and when she told Tsubame as much, the woman said, “I know you didn’t. I said you’re smart, but not quite manipulative yet. You don’t have the heart. You’re like a lot of young people in your world. You don’t like fakeness, so you’re brutally honest, sincere, even if it’s not politically correct. But that’s the reason you’re always in so much trouble. All unlimited and untapped potential, but no guidance.”

MaLeila wished Devdan or Bastet were with her, that she hadn’t stormed off in annoyance at them for not taking her uncertainty about Tsubame seriously. The woman was no longer looking at her like she wasn’t sure what to do with her, like she was playing with her until she figured it out. Now, she looked like a predator ready to pounce.

“Guidance?” MaLeila asked narrowing her eyes.

“How do you attract honey bees, Miss Samara?”

MaLeila blinked. That was unexpected, but she replied anyway. “Honey?”

“No. That’s how you attract pests. You don’t want pest. You want bees. And you attract bees with flowers. Sweet smelling flowers filled with nectar. It doesn’t matter what flower to the honey bee. They just want the nectar to make honey. That’s how you have to court the magical world. Give them what they think they want from you. Be the model sorceress on the surface and make them work for you, not for them. Charm them,” Tsubame said. “How do you think that in a matter of seven months I made my way into a man’s bed, influenced him to kill his benefactor and got us to peace talks? Not through being abrasive about it.”

“I thought you said you weren’t very subtle.”

“Most of the time,” Tsubame corrected and then continued, “Getting into bed with a council representative was a good first step.”

MaLeila blanched and said, “Marcel wasn’t a power play against the council.”

“But it could be, if you take advantage of the perks now while they’re so consumed with stopping Fathi and ignoring the real threat,” Tsubame suggested.

MaLeila decided that being around Tsubame was like that time she fell from one of the cliffs at the grand canyon while fighting off a sorcerer with a strong affinity for earth magic, not knowing which way was up or down, left or right, just the feeling of falling.

“That’s all nice and dandy,” MaLeila said, “but I’m not the one aiming for world domination here. That’s you. And you’re practically telling me exactly how you plan to do it.”

“World domination is no fun if no one knows you’re aiming for it, if no one knows who you are and you have to rule from the shadows,” Tsubame said.

The way Tsubame answered reminded MaLeila of the way Devdan answered her questions when he was trying to get her to back off. He gave a quick unhesitating answer that was probably part of the truth, but not the whole truth and meant that the answer he wanted to give would either hurt her feelings or was too personal for him to divulge. She wasn’t sure what Tsubame’s reasoning was, but if the woman wanted to tell someone who might potentially pose a threat to her and she was so convinced that MaLeila’s magic wouldn’t work against her, why hadn’t she just gone straight to the council?

Rather than ask her, because MaLeila was sure she wouldn’t like the answer and that Tsubame was aware of that also and was trying not to scare her off before lunch, MaLeila said nothing as Tsubame called her maids and told them that she needed some fresh air to clear her head.

“Will Fathi be okay with this?” MaLeila asked as they started to head out.

“You ask me that as if he’s my master and has me on a leash,” Tsubame said with a smile. “And while that may be true, he has me on the leash that I put on my neck and handed him the reins to, while holding the key in my pocket.”

They went back to the market, where Tsubame picked up creams and butters and spices for their lunch all the while complaining that the maids cooked too blandly, to which one maid, a mouthy woman named Saha, said that until now they hadn’t had access to anything that would make their food more palatable.

While the woman was bartering prices with Saha, MaLeila made her way over to the jewelry, looking at the pieces with intricate shapes and designs. She picked up a thick green bracelet with green leafs and vines with pink and white blossoms stamped in the middle on opposite sides. When MaLeila look closer, she noticed the design was shaped like a tiger.