“Holy shit,” she said.
“What?” Marcel said looking uninterested in the grainy video in the corner of the television while news broadcasters spoke.
MaLeila didn’t answer immediately, more focused on the red kimono dress, the wavy brown hair, the olive colored complexion, and the almond shaped brown eyes, which before she had dismissed as an undistinguishing trait. The video wasn’t cleat, but she knew that face regardless.
Finally she said, “That’s Tsubame.”
10
Naturally, MaLeila and Marcel didn’t extend their vacation, going with the original plan to leave Monday morning. Marcel dropped MaLeila off at home when they arrived and gave her a quick kiss while promising to be back soon, before leaving to take care of council business. When she stepped into the house, Bastet didn’t even turn to glance at her, eyes glued to her computer, but Devdan glanced at her, gaze lingering on her for longer than his it usually took to acknowledge her existence. Only when MaLeila locked her eyes with his did he slowly turn his gaze, whereupon she sat next to Bastet who was quickly scrolling through articles and news sites.
“What happened?” MaLeila asked.
“No one’s really sure. All we know is one of the most renown leaders in the middle east suddenly came up dead, his second took over and there Tsubame was sitting at his feet as he declared his takeover to his inner circle. Nothing’s really happened yet, but you know how changes in regimes go. Everyone starts speculating the worst people start saying the President needs to give the okay to send bombs or help the rebels in case worst comes to worst,” Bastet said rolling her eyes. “They aren’t talking about Tsubame though, her name isn’t even mentioned in any of the articles. In fact, no one seems to care about the woman kneeling on the floor next to the guy’s feet.”
“Tsubame didn’t strike me as the type to kneel before anyone’s feet,” MaLeila pointed out.
“Me neither. She’s too powerful for it, which lets me know that for some reason she’s exactly where she wants to be,” Bastet said, now logging into the world registry of magic users. “The guy who took over? His name’s Fathi. The magic council noticed him when he was young, around five or six, roughly thirty years ago, but he was just a random spurt of magic in a land where most of the powerful magic families had been scattered and diluted from hundreds of years of war and political coups. Then Ahmed Alfarsi, a rogue sorcerer and leader of one of the biggest underground rebel factions in the Middle East took him in. The council figured as long as Ahmed didn’t cross over into Europe again, he and all the other factions could destroy themselves with infighting. In fact, it was with some of their meddling that a decade ago that Ahmed rose to power.”
“Throwing the dog a bone so to speak?” Devdan asked.
“Yeah, but Ahmed didn’t know all this. And of course the magic council has kept him occupied by helping fund and manipulate other rebel factions to fight against him both magical and non-magical. As far as sorcerers are concerned, he’s neutralized. He would have never been able to organize to become one of the ruling magic families or even one of any real influence,” Bastet said. “But I’m sure the magic council didn’t plan on him being overthrown by his own second. Without even knowing Tsubame’s with him, the council is probably at least mildly concerned that this happened without them knowing it was going to happen.”
“How do you know all this?” MaLeila asked.
“All what?”
“The council’s schemes and manipulation of world powers.”
“I used to be heavily involved in that world. I have my insider sources,” Bastet said. She picked up her phone and looked at it, “In fact, I’m waiting for one to get back to me, if Tilila hasn’t already gotten to him. I guess she’ll let me know when she gets here.”
“When she gets here?”
“Yeah. She senses something in the air, figures it would be better for all of us to figure this out in person. She’ll be here sometime tonight. She’s bringing her husband too.”
“Oh really? When did she get married?” MaLeila asked.
“Couple of months ago,” Bastet answered absently.
Bastet didn’t say anything else, now engrossed in her research. MaLeila glanced at Devdan once more, who appeared to be asleep on the couch, and then went to her room to unpack her things and take a shower, before their company arrived. She didn’t come back out until she heard the doorbell ring later that evening. Bastet had already opened the door, letting into the house a tall thin dark skinned Moroccan woman with black eyes and bushy black hair tied down with a scarf in the front.
“Please tell me you have something to eat. Better yet, please tell me we can order pizza. You would think after all this time, I’d be used to flying, but of course not,” Tilila said in a thick accent that MaLeila knew would lessen within a week or so of her being there.
“Already on the way,” Bastet assured.
Tilila kissed Bastet on both cheeks before turning back to the door and gesturing to a Caucasian man around Bastet’s height with curly black hair, green eyes, glasses, and wearing faded jeans with a button shirt tucked into them.
“You’ve probably met my husband, Jaffe.”
Tilila barely got the man’s name out her mouth before a semi-automatic hand gun was being pointed at Jaffe’s chest. MaLeila hadn’t even seen Devdan move and with the lights on there was no way he could have travelled the shadows to get in front of Tilila’s husband so fast. Never mind when he had pulled the gun.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Devdan asked.
“Devdan. Put the gun down,” Bastet said.
“Depends on what his answer is,” Devdan replied.
Talila, who stood looking at the scene with wide eye, turned to look at Jaffe and asked, “You know him?”
“From a long time ago,” Jaffe said stiffly, not breaking his gaze from Devdan.
“He was… a friend of Claude’s,” Bastet gave as explanation.
After hearing that Claude was involved, MaLeila decided to take matters into her own hands, not trusting that Devdan would wait for an answer before he shot. At least he was better than he was four years ago. Back then, he would have shot first and asked questions later.
“Devdan,” MaLeila said putting her arm over his and grabbing onto the top of the gun. “Put it down.”
Devdan huffed and slowly lowered his gun, but MaLeila didn’t take her hand off it.
“Mind letting me have this?”
Devdan let go of the gun and when he did so, MaLeila lifted it level with her breasts and began to play with it in both hands. She looked at Tilila and said, “Long time no see, Tilila. Seems like everyone else knows your husband, but I don’t.”
At that point, MaLeila extended her hand to Jaffe and introduced herself, effectively turning everyone’s attention away from the fact that Devdan had pulled a gun on Jaffe a few minutes earlier. It would be a question to ask Devdan later, when they weren’t all trying to puzzle out why a powerful sorceress (or so they assumed) like Tsubame would subject herself to an average powered sorcerer at best who the magic council only cared about enough to make sure they eventually fought themselves out of existence.
“Go over it from the beginning MaLeila,” Tilila said with a slice of pizza in one hand and one of many books she took out of a purse that was neither heavy nor never seemed to fill in her lap. “Tell me everything.”
MaLeila sighed. “There’s not much to tell except what Bastet has probably already told you. She called herself the Immortal Queen Tsubame.”
“The queen of what?” Tilila pressed.
“Her world.”
“Did she say what her world was?”
MaLeila shrugged. “For all we know, she could be talking about an ant farm she keeps in her house.”
“She fell from a portal. I’m pretty sure when she said world, she meant a world,” Bastet replied.
“Not necessarily,” Jaffe said from where he was on a laptop with a cup of coffee. �
�Do you know how many magic users, no matter what kind have gotten into fights with each other and sealed one another away only for the sorcerer to escape later.”
“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you, Jaffe,” Devdan said, his hand flexing as though he were itching to have the gun the MaLeila had taken from him.
“Let’s not get into that one right now,” Bastet said before MaLeila could ask what Devdan was talking about. “That being said though, maybe Tsubame was a queen once, maybe not of this new modern world, but an old one, before there was a magic registry.”
“You’re talking about at least two thousand years,” Jaffe pointed out.
“Maybe even before that,” Tilila said while reaching into her purse to grab another book.
“What are you getting at Tilila?” Bastet asked as she leaned back on the couch.
Tilila took a book out her bag and as she was flipping through it she said, “I’m getting at the idea that maybe Tsubame being from another time might not be so farfetched.”
“So are you saying you think someone sealed her away while she was queen and now she wants to reclaim her throne again?” MaLeila asked.
“There’s a problem with that theory,” Devdan pointed out. “When Bastet said she wasn’t modest, Tsubame told her it was more modest than saying she was supreme goddess of the universe because she didn’t rule the universe yet.”
“He’s right on that one. She also kept saying she was from somewhere in the universe. So I think it’s safe to assume she didn’t mean Earth,” Bastet agreed.
“But that’s what I’m getting at. Maybe it’s all true and we just have to piece it all together the right way,” Tilila said finally finding what she was looking for.
MaLeila had only been in Tilila’s company three or four times, but she recognized the excited tone in woman’s voice, one that came when she finally got to show off her knowledge of the extensive history she learned from the research she did day in and day out. Eccentric as she was about her work, it was helpful in situations where MaLeila wasn’t clear who or what she was dealing with.
“Lately, I’ve been looking into the origin of magic, particularly the origin of the sorcerer and sorceress. If you go back far enough, there’s no record of sorcery, not the powerful kind we practice, even though magic goes back to the beginning of mankind. You don’t start to find sorcery in history until the myth of the gods begin to show up. Most people stop at saying that sorcerers and sorceress were the gods and the modern sorcerer is the descendant of them, but I don’t think that’s the entire story. It’s really fascinating how no one has done an in depth study of this correlation in history. I plan to write a paper on it and present it to the Magic Council one day, see what those old prudes think about this,” Talila ranted.
“Sweetheart,” Jaffe said.
“Right,” Tilila said while clearing her throat. “Anyway, no one knows where the gods came from, only that they showed up and people began to worship them.”
“This is supposing the gods were real and not just sorcerers and sorceresses,” Devdan replied.
“That’s exactly what my theory supposes. It supposes that the gods came here from another far world, brought humanity the beginnings of civilization and culture and from their intermingling with the human race gave birth to what we now call sorcery.”
MaLeila closed her eyes and shook her head, then put her hands up to stop Tilila before she went any further.
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that the gods, and when you say gods, you mean the stuff in Rick Riordan’s books?”
“Not just Greek and Roman and Egyptian. The gods from every culture. Japanese, Norse, Chinese, Arabian—“
MaLeila raised her hands to stop Tilila again before saying, “Right. All the gods. Are you trying to say that the gods are essentially aliens from outer space who came to our world, generously gave it order and civilization and language and culture, got into relationships with humanity, and had children who became the first sorcerers and sorceresses?”
“Yes,” Tilila confirmed.
“And furthermore, you think Tsubame might be one of these gods from long ago who was sealed away in a skirmish with another god or sorcerer?”
“Kind of,” Tilila said slowly.
MaLeila grabbed a slice of pizza and fell back against the sofa. When she first met Tsubame, she thought the woman was just another sorceress with delusions of grandeur that were never going to happen. Mildly annoying, but she had dealt with that before. An alien god, on the other hand, was a whole other level of insanity.
Tilila elaborated on her theory, saying that either Tsubame could have been sealed away in a duel or gotten lost coming to earth with the other gods millennia ago and accidently sealed herself. When Tilila told Marcel the theory the next morning, he was skeptical at best.
“So you want me to go before the council and tell them that Tsubame is an alien god—“
“You can leave out the alien part,” MaLeila added. “Tilila’s not even all the way sure about that.”
“But you still want me to tell the council that Tsubame is god, a forgotten Japanese god mind you, who was some way or another sealed away until recently and now she wants to find a way to rule the world again?” Marcel asked, an eyebrow raised. “They’re not going to even think of it. There are so many holes in your theory, they’ll dismiss before I can get it out my mouth.”
“Like what?” Tilila asked.
“The biggest one being that if she really is a god, why doesn’t she just use her powers to get what she wants? It would be much easier.”
“Because she lost some of her powers from being sealed,” Tilila argued. “MaLeila said it. She left because she wasn’t at her full strength.”
“Doesn’t mean she was powerful to begin with.”
“She caused a storm that knocked down trees and blew out windows when she appeared and when she disappeared everything was back in its place as though she hadn’t even come. Now tell me again she’s not a powerful sorceress,” Bastet argued.
“Touché,” Marcel gave. “But still, maybe that was the full extent of her powers.”
Bastet sighed and then said, “I’ll be back.”
She came back to the living room with Devdan, who had locked himself in the room that morning as Bastet and MaLeila were coming out of theirs to get ready to meet a returning Tilila and her husband.
“We’re all sitting here speculating what being sealed away does to a person’s magical potential when we could just ask the guy who has been sealed before,” Bastet explained.
Admittedly, the thought had crossed MaLeila’s mind, but she knew how difficult Devdan could be about anything directly related to Claude, so she hadn’t suggested it. Bastet must have blackmailed him some kind of way, because bribery never worked on Devdan.
Tilila turned directly to Devdan, eager for the opportunity to hear what Devdan had to say since no matter how much she begged him, he’d never help her with her research.
“So?” she urged. “What effect does a seal have on someone’s magic?”
“Being sealed is like being asleep. You don’t know it’s happened until the seal wears off or someone breaks it. So I really don’t know what it did,” Devdan replied.
“Well you got out of it eventually, so what did the effects feel like.”
“Like someone had cast a binding spell on my magic, except mush less temporary and much less easy to break. The more you use your magic, the more it loosens. Until finally it breaks and you’re free to use magic and let your powers grow the same way they did before the sealing. But that could take years, and Tsubame didn’t particularly strike me as the extremely patient type.”
Tilila, who was furiously writing down everything Devdan said, continued, “Are there any more effects of the seal? Like confusion?” she asked. “From being sealed in one time period and waking in another?”
“No confusion. It’s like when you sleep sometimes you dream. Sometimes I could see time
passing, especially when events that effected the magical world happened. The disturbance in magic could sometimes cause cracks in the seal. But it was like a dream, except when you wake up you realize that your dream was more real than you thought.”
Devdan was making this too easy, which meant that there was something else he wasn’t telling, but no one had asked the right question and it was a question he didn’t want asked. So he latched onto what was being asked and gave all the information his interrogators thought they wanted while hiding something key. MaLeila had played that game enough times with Devdan to be sure of that.
“What’s the other effect then?” MaLeila asked.
Everyone looked at her, but it was only Devdan’s gaze she felt boring into her, his aura that she felt beginning to contract as a warning for her to be quiet. MaLeila continued anyway.
“You said there’s no confusion. So if there’s no confusion, what is there?”
Devdan’s right hand clenched and unclenched, eyes darting to the right. MaLeila wasn’t sure what he looked at, though it must have been something because MaLeila had never known Devdan to shy away from someone’s gaze, not matter how uncomfortable he was.
“You’re consumed by the last thought or emotion you had right before you were sealed. In my case it was revenge,” Devdan admitted.
“Revenge on…” Marcel urged, but MaLeila put her hand on his thigh to silence him. Marcel may be able to easily read Devdan and better understand his psychology than she was able to but longevity counted for something. And MaLeila knew if they wanted Devdan’s help any further, this was a direction they were better off not going in.
Devdan’s eyes darted to the right again, hand clenching and unclenching, and that’s when MaLeila realized that the man’s eyes were going to the general direction of the kitchen table, where Jaffe was sitting appearing to be unaware of their discussion.
“Why don’t you ask Jaffe?” Devdan suggested. “He’s the bastard who helped Claude seal me.”
The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening Page 10
