The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension

by H. D. Strozier

  MaLeila reached out and grabbed his arm before he could fully get up and pulled him back onto the couch.

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant I thought you would get it without me having to explain it.”

  “I can’t read your mind,” Devdan said, refraining from adding that he couldn’t read her mind despite how emotionally in tune they tended to be with each other; despite the fact that he could feel her despair, her fear, her rage, her hate mixing into a dark dangerous swirl of an emotion that had no word to describe it, as if the emotions were his own.

  “I suppose not.”

  She was silent after that, but she wasn’t trying to push him away either, so Devdan sat next to her until she was ready to talk and idly wondered if this was how she felt when he went into one of his brooding moods in the past. Helpless to do anything except sit there until he opened up, but wanting to be there regardless just in case he changed his mind, whether he wanted her to be there or not.

  After almost twenty minutes of sitting in silence, MaLeila said, “Do you remember how it felt for you when you were a slave and you saw a friend or another slave get whipped within an inch of his or her life? Not dead, but just almost.”

  It was the first time that MaLeila had ever asked him so bluntly about his time as a slave. Normally she implied it, eluded to it, but never outright said it. Probably because she feared that it would make him retreat from her. And in the past it had. He wasn’t going to retreat this time, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t thrown by the question. Not only because it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, but also that he wasn’t sure what it had to do with what they were talking about before.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  MaLeila smiled and teased, “You’re so impatient. I’m trying to get there. Just answer the question. Do you remember or not?”

  He did. The helplessness. Not being able to do anything to stop it or else face death himself. The relief that the friend, family really because back then the slave community was all they had, would be okay but still carrying the rage, the fear, the worry, the hate that this could happen again and that next time someone might die. How they could be killed and no one would be held responsible for the death except to get a slap on the hand about losing an investment or good property. How his mother and later Bastet shared those emotions over and over again when he couldn’t keep his mouth shut or decided to be rebellious and would end up lying with a raw, bleeding, stripped like meat back on the brink of death. And it was as he reflected on this, that he understood the connection MaLeila was trying to get him to make and why she assumed she wouldn’t have to explain it to him.

  MaLeila didn’t have a lot of friends or even close family. And she had always been that way according to Bastet, having the keen ability to attract to herself and be interested in befriending only those who would value their relationship as much as she would. And in return, she’d take those people into her heart and fiercely protect and guard them from any threat, even those she wasn’t certain she could win against. He’d always secretly admired that about her and if he were honest with himself it was one of the reason that even knowing that their binding may have forced them together, he’d always been willing to protect and guard her because she always put herself in danger trying to do the same for everyone else. She’d grown a little jaded and cynical over the years, but that part of her hadn’t changed. So he understood why she was shaken by seeing someone she cared for attacked, knowing who was responsible and that they could get away with it without reprimand while she was made to look like the antagonist. In that sense, Devdan mused silently, they were very much alike. He was just much more aggressive and ruthless than she tended to be on a normal occasion.

  “You get it now?” MaLeila asked when he didn’t reply.

  “Yes,” Devdan replied simply and then asked, “So what are you going to do about it? Soon enough we’ll be practically running Algeria, especially when Farah comes through with her contacts.”

  “Algeria was your victory, Devdan. And so is the rest of Africa now that you’ve rallied the other magic families together and shown them you can win. I’m going after a bigger prize.”

  The last time he heard MaLeila talking like this, she deliberately asked for a meeting with the Magic Council a couple of years back and dropped in front of them out of a portal the dead body of an elusive sorcerer with a dangerous fetish of molesting and then performing a dark ritual to drain the life force of eleven-year-old children with so little affinity for magic that they couldn’t even be qualified to be a witch or wizard, but enough affinity that they were more attune to it than average; the children who were afraid of monsters in the closet because there probably was a spirit or something passing through at one time. She’d threatened to kill the entire council herself if they allowed a dangerous sorceress like that to come find her again while endangering others in the process, left, and never answered one of their summons again. Eventually they stopped trying to summon her and after that, the deranged magic users attacking came almost to a complete halt with only a few mediocre attacks here and there.

  “You think that’s what this is about? Getting some African magic families together to help me take a random African country?” Devdan asked. “I’m after a bigger prize too. Algeria, albeit unexpected and unplanned, was just the beginning.”

  MaLeila sent him a questioning glance, eyebrows raised, but Devdan didn’t answer her curiosity. Rather than try to pry it from him, she laughed mirthlessly and said, “That’s right. I almost forgot we’re still technically enemies now, just with a temporary alliance. Can’t give away your plans to me. I just might thwart them.”

  Enemies was a strong word. More like they were just on different sides battling the same mutual enemy, but Devdan didn’t bother making the distinction to MaLeila.

  They sat in silence after that, MaLeila’s aura still dark and somber but no longer pulsing and creating a tense atmosphere. The tension easing from everyone was obvious as the room began to get louder and livelier. MaLeila eventually got up and left, being sure to run her hand across and pat his right thigh and squeeze his hand in a gesture Devdan wasn’t sure how to interpret before she left. Devdan continued to sit in the same spot for a few moments longer, wanting to get up and go to his room and sleep for a while, but feeling too exhausted and comfortable to move.

  Eventually, Adina silently sat next to him. Then she said, “You and MaLeila’s bond is confusing.”

  “Our bond? What bond?” Devdan asked with his eyes closed, not having the mental energy to try to explore Adina’s constant observations of the relationships between people today; let alone an analysis of the strange one he had with MaLeila.

  “Your soul bond.”

  “What soul bond?”

  “You mean you didn’t know about it?” Adina asked, confusion apparent in her tone.

  Devdan sat up, seeing that Adina wasn’t going to take the hint and leave him alone. While some of the innocent behavior she had used to try to seduce him when they first met was an act, Devdan had come to learn that some of it was part of her personality. For someone so in tune with people’s emotions, she could be blissfully ignorant of some of the finer meanings behind them.

  “Know about what? What bond are you talking about? Everyone is linked together in some way.”

  “That’s true and you can see the silver threads that bond them together even though seeing them doesn’t give you their meaning. But there’s one bond distinct from all the others, the red string of fate, the soul bond. The non-magical humans call it soul mates even though they lack the true comprehension of its meaning,” Adina explained.

  Devdan rolled his eyes. “Me and MaLeila? Soul mates? You obviously don’t know our history. Besides, there are a lot of things I believe in, but soul mates isn’t one of them.”

  “It’s not just romantic though it usually starts out that way once both parties are of age. It’s like the connection you and I manufact
ured through a ritual, but you and MaLeila have it naturally. At this early stage of the bond, I’m surprised you two have so much physical control and restraint when around each other. It might have to do with the fact that the bond is damaged,” Adina suggested in a whisper, looking in Devdan’s direction, but certainly not looking at him.

  “If it is,” Devdan began dryly, “It’s no wonder. The shit we put each other through.”

  “That wouldn’t have damaged the bond. Even those with the red string connecting their hearts have quarrels and arguments. It’s natural. The bond you two have though looks like it was purposefully damaged. Like someone tried to severe it or destroy it. Whoever it was must have been powerful to be able to do something to deform the bond so much. It’ll eventually mend itself though.”

  Devdan furrowed his eyebrows and frowned. “Could another bond destroy it?”

  Adina didn’t answer. She was staring off like she was prone to do when she was examining something with her powers. Devdan, though, snapped his fingers in front of her face, exhaustion leaving him as her words helped in finding the answer to a question he’d been pondering for months now but put aside as a lost cause.

  “What?” Adina asked.

  “Could another bond destroy it?” he asked slowly.

  “Maybe. But a soul bond supersedes all bonds, even the marriage bond.”

  “What about the master and slave one? Do you know that one?”

  “No. But I suppose a powerful sorcerer could force another bond on top of the soul bond to try to destroy it. But the red string can’t be destroyed. Only deformed, in rare cases that I’ve only heard about—and the red string bond is rare to begin with—beyond repair.”

  “That motherfucker,” Devdan growled, suddenly standing to his feet and startling Adina.

  “What?”

  Devdan didn’t answer and looked for Tsubame. She had been in the lobby a few minutes ago, at least certainly until MaLeila left because he noticed the woman curiously watching them. When he didn’t find her, he made his way out the lobby and to the staircase. He made a beeline to the elevator, only remembering when he was halfway up to the seventh floor that he could have traveled the shadows to get there. The suite Tsubame had chosen for herself when she arrived was at the end of the hall. He started not to knock on the door, but then remember how pissed off he was the previous day when MaLeila didn’t knock and decided otherwise. He knocked twice and immediately Tsubame answered coolly for him to come in from the other side.

  Devdan opened the door to find the woman lounging in an armchair with a Harry Potter book in hand. He might have commented about it if it weren’t for other pressing matters.

  The woman didn’t look up from her book as she said, “Now aren’t you a pleasant surprise. I do love surprises. When you get to be my age and you’ve seen so many things in that time, you begin to despise predictability. Let me finish this page.”

  Since she brought it up, Devdan couldn’t help but say, “The great Queen Tsubame likes Harry Potter?”

  “The author’s imagination and depiction of magic truly is fascinating. While most of it is silly conjecture, some of it is stunningly accurate and true of witch and wizard magic. I wonder if the author didn’t have some knowledge of the real magic world when she wrote this, even if her magical world is far more fantastical and far less complex and engrained into the non-magical world than ours is,” Tsubame said before closing the book and setting it aside. “Now how can I help you Devdan.”

  A few minutes ago, asking Tsubame about Adina’s observation and his suspicions seemed like the perfect idea. Now Devdan was rethinking it. How could he even trust the woman? Why should he try? Then again, she was the only one who might know. The only one old enough and powerful enough that she may have seen a similar occurrence in her world before or even experienced it.

  “Do you know anything about soul bonds?”

  “You mean the red string of fate?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s about time you or Miss Samara asked me about that. I was starting to think I may have to guide Miss Samara into looking into the matter herself. Honestly, I didn’t expect you to be the one to come ask about it,” Tsubame admitted.

  “You knew?”

  “About the bond between you two? Of course I knew about it. Hakim—Marcel that is—and I have one. It was only natural that the two of you had one also.”

  “Were you and Marcel’s bound with another binding on top of it?”

  “Another bind?” Tsubame asked, now sounding intrigued whereas before she had been matter-of-fact and seemingly bored.

  “The master slave bind that Claude put on me and Bastet to bind us to MaLeila,” Devdan clarified.

  Tsubame frowned and put her book aside. Then she said, “Explain this bind to me.”

  Devdan explained what the bind was and how it normally worked first before explaining his suspicion that he, MaLeila, and Bastet were at the same time the master and the slave to each other, all mutually forced in the way that the marriage bind was a mutually agreeing contract.

  “I didn’t think much of it until Adina mentioned that she saw the red string connecting MaLeila and my heart together and that she was surprised we were so restrained around each other,” Devdan added.

  “That’s true,” Tsubame said. “I didn’t learn about the red string until decades after I discovered magic and certainly a while after I became queen. But it does begin to manifest itself between a sorcerer and a sorceress as a heavily sexual romantic relationship once both parties are or start to reach sexual maturity. I did wonder why Marcel and my bond began to manifest itself so late, but I always chalked it up to both of us being too stubborn and him being too prudish and protective because we were over a century apart to admit there was sexual chemistry between us. But you think it was the bind Claude put on you all.”

  “It wasn’t on you all?” Devdan asked.

  “If it was, Marcel and Nika never told me about it or rather the occasion to tell me never came up,” Tsubame replied. “And after a few centuries, I suppose it hardly matters. But it would certainly explain a lot of things.”

  “Explain what?” Devdan asked.

  “Why you and Miss Samara’s bond is so damaged. It might actually explain a lot of things about Marcel and I but by the time I saw our red string, most of the damage to it must have healed and mended on its own over the years.”

  Adina mentioned their bond was damaged too. Before Devdan could say that to Tsubame though she laughed and said, “Fucking bastard. Perverse as he was, the man was still a magical genius and he still manages to marvel centuries from the grave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tsubame gave Devdan a wry look that he had seen on her counterpart’s face dozens of times before.

  “Don’t act like you didn’t suspect it. That’s why you came to me in the first place. You don’t accidently damage the red string bond. That bond transcends every other bond. You have to purposefully and willfully be trying to severe or inhibit the red string bond in order to damage it so much that it inhibits that natural effects of the bind. The inherent trust, the emotional connection, the sexual inclination.”

  “But you said you thought you and Marcel were too stubborn.”

  “I did, until I did more research on the bond. I just thought that one of my earlier deranged enemies managed to see the bond and interfere with it when we first met. Today is my first time hearing about the slave bind. To think that Claude was so sick that he purposely interfered with a red string bond,” Tsubame said standing up to go to the kitchen in her suite. She took out an expensive bottle and glass before turning to Devdan and tilting the wine his way in askance.

  Devdan shook his head. He didn’t think he could stomach it even if he wanted to.

  “But why would he do that?” Devdan muttered, more to himself than to Tsubame. The woman answered regardless.

  “I suppose we could look into the past, get into the man’s head and see
his intentions. But I think that’s a little too much for both you and me. Besides, I get the feeling you know the answer without having to go through the trouble. You certainly understood him well enough to trick him into sealing you first while Bastet took his book of magical theories and the new staff he’d created and fled the country, knowing he’d be dead before he could track her down,” Tsubame said.

  Devdan didn’t ask Tsubame how she knew that as the woman knew a lot of things and connected the pieces of many puzzles that the average person couldn’t decipher. But she was right. He already knew or at least had a strong certainty about Claude’s intentions. He knew the man tended to be jealous when Devdan got close to other people and even always suspected that the man had something to do with the death of the girl he had planned to marry. But for the most part Devdan always assumed he’d been able to quell most of the man’s darker tendencies when he stopped fighting the man’s sexual advances, even encouraging them when it got him to leave Bastet be for chopping off her hair to deter white men from wanting her or when it distracted him from the fact that he and Bastet were hiding runaway slaves in the storage shed and placing concealing enchantments on them so they could make it to all the way north.

  But Devdan guessed he hadn’t been as successful in that department as he thought he had, guessed that Claude had somehow figured out that Devdan was manipulating him all along, guessed that it explained why the man had suffered from violent mood swings and suddenly had a kink for rough and violent sex with Devdan. The man had been going mad with jealousy because he had seen Devdan’s future, seen MaLeila coming a century and a half before she was born, very aware of her dark brown almond shaped eyes, kinky hair, and milk chocolate skin, seen how powerful she would be. So he fashioned a staff for her, left her his legacy, knowing that as soon as she accepted it as his heir, the binding he placed on them would be sealed and wreak havoc on the red string connecting them. Claude making her his heir had never been a benevolent blessing from a wise old man. It had been a curse to them both for something neither he nor MaLeila had any control over. An act of revenge.