The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension (8 page)

“What about your Claude then?”

Marcel shrugged. “Hell if I know. Nika probably knows more about Claude’s depravity than I ever did. I was never his slave.”

“You weren’t?”

She felt Marcel shake his head from the friction of his chin against the top of her head. He continued, “By the time I met Claude, I was nineteen, had been on my own passing as a white person with a magical disguise since I was fourteen, and I certainly wasn’t about to let any cracker make me a slave again. He’d been looking for me. Apparently had a vision of me and knew I was in disguise. He offered to train me further in my magic while letting me stay on his plantation. I alternated between pretending to be his slave and an orphan boy he took pity on and invited to stay in his home.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just say you were his son or nephew? Family?”

Marcel laughed. “Even before the age of the internet and social media, word traveled through the grapevine like fire. The rest of the Thorne’s and the Long’s would have certainly heard about it and investigated. The last thing Claude wanted was for his family to come snooping around to see who this family member was and wonder why Claude was keeping a free untamed nigga around.”

“So you don’t know what Tsubame meant?”

“If anything, he was always frustrated with me because I was always defying him and was a powerful enough sorcerer in my own right to one up him in his schemes to assert his authority over me and make me his slave. Whatever perversity she’s talking about, you’re going to have to ask her directly about it,” Marcel said. “I really never put too much depth or thought into Claude’s motives.”

That was another difference between Marcel and Devdan. Marcel spoke about Claude with notable indifference like he really couldn’t care less about the man and that he wasn’t in any way relevant to his life. Devdan spoke with the same indifference, but only as a veil to cover the hate and anger he really felt toward his former master. There was no way to tell if Marcel didn’t possess that same hate and rage though. Devdan only showed it when he let his guard down. Marcel always seemed to have his guard up, even when he was being open.

Noticing how quiet he was and how his breathing had significantly slowed, MaLeila tilted her head up to see the man had fallen asleep. MaLeila figured she should try to do the same. Her curiosity would wait.

8

When MaLeila returned to her room the next morning, she found a royal purple kimono dress and undergarments to match lying on the bed. She took the under garments in the bathroom with her and put them on after she showered. When she came out, Tsubame, sans her disguise as Nadiyyah, was in the room arranging makeup on the vanity. MaLeila silently dressed in the purple dress and just like the fuchsia one Tsubame had given her, it two had off shoulder billowing sleeves and swept the ground at her feet.

“Let me help you with that sash,” Tsubame said when she noticed MaLeila struggling with it.

MaLeila turned her back to the woman and allowed her to tie the sash for her. Then Tsubame guided her to sit down at the vanity and began to comb through the girl’s tangled locks.

“Sex is great,” Tsubame said after a few moments. “But in the books and movies they don’t talk about how long it takes a black girl to comb her locks back out after she’s sweated it out and tangled it up after good sex… or any woman for that matter.”

MaLeila felt her cheeks heat up at Tsubame’s thinly veiled accusation and probably sensing her embarrassment, Tsubame laughed.

“Where else would you have gone last night?” she asked.

She didn’t say anything else as she parted MaLeila’s dark locks into small sections, put some sweet smelling serum on them, and blow dried them. Only when the blow drier was off for good did MaLeila ask, “Why not just do it with magic?”

Tsubame shrugged and said, “I could. But you deserve to be pampered.”

“You’re the queen. Aren’t you the one who gets the pampering?”

“That’s a common misnomer. Contrary to popular belief, the first quality of being a queen is not being a spoiled greedy bitch, but knowing how to serve and pamper others,” Tsubame replied.

MaLeila frowned, partly from the small comb with flatiron following right behind it as Tsubame pressed her hair in even smaller sections than she had blow-dried it and partly from the woman’s comment.

“Is it?”

“Such a shame. You’re so used to encountering entitled rulers who herd their people like bad shepherds for their own greedy purposes that you don’t what it means to be a real ruler,” Tsubame replied.

“What does it mean to be a real ruler then?”

Tsubame didn’t answer immediately, only continued to flat iron MaLeila’s hair. Knowing the woman would eventually answer because she wouldn’t have said MaLeila had no idea what it meant to be a ruler if she didn’t want MaLeila to know in the first place, MaLeila waited.

Finally, Tsubame said, “I spent some time with the Japanese Clan after I was outcast from the broader controlling western magical world.”

“Is that where you got your name?” MaLeila asked.

“No. I went by Tsubame for certain purposes long before that. The fact that I very purposely pronounced it wrong according to Japanese phonetics greatly amused the clan though,” the woman said. “While with them though, I learned a lot about the culture of the Geisha. Have you heard of them? I remember them being a subject of American curiosity for a while.”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“The Geisha didn’t know the type of power they held. If they hadn’t limited themselves to two silly districts in Tokyo and Kyoto, not to mention evolved with the times, they could have ruled Japan.”

“How?”

Tsubame looked at her. “Because they understood the first step to being a competent ruler. Service. Because when you give people good service, when they know you’ll do everything in your power to take care of them, you’ll eventually have them eating out the palm of your hands and the Geisha had that opportunity with some of the most powerful men in the world. If only they had seized the opportunity. Maybe then they wouldn’t simply be the remnants of a dying culture. I learned a lot about them and their ways while with the Japanese Clan and their tactics eventually helped me learn how to rule the people beneath me, particularly the men who opposed me on my rise to the top, but whose power I still needed to aid me.”

“Couldn’t you have just used your magic? They did.”

“Secretly mind you,” Tsubame corrected. “By the time I was on my rise to power the broader world still wasn’t accustomed to the idea of magic although it was easier to make them follow me when anytime my enemies came against me they found themselves suffering by some natural catastrophe that only meant I was backed by some higher power. But you’ll come to learn that adoration is much better compeller than fear. And that adoration is what a Geisha’s entire career is based on.

“They gain the adoration of men by getting them as close to sex as possible without actually receiving it. A delicate balance. Too reserved and you’re a prude. Too forward and you’re a whore. If you can keep that balance, you can put even the greatest of men in your control. And for women, you make them adore you by making them just jealous enough that they can only wish to attain your control, give them something to try to achieve for. And all the while, you take care of them and look out for their interests. It’s that simple.”

Tsubame put the flat iron down and MaLeila felt the woman wrapping her hair up. After she was through the woman gestured for MaLeila to turn around in the stool so that her back was to the mirror of the vanity. Then Tsubame took a piece of thread, tied the ends together and used it to shape her eyebrows.

“I’m glad you did decide to embrace your potential and join me.”

“Why is that? Not like you need my help.”

“Maybe not for the initial takeover but I still would have essentially needed a successor eventually.”

“I didn’t take you for one who liked to share your power.”

“I don’t. But I’m not arrogant enough to think I can rule and maintain order in two worlds, let alone that I’ll be forever able to do it. As long lived as I’ll be, this body was made to eventually die. That’s why I need you to become the Immortal Queen Tsubame.”

“But that’s you.”

“No. It’s part of me. But it’s not the totality of me. It’s a charismatic personality that I have to pass down because I won’t make the mistakes of my predecessors who destroyed their greatest allies because they feared losing their power and then when they died had no one to carry on their idea. That’s why I’m recreating myself. And the first step in doing that is introducing you to the mask of Tsubame.”

Tsubame worked silently after that, using tweezers to refine the shape of her eyebrows. Afterwards, Tsubame moved onto doing her makeup—brushing white, red, pink, black and gray paints on MaLeila’s face, neck, and. When Tsubame was done with the makeup, she grabbed a curling iron and curled a lock of hair on either side of her face. Tsubame put the curling iron down and stepped back.

“Turn around,” she said to MaLeila.

MaLeila twisted around in her chair, to look at herself. The first thing that caught her attention was the makeup. Tsubame had painted her face, her neck and the part of her collar bone and shoulder exposed white. Not white, MaLeila decided. There was a beige undertone to the makeup like an off-white, but it was certainly paler that MaLeila’s natural skin tone with a faint tint of pink on her cheeks. Her eyelids were an odd mixture of smoky grey and faint pink, eyebrows delicately arched and filled in, mascara making her eyelashes look longer, and finally her lips were painted blood red. Compared to her makeup, her hair which was wrapped in a loose elegant bun with a small red flower on the left side, was an afterthought.

“This is the real face of Tsubame. This is what makes us immortal,” Tsubame said leaning down so that her face was next to MaLeila’s. “This is the mask you’re going to show the world once you become queen.”

While MaLeila was no longer trying to stop Tsubame, it was only because she had an invested interested in toppling the Magic Council that she was going along with the woman. She wasn’t sold on the idea of being queen, nor did she think she ever would be. When she said as much to Tsubame, the woman laughed and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll certainly get used to it. For now though, since you’re so eager to see the Magic Council fall, let’s you and I start gathering our allies.”

“You mean there are powers you haven’t pissed off yet?” MaLeila asked.

Tsubame grinned in response and then went to her chest.

“First though, I want you to have this,” she said as she pulled out a long staff.

It was similar to MaLeila’s old one, a tall piece of gold plated platinum metal shaped like an ankh, but coiled around the neck and handle of the staff was a snake with its mouth half enclosed around its own tail.

“This is my staff. I hardly ever have use for it anymore. Until you are able to refashion your own, you may use it,” Tsubame said holding it out to MaLeila.

MaLeila slowly took it from Tsubame, testing the weight of the item in her hand. It was both heavy and light like her own staff had been and while Tsubame said she hardly used it anymore, the magic MaLeila sensed flowing within it was a fair indication of how often Tsubame had used it at one time, much like MaLeila had used her own. And while it would do, it was because Tsubame’s magic permeated through it that it still felt wrong.

“How long until I can make my own?” MaLeila asked.

“Whenever you’re ready to,” Tsubame said.

MaLeila gave the woman a wry look which Tsubame only shrugged at. MaLeila had been hoping for more help on the matter. Theoretically she knew how to fashion a staff. Contrary to popular belief, everything in nature was magic if you knew how to hone it, but simply some items in nature were better conductors of magic than others. Too weak a conductor and it weakened a magic users magic and eventually destroyed the conductor because it couldn’t contain the power of its user. Too strong a conductor and the user risked the item zapping their life force and killing them. Simple witches and wizards used things like wood and plants to make their magical items, usually wands. Sorcerers and sorceresses needed stronger conductors than that and even that depended on the strength of the magic user. Platinum was one of the strongest conductors and magical items made from it were usually plated with gold to reign in its conduciveness for young powerful magical users until one day their magic was so strong it destroyed the gold plating and left the powerful platinum in its place. MaLeila’s staff had been far from being destroyed, but there had been a fair amount of crack in its plating. Tsubame gold plating wasn’t worn at all.

“I put a new gold plating on it. Pure gold mind you. That way you can adapt to it.”

There was still a lot Tsubame’s residual magic coursing through it though. It may work fine for now, but it still wasn’t fashioned by MaLeila’s magic. Of course she hadn’t fashioned her old staff physically. Claude Thorne had. But MaLeila had been the first and only one to use it and her magical energy had permeated it. MaLeila decided that fashioning a new staff would be her first priority when she had time. But more pressing at the moment was why Tsubame thought she’d need the staff right now to begin with if they were going to gather allies.

“While I’d like us to gain allies the… diplomatic way,” Tsubame said with a pause in between her words as though diplomatic wasn’t the word she wanted to use but was the best fitting, “It may come down to a fight to gain them or we could inadvertently turn them into our enemies which means we’d have to fight our way out of enemy territory. I don’t think it will come to that where we’re going but for all their similarities our worlds are still very different and even an alliance with Marie isn’t a guarantee of her loyalty.”

******

After Hitler, the lone sorcerer who rose to power and waged war on the rest of the world and killed upwards to 17 million people during his reign, the German magic families who had been unable to stop him fell from the graces of the magical world. Through sheer stubbornness, Marie Voss, who had been twenty-one at the time of the war, was the last magic family head with any influence left standing in Germany after the backlash if only because of her sheer stubbornness. Or at least, that’s what MaLeila gathered when she read through the woman’s entry in the International Registry of Magic Practitioners.

“I’m actually surprised she hasn’t come to you seeking your assistance herself yet,” Tsubame said once they had settled into their plane flight.

“Can’t we just get there with magic? I’m pretty sure we’re on every secret no fly list in the country at this point,” MaLeila said when the woman initially bought the tickets.

“That’s true, but the fun part is getting around it anyway. When you have as much unlimited magical potential as we do, we have to remind people that we aren’t limited to their silly rules and laws that they use to control others,” Tsubame said.

“A lone sorceress with no magical ties who gave the Magic Council the proverbial fuck you when she was only sixteen years old. Those are the kind of people Marie likes to prey on,”

“Prey on?”

“In her endeavor to conquer death and achieve immortality.”

“Did she contact you?”

“No. By the time she knew anything of me, I was already closely tied to the Long family and she didn’t bother.”

“Closely tied to the Longs? You mean they recognized your friendship with Irvin in your universe?”

“No. They recognized our marriage,” Tsubame said simply

“Your marriage?” MaLeila repeated. That was certainly new.