Page 23 of His Princess Brat
Chapter Eight
Azid
I must say, my trip to Osei was turning out to be a lot more fun than I’d first thought. Crossing the palace, I made my way to meet with Mazi, with all my thoughts on Pita. I couldn’t believe the whole Daddy thing that had come popping out of my mouth. Not that I was uncomfortable with adopting that title. I certainly wasn’t uncomfortable with paddling a naughty backside when the situation presented itself, but I had to admit, paddling hers was more fun than I’d had in a while. I loved her sass. She was without a doubt the mouthiest-without-being-obnoxious woman that I thought I’d ever met.
Too bad I wasn’t staying.
Too bad she was a princess. That would make it impossible for me to take her home. It’s not like I could pack her into my luggage and smuggle her through customs. I was pretty sure the TSA frowned on that.
Pretty sure the African consul would too.
“Hey,” Mazi hailed as I finally found my way to his office.
He wasn’t at the palatial-sized desk, situated in front of the twin floor-to-ceiling windows. Instead, he was leaning over a 3D map of what I could only guess was the island of Osei. It was scaled down, like a model train set map, with mountains, jungle, trees, the palace, and of course, the village, complete with houses, businesses, animals, and even people. It was the village that Mazi was looking at when he waved me over, so I looked at it with him.
“What are we doing?” I asked, mildly interested. I liked dioramas. Always had.
“So glad you asked. We,” Mazi emphasized, “are trying to bring stability to our local economy so we aren’t as dependent on the tourist trade. What do you think?”
I blinked. “Sounds good.”
I didn’t really know what more than that I should or could think, seeing as how I didn’t have a stake in the issue. I glanced at him. He was looking at me expectantly. “What?”
“I need an idea.”
“Dude, don’t you have royal advisors or something?” Why was he looking at me?
“Yes, of course I do.” He huffed, his smile tinged with exasperation. “They say bring industry in. Manufacturing. Build something. But the problem with that is the pollution that comes with it. And the corruption. Big business in Africa is kind of like big business in Mexico. Nothing can be accomplished without bribing literally everybody else. All the surrounding governments. Anything that’s shipped in from somewhere else would need to have palms greased from wherever it starts from all the way to here. We’ll be bankrupted within months, and that’s an optimistic projection. I’m not even kidding.”
“Dude,” I said again, trying to be supportive but not at all understanding why I was being involved. “Unless you want advice on opening up a local strip joint, what exactly are you asking me?”
“Remember that assignment we had in high school, where we were supposed to run a city and create an economy? You were really good at that.”
I was so shocked, I laughed out loud. “That was high school, Ma! It was all on paper. No actual money exchanged hands, and we didn’t actually grow anything. We didn’t ruin anything either if we were wrong.”
“But you were good at it,” Mazi pressed. “I’m just... I’m just looking for suggestions. Some out of the box thinking that won’t involve my island becoming an industrial waste dumping site.”
