MALLOS
Mallos nods slowly, accepting the implied apology without contest. He had never really supposed that Arthur would kill him; the invitation had been intended solely as a method of shock, and it seems to have worked.
“Well, don’t spread it around,” he frowns slightly, referring to Arthur’s statement about how alike he is to ‘normal’ people. “That would ruin my reputation, if people knew I was just like everyone else. Women love the ‘mysterious god’ card.”
He rubs his fingers absently on the arm of the chair and offers Arthur a half-smile. The joke has a clear, underpinned meaning: forget it; let’s move on. He’s tempted to remind Arthur of the good original fairies he’s met – Aura, Tsi and obviously, himself – but feels that the point has been made. There is good and bad to everyone, and what matters is the part that a person chooses to act upon. In the case of the original fairies, matters are further complicated by both their immortality and the extraordinary lives they have all led. A popular theory has it that not a single one of the deities escaped madness, and somewhere deep in the honest part of himself, Mallos is inclined to agree. One cannot simply give a person almost unlimited power, call them a god and expect them to live a perfect, impossible life without driving them to the brink of insanity. The Spaniard is only as mentally stable as he is because he rejected the idea of having to live by other people’s expectations a long, long time ago; not all of the deities have escaped that.
The brief, sneering look which alters the king’s face is not missed. It portrays a side of Arthur he hasn’t seen before – a vengeful side – and he can’t honestly admit to disapproving. Mallos isn’t vengeful in an angry, I’ll-murder-your-family-for-stealing-my-hairbrush sense, but he’s not without an ability to bear grudges. His revenge tends to be patient, precise, intelligent and forceful enough not to provoke a return gesture. Few people willingly tangle with him twice.
“You could go and speak to him. I can do this.” He gestures to the paperwork, then picks another paper up at random. He studies it for a moment, turning it sideways a couple of times, then places it down in front of Arthur. “No, I can’t do this. Why do no English words look the way they sound? What word is that? Kell… kell-err-why?” He turns his head slightly. “Or is that one of those C’s which sounds like an S? Sell… Celery.” Shooting the paper a faintly bemused look, he leans back again. “I talk to Tristan; you read nonsense. Otherwise we could still be waiting for our celery next year.”
As well as being an obvious attempt to lighten the mood a little, the display has a very faint subliminal message: you are the best man for this job. There’s another message too, although this one is unintentional. Mallos is not the type of man who openly admits his weaknesses or mistakes; in most instances and to most people, he would prefer to pretend he is literate in English than to have them know otherwise. This newfound openness indicates a level of comfort he feels around very, very few other people, and a little more honesty is beginning to seep across. This is further highlighted by what he says next, after a rather pensive pause.
“I think maybe it is time he had some private tuition from me,” he says finally. “If Shaman is going to continue being interesting to the original fairies, then he needs to learn more things than you can teach him. I can come to the castle, but you will need to find an hour or two a week in his schedule.”
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