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it just reminds me of before, arthur.
IP: 82.14.67.140
Posted on June 7, 2013 at 03:06:17 AM by victoria bolton-zabala

‘To His Majesty King Arthur, may he live, prosper and be healthy,

We hope you find this letter in good health.

Señor Virgilio Abel, First Prophet of Mallos of the Iglesia de España, respectfully requests an audience between yourself and a representative of the Church at your earliest possible convenience to discuss an urgent matter. Please send return communication with an appropriate date, time and venue for the embassy.

May the sun shine for you.

Yours sincerely,
Claudio Solos
Departamento de Comunicaciones, Iglesia de España
Oficina de Madrid’


Embassy, what a laugh. The ‘embassy’ consisted solely of Victoria and her so-called bodyguard.

To the disgust of her superiors, Victoria Bolton-Zabala was only half-Spanish and had been born out of wedlock: the singular offspring of a brief but intense passion which occurred when her mother visited Spain for the first and only time forty-nine years ago. She was born in east-end London and had never even tried to shift the Cockney accent which, to the Church administrators, would have been enough to disqualify her from the job she now occupied. She didn’t get on with school, and left with a handful of poor qualifications at the age of sixteen to join the Alliance, which she promptly flunked out of less than a year later. Like many English folk, she tried her luck in the promised greener pastures of Gibraltar but found herself no better off than she would have been in Britain. Victoria’s good fortune may have ended there, doomed to spend the rest of her life stacking supermarket shelves, if she had not, by sheer luck, caught the attention of the resident deity. It was brief, of course, but following the fleeting union Victoria turned her life around by enlisting in the service of the Church. There she had stayed, quietly building her way up to the highest place her rough background and rougher manner would allow her, until an event the previous year had changed everything again.

Mallos rarely intervened with the Church. The deities didn’t, as a general rule, which was why his actions the year before had sent such strong shockwaves through the fairy community. Following a strong disagreement with the Church administration relating to their policies towards demigods, he brashly put out an executive order on the matter and fired half of the high priests. The First, Second and Third Prophets had been allowed to keep their jobs – perhaps even Mallos didn’t have that much power, or nerve – but the Fourth Prophet position had been made available. Mallos had further enraged the Church by selecting the replacement himself. Her.

The logistics for sending her on this mission were sound. She supported the executive order, so if things went well then Mallos was unlikely to intervene. If they didn’t go well, then the First Prophet had reasonable grounds to fire her. Win-win for the Church, and they’d even sent along a little spy in the guise of a bodyguard to keep an eye on her. Thoughtful lot.

They arrived five minutes early but were admitted immediately by the royal guards, albeit only after they saw her ID. Victoria was used to that. Her Church robes – long and black with gold trimming, and the famous stylised sun-symbol sewn onto her chest – were never enough to convince anyone. She was forty-eight, but eternal youth gave her the face and body of a seventeen or eighteen year-old, and she had the permanent look of a misplaced teenager. Her skin tone was a shade darker than most Britons but still far too light to be fully Spanish, and she had brown hair, large brown eyes and a wicked curve to her mouth. It was easy to see how she had caught Mallos’ eye, but not so easy to see how she had ended up as a high priestess.

The royal guard led her and her heel-treading follow-dog into some kind of function room, where the King and a younger man who was presumably the Prince were already present.

“Your Grace, Your Highness,” Victoria acknowledged in perfect Queen’s English, her accent precisely and deliberately smoothed over. She bowed fully. “I am Victoria Bolton-Zabala, the Fourth Prophet of Mallos in the Spanish division of the Church. Thank you for your time and consideration, and for being able to see me so quickly. Señor,” she added sweetly to the bodyguard, “I appreciate you doing your job, but I am in no danger here.”

The bodyguard glanced at the room’s other occupants before regretfully turning and leaving. Victoria waited a few moments, then snuck back to the door and flung it open to check that he wasn’t listening at the keyhole. The bodyguard was nowhere in sight, so she shut the door contentedly again, walked back into the room and sank unceremoniously the only available chair.

“Alright,” she started, dropping the posh accent immediately and reverting instead to her ordinary Cockney. “Now that git’s out of the way I can talk freely. Here’s what I propose: I tell you everything straight, no crap, and I’ll answer any questions you may have good and honest. Then in return, when my boss comes snooping around, you can tell him I’m fantastic.” She paused for a moment, steepling her fingers, and shot him an attractive, genuine smile. “Or I can try and do the diplomacy thing, which’d just be painful for all of us, and the next time they send someone over it’ll be some ulterior-motive bullshitter.” There was a brief pause, in which Victoria realised that she probably shouldn’t swear to a king, and she respectfully added, “Your Majesty.”


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