always and forever is forever young
your shadow on the pavement, the dark side of the sun
“Are you joking?” Mallos demanded down the phone, which was wedged up against his ear with his shoulder. He was signing a document with one hand and gripping his pendant with the other, which kept flashing and shooting off papers. On the desk beside them, Sperantia was catching them, unrolling them and reading them quickly. Occasionally she swatted another one under his signing hand. “I’ve got, what, two hundred people on the payroll? And you can’t find anyone else who can deal with this?”

“Two hundred and thirty-one,” came the stiff, harshly accented voice down the other end of the line. Mallos occasionally wondered if Jane Bell, his personal assistant, was actually a fairy or if she was some kind of demon sent by karma to punish him. “Not that I would expect you to retain exact figures in your head… sir.”

She said ‘sir’ very deliberately in English, rolling the word around her mouth like she was having trouble spitting it out. Mallos had been forced to accept Jane as his PA over a thousand years ago when he’d lost a bet. Her contract was very specific and, unfortunately, he couldn’t fire her just for grimacing when she spoke to him. The only good thing about the arrangement was that she seemed to hate it as much as he did.

“They are all busy with their own assignments or unequipped to deal with an issue of this magnitude,” Jane added with her usual bite. She was probably imagining feeding him to one of her pet crocodilia. “As I have already said. In any case, you were personally requested.”

Some people counted to ten in their heads when they needed to calm down. Mallos mentally considered his top five favourite swearwords instead.

“Jane, can you hold?” He asked pleasantly. He dropped the phone onto his desk and covered the microphone, listening to the barely suppressed snarl from the tinny speakers. Surely, there was no greater satisfaction in life than putting Jane Bell on hold.

His desk was a mess of paperwork. The sheer sight of it almost made Mallos start twitching. In his other hand, his pendant glowed golden-yellow again and deposited another pile of documents on the already overcrowded desk. This time, he recounted his favourite swearwords out loud.

“Go,” Sperantia said, her voice clear and soft after Jane. Mallos glanced sideways at her and she rolled her eyes back at him. “You’re no use to anyone until you’ve been walked. I’ll take care of this. Leave your pendant, come back in a couple of hours.”

Mallos tilted the pendant in his hand so that it caught the light from the sun through the window behind him. It was warm from use, but otherwise no worse for wear.

“Sperantia – ”

“Out!” She overrode him in a more characteristically sharp tone. “Get out of my fur, silly fairy. Go and play with your friends.”

Without waiting for further permission, Mallos bolted.

Once out in the corridor, he could breathe a little easier. Trying to prevent war on two planets and contain it on one, track down a mafia squad hell-bent on finding his friend’s son and staying on alert on Shaman in case of another Therait attack, all on top of his normal duties – answering prayers, completing diplomatic missions, council paperwork and meetings… it was too much. He’d been holed up in one office or another for weeks, hopping planets every other night to try and stay nearest to the biggest fire, sleeping less. Having too much to do fired Mallos up rather than wore him out, so even when he got some downtime, he was too energised to make good use of it.

That energy rippled through him now, making his heart pound and his vision sharper. His fingers tapped rhythmically against the walls, his legs – whatever was nearby. He ran his fingers through his hair a couple of times and tugged absent-mindedly at his shirt.

The few people he passed stayed well clear. People could see or sense when he was wired and the inhabitants of the castle were well enough acquainted with him to know the possible consequences of engagement when the mood struck.

The ground floor was busier. Mallos recognised the queues of people in the entrance hall, all craning their necks eagerly towards a closed, guarded door, hoping it might open. The guards eyed him warily but made no attempt to stop him when he opened the door and slipped through into the great hall. There were more guards inside, flanking the walls and the raised dias where the throne sat. The only other occupants were the king, seated in his throne and listening intently while a common man wailed something about his goats. Mallos was glad, in moments like these, that he heard prayers and not petitions. Nobody expected every prayer to be answered. Petitioners all came here wanting something – some money, some food, some resolution to their petty problems.

None of the guards budged when he entered, apart from two who glanced at each other as if to say, well, this ought to make things more interesting! The commoner didn’t seem to have noticed. Mallos hopped up onto the dias and moved around the back of the throne before leaning against it from the other side. Since his feet had stopped, his hands had to keep moving – tapping gently against the side of the giant chair.

Arthur resolved the issue and dismissed the man. Although the guards kept their professional postures, Mallos got the distinct sense like they were waiting for something to happen. Presumably, that was his cue.

“Have you ever wondered,” he mused, “what a leviathan-dragon uses for a bed?”

i can feel you in the silence saying, “let forever be,
love, and only love, will set you free.”