THE DUCHESS;

EVERYBODY'S LOOKING FOR SOMETHING

“I, Mallos, as acting Chairman of the Council of Originals, hereby pardon Gwythr of all crimes which have been laid against him, and do hereby request his release.”

The handwriting wasn’t flawless, but the Duchess had tapped into some of the divinity to try to enhance her meager forging skills. It was rather serendipitous that Mallos had come into his position before the Duchess had arrived to take his body from him. Letters and memos and missives were constantly popping into the study. Saccharine condolences, questions about the closure of court, requests for visits, requests for rulings, prayers, and general correspondence were all piling up on the desk and the Duchess read through the history books, and then some old diplomatic meeting minutes and records from a time when she had been a child and her world had fallen apart.

She would rectify it. Her mother’s ring hadn’t fixed the world; perhaps this would. Still, she wasn’t exactly certain how the magic worked to send the messages. She was winging this as she went along, after all. She assumed there was some aspect of divine magic that could send the paper to wherever the hell Shyllipa was (it was not on any map, and seemed to be yet another world or planet that the Duchess didn’t really understand).

She focused. Her mind set itself on the memo in her hand and Gwythr and Shyllipa. She concentrated on the letter getting to the people in charge of the prison, and, as she felt the magic flow, a burst of sunlight filled her hand. When it vanished, the skin of her hand was bright pink, like shoulders and cheeks after a day in the sun. It was a mild burn, and the Duchess felt nothing compared to the slowly regenerating flesh on her other side. The healing had reached halfway up her palm, but was still red and raw. Nearest the cuff, it had scabbed over finally to finish healing, but the tips of Mallos’s fingers were still black and decayed.

The Duchess knew her time would be over sooner rather than later, however. She’d spent days locked in the study reading and learning about a magicless world and working out how to make her time here worthwhile. If the message worked, it wouldn’t have been a waste, but the Duchess wanted some action as well while she was here.

At some point, Croe had returned, and the magical alarm had gone off in the Duchess’s mind, but the former pirate had not bothered the study. There wasn’t much inside that the Duchess could have used to physically harm the god, and she supposed that as long as the possessed Mallos was locked away, Croe could find some ease that their darling little girl also wasn’t getting kidnapped and held for ransom by the new King of Shaman. She wouldn’t have to fret for much longer. Duchess was planning to leave the palace for the last time. With a snap of her fingers, her attire shifted to become inconspicuous. Mallos needed to be able to blend in with the crowd for at least a short time while things were set up. In the blink of an eye, the god was gone and the study unlocked, books and papers littered everywhere.

The deity reappeared in Granada, Spain, at the end of a blind alley. No one, human or fairy, saw him appear, and the Duchess strode cautiously into the main street and into the bustling crowd. Unnoticed by the throngs of people, none of whom expected to be standing so close to such power and thus blind to it, the Duchess picked coins and papers from pockets. For whatever reason, the papers with numbers on them were always kept with the coins, although the Duchess wasn’t entirely sure what value they possessed. She had noticed when popping in and out for food that many traded them for items and a handful of coins in the market places, but it seemed backward that paper would be worth more than actual metal.

As she passed a shop with “hardware” written over it, she stepped into the shade and began to browse. Small sores that begun to appear just above the magical cuff, but that limb was all but numb at this point to the punishments. The nerves had exhausted themselves. Still, she didn’t particularly want to wake up with the face of Croe and the point of a knife hovering over her, so the Duchess decided to limit the theft to vital items.

“Can I help you,” a shop boy said, although he didn’t exactly seem enthusiastic in his offer.

The Duchess, or rather, Mallos, smirked at the boy wickedly and reached behind him to grab a length of sturdy chain and a combination lock.

“Just these,” the Duchess answered sweetly, and handed him a paper with the largest number she had collected that morning.

The boy rolled his eyes and took that piece of paper and two more from her wad and walked over to the cash register, rather like Murray’s, sat. “Would you like a –” the boy began to ask, but the Duchess and her purchases were gone.

Lock in her pocket and chains hung over her shoulders, she continued down the market and street. People were noticing now. Wearing chains was an attention draw, even if the presence of a god was not. She didn’t care now. She wasn’t pickpocketing. At least, not from the general public. Finally, down another alley was a small stand, advertising magical potions. The lumps on the merchant’s back were enough to give him away as a fairy, but the Duchess wasn’t sure how he’d react to the secret being out.

The potions came in many colors and were stored in flasks and bottles of all shapes and sizes. They were labeled with small cards, either in front of large batches, or tied to unique bottles with string. They displayed the effect of the potion and the price, the Duchess noticed as she browsed. One in particular caught her eye, but was far more expensive than she cared to spend. Beside it were love potions, bubbly magenta in sickeningly heart shaped bottles. 20 euro, read the card. Whatever euro meant, the Duchess wasn’t going to pay that. She picked it up anyway.

“I’ll give you 5 for this,” she stated.

“No, no, sir,” the merchant replied. “The lady of your dreams must be worth much more than this. 20 is already quite a bargain.”

“I’ll do 8. There are many ladies around who’d have me for nothing.”

“15,” the merchant said, appraising Mallos’s face and finding that perhaps the man was not wrong about his prospects.

The Duchess, glad to be haggling, used the injured hand to slide the expensive green vial into her pocket as she continued the discussion. “10.”
“12,” the man said, “and not ten pence less.”

The Duchess sighed and put the heart bottle back on the table. “On second thought, maybe I’ll just try my chances with a rose and sweets,” she admitted. “Less for her to forgive when she finds out.”

The man stammered that he would take the ten, but the Duchess had already turned away. There was no need for a love potion where she and Mallos were going. There was no need for a love potion where Mallos was going to stay to awaken.

She continued with the crowd around the town, stopping sporadically to look at maps that dotted the area. Clearly, the Duchess was not the only visitor to this city and the city knew it. It helpfully marked her destination for her on each map, until her eyes finally fell on the large castle that would have put the king’s palace in Shaman to shame. With palace and entrance in sight, she slipped into the shadows. This was a more familiar method of teleportation for the Duchess, as she recognized the feeling from her own magic. She slid through the gates with a crowd of tourists heading in with a guide.

She slipped away at the first opportunity to explore. She needed a way below the floors, under the stones and majesty and flourished history of the castle and into the dungeons. The records had been clear about where events had transpired. After twenty minutes, she realized how stupid she had been, walking when there was magic. She had already used the ability when she’d arrived and teleported in Mallos’s palace; she should be able to use the same ability here to sense the layout of this palace. The magic rolled out in all directions, but the Duchess was most interested in what was below. When finally she found the open area with small rooms off of it, she focused and teleported.

It was empty, as though the ghosts of past prisoners had warned any who dared enter of their fate. It took more than that to frighten the Duchess away, especially since she wouldn’t be here long. Just long enough to set the plan in motion.

The small green vial was pulled from the pockets of her robes before the Duchess changed wardrobes once again. Magically the dusty dull attire became the god’s signature black before she sat against a pillar in one of the cells. Telekinesis had never been a skill the Duchess had mastered, but it didn’t seem to matter much with even dampened divinity, although the cuff was taking its toll on the Duchess as she worked. Still, the chains came and wrapped around their puppeteer, as bid. The Duchess set the combination of the lock to a number she’d seen mentioned in testimony on Gwythr’s reports: 269. The lcok clicked closed around the ends of the chains, and with what strength the Duchess had remaining to her, the vial of divine virus floated to her lips. This would take careful timing and a bit of luck to work.

A deep breath filled the Duchess’s lungs as the vial tipped into her mouth. As the liquid crossed her lips and made its way down her through, the Duchess clamped her eyes shut and, with all the force she could muster, shoved herself free of the god’s body.

She floated free, watching the Spaniard swallow the last of the virus before the vial shattered on the tiles beside him. Her stomach lurched as the scene sped away from her. She shut her eyes and sat up with a jolt, back in her tent with more than a few of her belongings missed and a bruised and battered mockingbird sitting quietly, wing dangling at her side, beside her.