The Three of Spades

The Inventor

The InventorWhen my footman Skip Honor helped me to the street, I saw it was true: the Spadros Inventor’s carriage stood there. “Let’s see what Maxim Call’s here for, shall we?

Spadros Manor’s butler John Pearson answered the bell. A man in his middle fifties with thinning brown hair, he nodded to me in a most stately manner. “Mrs. Spadros. Inventor Call to see you.”

“Thank you.” I gave him my hat and deep green floor-length coat. “I’ll be with him momentarily.”

One bad thing about being pregnant is having to use the toilet all the time.

* * *

Inventor Maxim Call was a wiry brown man with white hair and those startling blue Spadros eyes. If I recall correctly, he and Roy were distant cousins. He rose when I entered. “Mrs. Spadros! I’m so glad to see you.”

I went to him, took his hand, and curtsied low. “I’m glad to see you too.” Whatever animosities and misunderstandings we’d once had, Anna Goren’s death had brought us together. I went to an armchair — now reupholstered in forest green velvet, the wood stained a deep cherry. “What might I help you with, sir?”

He took an armchair beside me, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. “I want to show you something.”

He held the much-rumpled drawing I’d made of the Cathedral ceiling: what we’d thought was some sort of map. From dawn to dusk, the stained glass circles in the ceiling glowed like flowers of fire. Our theory was that each represented one of the Magma Steam Generators that powered the city.

“Look here,” Inventor Call said. “The other circles are evenly-spaced, each side having the same number, with one circle in the center.” Then he pointed at the one to the south-east, just out from the center. “Except for this one.”

I nodded, curious as to where he was going with this.

“All the texts I’ve found — and the ones Miss Goren had — mention twenty-seven Generators.” He frowned. “An odd number, but we assumed that the odd one out was here,” he pointed to the center, “upon Market Center.” Then he pointed back at the extra circle to the south-east. “Except with this one, the count stands at twenty-nine.”

“So two of these we know nothing about.”

Inventor Call nodded. “Precisely. And we have no idea where they are. From the map, this extra circle is somewhere in the Spadros Pot, not somewhere we might easily investigate. Worse yet, the island of Market Center is five miles across, built and rebuilt many times in the centuries since the dome’s raising. I’ve asked that the area under the Government buildings be investigated, but so far we’ve found nothing.” He leaned closer, as if sharing some secret. “The only clue is that this map of yours is upon the Cathedral’s ceiling.”

I snorted softly. “That explains everyone’s interest in it.”

“Indeed. But there’s no guarantee that whatever this is — a mechanism of some kind, a storeroom, some secret library — is under the Cathedral. It could be anywhere.”

I shrugged. “If it’s in the Cathedral, I haven’t seen it. But then, I wasn’t privy to much as a small child. And then once Mr. Roy captured me —”

Inventor Call held up a hand. “You need say no more.” He sat silent. “It’s a pity — if by some means we might make alliance with the Cathedral, we might learn much. Do you think there’s any way you might get me another visitation with the elderly woman I met?”

The Eldest. My great-grandmother. Was she still alive? “Last I saw her, she banished me for giving you this map, and told me not to return. I doubt they’d see me, nor look kindly on anyone I recommended.”

His face fell.

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what more I can do to help.”

He gave several tiny nods, lips pursed. “I suppose we must find another way.”

* * *

After Inventor Call left, I went upstairs, got into a house dress, and then it was time for tea, which I took out on the veranda. Most days, I either felt mildly ill or ravenously hungry. Today seemed a hunger day, and I looked forward to what they’d made for me.

Tony was out doing whatever it was he did all day, so I sat at the table smoking, watching the spring rains fall past the wide gray overhang.

When Mary Pearson Spadros — who used to be a maid here — became my apartments’ housekeeper, one of the scullery maids named Shanna, a girl barely eighteen, had been promoted to upstairs. She set my tea-tray and poured my tea. As I ate, she stood silent a few paces away, facing the rain.

Most of the staff had seemed quiet, distant, when I returned to Spadros Manor. At first, I thought they were angry with me for betraying Tony.

But after Tony and I lay together, giving the Dealer the opportunity for her Gift, I wrote to Tony, reassuring him that lying with me hadn’t caused me grief. This had given him such hope that he spoke to the entire staff in case I might return.

They weren’t to press me on any matter, nor to inquire as to my business, nor to contradict my orders in any way. I was the Lady of Spadros, not a Pot rag child, and I’d left because I felt caged.

I never wanted him to say any of that. I’m sure it hurt the staff greatly, particularly our butler Pearson and our housekeeper Jane — his wife — who I’d looked on as parents of a sort and I believe felt fondly for me. They kept to themselves now, their faces carefully neutral. And it grieved me.

My lady’s maid Amelia Dewey, on the other hand, never seemed happier. She didn’t have to be faced with Mary or her husband Blitz (the butler at my apartments) who she felt were acting “above themselves.” Nor did she have to deal with my business partner Master Blaze Rainbow (who’d first introduced himself as Morton).

And to her mind most important, Mrs. Amelia Dewey was once more the lady’s maid of Spadros Manor.