> The estates of the true nobility demand dedicated staff to maintain their gardens and grounds, ensuring that even in the dim sunlight of winter their flora flourish. Like many fashionable practices, sunrooms in Calamut were initially an effort of the moneyed classes to replicate the same aesthetic for themselves. But unlike other such fancies that routinely fall out of favour according to the obscure whims of the Small Society, they remained popular in Calamut irrespective of the tides of trend-chasing for one simple reason: they are remarkably beautiful.

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> Excerpt from “Gardens, Sculpture, and Murals: The Beautification of Underwave”, by Eyrs Shine.

Jack approached the sunroom with trepidation. Clearly there were forces moving outside his understanding, as Syra’s teasing delivery had revealed.

‘No use fretting over a card that hasn’t been drawn,’ he thought to himself.

Modestly bolstered by the tepid saying, he marched in.

The sunroom was a space unto itself. Unlike the rest of the house, it was humid and warm year round. Ingenious cables of card-modified glass ran from light collecting prisms on the roof to false-windows with painted landscapes that projected diffuse light into the room. Skylights, picture windows, and carefully placed mirrors contributed as well, so that no corner of the space could be truly called unlit.

The plants his mother kept grew thickly within, a bounty of green accented with the colours of flowers throughout. She had painted the walls with astounding detail, adding to the illusion of dense foliage and the occasional, carefully hidden creature. She changed these pigment occupants as the mood struck her, and any visitation could produce an encounter with a novel beast.

It was her place, and there she held dominion as absolute as any queen.

Liosa was sitting with two mugs when he found her. She did not look like the kept spouse of a merchant. She was surely beautiful enough to be a trophy, but her hands were calloused, her arms were muscled, and she observed all before her with a piercing gaze.

Liosa had entered into the Small Society status games at twenty at the insistence of her new husband: freshly married, pregnant, and unknown in those circles. She received immediate hostility for her defiance of convention—but such animosity was merely one more challenge to overcome.

A pair of gossips courted her enmity through their crude rumour-mongering. Pretending to be cowed, she offered them a pair of dresses by the famed seamstress ‘The Contessa’, a symbol of elegance and fashionable taste among the Small Society.

They lorded their gowns over everyone for months, happily courting the jealousy of others, until at an event hosted by Liosa they bragged to an unremarkable guest of the origin of their wear.

To which the Contessa replied, “I’d be ashamed to be seen in those, cards forbid if I had actually made them.”

The pair retired from public life for some time, scorned as they were, they had little choice.

From there Liosa became a respected, if somewhat feared, figure in the community. She took major roles in planning committees and social clubs through charisma, intelligence, and rarely a reminder of her capacity to outscheme all-comers.

Even as her child Jack was very aware of her intrigues, and approached this meeting with due prudence.

Jack settled into the seat across from her and took a sip of the tea in front of him. It was cold, he discovered with a grimace.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he ventured, setting the mug back down.

“It depends on your reckoning of what I’ve been waiting for. In this seat? Only a few minutes. For this meeting? Since yesterday when you made the appointment in your father’s schedule. For you to come clean about your plans? Three weeks.” Mercifully she didn’t wait for his reply, and instead gestured to the mug. At once he felt a surge of warmth through the vessel and took an appreciative second sip.

“How did you figure it out?” he finally asked.

“I didn’t need to ‘figure it out’. Don’t imply that I launched some overbearing investigation into your doings, I have no need to do such. I’ve tried to raise you with a degree of self-sufficiency and independent thought. If it was your judgment that you were pursuing a correct path I was content to wait and hear your intent from you. But to answer your question, the day the post included a weathered letter with a caravaneers seal addressed to you,” She looked directly at him then, and with a smile added; “You see deeply Jack, but you stand in shallow waters.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He winced; he’d hoped that the correspondence with his contact would go unnoticed in the tide of continuous reports and letters the business received on a daily basis but clearly not. There would have been no reason for him to be talking with a caravan in transit unless he’d been coordinating future plans with them. Trust his mother to make that connection immediately.

“And don’t bother elaborating on whatever you told your father, I’ll hear it from him. I want to know your real reasons…" She paused, seeming to consider for a moment, before carrying on. “But Jack, regardless of what you tell me, I won’t stand in your way. I already told your father that I’d be supporting you,” she said with an embarrassed tone.

Jack didn’t know how to respond, her demeanour was unusual. His mother had never been an easy person to read. Blatant displays of emotion were rare from her, as if she was always holding something back, particularly in the presence of company.

She had many ways of expressing amusement, and to anyone but her family they seemed sincere. But Jack knew what her real laugh—treasured all the more for the rarity of the occasions he brought it out of her—sounded like. It was not a tool like the rest.

She did not discuss her own feelings, and while terrifyingly adept at the social games of the Small Society, kept no close friends or confidants.

However, the evidence of her affection was expressed nonetheless. There was no work she wouldn’t set aside to listen to the problems or complaints of her children. Jack was sometimes embarrassed to remember times when he had so passionately brought schoolyard dramas to her, and she had patiently listened with absolute seriousness.

When his father had begun the process of preparing Jack for his focused carding at the typical age of twelve, his mother had seen how miserable the restrictions had made him. He didn’t know what she’d done, but soon enough his father slackened their routine for years, until Jack had approached him on his own.

Her responses now, showing her emotions in a clear, if stilted, manner did just as much to throw Jack off as the revelations of her prescient knowledge had.

He’d been so focused on each immediate goal that the realization that no one was going to stop him, to pull him from the path he’d set out on, hit him suddenly.

“I... I’m just having a hard time understanding what you’re saying. You don’t even know what I’m aiming to do, but you’re trusting my judgement that easily? I barely trust myse-!”

“Breathe, Jack,” she interrupted his torrent. “There’s more to this than you know.”

Before the interruption his voice had begun shaking.

He rallied against the panic of the moment and under her firm gaze slowed his breath. Finally she relaxed her look, and smiled at him.

“My son has been growing, hasn’t he? Even trapped in that dreadful room,” she spoke wistfully, once again stepping beyond the boundaries Jack expected of her.

He had very little idea of how to respond to that, and so simply settled on ignoring it. Besides, she’d offered a tempting morsel to interrogate instead..

“What do you mean there’s more to this than I know?” he asked.

But rather than answer him, she offered a riddle instead.

“It wouldn’t do you much good if I simply told you now would it? Where’s the Well Jack, let’s see how deeply you can see. Your tea,” she nodded to his mug, “how did I heat it?”

“Well you.. you used a card,” Jack answered with confusion.

“Tchh. Look deeper boy. Stop being complacent and be surprised. What was surprising?”

Jack stopped and considered, this was a return to lessons she’d given him in the past. She always challenged him to reject easy answers and work for his understanding. He thought back to the beginning of their encounter: he’d entered and sat across from her, tea was already waiting for him but left cold. She knew he was coming and wanted to make a point; admonishing him for not coming to her sooner. But with her point made, she’d wanted to reassure him of her favour so she heated the tea in an instant... wait.

“How did you heat the tea?” Jack suddenly asked.

“Now you’re surprised. Explain your reasoning.”

“Well you shouldn’t have been able to... The timing doesn’t make sense.”

She gestured to him to continue.

“You only have one thermal conversion card?” he asked, pausing only to observe her nod. “Right, just one. I knew that, when you bring everyone drinks in the evening it's always the same effect.”

“You needed to have that card readied at approximately the same time I appeared, but you didn’t know when that would be. I mean, it’s not impossible I guess, that you drew the card and I appeared before your hand cycled. It’s a lucky coincidence. Unremarkable if it only happens now and again.” He paused, feeling the burgeoning excitement of a mystery towering before him.

“Let me finish your thought for you,” she slyly interjected, “You’ve never waited more than a minute for tea after requesting it. Dinner has always been ready at the same time every day, and you’ve never once seen me waiting to draw a specific card.”

He nodded dumbly. The average number of minutes spent waiting for a specific card was slightly less than the number of cards in a deck divided by ten, it was a mathematical certainty.

Waiting for a card that had been discarded or played earlier could be as much as triple that average wait as the deck fully cycled. Every sixty seconds five new cards were drawn and the ones held were discarded, this was the fundamental rhythm of life.

That cycle was why redundant copies of cards were taken, why it was so common to see labourers standing in silence as they waited for a card appropriate for their next task to be drawn. It was so common, so everyday and somehow he’d completely missed his own mothers total ambivalence to its law.

“Let me add to your confusion. Currently my deck sits at...” her eyes glazed over for a moment, “two-hundred and thirty-seven cards.”

Jack merely sat, mind aflame and dumbfounded in equal proportion. That was impossible.