I was going to repair the air conditioning, or so I told myself. My lady had a hard time in this heat. I thought the book had overexaggerated when it described how she walked around fully clothed, even during the hottest of days, but I quickly discovered for myself that it had not been the case.

On most days she wore what in some counties would be considered perfectly normal summer attire, and in other simple modest wear. Although, there was nothing modest about the way her trousers fit over her hips. But on some days, she’d decide to experiment with autumn and winter fashion, despite my firmest advice.

Today was one of those days. My lady had decided to wear a thick jacket with fur on its collar and cuffs, over a pale-blue button-up. I told her twice that the weather was too hot, but she brushed me off, and I decided against asking her a third time for fear that she’d send me away to do some menial task in a different part of the mansion.

I knew why my lady covered up as much as she did. She had many scars from her childhood, and she felt the need to hide them away, not so much from society as from herself, as they were a constant reminder of the trauma she’d been through.

Why that manifested with adding layers of clothing I did not know, but to prevent Lady June from having a heatstroke, I decided to fix the air conditioning … mana thing. Well, that had been the plan, but I had spent the past 10 minutes staring at the machine before me.

It looked very different from the healing device at the Triunity church, and yet so alike. Two cylinders stood on either side of a wider central one. From the shape of the piping going in and out of each of them, I could figure out that one was pumping air in, the other out, and the central one was serving the purpose of an engine and cooler, as it circulated mana-oil through it.

Finally deciding that the device won’t fix itself simply from me looking at it, I approached it and pulled aside the front panel. This took more effort than anticipated, as dust and grime had accumulated inside and around the dedicated handles, but it did eventually come off, followed by filaments of semi-dry oil, long depleted of all mana.

“Ah, so that’s what was wrong with it.” Ludwick’s voice started me.

I ignored the man and took a closer look.

At the centre of the opening, all of the pipes visible from outside gathered into a single irregular-shaped clot. It almost looked like a human heart, albeit the size of a basketball, and covered in oil that oozed from a crack in its centre.

“I won’t be able to fix that…” I muttered.

“No, but I know someone who will.” The butler continued, with a smirk. “His name is Joffroie Bellvue, have you heard of him?”

With a name like that, it wasn’t surprising that I had not. I shook my head.

“Well,” Ludwick continued, “He is not well known outside of royal, pardon, imperial circles, so I doubt you would have. Last I heard, your dearest king has hoarded this genius of an engineer for himself.”

Ludwick came uncomfortably close to me, leaning forwards so as be on eye level.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to remedy that, would you?”

“How would I know?” I asked, clicking my tongue in annoyance, but also taking a step back in hopes of putting some distance between the two of us.

My back pressed against the oily machinery, and I could have sworn I saw something shimmer within Lude’s eyes. Unconsciously my hand reached out to the nearest thing I could use to defend myself, which just happened to be a loose rusty pipe, that I knew would do no damage to the man, and likely wouldn’t even be enough to serve as a distraction.

“But I must apologise.” He said, taking a step back. “My intent was not to intimidate you, but simply to inquire, as I was under the impression you knew what you were doing.”

He managed to insult me even when pretending to be sorry, but once I had some breathing room, I felt confident once again.

“I can email – I mean correspond with him. How much would you estimate this piece to be worth?”

Ludwick raised his eyebrows, twitching a corner of his mouth upwards.

“As much as an average train cargo-train worth of lumber.”

“That much?!” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

“Well, magical artefacts, especially the kind meant to keep entire infrastructures running, do not come cheap, girl.”

“Right.” He was an ass about it, but he was right. “How long would it take to get a letter to this Mr. Bellvue?”

“Magician Bellvue.” Lude corrected me. “And I can make it happen within a few hours.”

“Great, then tell me everything there is to know about him, and I will score us a deal.” I grinned, happy to finally put some part of my degree to use.

Ludwick did not seem to buy or really understand what I was doing but went with it nonetheless. I knew he would. He disliked me because I was a stranger, but he cared about Lady June as much as I did, and he had a lot more knowledge than me to go off in terms of her outfit preferences.

He told me that Bellvue was a huge fan of good wine, and had been trying to acquire himself a vineyard for quite some time. The only issue was that between Basil overworking him, and his family leaching off his government salary to invest in real estate, he didn’t have the time nor the means to invest in one.

Looking into vineyards for sale took slightly longer, as there was not a catalogue for such things. Lady June joined us in our research, although her contribution was mainly limited to looking great and sipping spiked tea while making the occasional snarky comment at her butler, or asking me personal questions – as if this were some sort of awkward work date where it was impossible to determine who the third wheel was.

By the end of the day, and with the help of Lude who I was starting to warm up to, I finished writing up a business plan for Bellvue. It was a rough outline, which I valued to be worth as much as the device we needed, with further guidance available at his discretion.

Lady June had fallen asleep at her tea table, make Lude and I drag her to bed, and tug her in. We didn’t put her nightrobes on her, but we did take off her shoes and that awful jacket.

Once we left her room, I handed Lude the multi-page letter I’d written.

“Here, this should do it.”

“If you’re right, which,” he paused.

“Go on.” I encouraged him. Not because I wanted to hear his insults, but because I was too tired to care. “Call me whatever you want to call me, but just keep in mind that if not for me we’d all be suffering from the heat in a few weeks, especially my Lady.”

He pressed his lips together, and surprisingly no insult came through. In retrospect, that made perfect sense, but I was too tired to fully process that. Working long hours was one thing, working all day when I had to adapt my vocabulary to that of this world was another.

After a few seconds, I figured he wouldn’t be saying anything.

“Good night Ludwick,” I spoke, as I spun around, heading towards my room.

“Naomi.” He suddenly called out. He’d never called me by name before. “You’re not too bad for a spy.” He said, with his usual smirk that was for once void of malice.

“Says the one pretending to be human,” I smirked back, thinking more about my bed than my words.