Chapter 22: Lord Zeus Attempts to Resolve Everything Through a Formal Proclamation

The formal summons arrived on a Thursday, which Petra considered appropriate. Thursdays had, since her arrival in London, demonstrated a reliable talent for producing circumstances she had not anticipated and could not have reasonably prepared for. A Thursday had delivered Mr. Fennwick's genealogical chart. A Thursday had delivered the marine-green seal. It was fitting, then, that Lord Zeus should select a Thursday for his assembly, as though the day itself had developed a professional relationship with the inconvenient.

The card was larger than a standard calling card and smaller than a broadsheet, and occupied a precise middle ground that managed to suggest both intimacy and authority without committing to either. The paper was ivory, the ink was gold—not gilded, but genuinely and disconcertingly gold, in the manner of something that did not distinguish between symbolism and fact—and the crest at the top depicted an eagle in the particular attitude of a bird that has never once questioned its own judgment. The wording was as follows:

Lord Zeus Zeusson, Patriarch of the Olympian Compact and First Lord of the Parliamentary Divine Assembly, requests the attendance of Miss Petra Calloway and party at Stormcroft House, Mayfair, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of Thursday, the fourth of November, for the purpose of formal Assembly and Proclamation regarding the recent events concerning the Compact's sacred instrument.