“And… ?” Daja asked.

He looked up at her, the stove’s heat turning his cheeks a feverish crimson. “I may as well be holding sand, or salt. How hot a fire could they withstand?” He withdrew one arm and dug in the fiery coals with the other, stirring them with a gleaming finger, shoving them together in a pile.

“Well, the living metal came about in a forest fire. I suppose maybe if the governor’s palace was to burn, they might get warm.”

Ben snorted. “Governor’s palace? He builds in stone, like the rest of the nobility. He’s no fool. I’ve been trying to convince Mother to rebuild in stone. She says wood is good enough for her neighbors, it’s good enough for us.” He shut the stove. “I know I’m being rude, but… would you mind if I tried these in the kitchen hearth? It’s a bigger fire. You can stay here-I won’t be long.” He didn’t even wait for Daja’s answer, but left the study at a trot.

Daja smiled, shook her head, and tried one of the cookies-they were very good. So was the tea. She hoped that Ben hadn’t dipped into Morrachane’s finest supplies. Though the woman did her best to be polite to someone who was Jory’s and Nia’s friend, she always made Daja feel as if she must have cheated somehow to get her medallion. Daja had the feeling Morrachane wouldn’t like knowing Ben had given her the best tea and cakes.

Bored after a few minutes’ wait with no sign of him, she got up to look around the room. A touch of the stove told her it wasn’t as badly made as the one in his warehouse office. His books interested her for a moment, as did his pen-and-ink drawings and knickknacks. She tried to keep her attention on those things, but time stretched. They weren’t very interesting. Daja found herself standing before the shelves half hidden in the shadows behind his desk. There was the skeleton hand with its molten gold ring. Looking at it, Daja felt the hair stand on the back of her neck. What if it had come from Ben’s dead wife?

She shook her head. Where had such a gruesome imagining come from? That was more the kind of nonsensical thing Sandry or Tris might think. There would be something very wrong with Ben for him to keep his dead wife’s hand. The only thing that was wrong with him was that he lived with his dreadful mother, a mistake any widower could make. That didn’t make him bad or cracked enough to keep a piece of his dead wife on a shelf.

She had stared at the hand too long. She forced her eyes to other things: the partly melted soldier, the glass lump, pieces he said he saved from fires he had beaten. Her nostrils twitched: the odor of smoke was stronger than it had been the first time she had seen these shelves.

Her eyes moved higher through the collection. The upper shelves were empty, except… Daja blinked. She had thought the shelf on a level with her own face was empty last time. Yet here were three objects. One looked like a half-burned corner piece from a Namornese outer door, carved with good luck signs. One was a scorched glass bowl; its contents smelled like burned sugar. The last was a blackened female figure with a loop on the back, as if it were a pendant. Silver gleamed through cracked gilt. Daja stared at it, memory stirring at the back of her mind like that gleam of silver. She had seen that figure around someone’s neck.

Goosebumps prowled her arms and her spine. Was she falling ill? The stench of smoke was thick around this shelf. It made her stomach lurch. That alone was proof that she might be ill, because smoke never made her queasy.

She backed away from the shelves and smashed her thigh into one of the sharp corners on Ben’s desk. Daja yelped and bent over, grabbing the hurt muscle, all other thoughts banished in that white-hot burst of pain. I hit it on exactly the wrong place, she thought, exasperated, as her head cleared.

Ben strode back in and grabbed Daja in a hug that lifted her off her feet. “They’re incredible!” he cried, putting her down at last. He still wore the gloves. “I’ve never seen anything like them. No wonder they gave you the medallion at fourteen!”

She wanted to correct him, to say she’d actually been thirteen, but it wasn’t important. His delight in her creation was important. “I’m glad you like them.”

Ben grabbed her face, the metal gloves flesh-warm against her skin. Enthusiastically he kissed her first on one cheek, then the other, before he let her go. “Is a whole suit really so much trouble?” he asked.

Any reluctance she felt about the suit evaporated. He did so much for others: she could do this for him. “I started my calculations,” she reassured him. “I have the air problem solved, at least for short periods. There’s still how you’ll see, but we have all winter to thrash that out. If you’ll come by Bancanor House on your way home a couple of nights next week, I’ll take all the measurements I need.”

“Yes, of course I’ll come. I never thought I’d be grateful for our long winters,” Ben said with a grin. “Now tell me, how did you do all this? Please, I’d love to know.”

They were still talking an hour later when the front door slammed. Morrachane had returned. Daja managed to leave without talking to the woman beyond the usual polite exchanges. Once outside, she heaved a sigh of relief. Ben was a good man, maybe a great one, but she didn’t like being near him and Morrachane at the same time. Something wasn’t right there. She wished she could talk to Ben about his mother. It was strange to think that even though she felt they were friends, she didn’t feel able to discuss Morrachane with him. It ran contrary to her last four years, spent with friends she could and did say anything to. It made her feel sad and lonely.