He heard the delight in her voice. “There's more. Move along the cord to the next one.”

“There's more than one?”

“Of course. It's a necklace. Can you tell what the next one is?”

“I want to put it on,” he announced. His hands trembled. A necklace, a gift to wear, for him. He didn't wait for her to reply, but took it by the cord and shook it open. He set it carefully over his head. It tangled for a moment against the chopped mess of his eyes, but he plucked it clear and set it against his chest. His fingers ran rapidly over the beads. Five of them. Five! He felt them again more slowly. “Dolphin. Gull. Seastar. This is ... oh, a crab. And a fish. A halibut. I can feel its scales, and the track where its eye moved. The crab's eyes are out on the end of their stalks. And the starfish is rough, and there are the lines of suckers underneath. Oh, Amber, this is wonderful. Is it beautiful? Does it look lovely on me?”

“Why, you are vain! Paragon, I never would have guessed.” He had never heard her so pleased. “Yes, it looks beautiful on you. As if it belongs. And I had worried about that. You are so obviously the work of a master carver that I feared my own creations might look childish against your fineness. But, well, to praise my own work is scarcely fitting, but I shall. They're made from different woods. Can you tell that? The starfish is oak, and the crab I found in a huge pine knot. The dolphin was in the curve of a willow knee. Just touch him and follow the grain with your fingers. They are all different grains and colors of wood; I don't like to paint wood, it has its own colors, you know. And I think they look best on you so, the natural wood against your weathered skin.”

Her voice was quick and eager as she shared these details with him. Intimate as if no one in the world could understand such things better. There was no sweeter flattery than the quick brush of her hand against his chest. “Can I ask you a question?” she begged.

“Of course.” His fingers traveled slowly from one bead to the next, finding new details of texture and shape.

“From what I've heard, the figurehead of a liveship is painted. But when the ship quickens, the figurehead takes on color of its own. As you have. But . . . how? Why? And why only the figurehead, why not all the ship's parts that are made of wizardwood?”

“I don't know,” he said uneasily. Sometimes she asked him these sorts of questions. He did not like them. They reminded him too sharply of how different he was from her. And she always seemed to ask them just when he was feeling closest to her. “Why are you the colors you are? How did you grow your skin, your eyes?”

“Ah. I see.” She was silent for a moment. “I thought perhaps it was something you willed. You seem such a marvel to me. You speak, you think, you move . . . can you move all of yourself? Not just your carved parts, like your hands and lips, but your planking and beams as well?”

Sometimes. A flexible ship could withstand the pounding of wind and waves better than one fastened too tightly together. Planks could shift a tiny bit, could give with the stresses of the water. And sometimes they could shift a bit more than that, could twist apart from each other to admit a sheet of silent water that spread and deepened as cold and black as night itself. But that would be unforgivable, cold-hearted treachery. Unforgivable, unredeemable. He jerked away from the burning memory and did not speak the word aloud. “Why do you ask?” he demanded, suddenly suspicious. What did she want from him? Why did she bring him gifts? No one could really like him, he knew that. He'd always known that. Perhaps this was all just a trick, perhaps she was in league with Restart and Mingsley. She was here to spy out all his secrets, to find out everything about wizardwood and then she would go back and tell them.

“I didn't mean to upset you,” Amber said quietly.

“No? Then what did you mean to do?” he sneered.

“Understand you.” She did not respond in kind to his tone. There was no anger in her voice, only gentleness. “In my own way, I am as different from the folk of Bingtown as I am from you. I'm a stranger here, and no matter how long I live here or how honestly I run my business, I will always be a newcomer. Bingtown does not make new folk welcome. I get lonely.” Her voice was soothing. “And so I reach out to you. Because I think you are as lonely as I am.”

Lonely. Pitiful. She thought he was pitiful. And stupid. Stupid enough to believe that she liked him when she was really just trying to discover all his secrets. “And because you would like to know the secrets of wizardwood,” he tested her.

His gentle tone took her in. She gave a quiet laugh. “I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't curious. Whence comes the wood that can turn to life? What sort of a tree produces it, and where do such trees grow? Are they rare? No, they must be rare. Families go into debt for generations to possess one. Why?”