"No, but that was…" He lifted his head. "I was just about to say, that was just lucky; like whoever opened the gates somehow saved me from bearing the guilt of losing us the war. Your case proved by admission, I think."
This time, she laughed. "You're an idiot," she said. "Carrying sacks of charcoal's about all you're fit for."
He smiled. "Thank you," he said politely. "I think so too."
"Good." She tutted again. "But if you think you're some kind of disaster-you know, carrying death and destruction about with you wherever you go, like a snail with its shell-I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced. I think the world can go to rack and ruin quite well enough without you."
"You don't…" Again, the right word had strayed from his mind, like the cow that insists on getting out through the gap in the bank. "You don't approve of me, do you?"
That amused her, at any rate. "No, I don't," she said.
"Why?"
Pause. She was giving his question serious thought. "We came here when I was sixteen," she said. "I was just getting ready to have the time of my life-well, you know what upper-class women's lives are like. The first sixteen years are strict training; you're taught to be fascinating, beautiful, accomplished, desirable, like it's a trade. I was good at it. I studied really hard, it's my nature to want to do well at things. Then, after you've learned all that stuff-you know, deportment, accomplishments, literature, singing, playing at least two fashionable musical instruments-you've got three years of being frantically pursued by eligible suitors, like you're the most desirable thing in the world, and they'll die of broken hearts if they can't have you; then you're married, and it's a lifetime of being pregnant and doing needlework, while your husband's out running the estate or hunting or fighting wars. I was all set for my three years. I knew the score. Those three years were going to have to last me the rest of my life, so I was going to do them very well indeed. And then, out of the blue, my father told me we'd lost all our money and my three years were canceled. Or," she added, frowning, "postponed. That was actually worse, I think. He said it'd be all right, because he knew a way to make us rich again, much richer than we'd ever been before. I'd be a great heiress, so it wouldn't matter that I was a year or so older than the other girls in the cattle market. The handsome young lovers make allowances if you're as rich as we were going to be. Meanwhile, he said, there'd be a slight delay, and we were going to have to move to a rather boring place out in the sticks; and he was going to have to work very hard at the project, and I'd have to help him, because he couldn't trust anybody, except his business partner and me." She was still and quiet for a while. "And here I am," she said. "I know more about ceramics and industrial chemistry than any woman in the history of the world, and I can carry one of those hundredweight sacks up those stairs as easily as you can, or easier. I tell myself it's been a better life than embroidering cushion covers and gossiping about the latest scandals; and it has, I suppose. That's the sad thing, if you stop and think about it. But you come here and tell me that the life I used to dream about, all the things we've worked so hard for, isn't worth having anyway, and you're happier here lugging fuel and scraping out furnaces… No, I don't approve of you at all. Just think," she added, and her voice was sharp enough to shave with.
"Back then, you're the suitor I'd have dreamed of: the Ducas. I'd have worked so hard…" She laughed, a sound like grating steel. "Some people just don't like work, but not me. My father says I can't relax, I haven't got the knack, I've always got to be working, and it's got to be just right or I get miserable. You can imagine what it's been like, getting it wrong year after year, not being able to find the right stuff to make the pots turn exactly the right color." She stood up. "So there you are," she said, her voice a little shriller. "Obviously, this is the place where all our dreams come true. You've found the true peace of menial labor, and Fate has brought me the Ducas. That probably explains why we're all so bloody happy."
He watched her go, wondering what he'd said.
Next morning, they made a start on true vermilion.
Framain had brought the book in from the house. He carried it in both hands, as if it'd shatter if he dropped it. He swept a patch clear of dust and ash with his sleeve and laid it down, like someone carrying an injured child.
"We tried it before," she told Miel, as they waited for Framain to find the right place, "about five years ago, with the bog sulfur. Didn't work. But Father thinks that sulfur you brought us might be different. No reason to think it'll work where the other stuff didn't, but I suppose it's worth trying. Of course," she added, "it was useless for making sweet spirits of vitriol with, so it'll probably be useless for this too. But you never know."
"There are actually three kinds of sulfur," Framain said, not looking up from the book. "As well as the yellow variety, there's the black and the white. Unfortunately," he lifted his head and looked at them, "the wretched book doesn't say how you tell them apart, or which one's suitable for the job. Presumably you're just meant to know, by light of nature. I'll need the scales."
Miel knew where they lived; he darted forward to fetch them, a bit too eagerly. He heard her tutting as he took the rosewood box out of the drawer under the bench. She was bashing something in the big stone mortar; a vicious chipping noise, like a thrush pounding a snail against a stone.
"Quicksilver," Framain said, with distaste. "Have we got any left?"
"Yes," she replied, not stopping her onslaught. "Wear your gloves, it's filthy stuff."
Framain didn't put his gloves on, but he handled the thick-walled glass bottle as though it was a live snake or a huge poisonous spider. "Hold the scales," she told Miel, as she scooped a spoonful of yellow dust out of the mortar into the left-hand scale pan.
"Two parts of quicksilver, by weight." Framain said. "Hold the spoon, would you?"
She held the spoon steady while he tilted the bottle. The stuff that came out was a silvery-gray liquid, the color of polished and burnished steel. Both of them winced a little at the sight of it. He trickled it from the spoon into the right scale pan, a shining silver droplet at a time, until the beam stopped swaying and the little needle above the pivot was dead center. Very carefully, he lifted the right-hand pan, as she hurried to put a clay saucer underneath it; he tipped the pan out, and she put the saucer down on the bench.
"Fine," Framain said. "And the same again."
They repeated the procedure, and Framain emptied the saucer into a different thick-sided glass bottle. "Get that stuff tidied away before we spill it," he said, to nobody in particular. Before Miel could move, she'd stoppered the quicksilver bottle and put it back on the long shelf. "Now we need fresh clay. I dug some this morning, you'll find it in the bucket by the door."
Like a sculptor with an important commission, Framain scooped and molded the wet brown clay all round the bottle-trickles of brown water squeezed back over the webs between his fingers, and down the back of his hands to his wrists-until it was completely covered. "Mustn't let any of the vapor get out," he explained. "The book doesn't say why, but for all I know it could be deadly poison. It's wise to assume that anything with quicksilver in it is out to get you. Blow the fire, would you?"
Miel worked the bellows until Framain said, "Fine, that's enough"; then he put the clay-covered mess down on the steel grille over the fire. "Once the clay's dry, we've got to blow up a good heat. Apparently we've got to listen out for a cracking noise, which means the sulfur's combining with the quicksilver. When the noise stops, it should be ready." He pulled a face. "Let's hope so, anyway."
"The last time we did this, it came out a disgusting brown sludge," she said. "And the bottle cracked."