Jordan looked at Declan instead of at Mikkel.

A boat ride. A fine, pretty boat ride.

“There’s quite a bit of legend around them,” Mikkel went on. “I don’t want to say a secret society because that makes it seem organized, and it really isn’t. It is more that anyone who deals in much art quickly learns to tell what is good art and what isn’t, what is going to make a splash, what isn’t. You get that sense in your head for what is worth your time. And it is not hard to tell after a while of dealing with art, high-end art, that some of them are these sweetmetals. They are special, you know? People like them, they have that something. They sell for much more than you would think, because of that something, so it pays to keep your eye out for it. But they are an open secret. You don’t really talk about them. You wouldn’t advertise something as a sweetmetal. It’s—what’s the word? Gauche. The mystery is part of what makes them what they are. There is just a tradition of not putting anything about them in writing if you can help it, and if you do, burn it, it’s all very Ouija board. What do you want to know?”

Declan held his hand out to Jordan, the universal gesture for After you?

“How are they made?” Jordan asked. “How is it put into them? Do you know?”

Mikkel squinted, as if the question wasn’t exactly logical to him, but then he answered, slowly, “Oh, I see what you are saying. The artist does it. It is something about how they are feeling when they make the art. I thought when I first saw one that it was because the art was special to the world in some way. A real original, you know? But it was explained to me later and this makes more sense. They are special to the artist in some way. They are an original for the artist, something new for them, something personal for them. The subject matter, sometimes, how they felt when they were painting it, others. That is what seems to make some of them into sweetmetals. I do not think it is the artist who does it. It is, like, the spirit of the time. There is a French term for that, isn’t there? There is a French term for everything. Does that answer the question?”

Declan looked to Jordan to see if it did.

“And you don’t know what this is, what the specific bit is about the artist’s process that does it,” she said. “You don’t know anything more specific about this … spirit of the time.”