1. Jordan in White by J. H. Hennessy. The portrait—one of the artist’s last before she died, the brochure noted—wasn’t portable, unlike the other most expensive sweetmetals in the collection, but it didn’t matter. It was a stunner of a piece of art, featuring an intense-eyed child posed in a simple white slip, her kinky hair piled upon her head. And it was incredibly potent. Anyone would be happy to display it prominently in their home to animate an entire dreamt family.

Jordan stood looking at Jordan in White for a very long time.

She looked first at the girl, at Jordan, and then she looked at the signature, J. H. Hennessy, and then back at the girl again. Mother painting daughter.

Although Jordan was supposed to be a direct copy of Hennessy, she’d never thought of J. H. Hennessy as her mother. For a while she’d thought this was because she hadn’t known Jay like Hennessy had. After all, Jordan had only come into being just after Jay died. But slowly she realized that shouldn’t matter; Jordan had all of Hennessy’s other early memories. Hennessy’s mother should have been as fresh as everything else.

But this painting underlined the unspoken truth. Jordan was missing memories. The Hennessy in the portrait looked wary, skittish, unlike the Hennessy Jordan had always known, but it was obviously her, back when she had been both Jordan and Hennessy. But Jordan had no memory of sitting for the painting, no memory of it existing at all.

This was something that had been kept from her.

Jordan felt very strange.

She didn’t know if this was because she was looking at some of her history, or because it was a sweetmetal, or because she was trying to figure out if Boudicca was playing a mind game with her.

She’d been staring at it too long; the guards were antsy. They were thinking about Project Bullets.

Jordan pointed finger guns at them before turning to Fisher. “How are the sweetmetals made?”

“I don’t understand the question,” Fisher said.

“Who makes these things into sweetmetals?”

“Isn’t that the same question?”

“This painting. Those spoons. Why do they do what they do? They are not just a painting, a spoon, they do other things, that’s why I’m here, don’t leave me feeling I’m talking to myself, mate— Was it put into them? Were they like that from the get?” When she saw Fisher’s exasperated face, Jordan answered her own question. “You don’t know how the sausage is made.”

Fisher said, “You’re a strange person.”

Without any hostility, Jordan went on. “All right, then. What’ll these set me back? I assume the price isn’t money. Because money’s too cheap.”

Fisher shrugged. With the sound of someone repeating someone else’s words, she said, “Our clientele includes those to whom money is no object.”