She raised her eyebrows slightly at this form of address but didn’t comment on it. “Titanium is what Andy calls it. It comes from a great old factory building, far north, in Calla Sen Chre. There are many ruins there. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard the tales. It sounds spooky.”

Roland nodded. “And the plates—how are they made? Does Andy do it?”

She shook her head. “He can’t or won’t, I know not which. It’s the ladies of Calla Sen Chre who make them, and send them to the Callas all round about. Although Divine is as far south as that sort of trading reaches, I think.”

“The ladies make these,” Roland mused. “The ladies .”

“Somewhere there’s a machine that still makes em, that’s all it is,” Eisenhart said. Roland was amused at his tone of stiff defensiveness. “Comes down to no more than pushing a button, I ’magine.”

Margaret, looking at him with a woman’s smile, said nothing to this, either for or against. Perhaps she didn’t know, but she certainly knew the politics that keep a marriage sweet.

“So there are Sisters north and south of here along the Arc,” Roland said. “And all of them throw the plate.”

“Aye—from Calla Sen Chre to Calla Divine south of us. Farther south or north, I don’t know. We like to help and we like to talk. We throw our plates once a month, in memory of how Lady Oriza did for Gray Dick, but few of us are any good at it.”

“Are you good at it, sai?”

She was silent, biting at the corner of her lip again.

“Show him,” Eisenhart growled. “Show him and be done.”

Five

They walked down the steps, the rancher’s wife leading the way, Eisenhart behind her, Roland third. Behind them the kitchen door opened and banged shut.

“Gods-a-glory, missus Eisenhart’s gonna throw the dish!” Benny Slightman cried gleefully. “Jake! You won’t believe it!”

“Send em back in, Vaughn,” she said. “They don’t need to see this.”

“Nar, let em look,” Eisenhart said. “Don’t hurt a boy to see a woman do well.”

“Send them back, Roland, aye?” She looked at him, flushed and flustered and very pretty. To Roland she looked ten years younger than when she’d come out on the porch, but he wondered how she’d fling in such a state. It was something he much wanted to see, because ambushing was brutal work, quick and emotional.

“I agree with your husband,” he said. “I’d let them stay.”