It wasn't the metal she was worried about losing. But she had no intention of confiding her secret, and risking disapproval or derision. When she'd heard her father's step in the hallway she had hastily rubbed away the chalk diagram with spit and her sleeve, and swept the recipe sheet, carefully copied in her best hand, and the set of symbolic objects—salt, dried flowers, a bit of unworked gold, wheat seeds—from the workbench. The apron into which she'd bundled them sat on the end of the table looking dreadfully conspicuous. Papa had, after all, only given her permission to cast gold. She hitched her nip over a tall stool, rubbed at the leather apron over her gray wool outer dress, and sniffed at the chill spring air slipping through the workroom's unglazed window. But it worked! My first investment worked. Or at least... it didn't back-flow.

A pounding penetrated from the house's heavy oak outer door, and a man's voice. "Master Beneforte! Hallo the house! Prospero Beneforte, are you awake in there?"

Fiametta scrambled up to the table, to mash her face against the grille and try to see around the corner of the window frame into the street "Two men—it's the Duke's steward, Messer Quistelli, Papa. And," she brightened, "the Swiss captain."

"Ha!" Master Beneforte hastily pulled off his own leather apron, and straightened the skirts of his tunic. "Perhaps he brings my bronze, at last! It's about time. Has no one unbarred the door this morning?" He stuck his head through the workroom's other window, that opened onto his house's inner court, and bellowed, "Teseo! Unbar the door!" His graying beard pointed, left and right. "Where is the useless boy? Run and unbar the door, Fiametta. Tuck your hair under your cap first, you're all awry like a washerwoman."

Fiametta hopped down, untied the strings of her plain white linen cap, and with her fingers pushed and combed back strands of her crinkly black hair, which had escaped unnoticed in her absorption with her morning's work.