She drew out a sample on a shell card.
When she came back from rinsing the grinder, the strip had started to dry.
The color did not flatten. It deepened. A low amber current seemed to sit inside the green without muddying it. The surface held the light not on top but just under, where the eye had togo looking. Something adjacent to the accidental color, quieter and stranger, as if floodwater and warmed stone had agreed to occupy the same skin.
"Mavrek."
He crossed the room at once. She held the card out without speech. He took it by the corners and stood under the window with the severe stillness that came over him when an object had caught his full attention.
"What did you use."
"Base from yesterday's second grind. Less chalk than your ratio. Maruk after the mineral settled."
"How long."
"One breath."
"One breath is nothing."
"Under my hand it isn't."
His mouth moved, not quite a smile, not quite surrender. "Again."
She remade it while he watched.
Mavrek watched differently from every older conservator who had ever assumed her competence required surveillance. Not to catch failure. To catch truth.
When the paste came together, he grunted once. "There."
She drew a second strip. It dried into the same low-lit depth.
Mavrek took the tools from her one by one and tried it himself. His first attempt went too warm. The second stayed green without opening. The third came close enough to make her narrow her eyes, then lost the hidden amber at the last moment and deadened along the edge.
He set down the knife, looked from his strip to hers. "Show me your grind."
She did, slower.
He leaned close enough that his shoulder brushed the top of her arm. "You hold at the turn."
"A fraction."
"Less than that."
"Enough to matter."
"Aye."
He tried to copy it with her exact timing and still missed by a shade. The new color would not cross into existence under his hand alone.
He looked down at the strip as if it had insulted him with admirable technical rigor.
Iva folded her arms. "I can be insufferable about this, if you like."
"You already are."
"Good."
"It needs your pressure and my fixative," he said.