The dyer's daughter had inherited the lapis vat and nothing else, and she meant to prove it was enough. Her mother had been careless, had let clients overwhelm her into producing colors that shouldn't be made. The daughter had watched apprentices weep from the failure, watched bolts ruined, watched gold pour away into ash. So she took the cobalt and locked it. No commissions for a season. Instead, she studied. She tested every variation of heat and cool, recorded each one, learned to read the color as it changed. When she finally opened the vat again, she'd created something new. Not just cobalt. This cobalt. Hers. The first client to see it was a paladin, a woman on pilgrimage to rebuild a temple in the north. She touched the bolt and went very still. Asked if it had ever been blessed. The dyer's daughter said no, but didn't say that blessing wasn't her trade. The paladin paid three times the asking price and wore it into battle. When a war-clerics' guild asked for her design, the dyer's daughter said no. That blue was for one woman. Everything else was negotiable...