Some days later, Irenya stopped inside her doorway and gaped. ‘It’s lovely, Sirani. You managed to do all this… and bring back some favour notes?’
Bits of lace and ribbon peeped from the edges of bright cushions. Not what she would have chosen herself, but she hadn’t given Sirani any instructions other than ‘whatever brightens the room’. Landscape paintings hung on the walls, every season and every hue of sunrise and sunset garishly captured. One featured the silhouette of a griffin in full flight across a salmon sky. But there, on the corner of a shelf near the small desk, was something different.
A man leading a horse, a figurine no higher than a hand span, roughly shaped and fired coppery black. A featureless wedge formed the man’s face, pressed into life by two confident thumbs. The
