A Study In Reproach

Somewhere, a clock ticks. The repetitive snap of each second the hand juts round, an oddity of a bygone past echoing into the era of a technologically advanced future. Larissa grits her teeth as she spares a glance back down the hallway towards the offending noise.

Her mother - the ever regal Leonore Ziegler - doesn’t notice Larissa’s lapse in attention. She’s already too busy greeting the guests crowding by one of the in-house bars, laughing at a joke Larissa didn’t quite catch. Expectant that Larissa will already be at her side.

Larissa hurries through the doorway, tucking the incessant tick of their archaic clock out of mind, lest she get an earful in front of her mother’s honoured guests. She smiles. Offers a greeting here and there. Acts the part and does her best to keep apprised of the conversation, even as her mind wanders.

It’s rare she visits this part of the manor. Even her father spends little time around these particular halls.

The unspoken rule between them is that this section is off limits; events only, high class and important, and only if Leonore grants you an invitation. Briefly, Larissa wonders if that bothers her father. The man has an endless list of political pursuits, is from a family just as wealthy and prestigious as their own, but of course nothing can ever quite live up to the Ziegler family name.

She’s feeling more inquisitive than she did during her last visit. A difference of seven years passing will do that to a woman; because that’s what she is now, at 19 years old. A grown woman, and one whom her mother expects a great deal from.

So of course she’s going to start ignoring the boring conversations going on around her. She’s clearly not needed, what with her mother effortlessly playing the gracious host. It frees up her mind and eyes to actually inspect the room.

Larissa regrets it the moment her eyes land on a figure looking down over the room.

Above the bar, a good eight feet tall, set in an intricate golden frame, is a portrait of a woman Larissa has seen a thousand times before. In history books, filmed documentaries, pictures strung across the walls of half a dozen museums. She’s never once seen this particular picture though. Must have been privately commissioned.

Astrid Ziegler, Larissa’s legendary ancestor, scowls at the room. No one else seems to notice. Larissa finds it unnerving. In every other picture she has seen of Astrid, the woman’s features have always been soft, maybe even kind. Here she looks like she’s on a warpath. Her eyes - hazel, Larissa knows, from countless boring hours spent studying - are painted so darkly they seem more like pools of ink.

That’s the other, eerie thing. The paints.

Most art now is digitised, set in a holo-frame, because it’s so much easier to repair a malfunctioning holo-frame than it is to try and restore a portrait created with paints. Even then, the only painted portraits that Larissa has seen in person were ones full of vibrant colour. This painting is dark, verging on greyscale, and maybe that is why the expression Astrid wears in it is so sharp.

The longer she looks at it, the more anxiety prickles at the edges of her mind. It sets off a familiar response, an instinctual fear, but Larissa can’t quite place ––

–– a throat clears.

Larissa straightens up. Glances from one disapproving stare to another and, ah, now her unusual response to a portrait of all things makes sense.