Oeuf scanned the dining room before ushering Askatla ahead of himself. 

The room was just as she had left it, the picture of neo-baroque ostentatiousness that her father had enforced after centuries of “modernist bastardisation” as he called it. Gone were the wall-to-wall carpets and monochromatic geometric furniture, replaced by hardwood polished to a mirror sheen and a dining set of maple with florid arched legs holding a birds eye tabletop and firmly tufted rose coloured upholstered chair on either side. Ornate brass sconces topped with faceted glass tubes cast starbursts from between windows curtained with heavy cotton duck in a rose and silver jacquard while the centre of the room was warmly illuminated by a hemispheric chandelier of faceted glass ringed by brass foliage. 

The wall to the left was dominated by a restored Lorrain depicting an idyll reclaiming ancient pillared ruins overshadowing a small party of revellers which included a jovial satyr. Below sat a bar cabinet not dissimilar to the one in her father’s office, save that this one was larger and had properly windowed doors revealing its contents. On her right, the wide double door to the billiard room, which took up the corner of the…