Ninth Figure

For twenty years, paintings conservator Iria Venn has restored damaged faces while refusing to examine the one memory she cannot repair: the museum fire that killed her father.When she returns to the rain-darkened city of Orsana to treat its most celebrated civic painting, she discovers that its familiar scene is a lie. Beneath a curtain of later paint sits a woman at the council table - a ninth figure deliberately erased from history.Her name was Ysara Neris.As the discovery ignites political outrage, family rivalries, and competing claims over what the hidden woman represents, Iria follows a trail through damaged archives, altered records, and the secret work left behind by her father. But uncovering Ysara's face is easier than recovering the truth. The deeper Iria cuts through the painting's layers, the more uncertain innocence and guilt become - and the closer she comes to a choice that may destroy the very history she has sworn to preserve.Set across two centuries and illuminated by a haunting atmosphere of rain, fire, salt, and painted shadow, The Ninth Figure is a literary mystery about memory, responsibility, and the stories cities create so they can live with what they have done.Some truths are buried to protect the guilty.Others are hidden to protect the truth itself.