“So you haven’t seen him?” Aurelius prodded.

“Maybe he’s hiding from you.” Giving the other man a stern look, he added, “You could have been more polite at breakfast.”

“I was!” he insisted. “For me.”

Freydolf snorted and said, “If you don’t bridle your tongue, you’ll never win the lad over.”

“I’ll bridle my tongue when you collar your pet,” Aurelius muttered. “He’d be easier to find if you kept him on a leash.”

“Have you tried behind the rimbles in the upper loggia?”

The other Pred blinked. “The what in the where?”

—excerpted from Galleries of Stone, Book 1: Meadowsweet

What the deuce is a rimbles? Since much of the Galleries of Stone trilogy is set in the Statuary, there should be little surprise that many of the characters are statues. Those who bear a master’s mark can “come to life” under the right conditions. Young Tupper Meadowsweet has two such stone guardians—one for day, one for night. He names his daytime guardian Rimbles.

Assorted Facts:
• Rimbles is a female lynx kitten.
• Freydolf shaped her from sunstone, which is a soft buff/gold color and stirs when touched by sunlight.
• At the time a sunstone guardian is master-marked, wine is needed to wake it. It’s rumored that the better the quality of the wine, the better the temperament of the statue.
• The magical mountain from which sunstone is harvested is located in Drom, a sunsoaked land on the south-eastern coast of New Continent.
• Rimbles made it onto the cover of Harrow. She’s the ball of fluff in Tupper’s hands.
• And finally, I’m sharing art of Tupper and his little companion. “A Moment’s Repose” is by Anna Earley.

Last Time: Meadowsweets
Next Time: Haimish