When he twisted around to brace his hands on the floor, his arm brushed against the toilet table, setting the porcelain washbowl into a looping dance.
From the sleigh bed across the room came the sounds of a sleeper stirring from troubled dreams. Tal froze again, but no sound came from beyond the bedroom door. When the occupant of the bed turned and lay still once more, Tal wriggled the rest of the way through the window, wincing at the pain the effort caused. His recent wounds were still tender, despite the healing he'd received.
He crouched beside the open window, then leaned out carefully to wave thanks to his accomplice below. The other, smaller man waved back, then vanished into the hedges. The Stormweather house guards were alert and efficient, but Tal knew his friend was clever enough to escape them. Together, they had years of practice evading guards and dogs alike.
Tal carefully closed the window and turned back to the room, his eyes quickly adjusting to the dim light. It was different from how he'd remembered it, though he hadn't been there in years. The room seemed more suited to their mother than to Thazienne. Solid furniture was decorated with fine lace and silk coverings, while the rough walls were painted in delicate but confident pastel patterns suggesting an unsullied seacoast at sunset.
The dolls were missing, he noticed, probably packed away in the attic. Not that Tazi had much use for dolls, even when the Uskevren children were so young. She preferred to run with the boys her age, climbing trees and rooftops, swimming and shouting and scrapping with the best of them. She was faster than either of her brothers, and more full of life.
Yet now she lay near death in her childhood bedroom.
Tal sat quietly on the chair left beside the bed. It still felt warm. Who had sat there so recently? he wondered. Probably it was his mother, Shamur, who always tried so hard to mold Tazi into her own image, the very model of a Sembian lady. Or perhaps it was Thamalon, his father, who tried so clumsily to do the same with Talbot and his brother, Tamlin. If half of what Tal had heard this evening was true, both Uskevren parents were likely exhausted and sleeping in their separate bedchambers. More likely, the chair had been left by one of the servants, perhaps the chief of them, Erevis Cale. In many ways, the tall, gaunt butler looked on the Uskevren children as his own offspring. He wasn't nearly old enough for the part, though his bald pate and gaunt appearance made him seem much older than he was.
Tal watched his sister. She seemed small and fragile under the heavy woolen blanket. Her skin was unusually pale in the half-light, especially in contrast to her black hair, cut short in the latest Cormyrian fashion. Tal wondered how much blood she had lost in the monstrous attack on Stormweather Towers, and he felt a sharp pang of guilt that he had not been present to help defend his home. At about the time Tazi had been hurt, he had been bleeding to death on the stage of the Wide Realms playhouse. Only the intercession of a pair of clerics of Selune, the goddess of the moon, had saved his life. While he was grateful for his life, he now cursed those same women for preventing the news of Tazi's injury from reaching him sooner.
"Who's there?" Tazi blinked weakly. Tal knew just how she felt, for he had woken from a medicated stupor only a few tendays earlier, disoriented and confused. Again, those clerics had earned his resentment.
He took her hand. It seemed tiny in his big, gentle grip. "It's me," he said quietly.
"My big little brother," she murmured. "C'mere."
Tal leaned close, and she slipped her hand from his to tousle his hair. She grabbed a handful to tug his head playfully, but her grip was weak.
"What's Eckert putting in your hair?" she asked. Tal's man served as his butler, valet, cook, and barber.
"Nothing," he whispered back. "Why?"
"It feels thicker."
"Must be my winter coat," he smiled, then frowned at his own joke, which he couldn't explain to Tazi. Not yet.
"Why are we whispering?" she asked.
"I want to avoid-"
"Father," said Tazi with a knowing smile. "Don't worry.
He and mother are probably both asleep. They took turns sitting up with me."
That was a relief. Slipping back out of Stormweather without another lecture might be easier than Tal had expected. "How're you feeling?"
"Not bad, considering the alternative."
"I would have come sooner."
"I figured you were doing the town with Chaney."
"No," he said, "I was… tied up for a few days."
"The jail again, was it? Not another brawl, I hope," said Tazi. "Not everyone's willing to leave it to fists, you know. You really should carry a sword."
"That's what Thamalon keeps saying."
"It's hard to believe, but sometimes Father knows what he's talking about."
"You're right," said Tal. "That is hard to believe."
They both chuckled, then they both winced at the pain. When they'd recovered, Thazienne said, "I heard you two had a 'discussion' about fraternizing with the help."
"Larajin…" said Tal, realizing that he hadn't returned to explain his odd behavior to the young housemaid.
Larajin had asked for Tal's help on a peculiar task that reminded him of the games they'd played as children. Unfortunately, their jaunt took them down into the steaming sewers of Selgaunt, and Tal began to fear he had misjudged the daylight. When he felt the first pangs of his affliction, Tal fled in a panic rather than risk hurting his friend, for whom he felt an abiding and-recently-confusing love.
Later, he tried to apologize and explain his odd behavior to Larajin when his father interrupted them. Mistaking the situation, as the Old Owl always did when it came to Tal, Thamalon led Tal off to hear a scolding lecture on the responsibilities of the upper class to their servants. At the time, Tal failed to recognize his father's exceptional anger for anything other than his usual self-righteousness. As Tazi reminded him of the cause of his father's lecture, Tal's face grew hot with a new realization.
Thamalon was keeping Larajin as his mistress.
There was no better explanation. Suddenly, all the years of cool civility between Tal's parents made sense, not to mention Thamalon's harsh separation of Tal and Larajin as the children grew into adults.
"Tal?" asked Tazi, snapping him out of his reverie. "It wasn't as bad as all that, was it?"
Tal blinked, then forced a smile. It might have convinced an audience at the playhouse, but he knew Tazi would see through it. "Sorry. I'm just a little tense being here. If I stay too long, someone's bound to spot me and summon Thamalon."
"You know," said Tazi, "he'd probably prefer it if you called him 'Father.' "
"Oh, I know," said Tal, his smile turning wicked.
"Tamlin irritates Father because he just doesn't care," said Tazi, "but you seem to go out of your way to make him angry."
"I'm not trying…" began Tal. It was pointless to lie to Tazi. She knew him better than anyone else, except perhaps Chaney. "Well, maybe sometimes. I just hate hearing all the things he thinks I ought to be doing, all the things he thinks I ought to be."
"So, what do you want to be?"
"That's not the point," said Tal, more loudly than he'd intended.
"You didn't answer the question," Tazi pointed out.
"You really are starting to sound just like him," he said. She poked him in the ribs. "Ow!" he winced, only half-jokingly.
"Sorry," said Tazi. "You don't look so hurt. What happened, exactly?"
"It's hard to explain," said Tal. The wounds from his recent ordeal had healed, but his second transformation had left his ribs and joints aching. Perhaps the wolf had thrown itself against the cage the night before, or maybe changing shape left him tender. Either way, Tal couldn't think of a way to explain it without making Tazi afraid for-or of-him.