Thamalon took several long moments to form his next questions.
"You don't…"
"No."
"So you…"
"It's under control."
"Ah," said Thamalon. "That's good."
He couldn't think of anything else to say while his mind still reeled with the absurdity of the revelation. Best not to think on it too hard, he decided.
They sat silently a while longer. Thamalon entertained a feeble hope that he was the brunt of some preposterous joke that would be explained later, perhaps over a bottle of Usk Fine Old.
He set aside the revelation to concentrate on the matter of Talbot's unseemly mourning, but he knew there were no words to soothe the loss of a beloved companion. Forty years after Nelember's death, Thamalon still quietly mourned his own best friend. The prim old tutor had been the first to perish in the assault that razed the first Stormweather Towers. The old clerk had done more to nurture and shape Thamalon than had his own father, Aldimar.
Suddenly Thamalon feared that he'd worked so hard to avoid Aldimar's obvious vices, such as piracy, he'd fallen prey to his more insidious faults, like siring bastards and treating his children with biting contempt.
"A man needs a friend he can trust," Thamalon offered. "I am grateful that Chaney was there to watch my son's back."
Talbot's eyes glimmered, but he opened them wide to let them dry before tears could form.
"Thanks."
"I mean it, Talbot," said Thamalon. "Sometimes I wish I had been a better friend to you."
"Only sometimes?"
"Not very often, mind you. You must admit, you have only lately become interesting."
As he'd calculated, the remark surprised his son into a genuine laugh.
"Well," said Talbot, "I could use some help painting the backdrop for The Happy Bachelor before tomorrow's rehearsal."
It was Thamalon's turn to laugh. Still, he wouldn't be diverted from his argument.
"Seriously, my boy, I have begun to realize just how much time I have devoted to the House-and how little I have devoted to those within it."
"Now, just because you and mother keep sneaking into the linen closet doesn't mean you have to go all soft on the rest of us."
"Have done! I won't have you talking about the lady of the house that way." He laughed. "That reminds me, whatever became of that fetching young country girl? What was her name?"
"Feena." The name was a charm to dispel Talbot's brief cheer. "She had to go home."
"I thought perhaps you and she-"
"Yeah. So did I."
Talbot's eyes wandered once more, this time to the gently twirling wings of an elven glass sculpture suspended from the ceiling.
"So why did she go?"
"Since her mother died, her village was without a cleric. She had to look after her people."
Thamalon paused before asking, "Why didn't you go with her?"
Talbot looked up and said, "Because I have to look after mine."
"Mm," grunted Thamalon. He knew that Talbot had many friends at the playhouse, but he wondered just how familial his loyalties ran.
"Will you be a friend to your brother?"
"Oh, come now, dear chap, you can't seriously mean that," drawled Talbot in a parody of his elder brother's voice.
The imitation was surprisingly good. Thamalon had once overheard the boy mimicking a wrathful Erevis Cale for an audience of giggling chambermaids, but he had no idea his son's repertoire was so wide.
"I'm afraid I do," said Thamalon, refusing to lighten his tone. "I know you two have never been the closest of siblings."
"That's putting it mildly. The only reason he survived to adulthood is because he's had that great lumbering ogre to protect him."
"Tamlin will inherit Stormweather Towers one day, and all the holdings of House Uskevren."
"I know," said Talbot, "and he's welcome to it."
Thamalon bristled. Talbot noticed.
"You know what I mean," said Talbot. "I have the playhouse, and Tazi is a free spirit. Besides, neither of us would dream of challenging your will."
"That isn't good enough." Thamalon slapped his hand on the table. "Tamlin will need your help one day. I want to know that you will support him, as a brother should."
"I don't like him very much." Talbot sighed. "There are days when I still want to throttle him."
"You must learn to suppress that desire."
"Oh, I am well practiced at that," said Talbot.
"Then I can trust you to watch his back?"
Talbot flinched at the phrase used earlier to describe his only true friend, but he nodded and said, "Why all this talk now? You sound like a man who-You're not ill, are you?"
"No, no, nothing like that," said Thamalon. "Perhaps I grow maudlin in my dotage. Maybe your sister's long absence has made me more keenly aware that you three must look to each other one day, when I have gone peculiar and need help eating my porridge. Or perhaps your mother's attentions have indeed made me soft. Why, just last evening she surprised me in the kitchen with a great spoonful of cake batter, and-"
"Have done!" roared Talbot in excellent imitation of his father's voice. He leaped from his chair and bolted theatrically toward the door with his big hands over his ears. "I won't hear you talk about the lady of the house that way!"
Thamalon laughed so hard he almost added incontinence to his roster of infirmities. He was still chortling when Cale peered into the room. Helpless with laughter, Thamalon dismissed his butler with a friendly wave.
When he recovered from his mirth, Thamalon realized that Talbot had left without a receipt for the returned loan. As much as he was coming to like his son as a young man, he couldn't understand how his three children could be so blithely unconcerned with matters of business.
Unlike his son, Thamalon couldn't bear to relax before business was done. He made a little space amid the clutter of his desk and wrote a bill of receipt in his meticulous hand. He spilled a handful of fine sand to dry the ink, blew it off, and fixed his seal to the document just below his signature before leaving it atop a neat stack of Talbot's books.
Alone at last, Thamalon luxuriated in the privacy of his library. Though it was open to all members of the household in his absence, including those servants who wished to better their positions through study, he still considered it his sanctum. It was there that he kept his most prized artifacts-sculptures, paintings, and art objects from all over the vast reaches of Faerun. Elven works were prominent, causing a mild scandal among those few outsiders who'd visited the library, for elves were not well loved in Sembia, even before the skirmishes of the past summer.
The misplaced globe crowded a small area devoted to some recent astronomical acquisitions. Thamalon had purchased them only a few days earlier, when Cale introduced him to a man called Alkenen, a street peddler whom Thamalon still suspected was more properly called a "fence." Regardless of the man's propriety, he offered an astonishing lot of curiosities to the amateur sky gazer. The centerpiece was a fine orrery that Alkenen swore had been made by artisans of the far isle of Evermeet.
The model of the planets had come as part of a small collection of astronomical oddities. Thamalon had hoped to spend a relaxing evening examining them at leisure, but Tamlin's ill-timed gift was sitting right in the middle of it all. He started to move the painting aside, but curiosity got the better of him. He pulled the ridiculous little tassel and unveiled the painting.
He couldn't have been more shocked had he revealed a nude portrait of his daughter. The swirling, monochromatic image fairly screamed "Pietro Malveen." The youngest son of the disgraced family was popular among the rebellious youth of Selgaunt's artistic community. No doubt because owning one of Pietro's paintings was just scandalous enough to be fashionable, Tamlin had purchased nearly a dozen of the impressionistic works to bestow as gifts.