document under Thamalon's nose.
Thamalon read it calmly, not moving to touch it. It seemed that Perivel Uskevren owed House Talendar a lot of money, and had named as his collateral if the monies- seventy-nine thousand golden fivestars, no less-were not repaid.
The collateral was Stormweather Towers itself-the house Thamalon had rebuilt, every tinted glass pane and smooth-carved arch of it. The head of House Uskevren did not look at the huge marble-sheathed pillars that rose all around him. Nor did he spare a glance for the exquisite lamps of iridescent blown glass that hung above the table, whose cost outstripped that of even the ornately carved pillars… but his question seemed directed more at them than at anyone seated down the long, decanter-laden table as he gazed across the cavernous hall and asked gently, 'And how is it that an Uskevren came to stand in debt to the Talendars, without any in this house knowing of it?'
'I am but recently returned to Selgaunt,' the pretender said eagerly, 'after years as a captive then a loyal servant of the Talendars, at their holdings in the distant land of Amn. I-I came to owe Presker Talendar the value of a ship that was wrecked on rocks near Westgate, as I was captaining it for the Talendars.'
Clever. Thamalon took care that none of the dark anger gathering in him showed in his face. The downfall of the Uskevren in his father Aldimar's day had been trading with pirates-an offense then as now treated no differently under Sembian law than open piracy itself. Any payment Thamalon might make to this man who claimed to be his brother could be trumpeted by the Talendars as paying a pirate, proof that the Uskevren were again up to their old tricks. False claimant or not, the Uskevren would be ruined. For that matter, this claimant-Perivel or not-could be a pirate himself.
Persons convicted of piracy in Selgaunt were always shunned by citizens anxious to avoid sharing their fate: a month of hard and unpleasant labor (usually harbor-diving to plug leaks in ship hulls, or squaring and hefting quarried stones to repair the city wall), followed by the amputation of one of the convict's hands. The guilty were often sentenced to suffer the breaking of another limb as well by officers of the court, a wound that was left to heal by itself so that, as the saying went, 'the pain will be their teacher.'
At over sixty years of age, Thamalon would be worked hard for a month, while this pretender disowned him and plundered the family vaults-a family none would dare trade with thereafter, for fear of being thought pirates in their turn. The Uskevren would fall, and the Talendars would seize everything and no doubt make special visits to a whipped and groaning Thamalon Uskevren to torment him with the news of what they'd done with it.
He'd end his days mutilated and in pain, probably tormented by Talendar servants and hirelings sent to hunt and harry him in the streets to provide feast-table amusement with their reports. He'd heard of their doing so before with House Feltelent, breaking the fingers of a lone, blinded old man one by one as months passed, purely for cruel sport.
In Sembia, it was all too easy to ruin a man.
It hardly seemed more difficult to shatter an entire family, no matter how rich, proud, and historied it might be.
His father had died fighting against such a fate. Thamalon could do no less, whatever it might cost him, and no matter how sick he'd become of such skulking and strivings. Thamalon owed the ghosts of Stormweather Towers-and his children, their lives still bright with promise before them-no less.
He raised his eyes almost idly, face smoothly expressionless. Seventy-nine thousand golden fivestars was coin he did not have. Nor was it a treasure Thamalon would be willing to let any Talendar steal from Uskevren coffers, even if he'd had it to spare. Yet if he lost this his beloved home, the brightest and best of Selgaunt would shun him and his as paupers whose every coin might already be spoken for… and, again, the Uskevren would be ruined.
Ruin, ruin on all sides, and sinister smiles all down his feast table, from men waiting to see him fall into the doom they had prepared.
The Talendars were the oldest, proudest family in all Selgaunt. One did not lightly refuse the request of a visit from one of them. Foes and longtime rivals they might be-and they might well have earned their cruel badge of the Blood-beaked Raven many times over-but they could boast trading contacts, agents, and factors almost everywhere across the teeming continent of Faerun. Only a fool snubbed the Talendars in Selgaunt.
'I anticipate you'll avoid any unpleasantness, brother,' the false Perivel said heartily into the lengthening silence. 'After all, you are the man they call the Old Owl… and all Selgaunt knows that Thamalon Uskevren is a man of his word-a man who takes care to keep all of his promises.'
Thamalon almost laughed. So it had been said, repeated by Selgauntans over and over again as a business motto, ever since he'd once said such words in a speech. He'd known then, the moment they left his mouth years ago, that they'd someday be turned back at him.
The man who always kept his promises let his eyes wander down the table, allowing a smirk to crawl across his lips and cover the snarl he wanted to let slip. Let them wonder what mirthful secret he held; with a Talendar and a Soargyl at the table, they'd learn it was but a bluff.
They'd not, after all, come unprepared. Invisible daggerspurn fields sang around all of them, to turn aside any weapon an Uskevren might hurl, and hunger glowed in their eyes. They were ready and eager for Uskevren blood. Well, then…
Thamalon looked down at the promissory note again, and let them all wait for another tensely drawn breath before he raised green, glowing eyes from the parchment to regard the man who claimed to be his brother.
'I've never seen you or this document before,' he said calmly to the pretender, 'and this your signature fails to resemble any I've seen in our vaults. Prove to me that you are Perivel Uskevren.'
This last, blunt sentence was dropped into the tense and waiting silence like a gauntlet hurled down in challenge. The men around the table seemed to lean forward slightly in excitement. The eyes of Presker Talendar and Saclath Soargyl gleamed with the anticipation of pleasure.
Thamalon never looked at them. His eyes were bright and very steady as they stared into the unfamiliar eyes of the man who called himself Perivel Uskevren. His gaze never strayed as he carefully handed the document not back to the pretender, but to the hired mage.
Velvaunt accepted the parchment with a smile that was almost a sneer. For all the attention the others at the table paid to him just then, he could well have saved himself the effort.
The little smile that curled the edges of Perivel's mouth never wavered as he stared back at Thamalon. His burly shoulders lifted in a slow shrug as he spread his hands and said mildly, 'Bring me the chalice.'
The smirk that rose into Perivel's eyes was a flame of pure triumph that told Thamalon two things: that this could not be his brother, whose quite different gloating smile Thamalon could remember very well, and that this impostor, whoever he was, thought he could prove himself to be Perivel Uskevren. Thamalon's older brother, the head of House Uskevren with the sole power to buy, sell, and forfeit its chattels, had been burned to ashes forty- odd summers ago.
Thamalon's hand never faltered as he set down his glass and rang the bell that brought his butler gliding to his side.
'Cale,' the patriarch directed calmly, 'fetch hence the chalice.'
As the butler inclined his bald head and turned in smooth silence to obey, the triumph in Perivel's eyes became a blaze. Thamalon's fingertips found the familiar hilt of the knife strapped to his forearm, inside his sleeve. He stroked that hard, reassuring smoothness ever so slightly, out of long habit. Battle was joined.
That the man who called himself Perivel Uskevren knew about the chalice proved nothing. Half the elder houses of Selgaunt had heard of the Quaff of the Uskevren. It had been enspelled long ago by Phaldinor Uskevren's house mage, Helemgaularn of the Seven Lightnings, to keep revelers from stealing his mead. Its enchantments were later altered so that only one of the blood of the Uskevren could touch it bare-handed and not be instantly burned.
Burning was how Thamalon had first seen the large, plain metal goblet-or, withstanding snarling flames. It had been floating alone, dark and eerie in midair, among the roaring fires devouring Stormweather Towers. He'd stared at it in amazement ere his great-uncle Roel stormed out of the smoke to snatch him away from the fire and death and shattered dreams.
