The Silenced Tale, стр. 120
Bevel remains faithfully stalwart, walking to the hospital every morning for the start of visiting hours, and only leaving when the pitying nurses send him back to the hotel. He passes the time with children’s primers, learning to read and write this new alphabet, regaling the sleeping Kintyre with increasingly confident stories as his skills improve. He learns how to navigate a computer tablet, revels in the discovery of electric razors, delights in pizza, and pretends that he is not having vicious, horrible nightmares that keep him up half the night.
Martin and Mei Fan fly in a few days after what Pip has dubbed the “Fucking Trilogy Wrap-up,” bringing Alis with them. My daughter is, at least, a healthy distraction for my brother-in-law as he frets.
At the end of the second week, Juan flies to Toronto to finalize some paperwork that, unfortunately, requires my actual signature. He brings Gil with him—a handsome, older man with all the slick charm of a Hollywood denizen—and introduces him to Pip and I when we fetch them from the airport as both his boyfriend and the executive producer of The Tales of Kintyre Turn television series.
Blast and drat. I had forgotten about that bothersome thing.
“A what?” Bevel asks. We are in the hotel room when I tell him that Juan and Gil have arrived, and are settling into their room, and that they would like to discuss some things about our creator’s estate with us. “A television series? Based on our books?”
Bevel knows what a television series is by now, but I had not told him that Elgar’s series was in the process of being adapted.
“Yes. And I think you should be there,” I explain. “Have a say.”
Bevel scowls. “They’ll have to come to the hospital, then.”
“I’m certain Kintyre will be fine sleeping alone for a few hours.”
“No,” Bevel says, and lifts his chin, mulish. “In Kin’s room, or no meeting.”
“There’s a park nearby,” Pip offers as a compromise, sticking her head out of our bedroom. Alis slips away from where Pip had been dressing her, delighted to run into the middle of the room in only her nappy and a dimpling grin.
“Come here, sweet girl!” Bevel says.
He hefts Alis into his arms to plant raspberries on her bare tummy as she kicks and squeals, “Bev, Bev, Bev!”
“Yeah, so not helping to get her geared up for a day at the zoo with her grandparents,” Pip scolds him fondly. “If you’re gonna get her all riled up, then you dress her.”
“Yah, sure,” Bevel says, standing from where he’d been moping on the suite’s sofa.
“Yah, yah, yah!” Alis echoes.
“Wr-Writer grant me patience,” I say fondly, only stumbling a little over the oath. Bevel pretends not to notice. It is the least he can do, when I have been similarly ignoring his own emotional difficulties with his usual cussing. “Now my daughter really will grow up speaking like a Bynnebakker blacksmith.”
“Best kind,” Bevel says, deliberately thickening his rural accent. “Yah, girl?”
“Yah!” Alis obediently agrees.
“Traitor,” I grumble at her, then lean forward to kiss the tip of her nose. “Off you go, then, you rotten turncoat. Let your Uncle Bevel dress you while I let Juan know where to meet us.”
Gil cannot stop staring at Kintyre, which is very slowly putting Bevel into a state. Juan is at least more subtle. His eyes cut back and forth between both men, but his face stays carefully blank.
“Juan?” Pip prompts gently, bringing his attention back around to those of us who are awake.
“I . . . uh . . . there was a will,” Juan says. “Syth Piper and family are the main beneficiaries.” He hands a document to Pip. Her eyes flick over the contents, and then her mouth drops open.
“Holy Tallulah,” Pip says, eyes wide. “This is an absurd amount of money.”
Gil snorts, shoving his hands in his pockets and finally tearing his eyes off my brother, only to have them latch on to me. He squints, brow furrowing, eyes darting over my frame, my thinning ginger hair, then back to Kintyre, and, ah, yes. There it is: the moment he understands what he’s looking at. To be fair, the only version of Forsyth he knows at the moment is a bratty eleven-year-old. “And there’ll be more once the TV series is out,” he says, clearly avoiding the topic he’d really like to discuss. “Royalties from the show, plus a cut of the merchandising, plus the surge in book sales from people who want to read it before they watch it.”
“Bao bei?” Pip asks me, and I am pleased that I had anticipated this, at least.
“I have already set them up with bank accounts,” I answer her unvoiced question. “It will be very easy to ensure the royalty payments are funneled into my brother’s reserves instead of our own. And of course, I shall set aside enough of it to ensure Alis’s education is paid for, and her life a comfortable one.”
I have only a tiny twinge of guilt as I recall that I had once rebuffed Elgar this very offer in person. Had I not, would our relationship have been different? Would we have been closer before the Viceroy had begun to terrorize him? Would he have felt safer coming to me? Could we have stopped the Viceroy sooner, before he . . . ah, but down that path of speculation lies self-recrimination and madness. What happened has happened, and even if magic still existed in the Overrealm, I still could not have brought the dead back to life. There are no Words strong enough for that.
“And there’s the matter of the . . . the house,” Juan adds. “The estate is yours, Mr. Piper, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to . . . there are a few mementos I’d . . . if that’s okay, I mean. And you’ll need to hire someone to