In Which Searle Denies a Last Day

July 19, 1165

Forgetting his place for a second, Searle rushed past his lord and launched himself into the arms of his older brother. "Abrich! You're so tall!"

"And you're so short!" Abrich laughed in reply. "Not as short as you were the last time I saw you, though. How old are you now? Eight? Nine? Forty-two?"

Searle rocked indignantly as Abrich released him. "I'm thirteen!"

Behind him, their uncle coughed. "Not until next month, you're not."

"Fine, almost thirteen," he compromised, rolling his eyes. "But you haven't seen me since I was five, have you?"

His brother grinned. "You know, brat, it doesn't seem that you were five all that long ago. Then again, it does seem that I was nine a very long time ago."

"Funny how that works, isn't it?" mused Lord Severin, gently ruffling Searle's hair; out of instinct, Searle pretended to hate it. "Thirteen and seventeen... God, you kids really do make me feel like an old man of twenty-six."

Searle threw back his head and smirked; the man may have been his lord, but his uncle provided so many easy opportunities for Searle to make fun of him that it almost seemed like he did it on purpose. "You're thirty-two, Uncle Severin."

"Thirty-two is pretty old," agreed Abrich. "I knew you were getting up in years, Uncle, but... hell, you could be a grandfather any year now!"

"If one can be a grandfather at thirty-two, then one can be a father at sixteen," Lord Severin mused smugly. "By your own logic, you should have a year-old baby by this point in your life."

Abrich chuckled. "Who's to say I don't? Anyway, I have some news for you, but before I forget, my father wanted to know if Searle wanted to come back and visit for a month or two. He says Mother misses him."

This seemed like an agreeable enough; he didn't want to admit it aloud, but he missed his mother too. He turned around and faced his uncle with the most puppy-like face he could muster. "Can I go, Uncle Severin? I haven't seen the triplets since they were babies and I haven't even met my youngest brother!"

Lord Severin's brow furrowed. "Now, Searle... you became a squire mere weeks ago, and already you want a chance to shirk your newfound responsibilities and abandon your cranky old uncle and your stifling old aunt and your screaming hoard of rampaging cousins to temporarily return to the peace of your own loving and entirely functional family?"

Searle nodded; his uncle chuckled. "Can't say I blame you. You have my leave to go."

He found himself grinning widely, trying hard to suppress the childlike urge to startle him with a sudden embrace. "Excellent! Thank you, Uncle!"

Abrich smiled, then began to study the room, his expression growing more grim with each angle he craned his neck. "Well, at least I have something nice to take back home with me, even if it isn't exactly a fair exchange, Uncle, considering what I've brought for you."

"Believe me, there's not much I demand in this transaction, considering the fact that I do have a spare Searle around here somewhere," Lord Severin assured him, "but I suppose it could only be wise of me to take what I can get. What do you have to offer me?"

Searle's older brother closed his eyes, his heavy lids adding several years to his face; he didn't remember exactly what his father looked like, but he couldn't have been much older than Abrich appeared now. "News--and not of the pleasant variety. You see... my cousin, he... well, your nephew Searle is dead."

His uncle frowned; it was no longer only Abrich's face that had gained a decade in mere seconds. "Searle?"

Gravely, Abrich nodded. "Horrible."

"Indeed. But, uh... not including this one here, who is quite obviously alive and well, I have three nephews named Searle."

"Is it the one who stayed with us a few years ago?" asked Searle. He hoped not; they weren't especially close, but he was the only one of the three with whom Searle was actually acquainted. Regardless, he had just lost a cousin--again.

Abrich's eyes narrowed. "That old grouch? He wishes. Believe me, that one has a hundred more years ahead of him and he'll be begging for the sweet release of death every miserable day of each of them if he doesn't quit moping around feeling sorry for himself and start being a man. No, the Searle I'm talking about is Aunt Meraleene's son."

If Lord Severin had appeared forty before, he looked all of fifty now. Searle did not think he would ever see his uncle ill, but this was even more sobering. "Her daughter has been dead a mere three months and now her six-year-old son is gone as well?"

Abrich bowed his head. "Unfortunate, isn't it?"

"That poor woman. Their father is lucky to have been spared this grief with his own untimely death."

"Indeed. Six!"

Six. If six was not too young to die, then neither was thirteen. Neither was seventeen, and neither was thirty-two. Family deaths had become common among the Dovian aristocracy, and it seemed to Searle that with each passing relative, those who remained would occasionally wonder who would be next; it was now, at the ripe old age of almost thirteen, that Searle was mature enough to understand that it could be anyone.

Perhaps he would be told one day that the birth of his sibling or nephew or niece had not gone as planned, mother or child or both reclaimed by their maker in the process. One day, he might wake beside the corpse of his hours-dead wife, or only to run to the crib of his deceased son or daughter. One day, he might return alone from a fatal journey through the woods, only to kneel at the feet of his young cousin Jadin and tell the boy that he was now Lord Veldora.

One day, he would close his own eyes, never to open them again.

"Give my condolences to the family," muttered Lord Severin under his breath. "I shall write Meraleene a letter, and I imagine my wife will do the same."

"I will deliver both personally," Abrich promised.

"Thank you. You are welcome to spend a few days here, if you choose."

Abrich nodded and opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Falidor, Florian at his heels. "My lord," Falidor addressed Searle's uncle, his fist clenched and his brow quivering, "another village has been destroyed."

With those words, Lord Severin now wore a different sort of frown entirely. "What?"

Falidor trembled. "In the baron's lands, near our border. A few people managed to get out safely, but... well, most of them were doomed. The baron wants you in his study as soon as possibly, and he's sent for the duke and the king as well."

Searle turned to face his lord, only to find a different man than the one who had been standing there seconds before. This man was not weary and old and resigned. This man had an air of determined, youthful invincibility about him, and was armed with a gaze as sharp as any sword and a scowl that could kill a man more swiftly than an axe to the neck. He was not fifty, nor was he forty; he was not even thirty. He was scarcely older than Abrich. "Is it too much to ask for some occasional good news in this godforsaken kingdom?"

Florian glowered bitterly. "It seems that way, doesn't it?"

Ignoring him, Lord Severin locked eyes with Searle. "Tell your aunt where I've gone, and don't keep her in the dark about the circumstances. In regards to your poor young cousin, perhaps wait for me to return to tell her, just so she isn't overwhelmed--of course, this is assuming that I return at all. As we're all well aware in these troubled times, every man has his last day."

"That's true," Searle admitted, "but today is not yours, my lord."

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