In Which Searle Mourns as He Has for Years

December 25, 1183

Merry fucking Christmas.

It was only a little past dawn, and that was the sole thing for which Searle was grateful at the moment. The steward had woken him a few hours prior and given him the news in the study while Ren and the children still slept, all the while not knowing that anything was wrong. Searle dreaded having to tell them, especially his nieces.

Those poor little girls knew they didn't have a daddy any more. But how could he crush the hope that one day, that might have changed?

He should have known. He'd been shocked, sure... but he hadn't been surprised. Some part of him must have been expecting that some chambermaid would one day walk into his brother's bedroom to find him dangling from the rafters. Ietrin just hadn't been the same since Ramona died.

The steward had brought the will. Ietrin had no sons, and his daughters were very young, so he'd left almost everything to Searle, with a portion set aside for their mother and half-siblings and instructions for his daughters' dowries. Or, Laralita and Ramona's dowries, at least. A brief footnote gifted Ramona's twin to a nunnery.

Not "Renata". Not "Ietrin's third daughter". Ramona's twin.

The elder Ramona had died giving birth to the twins. The first twin, who would later be named for her mother, had been an easy delivery, but the second had been breached. The baby had barely made it out alive, and Ramona herself had not been so lucky. Ietrin had never gotten over that, nor had he ever forgotten his grudge against his youngest, despite the fact that she hadn't done a damn thing.

Searle remembered the day he and Ren had ridden out to Ietrin's to take the girls into their care, when everyone from Ietrin's mother-in-law to King Oswald himself had agreed that his intervention would be for the best. The twins had been about a year and a half. Ramona, while sweet-natured, had been plump and spoiled, dressed more finely than Searle's own children, Ietrin's choice staff at her every beck and call for all she could not yet beck and call; Renata had been a scrawny, near-mute little bundle of loneliness, every cry she dared venture falling on deaf ears. If the girl's grandmother and aunts and uncles would have stood for it, Ietrin probably would have let her die.

The girls had been in Searle's care for over two years now. They received the same levels of care and attention, and as a result, were now more or less developmentally equal; Renata was even a little more clever than Ramona was, though he wouldn't have felt right saying so aloud. Both girls seemed happy, or as happy as they could have been with a dead mother and a deadbeat father. The issues only arose when Ietrin visited, when he doted over Ramona and Laralita while Renata's older cousins tried their darnedest to make up for her father's disinterest.

Perhaps it was wrong to disrespect the wishes of the dead, but Searle had told the steward to pass along the will to his head secretary, who had once earned a dubious living as a forger. He'd provided instructions to duplicate the will exactly, except for the part about the girls' futures; that was to allot an equal dowry to each daughter, with no mention of any nunnery. If Renata--or either of her sisters--chose to take the veil, then Searle would support that decision, but if she didn't, then he could and would dower her himself.

He would not see his three-year-old niece more or less exiled from the family, cloistered away to forever atone for the apparent sin of her birth. If that was what Ietrin would have insisted for her, then perhaps his suicide had been for the better. Searle would not mourn the man Ietrin had become, the bitter, useless wreck who blamed all of his problems on a toddler.

He would mourn his little brother, as he had now for years.

Searle stood, making his way out of the study and toward the stairs to the stables. The untroubled of the continent would be waking soon, and he supposed he'd best break the news to his mother himself.

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