CHAPTER 1102: A DEAD MAN’S DECREES (PART ONE)

More than an hour had passed since Bors Lothian’s death before a soft knock sounded at the door of the marquis’s office.

"You may enter, quietly," Owain said without rising from the chair behind the stately oak desk.

He’d cast aside the blanket his father draped over the chair in his final days, and he’d lit a pair of oil lamps beside the desk to make it easier to read through the stacks of documents and decrees that littered the desk but the office itself was still shrouded in dark, dancing shadows that the light of the hearth could never fully banish.

On the walls, the preserved heads and polished skulls of more than a dozen demons, taken as trophies by generations of Owain’s predecessors, stared down at the man sitting behind the desk in silent judgment. In the flickering light of the hearth, the gruesome trophies looked larger than life and more menacing than they ever would in the light of day.

But Owain wasn’t the child he’d once been. Other than him, everything in the office was dead, and he had no reason to fear anything that he’d once feared as a child. This was his domain now, and just as he intended to walk out from his father’s shadow, he intended to add his own legacy of slaughter and conquest to these hallowed walls.

"My lords, I..." Sir Gilander said as he entered the office, only to pause when he saw Owain raise a finger to his lips, pointing at his father’s slumped figure in a chair before the hearth.

"My father’s illness claimed his life before I arrived," Owain said quietly as he gestured for Gilander to join him at the desk. "I’ve been sorting through the decrees he left behind, trying to understand," Owain said, allowing his voice to trail off as though he couldn’t bear to say what it was that he was trying to understand about his father’s final moments.

It took several heartbeats for Owain’s words to penetrate Gilander’s mind before the aging knight could accept that the lord he’d served for more than thirty years was dead and not simply sleeping in the chair by the hearth.

It hadn’t been that many days since Gilander had sat in the chair opposite Bors’, drinking wine to mourn the death of their comrade in arms, Sir Cathal, before Bors sent Gilander to investigate the attack at the summer villa.

There weren’t many of them left who had fought side by side on the slopes of Airgead Mountain during the War of Inches. Those who remained shared a bond that couldn’t be easily broken, and that bond had become even more precious as the years went by and their numbers dwindled. Now, in the span of less than a month, two of them had fallen.

"Rest well, my lord," Gilander said as he knelt toward his fallen friend. The cup of spilled wine on the floor, along with the empty bottles nearby, made it clear that the pain of his illness had become intolerable. Or perhaps it was the ghosts of days long past, who had haunted his friend in recent days, that called his friend to drink. Either way, from the look of him, Bors had been at peace when he passed, slipping silently from this life into the next.

Sitting behind the oak desk, Owain said nothing as he watched the aging knight grieving for his fallen lord. In a way, he envied Gilander. The old knight and his father had been more than just lord and vassal after so many years together, and from the look on his face, Gilander’s feelings for Bors were both deep and clear. Years of friendship, loyalty, and unshakable trust lay between them, and for Gilander, witnessing his friend’s passing was a moment of pure sorrow.

Things weren’t that simple for Bors’ son. Over the past hour, as Owain sifted through the decrees his father had left behind, he found himself cycling through a range of emotions he couldn’t entirely describe, many of which he thought he’d long ago quashed as intolerable weaknesses.

The heavy oak desk felt larger than it had ever been, even when he was a child, now that he sat on the opposite side of it. Sifting through the stacks of documents and decrees, Owain was confronted directly with the scale of his father’s domain, and the dozens of details that weighed down the other man’s shoulders as he administered one of the most prosperous stretches of the frontier in the Kingdom of Gaal.

Slowly, page by page, a grudging respect for the old man formed in his chest, and there was a piece of him that wished he could ask his father about the half-formed plans that were scattered across the desk like priceless jewels still half concealed in stone.

He longed to hear that strong, steady voice laying out complex plans for the march as though they were simple battle strategies, and the comforting feeling of knowing that every scrap of parchment on the imposing desk was another stone on the road to his family’s ascension, paving the way to the grander destiny that awaited him and generations of Lothian lords who would follow after him.

Owain’s hand clenched into a fist as he felt pangs of regret, peppering his heart the way the hailstones of the storm outside clattered off the windows. What was done was done, and he had no reason to regret what he had done.

The old man’s plans for him couldn’t be tolerated any more than he could tolerate his father handing Jocelynn over to the Inquisition. Some things could never be forgiven, and his father had wronged Owain more than any man could accept.

Besides, just as his father had been able to rely on the comfort of Owain’s mother, Owain himself would be able to rely on Jocelynn’s supportive counsel. He always did his best thinking when she was there to recognize the greatness of his ideas and to suggest ways that they could become even greater. He had no need of the old man’s guidance when he had far more trustworthy people to rely on around him.

"Gilander," Owain said in a voice that was hoarse with emotions that still warred with each other, no matter how much the young lord tried to grind them down. "I need your help."

"Of course, my lord, no, your Grace," Gilander said, wiping the moisture from his eyes as he stood to join his lord’s heir at the desk. Technically, Owain wasn’t yet the Marquis of Lothian March, but that was only because there were rituals that still needed to be observed and ceremonies to be held.

Gilander might owe his life and his loyalty to Bors Lothian, and he was certain that his liege lord had been preparing to hand his throne to Loman rather than Owain, but he wasn’t a fool. Whatever Bors’ intentions had been, he’d never made them public. Even if there was a decree sitting on that desk now, proclaiming Loman Lothian as his heir, it would never see the light of day.

Perhaps if Bors had lived long enough for Loman to return from Hanrahan, things would have been different. But, because the old marquis’s body had given out on him before his younger son returned, and before he could make his plans public... There was nothing that could stand in the way of Owain’s ascension to the throne.