CHAPTER 1093: LEGACIES (PART ONE)

"You’ve been busy, Father," Owain said in a carefully neutral tone as he lifted a random decree off the stack on his father’s desk. "You want to establish an Academy of Trades in Lothian City?" Owain said with a frown as he tried to understand the state of his father’s mind.

"Mmm, yes," Bors replied as he returned to his desk and began sorting through the stack of decrees, looking for something specific. "It’s been too long that the best tradesmen in the march were trained in Keating or elsewhere. The duchies look down on us for being rough frontiersmen, but when we have to send our best apprentices to them to learn, and half of those apprentices never return, it’s hard to blame them."

"I should have done this years ago," Bors added. "That engineer from Blackwell made me realize how lacking our own engineers are, but academies are expensive and recruiting experts to teach in them is even harder... I’ve ignored things like this for too long because it wouldn’t help us in the fight against the demons but, but I see now that I was wrong," he said with a feverish gleam in his eyes, pausing to look out the window as if he could see where this new academy would one day be built, and how it would transform his domain.

Isla was right, he thought. It felt like it had only been a few days ago, while she was encouraging him to put up with a breakfast of boiled eggs and oat porridge, that they’d discussed how the coastal lords like Rhys Blackwell built the fortunes of their domains on the backs of skilled tradesmen.

She talked about a ’Wheel of Wealth,’ and how turning the raw materials that were plentiful in Lothian March into fine, finished goods would bring them a greater return on every barge that drifted down the River Luath into Keating or Trevarthen duchies ever could.

Whether it was timber, wool, or furs, Lothian March had all of them in abundance, but each year, those were the very things that Bors was forced to sell to tradesmen in the duchies in order to pay his tithes to the crown. Instead, Isla had suggested that they should build a reputation for the goods produced from those raw materials, whether it was fine furnishings or fur hats, it mattered less what it was they did with the materials than that people in Lothian March were the ones who were able to obtain the wealth that flowed from producing things of value.

And it wouldn’t be enough, according to Isla, to simply make things of their own that could be sold in the markets of Keating or Trevarthen, or even the Royal Capital. They had to make the best things that could be made from the materials they harvested, or else there would be no reason for the wealthy tradesmen, merchants, and even noblemen of their neighboring territories to buy their goods.

"Your mother has been helping me to see where I’ve been blind," Bors added as he looked at the stack of decrees that had flowed from suggestions she made while nursing him back to health. Everything from cultivating fisheries in Leufroy Barony to carving out territory for the Guild Masters from Blackwell County, he’d noted down her suggestions and found a way to work them into this final batch of decrees.

Some of them were odd, and Bors’ brow wrinkled once again as he wondered when Isla had become so knowledgeable about merchants and how to manage them for the benefit of his domain, but when he considered her words, they’d sounded well reasoned and wise. He’d promised her that he would listen, just like he’d promised her so many things when they first married, and when their sons were born... Now, it was time to make good on those promises.

"Go sit by the fire, Owain," Bors added after a long moment spent gazing out the window while the hailstorm filled the office with the irregular tapping of icy pellets against the thick glass. "Take your boots off, throw another log on, and sit with your old man for a bit," Bors added as he returned to the search for a document among the many scattered across the large desk carved from a piece of one of the demon’s sacred trees.

For a moment, Owain debated whether or not he should play along with this farce, continuing to act like a dutiful son when there was no longer any reason or need to, but... There was also no need to rush. It would take Sir Gilander at least an hour or two to send messenger birds to Baron Hanrahan and to prepare a party of riders and trackers to retrieve his brother Loman from the wilderness. He could indulge his father for a few minutes longer.

Owain found a genuine smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he stepped out of his riding boots before approaching the hearth. The rug before the hearth had been made from the hide of a single claw demon, with rich, tawny fur and patches of a lighter, golden tone. The demon was said to have been one of the largest of its kind, and while a much younger Owain had promised to find an even larger claw demon to slay, he was beginning to believe it might not be possible.

He could still remember how impressed he’d been by the pelt when his father brought it home from one of the final battles of the War of Inches. He’d still been young enough in those years to play on the rug before the fire, but his brother Loman had been the one who was young enough that when he learned to walk and took his first steps, it had been on this very rug. It wasn’t until later that Owain came to appreciate the feeling of walking across the remains of a defeated enemy and using its soft fur to warm his toes before the fire.

Once he did, however, he became determined to hunt a worthy foe for his own children to trample beneath their feet from the day they learned to walk... Not that doing so had given Loman any great courage, but then, Loman had always been a coward, hiding behind the robes of the Church and refusing to face the dangers of the world. Owain’s children would be different, and he wouldn’t make the mistakes that his father had made with either of his sons.