CHAPTER 1095: USELESS PLANS (PART ONE)

"I can’t disappoint her after she came back from the Heavenly Shores to help me put things right..."

If Owain had any doubts about the state of his father’s mind, those words made it abundantly clear that the old Marquis had fallen so deeply into delusions that he believed that Owain’s deceased mother had returned to the world of the living to help Bors ’put things right.’

His father hadn’t just fallen into a delusion that they were still living in the days before his mother’s death. His mind was clearly broken, pulling bits and pieces together like scraps of fabric and stitching them together into a fabric that only seemed whole and beautiful to the man who wore it like a patchwork cloak. But to anyone else, anyone who was still sane, it was clear that the aging lord’s mind was full of holes.

Owain took a long, slow sip of wine as his mind worked furiously to find the right way to handle his father in this delicate state. He’d intended on provoking him, stoking his father’s rage with the goal of producing another outburst, like when Bors had attacked Jocelynn.

He was willing to take a blow or two from his father in order to sell the story that he’d been forced to ’defend himself.’ He’d even prepared a convenient lie about the reason Sir Gilander had defied his orders to send a message to Loman.

After all, a loyal knight would never defy his liege lord, but if Owain could convince his father that Loman was never his son to begin with, and that Gilander, loyal Gilander, had only remained at his side all these years because he was watching over the son he’d sired with Owain’s ’unfaithful’ mother...

His father’s raving accusations would become the proof Owain needed to unravel any of his father’s recent proclamations as the work of a madman, and in the chaos of the scuffle, Owain would become a tragic figure who had tried to protect a loyal knight from his own father’s madness.

But now that he heard his father speaking as if his mother were present, perhaps sitting in her neatly cleaned and freshly polished embroidery chair even now, his plans to accuse her of infidelity and paint Loman as illegitimate as a means of provoking his father fell apart. Owain could hardly refute a ghost of the past whom his father believed was giving him counsel from beyond the grave.

Instead, he needed a different method, and he needed time to put it together. Time that he would have to sit here and stomach his father’s insults about the woman whom Owain had chosen to be the mother of his own children...

"What is this ’way out,’ that you’ve prepared for me, Father?" Owain asked carefully as he lowered his cup of wine. It took considerable effort on his part to continue wearing the mask of the dutiful son, playing along with his father even as the old man called his beloved Jocelynn a beast.

More than anything, he wanted to hurl the heavy silver cup at his father’s head, the way Bors had hurled so many things at him over the years, but he made himself hold back... He couldn’t lose control now that he was so close to the end.

"Take a look for yourself," Bors said, clutching his chest as a fit of coughing struck him. The sleeve of his tunic that he covered his mouth with bore several stains of dried blood, and this latest coughing fit only added more to it, but by now, the Lothian Marquis barely noticed.

When Owain retrieved the stack of documents, his eyes widened in surprise at just how many of them his father had bundled together. On top of the stack, the most impressive of the documents was made from fine parchment, affixed to a supple leather backing and bearing the full seal of the Lothian coat of arms, yellow silk ribbons, as well as his father’s personal signet and even more seals to mark a document that would likely outlive them both if it was properly cared for.

"You’re bestowing a title of Knight Errantry on someone? Who is ’Gawain Prescote?" Owain asked in confusion as he looked at the document that claimed to elevate the bastard child of Sir Dugal Prescote to the rank of Knight Errant in recognition of many years spent leading soldiers in battle against the demons who infested Lothian March.

The name ’Dugal Prescote’ was at least somewhat familiar. He’d been one of the knights who fell in the final year of the War of Inches, and he’d left behind no heirs. Owain only remembered the name because Prescote Village still bore the family name of the knight who had founded the village, even after the line had ended with Dugal’s death.

"Keep reading," Bors insisted. "You’ll understand," he said as he drank deeply of the strong wine to soothe his rough throat. He’d barely spoken the past several days, saying only a few words to Percivus when the Inquisitor delivered reports of his findings or required Bors’ approval for something like the execution of conspirators who had tried to poison him.

Now that he was saying so much, it felt like his body was betraying him, silencing him even when there was so much he needed to say to Owain before he would lose the ability to speak to his eldest son forever.

"A letter of introduction to Marquis Kuusik?" Owain said, furrowing his brow as he read further. "And another for Marquis Cenita," he said, reading over the documents before he turned to another, this time approving the Knight Errant ’Sir Gawain Prescote’ to use a personal crest of a bear’s head in front of a downward-pointing sword. This one, like the first, carried more silk ribbons along with its seals, even though it wasn’t as substantial as the first one.

But the more Owain read, the clearer the picture became. His father’s ’way out’ was to give his son a new name, declaring him the bastard son of a fallen knight. He hadn’t even been granted any lands to go with his new title; he would be forced to wander the Kingdom of Gaal in search of a lord who would take him in and grant him lands if he wanted any hope of passing down his title. Otherwise, any children he fathered would be considered commoners and the title he’d been given would die with him.

As a mighty marquis, only five dukes, the princes, and the king himself would stand above him. But as a knight errant, the identity Owain’s father intended to give him was barely considered a nobleman at all. Even upstarts like the arrogant Guild Masters from Blackwell would stand above him once they were granted their lands. It was absolutely intolerable!