Chapter Eight
Pel
Pel sucked in a breath as understanding dawned. It had been obvious, actually, what his mother had been saying, but it had never crossed Pel’s mind that the exiles would be willing to do such a thing.
It was Bav who said it out loud. “You’re saying that the exiles would be willing to swear their Fealty to Prince Torex?”
Their mother turned a look that was almost pleading on her oldest son. “I did try to tell them that you could be trusted. Honestly, Bavil.”
He looked sort of stunned even as he blurted out, “I don’t want any part of this.” Then he made a face at Tor. “Sorry, that’s probably not a very supportive thing to say, is it?”
And thankfully, Tor laughed softly, and some of the tension eased from his frame.
“No, I don’t blame you for that. It’s funny, because you’d think your father would have jumped at the opportunity.”
Tama immediately countered, “We would never have consented to be under his power. He’d do it for all the wrong reasons.”
That was certainly true.
Tor blew out a breath, straightened his shoulders, and looked at Pel’s mother squarely.
“Listen. You know it’s treason for a non-sovereign to accept Fealty from someone else.
I’m already in a lot of trouble with my brother, and I can genuinely not guarantee that I won’t be killed for that, for what you’re mentioning right now, or in the midst of what I’m going to try to do as soon as we’re done this discussion.
I’m probably not a very good bargain at all.
And I won’t give up my Fealty to my brother, not even for you. ”
“We wouldn’t expect you to,” Pel’s mother said, expression grave.
“It’s not something that we enter into lightly, I assure you.
Not everyone is altogether comfortable, and we do understand the risks inherent in what we’re proposing.
But the risk of inaction is killing us anyway.
The situation has improved somewhat with Forex gone if Bavil isn’t going to continue to hunt us down. ”
“Of course not,” Bav said promptly, looking insulted by the very idea.
Their mother smiled faintly at him, then continued more seriously, “But we’re still living on a land that won’t support us anymore. Where does that leave us? Will you allow all the exiles to move onto your land? To live here without pledging their Fealty to you?”
Pel’s brother frowned. “I would have said yes ten minutes ago. But what happens if you’re right about the land needing Fealty?
Would we be fine because you were now sharing the land with my citizens who’ve pledged Fealty to me?
Or would you bring the issue with you? And if the High King takes exception to any of that, what if my people are punished as a result?
I have an entire realm I need to protect. ”
He looked uncertain. Tor was nodding his head, and their mother looked… surprisingly approving given that she’d just been rejected. She smiled faintly at Bav.
“Spoken like a true ruler of his people.” She looked to Tor.
“But you don’t have a people. Or you have chosen all people, and at least once, that included us.
That made such an impression on my people that some who were categorically opposed have expressed themselves willing as long as it is with you.
We thought we lost our chance, only now here you are, and at a time when we can benefit you. ”
Pel couldn’t help but burst in, “By making him commit actual treason? High King Varex could truly have him put to death for this!”
Despite everything that had happened, Pel had been hopeful they could explain what really happened up the mountain. But this? This really was treason.
“We can’t control that,” his mother acknowledged.
“It’s certainly a risk, and it could mean the deaths of all of us, not just Prince Torex.
” She looked at Tor again. “But right now, you’re weak and injured, and you’re heading for a fight.
You’ll be stronger and more able to face that fight if you add the Fealty of our people to your own magic. ”
Bav mumbled, “It’s certainly a boost.”
Tor looked torn, and Pel could see why he was hesitating. This magical coma had taken a lot out of him, he was physically injured, and he was terrified for his family. Any advantages they had would be good.
Except it could irreparably harm the relationship between him and Varex. It was actual treason.
It was possibly the only thing that could help these people.
Was there another option?
Tor’s voice was carefully neutral as he asked, “What would you require of me?”
“After the matter with your family is resolved, as long as you are able, you come back and live on the land with us. You take care of us just as any ruler would. And we see if that is enough to stop the terrible things that are happening in our land.”
Tor blew out a breath. “How sure are you that this will solve the problem?”
It was a good question. What if she was wrong?
“When did the landslide stop?” she asked.
They looked at her in confusion.
“The night you saved everyone up the mountain,” she prompted. “When did it stop? When did the storm stop?”
Tor blinked. “Oh, uh, a little before dawn, I think.” He glanced at Pel. “I wasn’t really tracking the time.”
Pel nodded. “I remember the sky lightening.”
She smiled faintly. “I imagine that’s true.
But I mean to suggest that the landslide stopped and the storm dissipated after you poured so much of your magic into the shield grounded in the mountain.
Since that night, the weather in the area, though far from perfect, has been better than it has been in years. ”
Pel and Tor exchanged glances. That was interesting.
Especially since they knew that Tor had actually been borrowing the High King’s magic and, they’d conjectured, some of the Fealty magic.
It didn’t prove anything definitively. Maybe that was all a coincidence.
The landslide had to stop eventually, after all.
But it was suggestive when put together with everything else the exiles had experienced.
“You’re sure it’s worth the risk?” Tor demanded. “Absolutely certain?”
She was silent for a long moment, and then she looked him right in the eye. “Do you know what happens when a ruler pulls too much from the Fealty?”
Tor’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“When they pull too much from the Fealty, they don’t burn out their magical core. They burn out the cores of their citizens.”
There was a collective intake of breath from everyone in the cave—except for Pel’s mother and Tama. Cavun wasn’t pretending not to listen anymore, and Pel couldn’t blame him.
“That’s why the exiles left,” she continued. “It’s why they forswore their Fealty and fled. Because they were tired of being burned out and killed.”
Pel let out an unsteady breath. All those Unremarkable who’d died in the war. He’d had never understood why they’d been using magic to begin with, how they could have used so much that it killed them.
But this made a terrible, awful amount of sense.
“The avatars,” Tor breathed. “The royal ones.”
She nodded, her expression grim. “That were presented to the people as though they were protecting everyone, as though royalty fighting with avatars meant that people didn’t have to fight or die.”
And instead, the rulers had powered them with their own citizens, and when they’d drawn too much, it had killed them.
“Does everyone know?” Tor choked out.
“The exiles,” Pel’s mother answered. “The rulers. I knew as Forex’s spouse since I lived through the war with him.”
Tor looked stricken. “Why didn’t my mother say anything? Why didn’t my brother?”
It was a question they couldn’t possibly answer.
Instead, Pel’s mother said, “You’ve nearly died twice, Prince Torex, by expending too much magic recently.”
Pel flinched, and Bav shot Tama a furious look. She didn’t meet his eyes, staring intently into the fire.
“Yes,” Tor acknowledged.
“You had another source of magic with you at the time,” she pursued inexorably. “And yet he was unharmed. Why?”
Tor met Pel’s mother’s eyes with ones that glittered. His jaw was clenched, and he gritted out, “Over my dead body.”
To Pel’s surprise, she smiled. “Exactly. There’s no definitive proof that an Extraordinary can consciously protect those they’re bonded to, but I have always been of the opinion that it’s more likely to be a decision than not.
You value other lives over your own. And for that reason, the majority of the exiles who fled this very thing more than twenty-five years ago are willing to put themselves in your hands.
They trust you to do the right thing in a way that they’ve not trusted a ruler to do in a very long time. ”
Tor’s hand in his lap was visibly shaking. Pel picked it up and twined their fingers together. Tor cast him a fleeting smile of gratitude before looking back at Pel’s mom.
“What if you’re wrong? What if there’s another disaster, and I need more power than I have?”
She met his eyes evenly. “Then we would trust that what you were doing was actually to save people. Not pride or ego or anger.”
Tond has lost the most people to the exiles, Pel remembered suddenly.
Citizens had fled to Alossa and other realms—it was part of the reason why Alossa was so big following the peace accords.
More people had wanted to be there. Even if everyone hadn’t understood exactly what had been going on with the Fealty, had they felt it on some fundamental level?
Tor blew out a shaky breath. “All right. Hypothetically, you’d want me to live with the exiles in the hopes that my presence with the sworn Fealty would provide the land with the stability that it needs.”
It sounded wild when put like that, but maybe no weirder than anything else that had happened recently.
“Yes,” Pel’s mother confirmed.
“What else?”