Chapter Ten #3
What happened, he wondered, if the parents didn’t pledge their Fealty to the same person?
Why had Tor never wondered about this before?
Ada hadn’t renounced her Fealty to Varex because everyone’s Fealty passed from the other rulers to Varex anyway.
But normally, a royal who married into another royal family renounced their old Fealty and pledged to the new royal.
That was what Fernila had done when she’d become Varex’s wife, no longer pledging to her father but directly to Varex instead.
It was part of why Alossa was so large. Many citizens had wanted to come to Alossa and pledge directly to the High Queen following the war.
Would Pel be willing to pledge directly to Varex if that option was open to them? Or would he want to remain pledged to his brother? If Tor remained pledged to Varex, then who would their child be pledged to?
Tor should definitely have paid more attention in lessons, never mind that they’d been nearly two decades ago.
There might be families here where not all members were willing to pledge their Fealty to him.
Tor would accept that, and he supposed he’d see if he felt the connection to the children or not.
There were all sorts of people in the crowd, those who were old and jaded, those who looked so very weary but also hopeful, the young and angry ones, and the ones who clearly hadn’t lived through the horrors of the war personally—and regarded the horror of the land that was killing them as the worse evil right now.
Some of them regarded Tor mistrustfully, but they were still here and pledging. Some looked at him like he was their savior, which made him squirm with discomfort. He’d try to live up to their hope, but it was a tall order.
He really hoped that he’d be able to come back and actually spend time with these people. Right now, all he could try to do was accept pledges of Fealty as quickly as possible, because the sooner he accepted all their pledges, the sooner he could try to rescue his family.
Was this what his mother had felt after the war, when new people had flocked to Alossa? It was a tiny trickle that swelled piece by piece, one after the other until it felt like something more substantial, his and not his, deep in his core.
It wasn’t the same as bonding with Pel, magic that had entwined so deeply that Tor hadn’t even realized it had happened.
But it wasn’t as foreign as healing magic, either.
It felt like it belonged, even as it slowly grew with each additional person, like it was suffusing every part of him and filling him with energy.
He’d never stopped to think about what the capacity of a single person was for magic.
He’d known since he was fourteen that he held the most you could—apart from a ruler with Fealty.
But he hadn’t thought about what that would mean practically, the space that it would take up inside him.
But it was like a heretofore unknown capacity was being revealed inside him where all this magic could fit, like he was expanding deep inside where no one could see.
Tor pledged and pledged and pledged. Pel showed up at his side at one point with water and some bread and cheese that he insisted Tor eat.
He wasn’t hungry—he felt like he was so full he’d never need to eat again—but Pel cast him a withering look.
“Does every ruler everywhere still eat? Shut up and eat your food.”
Tor duly shut up and ate, making Pel roll his eyes at his obedience.
And then he pledged some more. He didn’t really notice it getting dark until torches and fires sprang up. What had happened to the rest of the day? But the exiles were still lined up, and Tor wasn’t about to stop accepting their Fealty.
Distantly, he recognized that up until he’d started accepting Fealty, he’d been in a magical coma and been exhausted by standing up. That reality seemed very far away right now.
He needed to get through all this Fealty, and if they stopped for breaks all the time, that wasn’t going to happen.
With more and more people describing what to do and what happened to those around them, they’d gotten the actual pledging down to a fine art.
It took about fifteen seconds. Tor’s mouth was getting a bit sore from smiling at everyone, but he didn’t want any of them to feel like he wasn’t fully welcoming them, or like he didn’t take their Fealty as the gift it was.
Occasionally, someone had a question for him, and even though part of Tor chafed at the delay, urging him to go faster and faster so that he could go after his family, he always made himself slow down and listen to them and answer as best he could.
On a handful of occasions, someone decided they couldn’t pledge their Fealty after all. Tor assured them that he understood and would be here if they changed their minds.
Assuming the theory that Istila had espoused was correct, then the land needed the Fealty, but hopefully there was a margin for error.
If eighty or ninety percent of people pledged their Fealty, would the remaining percentage still be protected?
Would it continue to throw off the land or the weather? In a minor or major way?