Pelun, it was clear, was extremely attentive. He knew most of these people by name, their circumstances, their children, and their preoccupations. He followed up with issues they’d mentioned on previous visits. He had a head for details.
It was an immensely attractive trait, and Tor found to his surprise that he was thinking about how useful it would actually be in Tor’s position. He was decently good with names and faces, but he didn’t have Pelun’s knack.
When they left the last farm, Tor said, “You have a gift.”
Pelun looked at him… suspiciously.
Tor wondered what it would take to get the man to accept a compliment and not assume that Tor was… what, setting him up for humiliation? If that was the case, then Tor needed to have a serious talk with whoever had crushed the man’s self-confidence to this degree. He was oddly self-possessed at the same time that there were these streaks of vulnerability a mile wide. Tor found himself wanting to intervene with Pelun’s family, even as he told himself that such intervention was unlikely to be welcome.
It was harder than he thought to see something that was wrong and know that he had to leave it alone.
Tor concentrated on trying to explain himself now in such a way that he wasn’t going to offend the other man.
“I thought I was good at names and faces, but you’re miles ahead of me.”
Pelun took a moment, as though he needed to digest those words and look for hidden barbs.
He finally said, “They’re my people,” like that explained everything.
“And does your father know as much about them?” Tor pursued. “Your brother or sister?”
Pelun hesitated for a moment. “No. But I have to be good for something, don’t I?”
Tor barely managed not to wince and said vehemently, “It goes far beyond that. You make them feel valued.”
“They already have value!” Pelun said vehemently.
“Of course they do,” Tor agreed, making Pelun look slightly less as though he were going to hit Tor again. “But that doesn’t mean they alwaysfeelvalued. You ensure that they’re seen and recognized in a system that sometimes aggregates them more than it should.”
Pelun looked… almost faintly pleased, and Tor had to suppress the urge to… what, puff out his chest and preen?
Goddess help him, he was a fool. He tried to turn his attention to something else.
Carefully, he asked, “Is the raiding as much of a concern as it sounds like it is?”
The thing was, the raiding wasn’t happening this close to Baless and the castle, but for the farmers and townsfolk to have heard about it and to worry? It wasn’t a good sign.
Pelun hesitated, and his words came out like he was choosing them one by one. “It’s gotten distinctly worse in the last year or two.” He hesitated, and then blurted, “The King is determined to deal with it internally. He wants to crush the exiles.”
Tor pointed out mildly, “The land was granted to them as long as they stay out of our lands.”
“My father considers that they have broken that pledge with the raiding.”
Tor thought that the situation was a lot more complicated than that, but it wasn’t as though Alossa was much given to being raided—certainly not by the exiles beyond the Tond mountains. Each of the realms had criminals and thieves from time to time, but nothing outrageous.
The biggest group of malcontents lay beyond the Tond mountains, where they’d been exiled when they forswore their Fealty during the war. But that had been twenty-five years ago, and apart from the occasional skirmish, the peace had held—or so Tor and Varex thought.
Of course, there was another reason to get rid of the exiles.
“He wants to expand?” Tor asked softly.
Pelun’s eyes flew to his. “I didn’t say that!”
He hadn’t really needed to say it, since everyone knew Forex hadn’t been happy with the shrinking of his realm in the peace accords. But… such an overt statement could be construed as treason, and Torwasthe brother of the High King.
Tor corrected himself. “He wants to make sure that his people are safe.”
Pelun continued to stare for a long, measuring moment, and then he looked away to the farmland that they were riding through as he carefully agreed, “Yes, of course.”
