Both Torres and van Rijn display leadership skills:
Torres speaks for all locals in the Solar Commonwealth with solidarity from extra-solar lodges;
van Rijn will relay the Brotherhood's demands to his associates, apparently with little hope that all will respond;
although the siblings at large would have voted to avoid the Kossaluth of Borthu as soon as the press-ganging began, the Lodgemasters held back, hoping that something could be done, but now they must act;
instead of hiding behind a collective decision, Torres declares to the merchant prince that he himself has taken a lead in getting the Brotherhood to act;
Torres has met an impressed man so van Rijn asks what it was like - he needs information before he can continue the discussion;
with these two men cooperating, there might be a solution.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteIt was not so much that he met a man who had been shanghaied that bothered Torries, it was seeing how he had been brainwashed or reconditioned to be what he was not that upset him.
Ad astra! Sean