King Ulyas has ruled Kerwin since before the Neferati founders came north. He negotiated Kerwin's entry into the empire roughly five centuries ago, watched the founding throne dilute into humanity, witnessed the Severance, and has outlived every emperor since. He still rules the same halfling villages, manages the same modest tribute, and makes the same annual trip into the Fireknife Mountains with prisoners who do not come back.
What makes him dangerous to Tarkha is not his age but his memory. Ulyas carries the things the current dynasty would rather no one held: the original wording of the accession bargains, the founding families' private histories, and the real sequence of the Severance — whether it was the clean succession the empire records or the coup its enemies allege. The historians in Nektuna argue the question and cannot close it. Ulyas could close it in a sentence. He has not, and he has not decided whether he ever will.
His silence is not indifference. The knowledge is leverage, and a halfling who has watched five centuries of emperors understands leverage better than men who get one lifetime to practice. So long as the question stays open, the throne in Nektuna has reason to keep Kerwin comfortable and unprovoked, and the founders in their southern exile have reason to believe the old king might one day speak for them. He lets both sides hope. Neither has yet offered him anything he wants more than he wants Kerwin left alone.
Tarkhetan's officials have learned not to push Kerwin toward closer integration. The ones who tried had short careers. Ulyas remembers them too.