Troy Denning - The Verdant Passage

“He won’t ignore us, that’s true,” returned Dyan. “He’ll have us assassinated.”

Beryl added, “Even if we survive, Kalak hasn’t listened to the Senate on any matter dear to him in a thousand years. What makes you think he’s going to start now?”

“If he doesn’t, we’ll withhold our taxes. We’ll burn our fields,” Agis said enthusiastically. “We’ll revolt.”

“We’ll commit suicide is what you mean,” Dyan said, shaking his head. “You’re talking madness. We can’t force the king to do something he doesn’t want to. He’ll kill us all.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Agis demanded.

Beryl glanced toward the ziggurat. “Nothing. Kalak’s been building the ziggurat for a hundred years. Our grandfathers and our fathers managed to survive his mismanagement, and so will we. Now that the tower’s less than a month from completion, we’d be fools to oppose it.”

“In a month, my faro will be withered and dead,” Agis said. “Without enough slaves to work my wells and irrigate the land, my fields are baking. The rest of you can’t even be as well off as I am.”

“So what? Are any of us going to starve?” Dyan asked, shrugging his plump shoulders. “I, for one, have no intention of risking my life to feed slaves and derelicts.”

Kiah placed a hand on Agis’s shoulder. “You’re overreacting, my friend,” he said. “If you look at it in a certain light, the situation is advantageous to us.” He paused and smiled at the other nobles. “I’m sure we all keep crops stockpiled against famine. Once the effects of the confiscations hit, those stockpiles will be worth ten times what they are now. If we can reach some arrangement among ourselves and the other nobles, we might even drive the price much higher.”

Agis shrugged Kiah’s hand off his shoulder and stood. “Are we concerned about nothing but gold and protecting our own fat necks?” he demanded. “By the moons, I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

The serving wench stepped out of the door with Agis’s broy. He quickly returned to his seat, pretending to laugh at some abusive jest. Once she placed the gummy liquid in front of him, Dyan immediately handed an empty mug to her and said, “Mirabel, be a good wench and fetch me another milk vine.”

As soon as Mirabel went back into the suphouse, Agis resumed his appeal. “If we allow our fear of Kalak to intimidate us, we’re no better than his slaves.”

“If you give me a course of action that will work, I’ll go along with you,” said Dyan. “But I won’t risk my life and my estate by sponsoring a meaningless resolution that Kalak will ignore anyway.” He shook his head to emphasize his point.

“He’s right, Agis,” Beryl said, not lifting his eyes from his mug. “The Senate can do nothing.”

“Perhaps we need to do something outside the Senate,” Jaseela said, commanding the senators’ attention by ending her long silence.

“Such as?” asked Kiah.

“Kill him.”

The balcony fell quiet. Finally, Dyan asked, “Kill who, exactly?”

“You know who I’m talking about,” she countered, fixing her hazel eyes on each of the men in turn.

“Regicide?” gasped Dyan, pushing his stool away from the table. “Are you mad?”

“He’s too powerful,” objected Beryl.

“What would happen to the city?” demanded Kiah, waving his hand toward the merchant emporiums on the other side of the ziggurat. “The political and economic structure of Tyr would collapse. We wouldn’t be able to sell our crops.”

Agis remained thoughtful, trying to decide if Jaseela could be right. Perhaps the only way to save Tyr was to kill the king. It was a difficult thing for him to accept, for it meant destroying the foundation of the city’s ancient social order. He could not deny that there was much that was wrong in the city-the corruption of the templars, the poverty of the masses, the injustice of Kalak’s law-but he had always believed that those things could be corrected by working from within the established order. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to give up that notion.

Jaseela’s mind, however, was made up. “Gentlemen, all of your objections can be worked out,” she said, bracing her elbows on the table. “The question is, do we let Kalak ruin our city or don’t we?”

Kiah shook his head. “No. The situation is more complex than that. What about the templars? How will they react when Kalak is killed? How will-”

“The question before us is simple,” Jaseela interrupted, rising to her feet. “Are we nobles, or are we slaves?”

When no one answered, the noblewoman turned her hazel eyes on Agis. “What about you?” she demanded. “You’re the one who wanted to resist the king. Is your courage limited to the Senate chamber, or are you willing to fight for what you believe?”

Agis met her demanding gaze with a calm countenance. “I’ve spent ten years in the Senate fighting-”

“Can you point to a single resolution that we’ve passed in that time that has actually made Tyr a better place for anyone but ourselves?” Jaseela demanded.

Agis pondered the question for a moment, then looked down into his mug of broy.

“Of course not,” she said for him. “The templars are corrupt, the Senate is corrupt, and so is the nobility.”

“So we should destroy it all and start over?” Agis asked. “You’re beginning to sound like you’re in the Veiled Alliance!”

“I wish I was,” Jaseela said bitterly. She turned to leave. “At least they’ve made enough trouble for Kalak to attract his attention.”

Agis rose to intercept her, but before he left the table he caught sight of a tumult in the square below. “Don’t leave just yet, Jaseela,” he said, moving to the edge of the balcony. “Something’s happening in the square.”

Jaseela and the other nobles joined him. Dozens of paupers were pouring into the square from the narrow alleys that led away from it. From the elves’ tents rose a drone of apprehensive voices as the merchants hurriedly packed their goods into bundles. Confused residents were casting aside their water pots and trying to push through the mass of paupers rushing into the square.

Kiah searched the sky above the tenements surrounding the plaza. “There’s no sign of smoke, so I don’t think it’s a fire.”

The five nobles watched in silence for several more moments. The scene grew more panicked and more confused, with beggars and paupers continuing to stream in from all directions. Soon, hundreds of people jammed the small plaza, half of them crowding toward the center and the other half pushing toward the tenements surrounding it. Most of the elves had wrapped their wares in their tents and, in groups of two and three, were beating their way through the crowd.

Agis turned to peer down an alley running alongside the Red Kank. He found himself staring down at a half-giant, his menacing eyes as big around as plates. Below the eyes, a huge nose ran down to a misshaped, thick-lipped mouth.

“In the king’s name, stand away from the wall!” ordered the half-giant, tilting his head back only a little to look up at Agis.

Agis obeyed, reaching for his mug of broy. The guard turned his attention back to the alley, gleefully kicking at the beggars, driving the poor wretches into the square.

Once the half-giant had passed the Red Kank, Dyan, Beryl, and Kiah immediately disappeared into the suphouse. Agis and Jaseela stayed where they were to watch what happened next.

From each alley emerged one of the king’s huge soldiers, using his feet and a club of polished bone to drive a small group of terrified paupers before him. Behind the half-giants came templars armed with whips and long black ropes. As Agis and Jaseela watched, the templars moved to the edge of the square and started separating people into two groups. They released one group to leave the square, then they bound the hands of those who remained into loops on the black ropes. As far as Agis could tell, the only thing that determined whether the templars released a person or bound him into a rope was whether or not the captive could produce a bribe.