“Can I be expected to run my business if his thuggish friends keep running drunkenly down the lane and knocking down my stall every night?” a merchant was complaining. Kadya realized her mind had drifted. One petty dispute after another wore on her. “There are nights I think it’s a contest—see how many minutes after Rahede gets his stall set up one of them can slam into the posts and guylines and bring it all down again!”
“Your stall is in the Western District, yes?” High Consort Kahalya asked. The matter was no real concern of hers, as she was the templar overseeing the Temple of the House—unless she was looking for a way to increase this poor merchant’s taxes, which was always a possibility.
“Yes, on the Lane of Seven Beggars,” the merchant said. He had a plump face, a round belly, and sweat streamed from beneath the checked krama wrapped about his head.
High Consort Rejan spoke up. This problem really fell under her bailiwick, the Temple of Trade. Like the other high consorts, she was entirely naked. “Then you can hardly expect not to encounter a … shall we say, a rugged element, can you?”
“I’m prepared for rugged, High Consort,” Rahede said. “It’s deliberately destructive I have a problem with. Short of killing my neighbor, I see no other way out of this. And if I killed him, I would miss the breads and rolls his bakery provides.”
“You could move,” Kahalya suggested. “Perhaps space could be found for your stall in the Palm Marketplace. Of course, a tax would have to be levied accordingly.”
“Isn’t there some way he can be reasoned with? Or threatened?” Rahede pleaded. “Or just told to keep his thug friends from visiting when they’re drunk?”
Nibenay cleared his throat, back in his gloomy corner. “Merchant, it seems to me you have two choices available to you. No, three. One, you kill the baker. Perhaps we don’t remember you threatening to do so in our very presence, and perhaps the Temple of the King’s Law doesn’t choose to pursue justice for the dead.”
High Consort Djena’s chuckle was a singularly unpleasant sound. She was their host for this forum, as the templar in charge of the Temple of the King’s Law, hers was position second only to the Shadow King himself. The temple controlled crime, punishment, the enforcement of laws, and all the dungeons and slave pits with which those who broke the laws might find themselves intimately familiar. But Nibenay had undercut his own system by installing a fierce young protégé, the fifteen year old psionic prodigy Siemhouk, as high consort over the Temple of Thought, and Siemhouk answered to none but the Shadow King.
“Yes,” Djena said after her chuckle had sent a shiver running through the poor, fat merchant. “Perhaps I would forget those things. If you’d care to find out how sievelike my memory is …”
“Choice two,” Nibenay picked up again. His voice gurgled like water trickling though pebbles. “You could move your stall elsewhere. Cliff side might be a better fit for you than the Western District. Palm Court, even, if you could afford to lease a space in either place. As Kahalya points out, the taxes would be higher than where you are now, but with a corresponding improvement in security as well.”
“Yes,” Rahede said, forgetting the rule about addressing Nibenay directly. “Perhaps …”
“Or choice three,” the Shadow King interrupted, a sharper edge to his voice than before. “You could pack your—what is it, ceramic bowls, cups and jugs and get out of my city before the sun rises again. I’m certain there are others who deal in similar objects, so that none of my fair subjects would go wanting for a new bowl or mug.”
“Make your decision,” Djena suggested. “Make it now.”
Rahede looked at the naked women before him, sitting straight in their high-backed chairs while he crouched uncomfortably on the floor. From Siemhouk, barely fifteen, to Djena of a certain age, they showed a variety of body types and facial expressions. None, Kadya noted, looked particularly sympathetic, but if he were to throw himself on the mercy of one she thought it would be the mul Bamandji, High Consort of War, who was so unconcerned with these sorts of squabbles that she hadn’t said anything for the last hour. Kadya wasn’t certain she was still awake, although her eyes were open and the beginnings of a smile played about her lips.
Siemhouk hadn’t spoken, either, but the look on her face could not, under any circumstances, be confused for a sympathetic one. She looked like she might order the merchant put to death for boring her.
It had happened before.
“I … perhaps I’ll just talk to the baker again,” Rahede said. “Try to work things out. And if we can’t, then … then I’ll move. Someplace.”
“That would be best,” Rejan said. “I know that baker. If a worthy sacrifice were to be made at the Temple of Trade, I might even find time to have a word with him myself.”
“That would … I will make sure such a sacrifice is offered,” Rahede said. He backed out of the room on hands and knees, thanking the high consorts profusely as he went. That was not only unnecessary, but a more confident approach probably would have better served his case. He couldn’t know that, though. Kadya guessed he would either make a spectacular offering at the Temple of Trade, or morning would find him dead or enslaved.
“Will there be any more appeals today?” Djena asked. Hers was the position Kadya wanted. She had been placing herself before Nibenay more and more, allowing him to see that she was intelligent and capable. Her current position was under Siemhouk, helping to organize the city-state’s schools and the special training for templars and other agents of the king.
“No more for today,” Saulindas said. She was a young templar, muscular and high-breasted, wearing a bright blue sarong and leather sandals. She started to close the door to the Council chamber, but then stopped with a gasp.
“One more,” a gravelly voice from outside declared. “The Shadow King will see me.”
Every eye in the room was fixed on the doorway when he came through. He was covered in sand and dust and filth, as if he had just rolled to Nibenay all the way from Urik. His head flopped around his right shoulder as he limped into the chamber. Something had chewed on his legs during whatever journey he had made; bone showed through the holes there as well as the gap where his neck should have been. He had the look of a soldier about him, with a hard, worn muscularity, his limbs and torso crisscrossed with scars old and new—but he was obviously undead, and just as obviously had been so for some time.
“And who might you be?” Nibenay demanded.
“My name is Shen’ti,” the dead man said. “Not that it matters. I was, of late, a mercenary in the employ of House Faylon. It was in this service that I made the discovery I’ve come all this way to reveal to you now.”
“What discovery is that?” the Shadow King asked.
“A city, buried under the desert sand for years beyond measure. This city is called Akrankhot.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Rejan uttered. Then, at a sharp glance from both Nibenay and Siemhouk, she covered her mouth with her fist and looked at the floor.
“This city,” the mercenary repeated, “is called Akrankhot. It was, I believe, a place of considerable importance during Athas’s past. It was uncovered by a violent storm, and my companions and I, separated by that storm from our caravan, happened upon it.”
“And why do you think this would be of interest to me?” Nibenay wanted to know.
“Because beneath Akrankhot, your eminence, is a trove of metals that I believe to be greater than all the metals currently known to exist on all of Athas.”