A beefy man wearing a filthy linen apron hitched his thumb toward a set of stairs. “Your friends are upstairs, my lord.”
Agis nodded his thanks to the proprietor, then ascended the stairs and stepped out onto a second-story veranda overlooking Shadow Square. In the background rose Kalak’s mountainous ziggurat, looming over the plaza like a dark cloud.
Four nobles, easily identifiable by their haughty bearing and careful grooming, sat at a table on the edge of the balcony. Like Agis, they were all senators, each the informally acknowledged leader of a different faction. A half-elf serving wench with fire-colored hair and a low-cut bodice stood beside the table, gamely laughing at a ribald joke.
As Agis stepped toward the table, a fair-skinned man with a square-set jaw noticed him. “Welcome, Agis!” Beryl called. “Tell me, did you manage to arrive with your coins?”
Agis placed a hand on his hip and felt his purse still hanging from his belt. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Good!” bellowed Dyan, a lord with a jowl-heavy face and a rotund build. “You can pay!”
A lanky man with long blond hair offered Agis a stool at his side. “You may as well spend your money here, my friend. You’ll never leave the Elven Market with your purse strings intact.” Kiah’s tone was warm as always when he was spending someone else’s money. He was the leader of a formal association of business-minded nobles.
Agis accepted the stool and ordered a mug of broy, leaving Caro to stand behind him. No other servants were present, undoubtedly because Tithian had confiscated them all.
As soon as the serving wench left to fetch Agis’s drink, Dyan nodded toward Caro. “Perhaps it would be wise to send your boy downstairs.”
Realizing that the other nobles would feel more comfortable discussing their sensitive agenda without a slave present, Agis nodded to Caro. “Wait downstairs. Have whatever you eat or drink charged to me.”
The old dwarf inclined his head and left without a word.
“You’re too kind to your slaves,” Kiah said. “It makes them insolent.”
“To the contrary,” Agis replied. “It makes them loyal. I guarantee that Caro will not abuse the privilege I just offered him.”
“Let’s get to our business while the serving wench is away,” Dyan said. “Mirabel may be no friend of the templars, but she’s no friend of ours either. I wouldn’t put it past her to earn coin or two by selling what she hears of our conversation.”
Agis began immediately. “We all agree that Kalak is driving Tyr to ruin. Closing the iron mine was bad enough, but by confiscating our slaves, he’s condemned the entire city to starvation.”
“What do you propose?” asked Jaseela, the only person who had not yet spoken. She was a sultry beauty with silky black hair hanging to her waist, a shapely figure, and a regal face dominated by huge hazel eyes. Jaseela’s speeches were seldom taken well in the Senate chamber, for they often bordered on the seditious. Still, even her greatest rivals admired her courage in so consistently speaking out against Kalak.
“Given that everyone’s interests in this matter are similar, I thought we might work together toward a solution,” Agis said. “Between the five of us, we have enough influence to insure that any resolution passes virtually unopposed in the Senate.”
The other three men nodded, but Jaseela rolled her hazel eyes and looked out over the square.
Agis continued, “Let’s convene an emergency session at sunrise. We’ll co-sponsor a resolution demanding that the king return our slaves and reopen the iron mine. With our influence, we’re sure to get unified backing. Even the king won’t be able to ignore us.”
“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?”