The Verdant Passage

by Denning, Troy

  Agis walked down the middle of the avenue, for he had no interest in anything the elves had to offer. Most represented nomadic tribes that bought goods plentiful in one city and hauled them across the desert to sell in another place where such items were rare. In theory, this was what any merchant did, but the shifty elves were seldom satisfied with an honest profit. Elven tribes usually bought inferior goods and sold them at outrageous prices, or they raided legitimate merchants in the deep desert and sold the stolen cargo as their own.

  After several minutes of struggling through the crowd, Agis reached the point the old man had indicated—a dilapidated pawnshop, identified by the three ceramic spheres hanging over the door. He slipped out of the throng and stepped toward the alley, pausing to make sure Caro followed.

  “Hey, fellow!”

  The voice belonged to a golden-haired elf who leaned against a wall just outside the alley. Taller even than most of his kind, the elf wore a tawny burnoose wrapped around his lanky body and had a bronze, weatherbeaten face with cloudy blue eyes. “You lookin’ for magic components? I got glowworms. I got wychwood. I even got powdered iron.”

  “Isn’t that stuff against the king’s law?” Agis asked, hoping to silence the huckster.

  The elf raised his peaked chin. “You a templar?”

  “No.”

  “Then what d’you care?” He looked away indignantly, leaving the noble to stare at a pointed ear caked with dirt.

  Agis stepped into the alley, Caro following behind. The tall buildings provided some shade from the sun, but little relief from the oppressive heat of the day. Nevertheless, paupers and beggars had taken refuge in its shadows and lined both sides of the narrow corridor. As Agis picked his way through their legs, they silently extended their bony hands and filled the lane with desperate pleas for water and money.

  Resisting the temptation to part with a handful of coins, Agis glanced over his shoulder at Caro. “This is what comes when a king cares more about magic than he does his subjects,” he said angrily. “If Kalak hadn’t rejected my proposal to set up relief farms outside Tyr, these people would have food, water, and beds.”

  “They’re free,” Caro replied. “At least they have that.”

  “Freedom won’t wet their throats,” Agis snapped. “You’ve been a servant for most of your life. You know that such service means you’ll always have enough to drink and eat, and a soft bed to sleep in.”

  “I’d be glad to go hungry and thirsty a few days in exchange for my liberty,” Caro replied, stepping to Agis’s side.

  “Ever since you escaped from the press gang, you’ve been talking like this. Why?” Agis demanded. “Is there something you need? Just ask and you know I’ll give it to you.”

  “I need my liberty,” Caro answered stubbornly.

  “So you can join these wretches? I won’t do it. You’re better off as my servant,” Agis said. He swept his hand at the alley of derelicts. “They’d all be better off as my slaves.”

  “But—”

  “I won’t discuss it any further, Caro,” Agis said, reaching the other end of the rank-smelling lane. “Don’t bring the subject up again.”

  “As you wish,” the dwarf said, once again falling a step behind his master.

  The alley opened into a plaza, as the old man had promised. The scene in Shadow Square seemed more chaotic than the merchant row on the other side of the alley, but Agis saw nothing particularly dangerous. Dozens of tents had been pitched by elves either too poor or too cheap to rent a storefront. These elves were vainly accosting the dozens of half-elves, dwarves, and humans who carried large ceramic pots toward the center of the square.

  There, a templar and a pair of half-giant guards collected a small tax from the pot-bearers for the privilege of filling a jug from the public fountain. It was a slow and tedious process, with a long waiting line, for the fountain consisted of a single trickle of water spilling from the mouth of a stone statue. The artist had shaped a braxat from the stone, a huge, hunchbacked creature resembling a cross between a baazrag and a horned chameleon. It walked on its hind legs and had a thick shell covering its back and neck. Agis could not imagine why the king’s sculptors had selected such a grotesque beast for a fountainhead, save that the city populace was always curious about the seldom-seen creatures that roamed the wastes.

  Looking away from the fountain, Agis walked along the edge of the square, carefully studying the symbols painted above the building doorways. There was no writing on the signs, for in Tyr, as in most other Athasian cities, only nobles and templars were permitted to read or write.

  At last, Agis came to a red sign portraying a man mounted upon a kank, one of the giant insects that caravan drivers often used as beasts of burden. The insect had an abdomen from which was suspended a globule of honey. Judging that he had reached the Red Kank, Agis entered the suphouse, Caro close behind.

  Lit only by a handful of narrow windows, the interior of the building was quite dim. As Agis stood near the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, the babble of voices inside quickly died.

  Once his eyes were accustomed to the shadows, he found himself standing in a small square room. Dozens of surly-looking elves stared at him with intolerant expressions, their hands firmly closed around mugs of fermented kank-nectar, known locally as broy.

  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.”

  “W
hat 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?”

  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.

  “Tithian is certainly a clever fellow,” remarked Jaseela sarcastically. “I would never have thought to solve the worker shortage by enslaving beggars.”

  “I wonder if it has occurred to Tithian that the king’s half-giants would do much better on the ziggurat than our slaves or these paupers?” Agis asked, glancing at Jaseela.

  “I’m certain it has, but have you ever known a half-giant to give an honest day’s labor?” Jaseela countered. “Besides, if he made slaves of the king’s guard, who would keep the Veiled Alliance in line?”

  Below the Red Kank’s balcony, a pauper broke away from the slave rope and sprinted for the alley. A half-giant lumbered after the escapee, roaring with excitement. He caught the unfortunate wretch in front of the suphouse, knocking the starving beggar into the wall with a well-aimed blow of the bone club.

  The guard stopped a few feet from the balcony and peered up at the nobles. “Nice smash, eh?” he chortled, displaying his bloody club.

  As that moment, a silver flash flared behind the guard and a clap of thunder rolled across the square. Agis looked toward the sound and saw a different half-giant crashing to the cobblestones, a smoking hole in the center of his back.