Gathered within were the men and women to whom those soldiers in the hall were loyal, and they were doing a far better job than their underlings of glaring their hatreds at one another. Clad in brilliant finery and glittering jewels, the leaders of several of Imphallion's most powerful Guilds stood with haughty, even disdainful expressions, weathering the array of verbal abuse-and occasional emphatic spittle-cast their way. Across the room, separated from them only by a flimsy wooden table whose sagging planks somehow conveyed a desperate wish to be elsewhere, stood a roughly equal number of the kingdom's noble sons and daughters.

Nobles whose anger was certainly justified.

"… miserable traitors! Ought to be swinging from the nearest gibbets, you foul…"

"… filthy, lowborn miscreants, haven't the slightest idea the damage you've…"

"… bastards! You're nothing but a litter of bastards! Dismiss your guards, I challenge…!"

And those were among the more polite harangues against which the Guildmasters were standing fast. Their plan had been to allow the initial fury to wear itself down before they broached the topic for which they'd called this most peculiar assembly, here in an anonymous basement rather than Mecepheum's Hall of Meeting. But the verbal barrage showed no signs of dissipating. If anything, it was growing worse, and the presence of the guards in the hallway no longer seemed sufficient to prevent bloodshed between these entrenched political rivals.

Perhaps sensing that precise possibility, one of the nobles advanced to the very edge of the table and raised a hand. A single voice slowly wound down, then another, until the room reverberated only with the sounds of angry, labored breathing. A red-haired, middle-aged fellow, Duke Halmon was no longer Imphallion's regent-Imphallion no longer had a regent, thanks to those "lowborn miscreants"-but the nobility respected the title he once held.