The Decree

The decree arrived before supper.

Not with ceremony. With guards.

Three of them entered the administrative court carrying sealed tablets and the tense haste of men who would rather deliver a cruel order than discuss it. One went to the legal office. One to the records wing. The third continued toward the magician annex with his hand never far from the hilt at his side.

By the time the first raised voice broke from the corridor, Danel already knew.

Bel-iddin did not read the tablet aloud. He read it once, closed his eyes for the span of a breath, then turned to the room and said, "All attached wise men, practitioners, lecturers, interpreters, and trainees are to remain in place pending collection."

No one moved.

"Collection for what?" one of the older scribes asked.

Bel-iddin looked at him with terrible calm.

"Execution," he said.

The word did more to the room than shouting could have.

One scribe sat down hard without meaning to. Another began talking to himself in half-prayer, half-accounting, as if the mind under mortal threat reverted to whatever structure it had trusted longest. Danel remained standing only because his body had not yet received permission to do anything else.

Attached wise men. Interpreters. Trainees.

Categories.

Babylon preferred killing in categories. It spared individuals the dignity of being hated personally.

Bel-iddin's eyes found Danel almost immediately.

"Do not be foolish," he said quietly enough for only him to hear. "There is nowhere in this palace to run that was not designed by men who expect boys to think of running."

Danel said, "Why is the decree so hasty?"

Bel-iddin's expression altered by a fraction.

There it was again: prudence and discretion under threat.

"Because the king has been humiliated by men who built their lives around promising that such humiliation would never occur," he said. "And humiliated kings prefer broad remedies."

"What exactly did he ask for?"

Bel-iddin studied him for one strange second, as if trying to decide whether the answer itself was an injury or an opening.

"The dream," he said. "And its interpretation. He would not tell them the dream. They could not recover it. So now he intends to kill the category that failed him."

Then guards entered the room.

Not to seize them immediately. To count.

One of them had a wax strip and a stylus. He looked over each face and marked names with bored efficiency, as if preparing a grain inventory rather than a death list.

Danel felt something inside him go cold and exact.

He found Ashpenaz before the counts were complete.

That itself required risk. Bel-iddin had told the truth: the palace was built to prevent panic from becoming motion. Corridors had already been locked in patterns Danel recognized as containment. Guards stood at stair turns that had been unguarded all week. But Ashpenaz was still a steward, and stewards still had the right to move where frightened boys did not.

Danel intercepted him near the kitchen court.

"Sir."

Ashpenaz turned, saw his face, and dismissed the servant behind him with a motion too quick to read as anything but urgency.

"You should not be here."

"I need to know if the decree reaches us."

Ashpenaz's look held pity and anger in equal measure, which was answer enough.

"Yes," he said.

"Why?"

"Because 'wise men' is a broad word when kings are offended." He took one hard breath. "You were placed under upper records instruction through the magician office. Hanan under audit alignment to attached administrative interpretation work. It is enough."

"How long?"

"Not long."

That was the worst possible version of the truth.

Danel held his ground.

"Then take me to the king."

Ashpenaz stared at him.

"No."

"He asked for the dream and the interpretation."

"Yes."

"Then take me to him."

Ashpenaz stepped closer, lowering his voice until it became almost dangerous.

"Do you understand what you are saying?"

"Yes."

"Do you?"

The question struck harder because it contained care.

Danel answered with the only part he fully knew. "If the decree stands, we die anyway."

Ashpenaz's jaw tightened.

"That is not logic. That is desperation."

"Then let it be desperate." Danel took one breath and did not let himself waste it. "Sir, why is the decree so hasty? Because he has been made afraid by men who claimed they could enter any dream and failed. If I ask for time, he may grant it because time is the one thing he still wants from this problem."

Ashpenaz looked away for the space of a heartbeat.

When he looked back, Danel saw the exact moment duty and fear and reluctant admiration finished negotiating.

"If I do this," Ashpenaz said, "and you fail, I have escorted a seventeen-year-old Judean boy into the center of the most dangerous mood this palace has seen in years."

"Yes."

"And if you succeed?"

Danel thought of the shield over the chamber. The harvest striking and failing. The System measuring and refusing to flatter. The God he had not stopped being angry with and who had answered anyway.

"Then it will not have been me," he said.

Ashpenaz shut his eyes once.

"I dislike you at moments like this," he muttered.

"I know."

"Good."

When he opened his eyes again, the steward was back in full command of himself.

"Return to your room," he said. "Say nothing. If I can get you in before the guard captain begins collection in the dormitories, I will send for you."

"And if you can't?"

Ashpenaz's face hardened into the shape Babylon required of men who had no room left for softness.

"Then pray your God enjoys being addressed quickly."

Back in the shared room, Danel told them everything.

Not in stages. Not with strategy. The decree. The categories. The audience request. Ashpenaz's answer.

Azaryah stood so fast he nearly overturned the lamp.

"No," he said.

"That is not helpful," Hanan snapped.

"Helpful?" Azaryah rounded on him. "He is going to walk into the king's fury because a room full of corpse-magicians could not do their jobs."

"What would you prefer?" Mishael asked sharply. "Waiting in our pallets until the collection guard reaches the door?"

Azaryah's silence was answer enough.

Hanan looked at Danel. Fear had drained his face clean.

"Can you do it?"

Danel did not lie to him.

"I do not know."

The room held that answer like a wound.

Somewhere beyond the dormitory walls a gong sounded once, signaling the beginning of evening lockdown.

Collection would follow.