Do Not Destroy Them

The collection guard reached their corridor before Ashpenaz did.

Not fully. First came the sound: boots, ordered and unhurried, the kind of pace chosen by men who did not need to rush because their authority had already arrived earlier in the tablets. Then voices. Then the rattle of bronze against the outer latch of the main dormitory door.

Hanan went pale. Azaryah rose without thought. Mishael stood too, though with less violence.

Danel moved first.

He opened their room door before the guards could.

Arioch stood in the corridor with four soldiers behind him and a wax strip in one hand.

For one heartbeat both of them simply stared.

Then Arioch said, flatly and with more exhaustion than surprise, "Of course it would be you."

"Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon," Danel said.

The sentence stopped the corridor cold.

Not because of its volume. Because no one under sentence was expected to say such a thing on his own way toward collection.

Arioch's face altered.

"What?"

"Take me before the king," Danel said. "I will show the king the interpretation."

Arioch searched him hard, as if trying to determine whether this was courage, madness, or some third thing he had forgotten how to believe in because Babylon had trained him too thoroughly in the first two.

"You understand what you are saying."

"Yes."

"No riddle. No delay."

"No."

The guards looked between them, uncertain enough now that the corridor itself seemed to wait for Arioch's classification of the moment before deciding whether to become violent.

Arioch lowered the wax strip.

"You are asking mercy for men who would have let the decree eat you with no difficulty at all."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Danel heard the answer as he gave it and knew it had cost him something to learn it.

"Because if God has spoken, then His mercy is not made smaller by the men who need it."

Silence.

Somewhere behind Arioch, one of the guards muttered an oath too quietly to matter.

Arioch looked at the four boys in the doorway—their sleepless faces, the lamp still burning behind them, the air in the room oddly clean of the palace's usual pressure—and then back at Danel.

"Stay here," he said to the guards.

He stepped into the room long enough to shut the door against the corridor and lower his voice.

"Do you know it?" he asked.

"Yes."

"The dream too?"

"Yes."

Arioch's mouth tightened once around old disbelief.

"Then you should have let the empire kill me last night," he said softly.

"No."

Arioch looked away and back again.

"I do not remember how to hear sentences like that from men I know are telling the truth."

That hurt more than accusation would have.

He opened the door again.

"You," he said to the guards, pointing at Danel only. "With me."

Azaryah caught Danel by the shoulder on his way out.

"This time," Azaryah said, voice rough, "sound like you are leaving for death and choosing it anyway."

Danel held his gaze.

"I know."

It was enough.

They had not gone twenty paces before the System opened.

Not small. Not partial. Full and bright enough to alter the shape of the corridor around it.

COVENANT STATUS

Bearer: Danel of Judah
Rank: D - Turning
Sealed Bonds: 3
Active Bond: Mercy Extended Under Sentence
Veiled Sight: Threshold
Authority: Emerging

System Note: What is asked for enemies is not lost.

Danel stopped dead.

Arioch turned at once.

"What?"

Danel stared at the window.

D.

Turning.

The third Bond had sealed not when he received the dream, not when he prayed, not when the room had quieted under mercy—but when, under sentence of death, he asked life for the men who had helped build the machine sentencing him.

The window vanished.

Arioch was still waiting.

"Nothing," Danel said, and for once the word was both wholly false and strategically indispensable.

Arioch studied him for a long second and then nodded once, as if deciding that whatever had just passed across Danel's face could be postponed until after survival had been sorted.

"Good," he said. "Try to keep nothing intact until the throne room."

They kept walking.