The Document

They approached the king in a group.

That was the first sign the matter had been polished for presentation. No one brought ordinary administrative concern to Daryavesh in a single block of mutually agreeable officials unless the point of the concern was theater before content.

Danel was absent by design.

The summons for him that morning had been redirected twice through lower offices, delayed by a courier mistake too convenient to be accidental, and by the time he reached the outer court he found the king already closeted with satraps, legal officers, treasury men, and representatives from the omen office in unusual unanimity.

Bel-iddin was among them. Nathrek was not visibly present.

That disturbed Danel more.

He did not force entry. Age had given him patience where youth would have mistaken interruption for courage. Instead he waited in the colonnade until the chamber doors opened and the men emerged wearing the expressions of officials who had just succeeded in becoming more dangerous while still calling themselves orderly.

One of the satraps bowed with theatrical courtesy.

"Governor Danel."

"Satrap."

"His Majesty has approved a kingdom-wide loyalty observance."

"Has he."

The satrap smiled.

"A brief measure only. Thirty days."

Bel-iddin paused beside Danel as the others moved on.

"It is signed," he said quietly.

"I assumed as much."

"The wording is elegant in the way traps admire themselves."

"Let me see it."

Bel-iddin handed over the sealed copy without argument.

Danel read.

All officials, governors, satraps, counselors, judges, and magistrates having agreed, it is decreed that any petition made to any god or man for thirty days, except to Daryavesh the king, shall bring the petitioner under penalty of the lion den.

The officials had not all agreed. That lie was expected.

What mattered was the seal below it. And the appended legal formula making the injunction part of the law of the Medes and Persians, not to be altered or revoked.

Lions, then.

Not fire this time. Teeth. Darkness. Animal certainty dressed in state procedure.

Bel-iddin watched him read with the taut stillness of a man who had not come for sympathy but had not managed to fully kill the impulse toward warning either.

"Daryavesh thinks it will steady the court," he said.

"And you?"

"I think old empires teach new kings vanity faster than arithmetic."

Danel handed back the tablet.

"Was Nathrek in the room?"

"Near enough."

That answered itself.

The king appeared a moment later from the chamber in high good humor, buoyed by the peculiar satisfaction rulers derived from believing agreement and devotion had finally been organized into one efficient shape.

"Danel!" he said. "You missed an uncommonly sensible hour."

Danel bowed.

"Then I regret the loss, my lord."

Daryavesh clapped him once on the shoulder with the intimacy of kings who liked competent men while remaining almost entirely unable to imagine how their own impulses endangered them.

"Thirty days only," the king said. "A kingdom newly taken needs one center, one visible route of appeal. After that the ordinary gods and grievances may resume their traffic."

There was even generosity in the tone. That was what made the thing so wearying.

"As you command, my lord."

Daryavesh moved on.

He did not wait for explanation because he believed he had already given one and because kings frequently mistook themselves for clear when they were merely final.

By midday the decree had been copied to the gatehouses and public courts. By late afternoon it had reached every office that mattered. By evening three separate witnesses had been positioned within sight of Danel's house, though positioned badly enough that only a younger man would have felt triumphant at discovering them.

Danel climbed the stairs to the upper chamber as the sun lowered red behind the western walls.

The windows toward Jerusalem were open. They had been open when lesser decrees ruled the city. They had remained open through Nebukhadran's pride, through madness, through conquest, through the long administrative attrition by which most faith actually wore or held.

He stood in the chamber awhile before kneeling.

Not indecisive. Only attentive to the exact weight of continuity when it became costly again after so many years of quieter service.

Below, in the street-shadow, one of the hidden observers shifted position and thought himself unheard.

Danel smiled without humor.

Then he got down on his knees and prayed.