Kudur had kept his word. No one ever learned what Namur had done to Gi.
Four years passed after that day.
Namur stood inside the temple of Anu, watching the beam of sunlight that fell through the ceiling and illuminated the center of the chamber.
"Namur, son of Tirak" the high priest called.
He walked toward the light without any hurry. Whether a god chose him or not did not seem to matter much to him.
By then, Kudur had already earned Namur's loyalty and begun training him as an assassin.
What surprised me was how he had done it. I had expected Kudur to manipulate him somehow. Instead, he simply gave Namur a choice, and the decision to follow him was his own.
It made sense when I thought about it. Kudur had been the first person who did not treat Namur as though there was something wrong with him. He gave him a purpose, made him feel useful, and most of his orders made sense to Namur.
Kudur did not seem like the man I knew. He was also quite close to Dagan, my mother's brother and Kisaya's father.
I barely remembered Dagan, but seeing him now, I noticed how weak he looked. Almost sick. Had he always been that way, or had something happened to him?
There was something else about Kudur that bothered me. He was supposed to inherit the throne after my father.
So why had Ishtal and I been named heirs instead?
The moment Namur stepped beneath the light, warmth spread through his body. Pale red flames appeared around him and began circling his body before gathering on the back of his hand. A symbol slowly took shape there.
Ninurta.
Namur had been chosen by the god of war, hunting, and justice.
Back home, Zana and Tirak were thrilled. Even Aren and Shala seemed surprised at first, but when Namur reacted with the same blank expression he always wore, their interest quickly disappeared.
His training as a chosen began soon after, and with it, he learned about his edict and first rune.
The rune allowed him to show any emotion he wanted and make it look completely genuine.
That explained a lot.
His Edict was the same one he had told me years later:
Those you betray must be given a chance to survive.
Namur did not seem particularly impressed by either his rune or his Edict. But he had been given orders. So the first thing he did was report everything to Kudur.
"The gods really are cruel..."
Namur did not understand what Kudur meant, nor did he care enough to ask.
I did.
For once, I agreed with my uncle. It almost felt like a bad joke. Of all the runes Namur could have received, the gods had given him one that let him imitate the very emotions he could barely feel.
When Namur gave no reaction, Kudur continued.
"Do not tell anyone what your rune actually does."
"Not even my instructor?"
Kudur nodded.
"You're good at reading other people's emotions, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"From now on, that is what your rune does."
Namur found the lie a little strange, but saw no reason to argue.
Kudur was quiet for a moment before continuing.
"And your Edict... that will require a little more preparation. If we want you to become a consecrated as soon as possible, we'll have to plan ahead."
…
A few months later, Namur had convinced everyone that his rune allowed him to read other people's emotions. Once he had mastered the trace and realized how little spiritual energy it consumed, Kudur gave him another instruction.
"Keep it active whenever you're around other people."
Namur looked at him.
"Why?"
"So you can start acting like everyone else."
And that was exactly what he did. The first time he returned home with the rune active, Zana came to greet him. Namur smiled at her.
She froze.
For several seconds, she simply stared at him. Then she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him.
Tears began running down her face.
Namur stood there while she held him.
'A normal person would react the same way.'
The moment he decided what he wanted to show, the rune responded. His arms went around her, his face changed, and tears soon appeared in his eyes as well.
Watching it made me a little uncomfortable. There was nothing behind any of it.
Zana did not know that. She believed the gods had finally healed her son.
As Namur continued using the rune, things at home began to change. He smiled when he was supposed to, laughed at the right moments, and showed concern when someone was upset.
Before long, from the outside at least, they almost looked like a happy family.
…
As the years passed, Namur gradually began to understand his Edict.
There was one problem, though. He understood what betrayal meant in theory, but actually recognizing it was much harder. To betray someone, there first had to be trust.
And trust was not something that came naturally to him. How was someone who still had to study emotions that everyone else understood instinctively supposed to understand when another person truly trusted him?
That was where Kudur came in.
He began putting Namur through situations designed specifically for his edict. Some were simple. Gain someone's confidence, learn something from them, then report it. Others went much further.
Sometimes the betrayal ended with someone dead.
Each time, Namur paid attention. He watched how people spoke once they became comfortable around him, how their posture changed, what they were willing to reveal, and which small gestures meant they had stopped seeing him as a threat.
Little by little, he learned what trust looked like.
The second part of his Edict was easier to understand, but harder to use well. Before betraying someone, Namur had to give them a chance to escape what was coming.
That warning did not always have to be direct. Sometimes a few suspicious words were enough. Sometimes a strange question, a deliberate pause, or behavior that did not quite fit could serve the same purpose.
What mattered was that the person had a real chance to notice something was wrong and act on it. The harder it would be for them to escape, the clearer Namur had to make that chance.
In more serious cases, though, he could sometimes feel when the Edict had been satisfied.
Even so, he found the whole thing inefficient.
His rune existed to help him blend in, to make people believe whatever emotion he wanted them to see. His Edict forced him to leave cracks in that deception whenever betrayal was involved.
One helped him disappear into a role. The other forced him to give himself away.
Namur found that contradiction deeply inconvenient.
…
Namur was thirty-two.
His loyalty to Kudur had become absolute. The thought of going against one of his orders never even crossed his mind.
A lot had changed in his family over the years. Tirak had died. Aren had remained with the palace guard, while Shala had become a potter. Zana, however, was still the same. Whenever Namur returned from a mission, she found an excuse to visit him and make sure he was eating properly.
As for Namur, he had become almost everything Kudur wanted him to be.
Almost.
He was an excellent spy as long as there were no chosen around. Runes and divine artifacts that could read intent or loyalty were still a problem.
Eventually, Namur understood what he had been missing. His Edict did not ask him to show mercy. If he was going to use someone's trust against them, he only had to return one thing before the end: a choice. A warning they could notice. A path they could take. If they ignored it, that was no longer his responsibility. The Edict did not protect their lives. It protected their right to choose what they did with them.
I hated how reasonable it sounded.
Once he understood that, his pact deepened and he became a consecrated.
His second rune gave him exactly what he needed.
It allowed him to project a false intention or belief through his spiritual energy. Anything that tried to read his loyalty, intentions, or convictions would only find whatever Namur wanted it to find.
So that was how he had done it. No wonder no one had ever found anything suspicious about him.
With that rune, Namur became nearly impossible to expose. The only real way to catch him was for Namur himself to make a mistake.
Like he had with me.
Around that time, Ishtal was born as well.
But he was not named heir. As far as everyone was concerned, Kudur was still the man who would inherit the throne after my father.
…
Another two decades passed. My brother had been chosen by Shamash four years earlier.
By then, Zana was gone. She had died peacefully.
After so many years of watching Namur smile, laugh, and act like everyone else, almost no one remembered how strange he had once been.
One night, Namur was returning from a mission when a star suddenly began to shine above Uruk.
At first, he barely paid attention to it.
Then it grew brighter.
And brighter.
Within moments, the streets were filled with light, almost as if the sun had risen in the middle of the night.
It was beautiful.
Namur might not have cared, but the rest of Uruk certainly did. People poured into the streets, and the temples immediately began searching for an explanation. An omen like that could only have come from the gods, and everyone wanted to know why Uruk had been shown such favor.
The star remained in the sky for a long time. Strangely, people soon discovered that it could only be seen from within the city.
A few days later, Namur heard something else. Some claimed that the Euphrates had turned golden beneath the light of the star.
And with that came one more detail.
The exact same night...
I had been born.
So those were the omens that had accompanied my birth. The gods had apparently gone to great lengths to announce my arrival.
And yet, none of them had chosen me. Why?
After that night, the chosen, the palace, and the temples were all on edge.
Even Kudur changed. He became easier to anger, and more than once Namur heard him muttering to himself when he thought no one was paying attention.
"It should be my right..."
"Even Dagan agrees..."
"Was there really a prophecy?"
"They're going to pass over me for a newborn..."
A prophecy? That had to be connected to why I had been named heir.
Namur noticed that something was wrong with Kudur, but he did not give it much thought. He simply did what he always did.
He followed his orders.
My parents also tried to bury the omens surrounding my birth. Keeping the event itself secret was impossible, but they managed to hide most of the details. Namur was one of the people tasked with making sure those details stayed hidden.
Not long after that, Kudur made his decision.
"I am next in line for the throne."
Namur nodded without hesitation.
"If they refuse to give me what is mine, then I will take it."
Kudur explained the plan.
When Kudur finally made his move, Namur would stay at his side if everything went according to plan. But if the coup failed, he would turn against him publicly, claim that Kudur's actions had betrayed everything he believed in, and defect to Lugalbanda's side.
He would submit to whatever loyalty tests they demanded. And once they trusted him, he would become Kudur's eyes inside my father's faction.
"At your command."
Namur did not hesitate.
As far as he was concerned, Kudur would become the next king of Uruk.
And Namur would be the weapon that helped put him there.
The coup failed to take the palace that first night.
What Kudur had expected to end in a matter of hours turned into a civil war instead. More people sided with him than I would have expected. Members of the council, priests, soldiers. His influence had spread much further than I realized.
Namur, meanwhile, was working his way into my father's faction.
That was not easy. Everyone knew he had spent years serving Kudur, so they tested his loyalty again and again before allowing him anywhere near anything important.
His second rune got him through every test.
Once they accepted him, Namur began passing everything he learned back to Kudur. Troop movements. Plans. Names. Anything that might give my uncle an advantage.
The fighting eventually reached Namur's family as well. Aren and Shala were both killed during clashes in the city. Neither of them had been the target. They had simply been caught in the violence.
Namur felt nothing when he heard. His rune made sure no one else knew that. To everyone around him, he looked like a man grieving the loss of his brother and sister.
Even with everything Namur gave him, however, Kudur could not hold out for long. My father had apparently expected something like this to happen. I did not know how much he had known beforehand, but he had been prepared.
Kudur lost quickly.
Namur never learned exactly how it happened. He knew only that my uncle had been defeated before he even had a real chance to fight. Namur was useful, but he was not important enough within Kudur's forces to be told everything.
I did learn one thing.
Kudur had been chosen by Marduk, the god of divine sovereignty and magic.
After his defeat, Kudur was imprisoned beneath the temple of Anu and tortured.
Namur considered trying to free him.
He did not.
Kudur had already given him instructions for that possibility. If he was captured, Namur was to remain where he was and wait. Only if Kudur was sentenced to death was he supposed to act.
The sentence never came. After some time, the decision was made to exile him instead.
Given my father's edict, should he not have killed Kudur for the good of the kingdom?
Had he broken it?
Some of Kudur's most visible supporters were imprisoned or exiled with him. Others swore loyalty to Lugalbanda again and were allowed to keep their positions.
Unfortunately, Namur never learned Kudur's runes or his Edict, so neither did I.
Kudur left Uruk in defeat.
Ishtal was named heir soon after.
To everyone else, the rebellion was over.
Namur knew better.
Kudur had left Uruk. His weapon had not.