The ink was still wet when the guards came.
I smelled it first—sharp, acrid, the scent of iron and gallnut biting the air in the scribes' chamber. I had just finished copying the latest trade decree, my hand steady, my back aching from hours bent over the low table. The reed pen trembled for a breath, then stilled. I didn't look up. Not yet.
In the palace, silence is a language. And that silence—sudden, thick, broken only by the echo of boots on stone—meant trouble.
They entered in pairs, four of them, their bronze breastplates catching the dim light from the high windows. No announcement. No warning. Just the weight of their presence, like a storm rolling in over the Zagros mountains.
I knew why they were here.
"Zev of Jerusalem," the lead guard said, his voice flat, official. "By order of the Vizier Kardax, you are detained on charges of treason."
My father stood slowly. He did not resist. Did not speak. Only smoothed the edge of his tunic, as if preparing for a council meeting, not an arrest.
I rose then, my chair scraping loud in the quiet.
"On what grounds?" I asked. My voice was calm. Too calm. Like the surface of a pond before it freezes.
The guard turned. He barely looked at me. "A sealed letter was intercepted, bearing your father's seal. It speaks of rebellion in Jerusalem. Of rallying the exiles to rise against the king's peace."
A lie. A perfect, polished lie.
I had seen the seal used a hundred times. I knew the way he pressed it—just slightly tilted to the left. I had written in his hand for him when his eyes failed. I was his hand, half the time.
And I knew—no letter had been sent.
I looked at my father. His face was stone. But his eyes—just for a second—flicked to the archive chest behind him. The one with the loose hinge.
He said nothing. Neither did I.
They took him without a struggle. His sandals whispered on the floor, then were gone.
The chamber emptied. The ink dried.
I waited until the last echo faded. Then I crossed the room, knelt by the chest, and pried open the false bottom with my fingernail.
Inside, a scrap of papyrus. A single line, in my father's hand:
"The serpent rises at dawn. Tell no one."
I folded it. Slipped it into the lining of my sleeve.
Outside, the sun was still high. The palace buzzed—servants, messengers, courtiers laughing in the courtyard. Life, uninterrupted.
But something had shifted.
The serpent had risen.
And I was the only one who had heard it hiss.