Chapter 1: The Mourning Horns of Jerusalem

The horns began before sunrise, long notes that rolled over flat roofs and down the valley like low thunder. Eliab woke on his mat in the scribes’ quarter behind the temple courts and lay still, listening. The sound did not belong to a festival. It belonged to death.

A runner passed in the alley, sandals striking stone. “Solomon is gone!” he cried. “The king sleeps with his fathers!”

By the time the sun lifted above the ridge, Jerusalem had changed. Women tied their hair back and tore strips from worn cloth. Men spoke in short, careful phrases. Even the sellers near the outer gate kept their voices low, as if grief could be measured and taxed.

Inside the temple complex, the day’s work did not stop. It only grew heavier. Eliab sat cross-legged at a low table, a damp clay tablet before him. He copied the priest’s dictation in neat lines: measures of flour, jars of oil, skins of wine. His reed pen scratched softly, and his thumb smoothed mistakes before they dried.

Today, the familiar rhythm did not calm him. Every step in the colonnade seemed to pause near the scribes’ room. Every whisper sounded aimed.

Near the inner court, older priests gathered in a knot of linen robes and tight mouths. Eliab kept his eyes on his tablet, but their words carried.

“Rehoboam will take the throne,” one said. “He was raised among cedar and gold, not among fields.”

“And the burdens?” another murmured. “The levies and forced labor—will he ease them?”

A third voice, sharp and bitter: “He cannot. The storehouses are not as full as the records claim.”

Eliab’s pen paused. He pressed it back into the clay and forced his hand to move again. Lists were safe. Lists were supposed to be safe.

From the outer court steps he could see laborers gathered in the shadow of a wall—stonecutters with split nails, carriers with rope marks on their shoulders. They did not mourn like the nobles. They spoke of brothers lost in quarries, of seasons spent hauling timber from the hills, of the heavy yoke that had built Solomon’s works.

“One more season for a dead man’s dream,” a broad-shouldered man muttered.

“Hush,” his companion warned, eyes flicking toward the guards.

Judah’s guards stood stiff with spears upright, watching faces more than gates. A king had died, and in such days strength was proved by finding threats.

Hanan, Eliab’s mentor, leaned close as they carried tablets to a storage alcove. His beard held flecks of clay dust. “Keep your eyes on your work,” he whispered. “And your thoughts behind your teeth.”

Eliab swallowed. “Is it truly that dangerous?”

Hanan’s gaze slid toward the arguing priests. “A new king must look firm. Firmness often means someone else is blamed.”

Eliab looked back down at the neat columns—grain, oil, bronze, numbers lined like soldiers. The horns sounded again, and he felt the city’s grief hiding a second pulse beneath it: fear, steady as a drum under prayer.

Chapter 2: A New Seal on Old Wax

Two days into the mourning rites, Rehoboam’s men entered the temple storehouses as if the death itself had opened a door. They came in a tight group: palace scribes with fresh cords for tying tablets, guards with newly oiled leather straps, and an officer carrying a small wooden chest that clinked as he walked.

Eliab stood beside Hanan at the storeroom entrance. The air inside was cool and dense with smells—cedar shelves, old grain, sharp wine, and lamp oil. Along the walls, jars sat in rows like silent witnesses. Each mouth was stopped with cloth and wax, stamped with marks that showed whose authority guarded the contents.

The officer set the chest on a table and snapped it open. Seal stones lay inside, and lumps of dark wax. “By order of Rehoboam son of Solomon,” he announced, “all royal and temple stores are to be inventoried and resealed.”

A priest stepped forward, voice calm. “Temple stores are sacred.”

“The king protects the sacred,” the officer replied, without warmth. “And the king counts what is his.”

His gaze landed on Eliab. “Junior scribe. You will tally under my eyes.”

Eliab’s throat tightened. “I am only—”

“You are a hand that writes,” the officer cut in. “That is enough.”

They worked jar by jar. Old wax was cracked with a small bronze blade. Eliab recorded marks and counts while guards lifted jars and listened to their weight. Then fresh wax was warmed between fingers, pressed down, and stamped with Rehoboam’s new seal.

At first, the work felt orderly. Then Eliab began to notice small wrongnesses that did not fit clean columns. A jar marked full sounded hollow when shifted. Another, labeled oil, sloshed too little. When a guard lifted it, it rose too easily.

“Perhaps it dried,” the guard joked.

Oil did not dry. Eliab wrote the number anyway, but his fingers stiffened.

In a side alcove, an inventory line named a delivery of bronze tools—chisels and hammers—from the lower city foundries. The officer read it and nodded. “Delivered.”

Eliab looked around. He saw bronze bowls, hooks, and spearheads stacked for guards. But no bundle of new tools.

He leaned toward Hanan. “Where are the tools?”

Hanan’s eyes narrowed. “Do not ask here.”

That night, when lamps burned low and the courts quieted, Eliab returned to the scribes’ room to shelve tablets. The room smelled of damp clay and reed bundles. He lifted a master ledger tablet used for temple stores, its surface smoothed and re-smoothed over years.

Near the bottom, a patch looked different. Fresher clay. Scraped marks. A surface pressed again.

He held it closer to the lamp. The old lines had been erased, but not perfectly. Beneath the new numbers, faint strokes remained—like footprints in dust.

Someone had removed figures. Someone had rewritten them.

Eliab’s heart hammered. He listened for footsteps. Outside, sandals passed and faded. He set the tablet down as gently as if it could bite.

In the stillness, he understood the danger more clearly than any warning could teach. This was not only grief and politics. It was theft hidden inside sacred records—new seals on old wax, and lies pressed into clay.

Chapter 3: The Petitioners at the Gate

The next morning Jerusalem filled with strangers. Delegations from the tribes arrived in dusty groups—leaders with staffs, attendants with bread and dried figs, and men who looked like they had slept on hard ground for days. They gathered near the city gate in a crowd that felt less like a welcome and more like pressure building behind a wall.

Eliab was sent to the outer gate with a small tablet and reed pen. “Record the names,” a priest instructed. “Record the gifts. The king’s household will want order.”

Order, Eliab thought, as if order could be written into a city by ink alone.

At the gate, Judah’s guards held a firm line. Spearpoints angled outward. Their captain barked, “One delegation at a time. No shouting. No pushing.”

The northern men did not look frightened. They looked worn down, and that weariness had hardened. Eliab heard their talk as he wrote.

“Tell him the yoke was heavy,” one said. “Tell him our sons were taken to cut stone while palaces rose.”

“If we stand apart, he will ignore us,” another answered. “We must stand together.”

A name moved through the crowd like a spark: Jeroboam.

Eliab had heard it in whispers—Jeroboam son of Nebat, once set over forced labor, later driven into exile in Egypt when Solomon sought his life. Now, in 978 BC, he had returned, and the northern tribes spoke his name with a steady respect that felt like a warning.

A tall envoy approached, hair bound back, eyes clear. “From Ephraim,” he said. “We bring bread and salt, as custom. We come to speak with Rehoboam.”

Eliab pressed the reed into clay and wrote the name and tribe. He felt the guards watching his hands more than his face.

Then a man brushed too close—close enough for Eliab to smell sweat and cedar resin. Without turning his head, the man murmured, “Do not write what you saw in the storehouses.”

Eliab’s pen froze. He turned, but the man had already slipped away into the crowd, moving with ease through bodies.

The warning was too sharp to be chance. Someone knew what Eliab had noticed. Someone knew he had looked past the official numbers.

As he forced himself to keep recording names and gifts, Eliab noticed a second exchange: an envoy’s hand meeting the hand of a clean-belted man who did not look like a traveler. The movement was quick, hidden by a cloak. A bribe, perhaps, or a message.

When the sun climbed high, delegations were allowed through in groups, escorted toward the palace. Eliab’s tablet filled with names, but his mind held another list: light jars, missing tools, scraped clay, and the whispered threat.

He understood then how theft and politics could braid together like rope. Empty stores could be blamed on the new king, on the tribes, on anyone convenient. Anger would rise faster than questions. And in anger, men stopped listening to careful truth.

Eliab steadied his hand on the tablet’s edge. In Jerusalem, during a change of kings, even a scribe’s marks could become a blade.

Chapter 4: Three Days to Decide

Rehoboam did not answer the tribes at once. He came to the palace steps with a practiced calm and spoke in a voice trained to carry over stone. “Return in three days,” he said. “Then I will give you my word.”

Three days. The city repeated the number like a charm, as if time itself might soften hard decisions.

Eliab was pulled into palace work because scribes were needed everywhere. Corridors smelled of polished wood, sweat, and incense meant to hide fear. Servants hurried with water jars. Guards shifted their grips. People watched each other with the tight eyes of those who expected trouble.

In a side room near the council chamber, Eliab sat with other scribes copying notes for advisers: lists of grievances, suggested replies, reminders of old agreements. He kept his head down, but he listened.

An older adviser with deep lines around his mouth spoke carefully. “Your father’s yoke was heavy. Speak kindly. Ease the levies. They will serve you.”

A younger courtier, dressed in finer linen and smelling of perfumed oil, scoffed. “Kindness is weakness. If he bends now, they will demand more. Show them strength.”

The word strength hung in the air like smoke. Eliab’s stomach tightened, because he had seen what “strength” often meant for laborers: more days taken, more grain demanded, more sons sent away.

A servant-girl entered with a water jar balanced on her hip. She moved quickly, but her eyes were alert, measuring faces. When she set the jar down, her gaze met Eliab’s for a brief moment—steady, not shy.

Later, when the scribes were dismissed to stretch, she appeared near the doorway as if by accident. “You write for them,” she said.

“I copy what I am told,” Eliab answered, trying to sound dull.

She tilted her head. “Dull men live longer. But you do not look dull.”

Eliab hesitated. “Your name?”

“Tirzah,” she said. “I carry water and I hear things. Water goes everywhere.”

“Listening can be dangerous,” Eliab said.

“So can pretending not to hear,” Tirzah replied. She leaned closer, voice low. “Two guards were paid last night. Not in barley. In silver rings.”

Eliab’s pulse quickened. “Who paid them?”

“A clerk with ink on his fingers,” Tirzah said. “He acted like temple service, but he walked like palace service.”

Eliab thought of the scraped ledger and the warning at the gate. “Someone is buying silence.”

“Or buying noise,” Tirzah said. “If the city erupts, men with wagons can move without being noticed.”

That evening, Eliab carried copied notes to a table outside the council chamber. Inside, voices rose and fell—Rehoboam asking, advisers urging. The same words returned again and again: burden, tribute, labor.

Tirzah passed behind him and murmured, “If you have seen something in the stores, do not speak in the open. Walls here have ears.”

Eliab did not answer. He watched torchlight flicker on stone and felt the city holding its breath. Three days to decide, people said.

Eliab counted differently: three days for stolen goods to be moved, for guards to be bought, for numbers to be scraped and pressed again. And three days for a young scribe to choose whether truth was worth his life.

Chapter 5: The Missing Measure

On the second day, Eliab returned to the temple stores with a careful excuse. Offerings required exact measures, he said, and the lists needed checking. No one questioned a scribe who spoke of measures and duty.

The storerooms were cool, and the smell of grain and oil was almost comforting. Almost. Eliab carried a small measuring vessel and a cord for weighing. He told himself he was only doing his work. Yet his feet took him straight to the jars that had felt wrong.

He lifted one marked as oil. Too light. He tapped the side. The dull sound confirmed it.

A voice behind him said, “You are thorough.”

Eliab turned. A priest stood in the doorway, blocking part of the light. His robe was clean, but his fingers were stained with ink, as if he had handled wet records. His smile was polite and empty.

“I am checking measures,” Eliab said.

“The ledger is correct,” the priest replied. “It has been corrected.”

“Corrected by whom?” The question escaped before Eliab could swallow it back.

The priest stepped closer, sandals whispering on stone. “By authority above yours. You are young. Do not trouble yourself with matters that can break a man.”

“If offerings are missing—” Eliab began.

The priest lifted a hand. “Offerings are not missing. You are mistaken.” His voice stayed soft, but the warning beneath it was hard. “Mistakes can become accusations. Accusations can become punishment.”

Eliab nodded quickly. “I understand.”

“Good,” the priest said. His eyes lingered on Eliab’s face as if memorizing it. “Return to copying.”

Eliab left with his measuring vessel, hands shaking. The priest had not denied the scraped ledger. He had claimed permission.

That evening Eliab returned to his small room expecting to find Hanan bent over a lamp, muttering about careless lines. Hanan was not there.

Eliab waited, pacing. The lamp burned low. Outside, Jerusalem’s streets carried a restless sound—voices, running feet, the city’s grief turning into argument.

When Hanan still did not return, Eliab stepped into the narrow alley behind the quarters. A stray dog nosed at scraps. Water spilled from a jar made the stones dark.

Near the corner, something caught his eye: Hanan’s reed pens, snapped in half, scattered like broken bones. Beside them lay a crushed ink pouch, black stain spread across stone.

Eliab crouched and picked up a broken reed. The split was clean, deliberate. Not an accident. A message without words.

Tirzah appeared at the alley mouth, as if she had been waiting in shadow. “He is gone,” she said.

Eliab’s throat tightened. “You know?”

“Servants talk,” Tirzah replied. “A man was taken at dusk. Two guards. No shouting. A hand over the mouth.”

Eliab’s stomach turned. “Because he knew the records.”

“Because questions spread,” Tirzah said. She pressed something into Eliab’s palm: a thin shard of clay. “I saw you looking at the master ledger. If you need proof, don’t keep the whole tablet. Take a piece. Hide it.”

Eliab stared at the shard. Faint marks showed where numbers had been erased and overwritten. Evidence small enough to slip behind a stone.

“If I hide this, they will come for me,” he whispered.

Tirzah’s eyes were steady. “If you do nothing, they will still come. Only then you will have nothing to trade for your life.”

Eliab tucked the shard into his belt under his tunic. The edge scraped his skin, a reminder with every breath. In a city built on sacred records, truth had become contraband.

Chapter 6: Answer of the Whip

The third day arrived like a storm everyone could smell. Delegations gathered before the palace again, packed tight in dust and heat. Judah’s guards formed a harder line than before. Spearpoints wavered as men shifted their weight, watching hands and faces.

Eliab stood with the scribes assigned to record the king’s words. His tablet felt heavy. Tirzah moved along the edge with other servants, water jar forgotten, eyes searching the crowd for danger.

Rehoboam stepped forward. He was not old, but his expression had the stiff set of a man trying to look larger than he felt. Advisers stood behind him—some gray-haired, some young and eager.

The spokesman of the tribes raised his voice. “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now lighten the hard service, and we will serve you.”

Silence spread, thick as oil.

Rehoboam’s jaw tightened. When he answered, his words came out sharp, rehearsed, meant to strike. “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.”

For a heartbeat, the crowd did not move, as if the words had landed like stones. Eliab felt them hit his chest. He wrote quickly, reed biting into clay so hard it nearly snapped.

Then the murmurs rose into anger. Men shouted. A woman cried out. Someone threw a handful of dust. Guards stepped forward, trying to hold the line, but the line was made of men, and men were shaking.

Eliab glanced toward Tirzah. Her face had gone pale, lips pressed tight. “He chose the young men’s counsel,” she breathed.

In the confusion, Eliab saw movement near a side passage—men slipping away quickly. One wore a priest’s robe. Eliab recognized the ink-stained priest from the storehouse doorway. The man moved like someone following a plan, not fleeing surprise.

“He expected this,” Eliab muttered. “He’s going somewhere.”

Tirzah’s eyes narrowed. “To move what’s left. If the city erupts, wagons can leave at night and no one will count.”

The crowd pressed forward. Guards shouted. Rehoboam retreated a step as advisers closed around him. The proclamation did not strengthen his rule; it cracked it in public.

A chant rose, bitter and loud: “What share have we in David?” Another voice answered, and another, until the words multiplied.

Eliab’s tablet was full—Rehoboam’s harsh answer pressed into clay like a curse. The kingdom was splitting in front of him, not in distant rumor but in dust, sweat, and shouted rage.

And somewhere behind the noise, someone was counting stolen grain and oil, ready to profit from the fracture.

Chapter 7: Stones in the Dust

Jerusalem’s calm broke like a jar dropped on stone. News raced through streets faster than any runner: the tribes were rejecting Rehoboam. Men argued in loud knots. Shopkeepers pulled shutters down. Temple guards doubled at gates. The city felt both crowded and empty, as if people were hiding inside their own walls.

Eliab moved through the outer court with his head low, trying to reach the scribes’ room. Tirzah stayed close, her hands empty now, no water jar to make her seem harmless.

“They say the north will choose Jeroboam,” Tirzah murmured. “They say the house of David will rule only Judah.”

“If that happens—” Eliab began.

“It is happening,” she cut in, voice tight.

A commotion swelled near the gate. Eliab and Tirzah edged toward a pillar. A royal official rode forward with a small escort, posture stiff with authority. Eliab recognized him from temple lists and laborers’ curses: Adoram, overseer of forced labor.

Adoram raised a hand, trying to speak over the roar. “Men of Israel—”

A stone struck the ground near his horse. Another hit the animal’s flank. The horse reared, screaming. Guards shouted, but the crowd surged, anger breaking into action.

Then stones came like rain. Eliab saw Adoram fall from the saddle. A rock struck his head. He did not rise.

Tirzah grabbed Eliab’s sleeve and pulled him back behind the pillar. “Don’t stare,” she whispered. “They will remember faces.”

Eliab’s stomach heaved. The killing was quick and brutal, and it carried a message: the old system of forced labor would not be negotiated back into place.

The guards retreated, overwhelmed. A shout rose—“To your tents, Israel!”—and spread like a chant.

Eliab touched his belt where the clay shard was hidden. In this chaos, records could vanish. Witnesses could vanish. Hanan had already vanished.

“We need your hidden proof,” Tirzah said, reading his movement. “If they take you, you need something to bargain with.”

They slipped through a side passage into the temple complex, away from the main courts. The corridors were cooler, but the air felt tight, as if the stone itself listened.

They reached the small side chamber where Eliab had wedged the ledger fragment behind a loose stone. Eliab knelt, fingers searching the crack.

His hand met empty space.

For a moment he could not breathe. He scraped deeper, knuckles catching stone. Nothing.

Tirzah crouched beside him, eyes wide. “It’s gone?”

“Someone found it,” Eliab whispered. His voice sounded small in the stone hallway.

Footsteps approached—soft, measured. Eliab froze, hand still in the crack. Tirzah stood quickly and smoothed her tunic as if she belonged there.

The footsteps paused, then moved on. A guard’s voice drifted past: “Search every room. The scribes are hiding lies.”

Eliab pulled his bleeding hand back. The missing shard meant someone was ahead of them, cleaning loose ends. Fear sharpened into resolve.

“If they took it,” Eliab said, “they want it buried.”

Tirzah’s jaw tightened. “Then we find what they can’t bury. Not a shard. The whole trail.”

Outside, Jerusalem echoed with running feet and angry shouts. Inside, the temple’s corridors held a quieter threat—one that moved with purpose.

Chapter 8: The Seal in the Shadows

Eliab searched for patterns the way he had been trained to search for errors. If a fragment disappeared, someone had moved it. If someone moved it, they left traces: wax flakes, reed fibers, dust disturbed on stone.

With Tirzah, he moved through back passages where supplies were handled and jars sealed. The noise of the outer courts faded, replaced by quieter sounds—rope pulled tight, a jar set down, men murmuring as if words themselves were dangerous.

Tirzah pointed to the floor. “Wax,” she whispered.

Eliab crouched. Tiny dark flakes lay scattered, as if someone had carried fresh-sealed jars in a hurry. He followed the trail toward a small room used for stamping and sealing. The door stood slightly ajar.

From inside came a wet, choking sound.

Eliab pushed the door open.

A clerk lay on the floor, half on his side. One hand pressed at his throat. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and spreading. His other hand was smeared with ink, fingers twitching as if still trying to write.

Tirzah sucked in a breath and covered her mouth. Eliab’s legs threatened to fold, but he forced himself forward. “Who did this?” he whispered, though the man could not answer with words.

The clerk’s eyes found Eliab’s. Wide, frantic, already dimming. His lips moved in a thin rasp. He reached toward Eliab with shaking fingers.

Eliab knelt and took his hand. The skin was slick with ink and blood. Something hard pressed into Eliab’s palm: a small clay seal stone.

The clerk’s fingers tightened once, painfully, then went slack. His eyes stared past Eliab.

Eliab wiped the seal on his tunic and stared at the carving. It was not the royal mark and not the temple’s. It was a household sign: a palm branch bound by a cord. Eliab had seen similar marks on baskets carried into palace kitchens—private stores, private authority.

Tirzah’s voice trembled. “That belongs to a powerful household near the palace. I’ve seen it on servants’ tags.”

Footsteps sounded outside, quick and urgent. Tirzah grabbed Eliab’s arm. “We must go. If they find you holding that—”

Eliab looked once more at the dead clerk. Another small man crushed between power and profit. Anger rose, hot and bitter. “They kill to protect numbers,” he said.

“They kill to protect power,” Tirzah replied.

They slipped out through a narrow back exit as two temple guards hurried past, arguing.

“Who was on watch?” one demanded.

“I was sent away,” the other snapped. “By order.”

By order. Eliab felt the phrase settle like a stone in his stomach. The conspiracy did not hide only in alleys. It moved with permission—or wore permission like a mask.

Outside, the city still seethed with political fracture. Inside Eliab’s mind, the line became clearer: stolen stores, altered ledgers, paid guards, and now a household seal tied to palace life. He tucked the seal under his tunic.

“We follow this mark,” Eliab said.

Tirzah nodded, fear and determination balanced in her eyes. “Then we do it quickly. Before Jerusalem’s noise covers their tracks.”

Chapter 9: Smoke Through the Lower City

By late afternoon, word spread that Rehoboam was preparing to leave Jerusalem for safety. Some said he would gather loyal men and return with force. Others said he feared being trapped if rebellion reached the palace gates. Either way, the palace tightened like a clenched fist. Guards moved in groups. Servants were questioned. Messengers ran until their faces shone with sweat.

Eliab returned briefly to the scribes’ quarter and found it half-emptied. Bedding disturbed. A writing board overturned. Someone had searched his room.

Tirzah pulled him away before he could linger. “They’re hunting,” she said. “Not rebels. Witnesses.”

They went down into the lower city where workshops crowded the streets. The air changed—thicker with smoke from kilns, sharp with heated metal. Bronze workers hammered in doorways, arms slick with sweat, pretending not to see the tension. Potters turned their wheels steadily, eyes down.

Eliab kept his head low while his gaze tracked every alley mouth. “If the seal belongs to a palace household,” he whispered, “why hide stolen temple jars here?”

Tirzah answered without slowing. “Because the lower city is noise. Noise hides secrets. And wagons move among deliveries without questions.”

They reached a walled compound near a busy lane. Two men guarded the gate with clubs rather than spears. The household mark—a palm branch bound with cord—was carved into the gatepost.

Tirzah’s breath quickened. “This is the mark.”

Eliab’s palms were damp. He stepped forward, trying to look like a messenger. Before the guards could challenge them, Tirzah called out in the clipped tone of palace service. “Delivery for the kitchens. Open.”

One guard frowned. “Who are you?”

Tirzah lifted her chin. “Do you want to explain to your mistress why you delayed her oil?”

The guard hesitated. Eliab seized the moment and held up the clay seal stone. “Stamped,” he said. “We bring what is marked.”

The guard’s eyes flicked to the seal. He grunted and pulled the gate open a hand’s width. Eliab and Tirzah slipped inside.

The yard smelled of damp stone and stored grain. A servant boy crossed with a basket, glanced at them, and hurried away without speaking. The silence felt practiced.

They moved along the wall to a storage room with a barred door. Tirzah found a loose peg and lifted it. The bar shifted. The door creaked open.

Inside, rows of jars stood—oil and grain—sealed with wax stamped with temple marks. Eliab’s stomach twisted. Proof in plain sight. He touched a jar and felt the wax still slightly soft, fresh.

In a corner lay a bundle of leather-wrapped tablets and folded letters under a cloth. Eliab unwrapped them with trembling hands. The letters were short, written in a practiced hand. Names appeared: men at the gate, mentions of “shorting measures,” “moving bronze,” “paying the watch.”

One line made Eliab’s blood run cold: “Let the people see empty stores and blame the house of David. Let anger rise. Then sell back what was taken at double.”

“They meant to feed revolt,” Eliab whispered. “And profit from it.”

Tirzah’s eyes burned. “And serve whichever side wins.”

Footsteps sounded in the yard. Voices. Eliab stuffed the letters inside his tunic. He wanted to drag jars into the street and shout, but he knew they would be dead before the shouting finished.

“We take what we can carry,” Tirzah said, already moving. “And we leave.”

They slipped out through a back passage and into an alley choked with kiln smoke. Behind them, a shout rose inside the compound.

Eliab ran with Tirzah through the lower city, lungs burning, heart hammering. The letters pressed against his skin like hot coals. He had proof now—enough to save him, or enough to get him killed faster.

Chapter 10: The Courtyard of Oaths

Eliab believed, for one desperate hour, that law might still matter. The temple was meant to be a place of oaths and judgment, where truth spoken before the Most High carried weight. If he brought the letters to a senior priest known for strictness, perhaps the priest would be forced to act.

Tirzah followed him, but her silence carried doubt.

They entered the temple complex through a side gate as dusk fell. Lamps were being lit along the colonnade, flames trembling in the evening breeze. Incense drifted over stone, trying to cover the city’s sour fear.

The senior priest received petitioners in a courtyard near a carved pillar. He sat on a low seat, attendants behind him like shadows. His face was stern, eyes heavy-lidded, as if he had seen too much to be surprised.

Eliab bowed, hands shaking. “My lord, I bring evidence of theft from temple stores and altered records.”

A murmur ran through the attendants. The priest’s eyes sharpened. “A scribe speaks boldly.”

Eliab offered the letters. “These were found in a private compound. Jars stamped with temple marks were hidden there. These letters name men paid to stir anger and move supplies.”

The priest took the letters and read. For a moment, Eliab felt hope—thin as a reed, but real.

Then the priest looked up, gaze cold. “These could be forgeries.”

“They are not,” Eliab insisted. “The jars—”

“Enough,” the priest said softly. “To accuse the temple is to accuse the order of the city. In a time like this, such talk is treason dressed as piety.”

Eliab stared, stunned. “But the seals—”

The priest lifted his chin. Two attendants stepped forward and seized Eliab’s arms with practiced grips.

Tirzah moved between them, voice rising. “He speaks truth! Men are dying—”

The priest’s eyes flicked to her. “Servant-girl. You will be silent.”

Eliab understood too late. If the priest feared the powerful household—or served it—then Eliab had delivered the proof into enemy hands.

Tirzah’s gaze darted to the line of oil lamps. Her face changed, decision hardening. She shoved a lamp. It toppled. Oil spilled across stone. Flame leaped bright and sudden.

“Fire!” someone shouted.

Attendants jumped back. The grip on Eliab loosened as men scrambled to keep flames from reaching hanging cloth. Tirzah grabbed Eliab’s wrist and pulled him into a side passage.

They ran as shouts echoed behind them. Eliab’s heart hammered with betrayal. The temple, his place of learning and careful record, had tried to swallow the truth.

In a narrow corridor, they stopped only long enough for Eliab to catch breath. Tirzah’s hands shone with lamp oil. Her eyes were fierce.

“They will bury it,” Eliab whispered.

“Then put it where they cannot bury it,” Tirzah said. “Before people who fear scandal more than truth.”

Eliab thought of the palace, of Rehoboam preparing to flee, of corridors packed with guards and servants—witnesses who would carry stories.

He nodded once. “We go to the king’s service corridor.”

Chapter 11: The Dagger in the Corridor

The palace complex was a hive of panic when Eliab and Tirzah reached it. Torches flared along walls. Servants carried bundles—blankets, water jars, baskets of bread. Guards shouted to clear passageways. Somewhere deeper inside, a woman wailed, and another voice snapped at her to be quiet.

Rehoboam was leaving. The king who could not hold the tribes was now trying to hold his own life.

Tirzah led Eliab through a side entrance used by servants. It was crowded with frightened faces, but fewer questions were asked there. Near an archway stood a captain of the guard, helmet catching torchlight, eyes hard. Men with spears waited behind him.

Eliab stepped forward and raised his voice. “Captain! I must speak. Theft from the temple stores. Ledgers altered. Men killed to hide it.”

Heads turned. The corridor quieted in patches as people listened.

The captain frowned. “Who are you?”

“A temple scribe,” Eliab said. He pulled the household seal from under his tunic and held it up. “This mark belongs to the compound where temple jars were hidden. And I have letters—”

Before he could finish, a man in a priest’s robe shoved through the crowd. The ink-stained priest. His face was tight with controlled rage.

“Lies,” the priest snapped. “This scribe forges trouble. In rebellion, he seeks to shame the temple and the king.”

Eliab stepped closer, forcing steadiness. “Look at the seal. Ask your own men why silver rings were paid to guards. Ask why jars meant for offerings were hidden in private stores.”

The priest’s hand slid under his robe. Eliab saw the movement—too quick to be harmless. A dagger flashed in torchlight.

Tirzah shouted, “Knife!”

The priest lunged. Eliab stumbled back, but the blade grazed his arm. Pain flared hot. The corridor erupted—servants screaming, guards surging.

The captain caught the priest’s wrist mid-strike. Another guard slammed him against the wall. The dagger clattered to the floor. The priest’s calm mask cracked; his eyes went wild.

“Let me go!” he hissed. “You don’t know what you touch!”

Eliab pressed his bleeding arm to his side and thrust the letters toward the captain. “Read them,” he said. “Or burn them. But do it where everyone sees.”

The captain’s jaw tightened as he took the letters. He understood what this meant: corruption tied to palace life, at the moment the kingdom broke. A scandal could snap the last threads of loyalty.

A door opened behind the captain. For a moment, the corridor fell quieter. Rehoboam appeared, surrounded by advisers and guards, face drawn and angry.

“What is this noise?” the king demanded.

The captain bowed. “My lord, a scribe brings accusations of theft and altered records. This priest attacked him with a dagger.”

Rehoboam’s eyes swept the scene—blood on Eliab’s arm, the dagger on stone, servants watching. His gaze hardened with calculation. More unrest was the last thing he could afford.

“Take the priest,” Rehoboam ordered. “Bind him. Question him away from the crowd.”

The priest opened his mouth to protest, but guards hauled him back. Eliab swayed, dizzy with pain and a strange relief. Tirzah steadied him.

Rehoboam looked at Eliab as if weighing him like grain. “If your words are false,” the king said, “you will answer for them.”

Eliab met his gaze. Fear was still there, but it no longer ruled him. “If my words are true,” he said, “then others should answer.”

Rehoboam turned away without replying, already swallowed by his retreat. But the dagger attack had done what Eliab needed: it exposed the priest’s intent before witnesses who could not unsee it.

Truth had not won cleanly. It had survived.

Chapter 12: A Kingdom Split, A Record Kept

Weeks passed, and Jerusalem lived beside a wound that would not close. The political break became real in the way real things always do—through repeated declarations, shifting patrols, and merchants bringing news that could not be ignored.

Word came that the northern tribes had acclaimed Jeroboam as king. Travelers arriving by the hill roads spoke it plainly. “Israel has chosen,” they said. “Judah stands alone.” The split that had begun with Rehoboam’s harsh answer now settled into borders of loyalty and fear, a social reality felt in markets and gatehouses as much as in councils.

Rehoboam held Jerusalem and the lands close to it, but the old unity under Solomon was gone like smoke. Within the city, men spoke more carefully than ever. The temple continued its offerings, but the tone had changed. Even prayers sounded guarded.

Eliab’s part in the scandal did not make him celebrated. It made him dangerous to keep near important records. The priest who attacked him was questioned. A few lesser clerks were punished, enough to satisfy public hunger for blame. Some jars were quietly returned to the storehouses. The household compound in the lower city was stripped and scrubbed. But Eliab sensed the larger net remained partly intact. Too many threads led too close to powerful doors.

A senior official in the record rooms summoned Eliab one morning. He did not offer a seat. “You will no longer handle master ledgers,” the man said. “You will copy prayers and routine offerings. You will be useful where your hands cannot shake foundations.”

Eliab bowed. “Yes, my lord.” He swallowed bitterness. Being pushed aside was safer than being buried.

Outside the record room, Tirzah waited near a pillar, carrying water again as if nothing had changed. But her eyes were older now.

“They pushed you away,” she said.

“They kept me alive,” Eliab answered, and he did not know whether it was mercy or strategy. A living witness could be watched. A dead one could become a rumor.

That night, in his small room, Eliab took a clay jar once used for dried figs. He cleaned it, then sealed it with plain wax. Inside, wrapped in cloth, lay his private copy: the altered numbers he had seen, notes about missing bronze tools, the household seal’s mark, and a short account of how the ledger had been scraped and pressed again. He wrote in tight, careful lines, the way scribes wrote when space and time were both precious.

He set the packet into the jar, sealed it, and slid it beneath a loose floor stone.

Tirzah watched from the doorway. “Why keep it?” she asked softly. “You survived.”

Eliab’s hand rested on the stone. “Because they will try again,” he said. “If not under Rehoboam, then under another. They will say the stores were full. They will say the people rebelled for nothing. They will rewrite the past as easily as clay is scraped.”

Tirzah stepped closer. “And you think one jar of truth can stop them?”

“No,” Eliab admitted. “But it can outlast them. It can wait for a time when someone is brave enough—or safe enough—to open it.”

In the temple courts, lamps burned steady. Beyond the walls, the hills held new loyalties. Hammers still rang in the lower city, bronze shaped into tools and weapons alike. Smoke rose from cooking fires and kilns, ordinary life continuing even as a kingdom lived split.

Eliab lay down, his arm scarred where the dagger had grazed him. He did not feel triumphant. He felt awake.

He had not healed the kingdom. He had not purified the temple. But he had kept a record that could not be easily erased.

In Jerusalem of 978 BC, that was its own kind of victory—small, bitter, and as real as iron.