Chapter 1: Mud-Brick Morning

Babylon woke before the sun cleared the haze above the Euphrates. From the rooflines, smoke rose in thin lines, smelling of dung fuel and barley porridge. In the lanes, water sellers called out while donkeys pushed through the early crowd. The city felt busy, but not relaxed. People spoke loudly until a patrol passed, then their voices folded into murmurs.

Bel-iddin sat cross-legged on a reed mat inside the record room of Esagila, the great temple precinct of Marduk. The room was cool compared to the street. Its walls were thick, and the light came through high openings that kept the sun at a distance. Clay tablets lay in stacks, some fresh and damp, others dried and marked with old fingerprints. Reed pens and cords hung from pegs. The work was steady. That steadiness was the point.

He was sixteen, narrow-shouldered, with hands already stained by clay. His reed stylus pressed wedge marks into a tablet that recorded barley measures: received, stored, issued. He had copied the same patterns for months. He knew the comfort of repetition.

Nabû-ēṭir, the senior scribe, moved behind him like a shadow with a beard. He did not raise his voice. He rarely needed to.

“Slow,” Nabû-ēṭir said, watching the tablet. “A crooked wedge is a crooked truth.”

Bel-iddin corrected a sign at once. The correction was small, but his heart beat hard anyway. In the temple, mistakes were not only errors. They could be interpreted as carelessness, or worse, as intent. In Babylon’s current mood, intent was a dangerous thing.

Outside, sandals scraped in the courtyard. Two elders spoke in careful tones. Bel-iddin caught only fragments as he worked.

“After Ulai…” one murmured.

“Keep your tongue,” the other replied. “Even here.”

Bel-iddin’s stylus paused. The name Ulai had drifted through Babylon like dust: a river far to the east, a battle, a victory that made people nervous rather than proud. He did not know the details. He only knew that when men spoke of it, they glanced over their shoulders.

Assyria was the larger rumor, the shadow behind all others. Ashurbanipal ruled in Nineveh. His brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, sat on Babylon’s throne. Some called it an alliance. Others called it a leash.

That morning, Bel-iddin’s mother, Amat-Marduk, had pressed his lunch into his hands—date-and-barley cakes wrapped in cloth—and held his wrists as if to keep him from drifting away.

“Do your work,” she had told him. “Do not listen. Do not speak. A scribe survives by being useful, not brave.”

He had nodded because arguing would only make her eyes sharper. She had already lost a husband to fever. She would not risk losing a son to politics.

Now, inside Esagila’s walls, Bel-iddin tried to match his breath to the rhythm of writing. But the city’s tension seeped even into temple rooms. A runner passed outside. A priest raised his voice in a chant, then lowered it again. Somewhere in the precinct, a door closed too hard.

Near midmorning, a temple attendant appeared at the record-room doorway. He did not call out. He simply met Nabû-ēṭir’s gaze and tilted his head.

Nabû-ēṭir’s mouth tightened, a small change that meant much. He turned to Bel-iddin, too calm.

“Put down your stylus,” he said. “Come.”

Bel-iddin wiped clay from his fingers onto his skirt. His stomach dropped as if he had stepped onto a loose brick. He followed Nabû-ēṭir out into the bright courtyard, where sunlight struck like a slap and the air rang with distant voices.

Inside the temple, men counted grain and offerings. Outside, men counted loyalty. Bel-iddin walked between those worlds, not yet knowing how thin the wall between them had become.

Chapter 2: The Seal in the Reed Basket

Nabû-ēṭir led Bel-iddin through corridors that smelled of incense, plaster dust, and old oil. Relief carvings stared from shadowed walls: gods with horned crowns, kings with hands lifted in prayer, lines of cuneiform that praised order and victory. Bel-iddin kept his eyes down. In Esagila, you did not stare at the holy. And you did not stare at the powerful, especially when you were being taken somewhere without explanation.

They stopped at a small side room with a high slit window. The light fell in a narrow bar across a low table. Baskets of reeds were stacked in one corner, cords coiled in another. Damp clay lumps lay under cloth, kept ready for quick writing. An oil lamp burned despite the day, its flame steady as if the room was meant for work that did not wait for sunlight.

A man stood by the table. He wore clean linen and a belt dyed deep blue. His hands were smooth, the hands of someone who gave orders rather than carried loads. He did not greet Bel-iddin. He studied him the way a scribe reads a tablet—quiet, exact, and without kindness.

“You are the apprentice who copies without asking,” the man said.

Bel-iddin swallowed. “I do what I am told.”

“Good.” The man reached into a reed basket and lifted a small bundle wrapped in fresh reeds and tied with cord. At the knot sat a lump of clay pressed with a cylinder seal. The impression was tiny but sharp: figures, a star, a line of signs too fine to read without time. The clay was still cool. The seal was recent.

Bel-iddin’s eyes fixed on it. Scribes noticed seals the way boatmen noticed changing currents. A seal was a voice. The wrong voice, in the wrong place, could drown you.

“This is for the south,” the man said. “To the marshes.”

Bel-iddin’s mouth went dry. “My lord, I—”

“You will take it,” the man cut in. “You will not open it. You will not delay. You will not speak the names of those who placed it in your hands.”

Nabû-ēṭir’s face remained blank, but one finger tapped lightly against his own belt: a warning to obey.

Bel-iddin forced himself to breathe. “To whom in the south?” he asked before he could stop himself. The question felt like stepping onto thin ice.

The man’s eyes narrowed. For a moment Bel-iddin expected a slap or a shout. Instead, the man spoke with careful weight.

“You will ask for Enlil-mukīn-apli among the Chaldeans near the lower waterways. If you cannot find him, you will give it to the headman who keeps the shrine of Adad in the reed village by the forked channel.”

Bel-iddin held the names in his mind without letting them show on his face. Names were hooks. They caught men.

“And if I am stopped?” he asked.

Nabû-ēṭir answered, voice low. “You are a temple apprentice. You travel to copy receipts for barley deliveries. You carry blank tablets and a stylus. You keep your eyes down.”

The man in blue leaned forward. “If you are forced to choose between your life and this message,” he said, “remember your life is small. Babylon is not.”

Bel-iddin flinched. He thought of his mother’s hands and her warning: useful, not brave. He thought of the neighbor’s son dragged away after shouting at a tax collector. No one shouted now. People disappeared quietly.

He reached for the bundle. The seal lump was slightly damp. The impression’s edges bit into his thumb: a horned crown, a kneeling figure, a star. The seal was not common. It belonged to someone important, perhaps someone close to the temple’s inner circles.

“Hold it as you would hold bread,” Nabû-ēṭir murmured. “As if it belongs in your hands.”

Bel-iddin tucked it into his satchel beneath cloth and two blank tablets. The bundle was small, yet it pulled at him like a stone tied to a cord.

“Go today,” the man in blue said. “Before the gates close. Before questions grow teeth.”

Bel-iddin bowed because fear had no other shape. He backed out, Nabû-ēṭir guiding him with a hand that did not quite touch his shoulder.

In the corridor, Nabû-ēṭir finally spoke so softly Bel-iddin had to lean in to hear. “Do not be clever,” he said. “Clever men die first. Do as you were taught. Say little.”

Bel-iddin nodded. As they reached the courtyard gate, sunlight poured in. Beyond it, Babylon waited with its vendors, its donkeys, its soldiers with eyes like stones.

Bel-iddin stepped out with the reed-wrapped bundle hidden against his side. He told himself one simple thing: deliver it before the clay seal fully dried. As if time alone was the enemy.

He did not yet understand that the seal was not the only thing hardening. Choices hardened too.

Chapter 3: River Road, Watchful Eyes

At the river docks, Babylon’s noises gathered into rough music: oars knocking wood, jars clinking, goats bleating, men shouting prices. The Euphrates smelled of silt and fish. Coracles coated in black pitch bobbed beside longer wooden boats stacked with baskets and amphorae. Laborers rolled barrels of beer, and temple porters carried sacks of grain sealed with clay tags.

Bel-iddin moved carefully, keeping his satchel pressed close. He looked like any apprentice sent on errands, and he needed to keep looking that way. He found Rīmūt, a trader who sometimes carried temple goods south. Rīmūt’s belly pushed against his belt, and his laugh came too easily. Bel-iddin did not know if the laugh meant confidence or practice.

“I can fit you,” Rīmūt said, eyeing Bel-iddin’s satchel. “You scribes travel light. Pay with silver, or with a promise from Esagila?”

Bel-iddin offered a small ring of silver—his mother’s hidden emergency savings. His fingers trembled as he placed it in Rīmūt’s palm. Rīmūt weighed it with his thumb and nodded.

“Sit near the jars,” he said. “And keep your head down when we pass the toll men.”

They pushed off near midday. Babylon slid away behind them: mud-brick walls, the temple towers, the great ziggurat rising like a man-made mountain. Bel-iddin watched until the city became a smudge in heat shimmer. He felt as if a rope had been cut and he was drifting free, but not toward safety.

A fisherman in the boat chewed dried fish and spat into the water. “You go south, boy? Marshes swallow men.”

“I go to copy receipts,” Bel-iddin said. The lie came too easily, and he hated that.

The fisherman snorted. “Receipts. Even when blood runs, someone counts it.”

The Euphrates carried them past fields cut into squares by irrigation canals. Farmers bent under the sun, their backs shining with sweat. Water wheels creaked in the distance. Here and there, small shrines stood by the bank with offerings of dates and bread. Life looked ordinary, but the river road was not relaxed. Boats were stopped more often now. Men complained in low voices about tolls and inspections. Everyone had a story about a cousin questioned, a neighbor taxed twice, a stranger taken away.

Late afternoon brought the first checkpoint: a small fort of mud brick with a flag staff and a shaded table where a scribe sat with a tablet. Soldiers stood behind him, spears upright. Some wore Assyrian-style helmets. Others wore local headcloths but carried themselves with the stiff confidence of men backed by Nineveh.

“Toll!” a guard called. “Boat, come in.”

Rīmūt guided them to the bank, muttering curses under his breath. The official scribe stepped forward. He had a waxed beard and a practiced stare.

“What cargo?” he asked.

“Oil jars, barley cakes, cloth,” Rīmūt replied smoothly. “And a temple apprentice traveling to the south.”

The official’s eyes flicked to Bel-iddin. “Temple?”

Bel-iddin bowed. “Esagila.”

“Your travel tablet,” the official said, holding out his hand.

Bel-iddin’s heart hammered. He produced a blank tablet and the small clay tag Nabû-ēṭir had given him bearing a temple mark. The official examined it, then nodded toward the satchel.

“Open it.”

Bel-iddin knelt and untied the satchel with fingers that felt clumsy. Inside lay cloth, stylus, blank tablets. The reed-wrapped bundle was hidden beneath cloth. He forced himself not to look at it.

The official jabbed the satchel with his stylus. “What is under there?”

“Cloth for writing,” Bel-iddin said. “To keep tablets from cracking.”

The official’s hand hovered, then reached in. His fingers brushed the cloth. Bel-iddin’s stomach turned to water. If the man touched the reed bundle, if he felt the cord and seal—

A shout rose from the bank. A soldier had found a jar with a cracked seal.

“False measure!” the soldier barked.

Rīmūt raised his hands, loud and offended. “It cracked in the sun! By Shamash, you think I cheat?”

The official withdrew his hand, annoyed, and strode toward the argument. Bel-iddin breathed out silently, lungs burning.

Rīmūt paid the toll. The boat pushed off again. As the checkpoint shrank behind them, the fisherman muttered, “Nineveh’s eyes are everywhere now.”

That night they camped on the bank with other travelers. Fires dotted the dark like low stars. Men ate and spoke in half-voices. Bel-iddin lay awake under his cloak, the reed bundle pressed against his ribs. Above him, the sky was crowded with stars. Somewhere far north, Ashurbanipal’s scribes carved victories into stone. Somewhere far south, marsh people watched the waterways.

Between them, Bel-iddin carried a few lines of clay that could pull a city’s skin tight.

Chapter 4: A Market of Oaths

On the third day, they reached a riverside town where the market clung to the bank in a tight sprawl. Boats tied up two and three deep. The air smelled of fish, sweat, sour beer, and onions. Vendors shouted over one another, lifting baskets of dates and dried river crab. A drummer beat a steady rhythm to draw buyers to a cloth stall. Men argued about weights and measures as if argument could keep hunger away.

Rīmūt wanted to trade for reed mats and bitumen. “We stop,” he told the crew. “Before the heat cooks us.”

Bel-iddin stepped onto the bank with stiff legs, satchel tight against his side. Crowds pressed close. Hands brushed his elbow, his shoulder, his hip. In Babylon, thieves wanted silver. Here, he feared hands that wanted something else—words, seals, proof.

He paused at a pottery stall where clay cups were stacked like small towers. A young woman stood behind them, hands dusted with pale slip. Her hair was tied back with cloth. She watched the crowd not with boredom but with alertness, as if she counted faces the way a scribe counted measures.

Bel-iddin pretended to examine a cup. The woman’s eyes flicked to his satchel. A corner of reed wrapping peeked where the cloth had shifted.

“You carry temple writing,” she said, casual as a price.

Bel-iddin’s throat tightened. “I carry blank tablets.”

She turned a cup slowly in her hands. “Blank tablets do not need reeds tied with cord.”

Bel-iddin forced a confused look. “You mistake me.”

The woman’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “My father makes pots,” she said. “I make sure people pay. I also make sure my brothers don’t get dragged into an official’s yard because someone heard the wrong word.”

Bel-iddin hesitated. He had no reason to trust her. Yet she had already seen enough to ruin him, and she had not raised her voice.

“What do you want?” he asked quietly.

“To warn you,” she replied. Her gaze slid toward the beer sellers where men lingered too long, listening too hard. “Informers stand there. They sell words for grain.”

Before Bel-iddin could answer, a local official raised his voice near the river road.

“Travelers! Line up! Inspection for those moving south. By order of the governor!”

The market’s noise faltered, then shifted into uneasy obedience. Soldiers straightened. A man with a scar on his cheek watched the forming line with hungry interest.

Bel-iddin’s breath shortened. The woman leaned forward, voice low. “Stand behind me,” she murmured. “Don’t touch your satchel unless told. Hands that move look guilty.”

Bel-iddin wanted to slip away, but soldiers blocked the path back to the boats. He stepped behind her as the line formed: fishermen, traders, a family with baskets of grain, a priest traveling with a small icon wrapped in cloth.

The official moved down the line, asking questions, tapping bundles, sometimes cutting cords to see what lay beneath. When he reached the pottery stall woman, he glanced at her cups.

“What is your business?”

“Cups,” she said, lifting a stack. “And a promise to deliver to my aunt. She has a new baby.”

The official grunted and waved her through. His eyes moved to Bel-iddin.

“And you?”

Bel-iddin bowed. “Temple apprentice. I copy receipts.”

“Receipts,” the official repeated, as if the word tasted bitter. “Show.”

Bel-iddin handed over his blank tablets and temple tag. The official examined them, then nodded toward the satchel. “Open.”

Bel-iddin opened it with shaking fingers. The cloth lay over the reed bundle, but the edge showed. The official’s hand hovered.

“What is that?”

“Reeds for keeping clay damp,” Bel-iddin said. “My master says tablets crack.”

The official pinched the reed edge between two fingers. Bel-iddin’s vision narrowed. If the man pulled, the seal would show. The seal would speak without words.

The woman laughed softly, sharp as a thrown pebble. “He’s a scribe, lord,” she said. “He fears cracked clay more than cracked teeth. Let him keep his reeds.”

The official glanced at her. “You speak for him?”

“I speak for the cups I sell,” she replied. “And for the time you waste while fish rots in the sun.”

For a heartbeat, Bel-iddin expected punishment. Instead, the official snorted, half amused, half annoyed. He released the reed edge and waved Bel-iddin through.

Bel-iddin walked on legs that did not feel like his own. On the far side, he turned to the woman.

“You risked yourself,” he whispered.

She shrugged, but her eyes were tight. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just learn. The world is not only soldiers. It’s also men who want to be noticed by soldiers.”

Bel-iddin followed her glance. The scarred man near the beer sellers watched the line, gaze lingering on Bel-iddin’s satchel a heartbeat too long.

“That one,” the woman said quietly, “counts more than grain. He counts fear.”

Bel-iddin swallowed. “Why tell me your thoughts at all?”

She stacked cups with quick, steady hands. “Because someone will betray you if it buys them a meal,” she said. “And because if you carry something sealed, you’re already part of a story bigger than you. Whether you want it or not.”

Her name, she added as if it were nothing, was Ninsunu. Bel-iddin repeated it silently, careful not to let it become a hook in his mouth. Then he returned to the boat, aware that the market’s noise now sounded like murmuring around a hidden knife.

Chapter 5: Names That Burn the Tongue

They left the town before sunset. Rīmūt’s boat slipped back into the river’s slow pull, and the market faded into smoke and shouting. Bel-iddin expected Ninsunu to remain behind her cups. Instead, she appeared at the dock with a small bundle and a determined face.

“My aunt can wait,” she told Rīmūt briskly. “I have cousins in the marshes. I can sell cups there. I can also row, if your men complain.”

Rīmūt eyed her, then shrugged. “More hands,” he said. “More mouths. But hands matter.”

Bel-iddin did not ask her to come. That made his gratitude feel tangled with guilt. Yet as the light faded and the boat tied up among reeds, he was glad she was there. Night along the river could feel like a closed fist. Insects buzzed. Water birds called. Every rustle sounded like a footstep.

Travelers settled into lumps beneath cloaks. Rīmūt snored. A hired guard sat awake with a spear across his knees, eyes half-lidded. Bel-iddin lay on his back, the reed-wrapped bundle pressed under his side. Sleep would not come. The seal’s impression seemed to itch against his thoughts.

Ninsunu sat a little apart, shaping a small lump of clay with her fingers as if making something could calm her. Her hands moved with practiced confidence. She did not need a stylus to understand clay.

“You’re shaking,” she said without looking at him.

“I’m not,” Bel-iddin lied.

She glanced over, and in the firelight her face looked older than in the market. “Scribes think danger stays outside,” she said. “But you carry it in your bag.”

Bel-iddin tightened his grip on his cloak. “I was told not to read it.”

“Then don’t,” she replied. “Knowing more doesn’t always help.”

He stared at the dark river. He thought of the official’s fingers near the reeds, of the scarred man watching, of the elders whispering “Ulai” like a curse. He thought of the man in blue speaking of Babylon as if it were a body that needed protecting.

“If I don’t know what it is,” Bel-iddin said slowly, “how do I protect it?”

Ninsunu’s fingers paused. “You protect it by not being caught,” she said. “And by not becoming interesting.”

Bel-iddin’s hand slid toward his satchel anyway. His heart thudded so loudly he feared it would wake the guard.

“I only want to see the seal,” he whispered. “Not the words.”

Ninsunu’s eyes sharpened. “Seals are words,” she said. “They tell who is speaking.”

He pulled the bundle out and held it near the firelight without bringing it too close. The clay seal lump was drying, edges firming. The impression showed a horned deity standing over a kneeling figure. A star hovered above. Along the edge ran tiny signs. In this light he could not read them fully, but he recognized the style: temple seal, high-ranking.

His breath caught. If the seal belonged to someone in Esagila’s inner circles, this was not a trade note. It was a voice from the heart of Babylon’s holy place.

He traced the impression with his eyes. One sign looked like “king.” Another like “Babylon.” His skin prickled. He thought he saw a name forming in the tiny line, a name too heavy for a boy’s hands.

Ninsunu leaned closer, voice sharp. “Don’t say it.”

Bel-iddin swallowed. He did not speak, but the name formed in his mind anyway: Shamash-shum-ukin. Babylon’s king. Ashurbanipal’s brother. A man balanced between city pride and Assyrian power like a reed raft between currents.

Bel-iddin hurriedly wrapped the bundle again, pressing reeds back into place as if he could undo the moment of looking. But the seal’s impression was now carved into his memory.

“You’re not a thief,” Ninsunu said quietly. “You’re just young.”

Anger flared in Bel-iddin—not at her, but at the trap of it all. “I didn’t ask for this,” he whispered.

“No one asks,” she replied. “The river carries you anyway.”

Bel-iddin stared into the fire until his eyes watered. He heard his mother’s voice: stay invisible. He heard the man in blue: Babylon is not small. Between those voices, he felt himself being pulled in opposite directions.

When he finally closed his eyes, he dreamed of clay cracking—not from heat, but from pressure. Like truth forced open.

Chapter 6: Reed Houses and the Shrine of Adad

The land changed as they traveled farther south. The banks softened and spread. Fields gave way to reeds that hissed in the wind. Water spilled into side channels, then into a maze. The river stopped feeling like a road and started feeling like a living thing with many fingers.

Rīmūt brought the boat to a place where the main channel narrowed and the reeds rose higher. “This is as far as I go,” he announced. “Beyond this, the marshes eat boats that don’t know the paths.”

A long, shallow boat waited there, made to slide through narrow water. Two men stood in it with poles, their hair bound back. Their eyes were watchful in a way Bel-iddin recognized: the watchfulness of people who knew they could not rely on walls.

Ninsunu spoke to them quickly in a dialect Bel-iddin could not follow. The men glanced at Bel-iddin, then at his satchel.

“He comes with me,” Ninsunu told Bel-iddin. “If you go alone, you’ll be lost in an hour.”

Bel-iddin hesitated. Trust was a luxury. But in the marshes, ignorance could kill faster than betrayal. He climbed into the shallow boat. They pushed off with poles, and the world closed in. Reeds rose taller than a man on both sides. The water was dark, reflecting only broken strips of sky. Insects buzzed. The air smelled of rot and green life, of wet earth and fish.

The channels twisted. Sometimes they opened into wide pools where reed houses stood on platforms. The houses were built from bundled reeds tied into walls, roofs arched like ribs. Smoke rose from small clay hearths. Children paddled tiny boats, laughing. Women washed cloth, slapping it against boards. Men mended nets and checked fish traps. Life here was not grand, but it was stubborn.

They reached a larger village near a simple shrine: a carved wooden post, offerings of fish and dates on a mat, shells strung as a wind rattle. Ninsunu stepped onto the platform and called out. A broad-shouldered man approached, his skin darkened by sun, a scar along his forearm. His gaze was calm and heavy, as if he had watched many strangers arrive with many stories.

“Uncle,” Ninsunu said. The word carried more than blood. It carried the marsh idea of kinship—wide, practical, binding.

The headman nodded once. “Ninsunu. You bring trouble with you.”

“Trouble finds us anyway,” she replied.

His eyes shifted to Bel-iddin. “And you are?”

Bel-iddin bowed. “Bel-iddin, apprentice scribe of Esagila. I carry a message.”

The headman did not reach for the satchel. He did not ask for the tablet at once. He only said, “Words travel poorly here. Too much water. Too many ears.”

Bel-iddin swallowed. “I was told to give it to Enlil-mukīn-apli, or to the headman who keeps the shrine of Adad by the forked channel.”

The headman’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Then you found the second.”

Bel-iddin pulled the reed-wrapped bundle out with careful hands and offered it like an offering. The headman took it, weighing it in his palm. His thumb brushed the seal impression, and his expression tightened.

“This seal is not for common trade,” he said.

“I was told not to read it,” Bel-iddin answered quickly.

“Good,” the headman said. “Reading makes a man responsible.”

He turned the bundle once, then placed it into a clay jar near the shrine and covered it with cloth as if setting aside a sleeping snake.

“You will stay,” the headman said.

Bel-iddin blinked. “Stay? I must return—”

“If you leave now,” the headman interrupted, “you may lead eyes to us. Or you may be caught and made to talk. Or you may drown. You will stay until I know whether you are bait on a hook.”

Bel-iddin’s mouth went dry. “I’m not bait.”

“Every fish says that,” the headman replied, steady and unimpressed. “Eat. Sit. Let me watch your hands.”

Inside a reed house, the roof filtered sunlight into green stripes. A pot simmered with fish and herbs. The headman’s wife served bowls with a polite stillness, her eyes flicking to Bel-iddin as if measuring him. Bel-iddin ate because refusing would be foolish. His hunger made the food taste better than it should have.

As evening cooled the air, the headman spoke of layered loyalties: family, tribe, city, gods. “Babylon thinks it is the center,” he said. “Nineveh thinks it is the whip. The marshes think only of surviving the next season.”

Bel-iddin listened, feeling his own loyalty twist inside him. In Esagila, loyalty meant order, ritual, and the city’s pride. Here, loyalty meant keeping children alive and boats hidden.

At sunset, the headman walked him to the shrine. “I will pass the message onward,” he said. “But you will remain until I am sure you did not come with soldiers behind you.”

Bel-iddin looked at the channels that could hide a canoe or a knife. Babylon had gates and walls. The marshes had only reeds and watchful eyes. He nodded once.

“I will stay.”

Ninsunu stood beside him, arms crossed. “You’re learning,” she said quietly.

Bel-iddin did not answer. His task was no longer a simple delivery. It was a test, and he was not sure yet what passing would look like.

Chapter 7: News from the Ulai (654 BC)

In the marshes, news arrived like drifting wood: slow, waterlogged, and impossible to ignore once it bumped your platform.

A week after Bel-iddin’s arrival, a messenger came in a narrow canoe, shoulders tense, eyes too bright. Men gathered near the shrine. Women paused their work. Children were hushed by the adults’ faces. Even the birds seemed quieter, as if the reeds themselves listened.

The headman spoke to the messenger in quick phrases, then lifted a hand for silence.

“Teumman is dead,” he announced. “Elam’s king. Killed after the battle at the Ulai.”

A low murmur spread. Bel-iddin felt the name strike him like a stone. Teumman. Ulai. The whispers from Esagila’s courtyard suddenly became a solid story.

Ninsunu leaned toward him. “Assyria fought Elam,” she whispered. “Big battle. People say the river ran dark.”

Bel-iddin’s stomach tightened. “How do they know?”

“Everyone knows,” she said. “Victory travels faster than boats. And kings make sure it does.”

The messenger’s account, repeated and shaped by each listener, carried the sharp edges of a real event of 654 BC: Assyria’s victory over Elam at the Ulai River. In villages far from the battlefield, people still understood what it meant. If Assyria could crush Elam and kill its king, then Assyria’s hand was freer. A strong hand did not rest. It tightened.

An older marsh man spat into the water. “Elam is far,” he muttered, but his voice shook. “Yet Assyria reaches here.”

The headman’s eyes were hard. “After Ulai, Assyria is stronger,” he said. “And when a strong man wins, he looks for the next thing to tighten.”

Bel-iddin thought of the sealed message in the jar. If Assyria’s confidence rose, then any whisper of Babylonian plotting would be treated as proof. In such times, proof was not needed. Fear was enough.

That night, the village made offerings. Not grand temple rites with trained singers and incense lines, but simple acts: fish laid on mats, beer poured into water, prayers spoken into reeds. The headman’s wife tied a strip of cloth to the shrine post.

“For Adad’s storms to turn away,” she murmured.

Bel-iddin watched, uneasy. In Babylon, omens were read by specialists: livers examined, stars charted, smoke interpreted. Here, omens were felt in the gut and in the way men checked their nets twice.

Ninsunu sat beside him on the platform edge, legs dangling over water. “Do you believe in omens?” she asked.

Bel-iddin chose his words carefully. “I believe the gods speak,” he said. “But I don’t know if we always understand.”

Ninsunu picked at a reed. “My mother said when kings fight, the gods don’t choose sides,” she murmured. “They just watch who forgets respect.”

Bel-iddin looked at her. “And who forgets respect now?”

She gave a short laugh with no humor. “All of them.”

Later, the headman called Bel-iddin into his reed house. Smoke thickened the air, and the lamp light made shadows jump on the walls.

“You heard the news,” the headman said.

Bel-iddin nodded.

“Assyria’s victory changes the balance,” the headman continued. “Some hoped Elam would keep Assyria busy. Now Assyria has more hands free.”

Bel-iddin’s mouth went dry. “Then the message I brought—”

The headman raised a hand. “I have not opened it. I do not need to. The seal speaks enough.”

Bel-iddin felt a flicker of frustration. “Then why keep it at all?”

“Because it is not only words,” the headman said. “It is a test of trust between Babylon and the marshes. If Babylon asks for help, Babylon must also show it can keep its own secrets.”

“And if Babylon cannot?” Bel-iddin asked.

The headman’s gaze stayed steady. “Then Babylon will be what Assyria lets it be.”

Bel-iddin left the reed house with the moon reflecting in broken pieces on the water. He understood then that the battle at Ulai was not distant. It was a weight shifting across the whole land. It pressed down on fishermen, potters, scribes, and anyone who carried sealed words.

In 654 BC, victories were not only won with spears. They were enforced with fear, lists, and the knowledge that someone, somewhere, was always listening.

Chapter 8: A Second Tablet, a Harder Choice

A second message arrived at noon, carried by a boy barely older than Bel-iddin had been when he entered temple school. The boy’s feet were cut from travel. His eyes were wide and too serious, the way eyes looked when a child had seen adults frightened too often.

He gave the headman a tablet wrapped in cloth. The clay was already hard, dried by sun and time. The seal was plain, official without being grand.

The headman called Bel-iddin and Ninsunu near the shrine where the air moved and voices carried less. He unwrapped the tablet and held it so light fell across the wedges.

Bel-iddin recognized the handwriting at once. Nabû-ēṭir’s hand was disciplined: even spacing, clean angles, no wasted marks. It was the kind of writing that made officials trust a tablet without thinking.

The message was short:

Eyes are on Esagila. A name has been spoken in the wrong place. Do not return by the main river road. Do not trust those who ask questions politely. If you have delivered, stay hidden until the reed message is gone from your hands.

Bel-iddin’s mouth went numb. “Someone betrayed a name,” he whispered.

“Or someone guessed,” Ninsunu said. “It doesn’t matter. A net is still a net.”

The headman’s thumb traced the tablet’s edge. “Your first delivery may have been expected,” he said. “Tracked. Watched.”

Bel-iddin’s stomach twisted. He pictured the scarred man at the market. He pictured the official’s fingers hovering over reeds. He had thought he was lucky. Perhaps he had been allowed through because someone wanted to see where he went.

“I led them here,” Bel-iddin said, voice cracking.

“Maybe,” the headman replied. “Or maybe they would come anyway. Assyria does not need a reason to count boats and men.”

Bel-iddin’s thoughts spun toward Babylon—toward his mother waiting, toward the record room, toward the familiar safety of copying barley measures. “I have to go back,” he said. “My mother will—”

Ninsunu seized his wrist. Her fingers were strong from clay work. “If you go back now, you may walk into hands waiting for you,” she hissed. “You won’t help your mother by dying.”

Bel-iddin pulled away, torn. “If I stay, I am hiding while Babylon—”

“Babylon is not one boy,” Ninsunu snapped. Then her voice softened. “And you are not a weapon. You are a person.”

The headman watched them and then spoke with the calm of someone used to deciding who lived and who didn’t.

“There is another choice,” he said. “You stay until the message is passed onward. You help us prepare. You write what we need.”

Bel-iddin stared. “Write what?”

“Lists,” the headman said, as if the word tasted bitter. “Boats. Grain. Men. Officials demand writing. They demand that someone makes their hunger look like law.”

Bel-iddin’s hands went cold. “You want me to help hide?”

“I want you to help us survive,” the headman replied. “And maybe help Babylon, if Babylon’s words are true.”

Bel-iddin looked toward the water where reeds bent in the wind like bowed heads. He heard again the man in blue: your life is small. Babylon is not. He heard his mother: stay invisible. Those voices pulled him in opposite directions.

Ninsunu stepped closer. “If you run now,” she said, “you run alone. If you stay, you at least choose where you stand.”

Bel-iddin swallowed hard. “What if I stay and still get caught?”

The headman did not flinch. “Then you learn what all of us know,” he said. “Courage is not a story. It is a cost.”

Bel-iddin looked down at Nabû-ēṭir’s tablet. The temple scribe who preached steadiness was now telling him the world had become unstable. Bel-iddin felt suddenly older, as if the seal impression had pressed years into him.

He nodded once. “I will stay,” he said, and felt relief and fear crash together in his chest.

Ninsunu’s shoulders loosened slightly, but her eyes stayed sharp. “Good,” she said. “Then we don’t waste time.”

The headman tucked the warning tablet away. “The reed message will leave tonight,” he said. “By a path you do not need to know.”

Bel-iddin wanted to ask where it would go, to whom, what it would cause. But he remembered the headman’s earlier words: reading makes a man responsible. Knowing paths made you a map for enemies.

That afternoon Bel-iddin sat with damp clay and wrote simple things: fish baskets counted, reed bundles counted, boats counted. Ordinary writing. Harmless writing. Yet his hand trembled. He now understood how easily ordinary writing could become a weapon.

In 654 BC, great decisions were made in palaces, but many outcomes were shaped in reed houses. The gods might watch kings at war, but they also watched a teenage scribe deciding whether to be invisible or to be counted.

Chapter 9: The Inventory at Spearpoint

They came at dawn, when mist clung to the water and reeds dripped with coolness. Bel-iddin heard them before he saw them: the dull thump of poles, the clink of metal, the low murmur of men who knew they were feared.

Ninsunu shook him awake. “Boats,” she whispered.

Bel-iddin sat up, heart racing, and peered through a gap in the reed wall. Three boats moved in a line down the channel. The men in them wore mixed gear: some with Assyrian-style helmets, others in local cloth. Spears and bows lay ready. One man carried a tablet case under his arm.

The headman was already outside, calm as stone. Villagers gathered behind him with tight faces. Children were pulled back into reed houses. Even the dogs were quiet.

The lead boat bumped the platform. A man stepped out, boots splashing. His beard was trimmed in the northern style, and his eyes swept the village like hands searching for hidden coins.

“By authority of the king,” he announced in Akkadian with a northern edge, “we demand inventories. Boats. Grain. Men. Taxes are delayed. Loyalty is questioned.”

The headman bowed slightly—polite, not weak. “We are simple marsh folk,” he said. “We fish. We cut reeds. We pay what we can.”

The official’s mouth curled. “Everyone says that.”

His gaze landed on Bel-iddin. “You. Scribe.”

Bel-iddin’s stomach dropped. He had tried to stand behind others, but scribes were noticed like fire in darkness.

“I am only an apprentice,” Bel-iddin said.

“Apprentice or master,” the official replied, stepping closer, “your hand makes truth. You will write what we ask.”

A soldier moved behind Bel-iddin, close enough that Bel-iddin smelled sweat and leather. A spear tip hovered near his shoulder. Not touching, but promising.

The official pressed a fresh clay tablet into Bel-iddin’s hands and handed him a stylus. “Start,” he ordered. “List every boat in this village. Who owns it. How many poles. How many nets. How many men who can row.”

Bel-iddin knelt. His knees shook. The clay was smooth and ready to take marks—ready to become evidence.

He began to write, speaking aloud as he pressed wedges because the official demanded confirmation.

“One fishing boat. Owner Ilshu-ibni,” he said, marking the signs carefully.

Ilshu-ibni stared at the platform boards as if looking up would make him a target.

The official paced. “Faster,” he snapped. “Or I’ll find someone whose hand moves quicker.”

Bel-iddin forced his stylus deeper. He listed visible boats. He did not list the smallest canoe hidden in a reed tunnel. He described some nets as torn, some poles as cracked. He used vague words where he could: “few,” “old,” “damaged.” Each vague sign felt like a small rebellion and a large risk.

“Grain stores?” the official demanded next.

The headman answered smoothly. “We store little. The marsh gives fish, not barley.”

“Everyone eats barley,” the official said, eyes narrowing.

Bel-iddin was made to write again. A small basket of grain was brought as proof of poverty. The official scoffed but made his own notes. Bel-iddin could not see what he wrote. He could only guess it would be used later.

Then came the demand that turned the air cold.

“Men,” the official said. “List the men who can fight. Names.”

Silence spread. Even water birds quieted. Bel-iddin’s stylus hovered above clay. Names were hooks. Names burned the tongue. Nabû-ēṭir had warned that a name spoken in the wrong place could destroy lives.

The headman’s voice stayed careful. “We have fishermen,” he said. “Not soldiers.”

The official smiled without warmth. “All men are soldiers when ordered,” he replied. He leaned down close to Bel-iddin’s face. “Write.”

Bel-iddin’s throat tightened. If he refused, he would be beaten or killed, and someone else would write the names anyway. If he wrote, men would be taken. He felt trapped between two wrongs, forced to choose which wrong he could live with.

His hand moved. He wrote a few names—older men, men with injured legs, men unlikely to be useful as captives. Shame burned hot as he did it. He felt Ninsunu’s gaze on him from the crowd. When he looked up, her face held pain, but not accusation. That made it worse.

The official took the tablet and nodded as if satisfied. “Good,” he said. “You understand your place.”

As the boats pushed off, the village stayed silent. Only when the last ripples faded did the headman speak.

“The net tightens,” he said quietly. “And it tightens first around those who can write.”

Bel-iddin stared at his hands, smeared with clay. He had believed writing was clean work. Now he understood it could be dirty without ever touching blood. He also understood something else: a scribe could be forced to write, but he could still choose how to write.

That small choice was not victory. But in a world ruled by lists, small choices mattered.

Chapter 10: The Informer and the Broken Clay

The informer arrived in the afternoon when the sun stood high and the village tried to breathe again. Bel-iddin saw him first: a thin man in a small canoe, moving too directly, eyes flicking from house to house as if counting. His hands were too clean for reed work.

Ninsunu appeared beside Bel-iddin, voice tight. “Not from here,” she murmured. “Look at his hands.”

The canoe bumped the platform. The man climbed out and spoke with false ease. “I bring word,” he announced. “From the river towns. Officials are asking about a temple boy. A scribe carrying a reed-wrapped message.”

Bel-iddin’s blood went cold. Villagers stiffened. The headman stepped forward, expression unreadable.

“And why do you bring this word?” the headman asked.

“To help,” the man said, spreading his hands. His eyes stayed sharp. “If you have such a boy, better to hand him over. Better to show loyalty. Assyria rewards those who keep order.”

The headman’s voice remained calm. “We have no such boy.”

The informer’s gaze slid past him and landed on Bel-iddin. Bel-iddin’s satchel hung at his side. He had been careful, but the man’s eyes went straight to the place where reeds sometimes peeked.

“Reeds,” the informer said softly. “That is not for fish.”

Bel-iddin’s legs wanted to run. But running would be confession. The headman’s hand moved slightly—a signal to stay still.

The informer stepped closer. “Show,” he said.

Two enforcers appeared behind him, holding clubs. Clubs were for taking people alive. Bel-iddin’s mouth went dry. The real reed-sealed message was no longer in his satchel; it had been sent onward the previous night. But the informer did not need proof to accuse. Suspicion was enough to earn a beating, enough to drag a boy north and squeeze him until he spoke.

Bel-iddin opened the satchel with shaking hands. Inside were blank tablets, cloth, stylus—and an empty reed wrapping he had kept for keeping clay damp. He had forgotten it. The cord still bore a faint mark where a seal lump had once been.

The informer’s eyes gleamed. “There,” he said. “Seal wrapping.”

The enforcers grabbed Bel-iddin’s arms. Pain shot through his shoulders. He gasped, trying not to cry out.

“Take him,” the informer said. “Officials will want him. Scribes know names.”

Bel-iddin was shoved into a canoe between two men. The informer climbed in front. As they pushed off into the channel, the informer leaned back.

“Where is the tablet?” he asked, voice soft as if asking about fish.

Bel-iddin stared at the water. “What tablet?”

The informer chuckled. “Don’t be a child,” he said. “Reed-wrapped. Sealed. Temple mark. You carried it. Where is it now?”

Bel-iddin thought of the headman’s jar by the shrine, now empty. He thought of the unknown path the message had taken. If he spoke, he would doom whoever carried it next. If he stayed silent, he would be hurt until he broke—or until someone decided silence was proof.

A third path flashed into his mind, a scribe’s path. When a tablet held danger, older scribes sometimes “lost” it: dropped it, cracked it, smeared it, made it useless to enemies.

Bel-iddin’s fingers found one of his blank tablets in the satchel. It was dry but brittle enough to snap. He pulled it out clumsily with bound arms, pretending panic.

“This?” he stammered. “It cracked in the water. I tried to keep it dry—”

The informer leaned forward, eager. “Show me.”

Bel-iddin lifted the tablet and snapped it hard against the canoe’s wooden edge. The clay broke with a sharp crack. Pieces fell into the water, sinking and drifting like dull fish scales.

The informer’s face twisted with rage. He grabbed Bel-iddin by the hair and yanked his head back. “Fool!” he hissed. “That was it?”

Bel-iddin forced fear into his voice. “It was ruined,” he gasped. “The water—what did you want me to do? I’m only an apprentice!”

The informer stared at the broken pieces. He could not read what was gone. He could not prove what it had said. And if he brought an apprentice to officials with nothing but broken clay, he would look incompetent. In a world ruled by fear, incompetence could be punished faster than disloyalty.

The informer spat into the water. “You will still come,” he said. “You will be questioned. If you lie, they will know.”

Bel-iddin’s scalp burned where his hair had been pulled. His wrists ached. But inside his chest, a hard point formed. He had destroyed something in front of an enemy and made it look like an accident. It did not save him, not fully, but it bought uncertainty.

And uncertainty could protect others better than brave speeches ever could.

As the canoe slid through reeds toward the larger channel, Bel-iddin watched the water swallow the clay pieces. Writing could be broken. Names could be blurred. Truth could be defended not only by saying it, but by making it unreadable to those who would use it as a knife.

He had chosen defiance that fit a scribe’s hands: not a sword, but a crack.

Chapter 11: Babylon’s Shadow and the Price of Silence

They did not take Bel-iddin to Nineveh. They took him north, to Babylon, because Babylon was where warnings were meant to be seen. A boy dragged back to the city showed everyone what happened when messages traveled without permission.

He traveled under guard in a larger boat with an official who asked questions in circles. The informer vanished after handing him over, paid in grain or silver, leaving Bel-iddin with bruises and a bitter taste. At each checkpoint, Bel-iddin was displayed like a caught fish.

“Temple scribe,” the guards would say. “Suspicious wrappings.”

Officials would glance, scribble, and wave them on. No one demanded full proof. Suspicion itself was useful.

When Babylon’s walls rose from the river haze, Bel-iddin’s throat tightened. From afar the city looked unchanged—mud brick, temple towers, the great ziggurat—yet it felt different now, like a house where you knew someone waited in the dark.

They marched him through streets that smelled of baking bread, sewage channels, and hot dust. People stared, then looked away quickly. A few whispered prayers. Most pulled children closer. Fear moved through the crowd like a current.

Bel-iddin was delivered to an administrative building near the temple precinct, close enough that Esagila’s shadow fell across the courtyard. A Babylonian official sat behind a low table with a tablet case open. His clothing was local, but his posture carried borrowed authority. A guard stood behind him with a spear that made the conversation feel like a trap.

“You are Bel-iddin,” the official said. Not a question.

Bel-iddin bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

“You carried a sealed message.”

Bel-iddin kept his face blank. “I carried reeds and blank clay.”

The official tapped his stylus against the table. “Do not insult me,” he said softly. “We know temple men speak to marsh men. We know names are exchanged like goods.”

Bel-iddin felt sweat gather at his spine. He answered with dull truths and careful emptiness. He spoke of receipts, of temple errands, of getting lost in marsh channels. He did not speak the headman’s name. He did not speak the seal line he had half-read by firelight. He did not mention Ninsunu.

Hours passed in a slow grind. The official’s questions returned again and again, searching for a crack. Bel-iddin learned to keep his voice steady and his story boring. Boring was safer than clever.

At last, the official leaned back. “You are not important enough to kill,” he said. “But you are useful enough to release.”

Bel-iddin’s stomach lurched. Release did not mean freedom. It meant being watched.

“You will return to your mother,” the official continued. “You will return to your work. And you will remember your hands are seen.”

A guard shoved Bel-iddin toward the door. Outside, the afternoon sun hit him like a blow. The city’s noise rushed in, but beneath it ran a new thread: caution.

When he reached home, his mother opened the door and froze. Her face looked thinner, eyes ringed with sleeplessness. For a moment she stared as if he were a ghost.

Then she grabbed him and dragged him inside. “Idiot,” she whispered fiercely into his hair. “My stubborn boy.”

Bel-iddin clung to her, breathing in the familiar smell of barley flour and smoke. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“They came,” she said, pulling back to check his bruises with shaking hands. “Two days ago. Men asking questions. Nabû-ēṭir told me you were sent south. He told me not to speak.”

“Nabû-ēṭir is safe?” Bel-iddin asked.

She nodded, but her eyes flicked away. “Safe,” she said, and the word sounded cracked.

The next day Bel-iddin returned to Esagila because not returning would be another confession. The precinct felt colder despite the heat. Scribes looked up, then down. Friends shifted away as if fear were contagious.

Nabû-ēṭir met him in the record room. His face was composed, but his eyes were tired.

“You came back,” Nabû-ēṭir said.

Bel-iddin bowed. “Yes, master.”

Nabû-ēṭir’s voice dropped. “You were watched as you walked in,” he murmured. “You will be watched as you leave. Speak to no one who does not speak first.”

Bel-iddin’s throat tightened. “Master… I tried—”

“Do not tell me,” Nabû-ēṭir said quickly. “If I do not know, I cannot be forced to say.”

Bel-iddin understood the brutal logic. Silence was not only fear. It was also protection, a wall built from ignorance.

Outside, priests performed rituals and burned incense. People brought offerings with trembling hands. Yet in the streets, locks clicked early. Doors closed. Voices lowered when soldiers passed.

Babylon still prayed. But Babylon trusted silence more than prayers.

Bel-iddin sat at his mat and picked up his stylus. The clay beneath his hands was cool and ordinary. Yet he no longer believed in ordinary writing. He had seen how lists could be spears.

Chapter 12: What the Clay Remembers

The year did not end with a proclamation of safety. No trumpet sounded. 654 BC closed like a hand tightening slowly—markets open, temples chanting, but every face turning slightly toward danger.

Bel-iddin learned to live inside that tightening.

In Esagila he copied accounts, recorded offerings, tallied barley and oil. On the surface, he became what his mother had always urged him to be: useful, quiet, invisible. He learned how to keep his eyes lowered when men in authority passed. He learned how to speak in short sentences that gave nothing away. He learned which courtyards had too many ears.

But invisibility, he discovered, could be shaped into something else. A scribe could disappear in plain sight and still do work that mattered.

One evening, Nabû-ēṭir handed him a stack of older tablets. “Re-copy these,” he said, voice neutral. “The originals are cracking.”

Bel-iddin understood the hidden meaning. Some tablets were meant to last. Others were meant to be replaced so that certain details could be softened, moved, or lost. In a watched time, records could be cleaned the way floors were cleaned—scrubbed until no trace remained.

Bel-iddin carried the tablets to a side room. They looked ordinary: lists of workers paid to clear canals, receipts for grain deliveries, notes of families receiving temple bread in lean weeks. Harmless, if you saw only numbers.

But Bel-iddin saw what else they were. Proof that a man had worked before he vanished. Proof that a family had existed before their doorway went dark. Proof that taxes had been paid before an official claimed they had not. Proof that the poor were real people, not just “missing” names.

He thought of the marsh inventory he had been forced to write at spearpoint. He thought of how easily officials could turn writing into a cage. He also thought of the broken blank tablet floating away—how destruction could protect.

That night, after his mother slept, Bel-iddin lit a small lamp and lifted a floor mat. Beneath it was a shallow storage niche where his father had once hidden tools. Bel-iddin pressed wedges into a small lump of clay, copying parts of the “harmless” records: dates, measures, names of workers. Nothing that shouted rebellion. Nothing that could be called a battle plan. Yet enough that, if the day came when someone asked what had really happened, the clay could answer.

His mother woke once and found him crouched over the lamp. She did not scold. She watched him for a long moment, her face carved by worry.

“You came back different,” she said quietly.

“I came back seeing,” Bel-iddin replied.

She sat beside him. “I told you to be invisible,” she murmured. “I wanted you alive.”

“I am alive,” Bel-iddin said, and touched the edge of the tablet carefully. “But if we let them erase everything, then being alive is only breathing.”

Her eyes shone in the lamplight. She placed her fingertips near the clay, not touching the wet signs. “Your father believed Babylon’s walls meant something,” she whispered. “He would hate this time.”

“Walls mean little if words are taken,” Bel-iddin said.

Weeks later, Bel-iddin saw Ninsunu again in a narrow alley market where potters sold cups and bowls. She stood behind a stack of plain vessels, hands dusty, eyes sharp. She did not greet him loudly. She did not even smile much. In Babylon, warmth could be interpreted as a connection, and connections were dangerous.

“You’re here,” Bel-iddin said softly, as if asking a price.

“I came back,” she replied. “The marshes are watched. The river towns are watched. Babylon is watched. Here I can sell cups and hear what people whisper.”

“Are you safe?” he asked.

“No,” she said simply. “Are you?”

Bel-iddin almost laughed, then stopped himself. “No.”

They stood in silence while buyers haggled nearby. A patrol passed at the alley’s end. Both of them waited until it was gone.

Ninsunu leaned closer. “Do you regret it?” she asked. “Carrying the seal?”

Bel-iddin remembered bruises, the official’s mild voice, Nabû-ēṭir’s careful ignorance, his mother’s fierce embrace. He remembered the news of Ulai and how Assyria’s victory made everyone’s fear sharper. He remembered the seal impression that had changed his life without ever being fully read.

“I regret being naive,” he said. “I don’t regret not letting them have everything.”

Ninsunu nodded once. “Then you learned the right lesson.”

“What lesson?” Bel-iddin asked.

“That we don’t always win,” she said. “But we can make it harder for them to lie.”

Before he left, she slipped a small clay cup into his hand. “For ink water,” she murmured. “Or for hiding a seal lump. Whatever you need.”

Bel-iddin curled his fingers around it. “Will I see you again?”

“If the river allows,” she said. “If the city allows.”

Then she turned back to her cups, and Bel-iddin walked away with the small vessel hidden in his sleeve.

As 654 BC closed, priests continued to chant in Esagila. People still searched smoke and stars for omens. Assyria’s victory at the Ulai River still echoed in officials’ confidence and in common people’s careful silence. Bel-iddin did not pretend he could stop kings. He was not a general. He was not a prince. He was a scribe.

So he did what scribes could do. He kept quiet truths. He copied what others wanted erased. He learned when to write clearly and when to write blandly. He learned that clay could remember when people were forced to forget.

A seal impression could outlast a shouted speech. A broken tablet could protect a living person. And in a watched city, the smallest act of honest record-keeping could become a kind of courage.

Bel-iddin did not call it bravery. He called it work. And he kept his hand steady.