Background
King Dawit signed a decree, and even if he was drunk and not of sound mind, it was still law, and there was nothing he could do to change it.
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Gabe of Babylon sleep had been disturbed by King Dewitt, whose quarters were next to his. He was the chief officer and royal bodyguard of the king. His job was a selfless position, and he worked twenty-four hours protecting the King. Several attempts had been made on King Dewitt since he usurped the crown, and with good reason. King Dewitt was an evil King that lived by the sword and sported with women from the vast dynasty. He had his personal opinions on how the King had vanished the Queen from her throne, but he was an intelligent man and kept them to himself.
He wondered if the King was mad. Did he not realize that a queen had to be from a royal descendant if they were to have royal children? Gabe himself was the grandson of General Goybryas, the late governor of Gutium. The general had become famous for arresting King Nabonidus during the seizing of Great Babylon. His uncle had aspiring dreams of rising to power but died suspiciously. Young Gabe thought he had been poisoned.
Gabe heard King Dewitt speaking out loud.
"Shan, Shan," Gabe rushed into the King's dorm with a dagger in his hand. He was ready to defend King Dawit with his life, as he had done so many times.
"Shan, are you okay"?
"Yes, Gabe, I just had another nightmare."
"Do you want me to summon the enchanters or magicians to help you interpret the dream?" Gabe asked, scanning the room cautiously. Ambushes were common, sometimes plotted by the King himself.
King Dawit pretended to trust Gabe, he did not trust anyone. He thought he was a faithful servant, outstanding military leader, and close friend. The King had a strange philosophy; he kept his friends and his enemies at the same range and very close to him. It was a double sword that had kept him in power and control.
He was not so happy with Gabe since they had returned from the last campaign. He wondered why Gabe had not insisted on the battle strategies he had coined but defaulted to the King's, whose ideas were inferior. King Dewitt knew Gabe to be calculating and careful not to offend him. A sign of weakness in his mind. A General in battle does whatever is necessary to win, sometimes even defiling the king but winning the fight. They lost the Battle of Marathon and were not able to capture Athens.
Gabe was a dwarf of a man compared to King Dawit, who measured eight feet. His long bright red curly hair and beard extended down to his chest. A burly man, a mighty warrior who shunned evil and did what was right in the eyes of the king.
"Sit down, Gabe."
Gabe took a seat in a chair next to the exit door with his eyes facing the balcony. The sun was just rising, and it was going to be a beautiful day, he thought when suddenly he saw a hooded person exiting the gates on horseback. Who was that, he wondered? His thoughts were interrupted.
"I want to know who started the taunting that infuriated me to banish Zenia," Dawit asked angrily. "I will have them cut into pieces, and their houses turned into piles of rubble."
"There were so many," Gabe said. I tried to dissuade you, but you were relentless."
King Dawit looked away in shame. "Never again," he thought to himself. "I have sinned with my gluttonous behavior and have offended the gods." He wondered if his dreams were portending from the gods.
"Tell me, faithful servant, and do not withhold the truth from me; who wrote the decreet to banish the queen?" he asked Gabe.
"I thought you did." Gabe lied. "The King was too drunk to remember anything, and the advisors wrote the decree, and Kaleb held his hand for him to sign it. King Dewitt could read and write but not to the degree of writing a sound legal document to banish the Queen.
"My thoughts are still cloudy, but I would have remembered that?"
Gabe's left eye twitched. He was the king's bodyguard and would defend him to death, but he did not like to be put in a quagmire of confusion.
"You became outraged when the queen refused to parade her modesty in front of your guest and asked your consultants what should be done."
King Dawit starched the back of his ears and sat on his bed.
"Go on, "the King encouraged.
"I do not know why you made such a strange request; none of us could figure it out."
Gabe hesitated and wondered if it was adventitious to tell the king everything. His advisors had wanted him to order her execution. He stopped their relentless taunting, warning them of an insurrection from the people if something happened to Zenia. It would be a bad omen from the gods.
"I cannot believe I was so foolish," Dawit confessed. "
Gabe nodded in silence. He thought the king should be embarrassed.
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation.
The King's advisors started filing in one by one. Men of valor and strength. Some were captured from other countries or turned over by their dissatisfied nobles to the control of the Persian King. It was customary in the Achaemenian culture to utilize and exploit prominent roles as satraps or military generals as long as they aligned with the Persian sovereign.
Author Notes
The law of the Medes and Persians was an established principle that once a king formally signed and instituted a decree, it was so binding that even the king could not change it.
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