Bystanders in a story of lots

Second fairest of them all

There were a precious few people in this world Afsoon hated: Her father, a self-made merchant from historic Anshan who would sell anything for the right profit, including his beautiful young daughter; Abagtha, that fat, unseemly eunuch who had a grudge against her ever since she refused him after first being sold to the king's kitchens. She had thought eunuchs no longer had those urges – wasn't that the point? – but Abagtha had proven that she had to be as wary of eunuchs as of any normal noble, if not more. She would have retrospectively been grateful for that early lesson, in a way, if only Abagtha had not sought vengeance ever since; Ahasuerus, that useless excuse of a king-of-kings who was unable to bring a grape to his mouth unguided by others, wasting his time and the empire's coffers on emptying Persia of its wine and its virgins. What little consolation Afsoon had in the Concubines' Harem was that she was one of those maidens Ahasuerus most coveted. She was the one he had called on the most frequently, the concubine who most had his ear and thus his royal influence for so many seasons.

Of all those she hated, none were loathed and despised by her more than that new wench, Esther, who swooped in from gods knew where to usurp her place at the king-of-kings's side. Since Esther's week-long banquet, and the two allegedly traitorous guards her supposedly Uzean-speaking informant from Judea claimed to have overheard plotting against the king not a week after her ascension, Ahasuerus had not called upon Afsoon once! Even now, five years after the fact, Bigthan and Teresh's heads remained upon the battlement pikes, nothing remaining but crow-picked skulls and a half-legible plaque no one bothered to read any longer. Coincidentally, the indicted guards were eunuchs loyal to Afsoon and her allies at court and were replaced by Esther, whispering in the king's ear. Naïve-virgin-with-no-knowledge-of-the-game-of-court, indeed...

Afsoon groaned.

However, as expected by anyone in the king's service for any length of time, not a year passed from Esther's coronation as Queen of Persia and Medea, Queen of Queens, and Queen of the Empire before Ahasuerus reinstated Hegai to search for new, novel maidens for his harem. Afsoon's contacts with Shaashgaz's ear had informed her that Queen Esther hadn't been to the king's chambers in over a month! Sweet, sweet, gossip.

She eyed the other concubines as she passed the common harem to her private chamber. Wide-eyed girls them all, likely the prettiest young things in their villages before fate brought them to Susa. Afsoon pitied them – for their beauty that trapped them in the palace and for not being beautiful enough to keep the king's favor. Most of these women had not seen Ahasuerus, or beyond the palace walls, since their fateful first night. But as much as she empathized with them, Afsoon would not share her private abode or gifted luxuries. The harem was a dog pit, and any one of them would betray her secrets for a eunuch's favor. She had no doubt some of them had eye and ear on her already.

She found a letter waiting when she reached the secluded chamber and did not need to see the foreign seal on the scroll nor glance at the unintelligible scribble buried inside to know who had written it, however infrequent his messages had become of late. Nevertheless, it was a long hour before she deciphered the message, cautious as Haman was since the debacle with the guards. Letters written before in their private language were now coded in a series of two additional ciphers. Afsoon groaned every time the encrypted scrolls appeared under her pillow in the thought of the long process of reading them. But Haman was skilled at the intrigues of court, evident by his lofty position if not by the wealth his immigrant family now brandished, and treason was dangerous even without the bureaucratic Persian spy network.

After making sure she was not being observed and closing the curtains of her private alcove, Afsoon unrolled the unusually long, thin scroll and wrapped it around the customly made pillar of her bed's canopy. Only then, reading the letters from top to bottom rather than the usual right-to-left, she could switch each Aramaic letter with the one of equal distance from the other end of the alphabet to unravel the intended Uzean text, still incomprehensible for any in Susa but Haman and herself. And Esther's Judean informant, she reminded herself. Still, only around a cylinder of specifically changing widths would the horizontal lines on the twists of the scroll line up to make the right cipher.