Shadows in the Pharaoh’s Court

A Nabium Investigation

When truth can start a war, who dares to speak it?
Fresh from unmasking murder and corruption in Babylon, merchant-investigator Nabium hopes to return to his ledgers and quiet profits. But a royal summons shatters his peace. The Egyptian envoy, Counselor Neferhotep, has died soon after leaving Babylon—and whispers in Pharaoh’s court name Nebuchadnezzar as his killer. If the accusation stands, two of the greatest powers of the ancient world will collide.
Sent openly as Babylon’s envoy, Nabium must walk into Thebes—the city of towering temples and living-god Pharaoh Apries—under a cloud of suspicion. At his side is Captain Bel-Sharuzzu, his loyal “strong right arm,” but swords are worth little in halls where ink and rumor are the sharpest weapons. A grieving widow, a hard-eyed general who hungers for war, a high priestess who trusts omens more than men, and a charming court scribe who may be more than he seems—all hold pieces of a deadly puzzle.
As forged tablets appear, sacred signs are staged, and a second poisoning strikes at the heart of the Egyptian court, Nabium uncovers a more sinister design: a hidden Assyrian network determined to pit Babylon and Egypt against each other and finish a lost war by proxy. With Bel in chains and the noose tightening around his own neck, Nabium must prove the impossible—that the hand behind both murders does not serve either throne.
Part political thriller, part whodunit, this second Nabium mystery explores how easily lies can be weaponized, how fragile peace between nations can be—and how one stubborn man’s commitment to evidence over rumor might be all that stands between empires and catastrophe.