Meret found him just before dawn, slipping into his quarters with an urgency that told him whatever she carried couldn’t wait for a more conventional hour.
"Tabiry finally got what we needed," she said, breathless, pressing a small folded scrap of linen into his hands. "She copied part of a letter from the senior priests’ private correspondence. She couldn’t take the original without it being missed, but she memorized enough to write this down before she forgot the wording."
The Missing Piece. Tabiry has recovered fragmentary evidence from within the Amun complex itself. This may finally name the figure behind your mother’s death.
Khaemwaset unfolded the linen carefully, his pulse quickening as he read the careful, hurried script Tabiry had reconstructed from memory.
The exile’s mother proved considerably more troublesome to silence quietly than anticipated, though the matter was resolved before it reached beyond the temple walls. Second Prophet Meryre’s continued discretion in these accounts remains essential to our shared arrangement.
He read it three times, the name settling into place with a cold, certain weight that felt, after two months of careful, uncertain searching, almost disorienting in its sudden clarity.
Second Prophet Meryre.
A Name at Last. The individual responsible for orchestrating your mother’s death has been identified. Second Prophet Meryre, senior figure within the Amun priesthood.
"Meryre," Khaemwaset said quietly, testing the name’s weight. His borrowed memory offered little immediately, a vague, distant impression of a senior priest rarely seen outside the Amun complex’s innermost circles, powerful enough to remain deliberately, carefully invisible to court gossip.
"There’s more," Meret said, her voice dropping further. "Tabiry says Meryre’s household has close ties to Prince Amenmose’s family. A marriage alliance, two generations back, that’s kept the connection quiet but genuine ever since."
The final piece clicked into place with a clarity that made the whole shape of the conspiracy suddenly, comprehensively visible. Not simply corruption for its own sake, but a deliberate, patient alliance, Meryre diverting crown wealth for years, funneling resources toward the Nubian household that had raised Amenmose specifically to compete for royal favor and influence, buying loyalty and position with stolen gold while silencing anyone who threatened to expose it.
The Full Pattern. Second Prophet Meryre and Amenmose’s household share a hidden alliance built on diverted crown wealth. This corruption directly threatens the succession and connects every thread of your investigation.
He sent word to Sethnakht within the hour, and found her waiting in his quarters before the morning bell had even finished its call, her expression sharpening with the same cold, focused clarity he felt building in his own chest as he explained what Tabiry’s letter had revealed.
"Meryre," she said slowly, turning the name over with careful, methodical consideration. "I know the name, distantly. He rarely appears at court directly, prefers to work through intermediaries and careful, deniable arrangements. It fits, uncomfortably well, with everything Horemheb described."
"We have a name," Khaemwaset said. "We don’t have proof. A fragment of a remembered letter, copied by a servant who could be discredited or endangered the moment anyone learns she was involved, isn’t enough to move against someone this carefully positioned."
Insufficient Evidence. A name alone will not survive scrutiny. Physical proof connecting Meryre directly to the corruption and your mother’s death is required.
Sethnakht paced the small confines of the room, turning the problem over with visible, focused intensity. "Nakhti kept private records, according to Horemheb. Records detailed enough to have gotten him killed, or at minimum silenced, before he could act on what he’d documented. If those records still exist somewhere—"
"They’re the proof we need," Khaemwaset finished. "But we have no idea where they’d be, if they survived at all."
He turned the problem over himself, returning, as he often did now, to the fragments of his mother’s letter, the phrase that had started this entire desperate search. Ask the scribe Nakhti, if he still lives. Tell him the falcon remembers.
Reconsidering the Clue. The phrase "the falcon remembers" was meant as a message to Nakhti specifically. Its meaning may relate to something only he would have understood, a location, a code, a hidden signal between them.
"The falcon," Khaemwaset said slowly, the pieces beginning to shift and realign in his mind with the same careful, deliberate precision he’d once brought to interpreting fragmentary inscriptions. "It’s not just a phrase. It’s a reference to something specific, something my mother and Nakhti would have both understood."
Passive skill triggered. Pattern Recognition, Advanced. Cross-referencing available information regarding Horus symbolism, Nakhti’s personal history, and temple architecture.
New notification. A connection has been identified. Nakhti served the Temple of Osiris for over forty years. Horus, depicted as a falcon, is traditionally honored within Osiris’s temple as his avenging son. Personal shrines to Horus within a senior scribe’s private quarters would not be unusual.
"His private quarters," Khaemwaset said suddenly. "If Nakhti kept a personal shrine to Horus, somewhere in whatever space he occupied at the temple, that might be exactly where he’d hide something he needed protected. A falcon statue, an altar, something specifically tied to Horus that only someone who knew to look for it would think to search."
Sethnakht’s expression sharpened with immediate, focused understanding. "Merneptah would know whether Nakhti’s private quarters still stand, or whether his belongings were cleared after his death."
Returning to the Temple. A second visit to the Temple of Osiris may finally reveal the location of Nakhti’s hidden evidence.
They arranged the visit carefully, framing it once more as continued mourning for Khaemwaset’s mother, a plausible excuse that Merneptah, when they found him again in the temple’s quiet inner courtyards, accepted with the same careful, guarded courtesy he’d shown before.
"Nakhti’s private quarters," Khaemwaset said, once the formal pleasantries had passed, watching the old priest’s expression carefully. "I understand he served here for many years. I find myself curious whether his personal effects remain, or whether they were cleared following his death."
Passive skill triggered. Read the Room, Advanced. Merneptah’s tension has spiked sharply at this question, considerably higher than his previous evasions regarding Horemheb’s transfer.
"His quarters were cleared some months after his passing," Merneptah said carefully, though his hands, Khaemwaset noticed, had gone very still against the fabric of his robe. "Standard practice, when a scribe’s position transfers to new occupancy."
"And his personal shrine?" Khaemwaset pressed gently. "I understand many senior scribes maintain private devotions. I’d hoped to see it, if it still exists, as part of honoring his memory alongside my mother’s."
The silence that followed stretched long enough that Khaemwaset began to wonder if he’d finally pushed too directly against whatever careful fear kept this priest’s cooperation so consistently, frustratingly limited.
"The shrine remains," Merneptah admitted finally, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Untouched, by my own quiet insistence, though I could not tell you precisely why I felt compelled to preserve it rather than clear it with the rest of his effects." His eyes flicked toward the courtyard’s entrance, checking, as Horemheb had before him, for anyone who might overhear. "Perhaps some part of me understood, even without proof, that Nakhti’s death carried more weight than a peaceful passing in his sleep should have."
A Priest’s Quiet Conscience. Merneptah’s careful preservation of the shrine suggests he suspected foul play all along, despite his fear-driven silence.
He led them, finally, through a narrow passage behind the temple’s main archive, to a small, dust-quiet chamber that had clearly stood undisturbed for the better part of two years. A modest shrine occupied the chamber’s far wall, a carved falcon statue at its center, wings spread in the familiar, protective posture of Horus watching over his father’s domain.
Khaemwaset approached slowly, his pulse quickening with the same careful, focused anticipation he’d once felt standing over a freshly uncovered excavation site, knowing the ground ahead held answers he’d spent years searching for.
The Falcon Remembers. You have found Nakhti’s private shrine to Horus. Search carefully for whatever evidence he may have hidden here.
The statue, when he examined it closely, revealed a small, carefully concealed seam along its base, nearly invisible unless someone knew specifically to search for it. He worked it open with careful, patient fingers, and found, nestled within a hollow space clearly carved for exactly this purpose, a collection of small, tightly rolled papyrus scrolls, their edges yellowed with age but their careful, precise script still perfectly legible.
Passive skill triggered. Inherited Resolve. Massive Ma’at generation from recovering evidence your mother died attempting to protect.
He unrolled the first scroll with trembling, careful hands, and found, laid out in Nakhti’s own meticulous documentation, years of detailed records, grain shipments diverted, gold quietly redirected, dates and quantities and, most damning of all, a name repeated throughout in careful, unmistakable script.
Second Prophet Meryre.
New quest complete. The Falcon’s Secret. Physical evidence connecting Second Prophet Meryre to years of systematic corruption has been recovered.
What Comes Next. You now possess evidence capable of exposing Meryre’s corruption and potentially connecting him to your mother’s death. Deciding how and when to use it may determine the fate of the entire succession crisis.
Sethnakht knelt beside him, examining the scrolls with the same careful, focused attention, her expression grim and determined as the full scope of the evidence became clear. "This is enough," she said quietly. "Enough to bring formal charges, enough to expose the entire arrangement between Meryre and Amenmose’s household."
"It’s enough to get us both killed the moment anyone learns we have it," Khaemwaset said, the weight of the discovery settling over him alongside a fear considerably sharper than anything he’d felt since the poisoned wine that had started this entire impossible journey. "We need to be very careful about who learns we’ve found this, and very careful about exactly when and how we choose to use it."
Merneptah, watching from the chamber’s entrance, spoke quietly for the first time since leading them here. "Whatever you intend to do with what you’ve found, Prince Khaemwaset, know that Nakhti died protecting this evidence, and your mother died attempting to bring it to light. I would consider it my own small measure of justice, after two years of careful, frightened silence, to see their sacrifice finally mean something."
Khaemwaset looked at the old priest for a long moment, understanding, with a clarity that settled deep and certain beneath every careful calculation still racing through his mind, exactly how many quiet, frightened people had already paid a price for a truth he now finally held in his own trembling hands.
"It will," he said quietly. "I promise you, it will."