Angol
Esther had not shewed her people nor her kindred.
Hadassah is an orphan of the lower city of Susa, raised by her cousin Mordecai, a clerk at the king's gate. Every morning behind a closed shutter he teaches her the rule that has kept their people alive: tell no one who you are. When the king's officers take her up the ramp to the house of women, she goes in as Esther, and keeps the rule all the way to the crown. Then Haman the Agagite casts the lot for the day her people will die. The king gives him the ring without asking their name. The one Jew in the palace who might stop him is the girl who was raised to hide. To speak, she must go in to the king uncalled, where the law is death unless he holds out the golden scepter. The story is told from inside the queen, the king who loves her and cannot be trusted, Mordecai at his gate, and Haman at his high window. A street of the lower city waits with them for the thirteenth of Adar, behind a barred door. God is never named in her book, and never absent.
Book 4 of The Called and the Kept: a hidden girl, a dangerous king, and one question sent up a stair.
Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
