In the heart of Ọ̀yọ́-Ìlú, beneath the shadowed eaves of the old palace compound—where murals of deified kings stared down with chipped grandeur and termite-bitten feet—a hidden chamber throbbed with quiet dissent.
It was once an ancestral archive, a circular room buried behind the Zamani Hall, where griots had sung lineages into the dust-thick air for centuries. But now the scrolls had been pushed aside. Mats replaced the old stone stools. And the room had taken on a darker purpose.
A single oil lamp burned low, casting shadows that danced like spirits across the red-clay walls. The smell of camphor, kola nut, and burnt palm frond drifted from a brass censer in the center. No guards stood watch outside; only the double sound of the royal talking drum from the courtyard could be heard, muffled and distant like a dying heartbeat.
Four men knelt around the flame. At their center sat Prince Rega, his face painted with streaks of blackened camwood—marks used in times of ancestral war. His eyes, usually shrewd and unreadable, burned tonight with the clarity of conviction.
Across from him sat Chief Tendaji, the Bashọ̀run, a man whose white beard curled like ancestral smoke and whose voice once echoed in the king's council like a thunderclap. Beside him, Diviner Zuberi, the royal historian and aseseer, whose face was a mask of ash, lips stained from the bitter root he chewed for second sight. The final man, Commander Sekou, the commander of the palace's elite leopard guard, sat with one hand on his cutlass, the other clutching a small pouch of dried herbs known to paralyze a man in under ten heartbeats.
None spoke for a long time.
The silence in ancient custom was a kind of truth serum. A testing ground. To speak before the ancestors had circled the room twice in silence was to curse your own plan.
When at last Chief Tendaji spoke, his voice cracked like old iron. "Your father grows weaker with each passing moon. His vision dims. The northern gates rot. The Desert raider attacks return and he responds with divinations instead of daggers. Ọ̀yọ́-Ìlú cannot be governed by ghosts."
Prince Rega's jaw clenched. "He dreams of the past. He believes thunder will answer him because it once did. But the gods no longer strike for him."
Diviner Zuberi hissed softly, casting a handful of powdered snail shell into the flame. It sparked green. "The ancestors turn their backs. I have seen them. The orí of this kingdom bends, Prince, but not toward your father. His crown weighs down the land like a grinding stone on cassava."
Commander Sekou leaned forward, voice low and taut with held fury. "My warriors eat fermented yam and patch their spears with copper wire. When I asked for iron, he sent me proverbs. When the reavers came last harvest, we lost seventeen men. The king buried their names beneath rituals. Not action."
Rega nodded, slowly. "And yet, he lives."
"That," said the Bashọ̀run, "is why we are here. To discuss how he dies."
The flame cracked. The censer hissed.
Rega did not flinch. In the dungeon he had already freed one enemy of tradition. What was one more transgression, if the kingdom demanded it?
Diviner Zuberi turned his gaze to Rega. "You must understand. This is not murder. This is ritual correction. A cleansing of the stool for the good of the kingdom."
Commander Sekou added, "But the blood must fall on a night without drums. And the people must believe he went by the will of the gods."
The Bashọ̀run reached into his cloak and withdrew a small bronze mask—a replica of the sacred Kivuli Mask, used to summon ancestral dreams in funeral rites. "This shall be worn when the deed is done. The last thing he sees should be the face of the ancestors. Not yours."
Rega reached out and took the mask, his fingers trembling only slightly.
"What of his loyalists?" he asked, voice level. "The Mfalme Council? His seers?"
Diviner Zuberi grinned, teeth brown with kola. "Half already pray for your rise. The others… can be redirected. Or silenced."
Rega bowed his head. "Then it is settled. On the night of the third moon, when the bat cries thrice before midnight, we do what must be done. No drums. No mourning. The crown will not touch the earth. It will pass... cleanly."
They passed a gourd of bitter gin between them. Each man sipped without flinching.
When the gourd returned to Rega, he drank last, then crushed it in his palm. "Let it be done."
Outside, the drumming in the courtyard ceased. Inside the hidden chamber, history pivoted—not on a battlefield, but on whispered oaths and the brittle neck of a dying king.