The air in the Great Hall was not meant for breathing. It was meant for ceremony, thick and heavy with the scent of beeswax polished to a high gleam on the obsidian pillars, of stale incense from rituals past, and the cloying sweetness of blooming lilies arranged in towering banks. Each breath I took felt like drinking from a cup of perfume. The weight of my formal attire was an anchor, seeking to pin the real me deep beneath layers of symbolic silk. My gown was of deepest purple, the color of twilight and royalty, embroidered with threads of silver so intricate they depicted the entire history of Zaria in miniature-a history I felt crushing me with every stifled gasp.
Today, I was to be named Magajiya. Heir Apparent. The word should have tasted of promise, of future power. Instead, it tasted of dust and obligation.
The throne room was a sea of still, watching faces. The entire court was assembled, a kaleidoscope of vibrant silks and solemn expressions. The high-born of Zaria, their eyes sharp as daggers, assessing, weighing, waiting for a stumble. My mother, Queen Bakwa, sat upon the great obsidian throne, a figure of immovable authority. Her face was a mask of regal composure, but I saw the slight tension around her eyes-a warning to be flawless.
The High Priest, an ancient man named Bello whose voice whistled faintly through the gaps in his teeth, began the long, droning litany of our lineage. His words washed over me, a river of names and battles and marriages I knew by heart. I stood before the dais, my hands clasped so tightly that the silver rings on my fingers bit into my flesh. My gaze, unfocused, drifted past the priest to the great arched window behind the throne. Outside, the sky was a fierce, untrammeled blue. A hawk circled on a thermal, a tiny, free-moving speck against the vastness. I envied it with a ferocity that was a physical ache.
"...and so, by right of blood and the will of the gods, we gather to affirm Amina, daughter of Bakwa, granddaughter of the great... as Magajiya of Zaria!" Bello's voice rose to a reedy crescendo.
A synchronized rustle swept the room as the court bowed. The sound was like a dry wind through dead leaves. My mother stood, her movements fluid and deliberate. She took from a velvet cushion a heavy gold circlet, set with a single, milky moonstone. It was the diadem of the Magajiya.
"Amina," her voice carried, clear and resonant, devoid of maternal warmth. It was the voice of the state. "With this symbol, you accept the burden and the glory of this kingdom. Your life is no longer your own. It belongs to Zaria."
She placed the circlet upon my brow. The metal was cold, surprisingly heavy. The moonstone sat in the center of my forehead like a blind, unseeing eye. I felt the weight of every gaze in the hall, a thousand tiny pressures seeking to mold me into the shape they required.
Then came the part of the ceremony I had been dreading. My mother gestured, and the chief steward stepped forward, unrolling a long scroll.
"As is tradition, the Magajiya is granted a household, a foundation for her future reign. Forty kuyanga, trained in the arts of service, to attend her."
The great doors at the back of the hall swung open. A line of young women filed in, their footsteps a soft, shuffling whisper on the polished stone. They were all around my age, perhaps sixteen or seventeen summers. They wore identical simple dresses of unbleached linen, and their heads were bowed, their faces carefully blank. They moved with the quiet, efficient grace of those accustomed to being invisible. They were led to the space before the dais and made to kneel, a living, breathing offering of human property.
My stomach tightened. This was the tradition my mother revered. The granting of lives as if they were bolts of cloth or ingots of copper. I looked at them, these forty girls. I saw the subtle tremor in one girl's hands, the defiant set of another's shoulders, the vacant resignation in a third's downcast eyes. They were not a gift. They were a message: this is the power you now wield. The power to own.
The silence in the hall was expectant. This was the moment I was supposed to acknowledge the gift, to perhaps select one as a personal attendant, to play my part in the comfortable, cruel theater of nobility.
But my grandfather's voice was in my ear, a ghost from the map-room. "The true kingdom is its people, all its people."
I took a step forward. The circlet felt less like a weight and more like a focal point, channeling a strange, cold clarity. I let my gaze travel slowly over the forty kneeling figures, then lifted my eyes to the assembled court.
"I thank the Crown for this... foundation," I began, my voice cutting through the ceremonial hush. It did not sound like my own; it was lower, steadier, the voice of the ruler I intended to become. "A Magajiya must be strong. Her household must be a reflection of that strength. I see potential here. Not for service, but for something greater."
A ripple of confusion went through the crowd. I saw my mother's mask of composure crack, a flicker of alarm in her eyes. I ignored it.
"From this day forward," I announced, my voice gaining volume, ringing off the obsidian pillars, "these forty are not kuyanga. They are released from that title. They are now my retinue."
I turned my back on the court and addressed the kneeling women directly. I saw a few pairs of eyes flicker upwards, wide with shock and disbelief.
"You have been given to me," I said to them, my tone shifting from proclamation to command. "But I do not accept you as slaves. I accept you as the first stones of a new fortress. You will exchange your linens for leather. You will trade your serving trays for spears. You will learn the art of war, not the art of submission."
The silence in the hall was now absolute, stunned. I could feel the outrage emanating from the nobles like heat from a furnace.
"You will be trained," I continued, my words falling like hammer blows in the quiet. "You will learn to fight, to ride, to read the land as a warrior reads it. You will be my hands, my eyes, and the unbreakable shield at my back. Your loyalty will not be born of a collar, but of shared purpose and shared strength. This I vow."
For a long moment, there was no sound. Then, from among the kneeling women, a single girl at the front lifted her head fully. Her eyes, a startling shade of amber, met mine. There was no gratitude there, not yet. There was a fierce, blazing curiosity. A challenge. She was the one with the defiant shoulders.
"What is your name?" I asked her.
"Zara," she said, her voice clear and unafraid, though it held a slight tremor.
"Zara," I repeated, letting the name hang in the air. "You are the first of my guard. Now, all of you, on your feet."
There was a hesitant shuffling as the forty women rose. They stood awkwardly, unsure of what was happening, of this new reality that had shattered their old one.
I turned back to the court, to my mother's stony, furious face. The ceremony was in ruins around me, but I had never felt more certain.
"The ceremony is concluded," I stated, it was not a request. I looked at Captain Adem, who stood at attention by the door, his face a carefully neutral mask, though I saw the faintest gleam of approval in his eyes. "Captain, escort my retinue to the old barracks in the western courtyard. See that they are fed and issued training gear."
Without waiting for a dismissal, without looking back at the thunderstruck court or my seething mother, I stepped down from the dais. The forty women, my women, parted before me. I walked through them, the cold of the marble floor seeping through my thin-soled ceremonial slippers.
"With me," I said, and began to walk towards the great doors.
I heard their footsteps behind me, a ragged, uncertain rhythm at first, then growing more sure as they followed me out of the stifling hall, out of the world of whispers and silks, and into the blinding, honest light of the sun.
The western courtyard was a forgotten place, its walls crumbled in places, weeds pushing through the cracked flagstones. It was a world away from the pristine main yards. This was a place of honest decay, of potential. The air here smelled of dust, wild thyme, and freedom.
The forty women stood in a loose cluster, watching me, their faces a canvas of confusion, fear, and a dawning, terrifying hope. I had taken off the heavy diadem and the embroidered overdress, standing before them in the simple tunic and breeches I had worn beneath.
"The court believes I have lost my mind," I began, my voice carrying easily in the open air. "They see a princess playing at war. They see a rebellion. They are wrong."
I walked slowly along the line of them, meeting their gazes one by one.
"I see forty women who have been told they are property. I am here to tell you that you are wrong, too. You are the clay from which I will forge a new kind of power for Zaria. It will not be easy. It will be the hardest thing you have ever done. There will be blisters, and bruises, and days you will hate me. But I promise you this: at the end of it, no one will ever own you again. You will own yourselves. And you will be feared, not for who you serve, but for who you are."
I stopped before Zara. "Do you understand?"
She held my gaze, those amber eyes burning. "We understand, Magajiya."
"No," I said, a sharp smile touching my lips. "Not here. Here, in this yard, you will call me 'General'."
I picked up two practice spears that Adem had discreetly left leaning against the wall. I tossed one to Zara. She caught it clumsily, the weight unfamiliar in her hands.
"Now," I said, falling into the ready stance, the ashwood smooth and right in my grip. "Let's begin."