The Grand Council had become a recurring theater of power, and Nawi's unit were its permanent, silent fixtures. They no longer felt the thrill of the honor, only the weight of it. The polished mahogany, the flickering lamplight, the scent of sandalwood and power—it had all become familiar, a backdrop to the relentless debate that shaped the destiny of West Africa.
Nawi sat on her stool, her back straight, her Reaper's uniform feeling less like a badge of honor and more like a suit of armor she was forced to wear in the enemy's war room. She had learned to school her features into the same impassive mask worn by the veteran Mino commanders. But behind the mask, her mind churned. The black-and-white world of her hatred—Dahomey was evil, her vengeance was just—was being slowly eroded by the relentless, grey tide of realpolitik.
The air in the chamber was particularly thick tonight, heavy with a tension that was sharper, more personal than the usual strategic disagreements. The subject was the future of the kingdom itself.
A new general, a man named Gbehanzin with a voice like grinding stones and a neck thick with ritual scars, had the floor. He was a pure Hawk, his ambition a physical heat that radiated from him.
"—this talk of 'trade' is a woman's chatter!" he boomed, his disdainful gaze sweeping over the Mino commanders. "It is the talk of merchants counting cowrie shells. The strength of Dahomey has always been here!" He slammed a fist into his own palm, the crack echoing in the chamber. "In the strength of our arms! In the terror of our name! The Oyo are on their knees. Now is the time to look to the coast! To Abeokuta!"
The name sent a ripple through the room. Abeokuta. The great Egba fortress city, a hive of resistance, a thorn in the side of Dahomey's expansion towards the sea.
"Abeokuta is arrogant," Gbehanzin thundered. "They flaunt their independence. They harbor our enemies. They interfere with our sacred work. A full-scale siege! We will pound their walls to dust! We will teach them the price of defiance!" He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming in the lamplight. "The fields of the interior are thinning. The raids yield less. But Abeokuta… Abeokuta is a fat prize. Its people are strong, its storerooms are full. The slaves we take will fill our coffers and man our armies for a generation. The Europeans on the coast pay well for strong backs. This is the true economy of Dahomey! This is the path to glory!"
Nawi felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. Slaves. The word was no longer an abstract concept. It was the chain on her own wrist, the sight of Binta being dragged away, the memory of Sefu's betrayed face. It was the foundational horror of her life. And this man, this general, spoke of it as if it were a harvest, a simple matter of logistics and profit. The rage she kept banked flared, hot and bright. This was the beast, unmasked and roaring.
Then, Commander Nanika spoke. Her voice was, as always, a cool, sharp contrast to the general's heat.
"Glory is a fine cloak, General Gbehanzin," she began, her tone dry enough to parch the air. "But it does not fill the royal granaries. It does not pay for the gunpowder from the Europeans that you are so fond of. A siege of Abeokuta would be the most costly military endeavor in our history. It would drain our treasury, bleed our army white, and for what? A mountain of corpses and a city of ruins?"
She stood, her movements economical and precise. She did not address the Viceroy, but the Council as a whole, her flinty eyes compelling their attention.
"There is another path. A path that does not require us to trade the blood of our warriors for the lives of captives. The world is changing. The Europeans no longer just want slaves. They crave oil. Palm oil." She said the words as if they were a sacred incantation. "It lights their lamps. It greases their machines. It is the new gold. And our land is rich with the oil palm."
She gestured to a large, woven basket a servant had brought in. It was filled with the reddish, fibrous fruit of the oil palm. The rich, cloying, almost buttery scent of the fruit filled a corner of the room, a stark, organic contrast to the metallic and smoky smells of the chamber.
"We can build presses," Nanika continued, her voice gaining a fervent, pragmatic intensity. "We can organize plantations. We can control the trade from the interior to the coast. Instead of sending our young men to die at the walls of Abeokuta, we can put them to work in profitable fields. Instead of relying on the fickle, bloody harvest of war, we can build a stable, enduring wealth. The Europeans will pay for this just as readily as they pay for slaves, and we will not have to wage a generation of war to get it. We can become a kingdom of industry, not just a kingdom of war."
Nawi listened, utterly captivated and deeply conflicted. Nanika's vision was… sane. It was practical. It was a future that did not require the burning of villages like Keti, the tearing of families like her own. It was a argument for life, for growth, for a different kind of strength. She found herself, to her own horror, agreeing with it. The part of her that was still Ama's daughter, the part that understood the value of a full granary and a safe home, resonated with this logic.
But it was a vision proposed by the woman who had overseen the destruction of her home. The architect of her misery was now arguing for a path that would prevent others from suffering the same fate. The cognitive dissonance was a physical pain behind her eyes.
General Gbehanzin scoffed, a harsh, ugly sound. "Palm oil?" he sneered. "You would have us become farmers? Traders? You dishonor the spirits of our ancestors who built this kingdom with blood and iron! The slave trade is our heritage! It is the will of the gods! It is how we offer to the ancestors and strengthen the kingdom! This… this grease… it is a weak man's pursuit. A woman's pursuit."
The insult hung in the air, deliberate and provocative. Several of the male generals nodded in agreement, their faces set in lines of traditionalist fervor.
Nanika did not flinch. "The will of the gods is for Dahomey to endure, General. Not to bleed itself out on an impregnable wall for the sake of a 'heritage' that is drawing the angry eyes of the British navy. The world outside is changing. If we do not change with it, we will be crushed by it. I would rather have Dahomey be a kingdom of living, wealthy farmers than a glorious story told by the ghosts of a dead army."
The debate that followed was the most heated Nawi had witnessed. It was no longer just about strategy; it was about the soul of the nation.
The Hawks, led by Gbehanzin, spoke of destiny, of glory, of the sacred cycle of war and tribute that had made Dahomey great. They painted a picture of a mighty, feared empire, its power unquestioned, its enemies trampled underfoot. Their words were intoxicating, primal, appealing to the same raw, vengeful spirit that lived in Nawi's heart.
The Doves, led by Nanika, spoke of survival, of adaptation, of a sustainable future. They argued for a different kind of power—economic power, the power that came from controlling a resource the modern world craved. Their words were logical, forward-thinking, and deeply unsettling to the old order.
Nawi watched Nanika. She saw not a monster, but a commander fighting for the life of her kingdom in the only way she knew how—with cold, hard logic. She was trying to steer the leopard away from a fight that would cripple it, towards a future where it could remain strong and fed. Her motives were not pure—they were for the aggrandizement of Dahomey, above all else—but her method was preservation, not mindless destruction.
The Viceroy listened, his face a landscape of conflicting pressures. The weight of the decision was immense.
"The King considers all paths," the Viceroy said finally, his voice heavy. "The strength of our warriors is not in question. But the wisdom of their use is. We will not lay siege to Abeokuta. Not this year." A wave of disappointment from the Hawks. "But," he continued, raising a hand for silence, "the slave trade is the lifeblood of the kingdom. It will not be abandoned. The raids will continue. The taxes in human lives will be collected. We will pursue both paths. We will raid for captives and we will explore this… palm oil."
It was a compromise that satisfied no one and condemned thousands. The Hawks were denied their great war, but the machinery of capture and sale would continue. The Doves had prevented a catastrophe, but they had not stopped the horror that defined Nawi's existence.
As the Council adjourned, Nawi felt dizzy. The clean, simple hatred she had carried like a torch had been doused with muddy water. Dahomey was not a monolith of evil. It was a fractured, arguing, complex entity. There were monsters like Gbehanzin, who saw people as currency. But there were also pragmatists like Nanika, who saw the same people as a wasteful, unsustainable resource, and sought a alternative.
Who was the true enemy? The general who openly craved slaughter? Or the commander who had destroyed her village to uphold a system she was now rationally arguing to reform?
She walked out of the chamber in a daze, the scent of sandalwood and palm fruit clinging to her. The black-and-white world was gone, shattered into a thousand shades of grey. She had come to the heart of the kingdom to destroy it, only to find that the heart was not a single, evil thing, but a battleground of conflicting ideas. And the most terrifying thought of all was that the woman she hated most, Commander Nanika, was making more sense than anyone else in the room.
The price of the kingdom was not just paid in the blood of its enemies, but in the souls of its people, forced to choose between different kinds of damnation. And Nawi no longer knew where she stood, or what her revenge even meant in the face of such a complicated, monstrous, and tragically human conflict.