The world had softened at the edges. The sharp, brutal lines of the training yard, the stark, bloody dichotomy of friend and foe, had blurred in the hazy, smoke-filled atmosphere of the Grand Council. Nawi felt unmoored. The cold, hard purpose of revenge that had been her compass for so long now spun wildly, pointing in a dozen conflicting directions. Was her enemy General Gbehanzin, who championed the slave trade with brutish pride? Or was it Commander Nanika, who defended the same system with chilling, pragmatic logic? The confusion was a physical ache, a disorientation that made the solid ground of Abomey feel as unstable as the log over the ravine.
She took to wandering the palace grounds in the hour before dawn, when the sky was a pale, watery grey and the city was still asleep. The air was clean and cool then, carrying the scent of dew on the dust and the nocturnal blooming of moonflowers. She would walk the perimeter of the training yards, her fingers trailing over the rough texture of the acacia thorn barrier, now a familiar adversary rather than an object of terror. She would watch the earliest birds begin their chorus, their songs a simple, pure language she felt she had forgotten.
It was on one of these solitary walks that she found herself near the ancient baobab tree, outside Iyabo's hut. The silence here was different from the sleeping city—it was a deep, ancient quiet, the silence of stored knowledge and patient observation. She had not sought the old Gbeto out since her training intensified, but now, feeling lost, she was drawn to the place where she had first learned to still the storm inside.
As she stood in the pre-dawn gloom, a different figure emerged from the shadows between two storage huts. It was not Iyabo. This woman was older than Nanika but younger than the Gbeto, perhaps in her late forties. She was of average height, with a compact, powerful build, but it was her face that held Nawi's attention. It was a map of subtle intelligence, with keen, observant eyes that missed nothing and a mouth that seemed permanently poised on the edge of a knowing, faintly ironic smile. She moved with the quiet grace of a Mino, but there was an extra layer of deliberation to it, a sense that every movement was considered for its effect. She wore the uniform of a senior commander, but without the ceremonial paint. This was Afi.
"The Reaper who walks with ghosts," the woman said, her voice a low, melodious contralto. It was not a question. "Nawi, is it? I have been watching you."
Nawi instinctively straightened, her hand drifting towards the hilt of a Gbeni knife. "Watching me?"
Afi's smile widened a fraction. "Relax, little blade. I mean you no harm. In fact, I may be the only person in this entire palace who understands what is happening inside your head right now." She gestured with her chin towards the council chambers, invisible beyond the compound walls. "The Grand Council has a way of… unsettling the certainties of young warriors. The first time I sat in that room, I nearly vomited from the confusion."
Nawi said nothing, but her defensive posture eased slightly. This woman had named the feeling exactly.
"You have been trained to see the battlefield as a place of force," Afi continued, leaning against the rough bark of the baobab. "A spear against a shield. An arrow against flesh. It is a clean, honest language. What you witnessed in there," she nodded again towards the council, "is a different kind of war. A war where the deadliest weapons are not made of steel, but of words. And you, my dear, are standing unarmed in the middle of the fight."
"I am a warrior," Nawi said, her voice tighter than she intended. "I know my purpose."
"Do you?" Afi's gaze was piercing. "Is your purpose to mindlessly swing your knives wherever you are pointed? Like a tool in General Gbehanzin's hand? Or is it to understand who is pointing you, and why?" She pushed off from the tree. "Commander Nanika sees your potential. She sees a sharp instrument. I see something else. I see a mind. A mind that is currently screaming in silence, trying to reconcile the song of the Mino with the screams of your village."
The directness of the words was like a splash of cold water. Nawi felt exposed, her carefully constructed defenses breached with an effortless precision.
"What do you want from me?" Nawi asked, her voice a whisper.
"To give you a new weapon," Afi said simply. "The only weapon that matters in the long game. Knowledge. Come. Walk with me."
For the next week, Nawi's education split into a new, parallel track. Her mornings were still for the physical—the relentless drills, the sparring, the maintenance of her lethal skills. But her afternoons now belonged to Afi.
Their classroom was not a hut, but the palace itself. Afi taught her to read the city of Abomey as a text.
They stood in the great market, surrounded by the roar of commerce. The air was thick with the smells of smoked fish, pungent spices, and the sweat of the crowd.
"Look,"Afi murmured, her voice barely audible over the din. "See the Keta traders? They are nervous. The taxes on their salt have increased. That man there, with the gold armbands? He is a royal tax collector. See how the people avoid his gaze? Resentment is a seed. It is planted here, in the market, long before it is harvested on the battlefield."
They walked past the barracks of the male army. The air here smelled of sweat, leather, and the faint, sour tang of fermented millet beer.
"Listen to them,"Afi instructed. "Hear the boasting? It is all about Abeokuta. Gbehanzin's rhetoric feeds them. They crave the glory he promises. But listen closer. Hear the older veterans, the ones with scars? They speak of lost friends, of dysentery, of sieges that starve the besieger as well as the besieged. The army is not a monolith. It is a beast with a thousand heads, all wanting to be fed, but not all wanting the same meal."
They observed from the shadows as petitioners came before minor officials.
"Watch the official's face,"Afi whispered. "He is bored. This woman's complaint about a stolen goat is beneath him. But see how she offers him a small, woven basket of eggs? Now he listens. Power is not just taken by force. It is often purchased with favors, with flattery, with the smallest of bribes. This is the grimy engine of daily rule."
One afternoon, Afi led her to a quiet archive, a small room smelling of dust, dry papyrus, and aging leather. Scrolls and bound ledgers lined the walls.
"This is the kingdom's memory,"Afi said, running a finger along the spine of a heavy ledger. "Here are the tax records from the reign of King Adandozan. See this column? 'Human Tribute.' This is the number of souls sent to the coast. Now look at this column. 'Royal Revenue.' See how they rise and fall together? For generations, we have believed this was the only math that worked. Nanika is trying to teach us a new equation."
Nawi, whose world had been one of immediate, sensory input—the smell of blood, the feel of a knife handle, the sound of a command—was now being forced to think in abstractions, in connections, in cause and effect. It was a more exhausting battle than any she had fought.
"The Council chamber is the culmination of all this," Afi explained one evening as they sat on a secluded bench overlooking one of the palace's ornamental gardens. The scent of night-blooming jasmine was heavy in the air. "General Gbehanzin does not just represent himself. He represents the ambitions of the young officers, the traditionalist priests, the slave-trading families whose wealth is tied to the old ways. When he pounds the table, he is channeling their collective voice."
"And Commander Nanika?" Nawi asked, her own voice hesitant.
"Nanika represents the Mino, of course. But she also represents the pragmatists. The treasurers who see the coffers draining. The scouts who bring back reports of British warships patrolling the coast, threatening to blockade the slave ports. She represents the fear of a future where our only trade is outlawed by outside forces. She is not a sentimental woman, Nawi. She is a realist. She would burn a hundred Ketis if it strengthened Dahomey. But she would also save a thousand Ketis if a new, more stable path to strength presented itself."
The words were a brutal clarity. They did not make Nanika a hero. They made her something more complex, and in a way, more formidable.
"So what is the truth?" Nawi asked, frustration edging her voice. "Who is right?"
Afi smiled her enigmatic smile. "There is no single truth. There is only power, and the relentless, shifting current of interests. The 'right' path is the one that ensures survival. Sometimes that path is paved with bones. Sometimes it is paved with palm fruit. Your job is not to choose a side, but to understand the sides. To see the strings that move the puppets. Only then can you decide which strings you wish to pull, or to cut."
She turned to face Nawi fully, her expression deadly serious. "You carry a great anger within you. I see it. It is a fire that can warm you or burn you alive. You can let it drive you to a futile, glorious death against the first target you see. Or you can let it become a forge. You can use the heat of that anger to temper your mind into a weapon far more dangerous than any Gbeni knife. A knife can kill a man. A well-placed word in the right ear can change the destiny of a kingdom."
The lesson settled deep within Nawi. The council chamber was not a place of confusion to be avoided. It was the most important battlefield she would ever step onto. The men and women there were not just arguing; they were dueling with ideas, and the wounds they inflicted determined who lived, who died, and who was led away in chains.
The next time she took her seat on the stool against the wall, the experience was transformed. She no longer just heard arguments; she saw the underlying structures. She saw Gbehanzin's bluster for what it was—a performance for his supporters. She saw Nanika's cool logic as a shield against not just military folly, but against economic collapse.
She was no longer an unarmed spectator. Afi had handed her the first, crucial weapon: the ability to see the battle for what it was. She didn't have to like the game. She didn't have to choose a side. But for the first time, she could see the board, and the pieces, and the ruthless, calculated moves being made.
The path of revenge had not vanished. It had simply become infinitely more complicated. It was no longer about plunging a knife into a single heart. It was about understanding the entire circulatory system of the kingdom, and finding the one, precise pressure point that could make the whole monstrous heart seize. And as she sat in silence, her observant eyes now seeing the hidden contours of power, Nawi, the Reaper, began her true apprenticeship. She was learning to become an assassin of policy, a ghost in the machine, and the most dangerous person in any room was no longer the one with the sharpest blade, but the one who understood the sharpest truth.