The palace courtyard buzzed with the usual noise: guards laughing too loudly, servants rushing like the world was ending, elders muttering about tradition as if it paid taxes. In the middle of all that chaos walked eleven-year-old Kafi, hands behind his back, face calm, mind spinning harder than the merchants' counting beads.
Everyone saw a prince.
Nobody saw the boy plotting ten years into the future.
Morning sunlight hit the stone paths as he crossed into the treasury hall, where chests of frankincense, ivory, gold dust, and cotton filled the room with the heavy smell of wealth. Kafi stood there for a moment, letting his eyes linger on everything the Ajuuraan Empire already had... and everything it was wasting.
"Your Highness," the chief treasurer said, bowing deep. "Do you require something?"
Kafi nodded, pretending to be the polite, harmless child they expected. "I want the weekly reports of Zeila, Mogadishu, Marka, and Barawa. All trade entering and leaving the ports."
The old man blinked. "You… want them? Yourself?"
"Is that confusing?" Kafi asked with the most innocent stare he could manage.
The treasurer muttered something about "children growing too clever" and shuffled away to gather the scrolls.
Kafi moved toward the open balcony. From here, he could see Mogadishu's coast stretching endlessly, ships drifting in and out, their sails catching wind that carried money from Arabia, India, and beyond. And yet, the empire behaved like the world would always come to them. Lazy thinking. Dangerous thinking.
"We control the land," Kafi whispered to himself. "But the ocean decides who wins."
Frankincense would move. Coffee would move. Cotton, salt, gum arabic, leather, gold dust, all of it could reach farther, faster, and cheaper if he built the right network. And if he controlled Zeila, the closest Somali port to the Red Sea, the gateway to the Gulf of Aden, then he wouldn't just serve trade… he would own its bloodstream.
He imagined Ajuuraan merchants dealing directly with Ottoman captains, Yemeni spice traders, Persian cloth dealers, and Indian shipmasters. Prices would spike. Rivals would bow. Influence would spread like wildfire.
A small smile crept onto his face. Too ambitious for an 11-year-old? Absolutely. But he didn't plan to grab a sword tomorrow and scream "conquer." He was patient enough to build the world he needed first.
As the treasurer returned with a stack of scrolls nearly as tall as Kafi's torso, the man sighed. "Your father said you're preparing for your future."
Kafi took the scrolls. "I'm preparing for everyone's future. They just don't know it yet."
The treasurer almost laughed, thinking the boy was joking.
He wasn't.
Kafi walked out, scrolls under his arm, sandals slapping lightly on the polished floor. Step by step, idea by idea, he was stitching the kind of trade empire where even the Ottomans would raise an eyebrow. He would make Ajuuraan not just an African power but the African power.
No fighting yet. No grand battles.
Just the calm before a storm that only he could see coming.