Year: 1880
Twenty-seven holes in each ceiling tile. He had counted them six times since yesterday.
General Adewale Okonkwo lay in the bed at Walter Reed, listening to the rhythm of his own ending. Beep. Beep. Beep. The morphine made everything soft at the edges, but it couldn't touch the clarity at the center of his mind.
Seventy-two years. Four stars on his shoulder. Three continents of combat. And one decision that still woke him in the night.
Fallujah. 2004. He had ordered the assault despite intelligence suggesting civilian presence. Thirty-seven dead. Eighteen of them children.
The inquiry cleared him. The medals kept coming. But every night since, he saw their faces—faces he had never actually seen, invented by a conscience that refused absolution.
"Dad?" Chioma's voice came from somewhere to his left. His daughter. The only thing he'd built outside the Army that had lasted.
He tried to turn his head. Failed. Settled for moving his eyes.
"I'm here," she said. Her grip was strong, like her mother's had been. "I'm not going anywhere."
His grandmother's voice echoed from sixty years ago, from a childhood in Lagos before everything changed. "The old kingdoms, Adewale. Benin. Oyo. Sokoto. They had walls and warriors and wisdom. But the white men came with guns that fired ten times while our men loaded once."
He had spent his career studying exactly that. Counter-insurgency. Logistics. The mathematics of resistance. Every African campaign the Europeans had won, he had analyzed. Every failed defense, he had mapped.
The beeping slowed.
Chioma's hand tightened on his.
If only someone who understood what was coming could have been there. Before the partition. Before Berlin. Before the Maxim guns...
"I'm sorry," he whispered. Not sure if he was speaking to his daughter, to the children in Fallujah, or to ancestors he'd never believed in.
The darkness came soft and warm.
And then the fire began.
---
The darkness didn't last.
It shattered into light—blinding, searing, wrong. His body was on fire. No—his body was gone. He was fire, pouring through a crack in something he couldn't name.
Voices crashed over him in languages he didn't know and somehow understood.
"—the fever has taken him—"
"—spirits speak through the dying—"
"—call the diviners—"
He tried to scream. The sound came out in a tongue he had never learned.
Hands pressed against skin that wasn't his. Cool water on a forehead too young. He felt the prince's memories flooding in like a river breaking a dam—childhood games in courtyards, his mother's songs, the weight of coral beads at a ceremony he had never attended.
Which ceremony? Whose mother?
The two lives collided. He was dying in Maryland and burning in West Africa and drowning in memories that belonged to someone else. The general's discipline cracked. Pure animal panic took over.
"No—"
A woman's face appeared above him. Young. Terrified. A servant, something told him—but was that knowledge his or the prince's?
"Prince Akenzua! You must lie still—"
He thrashed. His hand struck something—bronze, heavy, a figure of a leopard that crashed to the floor. The servant screamed.
"He's possessed! The spirits have taken him!"
More hands. Older hands. A voice cutting through the chaos with authority.
"Leave us."
The hands released him. Footsteps retreated.
Through sweat-blurred vision, he saw her. Middle-aged. Regal. Coral beads at her throat.
Mother. The word came unbidden. Not his mother—dead these forty years—but the prince's.
"Be still." Her hand on his chest, pressing down. "Whatever you are, be still."
The fever surged. He saw flashes: a museum in London, bronzes behind glass, a plaque reading LOOTED FROM THE KINGDOM OF BENIN, 1897. He saw the calculation: seventeen years. Seventeen years until everything he was looking at would be stolen, burned, destroyed.
Then darkness.
Real darkness, this time.
---
Heat. Real heat now—the West African afternoon pressing against his skin.
Akenzua opened his eyes.
The ceiling above was high, carved from okoume wood and supported by pillars decorated with bronze leopards. Three days, they would tell him later. The fever had held him for three days.
He pushed himself upright. Young muscles responded with a strength he hadn't felt in decades.
Eighteen years old. Strong. Alive.
The irony nearly choked him. A dying general's impossible wish, answered—if this was an answer and not some morphine-induced hallucination at the edge of death.
He pinched his arm. The pain was sharp and real.
His hands were young. Unmarked by age spots. The hands of a prince who had never held a rifle, never signed an order that killed children.
The ghost of Fallujah stirred. Would it follow him here? Would he see those faces in this life too?
He walked to the window on legs that felt borrowed. Benin City spread before him in the afternoon light.
The walls stretched as far as he could see—thirty feet high, exactly as the historical accounts described. The great moat encircled everything. Beyond the inner walls, the rooftops of the different quarters: the Igun quarter where bronze-casters worked, the Owina quarter of woodcarvers, the Igbesanmwan quarter where ivory was shaped.
In seventeen years, the British would steal the bronzes. Ship them to their museums. Burn the palace.
Unless he stopped it.
A knock at the door.
"Prince Akenzua? The Queen Mother wishes to know if you are awake."
He knew that voice. Osagbomwen—the servant who had witnessed his thrashing. She would have talked. By now, half the palace would know the prince had acted strangely during the fever.
"Tell her I will receive her."
The words came out in Edo, a language General Okonkwo had never learned but now spoke as naturally as English.
---
Queen Mother Idia entered like a general approaching uncertain terrain.
She paused at the door. Studied him. Moved closer in small steps, watching his reaction to each one.
"Akenzua."
"Mother."
She circled him. He forced himself to remain still under her examination.
"Look at me."
He met her eyes.
"Who are you?"
The question hit like a blow. "I am your son."
"My son didn't stand like that. My son didn't hold his hands like a warrior waiting for attack. My son was a boy." Her voice dropped. "What are you?"
Lie. The tactical mind screamed it. Deny everything. But something else—the prince's love for this woman, bleeding through the merged memories—made him hesitate.
"I am Akenzua. But the fever... changed me."
"Changed you how?"
"I see things now. Know things. The fever showed me—"
"Show me."
"What?"
"You say you know things. Prove it." She picked up a bronze figure from the table—a leopard, twin to the one he had knocked to the floor during his thrashing. "My grandmother gave me this the day I married your father. It has a flaw—a bubble in the casting, hidden from view. Where is it?"
The prince's memories offered nothing. The general's analytical mind raced—if the flaw was hidden, it would be where the bronze would naturally thin during cooling. The underside of the haunches, where the metal would pull away from the mold.
He reached out. Turned the leopard over. Ran his thumb along the inner curve of the left rear leg.
There. A small depression.
Idia's breath caught.
"The fever," he said carefully. "It opened my eyes to many things."
"That knowledge came from a smith. Not from spirits."
"Perhaps the spirits spoke through a smith."
She set the leopard down. "You will tell me everything you 'see.' Everything you 'know.' And I will decide what the court learns and what they don't."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I will announce that the spirits took my son and left something else in his place. The diviners will agree. Chief Osaro will demand your removal from succession. You will be dead or exiled before the next moon."
The threat was delivered without heat. A simple statement of fact.
"You would do that to your own son?"
"If my son is gone, there is nothing to protect. If my son remains—if some part of him still lives in whatever you have become—then I will protect that part." She stepped closer. "So tell me, creature of the fever: is my son still in there?"
The prince's love surged through him—real, undeniable, not something he had manufactured.
"Yes. He is. And he needs your help."
A long silence.
"Then we understand each other."
---
Outside, someone was waiting.
Akenzua had dismissed Osagbomwen and walked alone to the inner courtyard, thinking. Planning. His mother's test had shaken him—he had passed by luck as much as logic. He would need to be more careful.
A shadow moved near the pillars.
"I know you're there."
The shadow resolved into a palace guard—young, perhaps twenty, with the careful posture of someone who watched more than he spoke.
"Forgive me, Prince. I was not spying."
"Yes, you were. For whom?"
The guard's face betrayed nothing. "I serve the Oba."
"My father. And who else?"
No answer.
"What's your name?"
"Emokpae."
"You've been watching me since I woke, Emokpae. The servant told you about my behavior during the fever. You reported to someone. Now you're here to see if I've recovered or if I'm still... strange."
Still nothing.
"Tell whoever sent you that the prince is well. The fever passed. Nothing more to report."
"And if they ask about the leopard? The one you threw across the room?"
So the servant had been thorough.
"Tell them I dreamed of fire. It frightened me."
"They won't believe that."
"Then tell them the truth. Tell them I woke up different. Tell them I walk different and talk different and look at people like I'm measuring them for coffins." Akenzua stepped closer, letting the general's command presence bleed through. "And tell them that whatever changed, I remember who my enemies are."
Emokpae held his ground. But something flickered in his eyes—not fear, exactly. Reassessment.
"You know who I report to."
"Chief Osaro controls the Iwebo palace society. He opposed my father's ascension. He'll oppose mine. Of course he has watchers in the palace."
"The fever taught you that too?"
"The fever taught me to pay attention."
Emokpae nodded slowly. "I'll deliver your message."
"And Emokpae? I may have use for a man who watches. A man who reports what he sees—to me. The pay would be better than whatever Osaro offers."
The guard's expression didn't change. "I'll consider it."
He walked away into the shadows.
Akenzua watched him go. The game had already begun—Osaro would know within the hour that the prince was changed, alert, dangerous. The element of surprise was gone.
But perhaps that was better. Let them wonder. Let them watch. While they debated what the fever had done to him, he would be building.
---
Sleep wouldn't come that night.
Akenzua slipped out into the corridor, barefoot. The palace at night was a different world. Torches flickered in bronze brackets. The bronze plaques gleamed—scenes of royal power frozen in metal.
Each one would end up in a European museum if he failed.
He found his way to an inner courtyard. Ran his hand along one of the bronze plaques—a depiction of a warrior in coral armor, spear raised.
Courage without preparation is just a faster way to die. One of his instructors at the War College had said that. The African armies hadn't lacked courage. They had lacked logistics. Industry. Modern weapons. Modern tactics.
"Prince Akenzua?"
He turned. A young man in the shadows—maybe fourteen, thin as a river reed, with eyes that had seen too much.
"Who are you?"
"No one, Prince. I bring a message from the market. There's talk about your illness."
"What do they say?"
"Some say the spirits took you and gave you back. Some say you're blessed. Some say cursed. Chief Osaro's son has been telling people you spoke in tongues during the fever. Words no one recognized."
English. He had spoken English during the burning.
"And you?"
"I say you're different now. The way you move. Like you're seeing everything for the first time and already knew what you'd find."
Perceptive. Dangerously perceptive. Exactly the kind of person an intelligence network would need.
"What's your name?"
"Osarobo."
"Related to Chief Osaro?"
The boy spat. "No. We share only a syllable. He wouldn't feed a dog from my village."
"You have good eyes. How did you learn to see so clearly?"
"Eyes are how you survive. When you have nothing else."
"I may have need of someone with good eyes, Osarobo. Someone who sees what others miss."
The boy went still. "What would such a person get in return?"
"Protection. Purpose. A future."
Silence stretched. Then: "I've been waiting my whole life for someone to see me."
"Meet me tomorrow at dawn. The Igun quarter."
"Dawn, then."
He melted into the shadows.
First recruit. First step.
---
Dawn came painted in gold and red.
Osarobo was waiting in the courtyard. They moved through the palace and into the city. The streets were already alive—women carrying water, traders setting up stalls.
The Igun quarter smelled of charcoal and hot metal. Master Igue was already working—perhaps forty, with arms like iroko branches.
"Prince. You've never visited our quarter before."
The prince hadn't. But Adewale Okonkwo had spent years studying metallurgy, industrial processes, the technical foundations of military power.
"I was a fool before. I'm trying to be less foolish now."
"What do you want?"
"A conversation. About what you can make—and what you could make, if someone asked for things you've never been asked for before."
Igue set down his tongs. "You speak like a man with dangerous ideas."
"I am. The question is whether you can help make them real."
"Come inside. Some conversations shouldn't happen in the street."
In the workshop, Akenzua produced a brass cartridge case—taken from a European trader's goods years ago, the prince's memories told him.
"Do you know what this is?"
Igue examined it. "A container for the powder that makes the foreigners' weapons work."
"Can you make one?"
"The shape, yes. But this metal... it doesn't crack when it burns."
"I know techniques that might help." Techniques from industrial processes he had studied in another life. "The fever showed me what's coming. We don't have long."
"How long?"
"Seventeen years. Maybe less." He set down the cartridge. "After that, either we're strong enough to survive, or everything ends."
Igue was silent for a long moment.
"You know the British are coming."
"Everyone knows. Only the fools pretend otherwise."
"And you think a smith and some metal can stop them?"
"I think a thousand smiths with the right knowledge can outproduce British factories. I think an army with modern weapons and modern tactics can make conquest too expensive to attempt. I think a federation of African nations, united and armed, can survive what's coming."
"And if you're wrong?"
The ghost of Fallujah stirred. Thirty-seven dead because he had been certain.
"Then I will have tried. That's all any of us can do."
Igue walked to a corner of the workshop. Pulled away a covering cloth.
Beneath lay a rifle—British, worn with use.
"I bought this two years ago. Taken it apart a hundred times. I can make most of it. But the barrel requires precision I can't achieve. Not yet."
"Show me what you've tried."
For the next three hours, they talked. Akenzua shared what he remembered of metallurgy—heat treatment, carbon content, tempering. Igue shared what he knew of bronze-casting, of metalworking techniques passed down for generations.
Two different kinds of knowledge, meeting.
"Come back tomorrow," Igue said finally. "Bring whatever else the fever showed you. We'll see what we can build."
---
Evening found Akenzua in his chambers, mind racing.
A knock at the door. Osagbomwen entered.
"Prince. A message arrived while you were out."
She handed him a folded cloth. Inside, scratched on a piece of pottery: "The chief's men ask questions about you in the market. They count your steps. —O"
Osarobo. Already working.
He burned the cloth.
Osaro was moving fast. The report of his strange behavior had reached the chief, and now watchers were being deployed. Questions would follow. Then accusations. Then, if Osaro felt confident enough, action.
The general's mind calculated. He had maybe three months before Osaro felt strong enough to move openly. Three months to build a power base, recruit allies, demonstrate enough capability to make an attack too risky.
The prince's memories offered context. Osaro had opposed his father's ascension, had been outmaneuvered and humiliated. He would see the son as an opportunity to avenge the slight against the father.
And the watchers—Emokpae and whoever else lurked in the palace—would report everything.
Let them.
By the time Osaro understood what he was building, it would be too late to stop.
---
He stood at the window as the sun set.
Benin City spread before him—a hundred thousand people in one of the largest cities in Africa. Beyond it, the territories that owed tribute: the Itsekiri at Warri, the Urhobo, the Ijaw, the Isoko. Beyond those, the fractured Yoruba cities, the northern emirates, the coastal kingdoms the British already coveted.
Four million square kilometers. Ninety million people. All of it could become one nation. Must become one nation.
The task was immense. But he had planned campaigns across three continents. He knew how to break the impossible into the merely difficult.
Seventeen years.
One master smith willing to experiment.
One orphan boy with sharp eyes.
One prince who carried a dead general's memories—and a dead general's guilt.
The children of Fallujah would haunt him here too. He knew that now. But maybe—maybe—he could balance the scales. Save more lives than he had taken. Build instead of destroy.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the sun had set.
In the palace, Emokpae was already writing his report. In the market, Osaro's men counted the prince's movements. In the Igun quarter, Igue examined his notes and planned tomorrow's experiments.
The game had begun.
By morning, every chief in the palace would know: something had awakened in the prince. Something that watched back when they watched. Something that planned while they schemed.
Let them wonder what it was.
Let them fear what it would become.
---
END OF CHAPTER ONE