The rains had not yet come, and the air in Harar was dry with dust and tension. Tafari's new circle of watchers, led quietly by Abebe, moved like shadows through markets, taverns, and caravan camps.
Within a fortnight, they brought news that confirmed his fears.
"Wolde has been meeting with Italian agents outside the city," Abebe reported one night. "They bring him silver and cloth, promise him command if he supports their 'protectorate.' We followed his men — they smuggle rifles into his estate."
Tafari's heart quickened, though his face remained calm. So it begins, he thought. He had expected it, but proof gave him strength.
"What else?" he asked.
"One of the Italians plans to travel to Addis Ababa soon," Abebe continued. "They mean to spread their gold to other nobles. If we stop them now, we cripple their hand."
Tafari nodded slowly. He could not yet act openly — he was only fifteen, his father still commanded the armies, and a rash move might expose his network. But he could act quietly.
He wrote a sealed letter for his father, reporting Wolde's dealings, and had Abebe deliver it at night. By morning, Makonnen's men had raided Wolde's caravans, seizing rifles before they could be distributed. Officially, the rifles were said to be contraband brought by smugglers. Unofficially, Wolde was warned — his treachery was no longer a secret game.
For the first time, Tafari tasted victory. His network had worked. His vigilance had mattered.
But even as he savored it, he thought ahead. Foreign gold will keep flowing. A hungry man can be bought more easily than a full one. If I want Ethiopia strong, I must feed her first.
That thought burned in him. In his past life, famine had stalked Ethiopia like a curse. He remembered the skeletal children, the foreign cameras, the humiliation of aid shipments while the world called Ethiopia "backward." No empire could endure when its people starved.
So Tafari turned his gaze to food.
The next weeks, he spent time not in the council chamber but among the fields outside Harar. He spoke with farmers as they tilled their teff and barley, asked questions that surprised them.
"How many seeds do you save each year? How much grain do you lose to pests? How many oxen plow a single field?"
They laughed at first, bemused by the prince's curiosity, but Tafari pressed on, notebook in hand, sketching diagrams from his memories of modern agriculture. He remembered crop rotation, irrigation canals, granaries sealed against insects. He remembered seeing tractors and water pumps in his first life, and though he could not build them yet, he could lay the foundations.
At night, he filled parchment with plans — designs for larger communal storage, instructions for digging irrigation trenches to carry water farther, ideas for drying grain more efficiently under the sun.
One evening, as his father reviewed reports of troop movements, Tafari placed a set of drawings before him.
"Not soldiers, Father," he said firmly. "Not rifles. Look — food. If we can feed the people, they will not turn to Italian gold. If we can grow more, we can arm more. A full stomach is the first weapon of a strong empire."
Makonnen studied the sketches — crude silos built of stone and clay, canals branching from rivers, plowshares forged thicker from iron. His stern face softened.
"You speak like a farmer, Tafari," he said.
"I speak like someone who remembers what happens when Ethiopia goes hungry," Tafari replied.
Makonnen leaned back, eyes narrowing with thought. "Very well. I will give you land and laborers. Show me that your ideas work. If they do, I will give you more."
Within weeks, Tafari oversaw a small test farm near Harar. Abebe and his circle, no longer just spies, helped dig canals. Farmers, skeptical at first, began to watch with growing curiosity. The canals carried water to fields that once cracked with drought. The new granary stored grain without mold. Yields grew stronger.
Word spread quickly: the young prince who had scolded Wolde in council was now making barren fields green. Villagers whispered that Tafari carried wisdom beyond his years, a gift from heaven itself.
One elder bowed deeply before him and said, "A prince who feeds his people will never lack soldiers."
Tafari smiled faintly. He knew it was not heaven, but the hard lessons of his first life guiding him now. Industry will come later, he thought, but food must come first. From full fields we will build ironworks, from ironworks we will build rifles, and from rifles we will defend our freedom.
The seeds had been planted — both in the earth, and in the hearts of the people.
For the first time since awakening in this body, Tafari felt Ethiopia's future shift.