Three days after the fire, Tafari's men dragged a prisoner into the courtyard of Harar's fortress. The man's face was swollen, one arm broken, his clothes torn. Yet his eyes still burned with defiance.
He was no ordinary bandit. His tongue betrayed him—Italian, though he spoke broken Amharic to mask it. He had been caught while trying to flee toward the coast. On him were maps, codes, and a vial of strange liquid—poison, likely for silencing.
The nobles gathered as word spread: an Italian agent, alive.
Tafari ordered the interrogation himself. The chamber was dim, lit only by a single lantern. Wolde stood at his side, silent as stone.
"You came to burn my foundry," Tafari began softly. "You killed men who worked for bread, not war. Tell me—did your masters promise you glory? Gold? Did they tell you Ethiopia would fold like paper?"
The man spat blood onto the floor. "You are nothing. A boy playing at king. Italy will carve this land. Your rifles are toys, your forges mud huts. You cannot stop us."
Tafari leaned close, his voice calm, measured.
"Perhaps. But you are here, broken. And your friends do not know that I hold you. Shall we send them a message?"
He nodded to Wolde. A guard brought in parchment. Under the Italian's signature, forged by a skilled hand, letters would soon be written—reports assuring his masters that shipments had succeeded, that rebels were armed, that all was well. In truth, every letter would feed Italy falsehoods, guiding them into Tafari's traps.
The prisoner realized too late. His eyes widened with horror. "You… devil…"
Tafari's smile was thin. "No. Just a student of history. Your empire forgets—Ethiopia has swallowed invaders before. And it will again."
By dawn, the Italian agent was gone—whether executed or hidden in a deeper dungeon, no one outside Tafari's circle knew. But the nobles heard whispers: that Tafari could turn even foreign spies into weapons. Fear spread sharper than steel.
That week, another noble—Ras Getahun, long suspected of wavering—was found guilty of "collusion" after a cache of rifles mysteriously appeared on his estate. The rifles, of course, were planted by Tafari's men. The message was clear: any noble who even dreamed of treachery risked being unmasked.
In the streets of Harar, workers cheered Tafari as he inspected the rebuilt foundry. "A prince who protects us!" they cried. For the common people, he was becoming more than a noble—he was their shield.
But at night, when Wolde sat with him, the truth showed. Tafari's cough wracked his body, his hand trembled when lifting a cup. He masked the weakness in public, but in private it gnawed at him.
Wolde frowned. "You build faster than they can destroy, Tafari. But your body… how long can you keep this pace?"
Tafari's eyes darkened. "Long enough. History will not remember the length of my life, Wolde. Only whether I used it to break chains—or to wear them."
Outside, the hammering of steel echoed again. The foundries lived. The dream endured. And the Italians, thinking themselves hunters, were being led into a snare woven by a dying prince with the eyes of a historian.