Her new world was a symphony of whispers. The grand, pod-like dwelling assigned to her was nestled in the crook of a mighty branch, a stone's throw from the King's own chamber. It was spacious, its walls a living tapestry of woven, living vines that were trained to form patterns of swirling spirals and unfurling fronds. By day, light filtered through in a soft, green-gold haze; by night, the bioluminescent fungi embedded in the walls pulsed with a gentle, rhythmic glow, mimicking the breath of the forest itself. The air was perpetually cool and carried the clean scent of damp wood, dried herbs, and the faint, ever-present fragrance of the raffia that was the backbone of this entire society.
It was a gilded cage, far more beautiful and far more terrifying than any dungeon.
Her "attendants" were two silent Ugbò women. The elder, whom Moremi privately named Iya for her patient, maternal demeanor, was a master weaver. Her long fingers, emerging from her raffia sleeves, were constantly in motion, repairing a tear, braiding a new cord, or creating intricate patterns with dyed fibers. The younger, a slighter figure whose movements had a hesitant grace, reminded Moremi painfully of Ela. She named her Bimpe, 'born of precious things.' Bimpe was tasked with bringing Moremi food—roasted tubers that tasted of rich earth, sweet fruits she didn't recognize, and strips of smoked meat that could have been fish or fowl—and with helping her bathe in a small, secluded spring that cascaded from a higher branch into a natural rock basin.
They never spoke. Communication was a language of gesture, of subtle shifts in the rustling of their raffia, of the tilt of their blank masks. Iya would gently tap Moremi's shoulder twice to indicate a meal was ready. Bimpe would point with a fluid motion of her wooden hand towards the bathing spring. They were respectful, efficient, and utterly inscrutable. Moremi was a queen, but she was also a specimen under constant, silent observation.
She began her espionage with the precision of a master strategist. Every moment was a lesson, every observation a potential weapon for Ile-Ife. She mapped the city in her mind, memorizing the primary arterial bridges and the narrower, more precarious-looking pathways that led to storage areas and lookout perches. She noted the rhythms of the Ugbò day. The pre-dawn hours were for a series of flowing, communal exercises on the wide platforms, a silent, synchronized dance that seemed to be both meditation and martial training. The main part of the day was for work: maintaining the structures, weaving, hunting, and the mysterious process of treating and preparing the raffia.
It was this process that held her fiercest attention.
She was allowed a certain freedom to walk the main thoroughfares, always with Iya or Bimpe a few paces behind. She used these walks to locate the areas where the raffia was cured. She found a series of open-sided workshops on a sunny platform, where great bundles of the raw, green fronds were first soaked in tannin-rich solutions made from boiled bark, giving them their distinctive dull brown color and, she presumed, some resistance to rot. But the final stage, the one that made the armor, was conducted in a more secluded area, near the heat of the community cooking fires.
Here, the treated raffia was meticulously layered and then brushed with a thick, pungent oil rendered from the nuts of a tree she didn't recognize. The oil had a sharp, slightly sweet smell, and it made the dried fronds gleam with a dull luster and become supple yet tough. The workers, their wooden hands moving with practiced ease, would weave the oiled strands into the complex, overlapping plates that formed the iconic Ugbò armor. The smell of this hot oil became synonymous with the Ugbò themselves in her mind—the scent of her enemy, the key to their invincibility.
And then, the breakthrough came. It happened so fast, so violently, that it was burned into her memory with the searing intensity of the event itself.
She was walking with Bimpe past the cooking platforms, where several Ugbò were tending to clay pots over low, contained fires. The air was hazy with aromatic smoke and the sizzle of food. A warrior, his raffia armor still gleaming with fresh oil from the workshop, was moving between the fires, his movements, as always, fluid and silent.
It was a simple misstep. A shift in weight, a fraction of an inch too close to a fire pit that had flared up with a sudden gust of wind. The fringe of his raffia sleeve whispered against the orange heart of the flame.
What happened next was not an ignition; it was a transmutation.
The oiled raffia did not merely catch fire. It became fire. There was no slow smolder, no hesitant curl of smoke. One moment it was a sheath of woven grass, the next, it was a roaring, hungry sleeve of flame. The fire raced over the warrior's body with a horrifying, liquid speed, a demonic, orange-yellow bloom consuming the dry, oil-soaked fibers. A sound erupted from the creature—not a scream, but a sharp, high-frequency vibration of pure, agonizing terror, a sound like splintering wood.
The silent efficiency of the Ugbò shattered. Others surged forward, not with water, but with heavy, woven mats, smothering the flames with desperate, brutal speed. The smell that filled the air was no longer of cooking food, but of a charnel house—acrid, greasy smoke and the sickly-sweet stench of burned plant fibers and something else, something organic and terrible.
In seconds, it was over. The fire was out. The warrior lay on the platform, twitching, his armor a blackened, smoldering crust against his body. The vibrant raffia was now a funeral shroud of ash and tar.
Moremi stood frozen, her hand clamped over her mouth. Her heart was a wild thing trying to escape her chest. Triumph and horror warred within her, a nauseating cocktail. Fire. That was the answer. The great, unstoppable Ugbò, the specters of rustling doom, were terrifyingly vulnerable to fire. Their greatest strength was their profound weakness. A single, well-placed torch could turn a warrior into a walking pyre. She had found it. The key to Ile-Ife's salvation was not a secret weapon, but a simple, terrifying truth: they were made of kindling.
The victory felt hollow, tainted by the visceral, brutal reality of what she had just witnessed. This was not an abstract strategic advantage; it was a recipe for a specific, gruesome kind of death.
Later, back in the quiet of her pod, the image of the immolating warrior still danced behind her eyes. Bimpe had been unusually attentive, her silent presence a soft rustle in the corner. As the girl helped Moremi prepare for the night, brushing out her long, thick hair with a comb made of polished bone, Moremi felt a shift in the air. The girl's movements were slower, more hesitant.
Then, Bimpe did something she had never done before. She reached out one of her long, wooden fingers and gently, so gently it was almost not there, traced the line of Moremi's shoulder. It was a gesture of comfort.
Moremi looked up, meeting the blank, polished wood of Bimpe's mask. There were no eyes to read, no mouth to form a smile. But the intent was clear, a quiet empathy radiating from the still figure.
And then, Bimpe did the impossible. She spoke. Not with the deep, resonant hum of the King, but with a series of soft, almost melodic clicks and vibrations that emanated from her small chest. They were hesitant, unpracticed, as if she were forcing a muscle long dormant to move. The sounds were alien, but layered within them, like a seed hidden in fruit, was a meaning that blossomed in Moremi's mind, a meaning conveyed not just by sound, but by the girl's entire posture, her attentive stillness.
The King… the impression came, …is not a beast. He is… lonely. The silence… it grows heavy on a throne. He sees you… and the silence… lessens.
Moremi's breath caught. The girl was not just an attendant; she was an interpreter, a bridge. And the message she carried was dangerously disarming.
The words, or rather the impressions, settled in Moremi's soul, finding fertile ground in the soil of her own observations. She thought of the King's patient silence, his intellectual curiosity, his cold but not cruel logic. She thought of the way he had circled her, not as a predator stalks prey, but as a collector appraises a rare and fascinating artifact. He was a ruler shouldering the immense burden of his people's survival, a people so different, so isolated. The mask was a symbol of his office, but what lay beneath? Was there a man in there, a consciousness that longed for a connection beyond the rustling consensus of his kind?
A flicker of something treacherous and unwelcome sparked within her. It was not sympathy, she told herself. It was strategic understanding. But it felt dangerously like the beginnings of it. And woven with that flicker was another, even more alarming sensation—a faint, reluctant attraction to the sheer, formidable power and intelligence he embodied. It was the attraction of a sharp mind for another sharp mind, the draw of the unknown, the terrifying allure of the abyss that had, against all odds, shown her a form of respect.
She had the key to destroy them. She had found the chink in their raffia armor. But now, Bimpe's silent revelation had forged a different kind of weapon, one that targeted not the Ugbò's physical defenses, but her own resolve. The crown of queenship, which she had worn as a disguise, was beginning to feel real, its weight not just of opportunity, but of a growing, thorny connection. She had come to uncover a monster, and was instead finding a king. And that was a complication for which her heart was utterly unprepared.