Deities of Deceit

Chapter Twenty-three

Hareti Jaja | Twenty-three
RELIGION AND STEEL
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After all was said and done, the generals shuffled out of the military court, and I remained with the commanders and royal guards in tight conversation regarding the security protocol for my engagement ball.

I was not blind to the thick bad blood that ran between black and white people, much grievances had been committed against white people, and black people still saw a colonizer each time they looked upon white flesh. The hate was a pungent stench in my kingdom, one I was bound to blow away. If they were to stand in the royal halls, side by side as equals, there was no guarantee the peace would hold.

The night of the veil was intended to be a step in the right direction, the night when all citizens of Arjana would come to know of my true intention for the kingdom, a night to re-familiarize Arjanian citizens with the name of crown, and the weight of my rule. Security was of the utmost importance to enforce orderliness and tame anger I knew would flow free like a stream of volcanoes, melting all in its part.

Hour after hour, I listened and watched the royal guards and commanders try to tolerate their contempt for one another. There were like cats and dogs before my sight, each side seeking to claim control of the authority I had bestowed. I let them have at it until an agreement was reached for what was to be done.

Royal guards were my most trusted warriors. Most of them had grown up before my sight in the desert, trained from birth to protect the crown. They knew not the same hate as the military. But the military wanted their show of strength, so I allowed them take the lead with the security protocol. A way to reimburse their ego after I had stepped on their necks.

"Show me to General Yarima's office," I asked one of the warriors who stood guard in front of the court chambers as we departed . After a bow, he led the way.

It had been centuries since I walked the stone halls of the military cabinet. The plans for it were first laid out during my mothers reign, and when I became queen, it was completed, built with the bare hands of white slaves, over the dead bodies of white slaves. I had tasked them to work without rest after the war ended, day in day out, through every hour. They'd drop dead after months of piling stone upon stone with barely any sleep, food or water. Their fellow slaves were commanded to simply cover the bodies with stones and keep working.

It made for a formidable structure, utterly impregnable, with high towering walls that fortified our defenses against the far reaching eyes of white colonizers. Iron doors and windows in every passage. Every step I took brought with it memories of the long days I had trained with my military, a fellowship bound on oaths unshakeable by even the deities themselves.

It was a gift to have fought alongside the most fearless warriors, and the nostalgia of what it felt like, rivered through me. So did the memory of seeing the massive graves it took to make it possible. Even in that moment, at the sight of it all, I was unshaken by it, it filled me with the utmost fulfillment, and more taste for death.

If I were weak, I'd blame it all on the curse and claim myself a victim. But no. I had seen what they had done, and it brought me joy to see them fall in droves. Those were MY emotions. It simply felt good.

We arrived at a large oak door and the scruffy white man—the only white man I had seen since my arrival at the building—sitting at the secretary's desk sprung up and threw himself to his knees in a bow, spitting all sorts of greetings with all my honorifics included.

"You must be Preye," I said with a smile.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Be on your feet."