The Shadow King

Hirut waits for Ettore Navarra. Protests and revolution threaten Ethiopian political stability. Hirut remembers her own role as a warrior under the Shadow Emperor, who still lives on the farm beside hers, forgotten to history. The Emperor the students want to overthrow is an imposter. Hirut carries secrets, including the secrets of Ettore Navarra, in a metal box of letters and photographs.

Hirut endures a lecture from her enslaver, Aster, who accuses Hirut of stealing her wedding necklace. As Aster ransacks the room Hirut shares with the cooks, she uncovers the Wujigra rifle that belonged to Hirut’s father. Kidane appears and, at Aster’s encouragement, takes the gun in preparation for war.

Hirut looks for her rifle under the pretense of cleaning. While cleaning forbidden surfaces in Kidane’s office, she finds Aster’s lost necklace and takes it. She buries it, and many other things, in a hole beneath the woodpile, believing she has righted an imbalance.