Chapter 6 — The Missing Princess
King Adisa knew something terrible had happened before Captain Jabari said a word.
The man entered the council chamber shortly after sunset, covered in dust, his clothes stained with blood. Lieutenant Kato followed with his left arm bandaged, accompanied by two exhausted soldiers.
Adisa rose immediately.
“Where is Amara?”
Nobody answered.
Queen Nalia slowly stood beside him.
“Where is my daughter?”
Jabari lowered his head. “The escort was ambushed in the northern valley. Several guards were killed. Others were wounded.”
Adisa's voice became dangerously quiet. “And Amara?”
“They took her.”
The room fell silent.
For several seconds the King did not move. He seemed almost unable to understand the words.
“Alive?”
“Yes. We saw her alive when they escaped.”
“And Lela?”
“Taken with her.”
Nalia gripped the edge of the table.
Adisa walked around it and stopped directly in front of Jabari. “How long ago?”
“Several hours. We pursued them through the forest. They had prepared escape routes and changed horses. We found evidence that they reached the coast.”
“The foreign ship?”
“We believe so.”
Adisa turned toward the windows.
The strangers had not merely wandered into his kingdom. They had studied the roads, watched the patrols, learned the movements of the royal household and waited.
Then they had taken his daughter.
His last argument with Amara returned to him with painful clarity. Seven days inside the palace. No riding without guards. No more adventures.
She had argued, naturally.
At that moment he would have given half his kingdom to hear her arguing with him again.
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, grief had become purpose.
“Close every port.”
The ministers looked at him.
“Every port,” Adisa repeated. “No foreign vessel leaves without inspection. Send riders to every coastal village. Close the southern roads. Search every warehouse, inn, farm and abandoned building within two days' ride of the coast.”
He turned toward Jabari. “How many ships can sail tonight?”
“Three immediately. Two more before dawn.”
“Send all five.”
“Which direction?”
“All of them.”
Jabari nodded and left to give the orders.
Adisa continued. Messengers were to ride north and south. Fishermen would be paid for information. Merchant captains would receive rewards for reporting unidentified vessels. Border commanders would inspect roads and caravans.
Then he ordered the royal treasury opened.
Minister Bako cautiously asked, “What limit should I authorize?”
Adisa looked at him.
“The limit is reached when my daughter is standing in this room again.”
No one asked another question.
Only then did he look at his wife.
Nalia had not cried. That frightened him almost as much as the news itself.
He walked to her and took her hands.
“I will find her.”
“You don't know where she is.”
“Then I will find out.”
“What if they hurt her?”
He had no answer to that.
Nalia's eyes finally filled with tears. “She was frightened after those men chased her near the coast. She tried to hide it from us, but I saw it.”
“So did I.”
“And we still allowed her to ride.”
“With eight armed guards.”
“It wasn't enough.”
“No.”
For once, Adisa did not tell his wife that they could not blame themselves. He blamed himself too.
He had known strangers were moving through his lands. He had believed walls, soldiers and royal authority were enough to protect his family.
He had been wrong.
Nalia squeezed his hands.
“Bring her home.”
“I will.”
By midnight, the palace had become the center of the largest search the kingdom had seen in years.
Messengers galloped through the gates. Fresh horses waited in the courtyards. Military officers bent over maps. Naval commanders calculated currents and possible routes. Secretaries prepared letters while servants carried food that almost nobody touched.
Amara's brothers arrived as soon as they heard.
Malik, the eldest, entered the council chamber demanding soldiers.
“Give me fifty men. I'll go south.”
“No,” Adisa said.
“They took my sister!”
“And riding blindly into the darkness will not bring her back.”
“I cannot sit here.”
“Neither can I. That does not mean we stop thinking.”
Malik struck the table with his fist, then immediately looked ashamed.
“Is she alive?”
“She was when Jabari last saw her.”
Malik nodded.
For now, those words had to be enough.
Alive.
The entire family held onto them.
Before dawn, three royal warships were already at sea.
Two more followed with the morning tide.
The first useful information arrived after sunrise.
A fisherman reported seeing several small boats leave a hidden cove shortly after dark. Farther offshore, he had seen a large vessel waiting.
Jabari spread a map across the council table.
“Here.”
Adisa studied the position.
“Our ships?”
“They searched the area during the night. The vessel was already gone.”
“Which direction?”
“We don't know.”
A naval officer pointed toward the possible routes. North led toward several foreign ports. South opened into busy commercial waters where one vessel could disappear among many.
West led across the ocean.
Adisa looked at the map.
“If they went west?”
The officer hesitated. “Then this becomes a much larger search.”
“How large?”
“Potentially across the Atlantic.”
“Then we search across the Atlantic.”
The officer looked at him. “Your Majesty, we would need cooperation from foreign ports, governors, merchants and governments.”
“Get it.”
“That could take months.”
Adisa's eyes hardened.
“My daughter does not have months for us to discuss what is convenient.”
Nobody argued.
That afternoon, the first diplomatic letters left the palace.
Some went to neighboring rulers. Others went to foreign governors, commercial companies, merchant families and diplomatic representatives who had visited Adisa's court.
His kingdom had spent generations building trade relationships far beyond its borders. Royal ships carried valuable goods. Foreign merchants depended on agreements that could make them rich—or exclude them from profitable markets.
Until now, those relationships had served commerce.
Today they would serve Amara.
The message was simple.
The King's daughter had been abducted.
Anyone providing reliable information would be rewarded generously.
Anyone helping her captors would lose every privilege the Crown could take away.
Anyone responsible for returning her safely would have the gratitude of one of the wealthiest royal families in the region.
Adisa made certain everyone understood that his gratitude had considerable financial value.
Within days, merchants who had never met Amara were asking about a missing young African woman and an unidentified ship.
Money moved quickly.
News moved even faster.
Three days after the abduction, soldiers captured one of the men left wounded during the attack.
He had been abandoned by the others.
The information he provided changed everything.
The attackers had not known Amara's identity.
They had noticed wealthy young women traveling with a royal escort and assumed they could demand money or sell them elsewhere.
Their leader was a man called Rourke.
“What does he do?” Adisa asked.
Jabari hesitated.
“Smuggling. Kidnapping. Trafficking.”
Adisa's expression became still.
“Trafficking in what?”
“People.”
Nalia had entered the room unnoticed.
She heard the answer.
“People?”
Nobody spoke.
The Queen looked at her husband.
“They sell human beings?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since Amara disappeared, Adisa saw genuine terror overwhelm his wife's composure.
Malik, standing near the window, swore under his breath.
The King turned back toward Jabari.
“Does Rourke know whom he took?”
“Probably not. But Amara may have given him reason to suspect her family is important.”
Adisa almost smiled despite himself.
That sounded exactly like his daughter.
She would conceal her identity.
She would argue.
She would observe.
And sooner or later she would say something that made her captors realize she was not an ordinary prisoner.
“Find everyone connected to Rourke,” Adisa ordered. “Ship owners, agents, buyers, harbor officials, guards. I want names.”
“What happens when we find them?”
Adisa's answer was quiet.
“First we find Amara. Then we decide what happens to them.”
Jabari understood.
So did everyone else.
On the fifth day, one of the search vessels returned carrying debris recovered at sea.
A barrel bore markings associated with Rourke's ship.
The naval commander explained that a powerful storm had crossed the suspected route.
Nalia asked the question nobody wanted to ask.
“Could the ship have sunk?”
“We have no evidence that it did.”
“That wasn't my question.”
The officer lowered his eyes.
“Yes. It is possible.”
The Queen left the room.
Adisa found her later in Amara's bedroom.
Everything remained as their daughter had left it. Books rested beside the bed. Jewelry lay on the dressing table. Riding gloves had been thrown carelessly over a chair.
And one section of the blue curtains was still missing.
Nalia touched the cut fabric.
“She hated these curtains.”
“She called them depressing.”
A tiny laugh escaped Nalia before becoming a sob.
Adisa put his arms around her.
For several minutes there was no kingdom, no council and no royal family.
Only a mother and father terrified that they might never see their daughter again.
“When she comes home,” Nalia whispered, “she can replace every curtain in this palace.”
“When she comes home, she can burn the palace if she wants.”
Nalia looked at him through her tears.
“Don't tell her that.”
“I won't.”
They both managed to laugh.
It lasted only a moment.
But they needed it.
A week after the kidnapping, the search had spread across an enormous territory.
Royal ships searched established routes. Private merchant vessels carried descriptions of Amara and Lela. Diplomats contacted authorities in distant ports. Agents were paid to ask questions in taverns, markets and docks.
Rewards increased.
Rumors arrived constantly.
Two African women seen aboard a damaged vessel.
A ship requesting emergency repairs after a storm.
A captain called Rourke.
A group of men attempting to sell stolen cargo.
Most reports led nowhere.
Some produced another name, another harbor, another fragment of information.
Adisa ordered a room in the palace converted entirely to the search.
Maps covered the walls. Colored markers showed ports, ships, sightings, currents and suspected routes. Lists of names grew longer every day.
The King entered the room every morning before breakfast and returned every night before sleeping.
Often he found Jabari already there.
One evening the captain stood studying the western routes.
“You should sleep,” Adisa told him.
“So should you.”
Neither moved.
After a moment Adisa said, “You blame yourself.”
“I was responsible for her safety.”
“So was I.”
“I should have been with her.”
“If you had been, perhaps you would have stopped them.”
Jabari looked at him.
“Or perhaps,” Adisa continued, “I would now be searching for my daughter and burying one of my oldest friends.”
Jabari lowered his eyes.
The King looked at the map again.
“My daughter has spent twenty-two years escaping from guards, breaking rules and finding doors nobody else noticed.”
Despite everything, Jabari smiled slightly.
“That is true.”
“She once escaped from you during a state dinner.”
“She hid inside the ambassador's carriage.”
“She was twelve.”
“I remember.”
Adisa smiled for the first time that day.
“Whoever took her believes they captured a frightened young woman.”
“They will learn.”
“Yes.”
The smile disappeared.
Adisa placed one hand on the map.
Somewhere beyond that vast stretch of ocean was his daughter.
Perhaps frightened.
Perhaps sick.
Perhaps locked behind a door.
But alive.
He had to believe that.
And he knew Amara.
She would be watching every face, remembering every name and waiting for somebody to make a mistake.
Meanwhile, her family would do the same from the other side of the ocean.
The men who had taken her did not yet understand the scale of their mistake.
They had not simply kidnapped a young woman.
They had taken the daughter of a king who possessed ships, soldiers, money, allies, merchants and influence reaching far beyond his own shores.
And Adisa was prepared to use all of it.
Jabari looked at him.
“How long do we keep searching?”
Adisa did not hesitate.
“Until she comes home.”