by Alyssa Cole
“Don’t walk too quickly, Madame Highness,” Rafiq, one of the guards lining the hallway said when she inclined her head in his direction. His wiry salt-and-pepper brows drew together. “The council advises that a queen should move ‘slowly, with regal grace.’”
“Of course, Rafiq,” she said with a taut smile as she slowed her pace. He was a nice man, and the nicest of the guards who had constantly rebuffed her, but he also treated her like a child.
She’d just faded into the background enough not to be followed every time she was outside of the queen’s wing, and she didn’t want to lose her newfound freedom.
She passed another guard, who didn’t even seem to notice her at all, as if her gown was a cloak of invisibility.
When she turned the corner she ran into Josiane Uwe, the head archivist in the Royal Library, who sucked her teeth as she juggled the stack of books she had in her arms. The wrinkles around the woman’s eyes bunched together as she squinted up at Shanti.
“Madame Highness, in Njaza we don’t just leisurely stroll with our head in the clouds, getting in people’s way. Do remember you’re not in Thesolo. Here, the very least expected of a queen is that she pay attention to her surroundings. Is that too difficult for you?”
The woman didn’t wait for an answer before marching off, thank goodness.
This is what I get for taking the main path, Shanti thought, looking both ways before turning on her heels and jogging to find one of the entrances to the artery of less well-maintained hallways used by the palace staff. It was the route that she usually took through the palace back to the queen’s wing now, hopping over palettes of linens and squeezing past garbage bags, even though it made the already long walk even longer. Though it was inconvenient, it did allow her to hear snippets of conversation and keep an eye on the temperature of things in the palace and outside of it. It also allowed her to avoid Musoke and the guards, and her husband, too. The staff gave her the minimum deference necessary to their temporary queen and continued on their way, which was fine by her.
After what felt like kilometers of walking, Shanti finally reached the queen’s wing, where Kenyatta, the primary guardswoman assigned to her section of the palace, was making her rounds. The woman was shorter than her, with dark locs pulled into a bun atop her head and a pleasant face that belied the fact that she was trained and ready to use lethal martial arts.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” Kenyatta said, stopping to tap her spear three times on the ground—she was the only guard who acknowledged Shanti with the official royal greeting.
“Good morning,” Shanti said, feeling a sudden rush of gratefulness for the guardswoman who’d been so kind to her over the last few months. While they weren’t friends, exactly, as they didn’t really speak of personal matters, the guard checked on her every day, helped her practice her Njazan, and even occasionally sparred with her. And if she noticed anything amiss during her evening rounds, she hadn’t snitched.
“Do you require company, Your Highness?” Kenyatta asked. “I can requisition a staff from the armory, if you’d like to spar, and I have also acquired a one-thousand-piece puzzle. It is a picture of puppies and kittens, which I think you’ll find quite agreeable.”
Shanti smiled, feeling a bittersweet pleasure that Kenyatta was trying to make her happy. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll take a nap. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.”
Kenyatta studied her closely, but nodded. “And if anyone comes to see you, what should I tell them?”
“Lumu is the only one who visits me here, and you can tell him I’m not feeling well but let him pass if he insists.”
If she told Kenyatta to send him away, he might get suspicious and come back in the evening, and that was the last thing Shanti needed.
“As you wish, Your Highness. I . . .” Kenyatta paused and looked down. “I am sorry you are not feeling well again.”
Shanti cleared her throat before speaking. “I’ll be back in form soon, thank you.”
In the safety of her room, she closed the door and felt behind it for the familiar smooth cylinder of the broomstick she kept there, thinking maybe she would get some exercise even if she didn’t feel up to a partner, but something lit up in the dim office alcove of her room before she even had a chance to decompress. She ran to grab her phone.
Father: Hello, little rat! Just checking in because we haven’t heard from you in a while. How is our strapping son-in-law? Is he treating you well or do I have to kill him? I can make it look like an accident, mostly because I don’t want to be hauled before a Njazan tribunal.
Shanti laughed, the first time she had in days. She jogged to the kitchenette area and pulled a snack she’d bought at the night market from the fridge, not bothering to microwave it. She’d been skipping formal meals for weeks, since the prince from Liechtienbourg and his fiancée, Nya Jerami of Thesolo, had stopped by on a diplomatic visit after attending the wedding of Thesolo’s crown prince. Shanti hadn’t been invited to the wedding, though it was in her own homeland, but had ignored the sting of that. Instead, she’d tried to utilize her skill in the kitchen, to show what a good host she could be.
To her horror, her food had been deemed unsatisfactory by the royal taste tester in front of their guests and her husband’s plate had been sent back to the kitchen. Her absence at the table since then hadn’t been commented on.
Mother: Honey, Sanyu is a fine boy. We had him investigated and turned up nothing. I’m sure things have been hard, with the mourning and all, but he wouldn’t hurt our Shanti.
Not intentionally, she started to type, then backspaced.
Shanti: Everything is fine. I’m still working on expanding Njaza’s diplomatic relations and sphere of influence, but like I said, the council is still a bit set in their ways.
Mother: Well they let Bad Boy Jo-Jo come visit didn’t they? And isn’t he working to set up a land mine charity with Sanyu? I saw the Looking Glass Daily tweet about it.
Sanyu’s behavior during that visit had shown her that he did actually care for his kingdom despite his lack of action since her arrival. Then Musoke had returned from a vigil marking the two months after the former king’s death; the advisor’s decree that the visit had been nothing less than licking the boots of colonizers had sent Sanyu back into his shell.
Shanti: It’s a work in progress.
Father: Good, good. I wish we could have found a kingdom that was less of a work-in-progress for you, but you love a challenge. We can’t wait to see how you change Njaza, and then the world.
Mother: Yes! Go Shanti, go! And we’re looking forward to the official unification ceremony at the end of the month! It’ll be so good to see you, and have an actual celebration instead of that somber affair from before. You deserve better.
Shanti’s stomach clamped down around her food, squashing her appetite. How had the time passed so quickly?
Shanti: I will keep you updated about the ceremony! I have work to do now, though, so we’ll discuss later.
Shanti sent a GIF of a cartoon rat blowing kisses—her father had said she had the ingenuity and tenacity of a rodent, and the nickname had stuck—and then put the phone down and began to pace.
Her husband’s dismissal didn’t matter. She’d been rejected so many times before that it shouldn’t matter. And she was still making change for the better in Njaza, which was the only thing that did at the end of the day. But still . . . when she thought of the flash of something in Sanyu’s eyes when their paths crossed, she felt that same pull of desire that had led her toward all of her most important dreams.
She shook her head at the odd thought and refocused on her goals.
Sometimes she was sure he hated her and couldn’t wait for the marriage trial to end, given the way he so diligently ignored her. Other times she swore desire blazed in the warm brown depths, so real she felt the heat of it lick her skin. But their conversation was usually along the lines of I trust my wife is well?,
his gaze shuttered and his attention seemingly a thousand miles away. Her reply of I am, Husband, wishing more than anything that he would see that she wasn’t.
How had three months passed so quickly? With the sudden transition in schedule from jam-packed days and nights in Thesolo to isolation in the Njazan palace, she’d lost sense of the flow of time. As life returned to normal in the palace after the mourning period and moved on without her, denial at her situation had kept her rooted in the present; each day had possibly been the day that she would be allowed to step into her role as queen. The depression that’d set in when that didn’t happen had eaten up many days, too.
She was used to achieving her goals, even if it took years of perseverance, but she was dangerously close to something she’d tried to erase from her worldview: failure. In one month, the choice of whether to continue their marriage trial would arrive, and she was no more queen or wife than when she’d arrived.
“Keep moving toward your goals, even when they seem impossible. In fact, you should be moving toward the goal that follows your initial one, with certainty you’ll achieve the first.” Queen Ramatla had said that in the speech that had set the course of Shanti’s life, but it just didn’t fill her with the hope it once had.
She crossed the room toward her desk, making a quick detour toward the small altar to the goddess Ingoka that she’d set up in the corner of her sitting area.
“Goddess, I know you’ve already blessed me with the opportunity to be queen, and I know that you make no mistakes, but I pray for a sign that my path is true, and for a chance to spread your blessings more abundantly to those who need it. And . . .” She sighed, feeling greedy for voicing this particular desire aloud. “And to not feel quite so . . . lonely.”
After that, she moved to her desk, a truly beautiful eighteenth-century piece made of carved wood inlaid with ceramic tiles depicting scenes of daily Njazan life. Finely painted people with skin in all shades of brown wearing bright traditional clothing. Lumu had told her that the desk had been made for Liechtienbourger magistrates and reclaimed during the rebellion that won the country its freedom. It had served as bureau to each of the many, many queens who’d come before her. When at her most bored, Shanti had passed hours of her time searching the drawers and ingeniously designed hidden compartments for signs from those women, but the desk, like the rest of the palace, showed no trace of them.
She turned on her laptop, which seemed out of place on such a fancy piece of furniture compared to the simple wooden desk she’d had back home, and began her daily rundown of international news. She took note of things that could help or harm Njazan political relations, should they decide to actively resume them, sought out any stirrings of trouble on the continent and in Asia and Europe, and followed up with reports from farther flung places like Canada and the daily garbage fire burning in America.
After a couple of hours, she checked her secret social media account, where she followed royalty news, and made note of what was going on in that sphere—today’s hubbub was about the Mediterranean island of Ibarania, which was launching an international search to find the heir to the Ibaranian throne. Their royal family had fled when the country had briefly been conquered at the end of WWII, and the country had now enlisted the aid of the World Federation of Monarchists—the premiere chroniclers and proponents of nobility in the modern era—to help them find the rightful heirs and reinstate their monarchy.
Shanti wondered what that would be like, to be sitting around without a care in the world and have someone hand you a crown and rule over a people, no marriage necessary. She made a note to check if she had any Ibaranian ancestry listed in the genealogy test she’d submitted to Royal Match.
A notification from Shanti’s messenger app popped up on her screen. The message was in Njazan and Shanti responded in kind.
M: Hello sister. Can you make it tonight? New location, I’ll send you the coordinates.
S: I will try my goodest to be there. Thank you twice.
Shanti was supposed to go into “work” at the archives but she’d already said she was sick, and no one would care. While there was important work being done in the Royal Library, Shanti’s was pointedly unimportant, and she wasn’t in the mood to smile benignly and take any shit Josiane might want to dish out.
She would nap and preserve her energy for something useful, like what she would get into when she snuck out later, in the evening. She wasn’t allowed to make decisions, but she didn’t need Sanyu or Musoke to make change.
Chapter 2
Sanyu forced himself to sit down and work at his father’s massive desk, a mahogany monstrosity that made even a man as big as him feel adrift.
When he was very young, his father would let him sit on the edge of it, legs swinging as he watched the king carry out important royal business. Then, it’d been a special treat, and while Sanyu had never wanted to be an important man, he’d very much wanted to be his father. He’d spent a lifetime mastering how to replicate his father’s swagger, his booming voice, his presence. Sanyu’d been so focused on filling the man’s shoes—on filling his seat at the king’s desk—that he hadn’t even truly mourned, or accepted, his father’s loss.
Now that the desk was his, it felt wrong. He kept expecting the door to the office to open, for his father to stick his head in with an expression of playful menace and say, What are you doing at my desk, my prince? You’ll have plenty of time to sit here when you become king, but that’s my seat.
His heart clenched at the memory of his father, who would playfully chase him around the office until Musoke showed up and told him to stop spoiling the future king. That was how things had always been behind the scenes, even if he heard his father yell and make threats in public, saw the guards and advisors and citizens rush to do his bidding. He was always kind to Sanyu, even as he expected the impossible from him.
“One day you will have to be strong, fierce, and unrelenting. You’ll have to be fiercer than me, like your song says. We are counting on you to protect the kingdom we have built.”
An ugly feeling had cocooned Sanyu in darkness since his father’s death, blocking out everything but the paralyzing fear of making a misstep that would destroy his father’s legacy. He missed the man so much that it sometimes hit him like a physical blow, bringing him to his knees, and the very act of missing him revealed the flaw in a king who was supposed to have a fist—and a heart—of iron.
And then there was the shame—Sanyu had spent so long wanting to escape from Njaza, had tried so hard to break free of the legacy that had been his father’s pride and joy. He would never live down the fact that he had almost run away the night his father died—that the not-fear had driven him so far, and that Musoke and the guards had witnessed it.
Sanyu’s relationship with his father and Musoke had been difficult in different but intertwined ways. Two men who’d seen different potentials in him as they raised him, which meant double the opportunity for them to be disappointed.
“Why do you allow him to hide and read dusty old books, when he must be strong?”
“Why do you force him to fight, when he must be smarter than all who would harm us?”
People would be surprised at who had wanted what for him, as would Omakuumi and Amageez themselves, if gods could be surprised.
His father and Musoke had bickered endlessly about how to shape Sanyu into the perfect king. In the end, he’d turned out strong, but not the strongest; well-rounded, but lacking the kind of charisma that inspired people; and book smart, but too indecisive to put what he knew into action. It was like using all the right ingredients for a recipe and the final dish turning out mediocre.
Sanyu had always known that he was not a great man like his father, but never had it been more apparent since he’d taken the throne. Then again, his father’s greatness aside, the man had left the country isolated and on the brink of financial ruin, which Sanyu now had to navigate Njaza away from.
He rolled his shoulders, stretc
hing the bands of muscles that still burned after his grueling morning sparring session—exercise being the only way he knew to channel his need for self-flagellation—then refocused his attention on the tiny font of the loan offers from the World Bank that were spread across his desk. He’d printed them out after reading on his computer hadn’t held his attention, but he’d gotten no further with the actual paper in his hand.
Sanyu had read many accounts of the bank’s corruption and the calamity it brought to those it “helped.” A loan would temporarily prevent total economic collapse, but would also come with a million invisible strings that would be impossible to cut. The blade of Njaza’s foreign influence had long gone dull, and now he had to deal with Musoke undermining his every attempt to sharpen it.
If he pushed the council to accept the Rail Pan Afrique deal, or mentioned the benefits of joining the UAN, he’d be seen as caving to outside influence. Musoke had been apoplectic after a single diplomatic visit from Liechtienbourg without his approval. Sanyu had thought it a success since he’d gained funding for a land mine charity and a possible ally in the annoying redheaded step-prince Johan von Braustein. Musoke had seen it as opening the gates to the invading horde.
His entire life he’d been told being king was the most powerful job a man could have and he’d been lucky to be born to it, but it seemed to Sanyu that so much power bound a man more than it freed him. It was like a game of chess where one wrong move would mean the end of Njaza; Sanyu felt safer making no moves at all.
His muscles tightened and the unreachable spot between his shoulder blades began to ache, as it had every day since the crown had passed to him.
Though Sanyu had always known on some abstract level that he’d be king, it hadn’t seemed real until it was, and he discovered that the responsibilities he’d been given as prince were nothing compared to the job of king. He hated this job that he was unfit for, that he would absolutely fail at eventually—how very much he hated it was all he could think about lately, his mind circling back to it when he should be working. He preferred the cloudy fog his mind had been in for weeks after his father’s death, when he’d barely been able to drag himself out of bed for his own wedding and coronation, and certainly hadn’t been able to handle anything close to guiding a kingdom.