by Alyssa Cole
Everyone had seen it. Everyone would speak of it. Everyone would sing of it—the new version of the song he’d already hated would surely spread, catchy as the tune was. Maybe it already had. Maybe everyone had always changed the words to mock him and this was just the latest version, and the only one he’d heard.
Musoke had been right when he’d chastised him after the visit from Prince Johan. “We both know you will never be able to hold the throne as your father did. Leave the important decisions to me.”
“You may go,” he said, and the three women scurried from the room.
Sanyu pulled on a shirt and sweatpants, waiting a few moments before stepping out into the hallway to head back to the palace. Lumu silently fell into step beside him. He’d known Sanyu for long enough to give him quiet when he got like this.
When they made it back to his office, Sanyu walked in and slammed the door behind him, as if he could shut out the humiliation that echoed in his head—the questions and the song lyrics.
It was the first time any of his citizens had dared ask him something directly, and he’d had no response. Worse, that damn song that he’d never been able to get out of his head now serenaded him with his worst fear.
E-ne-mies, of Njaza! Our king, he does your work for you!
WHEN SANYU FOUND himself in front of Shanti’s door again that night, he’d shoved his not-fear back down into the shameful recess where he usually hid it away—somewhere near that constant pain in his stomach. His body was sore from the brutal workout he’d put himself through to clear his mind, and he was certain Shanti wouldn’t be able to tell his nerves were as tightly strung as the reed bows hung around the palace.
She would certainly be smart enough not to mention his humiliation, if she’d heard what had happened. Maybe it would be like the last time he’d visited, when he’d walked in and their desire had wiped away everything else. He could fall into the touch and taste of her and forget that he was a king.
He was about to knock when the door swung open.
Shanti looked up at him, gaze sharp. She held a broomstick without the broom attached to the end in her hand, and her hairline was damp with sweat—he imagined trying to sweep without a broom head was tiring.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Where are the women who interrupted your speech?” she asked, tucking the broomstick behind the door.
“So you heard about that?” he asked, his body tensing. He’d come to her for reprieve, not reproach. “Who told you?”
“Where are they?” she pressed, gaze unwavering.
“They were questioned by the royal guard and released,” he said. He’d received the report from Lumu.
“They weren’t harmed?” she asked.
Sanyu’s shame and annoyance slithered to a rest between his shoulder blades, and he stepped into the doorway. “What if they were? They openly defied and attempted to humiliate their king.”
Shanti matched his step forward, not at all cowed by him. Something blazed in her eyes, and when he dropped his gaze to avoid the heat of judgment, it landed on the smooth brown skin of her décolletage.
“They could only humiliate their king if they were correct,” she said. He watched the dip at the base of her throat work as she spoke instead of meeting the disappointment in her eyes. “In that case, the proper response is to fix the problems, not silence those who point them out.”
She turned her back to him and strode into her quarters, the thin colorful outer robe she wore flowing around her legs like an angry cat.
He took a deep breath and willed his muscles to loosen, then closed the door and followed her inside.
“You say they were correct?”
“You say they humiliated you,” Shanti said, pouring tea with hands that were perfectly steady though he was using the tone that made everyone around him startle. “I followed your line of reasoning.”
He didn’t sit across from her, but beside her, knowing that he was dominating the space and wanting her to be aware of it, to feel the imposition of his size since that was the only thing he had going for him in the moment—why should he be the only uncomfortable one?
“It is not possible for me to be incorrect. I am king.”
Maybe she’ll lean into me. Maybe she’ll slide into my lap, and then I can fall into the touch and feel of her and forget everything else.
Shanti scooted away from him on the couch, but left an unnecessary amount of space on her other side. Sanyu was squeezed between her body and the arm of the couch, which poked into his side, while she had plenty of space. When he tried to spread his legs, she wiggled her behind more firmly into her seat, blocking the action.
“What decisions have you made that I could judge as correct or incorrect? Please remind me. So far, all decisions have been made by Musoke.” She turned and held a teacup out to him and he wanted to knock it away. Not because she defied him, but because he was jealous of that defiance. She was so clearheaded, so unflappable, while his thoughts felt like a useless jumble.
She pressed the cup into his hand and held it there, looking into his eyes until he gripped it.
“Drink it, Husband. You’ve had a long day.” Then she pulled a pad and paper from the coffee table, settling it onto her lap with one hand while bringing her teacup to her mouth with the other.
She savored the sip that she took—Sanyu could see that in the way her lips turned up at the corners and hear it in the small sound of appreciation she made as she shifted beside him.
“Do you like it?” she asked. “It’s Thesoloian tea. You better appreciate it because it’s the last of my stock.”
He sipped quickly, then said, “It’s hot water and leaves, like all tea.”
“Sacrilege! The blessings of the goddess aren’t meant to be received mindlessly,” she said. “Take a sip, and then close your eyes and tell me what you taste.”
Sanyu huffed a breath, but took another sip, focusing on the way the warm liquid washed over his taste buds. “It’s floral. Sweet, with the slightest edge of bitterness.”
“Keep your eyes closed,” she said as he started to open them, and he should have ignored her. He didn’t. “Take another sip, hold it in your mouth. What else do you taste?”
He followed her instructions, then swallowed. “Honey. Cinnamon.”
With his eyes closed, the warmth of his wife was more apparent, too. She was pressed up against him on one side, from knee to shoulder, and he could feel both the softness of her curves and the flex of muscle beneath them. He inhaled deeply, and the scent that had surrounded him every night he visited filled his lungs. Rose petal and tea tree oil and something else that was just her, he supposed; like the tea, his wife’s accent notes were sweet with an edge of bitter.
He’d thought sitting beside her was enough for him, until he’d had the scent of her on the pads of his fingers. Now it was all he could think of, with the desire to know what she’d taste like a close second.
“Do you find the warmth of the tea pleasing?” Her voice was low, soothing, and pulled his mind away from his illicit thoughts.
“Yes,” he said, his voice rough, then blinked his eyes open when he felt her shift away from him on the couch to give him space to get comfortable. She’d moved for a reason—not because he’d tried to move her, but because his legs had spread as his tense muscles loosened. It seemed she didn’t respond to intimidation but would gladly allow him the room he needed if he didn’t push.
He wasn’t entirely calm—he never was—but he felt . . . better.
“This tea is good,” he said, looking at the cup with a furrowed brow. “You don’t have more?”
“No. Apparently every time my parents send a package of their special blend, it’s turned back by customs for one reason or another.”
“I’ll look into that,” he said. “Thank you for sharing the last of it with me.”
“I’m happy to share almost anything with my husband.”
“Almost?” He remembered t
he passion on her face as she’d ridden his hand, and his state of relaxation began to give way to desire.
She ignored his question. “Since we’re here to discuss politics, we can go over the two questions I heard you were asked.”
His neck tensed but he didn’t full-body recoil from the reminder of his error. He sipped his tea and washed down his discomfort with its warmth.
“The first woman asked two things,” Shanti said. “‘How can you speak of glory to our kingdom when jobs have dried up, businesses have fled, and doctors are so scarce that we wait months for treatment?’ and ‘How can women and other marginalized groups feel like full citizens when we have no voice in this kingdom?’”
She wrote the questions down as she repeated them, then drew a line beneath each one with brisk flips of her wrist—she was left-handed. He hadn’t paid attention to that before.
“Okay, what’s your answer to the first question?” She held his gaze, but there was no judgment in her eyes. He settled more deeply into the seat. “And why didn’t you give it to her when she asked?”
“Because a citizen shouldn’t demand a response from their king in that way. She could have written a letter, sent an email—”
She raised her brows. “You answer letters and emails from citizens?”
“Someone does.”
“She didn’t want answers from someone. She wanted answers from her king. This is an absolute monarchy, Sanyu. When people are unhappy, they will look to you because you are the only one who can change that.”
“I know.” He put the teacup down on the table and ran his palms over his beard. “Trust me, I know.”
He gazed at the cup in front of him. At the stream of liquid as Shanti refilled it without pushing him to say more.
“I don’t like public speaking,” he muttered as he picked up his cup. “Before these events, I memorize a speech written by the council. I don’t think about what I’m saying, I just want to get it over with.”
Shanti blinked a few times.
“I assume you have thoughts on these matters when you’re not onstage?” she asked carefully.
“Of course, but . . .” He couldn’t tell her the truth—that he was ill-equipped for the job. “The king reads the speech provided by the council. That is how things are done here.”
“Says who?” Her voice was light, but he knew what she was doing.
“Tradition,” he replied bluntly.
Her knee pressed into his thigh as she turned to face him more fully, and Sanyu felt the heat of her skin. He tried to ignore it, but sensation spiraled in growing circles from the spot where their bodies touched, resonating particularly in the place where she’d stroked him the night before.
“Husband, the world is changing more quickly than ever. You can’t do things a certain way simply because they’ve always been done that way. Traditions are rooted in meaning and if the tradition doesn’t change when it has to, the meaning and how it’s received certainly does.”
“But traditions are . . . it is the way my father did things.”
Grief surged out of nowhere, clamping his vocal cords painfully with the fact that he wished his father were here so he could ask him what to do—not wait to be told, but ask his advice, as one king to another. He would never get to do that.
He took a sip of the tea, cataloging the flavors as she’d instructed him to do earlier, until the muscles in his throat loosened.
“I understand why people are upset,” he said quietly. He felt traitorous finally saying this aloud. “They’re making enough money to scrape by, while I seem to live in the lap of luxury. But that’s not true either. The palace is crumbling just like the country is. If we tell the people that, everything will fall apart.”
He cleared his throat of the ticklish sensation that meant he’d said too much.
“You can tell them without telling them,” she said. “You can tell them you know they’re upset and that you’re working to fix things to make the kingdom better for everyone. And then you work to fix things, so that you’re not lying.”
He stood, propelled out of his seat by nervous energy and the need to escape the sensation the press of an inch of her knee caused in him.
“You have no idea how things work here. We would have to change everything, restructure everything—”
This wasn’t at all what he should be revealing to this foreigner even if she was his wife. But his words spilled from him like someone had blown a hole in the dam surrounding his inhibitions; maybe it was because she’d be leaving soon. He wouldn’t have to face her disappointment like he did with Musoke—and had with his father.
She looked up at him, eyes glinting with excitement instead of judgment. “Yes! You’ll have to rebuild everything from the foundation up. You say this like it’s impossible.”
Every lesson that Musoke had taught him echoed in his head. “You like rules, yes? Well I will tell you how things must be here in Njaza to prevent the kingdom from falling. If you do as I say, you will be a good king.”
Musoke was strict, but he didn’t lie, and he always had a reason for why changes couldn’t be made. If Sanyu were to change everything, wouldn’t that be saying that all his father and Musoke had built wasn’t good enough?
“And you say it like it’s easy,” he responded, ignoring the throb of pain in his stomach.
“Oh no, it won’t be easy. It can take a lifetime, or many lifetimes. But that doesn’t change the fact that it needs to be done and it’s your job to do it. Let’s start small. Do you want to address what happened today with your citizens?”
“Not particularly.”
She paused, twisted her lips. “Do you want your citizens to trust you?”
“You are our protector!”
“Yes.” He sighed. “And to do that I’ll have to address it. I won’t apologize. But . . .”
“But?”
“I will try to say what I think instead of what I’ve memorized more often.”
“That’s impressive,” she said. “That you memorize those speeches. Lots of politicians use notes or a teleprompter.”
“I do it to make things easier,” he said. “When I say things people don’t want to hear, they get angry. That’s why I was confused earlier because I thought I’d said what people want to hear. I don’t like when things suddenly change like that, so I just kept talking.”
He felt ridiculous, and she probably thought he was.
“It’s hard for you to switch gears in the moment, then? Maybe it would help to practice being taken by surprise.”
“Or maybe my subjects could not surprise me,” he bit out.
Shanti took a sip of her tea, watching him over the rim of her cup. When she kept looking, without saying anything, he took the pad of paper from her lap, just to have something to do.
“I mean look at this. ‘How can women and other marginalized groups feel like full citizens when we have no voice in this kingdom?’” he read, then shook his head. “This isn’t a democracy. They tried that at the beginning of independence, and it led to civil war. None of us have a voice. That’s the point of this kingdom. Njazans follow the decisions of the king . . . of . . . me.”
He suddenly felt so tired. By the two gods, it had been easier when he was checked out, when he didn’t have to make choices and second-guess them.
If tradition wasn’t the most important thing, if laws could be broken or changed easily, what was the point of anything? His thoughts multiplied and filled his head, sapping his energy even more. Usually he just decided it was easier to do nothing at all.
“I think that’s enough for tonight,” he said, dropping the pad onto the coffee table.
“I was hoping to ask you a question,” she said.
The hesitation in her voice was so unlike her that he glanced at her.
“I wanted to know about the former queens. I found—”
“Enough for tonight,” he said before she could go any further. His head was already swimming from
the domino effect one reconsideration had caused and he couldn’t deal with talking about the past queens on top of that.
“Okay,” she said tartly, leaning over to scrawl something on the paper. “We’ll talk again soon. In the meantime, please look at this when you’re feeling up to it.”
She handed him the paper when they both stood at the threshold of the door, then placed her hand on his shoulder to stop him when he tried to leave without saying another word.
“You’re brave,” she said quietly.
He glared down at her. Their conversation had already pushed him to the edge of his tolerance and now she lied to flatter him. He reminded himself that she was only kind to him because she thought it would help her keep the crown.
“It’s the duty of the king to be brave, above all things,” he said, his anger barely concealed.
“I’m not talking about duty,” she said. “You could’ve left my room at any point, could have ordered me to stop talking, because you are king. Instead you stayed, trying to think through things even if you find them confusing and don’t like change, when it’s so much easier to let things remain as they are. That is brave.”
Warmth spread in Sanyu’s chest, filling in the spaces between the tangle of pulsing agitation that he could never rid himself of.
“You speak to me like I’m a child,” he said gruffly.
“Yes, I am,” she said. She reached out and stroked her hand up and down the side of his neck, a motion that could have been arousing in other circumstances but was calming instead. “We don’t stop needing to hear what’s good in ourselves, ever. Other people just stop telling us as we get older. But I’m not other people. I’m your wife.”
She leaned up on the balls of her feet as she had the evening before, but this time, not in challenge. She kissed him, firmly but sweetly, her lips exploring the hard set of his mouth until he lowered his head a fraction. Then her tongue swiped over his lips, licked into his mouth and tangled with his. He’d sparred for hours but this was the battle that cleared the crowded slate of his mind. As they kissed, there was nothing but the taste of her mouth, the feel of her soft lips against his, the small sounds of pleasure that were so different from her usual fierceness—and just as pleasing to him.