How to Catch a Queen

by Alyssa Cole

  Sanyu glanced down at the note card.

  Move independence parade to a later date.

  Create committee to explore inclusion of women and other marginalized groups on a council, to be led by Queen Shanti.

  He’d just made a huge change to the structure of how things worked in the kingdom, and two changes that would immediately impact life as everyone knew it. Were the last two items on the list truly critical?

  He didn’t want to hurt Musoke any more than he had. How would he react to the parade honoring his contribution to the kingdom being moved? Or to learning Sanyu had decided Shanti was his True Queen in a meeting, instead of being told privately? Musoke often imagined disrespect but Sanyu feared that this would actually be it—enough to serve as a final blow to a man who’d just had his life’s purpose snatched away.

  Allowing a woman to speak, lead a committee, and effectively take on the role of advisor might be a bridge too far for this first time taking control. Deciding to make changes for business and trade reasons was one thing, but going against the tradition of the council, of their country and religion, in the same day? It had all made sense when he was discussing it with Shanti, but now looking out at the faces of the advisors, he realized too much change too quickly could lead to chaos. Sanyu had to prevent that at all cost; it was his job as king.

  These changes could wait for the next meeting, and they could just leave the date for the parade as is. It would clash with both the renewal ceremony and Shanti’s event in Thesolo, but given how much she’d pushed for changes to Njaza, surely she would understand they had to offer Musoke some concessions. That was teamwork, right? As long as it got done eventually, it wasn’t a problem.

  His stomach began to ache and his head to crowd with thoughts.

  He caught sight of Shanti, at the secret smile she’d been giving him, and then he spoke.

  “We still have many changes to make, but that is all for today,” he said. “All questions, concerns, and personal follow-up to this will be had with me, not Musoke. Musoke and Lumu, you will meet in my office immediately after this. The council is adjourned.”

  The room suddenly exploded with chatter.

  Councilors rushed toward him immediately after, pulling him into conversation after conversation. He was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t even feel the not-fear—anxiety. When he finally finished with the last councilor and was able to breathe, an hour and a half had passed and Shanti was gone.

  “We should talk now, before we get to your office,” Lumu said, his gaze on Musoke like a man watches a snake a few meters away.

  “Right,” Sanyu said.

  Shanti would understand. He’d see her afterward, and they’d celebrate this first giant step toward a new Njaza.

  Chapter 19

  Shanti was drenched in sweat and her arms were exhausted from whirling and jabbing the ceremonial spear Sanyu had brought her to replace the broomstick she’d been practicing with, but no amount of imaginary beheading or gutting was enough to quell the shocked disappointment that had washed over her in those last moments of the advisory meeting.

  She was trying to focus on the fact that she had achieved her initial goal of helping her husband become a better king and helping Njaza move toward a better future, but it all felt wrong. She should have been elated, but she felt nothing but a strange kind of emptiness.

  Her mind kept replaying two moments where her dream of finally finding her place in the kingdom had crashed into a brick wall. The first, when Musoke had said there would be a trial. The second when she’d held her breath waiting for Sanyu to get to possibly the most important point on the docket—the decree that would truly begin a seismic shift for those people fighting for their voices to be heard—and he’d ended the meeting instead.

  She’d been watching him intently, and she’d seen the exact moment when he’d made the decision not to address the most basic of steps forward. The moment when her hope that he wasn’t sacrificing her and the women of Njaza Rise Up because things were going well and he wanted to keep it that way.

  She’d tried not to think of the other, bruising result of Sanyu’s unilateral decision. By striking that last item from the docket, he’d denied her the goal she’d pursued for most of her life—her queendom and her future. Allowing her to speak, to lead a committee, and to make decisions were powerful statements, ones that declared she was the True Queen without having to say it. One that backed up his words when he’d asked her to stay.

  But he’d looked her in the eye and then happily ended the session.

  Why?

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Shanti?”

  She placed the spear down and stared at the door, drawing on her years of training. It was funny how so much of that training was in how to make herself calm, quiet, and unobjectionable in order to have a chance at being heard.

  “Come in.”

  Sanyu walked in with that lightness in him that made him extra handsome, even though he also looked exhausted. He was smiling at her like a football player smiles up into the stands after scoring the game-winning goal. He closed the door and leaned back against it, shutting his eyes.

  “I’ve never spoken this much in one day in my life. My brain feels like goat stew,” he said with a chuckle then held out his arms. “Come here, Warrior Queen. We did it.”

  “I’m sweaty,” she said stiffly, and the skin around his eyes tightened and his smile faltered.

  “You’re mad at me,” he said.

  “I’m not mad. Okay, yes I am mad. I’m also confused.” She sighed. “We need to talk. I feel like some of the teamwork wires got crossed.”

  She walked toward him and leaned the spear against the wall and held his hand because even if she was frustrated, and betrayed, she didn’t like this awful feeling growing between them.

  “What do you mean? We achieved so much today,” he said.

  “We?” She shook her head. “You didn’t mention I was involved in any way. You didn’t address the last points on the agenda. The ones left for last because of their very importance.”

  You didn’t tell them I was your queen.

  His fingers tensed in her hold, and she watched as displeasure dug the trough in his forehead again.

  “The other points were also important,” he said. “Don’t forget, the Rail Pan Afrique was what we originally wanted to get the council to consider and they did without argument. That’s huge.”

  “That was what you wanted the council to consider,” she said. “And even then, you handed out the packet I made without even letting the advisors know I had anything to do with it.”

  “It would have been strange to point that out when you had just been accused of treason,” he countered. “I was just trying to make sure they considered the project on its merits with no distractions.”

  Her nostrils flared and she dropped his hand. “Distractions. Goddess grant me patience, my hard work is a distraction. My future is a distraction?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, taking her hand again. “I weighed how the meeting was going and decided that we had overburdened the agenda. I didn’t want to add one more thing and then have the advisors revolt because that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Having you stand and speak might have made them reconsider everything else that had been agreed to.”

  She tugged her hand away again and paced away from him, a sick feeling settling in her stomach. “So my ideas and my time are good enough for you to claim, but I still get to sit quietly on the queen’s bench. You moved it closer to you, but that only gave me a better view of the process I’m not allowed to take part in.”

  He scrubbed his hand over his beard in frustration. “I don’t understand. You want me to make my own decisions, and then when I do, you get mad at me over them?”

  “I’m allowed to get mad,” she gritted out. “It wasn’t Musoke, or the council members who have no idea what’s going on, who chose to cling to tradition. This was y
ou! My teammate. We’ll never know how everyone would have reacted because, when it came down to it, you cut me out to prevent imagined pushback. You didn’t even risk a real discussion. Because maybe you feel the same way they do.”

  The idea hurt her, but maybe she’d fooled herself into thinking Sanyu wanted the same things she did.

  His expression was thunderous.

  “You’re so obsessed with making change so that you can feel you’ve achieved your goal that you’re forgetting I know the advisors better than you,” he said. “I’m not throwing the work we did away or ignoring your opinion. The matters were pushed to the next meeting, and they will be addressed then. That was my decision as king.”

  Shanti shook her head, disbelieving.

  “The next meeting? The next meeting scheduled for after I’m supposed to be gone?” She paced harder. “In private you treated me as your True Queen, your equal, but you haven’t told anyone I helped you with your decision and you haven’t kept your word about bringing the matter of equality before the council. I’m supposed to trust that you will, eventually, do the right thing? And you wonder why the people of this kingdom doubt you!”

  Sanyu’s shoulder hunched and his gaze dropped away. “This is why I didn’t even want to try. What’s the point? I thought today went well. I thought it was the best I’d ever done—even Musoke complimented me afterward for finally taking command of my kingdom. And yet all you can do is point out my errors. Teamwork, yes?”

  She frowned at him. “This isn’t about getting a pat on the head from Musoke. The fact that you spent hours talking to him, the man who’s trying to rule the kingdom while standing in your shadow, instead of me, your queen, makes no sense. He threatened to put me on trial and you speak of him as if he’s someone who can still be trusted. Did you mention moving the military parade during your chat?”

  “What, am I supposed to banish him? He raised me, Shanti. I can’t cut him out of the process entirely—I can’t cut him out of my life or out of this kingdom! His kingdom!” He threw his hands up. “The parade will be scaled down without being moved. I thought it best to offer a concession, given the other changes I’ll be making.”

  “You don’t offer concessions that hurt other people, and will eventually hurt you, too,” she said, incredulous. “And am I not to represent Njaza at the summit?”

  Am I supposed to beg you to tell me whether you’re going to end the marriage trial or not?

  “You don’t have to give that talk,” he said in a cold voice. “I know you’re excited to play royalty, but you didn’t even ask whether you had the right to speak for Njaza before you accepted, and now you want me to move a parade honoring my father and my kingdom to accommodate you. Part of being a queen is making sacrifice.”

  “Sanyu—”

  She stopped, recognizing the stubborn set of his jaw from the first night she’d met him. The night he’d decided he would have nothing to do with her, and had kept to that decision for months.

  “You’re the one who reminded me that I am the king,” he said. “How quickly you’ve forgotten your speech to Musoke about dictating versus advising.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m a child of Ingoka, not Amageez, and my goddess does all things except tolerate foolishness. See yourself out if you want to pretend you don’t understand why I’m hurt when I’ve just explained it to you. I feel sorry for you—you spent your entire life wanting to escape from this kingdom only to become exactly what you were running from.”

  He stared down at her, and she stared back, hoping against hope that he would realize how pointless this was. That he’d soften, apologize, ask her to officially be his queen so that she wasn’t on the edge of a plank waiting to see whether he would decide to push her off—and so that he could let her know that he cared for her and not just what she could do for him.

  Sanyu turned and walked stiffly out of the room.

  Shanti sucked in a breath as the door slammed, holding it for a long moment as she waited for him to come back, for this argument that had dashed all of her dreams to be over.

  There was a knock and she inhaled.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you okay, Your Highness?” Kenyatta asked from outside the door.

  “I’m fine,” she said, and surprisingly she sounded the part.

  “Do you need anything? My shift is over in a few minutes, but I can stay if you’d like,” the guard said. “Or go trip the king so he falls on his face.”

  “Thank you, Kenyatta,” she said, then laughed shakily. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, or commit a breach of your Oath of Guard on my behalf. Have a good day.”

  “All right, my queen.” She heard the sound of three taps against the floor of the hallway—Kenyatta giving her the royal salute.

  She stood for a moment, the sound echoing in her ears, then nodded to herself.

  Okay. That had happened. The fight, all the awful things that may have been said out of spite or may have been what he’d thought all along.

  The end?

  She shuffled numbly away from the door; the thrumming excitement that had filled her in the lead-up to the meeting was a frozen nothing in her chest now.

  She showered in scalding hot water that went cold before it could thaw her. Then she treated herself to the luxurious lotion she’d been saving for when she finally felt like a queen, because waiting for someone else to make her feel special while she spent her energy doing the same for Sanyu and the kingdom was for the birds.

  She wasn’t one for rumination, but she couldn’t get over how unfair it was. She’d technically achieved every goal she’d laid out for herself but somehow she had failed.

  It was when she sat down at her desk, muscles sore and heart more bruised than she wanted to admit, that she realized something was amiss. Not just the weird smell—vinegar? Everything looked the same, but she was observant, and knew that things had been moved. Someone had searched her desk. When she opened her laptop and tried to turn it on nothing happened. She picked it up—beneath it was a pool of liquid.

  She placed it back down, anger and violation making her want to scream. She opened each normal drawer in the desk to find her paperwork and belongings similarly doused with a reddish liquid that at the very least wasn’t urine.

  She remembered Musoke’s smug expression as he’d entered the meeting late and knew he had done this. Maybe he and his advisors had been searching for something to support their claims of treason, but most likely this had been driven by pure pettiness and a need to put her in her place.

  She’d done nothing but try to help since she’d arrived, and had been repaid with mockery, derision, and erasure. She’d spent months telling herself to just hold on, that things would change, that they just needed to understand—and then that Sanyu would come around—but she’d just run face-first into an ugly possibility that had never occurred to her.

  What if she couldn’t change things? What if some people and places didn’t want to change for the better, and punished you for showing them the ways in which they could?

  In that moment, every hope to remain Njaza’s queen, every ridiculous spark of desire and too much more that she felt for her husband, were weighed against her self-worth, and they lost.

  She opened the last secret compartment she’d discovered, which had survived the desk dousing. She removed the “Field Guide to Queendom,” along with the journal she had found, opening both to the last page with writing. She copied the wisdom of Anise, the mysterious first queen of Njaza, into her guide.

  Men take, drunk with power and unable to see past their egos; this is why kingdoms fall and will always fall until balance is achieved.

  And

  My presence is ignored and my contributions are attributed to others. I’ve been silenced in the kingdom I spilled my heart’s blood to create by those I care for most dearly. They want to rule this kingdom and me—they will get only one of those things. I will leave them to it.

  Shanti had always t
hought it was best to listen to her queenly elders.

  She put her most important belongings—her journal, towel-wrapped laptop, and clothing into a valise, and then pulled out the notepad that had the overlapping impressions of letters that chronicled the last few weeks spent with her husband and began to write.

  On the night of our marriage, I told you that I had expectations and that whether you met them was up to you, she wrote in smooth, precise cursive, though her hands shook and her heart ached. I’m not your father, another person for you to pin your self-worth on. I’m not Musoke, to reprimand you when you do wrong. I expected respect and cooperation, and I told you I wouldn’t barter. If gaining those things from you means I have to sit on the queen’s bench waiting to be given a crumb of the cake I helped bake, then, like your subjects, I deserve better. Since you have avoided the question of whether you’ll continue our marriage trial, I offer one last assist with your decision-making and agree in advance to the dissolution that kicks in at the end of the four-month term, which will be completed this weekend. Best of luck to you and your advisors, and whomever you marry next.

  She pursed her lips and then exhaled, willing away the emotions trying to distract her.

  “All queens cry,” one of her lesser used quotes from Ramatla read, “but most of these fools really aren’t worth it, dear. Chin up.”

  She didn’t leave through the secret passageway—the memories of the mutual passion and hope for their future that had bloomed there between her and Sanyu might break her resolve. She left her room, where the hall was empty as Kenyatta’s replacement hadn’t arrived yet, then walked out of the exit of the queen’s wing. The wheels of her suitcase clacked loudly on the stone floor as she entered the palace’s main hallway.

  “Where are you heading, Madame Your Highness?” Rafiq called out as she passed him.