shouting at the morning traffic and Gertinj and Marie peppering him with questions, they arrived at the temple he and Shanti had visited together.
Three of the older attendants were waiting in front of the temple, happily chatting in their simple brown frocks. When he opened the door to get out, he was pushed back in, the minivan filling with the scent of the herbs they burned to honor Amageez.
“She’s already left, Your Highness,” one of the women said as she clambered in. “You know where, right?”
“Do I?” he asked, his frustration making him snappy. Maybe she’d gone to the terraced farmland? No, she had no reason to visit there. Perhaps the proposed sites of the Rail Pan Afrique stations—no, no, she had no need to go there either.
Josiane sucked her teeth. “You were always so indecisive. I told you to think before, but now I’m telling you not to overthink. Where should we go, boy?”
After they visited the temple, Shanti had asked him about . . .
“Njinisbade,” he said, gathering his robe closer to himself as two acolytes settled in beside him.
Several whoops filled the minivan.
“Let’s go,” Gertinj said, pulling away. “Yes! I always knew he was a smart boy.”
He should have been uncomfortable and anxious, but as the women chattered around him, he found himself slipping into a kind of peaceful trance despite the fact that Gertinj had the pedal to the metal on the craterous route to Njinisbade. The women laughed and reminisced, pointing out landmarks from their childhood, towns that had disappeared, places where land mines might still lurk.
They passed around snacks pulled from purses.
They argued.
They sang.
There was something joyful and comforting about the flow of conversation around him. Something that had been missing at the palace for most of his childhood, except for those times when there was a queen present who would be kind to him before leaving as they always did . . .
One of the women beside him began to sing as he drowsed, her voice soft and sweet. “Sanyu II, even fiercer than his father! Our prince, one day our mighty king.”
Sanyu jolted upright as a memory struck him. The radio version of the song had been stuck in his head for years, but it wasn’t the only version. This was the voice of the acapella version of the song that sometimes looped in his head; a voice that hadn’t changed much in almost twenty-five years.
One of the queens had first sang the song to him, when he was upset after being chastised by Musoke. It had been a lullaby, not a dance tune, not a theme song—he’d always assumed that his mind had created the soothing version, but no. This was the voice from his alternate earworm. And this was the woman who had comforted him with it before the song somehow made its way to the radio stations.
How had he forgotten?
He knew how, actually—each time a queen left, he tried to forget all of the good times he’d had with her. He’d willed the memories away, forcing himself to be strong and hard like Musoke demanded. It had been the only way not to hurt too much when they were gone.
He looked down at the woman, shame filling him—he couldn’t even remember her name. It’d been so long ago and he’d worked so hard to forget.
“You were . . . married to my father?” he asked the woman who’d just serenaded him again all these long years after she’d left the palace.
She grinned. “Yes.”
“Yes,” the two attendants on his other side said in unison.
“Ouay,” said Marie.
“How?” Sanyu choked the word out, looking between the women.
“Okay, maybe he isn’t so smart,” Gertinj said as she briefly caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “All of us were married to your father.”
“Don’t forget time passes more quickly for us old folks,” Josiane said from the passenger seat. “Yesterday for us was decades for him. Of course, the boy wouldn’t remember you.”
She looked back over her shoulder and smiled warmly at him and, yes, he remembered that smile on a face that had not yet been lined with age.
“I thought you all left,” he said, voice hoarse for some reason. “The queens always leave.”
“Sometimes they come back,” Marie said with a wink.
“Why?” Sanyu’s voice shook as the car juddered along a winding rock-strewn excuse for a road. At least he hoped that was the reason.
“To assassinate the new king and form a matriarchy,” Gertinj said menacingly, and all of the women cackled, the