before her had led. A cage made of arbitrary rules designed to shame and silence instead of nurture.
She would help her husband bend the bars of that cage. This was the path Ingoka had placed her on—if not the snare in the path. Maybe this was her power as a queen, the thing that she’d prayed for over the years. Even if the role was short-lived, it didn’t mean she had failed. She’d never said she wanted to be queen forever, after all.
She was here now, and Ingoka made no mistakes.
She turned down an alleyway and then again, her mood slightly less dour, until she reached the hand-carved wooden sign hanging above a doorway: LIBERATION BOOKS. Inside, tables full of people—mostly university students but also many older patrons—buzzed with conversation over coffee, tea, or beer. Massive wooden shelves filled with old books lined the walls, and dim bulbs in old light sockets made the place feel like some magical hideaway.
Some people played chess, faces tense with contemplation as they planned many moves ahead. Others laughed and shouted as they sat in small groups and played word games that were rooted in ancient storytelling tradition. Others sat cozied up in corners on romantic dates with people they cared about—something Shanti had never experienced.
She nodded to Amy, the bartender with a crown of coiled locs, and headed toward the back. As she reached the door to the meeting room, familiar voices drifted out, and she felt her sense of purpose redouble.
“Hello!” she called out easily in Njazan, as she stepped into the room.
“Hello, friend,” came the replies of the three women seated on the ground of the meeting space. They were surrounded by stacks of papers, and the clack of staplers and whine of a straining photocopy machine in the corner of the room competed with their voices.
“Friend bought snacks!” said the youngest woman in the room, Jendy. She was a first-year student at the teacher’s college with a shaved head, smooth dark skin, and a fearless heart—a bit too fearless, given how she spoke sometimes.
“Here you go,” Shanti said, handing her the heavy paper sack full of egg, tomato, and cabbage-filled chapatis. “I know it’s a bit late for such heavy food, but I had a craving!”
“Our mystery friend, she always brings us good food,” Nneka, a woman in her forties, said in playful English.
Salli, a woman with brown skin, loose curls, and a finely flared nose, laughed and shook her head. “No English! Our friend wants to practice her Njazan.”
“I still don’t understand why she’s here!” Jendy looked at her not with suspicion, but with envy. “You come from some other country, one where maybe the government cares about you and you aren’t decades behind the rest of the world, and you choose to live here? Here, where we have snappy mottos from the council like ‘Be happy with what you’ve got, it’s better than war’ and ‘Njazans eat hardship like green banana, if you want a different meal, leave’?”
“I’m here because I believe in what Njaza can be, just like all of you,” Shanti said, sitting down cross-legged, then sighed. “Though perhaps my decision to come here was a little impulsive.”
Jendy gave her a wry look and handed over the papers that needed to be folded and stapled together. It was the latest pamphlet Marie had written—an open letter to the royal advisors demanding a literal seat at the council table that ended with a short protest song written by Jendy.
Past mistakes can be rectified,
If you give up stubborn pride!
Admitting wrong is not defeat,
And you know we’ve earned those seats!
“This is perfect,” Shanti said. “Gets the point across and reminds you that this is all because a handful of people don’t want change.”
She still didn’t understand how women were allowed to serve in Njaza’s military, support the kingdom in every way, but not have a say in how the kingdom ran. Njaza didn’t seem more misogynistic than other countries on the surface, but women just disappeared as you moved up the ladder of power.
How the queens disappeared.
Maybe this kingdom was too broken to repair. She didn’t even know how things had come to be this way—how they could come to be this way. What hope did she have of helping to fix it?
No. Believe in yourself, she thought. Once you’ve proven what a good queen you are, you’ll be able to change things.
She stapled a brochure with more force than was necessary, as if fastening her hopes to the