his right, Kenyatta stood ramrod straight. Her lips were pressed together as if to prevent a smile.
“Yes,” he said, turning toward her and heading for the exit.
“I should hope so, Your Highness,” Kenyatta said, and though her voice was level as ever, he understood that she was teasing him. If he were his father, he would have roared at her for her insubordination.
He chuckled and kept walking.
Sanyu didn’t look at the paper Shanti had handed him until hours later, when he lay wide-awake in his bed, trying not to relive the humiliation of the day over and over.
“How can women and other marginalized groups feel like full citizens when we have no voice in this kingdom?”
Written beneath the question he hadn’t answered, in a slightly messier version of the same cursive, was a quote:
If a troop of lions gather to make the rules of the land, they will agree that eating antelopes and aardvarks is in the best interest of everyone. If a group of lions, antelopes, and aardvarks gather to make the rules of the land, the final decision will look very different, don’t you think?
—Queen Ramatla of Thesolo
Sanyu stared at the quote for a moment, then pulled up his search engine to see where it had come from. The result was a video of Thesolo’s queen giving a speech on good governance. After he’d watched it, another video of her, her husband, and her son in conversation about the role of the monarchy in modern Africa began to play. Two hours later, he fell asleep with the videos still autoplaying, and dreamt of being deposed by an aardvark.
Chapter 9
When Shanti hurried into Liberation Books an hour after Sanyu left her room that night, the mood was tense. The chess players hunched over their pieces, eyes darting, and the general sense of merriment was more subdued, even though the volume level of the café was louder.
While she’d been soothing her husband, something else entirely had been brewing outside of the palace walls.
As she passed one table, she heard a man begin singing as a woman drummed the tabletop with her palms. “Sanyu II! Even crueler than his father! Sanyu II! Our new and useless king! E-ne-mies, of Njaza! Our king, he does your work for you!”
Everyone at the table laughed and clapped afterward, and the muscles around Shanti’s eyes tightened as she tried to hold on to her cheerful expression.
As Shanti passed the bar, Amy gave her a nod of welcome, then scanned the café like she was keeping an eye out for any brewing fights. Shanti wasn’t the only one sensing the strange energy.
She found Jendy, Salli, and Nneka sitting around a small table in a recessed corner.
“Are you okay?” Shanti asked, rushing over to them. “Did they hurt you? How about Marie? I was so worried when I got the texts earlier today!”
Sanyu had told her they were fine, but he wasn’t always told what took place in the palace.
“We’re fine,” Jendy said, voice filled with pride. “They asked questions that we didn’t answer, and then we were released. I told one of the guards that he was a sandal licker who disappointed the ancestors.”
Shanti laughed despite the seriousness of the situation.
Jendy made a face of contrition. “Sorry we didn’t invite you—it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
Shanti pushed aside the uncomfortable sensation of someone feeling bad they hadn’t brought her along to protest her own husband.
“I couldn’t have come anyway. Was it scary?” she asked.
“Yes. But it was also amazing,” Jendy said. “All of those people who usually ignore me had to look. Had to listen.”
Shanti remembered her satisfaction after getting Musoke to acknowledge her at the last council meeting. There was a sweet victory in forcing yourself into the line of sight of those who would rather erase you.
“Another round on the house,” Marie said cheerfully as she walked up to the table with a tray of drinks. Her NJAZA RISE UP! shirt was ripped at the sleeve, but she seemed to wear it with pride.
Shanti plucked at the shirt as Marie handed over a glass of wine to Nneka. “How did this happen? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Like our great king, the guards are nothing but bluster, and the royal advisors who watched were too disdainful to see us as a real threat.”
It felt like treason now, to hear Sanyu spoken of this way and not defend him, but Marie and the others had every right to be angry. The fact that Sanyu might