do until she left for the bookshop later so she tried again.
As she thought about her bookshop friends, she realized she could have snuck out in the last week if she’d wanted to, but she hadn’t because she felt guilty now. Before, she hadn’t really been lying to them because she hadn’t been involved in queenly affairs. Now she felt like she would be eavesdropping even if she did want to help.
And she’d lied by omission to Sanyu when he’d mentioned her never leaving the palace. It made her uneasy—even if the idea that a married couple could share everything with one another was naive, she didn’t like deceiving her husband. She hadn’t told him she left the palace or knew the activists who’d heckled him. She hadn’t told him about her invitation to the Royal Unity Weekend.
He hasn’t asked you to stay, she thought with frustration.
As she ran her fingers along the side of the desk, deep in thought, her middle finger came to rest in a shallow recess, one she’d assumed was just a wood knot the many times her finger had passed over it before. She pushed, and a slim drawer popped out.
Empty, save for a few spiderwebs. She was about to close it when she decided to look more closely. She felt around, hoping no spiders remained, and then patted the top of the cavity the draw had sprung from. Her fingers felt around an indentation . . . no, a notch . . . no, a lever—another secret hidden behind a more visible one. At first tug, the lever didn’t budge. She tugged again, then went to her vanity and grabbed the aerosol can of olive oil spray she used for her hair, giving two short blasts to the lever.
“Here we go,” she muttered, and tugged. A sound emanated from within the desk, but nothing happened. And then, before her eyes, the main panel in the center of the desk flipped down, releasing the scent of old dried plants and dust. A small book holder slowly emerged, pushed forward by a spring-loaded arm that had clearly rusted. Atop the ornate ledge rested a small journal with “Okwagalena” scrawled in ornate handwriting across the front.
Beneath that, in smaller letters in English, were the words:
Anise Lumeywa
General of the Resistance
&
First Queen of New Njaza
“Oh goddess,” Shanti exhaled, carefully taking the book in hand and laying it on the desk. This was the queen’s wing. This had been the queen’s desk. And the woman missing from Njaza’s history had apparently left her own.
When Shanti opened the journal, she was devastated to find it was mostly empty.
The first few pages were three-dimensional drawings of triangles sketched to show their depth, like the one she’d seen at the temple of Amageez, with words encircling it, almost like a logo:
Omakuumi–Amageez–Okwagalena
Strength–Head–Heart
On the following pages were random strings of words like hospital funds, metal detectors, prosthetics and terracing, irrigation, staple crops.
A to-do list, maybe?
The next writing she came across was a sentence in Njazan that, when translated, seemed to read:
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. I warned them.
That seemed, well, on point, but also not at all in line with how Shanti imagined any of the previous queens. She supposed they’d all been meek, mild and . . . exactly what she’d pretended to be until a couple of weeks ago. But she had never been meek or mild, and her own journal wouldn’t read that way either. People had always said Njazan queens were weak, and she’d believed it, thinking herself different when clearly that hadn’t been the case.
On one page was a drawing of a flame of three hues, but most of the remaining pages were blank like the ones that preceded them.
On the last page, Shanti found something even more confusing:
Two flames burn bright, stealing the kindling of the third. Love is not enough. 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.
Enough was enough; Shanti had to get to the bottom of this. She carefully placed this journal, the files on the queens, and her own field guide to queendom into the secret compartment she’d just discovered, and