Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  Friedrich uses a handkerchief to wipe clean his sword before dropping the cloth to the dirt. He’s now killed his sixth man. He’s heard other guards, such as Malthe, say they’ll always remember the face of each man they’ve killed, but the faces of these slave rebels are already starting to blend together for Friedrich: the anger twisting their mouths, the surprise and pain in their eyes. How easily these men could’ve been Friedrich’s friends, family, Friedrich himself. They were driven to desperation, he thinks. He’d had a cruel master once. He knows what it’s like to wonder whether it might be better to fight, knowing he’ll likely die, if there’s a chance he might find a better life.

  I walk to the body of my fallen guardsman. I don’t even know his name. He was young—probably no older than twenty. His neck is cut, showing the red muscle beneath, the white of bone. Though his body lies on its front, his head is twisted, eyes stuck open. Some would say this was a good way for the boy to die. He stares at the gods and so will know which direction to turn in death. The gods were brought to these islands by the Fjern many eras ago; gods to be worshipped instead of the spirits of our ancestors, as our people had done since the islands themselves rose from the waters. Islanders are no longer allowed to pray to the spirits. If we do, we are hung, and so we learned the way of the Fjern gods. My enslaved people are told that if they worship the gods, they will be granted freedom after death. Most would rather pray to the Fjern gods, hoping for freedom, than fight for their freedom in life. In a way, I admire the dead rebels at my feet.

  “His mother and father are on Solberg Helle,” Malthe tells me of the dead guard, “working for a Fjern merchant family.” Working. This is easier than saying his parents are slaves.

  My eyes are still on the boy’s face and the blood seeping from his neck and into the weeds. “Have his body returned to them.” I should simply have his body sent to the sea, I know; it’s easier, less work for everyone involved, but I can’t help but think that the boy’s parents would like to bury him themselves.

  Blood has sunk into the dirt. The smells of iron searing under the heat of the sun, of the smoking wood and the charred stone, overwhelm me. My guardsmen sheathe their blades and walk into whichever remaining homes are still untouched by the flames to check for survivors and conspirators, kicking over the fresh bodies that lie at their feet. I watch their work as I walk, Friedrich beside me. There’ve been rebellions before, but this has been a particularly devastating uprising; it seems nearly one hundred have died, and the damage to the property and crop won’t please the regent of Hans Lollik Helle.

  The Fjern of Lund Helle have used the slave rebellions as an excuse to call for me to step down as their Elskerinde. To them, the rebellions prove that I don’t have the necessary intelligence to control my own people. I’m an islander, after all, who should be a slave along with my brown-skinned people—not ruling over them and this island. Flower-scented letters are sent to me with open threats: Elskerinde Sigourney Lund might soon find her own throat cut one night.

  “You don’t feel any guilt,” Friedrich says as he bends over to check the pockets of one of the fallen rebels. There’s no question in his voice, just as there isn’t any question for the guilt he feels. Friedrich worked hard for his position in my guard—he wasn’t handed his title—but this doesn’t take away from the comforts he knows he has over the other slaves of Lund Helle and all his people in these islands. He lives in the barracks, which have beds, not the overcrowded slaves’ quarters, where his people sleep on dirt floors. He receives a meal of oats and banana in the morning and goat stew at night. He’s even allowed to drink guavaberry rum, when he isn’t escorting me across the islands. He isn’t beaten, except while in training with the other guards as they practice their skirmishes; he isn’t whipped for his mistakes. The scars he bears are fine, thin lines in comparison to the thick scars that cover the backs of the slaves who work the fields. It isn’t easy for him, knowing his people suffer while he lives in comfort—knowing it was simple luck that allowed him to be sold into training for the guard. He could just as easily be trapped in the fields, whipped and scarred; just as easily have been hung upside down by his feet while his master’s son practiced archery.

  Friedrich stands from the body, mouthing a quick prayer to the gods. The gods don’t bring him peace. He knows that these are the gods of the Fjern, and that these gods only care for people whose skin is paler than his own. Still, he prays to them. This, like most of our people, is all he knows.

  “Do you think I should feel guilt?” I ask.

  He glances at me, my mouth, my neck. “It’s not my place to tell you how to feel.”

  “That is true,” I say, and though he’d suggested the fact himself, shame still flourishes in his chest. “But I still want to know what you think.”

  Friedrich doesn’t answer, not at first, and so I sink my consciousness into his, feel the pulse of his veins in my own. A jungle of voices echo in my mind: He wonders if I’m using my kraft on him and hopes that I don’t; he fears, as he always does, that I might decide I don’t want or need him anymore—fears that, though I would have no reason to, I might take control of his body in the same way I’ve taken control of so many others and force him to stab his knife into his own stomach. He thinks that the stomach is always the slowest, most painful way to die. Death should always be quick and clean. Ever since the first man he killed, Friedrich is careful to give merciful deaths to the slave rebels he fights.

  And still, even with his fear of me, I can feel the emotion in him rising as though it’s my own: desire—for me, for my body, for my freedom, for my power. He thinks of me at night, dreams that he’s inside of me again even now. He doesn’t think the words, not consciously, but whenever he’s in my bed, he’s able to imagine for a moment that he’s not my slave. I’m not surprised. I know what Friedrich has convinced himself he feels: that he believes he, a knight in a Fjern fairy tale, has fallen in love with his mistress, his Elskerinde.

  Friedrich glances at me again and swallows thickly, knowing that I’m in his head. He pauses beside another body, this time a pale-skinned Fjern—a woman, her face twisted in fear, her stomach cut open and spilling onto the ground. “I don’t think you should feel guilt.” He lies to himself, even he’s aware of this. “These men were rebels, murderers. They would’ve been executed eventually, even if they hadn’t died today.”

  “Is that really what you think?”

  It’s a cruel question. I know he’s too afraid to tell me the truth. The truth is traitorous, the words of rebels, punishable by beheading. But his feelings are clear: None of these men can be blamed for wanting, and fighting for, their freedom.

  “They were driven to rebel and murder because they preferred to die rather than live as slaves to the Fjern,” I say. “I’m an islander. These are my people. I haven’t done enough to help them. At least, this is what those who hate me will say.”

  Friedrich looks at me with pity. He thinks he knows me: his poor, misunderstood mistress.

  He checks this woman’s pockets as well, then murmurs a prayer for her. Remarkable, watching a slave pray over the body of a slaver and to the very gods that oppress him. But I can’t judge Friedrich too harshly. These are my gods, too. I was never taught how to pray to my ancestors. Any thought of our ancestors, the spirits, was supposed to have died generations ago. I wait until Friedrich is finished, and we walk quietly for some time.

  Friedrich says, “Only people who envy your power will hate you. The poor hate the rich. The slaves hate the kongelig. It’s only natural, isn’t it?”

  I want to ask Friedrich if his envy of my freedom, my power, means he actually hates me as well, but the corners of his lips twitch into a smile, and he remembers an image, hoping that memory will become my own—a memory of only a few nights before, sneaking into my chambers, into my bed, beneath my sheets. I should be disgusted with myself. Ashamed. The boy is technically my property. Property, like the goats fenced in and awaiting slaughter. That
is what the laws of these islands decree: Friedrich, and all other islanders, are not human. The color of their skin, the blood in their veins, make them undeserving of life. And so they must give their lives for the Fjern. There’s nothing beautiful in this, I know. In the same way there was nothing beautiful in the fact that my mother technically belonged to my father, before she was given her freedom; in the same way there was nothing beautiful in the fact that my father’s ancestors belonged to the Fjern, who took these islands. If I cared for Friedrich, I would give him his freedom, along with all the slaves of Lund Helle. I wouldn’t take Friedrich into my bed, pretending my company is something he wants, something he chooses, when he has no choice in a life he doesn’t own.

  I refused him, at first. This is what I remind myself in consolation. I refused him and told him that he’s a child for thinking he wants me. But though I own my life, it’s not a good life I live, and Friedrich is a distraction I desperately need. He’s young and foolish in his ambition, cocky in his thoughts of surpassing his peers to follow Malthe and become captain of the Lund guard—but still handsome, with his dark skin and sculpted muscles and his smile, a smile that isn’t easy to find on these islands, and certainly not this island of mine. And even I can’t ignore that my body has its own needs, its own desires.

  I tell Friedrich I’d like to make a trip to Jannik Helle, and I can sense his impatience. It’ll be my second trip this month alone. Still, he nods his understanding as he kneels beside the body of one of the slave rebels, machete still clenched in his hand where he fell. Checking the rebel’s pockets, Friedrich pauses with a frown and withdraws his hand, staring into his palm.

  “What is it?” I ask him, though I see a flicker of his vision.

  He offers his hand to me. He holds a rusted red coin. I pick it up and turn it over. The coin has the crest of a crude zinnia flower, the symbol belonging to the Ludjivik family.

  Friedrich stands, brushing off his knees. “Do you think they were behind this?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them,” I say. “An ill-fated attempt at supporting and supplying a slave rebellion against me.”

  “Unless they meant to lose. What if this was meant as a distraction, or they hope to make you feel secure before attacking again?” They will take this island from you.

  I toss the coin into the dirt. “It isn’t incriminating to find a coin. Maybe one of the slaves recently traveled to Ludjivik Helle and took it.”

  Friedrich doesn’t look convinced. I don’t need to enter his mind to know his thoughts: There are those in the islands of Hans Lollik who want to see me dead, and if I’m not careful, eventually one will succeed.

  Friedrich and I start the walk to our horses. The rest of my guardsmen will stay, searching for clues and valuables under Malthe’s watch, before starting the back-bending work of burying each of the slaves’ bodies at sea. The dead masters of the plantation will be returned to the Fjern for a ceremonial burial so that they will easily find the gods.

  Before we get far, a guardsman hurries down the rocky path.

  “Elskerinde Lund,” he says, breathless. He catches my eye, and when I look to his thoughts, a wave of his fear crashes into me, dread sinking into my bones. Fear that I’ll learn of all his secrets, of the extra goat stew he’s been stealing at night, and maybe even of the little boy he watched drown so many years ago—

  “Spit it out,” Friedrich says.

  The man hesitates. “We found survivors.” He doesn’t look at me as he continues to speak. “One of them has kraft.”

  We follow the guard back up the path to the burning plantation houses with my nine other guardsmen, waiting in a circle and turning to watch my arrival. A line of the survivors stands in the center of the circle, all slaves. A man, middle-aged and frail—thinner than most, it’s clear that he holds a sickness in his lungs, perhaps caught from the last storm season, something he never managed to shake. A woman, her skin a maze of wrinkles, toothless so that her lips sink in like a skull. She watches me. She isn’t afraid. She’s already so close to death. What could I possibly do to make her afraid? There’s another woman as well, breathing heavily as she grips the hand of the girl beside her. The girl is young, perhaps no older than thirteen. She and her mother have the same eyes, the same mouths.

  Though he’d been so willing to joke about kraft before, Friedrich takes the matter seriously now. “Do you think the one with kraft caused the uprising?” he asks me, eyes on the islanders.

  That would depend on the power, and the strength, of the kraft itself. My chest burns. “Which one?” I ask Malthe.

  He marches to the villagers and pushes the girl forward, forcing her to let go of her mother. The girl winces, struggling not to cry, shoulders shaking with the effort. My heart drops. She reminds me too much of my sister Inga, crying as she was forced to her knees.

  My mouth is dry, words scratching my throat. “How do you know she has kraft?”

  “She tried to use her power on us—confused us for a moment, made us forget who we were, what we were doing here, then tried to run with the others. When we captured them and threatened to kill them all if no one spoke the truth, she stepped forward.”

  The man in the line of slaves speaks. “She’s just a girl. She was afraid, thought you were rebels. They were killing all of us, not just the masters—”

  Malthe jams the hilt of his sword into the man’s nose. The slave falls with a shout of pain, blood streaming between his fingers as he clutches his face. If he thought he was safe, facing his own people with not a single Fjern in sight, he was mistaken.

  “You’ll speak when we ask you a question,” Malthe says to all of them. “Is that clear?”

  No one moves or makes a sound. The woman with her skin of wrinkles watches me.

  “Were you fighting with the rebels?” I ask the girl.

  She glances up, terrified, before looking at the ground again. She’s willing to tell us anything and everything if it means she’ll live. Even if she doesn’t own her life, she still wants it. “No—I wasn’t, I promise you. They weren’t of this plantation. No one recognized them. They came here and attacked us. Killed everyone. They weren’t from Lund Helle, they were speaking of returning to their ships.”

  Friedrich gives me a pointed look. I ignore him, glancing Malthe’s way, and he nods. The ships will be found and searched.

  I ask, “Where were the rebels from?”

  The girl doesn’t know the answer. She’s frightened I won’t be pleased. “I—I think maybe Niklasson Helle.” She’s lying. There’s no reason for her to think the rebels came from Niklasson Helle.

  I pause. I can feel their fear. Fear that they’ll all be killed for failing to protect their masters. Fear that I’ll decide they’re lying, and that they were all a part of the rebellion. Fear from all—except for the older woman. She stares at me, blue film over her eyes. She’s seen more hatred, more evil, than I ever have—probably more than I ever will. The Fjern, who gave me the power I hold, stalking through the plantations in the dead of night when she was a child. Raping her mother and her sister and herself, slicing open the bottoms of her feet and burning the palms of her hands and making her work the fields, threatening death if she stopped for even a breath, hanging her father for daring to meet his master’s eye, beating and whipping and tying up a little boy child and leaving him outside in the sun to be eaten away by the salt air, and all because he wouldn’t stop crying for his mother after she was sold away. Islanders, tying rocks around their ankles and walking into the sea to escape the hell of Hans Lollik.

  To the slaves before me—to all the islanders—I’m the traitor to her own people. My skin might be brown, and my blood might belong to these islands, but I’m no better than the Fjern. My heart thumps harder. I close my eyes. Try to push their thoughts aside—their hatred for me, their fear of me—but I realize that the feelings are my own.

  When I open my eyes, the man is still bleeding. The elderly woman still watches me. The girl�
��s mother clutches her hands together so tightly they shake. The girl tries so hard not to cry.

  I have no more questions—no way of delaying what I know has to come. Malthe stares at me expectantly. I’d hoped he’d let this pass. No one need know we found a slave girl with kraft in the fields of Lund Helle.

  When I speak, my voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to me. “The law of Hans Lollik is clear.”

  The girl’s mother begins a low wail. This woman will inevitably feel a guilt I’m familiar with—guilt, that she didn’t do enough to save the person she loved. But the guilt will only simmer beneath the rage, the hatred, for me—the one who ordered her daughter’s death.

  I don’t even know the girl’s name. “You stand accused of holding kraft, a power that belongs only to your sovereigns of Hans Lollik, gifted as a divine right by the gods that watch over us.”

  The woman tries to step in front of her daughter, but the guardsmen pull her and the others aside. The girl shakes her head. Her face crumples as she heaves sobs, tears dripping from the end of her nose. I can’t save her. The Fjern made it clear when they claimed these islands over hundreds of years before: Only they, with their pale skin, are allowed to have kraft; any slave accused of having the power must be found and killed, no matter the innocence, no matter the age. The fact that the Fjern can’t own kraft is one that they despise. My people, descendants of the first islanders before the Fjern ever came, believe the abilities to have come from our ancestors. We whispered that those with kraft were blessed by the spirits. The Fjern disagreed. They don’t believe in the spirits of our ancestors; they declare that their gods pass the kraft on as divine gifts to only the worthy, and to the Fjern, my people are not worthy. I was born with my freedom, and so I’m allowed to keep my life, even with kraft simmering in my veins. This girl wasn’t born with her freedom, and so she’ll die. She’ll become a martyr. The hero in every story but my own.