Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  “My king,” I say, “I ask for Lothar Niklasson to speak.”

  Lothar steps forward, brow heavy. “I have no words to speak on Sigourney Jannik’s behalf, your grace.”

  “I ask to be questioned by Herre Niklasson. No lie can leave my tongue if he asks me a question. Ask me if I killed Elskerinde Beata Larsen.”

  The king taps the armrest of the chair he sits in. “You’re requesting an interrogation by Herre Niklasson. Do you understand that we won’t only ask about the murder you’re accused of but also about your tactics in finding yourself on my island?”

  I nod my understanding. The crowd parts once again, and Lothar stands beside the king, hands grasped behind his back. I’m sweating in the heat, trying not to show the tremble in my hands, my legs.

  Lothar Niklasson speaks. “Elskerinde Sigourney Jannik,” he says, “also known as Sigourney Rose: What do you know of Elskerinde Beata Larsen’s death?”

  I can feel his kraft like vines wrapping around my neck, slithering into my open mouth and down my throat, pulling the truth from me. “I’d had a nightmare where I killed Elskerinde Freja with my bare hands,” I say, “and when I woke up, I learned that Beata Larsen had been strangled and drowned.”

  “And did you do it?” Lothar asks. “Was it you?”

  I shake my head, the truth freeing itself from my lips. “No, it wasn’t me.”

  My voice rises through the courtyard. Murmurs follow. The expression on Aksel’s face is a twist of rage.

  “She’s lying,” he says. “She’s lying, I know she is—she’s found a way around Lothar Niklasson’s kraft.”

  “Are you accusing me of weakened blood?” Lothar asks.

  Aksel’s face flushes and his gaze drops. “No, Herre Niklasson.”

  Lothar nods his head at the king. “She tells the truth. She did not kill Beata Larsen.”

  Whispers string through the crowd again, and I can feel the surprise, the frustration, the questions. I stay firm on my feet, raising my head. At least if they kill me now, they won’t be able to tell themselves the lie that I deserve it—that I’m being punished for taking away Beata Larsen’s life. If they kill me, they’ll know it’s unjustified, and that I’ve died only because they hate me.

  Jytte Solberg reminds Lothar that there are still more questions to be asked, and so he proceeds.

  “How did you find your way onto this island?”

  I tell him that Elskerinde Jannik and I agreed that I would make a good match for Aksel Jannik; because I was betrothed to be married, the king sent me a letter of invite to join the kongelig for the storm season. Jytte says that the question isn’t narrow enough, so Lothar tries again.

  “Did you take advantage of the late Elskerinde Jannik in any way?” he asks. “The woman was aging, sickly. Did you force her to agree to let you marry her son?”

  “No,” I say, relieved that this is enough of a truth. “I didn’t force her to agree.” But I can feel slivers of truth rising. As though sensing there’s more to be said, Lothar continues.

  “How did she come to agree to let you marry her son?” he asks.

  I’m quiet. When I try to open my mouth, the words that I hoped wouldn’t come linger, swelling in my throat, heavy on my tongue. The kongelig are waiting; the king leans forward. Aksel’s eyes are red as he watches me, his chest heaving, fists tight. He’s suspected, but he’s never known for sure—and now, finally, he’ll know the truth of his mother.

  I tell Lothar, “I used my kraft on Elskerinde Jannik.”

  Aksel demands justice, but Lothar raises a hand to silence him. “How did you use your kraft?”

  “I gave her my thoughts. Thoughts suggesting I’d make a good match for her son. Her mind was frail; she mistook these thoughts to be her own. I took away her memories,” I add, Lothar’s kraft forcing all of the truth from my mouth, “when I knew that this would only make her more ill.”

  “Did you kill Elskerinde Jannik?”

  “I did not,” I say. “She was already dying, and she passed of natural causes in her old age; but taking her memories helped this process.”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “I wanted her to die more quickly, so that I could wed Aksel Jannik as soon as possible, and so that I could come to Hans Lollik Helle to be considered by Konge Valdemar as the next regent.”

  Laughter follows this, but there’s little mirth in the crowd. There’s cruelty in the gazes of the kongelig, a readiness to see me punished. Punished not only for my actions but for thinking myself their equal. The kongelig want to remind me of my place. Aksel, however, doesn’t just want to see me whipped and beaten. He’s shaking with rage. He wants to kill me himself. I fooled him, this he already knew—suspected that I might’ve used my kraft to convince the late Elskerinde Jannik that I should marry her son—but Aksel didn’t know the role I’d played in his mother’s death.

  Konge Valdemar raises his hands, and the laughter and whispers are silenced. We all wait to hear what the king’s ruling will be. The king is controlled by one of the kongelig, of that I’m sure—one of the kongelig who means to kill each of us until it’s too late to stop them, who means to take control of Hans Lollik Helle and all of its islands in a way that will seem innocent, blameless, so that there will be no retaliation or rebellion. And if Konge Valdemar is controlled by a kongelig, that surely means there’s no chance the kongelig will let me leave this island alive.

  The king speaks. “Not guilty of Elskerinde Beata Larsen’s murder,” he says, “or of the death of Elskerinde Jannik, but guilty of scheming and conspiring your way onto this island of mine.” He leans forward with a smile. “What do you think your punishment should be, Elskerinde Jannik?”

  I raise my head, holding my breath. “I believe my punishment should reflect my crime, and not the kongelig’s hatred of me.”

  Konge Valdemar smiles. When he declares that I won’t be killed, whispers stream from the kongelig gathered. Aksel doesn’t wait for the rest of the sentencing; he turns on his heel and leaves, walking out of the courtyard, his blistering rage following him.

  “You’ll instead stay here on Hans Lollik Helle,” Konge Valdemar says, “continuing your role as Elskerinde Jannik—attending my meetings, giving your updates on the islands under your rule, Lund Helle and Jannik Helle. But know that I’ll never give you what you wanted,” he tells me. “You worked so hard to get onto this island, in the hopes that I would hand you the crown; I will never name you or your husband regent. You will never be chosen as my successor.”

  The king stands, and the judgment is complete. He leaves, Lothar Niklasson following closely behind. The other kongelig are slower to leave. They watch me, waiting to see what I’ll do next. It’s only when I turn to walk through the courtyard, my palms still shaking, that Jytte Solberg approaches, standing in front of me so that I can’t take another step.

  “The king has declared that you’re to remain on Hans Lollik Helle,” she tells me, “perhaps knowing that’s a death sentence in itself. You won’t survive the storm season.”

  I push past her before she can say another word and continue on the path to the Jannik house, Løren following closely behind. He doesn’t speak, but the wall that remains between us wavers. I feel pity in him. Pity for me. Not for the king’s ruling—he couldn’t care less about that—but having witnessed me, surrounded by the Fjern who have so much hatred for me, taking their judgment with my raised chin. Løren knows how it feels to be surrounded by those who have no love for him—but I don’t want or need his pity. I know now that I’ve been a fool, like all the kongelig, to kiss the feet of a puppet, when all along I should have been searching for the one who holds the strings.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Aksel doesn’t return to the Jannik house, and I have no plans to leave. I’m no longer in line for the throne, but I take Jytte Solberg’s threat seriously. The kongelig’s hatred of me has only grown, and they don’t believe that I should be on this island, nor that I should even
be alive, after everything I’ve admitted to in Lothar’s questioning. It’s clear to me that the second I leave the Jannik house, my life will be at risk. Any one of the kongelig could be lying in wait, ready to kill me and make it seem like an accident—push me from the cliff, or hang me from a tree and forge a note in my hand to make it seem like I’d taken my own life. I’m too afraid to leave the house. Marieke tells me this means the kongelig have won.

  “Isn’t it all right to be afraid?” I ask her. “My mother must’ve been terrified for her life, before the kongelig killed her.”

  “She was,” Marieke admits. “And yet she continued. She wasn’t fighting only for herself. She was fighting for the islands. She couldn’t afford to hide away in her home. She couldn’t afford to be afraid of death. Her life didn’t belong to her. It belonged to our people. They needed her.”

  Maybe that’s why I’m so afraid now. I don’t live for our people the way my mother did. I only live for myself. I live for my own goals, my own ambitions—my own need for vengeance. To make the kongelig pay for taking my family away. To relish taking their power.

  Marieke runs her fingers through my tight curls, strands yanking at my scalp. She used to do this with her own daughter, she allows me to feel. Her little girl had been a wild thing. She’d play in the sea from morning until night. Marieke was sure that the girl had been nothing but one of the spirits of these islands, trapped in the body of a child. Marieke, the girl, and the girl’s father lived together in a little house that swayed in the breeze, on the cliffs of Rose Helle, looking down at the manor and the sea. Every morning before the sun would rise, the girl and her father would walk hand in hand down the hillside to work on the plantations for their mistress, Elskerinde Rose, and every night they would return.

  The girl would tell her mother stories of what she had done that day—picked mango, pulled weeds. Her father would kiss Marieke good night before he went to sleep. Marieke was grateful, because some nights she could pretend that this is what it might feel like to be free. And she knew, too, that she should have love for the Elskerinde Rose. Mirjam Rose was not like the Fjern. She would not sell Marieke’s little girl or the girl’s father, and Mirjam Rose would not beat any of them out of spite. Yet sometimes, on the darkest of nights while she lay awake, Marieke couldn’t forget that even though her life was not as painful as the lives of so many in these islands, she still wasn’t free. And in those moments, she had a spark of hatred for the Elskerinde Rose. She hated the woman, for even though Mirjam Rose had her own scars, and even though Mirjam Rose knew the pain of her people, the Elskerinde still hadn’t let them go.

  Marieke plaits my hair, and I ask her if she loved her daughter’s father. “I’ve never heard of one slave loving another,” I tell her.

  “I did love him,” she tells me, “though I shouldn’t have. Even with your mother, as kind as she was, I knew that there could be no joy for us. He disagreed. He believed finding our joy was the only way our people could survive. Even in the face of pain, the hardships we endured, we had to remember our joy, our laughter, the love we had for one another.

  “For a while, I believed he’d proven me wrong. He wouldn’t leave me alone when we were young, that boy,” she tells me. “Every single morning, he would walk across the plantation before we were to begin our work and he would bring me the most beautiful shell he’d been able to find on the beach the night before. He did this for years. Eventually I had several bowls and jars filled with nothing but the most beautiful shells. Until, finally, I decided to meet him on the beach while he was looking for another, and, well—I won’t tell you the rest.” She smiles. “But he was wrong in the end. He died, and my little girl died, and you’re here on this island with their killers, too afraid to bring them to justice.”

  I walk the gardens of the Jannik house, the newly planted mango and guava and sugar apple trees’ leaves bristling under the sun, the rose mallow and bougainvillea blooming red. I sit on a stone bench, looking out at the blue of the sea, the islands of Hans Lollik shining green in the distance. I think about the kongelig, and who among them could possibly control the king; who has tried to kill me, and has succeeded in killing Beata Larsen, and perhaps Ane Solberg and Jens Nørup as well.

  None hold the kraft to control illusions, dreams, or hallucinations—unless their very kraft over illusion has tricked us all. Unless one of the kongelig pretends to have a different kraft, when they actually have the ability to control the reality that surrounds us. I run through the list of kongelig and each of their motivations: Lothar Niklasson with his cold, calculating eyes. The Nørup twins, who have seemingly no need for the crown, though perhaps this is as much a hoax as the king. Patrika and Olsen Årud, who—though foolish and arrogant—might enjoy this cruel game they play. Perhaps Olsen has had a power all along, only pretending that he has no kraft in his blood.

  Ironically, I don’t think Jytte would be behind the king or these murders, though her ambitions seem to rival only mine. If she had such a power, she’d do as the culprit does now: wait silently for their moment to strike, hidden in the shadows. Jytte does neither of these things, and she mourns the death of Beata Larsen, though I suppose this could be a part of her game as well. I’m certain that Aksel wouldn’t have killed his beloved Beata Larsen.

  I’d always known Lothar Niklasson to be the greatest threat, but maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss Patrika and Olsen Årud for their foolishness, and too quick to believe that neither of the Nørup twins have any true desire for the crown.

  Løren, who’s to be at my side at all times whenever I’m not in the house, stands in the shade on the porch. It’s a possibility also, I suppose, that anyone on this island might hold the kraft to control this false illusion of the king—even an islander like Løren. He could be pretending to have an ability that blocks my own, hiding his true kraft. He meets my gaze unblinkingly. He thinks I’m brave to be here, when he could so easily push me from the cliffs and into the ocean below.

  “But how would you escape?” I ask him. “Malthe wouldn’t let you get very far.”

  “How do you know that?” he says. “Malthe might congratulate me and escort me to the boats himself.” When I don’t respond, he tells me that he would make his way to the mangroves in the bright of day and hide there until nightfall, which he learned in his younger years was better than running for the mangroves at night, when the masters and guards would expect a slave to run. Once most of the night had passed, and the sky was beginning to show the morning sun’s light, he would swim. There would be sharks, and he would be tired, but he’d swim for as long as he could, as though his life depended on it, because it did. He would try to make it to Larsen Helle; it was the closest island, though also the most dangerous, as there were few mangroves to hide in and it has open, rocky shores. He would rest for a few hours before he’d swim again, next for Årud Helle.

  “It’d be impossible to swim that long, and for that far, with only such a short break in between. Why wouldn’t you try to find a boat?”

  “The Fjern look for slaves on boats without masters,” he tells me. “I wouldn’t last an hour. At least in the sea, if someone sees me, I can try to swim beneath the waves until I’ve lost them.”

  “You wouldn’t last long,” I say again. “You’d drown.”

  He already knows this, he lets me sense—he’s already tried to escape from these islands. The first time he’d attempted to escape from Jannik Helle was when he was eleven years old—had run late at night, while everyone was asleep, and ran until he reached the shore. He’d hidden a raft there, one he’d built over long months, and pushed it across the sand until it was atop the waves. He climbed onto the raft, pushed out with his paddle, and made it past the coral reef and the tide—but the raft began to sink under the rougher water, and before long he was in the sea, sinking in the current, pulled beneath and knocking his head on coral—

  He should’ve died then. So many times the boy should’ve been killed. But a guard ha
d seen him trying to escape. He pulled Løren from the sea, and the child was hung from a tree by his wrists. Engel Jannik whipped any slave who attempted to run away, whipped them until it was up to fate whether they would survive; but today, he handed the whip to Aksel, and would not let the boy stop beating his brother until Løren’s eyes closed and he stopped breathing. He was taken from the tree, and again, Løren should’ve died—but he always lived, always survived.

  Løren didn’t stop trying to run away. When he came to Hans Lollik Helle, he tried again two times. In the first attempt he was caught in the mangroves, but in the second, he’d swum from night until morning, swum until he thought it might be better to let himself drown. His feet finally reached sand and rock, and he lay on the bay like a body washed ashore. He was found like that, so exhausted he couldn’t move, let alone run. The guards dragged him to his feet. This is what broke him. Not the whipping or the beating he received afterward, not being starved for a week and having the bottoms of his feet cut open. It was finally finding his freedom—for even a moment, lying on the rocks of another shore and knowing he had escaped—but being unable to find the willpower to get to his feet.

  “Will you try again?” I ask him.

  “Yes,” he says, “but not until I know I can escape.”

  This is bold of him to say, he knows; it isn’t something he should so easily admit to his mistress. Not something he should say, implying that he means to kill me and whoever else might stand in his way. But he isn’t afraid to speak this truth. He isn’t afraid to look away from my gaze, even now. Løren is fearless. He has no reason to be afraid. His life isn’t his own, and so he feels he’s already dead. Not all islanders of Hans Lollik feel this way, but Løren lets me see that he was dead the moment he was pushed from his mother’s hips. His father might as well have run the blade through the infant’s neck. What could a dead man have to fear, when he might be fighting for a chance to live?