Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  When I ask Løren if he’ll come with me to Herregård Constantjin, he doesn’t ask why—he doesn’t care to know the reason, and only vaguely suspects it might be another garden party or council meeting. It’s his duty to follow me, regardless the reason, so that’s what he does—silently, out of the gardens and down the path. Night is falling, and the noise of the island’s birds and frogs grows the closer we get to the white manor. I can sense Løren’s confusion growing as well. There’re no lights in the courtyard, no other kongelig wandering the path with their slaves to arrive at the council meeting. We’re alone here.

  Though his ability to read my thoughts is weak, Løren must’ve reached into my mind, because he asks, “Are you sure you want to be caught wandering the manor without permission after you’ve just been accused of murder?”

  I laugh, not because this is funny but because it feels odd to hear Løren speak to me as though we’re acquaintances—friends, even. This is usually something Marieke would say, and in exactly that tone of voice, too. “Probably not,” I admit.

  He asks me what I’m looking for.

  “Something. Anything.” A clue to this mystery of Konge Valdemar and who might be controlling him. I want to wander the manor with Løren, too—to look at his face and attempt to read his mind, to see if he might let the truth slip. To see if he’s the one who’s been killing the kongelig.

  The courtyard is empty except for the shadows, the sun already disappeared behind the sea, the white-silver light of the moon illuminating the pockmarked cobblestones. Without the glittering lights and sugarcane wine, the gentle music and chattering kongelig, the courtyard looks desolate. The walls of the manor itself seem to be crumbling.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Løren tells me.

  He follows as I walk to the grand entrance doors, but they’re barred. I step into the gardens, thorns of overgrown flowers catching the bottom of my dress, weeds crunching beneath my feet. I look into a blackened window, but a gauzy curtain blocks my sight. I ask Løren for a rock, but he doesn’t hand me one—only stares at me blankly, like he’s become a ghost, or like he’s thinking of killing me here and now, where there wouldn’t be anyone to witness my murder; I can’t tell which, and he’s put the wall between us back up again. I bend over to pick up a rock myself and throw it at the window. Glass shatters. I wince, hesitating to hear the voices of confused slaves or guards running to the commotion, but there’s nothing.

  I rip a strip of cloth from the bottom of my dress, wrapping it around my hands, and climb up. Løren refuses to help, even as I struggle to put one leg over, trying to avoid the gnarled teeth of glass. An edge pierces my thigh, and sharp pain follows the drops of red that stain my dress and dribble down my skin. I pull my other leg up and manage to jump down into the manor itself.

  The hall I’ve landed inside is abandoned. There’re no lights, and the wallpaper is torn and yellowed, old water ballooning beneath. The rugs smell of mold and have dirt scattered across them. I wait for Løren, who takes his time climbing the wall and pulling himself up through the window as well, landing silently beside me. He doesn’t say anything as we make our way to the end of the hall. I look around the corner, but this hall is also abandoned. I feel a whisper on my neck even though no other windows are open for a breeze.

  The next hall, and the next—empty, dark. One takes me to the kitchen. Pots and pans, scattered across the floor. Ash and dust layers the tables, the iron stove. I think that this is a wing the king, or whoever controls him, has had no use for, and that there’s another kitchen where the slaves prepare their meals. But the halls take me to the grand entryway. Paintings have been torn down from the walls. The staircase, which had been made of marble, once gleaming in the sunlight, now crumbles. The room that had held the exquisite art is empty; the few busts that remain are cracked and on the floor. The meeting room has its table, its chairs, but the wood is swollen and covered in dust. The mahogany rots. I walk faster until I’m running—I race up the stairs, and there’s more of the same. Chambers with overturned furniture and torn curtains and sheets, rooms that look like they’d been set aflame. No slaves. No king. I don’t think a soul has lived in this manor for more than a decade.

  The pressure in me, as though I’ve been sinking into the depths of the ocean, builds. I have to leave. I have to get out of the manor. The walls of the maze close, thorns wrapping around me. Løren takes my arm. He guides me through the abandoned halls, to a door to the servants’ quarters and out into the night. I sink to the weeds, overheated even in the trade-winds breeze. Sweat makes my dress stick to my skin, my hair itching my neck.

  It’s all been a lie. Not only the king but even the house—perhaps this entire island.

  Løren stands over me. I believe in his innocence now. He would’ve continued the lie if he could have. It has to be one of the kongelig. They must need to be inside the manor itself, the meeting room and the courtyard, to use their kraft and keep up their illusions. Whoever holds the power of the king has been in attendance for each gathering, each meeting. The kongelig must’ve had a laugh having us sit in filth while we thought we were surrounded by riches. More frightening than anything else, though, is the power this kongelig must have, to fool so many of us.

  Løren helps me walk to the shoreline so that I can clean my stinging cut with saltwater. I take the cloth from my hands to wrap it around my thigh. The water is black in the night, swirling around my feet and pulling back out to sea again, a rhythmic pulse that’s usually so soothing but now feels like a threat. Løren’s wall remains in its place. He shows no emotion at having seen the ruins of Herregård Constantjin. I remember he has nothing to compare what he’s seen to; as a slave and my guard, he never would’ve been let inside those walls. He’s always been forced to wait outside, lined up in the courtyard with the others.

  I tell him that the king is dead. “He must be,” I say, “for someone to be able to use this image of him as they do, to take over the Herregård Constantjin, take control of the kongelig. What could they want? They already have the crown, with their false image of the king. What could be their goal?”

  Løren doesn’t care; he listens, but only because he has no choice. He doesn’t answer my questions or my thoughts with any of his own. Anger sparks inside me.

  “You pretend this doesn’t affect you.”

  “How does this affect me?” he asks.

  “Whoever controls the false king will take control of Hans Lollik Helle.”

  “And when they do, how will my life change? It’ll be the same as it was before. There might be fewer kongelig alive, once the fighting is done, but that’s not something to mourn.”

  “You might very well be killed in the fighting, too.”

  “Then not much will have changed still,” he tells me. “Don’t misunderstand me. I want my life. But I want my life on my terms.”

  “That’s all the more reason for you to worry,” I tell him. “I should be at the helm of Hans Lollik Helle. If I were in power, I would free you. I would free all of our people.”

  “Would you?” he asks me.

  The question angers me, so I don’t respond, not at first—I only watch him, wait for him to crumble under my gaze and look away, but he does not. “Yes, of course I would.”

  “I heard that you were supposed to have freed the slaves who work under you long before now,” he tells me, “but you have not.”

  “I need them still,” I say. “I need all of you if I’m to be on Hans Lollik Helle, to be considered equal to the kongelig.”

  “So you use your people to make yourself seem above them in the eyes of the Fjern.”

  “I’ll free them once I have the power to do so. I’ll free all of us.”

  There’s anger in his eyes, even as he laughs at me. “You’re lying to yourself, Elskerinde Jannik. Tell me, how do you envision these islands under your rule?”

  I think of the land, lush and green with fruit, my people walking free. This is what my mother wou
ld’ve wanted. But even as the image crosses my mind, questions fill me: How will our islands continue to compete in the world’s economy if there are no slaves to work the land? We will make ourselves vulnerable for another attack if I release all the guards of the islands as well. The Fjern would send their armies to quell my rebellion, and we would be massacred. It’s easy to say that I would be the heroine in this tale, just as my mother was, but fear of the truth swells.

  I don’t respond, so Løren tells me, “I’ll believe you mean to free your people when you decide to free me.”

  When I’m finished bandaging my leg, he walks me back to the Jannik house and tells me good night as he’s expected to. I pass by Aksel’s chambers, but I don’t feel him inside. Aksel’s been gone from the house since Konge Valdemar’s ruling. I’m grateful. It’s better to have him away than haunting the halls, his rage and depression souring the air and sinking into my skin. I pause outside his door, and a shadow catches my eye. A scream lodges itself in my throat. Aksel’s face is blue as he swings, sheets wrapped around his throat, body hanging from the top of the bed’s canopy. I shout for help, but none of the slaves are in the house—they’re in the slaves’ quarters, Malthe sleeping with the other guards—

  A shadow moves behind me, and I spin. Nothing’s there. By the time I turn back around, Aksel’s body is gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Aksel’s eyes are red, and his skin is paler than it normally is; he staggers, talks loudly enough that his voice echoes, and laughs after every sentence he speaks. But still, he’s alive. I can’t look away from him. He’d been dead, neck swollen where the sheets had cut into his skin, eyes stuck wide open, feet above the ground. The man had been dead. The questions burn through me. It could be the work of kraft—the kongelig with their power over illusion. It could be my stress playing tricks on my eyes. It could be this island itself, filled with all of its ghosts.

  When I first saw Aksel in the sitting room that morning, he wouldn’t speak to me, but he wanted me to know that he wasn’t afraid of me, and that he wouldn’t be pushed out of his own home. If we had to share the same space, even believing I’d taken the life of his beloved, then so be it. I couldn’t look away from him, even as he ignored me. The body I’d seen the night before was burned into my memory.

  Traveling the streets of the northern cities, I’d told Marieke my fear that I was mad. I could’ve easily convinced myself that the thoughts of others that filled my head were the by-product of my kraft. What if these weren’t actually the thoughts of strangers at all, but voices I’d conjured? My madness wasn’t so difficult to imagine. I’d had thoughts of taking my own life for years, especially after the deaths of my mother and sisters and brother. I had no interest in being alive when they were all dead. I was young, but I started to wonder if there was any real point to life, when in the end, I was going to be met with the same fate as everyone, no matter the color of their skin, no matter if they had their freedom or not: We were all going to be met with death. I wanted to die. I’d never attempted to take my own life, but I told Marieke as much.

  In the end, it was a nightmare that turned me. I’d been plagued by nightmares every time I closed my eyes: the echoing screams and the grass shining red and the stomping of boots in the hallway, the men’s voices searching for me even so many miles away. But this particular night as I ran through the twisting halls, dodging the bodies of the dead that covered the floor, I heard Tante’s voice. She reminded me: My mother would’ve wanted me to live.

  Aksel has invited the kongelig to our gardens. Hardly anyone has come. There are only seven: Erik Nørup, always happy for an excuse to drink. I take the opportunity to watch him closely and to invade his mind—to search for any possibility that he and his sister might have performed the killings and created our false king—but I only find thoughts of boredom and memories of wine and the women who’ve shared his bed. Patrika and Olsen Årud are also here, too snooping to decline. I decide I’ll keep a closer watch on them both throughout the afternoon. A few cousins of the kongelig have also come out of nosiness and curiosity; I don’t know which families they belong to, and I don’t care enough to search their minds for the answer. Aksel is too drunk to see how they all laugh at him and the Jannik name. These gardens are nothing but weeds in comparison to their own. The house itself looks like it might collapse at any moment, and no one wants to stand too close to the edge of the cliffs, in case the wind—particularly strong this afternoon—takes one of them into the sea below.

  Marieke and the slave girl Agatha hurry from guest to guest with offerings of sugarcane wine. The personal guards are lined up and sweating in the hot sun. Only Løren stands in the shade on the porch. He tries to hide there. Even with the wall between us, I feel this truth. He doesn’t hide because he’s afraid; he hides because he doesn’t want the attention of his brother, or any of the other kongelig. He doesn’t feel like pretending to have respect or love for any of the pale-skinned Fjern today.

  Patrika Årud doesn’t bother to keep her thoughts to herself. “Pathetic,” she whispers to Olsen. “Aksel Jannik needs to learn to mourn in privacy.”

  She sees Løren. She knows he’s here, but she keeps her back to him. If there’re any rumors of the nights she’d forced the boy to her bed, she doesn’t need to inspire more, not when they’re in the middle of the storm season, not when they need the king’s support. Patrika doesn’t lie to herself; she might be a narcissist, but she knows the king doesn’t have her name in mind to inherit the crown. Why would he, when he has Lothar Niklasson and the man’s nephews, safely hidden away on Niklasson Helle? Lothar Niklasson is the obvious choice. He might be older than all of the other kongelig, but he’ll know how to keep control of the islands of Hans Lollik after the rule of Konge Valdemar, will know how to smoothly transition his rule to his successor. Even if the king were not to choose Lothar Niklasson, other names would come to mind first before Patrika and her husband: Erik Nørup, or even Jytte Solberg, though she’s an unwed woman. There’s no reason Konge Valdemar would choose the Årud.

  Patrika needs to do what she can to change his mind, she knows, and quickly. She needs to prove her family’s worth, the strength of their coin and guard. She’s been looking for opportunities, but it seems that Hans Lollik Helle has become nothing more than a circus this year, with me joining the table and the death of that girl Beata Larsen. And now this party, where the slave son of Engel Jannik stands on the porch. She doesn’t want to know if he’s as aware of her presence as she is of his.

  Her husband knows, of course. Olsen has known of every man and boy Patrika has brought to her bed that wasn’t him. He has even brought slaves to Patrika some nights, as gifts to his wife, though he’s never had any interest in joining them or even watching, as some men might. He’d been the one who first brought Engel Jannik’s slave to her. The boy was still growing, no more than thirteen. He hadn’t known what Olsen Årud had requested him for, only that he had to obey. Olsen had his own personal guard bring the boy from the slave’s quarters. Løren had been afraid. It was clear he thought he would be whipped, or even killed, and Olsen couldn’t blame him. Olsen had his own particular interests, and just as he didn’t interfere with his wife’s pleasures, she didn’t interfere with his, as long as he didn’t choose slaves who were worth more to them alive. The boy clearly thought that Engel Jannik had given Olsen permission to kill him, the way he trembled so, fists balled, ready to fight for his life.

  He was confused when he was brought to Patrika’s chambers, it was easy to see on his face; he was confused when the door shut behind Olsen, leaving the boy and Patrika alone. His screams of pain had echoed all through the night as she worked her kraft on him. Olsen sees and recognizes Løren as well. Olsen is surprised the boy’s still alive. He thought Løren would’ve gotten himself killed long ago, with that look of defiance always in his eyes.

  Aksel shouts and stumbles, dropping his glass of sugarcane wine so that it shatters. A slave girl hurries f
orward to pick up the shards. Aksel yells at her to hurry up—then, deciding she moves too slowly, drunkenly pushes her out of the way to snatch up the glass himself. A shard cuts his finger, and red drops onto his shirt, his pants.

  Some of the guests look away, embarrassed for him, but Olsen laughs with his wife. Aksel Jannik behaves like a commoner, as did his father; both were born on these islands. Only the Elskerinde Freja Jannik had any grace. Olsen has known nothing but riches all his life. Nothing but jewels and gold. These islands are only a small piece of the Fjern empire of Koninkrijk, a sliver of paradise that he’s happy to own—but there’s so much more to take in this world. Olsen comes here for the storm seasons, but he mostly travels to the other nations under the Fjern empire, conducting his business and buying new lands while his wife stays on Årud Helle for the rest of the year. Patrika and Olsen Årud do not love each other. That’s easy to see. Theirs is a business, a partnership. Patrika Årud wants to rule these islands as queen. The power is too magnetizing, and over such beautiful lands, too—the most beautiful in all the world, all the other nations agree.

  Aksel raises a fresh glass of sugarcane wine. “I’d like to make a toast,” he announces. The guests and their polite conversation pause, unease trickling through them. “Beata Larsen,” Aksel tells us, “was the most beautiful woman to have ever graced these islands.”

  Erik shouts his agreement, but the others glance away in discomfort, or look to me to see how I’ll react. I have a flinch of pity for Aksel. He tells everyone that he loved Beata Larsen. “I don’t care who knows now. I was married, yes, married to this snake”—he gestures at me, pausing to look at me as he sips his wine—“but I loved Beata Larsen more than anyone else, and now she’s gone.”

  He takes a long swallow, and the guests raise their glasses politely to Beata’s memory. But Aksel isn’t finished. He turns his toast to Erik Nørup now, thanking the man for being such a good friend.