Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  He and his friends were gathered to be killed, as Marieke expected. Her brother spat at her feet as he passed by. This didn’t surprise her, either. What did surprise her was when Koen Rose, before the boys’ execution, decided he would extend his punishment to five innocents anyway. Two girls and three boys, all as young as Marieke, were selected and brought forward, screaming and crying and pleading with their master for their lives, promising they had nothing to do with the rebellion. And her brother watched Marieke, accusingly—all of these deaths were because of her, it seemed he wanted her to know.

  Marieke tells me that Løren asked her why she cares for me.

  “And what did you say?”

  “The truth,” she tells me. “It’s not like I have much choice.”

  Marieke isn’t happy with me, either, I can tell, but I want to ask what she would rather I have done. Should I have let Aksel hang Løren from his neck? Should I have let Løren jump into the sea? He’s in pain now, but his wounds will heal and join the thick netting of scars across his skin.

  “You came here to destroy the kongelig,” Marieke tells me. “You came here to take the throne back from the Fjern, to find your revenge and free your people. What have you done since you’ve arrived here on Hans Lollik Helle? You’ve done nothing but kill an old man on behalf of the king and have one slave boy nearly whipped to death.”

  “You don’t understand the way the kongelig work,” I tell her, but I can feel shame radiating from me. “If I didn’t have Løren whipped, I would’ve lost the respect of the Fjern, and he would’ve been killed anyway.”

  “The kongelig will never have any respect for you, no matter what you do.”

  “Herregård Constanjin is false, nothing more than an illusion. I’ve been looking into the minds of the kongelig, to see who might be controlling the puppet king, who might be killing the other kongelig. I know that it’s either Alida Nørup or the Årud. I only need to find a way to question them.”

  “Why question them when you can simply kill them?”

  “You always tell me to have patience, Marieke,” I say. “I can’t simply murder Alida Nørup and Patrika and Olsen Årud in their sleep.”

  “And why not?” she asks me. Her eyes burn. “You should have patience, yes—but not to the point that you miss your opportunity. The storm season won’t last much longer.”

  The house isn’t a welcome place for me. It never was, but especially now, the slaves who walk the halls watch me with loathing and disgust. I’ve never allowed any of my slaves to be beaten or whipped. Though I hadn’t given the slaves their promised freedom, this, at least, was what held me apart from the Fjern. I shouldn’t let myself be run out of my own home, but I do. I wander the groves, picking mango and guava, trying to think on what my next steps should be. I’m no closer to knowing who among the kongelig control the king—who has killed Beata Larsen and Ane Solberg and Jens Nørup.

  I find an alcove in the sea: a little patch of sand surrounded by rocks, and a calm swirling tide that allows for a miniature world of life to flourish. Baby crabs are nestled in the rocks, along with sea urchins and starfish. I eat my fruit and stare out at the blue of the ocean, remembering the days I would spend with Ellinor. We’d pretend that we were the queens of Hans Lollik Helle, even as children. We’d tell each other that if only we had the crown of these islands, the Fjern and the islanders alike would learn to love us as much as our mother taught us to love ourselves.

  I can feel the presence long before she arrives at the shore, so I’m not surprised when I see Alida Nørup, though Alida is surprised to see me. I remember Marieke’s suggestion to simply kill the woman. She catches a glimpse of me and begins to slow her walk, hesitating, unsure if she should join me; then, determined, she speeds her steps until she’s by my side. She wears white, loose-fitted pants and a white shirt, as her brother might; unlike her brother’s blond hair and blue eyes, her eyes and hair are dark. This had been a source of pain for her, once; the Fjern have always admired blond hair and blue eyes, so as a child, Alida could feel the love and attention her brother received for looking the way he did, while she received none. Her mother had been disappointed. She felt it would be difficult to find a suitable match for Alida, and it didn’t help that the girl had little interest in dresses and dolls. She always wanted to read, or ride horseback, and gods above, the girl was wild: attempting to race after her brother to play with his friends, running through the mud. It took years before Alida finally seemed to compromise: She stopped acting like a little boy, chasing after her brother, but she wouldn’t wear the pretty little dresses and stand silently and demurely at the garden parties, either. Instead, she locked herself away in the library, poring over her books, unwilling to meet with any men who called upon her. Erik would send his thoughts to her: Just do what their mother wanted. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, would it, to act like the other girls of these islands? This perhaps was the first crack between the two.

  I see in Alida that she noticed me a while ago, walking through the groves, but she’s still surprised that I managed to find this hidden section of the shore. Her cousin Jens Nørup had been found dead, but she doesn’t seem to be in grief over the man; they’d never been close, and there’s even disdain—Jens had always been the type to claw at whatever power he could. Alida isn’t like this. The games of the kongelig disgust her.

  “You’ve found my favorite place on Hans Lollik Helle,” Alida tells me. She doesn’t hesitate to sit on the sand beside me; she helps herself to one of the mangoes I’d picked, biting into the yellow skin, juice leaking down her arm and staining her shirt. Alida is odd. Everyone on Hans Lollik Helle, on Nørup Helle, throughout all of the islands, knows this.

  She doesn’t seem to mind. She only smiles at me while she sucks on the mango seed. “My brother likes you,” she tells me, “very much.”

  Alida and Erik’s kraft connect them. They know each other’s thoughts, their feelings. I can see that when they were younger, the two could even hop into each other’s bodies, but in the same way that my power had once been impossible to control, their own power has evolved as well, and that part of their kraft died long ago now.

  “He feels sorry for you,” Alida tells me. “He’s too kindhearted, my brother. He sees anyone who’s been outcasted and thinks he loves them.”

  I don’t want Erik’s pity, or the belief that he’s kindhearted, when I’ve seen the way he chased Løren through the groves by Aksel’s side. “And what do you think of me?” I ask Alida.

  She has a smile for me. “I think you’re interesting. The most interesting thing to happen to Hans Lollik Helle in a long time, in fact.”

  I ask if she isn’t as upset as the other kongelig are—Jytte Solberg, Patrika and Olsen Årud—but I can already feel the truth brimming in her. There are some whose minds are more tiring to read than others, and there are some who are so open, and want me to know their thoughts so desperately, that each thought comes to me whether I’m looking for it or not. I might be wrong, but I now don’t believe that Alida is behind the false king, or the killings of the kongelig. If not her and her brother, then the last two I have to suspect are Patrika and Olsen Årud.

  “Why should I be upset?” Alida says. “I can’t stand this island and its politics. I fear that Konge Valdemar will choose my brother only because he looks the way the Fjern hope a regent would look, and then all of the islands’ responsibilities would fall to me. Gods above, it’s my worst nightmare. But you already knew this.”

  She thinks I’m interesting, yes, but most interesting of all is my kraft. It’s the strongest she’s seen in some time, and Alida has long since wondered if power can be taken. Whether kraft fills the veins, and if blood were to be spilled and poured and sipped like a fine wine, would the drinker then take the power of the other? Ancient stories fill the Fjern empire: regents of Koninkrijk would slaughter their enemies and drain their bodies. They would drink their blood in their attempts to take the powers of others, and though some
claimed success, these were more the legends one might tell a child as they fell asleep at night. Alida has seen from her own experiments firsthand that drinking the blood of another isn’t enough to take their kraft. She believes that their kraft must fill your veins wholly, replacing your own; but then, Alida wonders, what if there was a way to take all of the blood of one person and replace it with the blood of another?

  Dark thoughts for a woman of her standing, but as I sink into her further, I can see that although Alida may be curious about my kraft, she has no interest in killing me. Alida believes the hatred the kongelig hold for me is something that belongs to the older generations. She has seen much of the world, even if most of the Fjern would expect her to stay home and wait to be married. She’s seen the wealth, the culture, the civilizations that people with skin like mine have built, and she knows that a person with dark skin is her equal; in many cases, her better. The lies the kongelig tell themselves in these islands—that’s what she can’t stand, more than anything else. They’ve taken what they consider a paradise and set it up as a child might in their own kingdom: the feeling that they are somehow better, stronger, more important than others. And why? Why do her people conquer others? Alida’s always wanted to know, ever since she was a child.

  This is what Alida tells herself, anyway—but still, she was raised in these islands. She tells herself I’m her equal, but there’s still a flicker, in the back of her heart, that says otherwise. The surprise that I would sit beside her, speaking as I do, without using Alida’s proper title of Elskerinde Nørup; the confusion over why I’m not in the groves, where I belong, and why I picked the mangoes to eat them myself, when they belong to the Fjern.

  She knows she holds these feelings and detests them. So she pushes them as far away as she can, pretending that they don’t exist. Instead she looks at me with a smile, as she’s supposed to look at any equal. “You’ve had a difficult time on this island,” she tells me. “I’m surprised that you’re still here.”

  “Why would that surprise you?”

  “The kongelig have tried to kill you,” she says, “and they’ll undoubtedly try to do it again. You know that you won’t be chosen for regent. The king announced this for all to hear. And yet you’re still here on Hans Lollik Helle. Why?” she asks me.

  Alida envies my kraft. She wishes she could ask any question and have it automatically answered. If there were a way to simply switch the blood of two bodies, without killing the other, she’d certainly try. She’s already made her attempts, draining the blood from one mouse and attempting to filter this blood into another. She tried to do this in over one hundred ways—slowly, so that neither mouse would lose too much blood; quickly, before the heart had a chance to stop—but neither mouse would ever survive the experiment. It was difficult to know whether the mice died because they were mice or if by a fault of her own. She wanted to attempt her experiment on humans. On one particular night, one filled with shame, she did wonder if she could simply try to switch the blood of two islanders. The islanders wouldn’t be missed, and if they were slaves of the Nørup, then those slaves were technically the property of her family anyway, and hers to do with as she pleased. It would ultimately be to help the islanders, she told herself. The exchange of blood could be a way to save the poor islanders of Hans Lollik who have kraft in their veins, when it’s no fault of theirs. The kongelig could simply take their blood and put it into the bodies of young Fjern who were not given the divine gift. This would be a kindness, she tells herself, and the two islanders who might die in her experiment would have sacrificed their lives for a worthy cause. This is what Alida tells herself.

  “I have to remain on Hans Lollik Helle. It’s my duty to stay here as Elskerinde Jannik.”

  “If I were you,” she says, “and I had a husband who hated me and tried to kill me, I would’ve left him long ago, and I would’ve traveled the world twice over by now. There’s so much more to see than just these islands. I feel trapped here every time I come.”

  This is easy for anyone to see, whether they have my kraft or not. Alida Nørup detests these islands and Hans Lollik Helle. Girls aren’t supposed to ask as many questions as she does; girls aren’t supposed to want to read and learn the sciences or attend universities in faraway empires. Yet she asked her questions and learned the sciences and went to her university, where she was one of the top students in her field, researching the properties of various plants and herbs and taking note of their medicinal uses and their effects on kraft. After all of this, Alida could have stayed away from Hans Lollik Helle. She could have taught at one of the many universities, or continued her research of the sciences and of kraft. So many things Alida Nørup could have done—and yet she returned, and why? Her brother, her brother, always her brother. Erik Nørup has always been a child, always needed her help, and as much as Erik annoys her, Alida finds that she can’t abandon him.

  “It’s your brother who’s expected to be here more than anyone else,” I tell her. “Why don’t you simply leave?”

  She laughs at me. “Erik? He can’t spend a day here without me. He always whines whenever I threaten to leave him here. He’s a baby, you know, a child. I hate my brother sometimes. And he knows it. He can feel it, the same way I can feel how sad he is to know that I can’t stand him. That’s what’s most tragic of all,” she tells me. “Even knowing I hate him sometimes, hate his ways of drinking and dancing and gallivanting all across the islands, he can’t return any anger. He wants to. He’s tried. But he’s just too innocent, my brother.”

  I want to tell her about what he used to do in the groves, hunting Løren with his friend Aksel; want to tell Alida that her brother came with the other kongelig earlier today, to hang Løren by his neck. What’s funniest is that I don’t believe Alida means to lie to herself. This Erik she describes is the only version she’s ever seen.

  “Elskerinde Jannik,” Alida says, “I want to hear about your life. You’re fascinating to me, you know.”

  I hesitate. I don’t know what information Alida might one day use against me. But I can also feel that she has no plans to take what she learns and race to the nearest kongelig, to plot against me as some might. She really is just curious, and bored. There’s never anything to do on Hans Lollik Helle except watch the other kongelig whisper their gossip and play their games and murder one another as they sleep, and even that becomes tiresome after coming to this island once a year for the past ten years of her life.

  And so I tell her. At this point, I don’t see that I have any other choice. I have no allies among the kongelig, and the longer I sit here next to Elskerinde Nørup, the more I begin to wonder if I could use her friendship—if there could be a way to ask for Alida’s help against the other kongelig. I describe the deaths of my mother and sisters and brother at the hands of the Jannik guards, explain how I escaped Rose Helle with Marieke and traveled the northern empires, and how I decided to return and use my kraft to convince Elskerinde Freja Jannik to let me marry her son. I even decide to tell Alida a story, of when I’d traveled the north with Marieke, and together we hoped to make it to Koninkrijk, for I’d never been to the empire that had taken these islands and oppressed my people. I wanted to see for myself the fields, the groves of elder trees and the mountains with white tips in the distance; I wanted to look at the people who shared the same blood of the ones who’d killed my family, to see if the evil was one they all shared, and if it was an evil that’d been passed on to me.

  We crossed the border on horseback, and there was nothing momentous about the occasion, nothing special. We were only surrounded by craggy paths and fields of grass that stretched on like the sea. I’d heard of the cold ice that fell from the sky in Koninkrijk, but had never seen it, and so I was most intrigued by the frost that seemed to cover the leaves of some of the trees, the ice like glass that cracked beneath my feet.

  Marieke rode me through the groves and to a stone inn, helped me from the horse and took the animal to the stables. She
held my hand as we walked inside, fireplace roaring. There weren’t many people: the innkeeper and two other guests who sat in the far corner. It’d already been quiet, but it seemed the silence became physical when we walked inside. We dusted our jackets of ice and sat. I’d only had my kraft for a few months, and I still had difficulty controlling it. Sometimes thoughts and emotions came to me unbidden; other times I would purposefully try to enter minds, but find it impossible.

  I tried to know the thoughts of the two men in the corner, the woman who walked to us hesitantly. The woman gave us a careful smile. She looked at us as though she’d never seen people with skin our color before. It was possible she had not.

  She asked us if we were planning to stay at the inn, and if so, for how long; Marieke gave her an answer, I can’t remember what she’d said. But before Marieke could finish speaking, one of the two men in the corner stood. He said he wouldn’t be sharing his quarters with people like us—beasts, creatures, monsters—this is what he called us, and all because of something like the color of our skin. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because these were the same people who had come to my islands, who killed and tortured and enslaved my people, but I couldn’t help but be shocked and hurt. It’s always shocking when someone claims you aren’t as human as they.

  I don’t think Marieke was as shocked. She’d been hesitant when I first requested we come here. I’d wanted to understand the people who had conquered us, but Marieke had told me that sometimes there’s nothing to understand.

  The man went on, demanding we leave. The other laughed, saying that perhaps they could make coin off of us: take us captive, sell us to any of the Fjern territories that kept their slaves with skin as dark as ours. Marieke trembled. She understood how easily these two men could take us and sell us. These were people who didn’t believe we deserved our freedom. The woman, the innkeeper, had given us a smile when she approached, but now she only watched.