Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  It’s only when I step from the porch that I think of him. I hesitate. He I should want to forget, too. I should want to leave him here on this island, leave him here to hang and burn, but I can’t. I can never leave that man alone. I turn down the halls, toward the library. I turn the knob, afraid of what I’ll find inside, but Løren stands, watching and waiting like it seems he always does. He’d heard the screams, the pleas for mercy, trapped in this library. He’d been prepared to fight, even knowing it was likely he would die. After surviving so much, this wasn’t how he wanted to leave this life.

  I should free him. I can feel it in all of my being, vibrating beneath my skin. I should free the man who stands in front of me and allow him to escape to the north.

  We leave the house, him following behind as he has always done. I’m ready to burn the house down. Burn the house and all the bodies within it. Marieke deserves a proper burial, I know this, but I can’t imagine stepping across that threshold again without breaking apart. I need to keep moving, get onto the boat, and go, or I’ll return to that house and set it afire with me still inside.

  Løren expects me to ask him what happened, but I don’t want to know. I don’t care, I tell myself, not even if he knew the name of the kongelig who’s to blame. I can’t let myself care, because the grief that is building in me will explode and rupture me, and I know I won’t leave this island. If I think of the pain, let myself remember Marieke in my bed, I’ll walk into the sea and keep walking, as so many of my people have escaped these islands before me. I have to keep moving. I can’t allow myself to think on Marieke.

  Løren is surprised to see me in mourning. He didn’t think I had true feelings for anyone other than myself, and most certainly not a slave. It’s interesting to see myself as Løren sees me: the black island woman, skin as dark as night, wearing the white dress of the kongelig. There was so much potential for me to be the heroine I’d always wanted to be. If I’d stood up against the kongelig; if I’d led my people in battle against them, not because I wanted to lead them but because I wanted freedom for them. I could’ve been a symbol of hope in these islands; a daughter of the beloved Mirjam Rose, rising from the dead to lead her people to freedom. I could’ve destroyed the Fjern, run them from these islands, and made them the land of my people once more.

  And why didn’t I? This is something Løren has wanted to know. Is it because it would be so difficult for someone like me? I’ve hated the Fjern, but I’ve always wanted to be them; have envied their power, have desired the title of regent. Løren wonders if I’ve been unable to admit to myself, all along, that what I’ve wanted above all else is to prove my worth to the pale-skinned Fjern; prove that I belong in their world, and earn a respect I know they’ll never give. I’ve wanted this, and the love of my own people, even while knowing I could never have both. I leave these islands now with neither—nothing, but the hatred Løren believes I’ll always hold for myself. He pities me. Løren has always pitied me. Someone like me, with my dark skin and the opportunity I hold, can’t afford to make the mistakes that I’ve made. Someone like me, an islander with no love, can’t afford to sin. Sins are for the Fjern, to be forgiven by their divine gods; sins are for the islanders, to be forgiven by the spirits of our ancestors. I have no one to forgive me.

  “We’re leaving Hans Lollik Helle,” I tell him. “You’re coming with me.”

  Løren leaves for the slaves’ quarters with orders to have the boat and ship prepared. I can’t wait outside the Jannik house knowing what lies within. I walk the path that takes me through the groves, and I can feel the eyes of someone on me, their breath on the back of my neck, but I see no one. I run to the hill that holds Herregård Constantjin and I walk up the slope, rocks cutting the bottoms of my bare feet.

  The courtyard looks as it did the night I’d come with Løren: desolated, cracks in the cobblestones. I enter through the main doors, not bothering to hide, and I scream that they’ve won. My voice echoes through the empty halls, and I can hear a laugh, though I can’t see the body it belongs to. The laugh lets me know that, yes, they’re happy to know I’ve surrendered in this game. The laugh echoes, fading. I should leave, I know this—leave and wait for Løren, escape the island for good. But my feet move, my legs running. I chase the laugh, racing through the halls that twist and turn like a maze of rot and mold, until I come to a room I haven’t seen before: the throne room.

  The room is brightly lit with chandeliers and candles that line the walls, empty of furniture except for the throne that presides at the far end of the hall itself. Something sits on the throne. I walk closer, and closer, over the red velvet carpet—stop when I see what it is, and gag despite myself. The head of the king. Its eyes bulge, tongue lolls, and from the skin that has been eaten away, the chunks of hair missing from the skull: the king’s head. The person who placed the head here must know that I went to Valdemar Helle. They must know that I’ve seen the grave. It could be the king’s real head, but I’m used to their tricks now. They could have put this false vision of the king’s head here to taunt me, to laugh at me.

  There are footsteps. I spin around, and Jytte Solberg stands with her guards. One guard already holds Løren, his hands tied, his face empty of emotion. Jytte’s eyes are wide, moving from me and to the throne.

  There’s shock that echoes as the guards and Jytte realize what it is they see. Jytte steels herself from showing the emotion her body releases through her pores. She’s had to be careful, all these years, not to show emotion as anyone else would—this emotion is considered a weakness on these islands, and the men of the kongelig have always gladly searched for any excuse to have her removed as Elskerinde Solberg. She shows an icy expression now as she turns to her guard, pointing to me.

  “Arrest her,” she says, and so they do. They grab my arms, yanking them behind my back. I could fight. I could enter one of the guards and have him attack his brothers—have him attack Jytte even, and try to kill her in an attempt to escape—but I know that this is a fight that I would lose. I suddenly understand why Løren doesn’t bother to fight when he knows he cannot win. There isn’t any point spending that energy—energy that could easily be saved for another opportunity to fight again, to fight and win.

  One guard kicks the backs of my knees, forcing me to the rough surface, my skin stinging; Løren is forced to his knees beside me.

  “It’s not real,” I tell her, but Jytte isn’t listening. She only moves closer to the throne. “It isn’t real. None of this is real, Elskerinde Solberg.”

  She thinks I speak nonsense. She thinks I’m crazed. She truly believes I’ve been to blame for each murder on this royal island; has believed that I have been the snake planning each of their deaths, and now here’s her proof. She’s glad to have it now, finally, but she only wishes she could have made the others see sooner. The guards flank us, bringing us from the throne room, halls now restored to their marble and gold. We march through the groves, which had been empty before but are now filled with slaves who finish their work, staring only at the fruit they pick. We’re taken to the Solberg house. It’s difficult to see the outside of the house in the nighttime, but within, the fireplace roars with life and golden chandeliers light the rooms, with their gilded wallpaper and gleaming wooden floors. The guards take me and Løren across the hall and to a staircase, down into the darkness of a cellar. There are bars here, locked doors. We’re told to stand within, and the door clangs shut behind us, key turned.

  Løren is unbothered. He’s found himself in similar situations many times before. Things always tend to work out for him in the end, so he isn’t afraid as he finds a comfortable space on the hard stone floor to sit. And even if he were to be killed—accused of helping me in the beheading of the king, hung before all on Hans Lollik Helle—what would that matter? Fate will have finally found him, after all these years. It’s interesting to me that he can feel confident that he’ll live, but is also resigned to die.

  “Are you really so willing to die?”
I ask him.

  He doesn’t bother to respond, doesn’t even bother to hold the wall between us. I can slip into him easily, can feel the calmness in him with the strength of the rising tide. There’s a memory, deep within him, one that he’d forgotten himself but, as he feels me witnessing it, remembers with some nostalgia, the smallest of smiles. Løren knows he’s protected. He knows the love his ancestors hold for him. He’d been a boy, barely able to walk, and he’d come to the rocky shore. He’d gotten too close to the water, and a wave washed him into the sea, tide pulling him beneath, the dark water swirling around him. He’d nearly drowned, just as I had almost drowned so many years ago, too. But a woman had waited for him under the waves. Løren couldn’t remember much else. It’s possible he’d lost consciousness, unable to breathe. It’s possible he actually did die that day, and the spirits didn’t want him, and so sent him back into the world of the living. He was left on the sand for one of the slave girls to find. Løren has always been blessed by the spirits of these islands. So blessed that I can’t help but begin to wonder if he’s a spirit himself.

  “You loved Marieke,” Løren tells me. This isn’t a question. He doesn’t need confirmation. It’s only an observation of his, one with slight surprise.

  I don’t want to discuss Marieke. I want to forget her. The pain that fills me numbs my mind, and it becomes difficult to think, to breathe. I’m not a stranger to death. Death has followed me all my life, and I know this grief well.

  “I did love her,” I tell him.

  “You don’t believe the kongelig can love a slave they own.”

  “Marieke wasn’t my slave,” I tell him. “I’d granted her freedom.”

  He’s impatient at this. Yes, of course Marieke was my slave, when I wouldn’t grant her the coin my family owed her for her years of service, along with the coin owed her dead daughter and the girl’s father. How could she be anything but a slave, when she had nowhere to live, no food to eat, no opportunity? She’d had no choice but to stay with me, Løren believes, and this perhaps was the worst sort of slavery: one that’s mocking as it declares its freedom, punishing Marieke for making her imagine it’s her own choice in staying.

  But still, Løren must admit that I did love Marieke, even with the lies I’d told myself. He offers his condolences. They’re genuine, in respect for Marieke. He wonders if there might be hope for me after all, but this is something he’s wondered before, and something I’ve proven him wrong in time and again. I’d tried to have him killed, he reminds himself. But he can’t help but hold hope for me. Hope that I can be better—that I can change.

  “Have you ever mourned anyone?” I ask him.

  He tells me yes. He mourned the death of his friend who was hung by Engel Jannik after revealing Løren hiding in the caves.

  “Why would you mourn that boy, after he betrayed you?”

  “He didn’t know any better,” Løren tells me, and I can feel that he doesn’t mean because the boy was touched in the head. “He didn’t know anything else. How can I expect someone to imagine freedom if they’ve never seen freedom for themselves?”

  “You’ve never seen freedom,” I tell him, “yet you imagine it whenever you can.”

  “I don’t know why I’m different,” he says, “but I do know that I am. And so it’s my responsibility to imagine something others can’t see, and to show it to them.”

  I stand, waiting for Jytte’s arrival. I know that she means to have me and Løren killed—I just don’t know when. I try to come to terms with my death. I should have died along with my family when I was a child, so perhaps this is only what I had denied the spirits so long ago. They’ve come to collect on the debt I owe. So many have died because of me; because I lived, because I fought to return to these islands, because I wanted the power the kongelig denied me. It’s only right that I be punished now. I don’t know if the spirits would welcome me as they must have welcomed my family. I don’t know whether my family would have any love for me, or if my mother would be proud of me. This is what I fear more than dying: to be greeted by my mother, and to see the disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment not that I failed to rise among the kongelig, but that I betrayed her and my people. And what of Claus, Inga, Ellinor? I fear that they’d look at me with the same hatred that all the other islanders around me do. That I’d be exiled from my own family—my own people—even in death.

  I fear this more than I do the act of dying, but I do still want my life—it’s natural, isn’t it? To want to stay alive. To want to keep the body that I have, to not feel the stopping of my heart in my chest as I have felt in the bodies of so many before me. Løren falls asleep, and I can see snippets of memories mixed with his dreams—the rope and its tree, the water that swirls around him, the islanders who stand in the grove awaiting his return.

  It’s hours before I hear footsteps approaching. A guard opens the door to the cell, Jytte Solberg by his side. I can see in Jytte the chaos that has befallen the island. The king is dead. The kongelig, upon learning the truth, have started their escape. They have all packed their things, ready to leave for the ships that will take them to Koninkrijk. None want to be here on Hans Lollik Helle when the inevitable battle for power begins. They believe there’ll be an outright war between Jytte and Lothar, and Jytte thinks that they may be right in this. She hasn’t seen or heard from Lothar, and though she has known Herre Niklasson to be gentle, she also knows that he wants the power that he feels has been promised to him; and so if he has to kill her and all of her guards to sit atop the throne, he will do so. If this is how it must be, then Jytte will fight Lothar, and she’ll kill the old fool herself.

  But first there is me. Jytte knows it was a risk imprisoning me and my slave. She had no proof that I have done anything wrong on this royal island; can’t say with any absolute certainty that I’m the one who has been behind the murder of the king, beyond finding me in the throne room as she did. But she knows, too, that no one will speak for me. No one will care if I, with my dark skin, am imprisoned and left to rot in these cellars. I have no friends. I have no allies among the kongelig. Alida Nørup has already left for Koninkrijk, before she could even properly bury her brother at sea.

  Jytte should simply kill me. This is what she’d planned, at first—but now that my allies are gone, and I’m imprisoned, no longer a threat, she considers another option. I could be of use to her. This is what Jytte thinks; she’s had hours to consider this carefully, this spark of inspiration she couldn’t help but feel over the past weeks. That, though I wouldn’t work with her willingly, my kraft and my ability to know the thoughts and emotions of others, to even control their bodies, would be valuable if she can learn to control me. It would take work. The stripping of my kongelig status, of course—that would be as easy as a few spoken words. She’d send her guards to overtake Lund Helle, making it the property of the Solberg name along with the plantations, the crops, and coin. Next would be the stripping of my freedom. She would declare that, since Lund Helle would belong to the Solberg, and I am no longer a protected member of the kongelig, I’m no longer deemed a person of these islands who can control my own future. I would be made a slave. I would have to be broken in first. I’ve only ever known freedom my entire life and I would need to be reminded of my place. Jytte would keep me in this cellar. She would use her kraft on me. Drive me insane with my own fears and anxieties. Have me screaming for my own death within only one month’s time. She would offer me comfort. End the torture as a reward, whenever I did something that she wished. Bring another slave into my cage, perhaps, and order me to kill the islander to prove that I’m willing to do the work she needs me to do. Jytte would make me come to learn that if I do what she asks, my life would be bearable. She would successfully break me. Jytte is certain of this.

  “I would rather take my own life,” I tell Jytte. She’s surprised, frustrated that I can know her thoughts so easily, but impressed as well. I’ve only solidified her desire to take me and make me a slave of So
lberg Helle—to use my kraft as she wishes.

  The questioning doesn’t take place in the dungeons as I thought it would. Løren and I are brought above to the sitting room, as though we’re welcomed guests, though our hands are still tied, Løren told to stand against the wall as one of the slaves. Jytte sits across from me, wearing her pants and shirt, her hair tied up in a bun. Lothar stands over us. I’m surprised by this. Jytte and Lothar both think on how they’ll have to battle for their position as regent—that they’ll have to attempt to take one another’s life for the crown within just a few days’ time. But the time for that hasn’t come yet, and in the aftermath of the regent’s death, they act as allies. Both need answers still.

  The grief from Lothar comes in waves. He tries to hide it—tries to pretend that he’s nothing more than a kongelig who mourns the death of the king as any loyal adviser would. Lothar knows that the king had changed—knows that he wasn’t the man he loved when they were both boys—but he can’t help but mourn the boy Cristoff Valdemar had once been. He’d been beautiful, filled with light and hope and ambition. Lothar had always been drawn to Cristoff, a moth drawn to a flickering torch. And now the man is dead. He should be happy, too, for the clear path toward the throne. Lothar tries to remind himself of his goals, of his successors, of his legacy; but it’s difficult to feel that such things matter when he’s lost someone he loved. I know what Lothar feels. I try to forget Marieke’s death. I need to forget now if I’m to keep my mind sharp and have any chance of surviving the kongelig long enough to escape Hans Lollik Helle.

  “Elskerinde Jannik,” he says, “did you have a hand in the death of the king?”

  “I did not,” I say, and he knows that I’m not lying—but still, he wonders again if I’ve found a way around his kraft. Lothar knows that something’s wrong, not just about me but about all of the island of Hans Lollik Helle. It can’t be a coincidence that the season that I’m invited to the royal island is the same season that so many kongelig have met their ends, and that those who survive have escaped from the island, passing on the chance to become regent. This is all interconnected, he thinks; he just doesn’t know how.