Queen of the Struggle

by Nik Korpon

  “Nothing, I…” He pauses a second, arranging his words. “I still don’t get why they did that, back there.”

  I figured that was it. I let out a long sigh, not really sure how to explain allegiance and duplicity to a kid who has already seen too much.

  “Sometimes, it just happens,” is all I can muster.

  “But you guys – the guys you fought with before – you were all good, right?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “So why’d you agree to fight with Brighid and Ødven, if she was so bad? I mean, they destroyed everything we had, Dad. All of our stuff, in the apartment, it’s all gone because of them. Why’d you fight with them?”

  Heat spreads across my face, through my arms. It’s not anger, but an adjacent feeling. I crouch down onto my knee to come eye level with him.

  “There are two things you need to understand, son. Number one: in war, people lie. They do what they need to do and tell you what they need to tell you so they can win. That’s just how it goes.” I set my hands on his shoulders, making sure he’s focused solely on me. “But number two, and this is the most important thing: possessions are just things, and they will never destroy our family. Do you understand me? I told you before that I was never going to let something pull us apart, and I would die before that happened again. OK?”

  He mutters something noncommittal.

  “I need you to say you understand,” I say, “and I need you to mean it.”

  He finally looks me in the eyes. Something about his gaze, it just feels natural, organic. Like it’s familiar on a cellular level, because it’s like looking at myself.

  “I know,” he says. “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  He bites his lip a second, then says, “But I still hate them for it.”

  I clap his shoulder, because there’s no arguing with that. “I do too, kiddo. I do too.”

  I guide him back to our room and get him in his bed to sleep a while longer, but he just tosses and turns. After a few minutes, I hear him pad across the room toward my bunk. Without saying a word, I slide over and lift my blanket, and he curls up against me like a long-lost part of my body. Two minutes later, he’s snoring softly. I stare at the ceiling, listening to the soft rhythm of his breath, and it’s only a matter of moments before it lulls me to sleep as well.

  The second night is rougher than the first, but I feel like I handle it well. I only vomit twice, in any case. The boys sleep just as soundly. The winds stick around for much of the morning and afternoon, which the captain says will impede our progress, but it’s time that seems to stall. The sun stays perched high above us, in possibly the longest afternoon ever.

  After the boys eat their third meal of the day, I go up to the bridge and check the navigation clock. It’s after nine. At night. But the sun is still sitting at the three-quarters mark, when we should be squinting to see things in the dark.

  I go over to the captain, my head dizzy and my body sloshing with liquid inside, disoriented. “How much longer do we have?”

  He nods forward and points with one hand.

  Not far in the distance, I can see buildings jutting up against the dimming sky, gleaming and glistening even from this far away.

  I head back down to the room and tell the boys, who are already yawning.

  “I think I need a nap or something,” Donael says. “Maybe I didn’t sleep so well.”

  “Yeah,” I say, unsure how else to answer. “Maybe.”

  Not more than twenty minutes later, the captain tells the crew to prepare for docking. We come out of the room and as the boat slips into the harbor we are greeted by sleek, angular buildings made of glass and polished metal, streets made of cobblestones instead of potholes, cars zipping along the street and citizens flowing along the sidewalks and scenic pathways. The feeling of dizziness and liquidity doubles, and not from the sky that refuses to darken.

  Slåtann stifles a yawn as he comes up next to me. “We’ll get you right to your accommodations so you can get your boys down to sleep. I know mine become cranky when they stay up too late.”

  “Yeah,” I say, my eyes tracking across an amphitheater and a football stadium near the water’s edge. “That sounds good.”

  The boat judders against the pristine dock.

  “Well, Henraek,” Slåtann says, gesturing broadly across the city. “Welcome to Vårgmannskjør.”

  8.

  EMERÍANN

  The soldier slides open the door to my cell and I don’t immediately lash out and cut him. I think I’m getting soft.

  “On your feet,” he says.

  “Suck my dick.”

  “Excuse me?” He steps forward, hand now resting on the butt of his rifle.

  “I thought we were giving arbitrary commands.”

  He runs his tongue over his teeth and I can almost hear him thinking how much he’d enjoy beating my ass.

  “I have orders from Befälhavare Tobeigh to collect you and move you to new accommodations.”

  “That’s what you’re calling restraining cells now, accommodations?”

  His jaw flexes, nostrils flare as he exhales hard. “If you are unwilling to cooperate, I will be forced to make you comply.”

  I take a read of him, his body language. He obviously wants to smash that rifle against my face, but if he wanted to shoot me, he could have already done it.

  “Where are these new accommodations?”

  We pause by the front desk to Clodhna, opposite of where we entered. Three men pace by the guard, their rifles in hand and ready. The soldier holds up a blanket.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A blanket. Put it on.”

  “Blow me.” One of the guards snickers. Another scowls.

  The soldier gives me that look again, his patience wearing thin. “Do you want to get shot?”

  “You’re going to shoot me if I don’t get under the blanket?”

  “No. But they will.” He leans down and points at a monitor on the desk, displaying feeds from multiple security cameras. “When they see our uniforms, do you think they’ll recognize your face quick enough to miss you when they start shooting? Are you willing to take that chance?”

  On the east side camera, a group of soldiers hunkers down behind clear riot shields as rebels lob bricks and chunks of wood. On the west side, two soldiers drag an unconscious woman across the street by her armpits then toss her on a pile of four other unconscious people. At least, I hope they’re unconscious. The south camera is mostly obscured by black smoke, but I’m not sure what’s burning.

  They’re out there brutalizing everyone I fought with and I’m stuck in here, cuffed and passive, listening to Brighid apologize.

  This is bullshit.

  I swing my cuffed hands up and wrap them around the soldier’s neck then yank backwards, pulling him toward me. In my head I can already see us falling backward on the floor, then me wrapping my legs around him and yanking the cuffs until he chokes, then using his body to shield me as I grab his rifle and mow down the guards.

  But he plants his back foot before I can flip us, then latches his thick hands on my forearms and hurls me over his head. I crash against the glass wall and my hip digs into the floor when I land.

  Before I can blink away the stars, his rifle muzzle is in my face. His chest is heaving, his face red and eyes wild. I can see his finger twitching on the trigger and expect at any moment for him to unleash a bestial scream and spread my brains all over the lobby. Instead he pitches the blanket at me, slamming my head against the glass.

  “I’m walking out the door now,” he says, his voice deadpan. “You don’t come now, I’ll be happy to deal with the consequences of shooting you.”

  There are scores of rebels and citizens outside, but there are also a shit-ton of Ragjarøn soldiers. If I run, this soldier will gun me down. Or the guards will. Or one of the other soldiers will. Supposedly Brighid wants me alive, and they haven’t killed me yet despite a good amou
nt of provocation, so I guess they’re not lying about that. And giving in now will give me a little more time to figure my way out of this.

  I push myself up to my feet, blanket draped over my arms.

  “I’m going to need some guidance,” I say to the soldier.

  He comes back toward me, says, “That’s one word for it,” then drapes the blanket over my head and leads me outside.

  I recoil immediately at all the commotion. After having been inside the deathly quiet rooms of Clodhna for several days, the noise of the street is damn near deafening. Gunshots. Screaming. Cars backfiring. Cinder blocks tumbling as explosives rock the air. I make my way down the sidewalk by watching his heels just under the edge of the blanket. For a second I lose his trail and end up on a dirt patch, banging my shins against the edge of a water fountain. Figures. I look down and there’s a finger lying in the dirt. The soldier calls out for me to stay close and I follow the sound of his voice.

  A minute later, he tells me to stop. There’s another voice, sounds like a younger soldier. Then a door opens. The younger voice asks for my hand and helps me into the car.

  “Keep your head covered, miss. There’s some crazy people out here today.” He’s got a slight twang at the edge of his words. He’s definitely not Ragjarøn, and he’s not from the hills either, which means he’s probably lived in Eitan for a while. Which means Brighid has either secretly recruited people or he was part of a group she arranged to be here. Neither makes me feel better than the other.

  I keep the blanket on, partially because I don’t want someone getting a potshot at me and partially because it’s cold as balls in here. Must be a commandeered Tathadann vehicle. Light slips in through a small hole in the blanket. It’s perfect because, despite knowing that I should stay covered for my safety, I have to know where we’re going. The outside passes in flashes and slivers, but what I see is enough to chill me.

  Rebels lined up against the wall, hands on the back of their heads, waiting as Ragjarøn soldiers load them onto transport vehicles, taking them who-knows-where.

  A butcher shop owned by a rebel sympathizer who let us take over his back room so we could drill through the floor and connect to the underground tunnels and evade the Tathadann, although it ended up being only a small portion – not even a quarter-mile – of the rumored tunnel system.

  Piles of bodies. White ones, brown ones. In rags, in Amergi clothing, in Brigu garb. Some of them whole, some of them not.

  Our uprising, our chance to be free, gone. Everything we’d fought for over the last six months – and the year before that – erased in a few days.

  I slink down in my seat and let my head fall against the blanket.

  The car ride barely lasts fifteen minutes. We slow to a stop and the soldier rolls down the window and speaks to someone. Then we pull forward. A checkpoint. I peek through the hole but don’t recognize where we are. We continue down a small road, potholes making the car judder and shake enough that the autodriver has trouble navigating and the soldier has to take over. Something that looks like a wall or a store passes by, then a tree. Where the hell are we?

  The soldier stops and exits the car. I sit and wait. Outside, I hear him talk to another soldier, something about secured location, sightlines, penetrability. The young soldier gets out of the car and, after receiving the OK, opens my door.

  “We’re going inside, miss,” he says as he takes my arm. “Watch your step.”

  We head up a staircase that had been cement at one point, before it was overtaken by moss and dirt. Once we’re inside, the young soldier tells me I can take my blanket off.

  The room is small. I might call it cozy in a different situation. Old wooden floors. A few worn armchairs that look like they’d be comfortable. A kitchen table made of reclaimed wooden planks. Three paintings on the wall, abstract shapes in contrasting colors that smash against one another and seem to vibrate with the way the brushstrokes cross.

  “Miss,” the young soldier says, “if you could follow me upstairs.”

  We pass through the dim hallway. There are rectangles on the wall, a few shades lighter than their background. Family pictures from before the house was commandeered.

  At the end of the hall is a tight stairwell up to the second floor. This whole place has the feeling of a cabin out in the woods, but we’re only a short distance from Clodhna. Still, there’s a hush that fills the place, like the people who lived here suffered some tragedy that couldn’t be reckoned with so they just decided to never mention it and it absorbed into the house. Or maybe I’m just too inside my head, like Henraek used to say.

  Used to? Don’t say that, woman.

  “This is your room,” the younger soldier says, his hand showing me the way.

  It’s only a little bigger than my former cell, but there’s an actual bed with sheets, a freestanding mirror – albeit one that has oxidized and fogged over – and a small dresser, though I don’t have any clothes to put in there. A small window, the size of a manhole cover, too small to climb out of and too high up to drop down from. The floor is carpet, which makes me cringe at the thought of all the years of dirt and grime ground into it. I glance outside the window, see a few trees in a small backyard ringed in by a fence, but still no landmarks.

  “Miss, you need to eat,” he says.

  “Eat?”

  He points at a night table in the corner, at a plate holding a sandwich stuffed full of meat and cheese with fresh fruit on the side. I pick up the sandwich, sniff it, and my mouth instantly waters.

  “Holy shit, is this salami?” He nods yes. “Real salami? Not ground up pigeon with so much spice you can’t tell?”

  “No, miss. It’s real. But you do need to eat quickly.”

  I’m about to bite into it before I hear what he said. “Quickly?” I say. “Quickly before what?”

  “You’ll be accompanying Befälhavare Tobeigh on a mission.”

  “I’m what?” My hand drops, pieces of meat falling out and landing on the carpet. “What kind of mission?”

  “That’s above my rank, miss. You’ll have to ask Befälhavare Tobeigh.”

  “I will,” I say, bringing the sandwich to my mouth. “As soon as I see her.”

  He clears his throat. “Miss, she’s waiting downstairs.”

  9.

  HENRAEK

  I had to carry both of the boys into our room, then lasted all of ten minutes before collapsing on the bed and falling asleep.

  I wake up what feels like a few hours later – disoriented because of the foreign, magical sunlight streaming through our windows. It’s brighter now than it had been on our arrival. I roll over to face Emeríann, and find only an untouched pillow on her side of the bed. Right. I remember now. I wonder where she is, if she’s awake or sleeping, if she knows that there are places where the sun actually does shine. I wonder if she’s safe, if she broke free of Ragjarøn and is hunkered down with rebels, planning the next phase of the uprising, the war in Eitan that never seems to end, or if she’s still under Ragjarøn’s control. I wonder if she’s thinking about me too.

  I struggle to pull myself upright in bed. My mouth is tacky, head filled with cotton. I blink and glance around for a clock but find none. The boys are still snoring, both of them lying on top of the covers with their shoes still on. We have no other clothes to wear, but I must’ve been really tired if I sloughed them off in their bed without taking off their shoes. I push aside thoughts of all the bacteria that I brought into their sheets as I pad quietly through the room, taking it in. Minimalist décor. Light colored walls with polished metal shelving. Carpet the color of an Eitan summer evening, which strikes me as nostalgic in a strange way. The room next to this is something like a sitting room – couch, two chairs, dinner table, coffee table – that extends into the kitchen, all decorated the same austere way. But the far wall is a window. The entire wall, just glass stretching from floor to ceiling, end to end.

  A halo of condensation forms around my hands when I p
ress them on the glass. The whole city unfurls ten stories beneath us, as far out as I can see. The harbor where we came in sits to the far west, a few boats motoring in and out. Trams slip quietly through the streets as people move around them, like water parting around a duck. I glance up and figure there must be at least another twenty stories above us. This building is easily twice as tall as anything in Eitan. Any tall buildings we had were destroyed during one of the wars waged over the last sixty years. The window is so large and immersive, I feel like I’m leaning out over the void, and when I look down I get a rush of vertigo. The wavering feeling could also be cognitive dissonance, because nothing about this city resembles what I’ve always heard about Vårgmannskjør, not to mention the whole country of Brusandhåv. Hell, the name of the capital means “People of the Wolf,” which aptly described the citizens here. Or so I’d thought.

  There’s a large square in what appears to be the city center, and in the middle of the square sits a statue. It’s hard to tell from this distance but it appears to be a two-headed wolf with the body of a man, and the fact that I can determine that from this distance means the statue must be massive.

  “Holy shit,” Donael says behind me.

  “Watch your mouth,” I say this time. He’s always so quiet. I never hear him enter.

  He stands beside me. “Come on. You’d say the same thing. Look at that!”

  “OK. Maybe you’re right.”

  “I thought this place was supposed to be terrible,” he says, pressing his face against the glass. “Like, people eating each other and stuff.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  He shrugs. “School.”

  “You can’t believe what they taught you at school. The Tathadann lies with every breath and their schools are just a center to brainwash the next generation.”

  He looks at me like he’s already bored of what I’m saying. To be fair, I do rail against them a good amount.

  “I meant other kids at school. Craesa’s dad told her that in war they wear the skin of the people they kill like a mask.”