King of the Rising

by Kacen Callender

  “She isn’t useful collateral, and she’s made too many mistakes,” I say. “It would be satisfying to kill her and be done with it.” Sigourney worries that I’ve changed my mind. I continue, looking at her with the pity I can’t help but feel. “But she’s still an islander. We have a chance to rebuild our home. When you envision our homeland, what do you see?” I ask the men. “Do you see a land of blood and violence, fighting for power, an echo of the Fjern? Or do you see a land as it was meant to be?”

  I feel the emotions of the men in front of me. Their rage. Their pain. They’ve all lost so much. Georg’s brother didn’t survive the night of the uprising. I see his memories as though they’re my own. His brother wasn’t family by blood but was a man Georg had always looked up to, who had cared for Georg as if the boy was his own. His brother had been made to join the guard years before. It was the reason Georg joined as well. He was trained under the heat of the sun, so searing hot that some men fell under its mercy and died of stroke. Georg was whipped nearly every day for any mistake he made in his training, his back a tangle of scars. And it was all so he could have a chance to be closer to the only family Georg had. His brother stood like an unbending tree in front of the kongelig. Even when he was whipped, hung by his wrists from a tree, it seemed to Georg that the man was unbreakable. The day the whispers had spread of a revolt, Georg’s brother had asked for him to stay in the barracks—to stay out of the fight. Let him and the other guards fight for their freedom. Georg was too anxious for his blade to cut flesh and bone. He joined the fight the night of the revolution. His brother learned that he hadn’t stayed in the safety of the barracks and left his position to look for Georg. Georg had found his brother dead on the beach, his stomach cut open. Georg punishes himself. He should have stayed in the barracks like his brother asked him to. Georg believes that he should be dead instead. But he’s still alive. This is what makes him angriest of all.

  I scoop my hands into the anger. It’s wet like white clay, molding in my hands and draining between my fingers until I’m only left with the sharp glass of his pain. I push the glass into my palms, wincing as I try to absorb the emotion. I can’t take all of it. His pain is inconsolable, with the depths of the sea. But I do take some of the burden from Georg. I can see his face soften as he stands in front of me, his rage quivering as his eyes become wet. Sigourney Rose has always had the kraft to sense another’s thoughts and emotions, to control their mind and body—but she never considered how she could use her power with a little bit of empathy.

  Georg doesn’t realize what I’ve done. His heart pounds and he tries to force down the swelling grief for his brother.

  I continue to speak to him and all the men. “How do you envision our land without the Fjern?” I ask them. “When I picture the islands, there’s only peace. We rely on one another without attempting to cut each other down for power or coin. This is what separates us from them. We won’t use each other in the way that the kongelig have used us. If we want to be different, we need to begin that change. We won’t abandon our own people.”

  The men hesitate. Georg works his jaw back and forth. The frustration he feels is with himself. He had been determined to see Sigourney Rose dead, but he’s beginning to waver. He doesn’t understand why he wavers, though I can see the shift in emotion. Sigourney sees it, too. She gazes at me openly. Fear echoes, but she’s curious as well. Astonished by the power she’s witnessed. She wants to understand how I managed to control Georg as I did. She wants that power for herself.

  “Sigourney Rose could help us win this insurrection. We don’t know how she could be useful yet. But if we kill her, it’ll be too late when we need her in the future.”

  The hesitance remains, but only because the men, Georg included, are afraid of what I will do once Sigourney is released. I could tell Malthe what happened here tonight. Malthe is not as merciful as I am. Though the kongelig are gone, Malthe has still used the whip on his guards when they don’t obey his commands. I’ve suggested that he not, as has Marieke, but Malthe has told us that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with how he leads his men.

  “I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done tonight,” I promise them, my voice low. “You won’t be punished.”

  Though anger and hatred still rages through him, Georg steps away. Without another word, he begins to march down the hill, returning to the barracks where the guards under Malthe have slept. The other men follow, their torches flickering. Some look over their shoulders at me as they walk. It’s strange to them that I would spend so much effort in saving a former member of the kongelig, especially one that had been my mistress—one that had tried to have me killed. It was only because of the weakness of the tree branch and the mercy of the spirits that I still stand here. I understand their confusion. I see how that confusion could take root and grow into mistrust and disdain. I need to be careful. The hatred that the men hold for Sigourney Rose could easily transfer to me.

  When the guards leave me and Sigourney alone, we stand in the dark of the courtyard in silence. With the torchlight gone, the only light is from the silver full moon above. Sigourney’s legs are weak and shaking. She almost falls in her relief, but she would never willingly show me that vulnerability.

  “Thank you,” she says. Her voice is hoarse.

  There’s an echo between us. An echo as she feels that I know her thoughts, and that she knows mine. The longer I have been in Sigourney Rose’s company, the more her kraft has melded with my own. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. To suddenly enter another—their minds, their emotions—is invasive. The power is strongest with Sigourney. Her thoughts reveal that she believes it’s because she is the source of this kraft. She finds it interesting, the way my kraft has evolved. The ability to end another’s power and take that power as my own has grown tenfold.

  “You’ve grown stronger,” she tells me. It’s been weeks since I last saw her.

  I don’t bother to answer. She senses that I see this is true. Though it was a shadow in comparison to my ability now, my kraft hasn’t changed. I could stop the abilities of those around me for a time and borrow a shadow of that power in turn. But it feels like my kraft had only been embers, glowing dimly in the dark—and that Sigourney’s power was oil, sparking my kraft into a blazing flame. My power has begun to evolve in ways I’m not sure I understand. It’s odd to feel indebted to Sigourney Rose for this. I don’t like the feeling of owing her anything.

  I gesture, and she walks without struggle. She marches back up the stairs and through the heavy front doors, down the dark hall of mold and dust, air covered with a layer of ash and salt. Paintings were torn from the walls, leaving faded shadows where they’d once hung. Rooms hold overturned pieces of furniture and rotting and tattered curtains. Some rooms leave scorched evidence of little fires behind. Sigourney wasn’t put in the dungeons, but in an empty room at the top of a set of collapsing stairs. One wrong step, and the staircase of stone might come crashing down. The room’s door is usually barred from the outside, locking her within. Inside of the chamber, part of the wall has fallen, giving a view of the island and the black night. The shadows of bats flit across the sky, and the chorus of birds and frogs and crickets rises to the moon and smear of stars. I can see the shimmer of the black sea in the distance and hear the gentle hush of the waves washing ashore.

  Sigourney had once considered jumping from the fallen wall and risking death, but she’d decided against it. She was left here with her cot and ragged sheet. Marieke has taken care to nurse her wounds with aloe and herbs. The woman brings her food—salted goat and fish, mango stew and porridge in the mornings. She brings books to Sigourney so that she can read. She carries a bucket of saltwater to help Sigourney wash when the sun is at its height to help her cool off from the heat since she lives in this room without much shade from the burning light. Islanders see Marieke do this every day, and they see Sigourney living in a room of Herregård Constantjin, and they’re angry.

  Sigourney wonders why
I saved her as she steps into her room. I’ve saved her several times. I was supposed to have cut her throat the night of the uprising, and the day that I imprisoned her here, Malthe sent me with a blade to complete the job—but each time, I let her live. Sigourney can recognize that I hate her as much as I hate any of the kongelig. Why, then, do I show her mercy? She wonders this without speaking, knowing that I hear her thoughts. I leave and close the door, pressing the bar back into place.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The meeting room hasn’t changed. Mold still leaks from the stone floor, and the wallpaper cracks and peels like dirt under the sun. Seven of us are here. The newcomers, the ones who have joined us in this meeting room—Geir, Olina, Tuve, and Kjerstin—are at the other end of the table, while Marieke sits to the right of Malthe, and I’m on his other side. Malthe is at the head, where the dead king once sat. Agatha’s seat remains empty. The girl died almost a month ago, but we haven’t had time to properly mourn. Her burial at sea had been a quick ceremony without tears. Her memory deserved better, but there were too many plans and strategies to discuss, too much training to oversee, too much work to be done.

  Malthe doesn’t look at her chair. He’s angry that he allowed her to leave the room that night, costing her life. He’s angry with me as well. If I’d cut Sigourney Rose’s neck as I was ordered to on the ship as she attempted to escape the islands, then Agatha would still be alive. Instead, I’d brought Sigourney here because she’d asked me to. I brought Sigourney here, questioning the decision to kill her and hoping to show her mercy. Malthe was furious. He demanded that Sigourney Rose be killed, and Agatha volunteered. Agatha had been eager for the chance to prove her power against the Elskerinde for a long time. She’d chased Sigourney from the room, hunting her across the island.

  The events of the night are unclear when I see the memories in Sigourney’s mind. Too much of it had been muddled by Agatha’s kraft, and she couldn’t tell what had and hadn’t been real. The only fact is that we’d found Agatha’s body on the rocks, a deep wound in her side. Malthe guesses that she’d smashed her head as she fell from the cliffs. Agatha had been stubborn, and she’d let her anger control her, but her youth had promise. None of us said this, not out loud, but we hoped that Agatha would be the savior we needed. Her power—her kraft—had been the strongest I’d seen. She was stronger than me. Stronger than any of the kongelig—stronger than even Sigourney Rose. She’d had the potential to save us all, if she had lived.

  We’ve spent hours in the meeting room already, as we do every day with our updates and maps and strategies and plans. Malthe is frustrated. “What are we waiting for? The spirits to come and free us from the Fjern? We must attack Niklasson Helle.”

  Niklasson Helle is where the kongelig wait with their power. It’s where Lothar Niklasson went after he and other kongelig escaped from Hans Lollik—where he orders his Fjern to attack our islands.

  Geir, an older man, is thin and gives the appearance of someone who might break if he were to fall, with gaunt cheeks and white hair. He’d spent his years hidden away on Nørup Helle. The man had been a part of the network of whispers, helping to organize the attacks to the north whenever messages came to him from Hans Lollik Helle. He made a habit of singing the songs of islanders in his mind, again and again, so that no one would be able to discern his thoughts. Whether they had kraft or not, it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. Songs fill his mind. The old habit is difficult for him to break.

  His voice is low when he speaks. “They outnumber us with both resources and the number of Fjern guards who will fight for them.”

  Olina is against this plan as well. “We would lose the battle. We’re safer here on Hans Lollik Helle. Would be safer, if we moved our command to the north.” Olina is older, perhaps in her thirties or forties, though she isn’t sure of her age. She has always been a cautious woman. She doesn’t take unnecessary risk.

  “We’re in a war,” Malthe says. “We’ll never be safe. Don’t delude yourself.”

  “It would be better to stay here, barricaded against the Fjern, and wait for aid. I’ve prepared letters making requests.” Olina has mastered the tongue of the Fjern and can write in their hand, trained by her master, now dead, so that she could write his letters for him whenever his fingers cramped in his old age. Olina regrets poisoning the old man, a cousin of the Solberg, when she really did have much to thank him for. These are the ways the Fjern have taken our minds. We should be grateful to them that they haven’t killed us and that they provide us with food and clothes as they take our freedom. There are some islanders that believe these lies. It worries me that Olina is one of them.

  Malthe shakes his head. “You’ve prepared letters that won’t make it past Skov Helle before the Fjern find the scouts and send us back their heads.”

  Though I agree with him on this, I also realize that we can’t attack Niklasson Helle—not yet. We aren’t ready. “We need to wait for the right opportunity.”

  “This is the right opportunity,” Malthe says. He still can’t look at me. He hasn’t been able to, since Agatha’s death. “They wouldn’t expect an attack. We hold the advantage of surprise.”

  “We have no advantage,” I tell him. “Our power is here, on Hans Lollik Helle. We need to communicate with the other islands first.”

  The islands to the north. Our revolution was meant to spread to all of the islands of Hans Lollik as we took back our home from the Fjern. But our people lost the battles of Larsen and Jannik, and by the time the message to begin the slaughter of the masters had spread to Solberg and Niklasson and Lund Helle, the Fjern had been warned by the fires and smoke in the distance. Scouts and survivors that returned to the royal island reported that the Fjern attacked the islanders before the battles could begin. Guards, whether they had agreed to be a part of the rebellion or not, were gathered and indiscriminately killed. Solberg, Niklasson, and Lund Helle are the strongest of all the islands of Hans Lollik. They’ve become a safe haven of all the Fjern of these islands, including the few kongelig who managed to escape Hans Lollik Helle.

  “When we attack, we need to ensure that all of the islands are ready to attack as one instead of as a disjointed ambush.” And with patrols of the Fjern and daily battles between scouts and guards at sea, it’s been difficult to pass messages to the islands of the north. The islands we do hold haven’t been helpful in this war. Valdemar, Skov, Årud, Nørup, and Ludjivik Helle have not proven useful when it comes to resources or strategic positioning.

  The others agree with me. It’s better to wait until we can attack as one, instead of sending smaller troops of guards to their deaths. Malthe isn’t pleased.

  “And what, exactly, is it that you do, Løren?” Malthe asks me. “Why are you allowed into this meeting room, giving your opinions and making decisions?”

  I feel frustration rip through me at Malthe’s question, and then shame. I don’t like to feel emotion. Emotion is a distraction. Even something like anger, rage—the hatred I feel for the Fjern—can cloud my mind. Still, I need these emotions, or I’ll become complacent. Some islanders have convinced themselves that a life of slavery is all that they are meant for, happy to live under the foot of their masters. There were some across the islands that fought for the Fjern, willing to betray their own people for the only life they’d ever known. They were too afraid to take their freedom. Disappointment, pity, rage. It’s necessary to feel emotion so that I’ll have the will to fight.

  Every person at this table has a task and a purpose. I have none. I’m only here because my kraft had been helpful once. But it isn’t helpful, not anymore. I have no role. When Malthe asks me what it is that I do, the others look at me and wait for my response. What else can I say?

  “Nothing,” I tell him. “I do nothing.”

  No one speaks. Malthe clenches his jaw in his silence. The kraft isn’t mine, but I can still feel the echoes of Sigourney Rose’s power move through me. It’s difficult to determine if the disdain I feel in Mal
the is his own or if it’s one that I’ve imagined. You do nothing, I can feel him think, and yet you have the respect of all.

  “We’ve achieved everything that we can for the day,” he announces. “Tuve, your messenger will leave before morning light.”

  The messenger will likely die in an attempt to reach Årud Helle to update the islanders who wait for their commands. Few messengers have reached the other islands alive. It was only in the early days of the rebellion that we were able to contact them and share our updates and plans. It’s been nearly two weeks since we last heard from any of the other islands. Tuve acknowledges Malthe’s order with a nod, and the older man dismisses us, but Marieke interrupts. “Wait. There’s still a point we need to discuss.”

  Malthe doesn’t hide his impatience. He understands which point Marieke means.

  “We can’t just leave her in this manor,” Marieke insists. “What will we do with Elskerinde Rose?”

  “You still call her an Elskerinde,” Kjerstin notes. Kjerstin is younger, only nineteen years old. Her hair is plaited and falls down her back and shoulders. Her skin is a warm brown that gives a feeling of the sun as it sets, sky red and orange with fire. The same fire is in her brown eyes. Even with a face she keeps blank, trying to hide any emotion and expression from us, I have the sense that she’s laughing at everyone around her. She laughs because it’s amusing to her that we think we’ll win this insurrection against the Fjern, when it’s obvious to her that we will all die.