“What do you think waits for us?” he asks me.
“I hope it’s the spirits who wait to welcome us.”
He nods stiffly, already thinking of how he’s afraid to leave this world, even if it was one that wasn’t meant for him and even if death will mean its own freedom. He closes his eyes. He’s ready. I’m quick when I cut his throat. I don’t want him to suffer. I help him to the sand and he grips my shirt. He swallows, trying to speak words he doesn’t understand, until he becomes still.
Grief floods through me. Grief for Georg, grief for each and every single one of my people, everyone who lives and everyone who doesn’t. There’s rage, too—anger for those who’ve taken everything from us. Fury for myself for failing to take our freedom. But though I have failed, I can feel the sliver of hope. Someone will try again. Someone will succeed.
I carry Georg to the water to help lay his body to rest. I stand in the shallows, watching pulsing waves take him away. I should decide how I want to die. I could walk into the waves as well or cut open my own veins. Instead, I stand in the shallows as if I’m waiting. I already know who I’m waiting for.
Pink light shines through the sky when the ship carrying Sigourney Rose and Lothar Niklasson arrives. They anchor out at sea, and a smaller boat carrying her, Lothar, and Kalle brings them to the shallows and to the beach. Kalle helps Sigourney out of the boat and into the water, the ends of her dress wet as she walks onto the sand. Lothar Niklasson follows her. He looks older than the last time I’d seen him. His skin has become thinner, blue veins running along his flesh, turning red in the heat. His hair is white, his eyes pale. If he had not died in the war, he wouldn’t have had many more years to live. He sees this as well as anyone else. Yet he had his plans. He meant to give these islands to his heirs, so that the Niklasson name would live on as the rulers of Hans Lollik. He would only be able to enjoy his position for a short time, but he would still be written in history as the first of the Niklasson regents. He won’t be able to. He hasn’t seen what I do. It should be obvious to the man, that she means to kill him and take all of his power, but she has managed to convince him that she truly meant to serve him and all the kongelig. That her only ambition was to keep her life.
She waited until this moment: when she, Lothar, and the slave he’d thought loyal were away from all of his guards. Lothar looks at me with disdain. I’ve caused him so much trouble these last few months, and he still only sees me as a boy. The bastard son of Jannik, who had his kraft and should have been killed many years before. He curses Engel for allowing me to live. But it doesn’t matter. He will have Kalle kill me and send my body into the sea.
This is what he believes. Sigourney looks at me with the slightest smile. She knows I’ve seen the truth. She feels no urgency. Lothar Niklasson won’t survive this island. She walks to my side and looks down at me as I sit in the sand. She finds it rude that I don’t rise to greet her.
“Where are the rest of your friends, Løren?”
I tell her that they’re dead. Lothar doesn’t believe me, but Sigourney sees that it’s the truth. She sees that I have been sitting here, waiting for either her or the courage to end my life, whichever came first.
“I’m disappointed that you’d consider taking that route instead of facing me.”
Lothar is impatient with Sigourney’s games. He speaks to his guard. “Kill him and be done with it.”
Kalle doesn’t move. Sigourney keeps her gaze on me.
Lothar is confused—for a brief moment, he thinks Kalle has not heard him. It’s only a moment later that he senses the true danger. He isn’t sure he can believe this. He’d questioned Sigourney thoroughly, asked her if she would give him her loyalty, asked if she would try to take his life in pursuit of power—and besides that, he couldn’t take Sigourney Rose as a serious threat. If she kills him, the kongelig will not willingly follow her. He believes she has no purpose in taking his life. He underestimates her. He looks at Kalle, who speaks no words as he drives his machete into his master’s stomach. Lothar gasps, blood on his lips. Kalle pushes him away so that he falls to the sand, groaning. Sigourney means to let him die in pain.
She doesn’t spare him a glance. She can feel his pain, his rage at her betrayal, his surprise and desperation and hopelessness. She feels it all and relishes in it. And she can feel me as well. She feels my numbness and my acceptance of death. She asks me to join her in Herregård Constantjin. She tells me she will wait there for her allies to arrive. She wants my acceptance and forgiveness for what she sees as her only choice. There’s much she wants to explain to me, before she sees me die.
I’ve weakened in the past two days. I haven’t had any food or water. Sigourney orders Kalle to help me to my feet and down the path. She surveys the island as she walks ahead of us. There’s much to be done to return Hans Lollik Helle to its previous beauty. She laments that Marieke will not be a part of this. She’s already seen in me that everyone is dead, including the woman that had raised her. Sigourney has already mourned Marieke. She’s already assumed the woman had died with each battle that passed. She’s mourned Marieke, and she will mourn again in the privacy of her rooms at night. But she can’t allow the woman’s death to distract her. Not when she’s so close to everything she’s worked for. Everything she’s ever wanted.
Kalle is silent as he grips my arm over his shoulders and drags me toward the manor on the hill. He has such a deep hatred for me that he wants to go against Sigourney Rose’s orders and kill me. He’s impatient to see me punished. Not for failing the islands, but for leading the insurrection. He thinks that this is what destroyed these lands. Too many people have died unnecessarily. Kalle would rather play by the rules of the Fjern. He would rather play their game, even if it was built to keep him at a disadvantage. The Fjern would not be able to deny him his freedom if he did all that they asked. This is what he believes. He doesn’t see the value in burning the islands to the ground and starting again. It’s unfair to people like him, who have worked for their freedom all their lives.
I’m taken to the manor, past the broken fountain where I’d saved Sigourney from Georg and the other guards who’d meant to kill her that night.
“I’m grateful that you did save me,” she says, not looking at me as she sweeps into the front doors of the manor, Kalle bringing me in after her. “You could have let me die. You did not.”
I should have let her die. This answer is clear now, if it comes to her life or mine.
“Perhaps,” she acknowledges. “But would killing me have really saved your revolution?” She thinks this is only a lie I tell myself. That I put the blame on her because I don’t want to see the truth: This uprising, though it took a lifetime of planning, was doomed from the beginning. She does not think an uprising like ours would have ever won against the Fjern.
She thinks that hers is the only way any islander would have been successful in taking back our power. “You think that you were meant for this moment. That the spirits saved you time and again and guided you so that you could lead our people to freedom. I think the same of myself.”
We sit in the meeting room. She takes the head of the table, where I once sat, and where Malthe sat before me, and where the regent of the Fjern sat before him as well. Kalle roughly drops me into a seat farther down the table and takes a position standing behind Sigourney. I feel dazed and faint. The lack of food, the overwhelming kraft—Sigourney’s thoughts, her emotions, and memories assault me. She sits calmly as she waits for me to catch my breath. I wish that she wouldn’t. I agree with Kalle. It would be better if they simply killed me.
“There are things I need you to see.”
“You only want to make yourself feel better about my death and your betrayal of the islands.”
She doesn’t answer this. In her mind she has convinced herself that I speak illogically, angry that I’ve been bested. I’m glad that Marieke isn’t here to see this. Sigourney had the opportunity, time and again, to become the woman these i
slands needed. She saw that the path she chose was wrong, and still she took it, deciding instead to tell herself that her selfishness would benefit her people.
“Is it really so wrong to want the power of the crown?” she asks me. “I want to be regent. I’ve worked for that position. I deserve that position.”
I don’t want to argue with her. I want Kalle to kill me and be done with it, if that’s what he’s to do. But she still wants me to see.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The battles of Årud and Nørup had been good for Sigourney. Though the Fjern still viewed her as less than human, they did also begin to see her with the positivity that one might feel for a prized pet. She could have used the opportunity to help further the revolution for the islanders. Instead, she attacked her own people and won the Fjern the two islands they needed to finally tip the balance of the war in the favor of the kongelig.
When she returned to Niklasson Helle, it was to a welcome she never before experienced among the Fjern. She knew it was not an admiration she should value. It was the same sort of love one might have for a goat they’d grown particularly fond of, or a horse that had finally been tamed. Yet she couldn’t help but be glad that the Fjern had begun to recognize her worth. It was something she had worked for her entire life, something she didn’t think she’d ever witness.
The recognition angered my brother. Aksel Jannik had stayed on Niklasson Helle with the other surviving kongelig reluctantly. It was the only place he could remain and stay safe from the battles that’d overtaken the islands and the sea, but he hated being trapped among the other smug Fjern. Before the war, he had only continued his responsibilities as a son of the kongelig because this is what his dying mother would have wanted of him. He had no desire to be on the same island as Jytte Solberg and Gertrude Nørup and Lothar Niklasson. Least of all was the desire to be anywhere near the woman he’d married. His hatred for her and himself only grew every time he saw her in the courtyards and sat with her for dinner with the other kongelig and shared the same bed with her, as he was prone to do when he’d had enough sugarcane wine. The news that she had won the islands Årud and Nørup Helle, and the Fjern’s congratulations toward her, enraged him. He’d followed Sigourney to her chambers. His only intention was to remind her that she was still an islander and should have been a slave of the kongelig. Instead, he heard as Sigourney spoke to Kalle about her plans. Kalle had become someone Sigourney trusted. He was the only islander she knew that, like her, agreed they ought to play by the rules of the Fjern, but was also determined to win this game against them.
Aksel heard as she told Kalle that winning the battles of Årud and Nørup Helle would only be her first step. She would use her newfound admiration to enter into an agreement with Jytte Solberg and Gertrude Nørup. They’d both wanted her assistance against Lothar Niklasson, and now that the timing was right, Sigourney would finally agree. Both families had already lent their guards to Sigourney’s rule. She had already commanded them in the battles of Årud and Nørup. She would continue her control once Jytte Solberg was dead. Sigourney would convince the cousins of the kongelig and the woman’s friend Gertrude Nørup to have Jytte Solberg executed for conspiring in the death of Lothar Niklasson. Lothar Niklasson had died on Hans Lollik Helle. Both she and Kalle would claim it was the actions of a guard sent by Jytte Solberg, and though Gertrude would likely sense the truth, the woman would not continue as an ally with the Solberg when all the rest of the kongelig wanted her dead as well.
Gertrude Nørup would be easier to manipulate and control than Jytte Solberg. The woman was a fool—as naive as Erik Nørup had once been. Sigourney would use Gertrude Nørup as a puppet for as much time as she needed to, standing at the woman’s side, rising in control with her until she would be able to take the role of regent. Sigourney is confident that Kalle’s support will be necessary. He can help to convince other islander guards of Niklasson and Solberg Helle to come under Sigourney’s rule. They would create a new class of islanders, who would hold all the power as the Fjern once did. It wouldn’t do to simply eradicate slavery altogether. There needed to be a system of power in place for all of their protection. Without that system, the islands would only be attacked by the Koninkrijk Empire or any of the other free nations again.
Everything had gone as planned so far. The only question that lingered was what would become of me and all the others who had been a part of the revolution. It was a question that overtook her thoughts for days, weeks. She left Niklasson Helle with Kalle. She went to Lund Helle, where she had spent so many of her years as the leader of the land she’d inherited from her cousin, before she returned to Rose Helle. It was the place of her birth, where she had lived with her family before they were killed by the Fjern. She returned to the ruins of the manor where so many had been slaughtered. She went to her mother, as I sometimes try to go to mine as I stand on the rocks. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find. She wanted her mother’s approval. She wanted her mother’s pride. She wanted her mother’s guidance. She didn’t know if she would be able to kill everyone. But she knew that she would have to.
She didn’t quite expect that I would be the only survivor of Hans Lollik Helle. This makes her decision more difficult. She had come here with a steeled heart. She had already decided we would have to die to prevent us from rising up against her. But only I remain. It wouldn’t hurt to keep me alive, would it? She could keep me at her side. I would be a trophy of sorts—proof of everything she has survived to bring her to this place. She has won. It’s a fact she finds remarkable, one that she hopes that I will celebrate with her. Like the Fjern who recognized her worth, this is what she wants of me as well. She sees I will not give it. This disappoints her.
“You don’t really believe I would be happy that you’ve betrayed us,” I say.
Sigourney has at least finally admitted to herself that she’s betrayed her people and these islands. She admits that she wanted to win against the Fjern, not out of love for her people, but out of love for herself. She wanted the power of the regent. This is what she will have.
“Yet our people will also benefit, in the long run,” she says.
“How long?” I ask her. “Years from now? After your death, and deaths of your children?”
She isn’t surprised that I’ve seen the truth: She carries a child. She’s realized this for weeks already, after she felt herself becoming ill by the scent of salt. She can feel the being growing inside of her, and she thinks that she will raise the child to be the true regent of these islands. She doesn’t think about the fact that the father is Aksel Jannik, and that she has had him killed.
“We could have ruled these islands together,” she says. But these are the daydreams of a child. There isn’t any way that we could have worked together to create a world that we both envisioned.
I’m placed in the room Sigourney had once occupied, locked in and facing the ruins of the island. The revolution is over. It’s a quiet end to the war. And after our deaths, the island goes on. All of the islands will go on as they are, no matter who claims them. I remember Marieke’s words. As long as there are islanders in our homeland, there’s hope. Even if I don’t witness the freedom of these lands myself, it will come.
It’s only days until the Fjern ships anchor at sea. The slaves they bring with them begin the cleanup of the island. They erase evidence that there’d ever been a war. They erase evidence that anyone of the uprising had ever existed. The Fjern return to the houses that had not been burnt down. The new heads of each of the kongelig families return to the manor of Herregård Constantjin and to the meeting room to discuss the actions they’ll take to find their sense of normalcy once more. To the Fjern, this was nothing but an inconvenient interruption in their way of life. Our bid for freedom was always doomed to fail.
There are few who protest the execution of Jytte Solberg. Gertrude Nørup doesn’t want to risk the ire of the kongelig around her. She doesn’t want to be killed right alongside the woman who ha
d been her ally. Jytte is hanged, her body thrown to the sea. Gertrude Nørup behaves as Sigourney predicted she would. She is overwhelmed by the confidence given to her by the Fjern and leans heavily on Sigourney. Sigourney quickly becomes Gertrude’s right hand, following her into the meeting room. Sigourney plays the role that Konge Valdemar had once expected for her mother: to sit in the room of the Fjern and give insight into the ways of her people. To betray their potential movements, to say what should become of them. She plays her role well, without complaints. The Fjern are all new to their positions in the meeting room. None of the previous kongelig remain. None recognize the ways she grips to the command, the ways she positions the Fjern against one another, the ways she raises herself to the place of leading each of them. She understands that she won’t win their admiration to the point that they’ll willingly give her the role of regent. But she does think she’ll force them to.
She tells them any secret she’d learned from her connection with me. She has ships return to Ludjivik Helle to kill the survivors. She enters agreements with the northern empires: coin and crop in exchange for any slave of Hans Lollik who had escaped to their freedom. She means to rebuild these islands. Only some islanders of her choosing will escape the fate of slavery.
There’s a fate that I can’t escape. She’s already decided that she can’t allow me to live, even if it is only by her side as her treasured slave. I am a symbol of revolution. As long as I live, islanders around us will always see the possibility of another uprising. They need to see my death as much as the Fjern of this island crave to see my head.
Gertrude Nørup asks why I still live. It’s the simple catalyst that Sigourney needs. She has me taken from my room and brought to the beach. Kalle holds the machete. He’s glad to be the one to kill me. He wants vengeance for those who had not been in the war—for anyone who hadn’t had any choice in joining the revolution. The Fjern line up to watch my death. Sigourney Rose stands in the center. She won’t watch. She’ll look away when my head is cut from my body. But she still needs to stand and oversee my execution.
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