I recite the words memorized, heavy on my tongue. “Anyone who isn’t of kongelig descent and dares possess kraft, which belongs only to their benevolent rulers as a divine right, must die by execution.”
The woman screams now, fighting against the guards that hold her. I nod at Malthe, and he moves forward dispassionately, pressing down on one of the girl’s shoulders so that she’ll fall to her knees. I look away when he swings his sword.
Silence, but for the crackling of the fires. The girl’s mother has fainted. My hands are shaking. I wipe them on the white of my dress as I turn away, but before I can take another step, the older woman comes forward. She spits at my feet. The metallic smell of blood burning in the heat sickens my stomach, and I feel faint. I don’t have the energy or the will to read this woman’s thoughts—to feel her hatred. But she wants me to know.
“You’re evil,” she tells me. “You might call yourself kongelig, and you might wear your pretty dress of white, but you’re just a dog taking scraps from your masters.”
I could have her executed, too, for being a slave who has shown disrespect to her Elskerinde. The guards, watching closely, will wonder why I don’t. I’m already weak, wavering on my feet, but I close my eyes, and I sink into her—feel myself in her veins as her face tightens, her arms and legs cramping. She steps forward, then lowers to her knees. The woman struggles, fights against me—leans forward to kiss my feet.
She watches only the ground as I walk past her.
I return to my horse, Friedrich following closely behind, and pause by the brush. Most days, I’m able to pretend I’m not caught in a horror of my own making. Easy to pretend I’m not the monster who deserves the hatred of her people. Friedrich looks away when I heave into the leaves.
CHAPTER TWO
Herregård Dronnigen is a manor I’d visited many times before as a child. It was where my paternal cousin Bernhand lived with his wife of the family Lund, nestled right on the edge of Lund Helle, its back fortified by the wall of stone, dirt pathways leading to the sea. I’d enjoyed the sticky mango tarts and the flowers of the gardens and the shallows of the beach, where I would pick up sea urchins with their spiny needles and starfish, feeling their tentacles tickle the palms of my hands. As a child, I never questioned why so many people with brown skin, brown like my own, worked the fields of the plantations; why my nursing maid, and all the cooks and servers and guardsmen, were islanders. I only wondered why the Fjern with their pale skin wouldn’t smile my way as they would with the other little girls in their dresses of lace, why they refused to speak to my mother if ever we passed one another in the streets of other islands of Hans Lollik.
My mother wouldn’t take me or my sisters or brother away from Rose Helle often. I think she wanted to protect us from the hatred she knew we would face—the same hatred she bore every day from the Fjern—but she couldn’t keep us trapped on our little island, in the paradise she had built for us. Inga was left behind in the manor of Rose Helle while my mother brought me, Ellinor, and our older brother, Claus, to Solberg Helle. She had business, I don’t know what. She held my hand on one side and Ellinor’s hand on the other, while Claus walked behind. We had no guards. This I remember. I don’t know why—perhaps my mother wanted to show everyone that she wasn’t afraid of the Fjern. Whatever her reason, it was foolish. She brought us to the main town of Solberg Helle, streets cobblestoned and air salted by the docks. There was a market, dozens of stalls selling stewed mango with cinnamon and stalks of sugarcane. Even I, who would normally stare only at the sweets, was distracted by the gazes that followed us; the Fjern, who stared at my mother with her dark skin, wearing her finery, and at her brown-skinned children, also dressed in lace and pearls. She went into a house, spoke briefly with a Fjernman and exchanged our island’s rose-mallow coin for papers, I don’t know the contents, and I suppose it doesn’t matter—and just as quickly as we’d gone inside, we were out again. But this time, the Fjern who had stood behind their stalls now had words for my mother. They asked why she walked with no master. A Fjernman stood in front of her and demanded to know which family she belonged to. Another suggested he might take me, Ellinor, and Claus away from her, to be sold on the docks of Niklasson Helle. More Fjernmen came, surrounding us. They followed her. They shouted at her. They spat at her feet. Claus grew pale, Ellinor cried, and fear was heavy in my gut. I hadn’t been afraid often as a child—I didn’t know I’d had anything to fear—but I was afraid that day. And through it all, my mother only walked forward, her chin raised, as though she were taking a stroll with us down the shoreline, with nothing before us but the sea.
My mother was usually kind and gentle, but once we returned to the ship that would bring us to Rose Helle, she slapped Ellinor for crying. She told us never to let the Fjern see our fear again.
“This is what they want to see,” she told us. “Don’t ever give them what they want.”
Dronnigen shines, stones painted white faded by the everlasting sun. I jump from my horse, rocks crunching beneath my sandals, and hand the reins to Friedrich before I step into the hall. Paintings of the deceased Lund and Rose families line the walls, portraits that Bernhand Lund had installed out of respect before his own death. There’s my father, dead shortly after my birth—I was too young to have any memories of him now—along with my mother and two sisters and one brother. My mother was beautiful, with black hair curling atop her head, skin as dark as the purples of the night sky, brown eyes lined by lashes so thick it’s as though she wore kohl, and a proud, wide nose sitting above an even wider mouth. I remember that she had scars lining her arms and back, and one thick scar from her ear and across her neck, but the scars aren’t in her portrait. I look more like her painting every day.
She was born of slavery, given freedom and married to my father when she was fifteen. When I ask, my personal servant Marieke tells me that my mother and father never had a loving relationship. He liked to keep my mother by his side to show off her beauty like a trophy, but nothing more. He would take my mother into his bed as often as he could, hoping for an heir worthy of the Rose title and inheritance. Claus had always been a weak child, and Koen Rose wanted a son who didn’t seem like he would die from a single storm-season sickness. He was unlucky in this. I try to imagine my mother standing beside my father, slapped and beaten if she ever misspoke; the years she must have waited, patiently watching and observing and learning everything she could, so that the moment my father died, she could inherit and control the title of the Rose. Sometimes I wonder if my mother had a hand in Koen Rose’s death, but there’s no way to know something like this now.
Even before my father’s death, my mother had been so dearly loved. She only ever spoke to islanders with respect and kindness, even though she had been handed the power to consider them beneath her. She would walk the plantations of Lund Helle with baskets of mango, sugar apple, squash, and banana bread, handing out the food to anyone who worked the fields. Marieke told me, once, that my mother had heard of a slave’s whipping at the hand of my cousin Bernhand Lund and went to the shack where the islander lay. She rubbed aloe on the man’s back with her own two hands. It’s difficult to know if any islander would’ve done the same if in her position. I’m in her position now, and this is something I’ve never done myself. Perhaps this is why the islanders loved my mother yet have such hatred for me. Before she was murdered and after my father had been beneath the sea for many years, she’d promised freedom to each and every slave of her household and of Lund Helle following Bernhand Lund’s death. It’s a promise I can still feel burning in the slaves’ hearts. The chance to escape these islands without the fear of being hunted down and killed.
But my mother is dead, and this is a promise I can’t keep. I need the slaves around me. My mother had the respect of the regent, the power of the Rose and Lund families; I have nothing. Nothing, but the coin of the Lund inheritance, which will only get me so far. To release my slaves would be to release the last of the power I have, and
if I’m going to succeed in my plans, I’ll need them. Disgust radiates from the slaves of Herregård Dronnigen whenever I cross their paths. Most of the slaves I’d known as a child died in the Massacre of Rose Helle, but the slaves of Dronnigen still remember me from the visits I would make when I was young. It must be only out of respect for my mother’s memory that none creep into my room at night to cut my neck. I make it a habit to avoid my slaves whenever I can, to keep a barrier between me and their thoughts. I hold enough self-hatred. I don’t need to expend the energy to use my kraft and read their minds, confirming the thoughts I already have for myself.
The shade of the hall is a relief from the sun, but not from the heat, which is so thick it’s something I must move through, something I must breathe. The heat swarms my skin, filling my veins, and I can see the girl standing before me, crying; hear her mother’s screams. The screams grow louder when I close my eyes.
Friedrich’s voice startles me. “Are you well?” he asks, walking into the hall behind me. I can’t be sure if he asks out of genuine concern or if he asks because I’m his Elskerinde. I don’t think he knows the answer himself. When I turn to face him, his eyes scan my own, perhaps searching for a humanity I’m not sure I have.
I need a distraction. Friedrich is a good distraction. I ask him to my chambers, and though he doesn’t speak on it, I can feel his hesitation. His fear. But he doesn’t argue. He can’t argue, I remind myself. My self-hatred rises, but I push it down again, allowing myself to pretend for a moment that I’m not Elskerinde Lund, and that Friedrich is not my slave, and that we are two islanders who have escaped Hans Lollik, living in the north, in freedom and in love. It’s the only lie that allows me peace whenever the boy shares my bed.
Friedrich follows me up the winding stairs, closes the door behind him, and allows me to kiss him without complaint, lets me press myself against his body, wrapping my arms around the back of his neck.
“Elskerinde Lund,” he says, “perhaps this isn’t the right time…”
I raise a brow and let my hands fall over his shoulders, the buttons of his shirt. “But you’re always so eager to please me, Friedrich.”
He steps away from me now, a flicker of hurt crossing his face, pinching through my chest. He wants me to respect him, to think of him as someone who is strong, intelligent, could easily become captain of my guard. He spends much of his time trying to make others laugh. He goes to the kitchens, flirting with the cooks and tasting their guavaberry tart. He drinks rum with the guards by the stables, telling stories of how he’d get himself in trouble with the head of his guard when he was a child, running away from his beatings. He wants to make others laugh, but he doesn’t like it when others laugh at him. This is the worst thing that I could do.
My hands smooth over his chest and down his arms, lined with thin white scars. Friedrich honestly believes he’s in love with me—the knight forever ready to protect his princess—but this isn’t love. It’s no more possible for Friedrich to love me than it is for me to love any of the Fjern, just as it wasn’t possible for my mother to love my father, her master. It’s simply a fairy tale that Friedrich has told himself—another lie to help make this life of his bearable. He was born to an enslaved family on Årud Helle. He only has a vague memory of his mother hanging a white sheet, ballooning in the breeze. He was sold to another Fjern family, at first to be an errand boy and then to be trained as a guardsman when Friedrich began to show talent with a wooden sword. I bought him myself, to join my guard under Malthe, five years before; bid on him from the docks of Niklasson Helle. His life, apparently, is worth six silver coins with the guinea-grass insignia of Lund Helle imprinted on the front.
I lean forward to kiss Friedrich’s clenched jaw, the corner of his lip. His lips loosen against mine. He lets me guide him to my bed and helps me pull my white dress over my head. Friedrich is young and clumsy, but he makes up for it all with his enthusiasm. He won’t stop until I find my pleasure. When we’re finished, we lie in my sheets, sticky with sweat. I stare at the invitation, still waiting atop my stand. Friedrich notices, and curiosity hovers over him. Friedrich can be annoying after he’s shared my bed, and I want him to leave, but I’m afraid of being alone now, too.
Friedrich lies on his stomach, propped up by his elbows. “Have you ever considered escaping the islands of Hans Lollik?”
He speaks to me as one slave might speak to another. Escape. I don’t have to escape, hidden away on a ship, praying to the Fjern gods that I’m not captured and hung by my neck. I’m free to leave anytime I please. “And go where?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Anywhere. Another island, another empire.” He dreams of seeing the lands to the north, where the pale-skinned Fjern of Koninkrijk and dozens of other empire nations have days and nights so cold that ice like frozen sand falls from the sky.
“Why would I?”
“You could do anything you wanted. You could become another person.”
His eyes are earnest, and because he’s risen through my guard so quickly, I sometimes forget that he’s young—eighteen, two years younger than me. This only reminds me that I’m young as well. “Do you think I should?” I ask him.
“I think you should be happy.”
“Do I seem so unhappy now?”
He hesitates, and in my impatience I push my way into his thoughts. His memory takes me to the afternoon sun, the screams of a woman, and what I’d looked away from but what Friedrich forced himself to watch: the white flash of the sword, the blinding red, the girl’s body crumpling into the dirt, her head with her eyes clenched shut rolling in the grass.
I sit up, dizzy in the heat. “You should leave.”
He kisses my bare shoulder, still watching me.
I ask him, “Do you really think you’re in love with me?”
His brows pull together. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I see it in your thoughts. You believe you’re in love with me, but your love for me is a child’s, before he even knows what love is. You tell yourself you love me, to stop yourself from hating me instead.”
“You always do this,” he tells me, voice low.
“And what is that?”
“Push me away. Try to hurt me. Why? So that you won’t feel weak? Because you might start to love me, too?”
“I don’t love you, Friedrich.”
He stands up, abandoning the sheets, and bends over to pick up his shirt and tug it on over his head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Why would you love a slave?”
I’m silent as he buttons his shirt and pulls on his pants. “Even if you think you love me,” I say, “you shouldn’t waste it on me. Fall in love with a sweet island girl instead. One who’ll smile every time she sees you.”
He shakes his head. “What do you mean, I shouldn’t waste my love on you?”
I can feel his heart, thumping with anger, begin to soften—can feel the pity in him as he walks back to my bed and sits on the edge. “I’m not wasting my love on you.”
He truly believes he loves me, but this love isn’t real. It’s imagined, a story he tells himself, and while he sees me as the princess in the fairy tales we heard as children, I’m nothing more than the wicked queen. I’m not deserving of this false love, even as I take it and use it to comfort myself. I’m only deserving of his hatred. This I can sense also—embers of his hatred for me, burning beneath his skin. If he admitted his hatred of me, he might not be able to stand the sight of me, the woman he’s meant to protect. He might take the sword meant for killing rebels and cut my neck instead.
I tell Friedrich that Marieke will come by any moment, and I can feel his frustration, but he nods his understanding and kisses me again before leaving my chambers, boots in his hands. I sit in my bed, knees curled to my chest. My room is usually a welcomed sanctuary—a slight reprieve from the island and its responsibilities, though not from my own thoughts, my own ambitions. That’s never something I’ll be able to escape, maybe not even when I’m dead and in my gra
ve of the sea. But today, I look again to the table beside my bed and the awaiting letter I haven’t had the courage to open or read. I already know what it’ll say—have waited for its arrival for nearly half my life.
The marbled floor of my chamber shines yellow in the bright sunlight that spills from the open balcony windows, lace curtains leaving intricate patterns on the walls. It’s a clear day, and I can see three of the other dozens of islands under the rule of Hans Lollik in the distance: Solberg Helle is farthest, green hills faded in the distance; Niklasson Helle is a jagged rock that reaches for the sky. Rose Helle is closest. I can see the browning of the trees, the bald spots where fires spread so many years before. My mother’s island had been beautiful, once. It was the smallest of the islands of Hans Lollik, with no plantations and only a scattering of houses. I would run through the groves with Ellinor and hold Inga’s hand as she took me to the shores. Claus had been the quietest of us, the shyest. He would spend his days in the library, reading his books on the histories of Hans Lollik Helle and the northern empires. Ellinor had only been interested in the fairy tales. She would beg Inga and our mother to read them to her, no matter the time of morning or night. But I would come to Claus. He was fourteen. He had the lightest skin of us all and curly brown hair that showed the blood of the Fjern ancestor who lived so many eras before. Claus was lighter-skinned than even the Fjern who worked long days under the hot sun. The Fjern didn’t like Claus and the color of his skin. It was too strong a reminder of how close the islanders and the Fjern truly were, despite the Fjern’s claims to higher intelligence, and their divine purpose in oppressing the dark-skinned islanders. It was their justification: The Koninkrijk Empire claimed that the Fjern must spread their rule over the lesser savages of this world.
Queen of the Conquered Page 3
