Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  “These aren’t really my gardens,” she tells me. “They belonged to my parents.”

  Now dead, I know, killed by bandits in their own home many years before, when Beata was just a child. In the sitting room of the Jannik manor, the Herre and Elskerinde Larsen hadn’t been vocal in their agreement to kill my family, but they weren’t vocal in their disagreement, either, so I celebrate their deaths as much as I do the deaths of any of the kongelig.

  The Larsen family had been one of the most beloved of the kongelig. The islands across Hans Lollik suffered a drought, and the plantations began to fail; the people—islanders and Fjern alike—began to starve. Besides the Jannik name, the Larsen family had always been the poorest of the kongelig. Even so, they did what they could for their people: They collected coin, fruit, and bread, and handed out what they could to the starving villagers. This hadn’t been enough to save the island. The few plantations that belonged to other Fjern families failed as well, and the island was abandoned, save for the small villages that remained. It was from one of these villages that a mob sought to punish their island’s rulers. The gifts and the Elskerinde’s kind smiles were forgotten. Bandits arrived at the manor one night and slaughtered everyone inside, slaves included—everyone, except for little Beata Larsen. She’d been smart enough to hide and to not make a sound, even when she’d wanted to cry. The bandits had searched for her until the sun began to rise, but the smoke from the fires set to the Larsen plantation had alerted other islands, and the kongelig sent their guards. The bandits had to escape or risk the gallows. Beata was found by her rescuers, still too afraid to make a sound. She didn’t speak for the next two years.

  Beata lived under the patronage of the Solberg family, who took her in—perhaps not out of kindness but in an effort to minimize her as a future threat; to convince her, from a young age, that becoming regent of these islands wasn’t something that she could handle, or that she would want. Beata is still hesitant to speak, to make herself heard, her voice never louder than a whisper. We have similar histories, Beata Larsen and I, but our lives still managed to be so different.

  “You’ve inherited the Larsen title and property,” I tell her. “The gardens are yours.”

  She’s embarrassed now, I can feel, because she knows she lacks the confidence a woman of her age and standing should have, regardless of the tragedies she’s endured. Everyone has endured a tragedy. She isn’t special in this. She can’t meet my eye, red coloring her cheeks. But there’s another reason she doesn’t look at me. She’s so terrified that I’ll be able to sense the love she has for my betrothed. She shakes at just the thought that I might see a memory of hers, of Aksel taking her into his arms and whispering into her ear that she belongs to him and he to her. If only he had his freedom from me, he’d murmured, he would marry her and together the two of them would leave the islands of Hans Lollik—

  “You’re too soft,” I say.

  Her gaze snaps to my own, breath catching in her throat. By the gods, she’s so frightened of me. Maybe she should be.

  “Let me give you some advice, Elskerinde Larsen,” I tell her. “Aksel doesn’t deserve you.”

  She’s surprised. Not that I’ve sensed her feelings as she feared I would but that I would say such a thing. You’re wrong. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve him.

  No anger. No judgment in Beata Larsen. Her innocence enrages me.

  “I can see what you feel for him—can tell that your heart is genuine—but I need you to stay away from Aksel, because while I could care less about who he brings into his bed, I won’t allow him to risk the Jannik name.”

  I don’t bother waiting for a reply. I leave the gardens, her shock and her fear following me. I’m ashamed to revel in the power I feel after frightening Beata Larsen, this woman the Fjern consider worthier than me. The Fjern are cruel. Perhaps that’s proof enough that their blood runs through my veins.

  As Malthe and I return to the Jannik house, walking up the sloping dirt path, one of the island’s guards approaches from the groves, waving us down. The man sweats in the island’s heat, and he’s breathless.

  “There’s news,” he tells Malthe—he won’t speak to me directly.

  Malthe is impatient, perhaps just as tired as I am. “What is it?”

  The guard hesitates. “I’m not sure this ought to be heard by a lady’s ears.”

  Malthe’s impatience becomes my own. I almost sink into the stranger’s mind, just to hear the truth for myself, but it’s only as I stagger on my feet, so close to my new bed in the Jannik house, that I realize how exhausted I am. Days of travel and confronting the Larsen heir has tired my mind, and I don’t want to spend the energy knowing this man’s thoughts, not when I know I’ll only be met with the hatred I always find in my people. The Fjerns’ hatred, I know and expect; my own people’s hatred is the one that strips me open and tells me that I’m undeserving of the life I live, unworthy of love and acceptance. I don’t bother to read the minds of the slaves around me.

  Malthe’s tone is curt. “Elskerinde Lund isn’t delicate. You can tell us what you came to say.”

  The man hesitates, even with the express permission given, but finally he speaks, voice low. “There’s been a death on the island. Dame Ane Solberg, cousin of Jytte Solberg, was found dead just an hour ago.”

  “Dead?” Malthe repeats, surprised, though I don’t know why he would be; this is Hans Lollik Helle, after all.

  “She was found in her bed. It seems she’d passed in her sleep.”

  “The woman was old, ailing,” Malthe tells us like he’s arguing a point, perhaps making the suggestion that her death isn’t suspicious. The guard nods, as though he agrees with this, but he won’t meet Malthe’s eye. There are any number of poisons to ensure that when a person falls asleep, they won’t wake again. It’s never just a coincidence when someone dies on Hans Lollik Helle.

  Malthe offers to stay with me until Marieke arrives. I can’t pretend that I don’t feel unnerved by the news of a death so soon in the storm season. I know what I’ve risked agreeing to come here; with so many enemies together in one space, murder is inevitable. It’s become a tradition, here on Hans Lollik Helle; a game of sorts, to kill without being caught, and to survive the storm season yourself. It’s a game where I know I’ll become a target. The kongelig hate me for being an islander where they feel I don’t belong, just as they hated my mother. They killed my mother for daring to go beyond what they considered her station, and for daring to earn the respect of the regent.

  I’m afraid on this island. I would be a fool not to be afraid for my life. Still, I’m also exhausted, and eager to be alone, and so Malthe leaves for the island’s barracks. After I rest in my bed for a few hours, I wander the Jannik house’s garden of brush and weeds, bending over to snag thorny leaves and pull them from the dirt, back and shoulders aching in the heat. The afternoon passes as I explore the house itself—discover a hidden library with dust-covered volumes, and a particularly nasty surprise as a fruit bat screeches and flaps around the room desperately, until I’m able to unstick the window and it escapes into the sunlight.

  Evening comes, and Marieke still hasn’t arrived. There isn’t any food besides the mangoes I’d earlier picked, but I’ve gone days without eating before, on our journeys across northern empires. The empire of Rescela, along the coast; the Aldies, fields that grow into mountains that seem to be pillars of the sky itself. The towns of the islands of Hans Lollik were so much smaller than the cities of the northern empires. The cities had piss-covered streets of stone, mazes of crumbling houses, and people everywhere I turned, people packing the roads and the windows of uneven houses and doors. The people were my favorite part about the north. There were so many different sorts, from all around the world, even the western empires, that I’d never witnessed before with my own eyes; people who wore wooden beads and scarves around their hair, people with markings drawn across their skin, people who had their eyelids and lips sewn shut. The languages,
the scent of the different foods and their spices, the music and beat of drums that would follow my ears—and the colors of skin, from the pales of white moonlight to the darkest of black night. Hans Lollik isn’t the only land that holds slaves. There are empires to the west, and some of the empires in the north as well, who sell humans as one might sell cattle. But the empires I journeyed through with Marieke, using my cousin Bernhand Lund’s coin, were nations where each and every single person was free.

  It was the first time I saw people who looked like me and who also had their freedom. They walked with their heads in the air, their gazes not stuck to the ground; their skin was smooth, untarnished by a whip’s scars. They smiled and laughed with ease. There were even a few I saw who I could sense had come from Hans Lollik, slaves who had managed to escape, stowed away on ships. I shared in their awe at these people who looked so much like us and yet were so different—and only because they’d had the luck to be born somewhere other than our islands. I’d escaped Hans Lollik as well, I realized—escaped the Fjern who would have me killed. It wasn’t an easy decision returning to the islands, knowing that anyone who looked my way would only ever see a slave.

  I had always been so enamored with the north and its people, but the north didn’t always return this love. Marieke and I had just returned from one of the short visits to Lund Helle. Bernhand hadn’t been a particularly gracious host when we came to visit. He rarely joined me for dinner, and when he did welcome me into his sitting room for tea one afternoon, he commented on the color of my skin and how it seemed to be getting darker. “Perhaps not as much sun,” he’d suggested.

  I was thirteen, and I’d had my kraft for a full three years already, but I hadn’t yet mastered the power. If I tried to read another person’s thoughts, I would become lost in their mind and emotions, unable to distinguish them from my own. We sat for tea, and I decided to try to read my cousin’s thoughts so that I could know what I should say to please him. I could feel his disgust. He wanted to pretend he was benevolent, that he loved his family, but he was embarrassed to call me his cousin. Bernhand Lund had always held a smile for me, but now that I had my kraft, for the first time I could see his hatred. I was curious. Curious to know of other hidden thoughts. I became lost in his mind, so lost that for the barest of moments I looked out from his eyes and saw myself sitting opposite him, this child who should never have survived the massacre that took her family’s lives.

  It was the first time I realized the extent of my kraft. Marieke knew of my power to feel the emotions and thoughts of others around me, but not to the point that I could nearly become another person. I could already feel how much she hated my kraft, and I knew I couldn’t go to her for guidance on this. We left Lund Helle on a ship that returned us to a northern coastal city. Normally Marieke and I would travel various cities and towns and stay at the local inns as I explored and learned of other cultures, continuing my studies in any library we found, but this time Bernhand decided he would finance my education with a tutor, and pay an acquaintance to allow me to stay in their townhouse as a guest. To keep me out of the sun as much as possible, I suppose.

  It was a townhouse in a row of others in the center of the wealthier section of the city, with brick walls and vines that wrapped around the windows. Upon arriving, I learned that my cousin’s acquaintance didn’t live in this house, but rather that the house was filled with his guests: other girls from across the empires, either the bastards of the wealthy who wanted their daughters hidden away from polite society or the exiled who had nowhere else to go. There were even a few who’d been taken from the streets in mercy. In all, there were ten of us. Marieke took residence with the other servants of the household, and for a time, I had what I considered a home that wasn’t Hans Lollik.

  Marieke made it clear to me that my kraft was to remain hidden. No one could know of it. In this city we’d traveled to, anyone with kraft was hunted, as my people often were in Hans Lollik; but instead of being killed, they were made to devote their lives to the divine gods of the north. They were placed in churches and temples and forced to take oaths that they wouldn’t marry or have children and would devote their lives to the divinity in gratitude for the gifts that had been bestowed upon them. It was a different sort of slavery, and the fact that I wasn’t from this city wouldn’t save me.

  I don’t have particularly fond memories of this time. I was used to my independence: traveling with Marieke at my side, deciding what I would learn and study each day, eating and drinking whatever I craved. Now I was at the mercy of a nurse who was stricter than Marieke. She had her ideas of what it meant to be a proper lady of the north, and though she was used to seeing people with brown skin like my own, she had her own ideas of what it meant for me to come from the southern islands. She didn’t like the way I pronounced my words. If I said anything that had the lilting tone of the way my mother had spoken to me, the nurse would hit my knuckles with a stick. If she ever caught me sipping the lemongrass tea I would often buy from the markets, rather than the proper mint that was more common in the north, she would spill the scalding tea on my hands. If I ever talked back, or gave a look that let her know exactly what I thought of her, she would have me raise my skirts before the entire class and beat the backs of my legs.

  She wasn’t the only person who didn’t treat me well in that year. Though I was the only girl from Hans Lollik, I wasn’t the only girl with dark skin. There was another, named Andela, who had skin as dark as mine and had a following of girls whose skin was all colors, some pale and some brown, all from different empires in the north. I looked to her, and I saw the commonality between us: To me, her dark skin meant that she understood the world and its hatred of people who look as we do. Her people hadn’t been enslaved in Hans Lollik, but she had to have understood the pain of others looking down on her, the isolation of feeling that hatred surround her. She would be my friend, I’d decided. I’d never had any friends; besides my sisters and brother, I hadn’t even known anyone my own age before, as Marieke and I had been solitary in our travels.

  Andela was beautiful, with a loud voice that seemed to command the attention of everyone in a room. She demanded respect with the raise of her chin. I was enamored. The first few days following my arrival, I only watched from afar—watched the way the other girls flocked to her. Watched the way she could have any of them do her bidding—bring her gifts, cups of tea, her favorite books—with the smallest of smiles. We would do our quiet, ladylike activities in the sitting room each day at noon for an hour. I would glance from the pages of the book I read to see Andela whispering to her friends with that same smile.

  My kraft had developed enough for me to know her thoughts and her memories at my will. Her past hadn’t been easy: She’d been born with her freedom in another nation to a wealthy merchant family, but her family’s wealth quickly crumbled under new taxation laws that secured the coin of particular families in power. Andela’s mother had died in childbirth, and her father became sick; unable to afford medication, the man had little choice but to sell their home and their belongings, until finally they ended in the slums of the city. Our benefactor, whoever he was, had taken mercy on Andela, and she was brought to this house three years before. Her father had since passed away, what little left he owned sent to the benefactor to help pay for Andela’s schooling, food, and clothes. Andela didn’t speak of her worries to her friends; she didn’t say how she was unsure what was to become of her after her education at this home was complete. She would have no money, no prospects, nowhere to go. She hoped the benefactor would allow her to stay as the new nurse, but she wouldn’t admit to this aloud; there was nothing beautiful or glamorous in this.

  I worked up the courage to greet her one night as we took our supper at the table. I sat across from her and said good evening. This grabbed the attention of the other girls. So far, I’d been quiet—to them, I could feel, I was mysterious and strange. I never spoke, only watched the others and always had a blank expression upon
my face, as though I could already tell what they each thought and felt. I was intriguing to a few, but to Andela and her friends, I was mostly boring.

  Andela looked at me with a quirk of her eyebrow. “Good evening,” she said in return.

  I can’t remember what we chatted about—books, perhaps. I’d taken Claus’s love of books when I was young, sinking into worlds and persons who were not my own. Andela, I could tell, was still bored by me and my presence. She wished I hadn’t spoken to her. She didn’t consider me important enough in the ranking of the girls of this school. I was determined to change her mind.

  The following day we were taken from the house for our morning stroll. We would line up as pairs and walk the cobblestoned streets as fog hung heavy in the air. I’d been traveling the north for some time already, but I had not and could never become used to the constant chill, or to the white steam of breath that left my lips. I shivered as I walked beside another girl whose name I couldn’t remember, directly behind Andela.

  She spoke of rose mallow. I inserted myself into her conversation, letting Andela know that this is the flower that had inspired my last name.

  “Really?” she asked with a touch of curiosity. “I’ve never seen a rose-mallow flower before.”

  “When we return, I can paint one for you.”

  She was grateful, and when I fulfilled this promise, she gave me a smile. I was then allowed to sit with her friends at the dinner table, and allowed to continue to walk behind her as we took our daily strolls. The other girls—four of her friends, now five with me—seemed interested in the fact that I was from Hans Lollik. They asked why I wasn’t a slave in these islands.

  I didn’t notice it at first, the favors Andela requested of me: to bring her a glass of water or mint tea, to hold an umbrella over her as icy rain began to fall on our morning walk. I did, however, begin to notice the way she delighted in humiliating me. I sat with her and the others in the gardens as the sun was setting.