Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  Marieke wants to know why I’m out of bed when I pass her outside my room. The slaves won’t look at me as I walk by, slipping through the halls. The door to the library is shut, the key still in the lock. I twist it with a click, scraping the door open. He’d been free just days before, standing on the rocky shore, but it’s hard to tell now if that had only been another dream. The man named Løren had been asleep, I can tell, and I woke him with all my noise; he’s on his feet now, standing up from his corner on the floor where someone took pity on him by bringing him a blanket and a pillow, a cup of water, and leftover chicken broth. The skin around his eyes is dark and heavy, the corners of his mouth lined as they tug down, making him look much older than his twenty-two years.

  It’s obvious, I realize—this power he has in his blood, his kraft to hinder the ability of anyone else around him. It isn’t easy for him. It’s something he must put his energy into, watching me the way he does, careful not to leave open a crack, careful not to let me slip inside him and take control. This is a great fear of his: Though he might not own his life, he can at least control his body and mind. This is something he prides himself on. Not everyone who is a slave controls their own mind.

  His breath catches in his throat when I tell him that he will be my new personal guard to replace Malthe, effective immediately, and stride away, leaving the library door open behind me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The ghost of Konge Valdemar sends a letter of invitation to join him and the other kongelig for the evening. I leave for Herregård Constantjin with Aksel. It’s the first time I’m seeing my husband in over two weeks. He’d left his Jannik house after our wedding night and hadn’t returned since. I know he wouldn’t tell me the truth if asked, so I sink into his mind and see now the days and nights he’d spent: drinking with his friend Erik Nørup, and once Herre Nørup could drink no more, drinking alone in the shadows of the groves, lingering outside of Beata Larsen’s house, refusing to leave even after she begged him to, her finally coming to him and allowing him to kiss her, to whisper his love for her. She took mercy on Aksel, brought him into her house and bathed him, washed his clothes. He cried to her, admitting what he had done with me on our wedding night, though he wouldn’t admit to the shame he felt for his desire. He apologized for his betrayal; but for Beata, there was nothing to forgive. He kissed her again, and Aksel and Beata made love for the first time, although they risked ruining Beata’s reputation and the Jannik name. It was the greatest pleasure Aksel had ever known.

  He doesn’t hide this memory from me now. He wants me to see, in fact. His eyes are rimmed red with rum. Slaves might have seen Aksel leaving Beata’s house in the early-morning light, and gossip might spread across the island quickly, but he doesn’t care. He isn’t desperate for the king’s favor—not like I am. Anger ripples through me, but I won’t spend energy on what can’t be undone. I can only hope that the regent won’t hear word of Aksel’s betrayal and that this sham of a marriage won’t fall apart at its seams. Even if the king is nothing more than a ghost—a corpse, dangling on invisible strings—this is the game we must still play.

  Aksel has questions about his brother, and why Løren stalks behind us as my new guard, but he doesn’t ask them. He assumes that the slave is my new pet, just as Friedrich had been, and also thinks that I use his brother’s presence to flaunt the fact that Løren failed to kill me. If Løren has his own assumptions about his new position, he doesn’t let me know them.

  Cutting through the courtyard, we walk up the stone steps and through the heavy doors that allow us into the entrance hall. Løren waits outside with the other guards lined up in the courtyard, and Aksel and I continue on. Aksel is used to these meetings; he’s been attending in his mother’s place for the past storm seasons. He’s used to the notion that, at any moment, any one of the other kongelig might decide that he would be more useful to them dead, and has relied on the weakness of the Jannik name to spare him his life. He’s witnessed the other kongelig die around him, watched the cousins suddenly fall ill or their bodies washed ashore. He rarely worries for his life, but Aksel has always been a fool. With his marriage to me, there’s more reason now for the kongelig to decide the Jannik name is more of a nuisance than a joke, and to target him and me both.

  As we enter the main house’s walls, Aksel doesn’t blink at the luxury that surrounds us—but for a moment, my breath is taken away. These are the riches the Fjern hoard to themselves, created on the backs of my people while the islanders suffer. The floors are made of white marble, and intricate wallpaper that seems to glitter with gold covers the walls. We’re led by a slave down another hall that holds grand paintings, larger than even myself, with portraits of the past regents of Hans Lollik. I can hardly meet the slave girl’s eye, so much shame fills me. I’m angry at the Fjern, but I’ve enjoyed riches and wealth and freedom just as much as they have.

  The girl is familiar, one of the island’s, I realize. She’s been introduced to me before, helping Marieke around the Jannik house, though I forget her name now. She keeps her gaze obediently on the marble floor as she takes us through what could nearly be a museum, statues and busts on display. Another turn, and we reach the open doors of the meeting room.

  This is a room of mahogany, velvet, and gilded gold; plush seats surround the wooden table. We aren’t the first to arrive. My heart feels heavy in my chest as I see the kongelig. It will take energy, but I need to use my kraft on each of the kongelig at every opportunity. This creates its own danger. The exhaustion might make it difficult to think as clearly as I normally would, but this is worth the risk. I need to know if any of the kongelig plan to see me dead—if one had meant me to walk to my death over the cliffs, or if it really had only been a dream.

  Beata Larsen takes her seat as the head of the Larsen family, not meeting my gaze, and Erik Nørup sits alongside his twin sister, Alida. The Nørup family, symbolized by the lily, is known as one of the more powerful among the kongelig in terms of wealth and ability to provide and trade multiple crops, though the family isn’t as competitive when it comes to their guard. They have only one hundred men, last I heard, though I suppose I can’t be too judgmental, when the Lund guard only has fifty, and the Jannik only thirty.

  I can feel Erik’s curiosity as he glances at me and nods his greeting, but Alida stares only at the table, deeply lost in thought, completely aware that more guests have arrived but not caring in the slightest. The Fjern believe that Alida Nørup might make a better head of the Nørup family than her brother, who drinks and frolics through the lands, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s a woman; even so, her desperation to be anywhere but the meeting room is easy to see. She doesn’t want the crown, nor does her brother. The Nørup twins are not a threat.

  Jytte Solberg also sits in waiting. The Solberg, with their oleander crest, are even more powerful than the Nørup clan. They’ve been by far the most successful in building a military presence, with over three hundred guards that actively train as though preparing for a possible invasion. The Solberg family has an inherited wealth, which they’ve been careful with for generations, unlike the Jannik. The Solberg family would be a clear frontrunner to be next in line for the crown were it not for their mistake in having a woman as their heir. Jytte Solberg seems to take her family’s mistake gravely. She’s a grim, silent woman, her pale eyes sweeping across the room before landing on me. She’s nearing thirty years and is small in stature, and her skin, her hair, her eyes remind me of sand. Disgust rolls from her in waves when her eyes meet my own, but it’s not the disgust I’m so used to seeing in the pale-skinned Fjern around me. She doesn’t see me as her equal, this is true; but Jytte Solberg’s hatred of me is seeded somewhere else. She simply does not trust me. I’m lucky, I suppose, that Ane Solberg had been poisoned before I arrived, found dead when I’d been on Hans Lollik for barely an hour; otherwise, Jytte Solberg might have accused me of the woman’s death, whether she thought I was innocent or not. It’s almost a relief, th
is hatred, for it to not be rooted in the color of my skin and the thickness of my hair and the wideness of my nose and lips.

  I remember Jytte Solberg’s kraft with a rush the longer she holds my gaze with her own, and my heart begins to race with panic: her control is over fear. She continues to watch me, a challenge, and the longer I keep her stare, the faster my heart pumps in my chest, palms becoming cold with sweat, as my thoughts fill with death and the fact that I won’t succeed on Hans Lollik Helle, will not survive—

  I blink and look away with a shuddering breath, and Jytte smiles.

  “I believe this is the first we’ve had a chance to speak, Elskerinde Jannik,” she says.

  I nod my head to her. “A pleasure.”

  “I’m sure.” She glances at Aksel, who has turned his attentions to Beata. “Congratulations on your wedding.”

  She’s taunting me, and she wants me to know. Aksel and I sit at the far end of the table, Aksel still gazing openly at Beata, while Beata refuses to meet his eye. Beata regrets allowing Aksel into her house and into her bed, regrets giving her virginity to a man who isn’t her husband, a man who is married to someone else. If news of this spreads, she will lose all of the respect of the kongelig, the legacy her parents and her grandparents had built for generations. Beata Larsen would be forced to leave the islands of Hans Lollik in shame.

  We aren’t yet properly situated when Patrika and Olsen Årud storm into the room, a wave of haughtiness sickening the air. They take their seats, looking smugly at each of us without formal greeting. The Årud family with the crest of the crab claw flower; it’s only their grandiose self-esteem that makes them any sort of threat. Though wealthy from the multiple businesses their family holds, their crop has always failed, and they have an army of only seventy guards, yet they manage to act as though they are better than any of the other Fjern, and because of their arrogance, somehow they have convinced others to believe the same. I don’t find them a threat to the crown, but I think the two would be happy to kill whoever they feel is in their path.

  Patrika and Olsen are two of the few remaining kongelig who belonged to my mother’s generation. They would’ve looked her in the eye, smiled, and exchanged pleasantries over wine, knowing that she and her children were about to die. They would do the same to me now—may have even already begun to plot how I’ll find myself dead in just a few days’ time. I think of the cliffs and how I nearly fell from the edge. It could’ve been the storm sickness, yes—a dream brought on by fever that nearly walked me to my death—or it could have just as easily been any one of the kongelig, using a secret kraft to guide me.

  Though the Årud say nothing to me, I can see a crack in their mask of conceit, feel their discomfort: I look like the ghost of my mother, taking a seat at the table that she’d previously been denied.

  “Why is Lothar always the last to arrive?” Patrika says with annoyance, readjusting her skirts in her seat.

  I’ve heard of Patrika Årud’s powers to cause excruciating pain with just a glance. Patrika had been beautiful once, I can tell: Her hair, a curling red, swoops over her shoulder, while her painted lips are full; but in her aging years, her cheeks have become gaunt, and powdered makeup cracks in its attempt to hide the lines around her eyes, her mouth. Olsen, from what I’ve heard, has never been particularly pleasing to the eye: his bulging eyes, his thick neck and fingers, his thin mouth, and hairless, weak chin. Instead he covers himself with jewels—rubies, emeralds—to show his wealth.

  Olsen snaps his fingers at a waiting slave girl to pour him wine, and when she’s finished, he picks up the glass with thick fingers and swallows. Olsen holds no kraft in his veins. It’s only his wealth that has afforded him a seat on Hans Lollik Helle. He watches me, eyeing my face, my chest, as he slowly sips his wine. A pretty little thing, he thinks. Too bad she has the skin of a slave.

  “I’ve heard rumors of your kraft, Elskerinde Jannik,” he says. “A powerful ability to enter minds—even take control as you wish.” His eyes glitter like his jewels. “Is this true?”

  I have no reason to hide my power. “I think you must already know the answer, Herre Årud.”

  I can feel the eyes of the others on me. He smiles. “A curious ability. Couldn’t it be said that you might’ve forced your way onto Hans Lollik Helle?”

  “I think the same can be said of anyone with kraft,” I answer. “Perhaps Elskerinde Årud has threatened the king to perform her kraft on him if she were not to receive an invitation to join the kongelig.”

  “Is that an accusation?” she asks.

  Olsen sips his wine, eyes fastened on me, in an attempt to unsettle me—part of his game, I know, because he holds no kraft himself.

  “Perhaps it’d be best if you stopped watching me,” I say to him.

  “I can watch whomever I wish,” he says.

  I enter him—see myself sitting only a few seats away, disgusting that an islander with skin as black as mine should sit at the table as I do—and his neck twists with a gasp, eyes turning to stare instead at the front of the room.

  “What’re you doing?” Aksel hisses.

  Olsen wheezes as I let him go, and he leans forward over the table, as though he might be sick. He keeps his eyes on the table, and only furtively glances up at me, enraged—he wants to have me whipped, tied to a tree by my wrists and beaten—but I can also feel his prick of fear. Patrika looks to be on the verge of laughter as she sips her sugarcane wine. She holds no love for her husband.

  The door opens, and Lothar Niklasson strides into the room. Herre Niklasson is easily the oldest of the heads of the families, with graying hair and a lined face. The Niklasson family is symbolized by the orchid. Besides the regent, the family is by far the most powerful of the kongelig, in wealth, crop, business, and with an army of four hundred guards. Everyone knows that they are the family most likely to inherit the crown. Lothar Niklasson is also the one who holds the greatest threat on the royal island: a kraft that forces others to speak the truth to any question asked. If he grows suspicious of me, and knows exactly the right question to ask, I’ll have no choice but to tell him everything about my plans here on Hans Lollik Helle—to win the favor of the king, only to have my husband killed and claim the throne for the Rose; to use my power to destroy each of the kongelig who sit before me, one by one, until they’re all in their graves of the sea.

  Lothar takes a seat, silently nodding his greetings, and from the stillness in the room, I know that the others fear him as much as I do—a man who potentially has access to each of our secrets and all of our plans. Yet I remind myself that I, too, know a secret of his: He, along with Patrika and Olsen Årud, murdered my family.

  I look to each member of the kongelig, silently remembering the ranking I had conceived with Marieke: First choice for the crown would undoubtedly be Niklasson; second, likely a tie between Solberg and Nørup, for the simple fact alone that Erik Nørup is a man, and Jytte Solberg is not. The Årud family would follow, embarrassingly directly ahead of me and Aksel. The Jannik would be considered only in front of the Larsen family. Before the next two months pass, I’ll have to ensure that this ranking changes.

  We all sit silently, waiting. A moment passes, and Konge Valdemar walks through the heavy doors and into the room. We stand with a scraping of our chairs as he faces us. Ice runs through my veins, seeing the regent standing so close by: There is no life in this man. It’s like watching a doll, or a scarecrow, suddenly move and turn with a smile. I’d come here to Hans Lollik Helle believing that I would have to focus on charming the regent… but now it’s clear that my goal has shifted: Something is wrong with the king. He could be a ghost, yes, an animated corpse; but another possibility strikes me: The regent could be a product of kraft. He could be an image, a puppet, its strings pulled by one of the kongelig in this very room.

  Konge Valdemar doesn’t greet any of us as he moves to the head of the table. He waits as the slave girl pours him a glass of wine, then nods his thanks as she returns
to her station. He looks to us all, still standing, then says gruffly, “You may be seated.”

  We sit down once again.

  Konge Valdemar takes a healthy sip of wine, then waves his hand at me, a smile suddenly upon his face, eyes bright—though I still can’t sense any happiness, any emotion, any life from the man. I suppress a shiver. “We have a new addition.”

  The heads of each family look to me.

  “Elskerinde Sigourney Jannik,” he says. “Welcome.”

  “Thank you, my king.”

  There’s a moment’s breath of quiet, before Patrika Årud turns to me, clearly unable to control herself, even in front of Konge Valdemar.

  “Elskerinde Jannik,” Patrika says, eyes fastened on me. “I’d heard a rumor that, while Bertrand Lund had been your patron, you are actually a member of the late Rose family. Looking at you now,” she says, but it’s her thoughts that finish for her: She looks so much like Mirjam Rose that this must be true.

  All of the kongelig and Konge Valdemar watch me silently. Aksel’s brow is furrowed; I’ve already taken too long to speak.

  “Yes,” I say, “it’s true. I am the daughter of Mirjam Rose.”

  Silence fills the room. This is the first I’ve acknowledged my bloodline publicly. Beside me, I sense Aksel’s anger, and at the root of that anger, his embarrassment.

  “My condolences on your family’s deaths,” Elskerinde Årud says, her heart speeding, a surprising amount of fear sinking into me, though she controls her expression well. “May I ask how you survived such a tragedy? I’d thought all in the manor that terrible night had been killed.”

  “With the help of a slave,” I say, “who sacrificed her life for mine.”

  Lothar Niklasson’s gaze is narrow. “And why did you keep your name a secret all this time, until you are now conveniently on the royal island of Hans Lollik?”