There’s one thing that Patrika knows for certain: This fire was set, and she’ll have the person who set it. She’ll torture whoever killed her husband, slowly, for many months, until the murderer has bitten off their own tongue, choking on blood, in an attempt to escape her. She considers the many ways she might torture her husband’s killer; her kraft won’t be enough. She wants to see the inside of the murderer’s skin, bone peeking through flesh. Patrika Årud may be a more vengeful woman than I am.
“A second member of the kongelig, dead in as many weeks,” Jytte whispers, her eyes fastened to me, “and a newcomer who is welcomed by none but the king.”
Konge Valdemar calls for another meeting with the kongelig in a handwritten request brought in by a trembling slave girl. I haven’t seen Aksel in days, and don’t know where he’s hiding on the island, or if he’s even on the island at all. It’s possible that he got on a boat and left for Jannik Helle, or any of the other islands of Hans Lollik; possible that he left these seas altogether for the northern empires, cities, and nations he’s always wanted to witness, even if it means he won’t see them with his beloved. I hope that he’s left, not only for me but for himself as well. I thought that I needed Aksel Jannik, once, but it’s become clear that he’s only in my way the longer he stays on this island. I know that I won’t be handed the title of regent by the puppet king, but if I can discover which of the kongelig is behind the murders, and who is behind the control of the regent, there’s still a chance I can expose them—kill them if necessary—and take control of these islands. Aksel is only a dangerous distraction.
I leave for the main house without him, Løren behind me. He’s able to walk now, though he walks with a limp. The pain that flares in him with each step is so strong that he’s unable to keep the block between us as he normally does. I tell myself it’s out of respect that I don’t abuse his pain to read his thoughts and answer more questions I have of him, always unending questions and curiosity for the man—but I’m only telling myself a lie. I’m too afraid to see what he really thinks of me right now. I’m too afraid to see the hatred he feels for me. I don’t know what I can do to convince Løren that I don’t deserve his hatred. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do, except to free him and all the slaves of the Rose, Jannik, and Lund names.
We come to the main house, and I don’t know if he thinks about the night we’d come here together—the rot of the walls, the weeds that filled the gardens, which look so perfectly manicured now, shining under the sunlight. The window I’d shattered to climb inside has been fixed, or has been brought into the lie that’s the perfection of this manor, I don’t know which. This only makes my heart tighten in my chest. Løren goes to stand beside the other slaves lined up outside of the wall, and I enter through the grand doorway alone.
I shiver, walking down the halls. The wallpaper had been torn and stained, bloated with water; the floors, scuffed and cracked and covered with dirt and abandoned pots and pans. Now the wallpaper is intact, floral patterns shining with glittering gold, paneled wood floors gleaming. The staircase, which I’ve never seen anyone walk up or down, I now realize, remains as grand and unbroken as it did before, marble glistening under the golden chandeliers. A lie, all of it.
I come to the meeting room with its walls and chairs and table of mahogany. My vision flickers and wavers as I sit at the table. I can feel the rot beneath my skirts, smell the must and mold, though the room looks as beautiful as it had the first time I walked through its doors. I look for the cracks in the lie, but the more I strain to find even a hint of mold on the walls, the more my vision tunnels and blackens. I clench my hands together in my lap.
Today Lothar Niklasson is also already in the room, along with all the other kongelig. It’s clear they’d just been discussing me. Lothar tilts his head as he examines me. Alida and Erik watch me with a mixture of curiosity and guilt, before looking at the surface at the table instead. Jytte Solberg stares. A small smile twitches on her face. She thinks to herself how I might look when I’m finally brought to justice, rope strung around my neck. Patrika looks forward at the opposite wall without expression, without blinking. She trembles across the table from me. She forces herself not to use her kraft on me, though she so desperately wants to.
I can see that she doesn’t believe it was me. She knows I sat on the bay with Alida Nørup; she knows I would have to be a fool to kill another of the kongelig right now, when so many accuse me of the death of Beata Larsen, and that though my skin is dark, I’m clearly not a fool if I’ve managed to make my way onto this royal island. Patrika Årud knows I didn’t kill her husband; but still, she wants to see someone scream. She wants to watch me beg for mercy, to end my life just to let the torture stop. If enough of the kongelig believe it was me—if they all hate me so, all want to see me dead—then perhaps this is something she could do without repercussion. She considers this strongly.
No one speaks. There’s nothing to say. There’s only a beat of silence before the doors open and the false king enters. We all stand, and he takes his seat, waving at us impatiently to be seated as well. I can’t look away from the man. I think on his kraft over the dead. Is it possible that he truly is nothing more than a ghost welcoming us into his haunting? I can’t imagine what a spirit would want with the world of the living. And if he isn’t a ghost, but a result of kraft? How well this lie must be upheld; the power of whoever holds the king in their grasp, and presents this lie of beauty around us, awes me and shocks me and terrifies me all at once.
The regent asks me for my husband.
“I don’t know where he is, my king.”
Konge Valdemar raises a brow. “You don’t know where your husband is?”
At one point in time, Patrika and Olsen Årud would have exchanged smiles. Jytte Solberg, perhaps, would’ve looked satisfied that the Jannik name continues to be no more than a joke before the king. Beata might’ve stared at her hands, too afraid to look my way at the mention of my husband. Today there’s only hard silence. Patrika has barely registered that the king has spoken. She shouldn’t have come, she now realizes. She’s close to standing with a scream, close to throwing herself at me, close to demanding that Konge Valdemar allow her to use her kraft on me.
The regent doesn’t seem to realize the depths of Patrika Årud’s struggles. “Is it not suspicious,” he asks, “that you don’t know where your husband is, and there’s just been a fatal fire?”
It might be foolish of me, but I hadn’t considered the possibility. Aksel has been in mourning, and doesn’t have any reason to burn the Årud manor to the ground, unless he’d drunkenly mistaken the manor for the Jannik house, hoping to take my life. The others around the table, however, have thought about the possibility. Lothar’s colorless eyes flicker to my own. He wouldn’t know the motive, but Aksel Jannik has been crazed since the death of Beata Larsen. Perhaps he wouldn’t need a motive to want to see this island burn. Lothar has never liked Aksel Jannik, his father, or even the former Elskerinde. He, along with Patrika and Olsen Årud, had been in the room when the Herre and Elskerinde Jannik invited the other kongelig to their home. Arranged around the sitting room carefully, as though posing for a portrait, Herre Engel Jannik began to describe their plans. The king was ill, frail of mind; he didn’t understand his implications in inviting an islander onto Hans Lollik Helle for the storm season. And while the Rose family had been nothing but an inconvenience for generations now, partnering with the Lund and taking a hold on the business of sugarcane in these lands, the inconvenience had now officially become dangerous. Each of the kongelig could agree that Mirjam Rose must be killed.
Lothar remembered the discomfort of Freja Jannik as her husband began to detail the plan: the annual ball that the woman threw in her late husband’s honor. The children, who would be in attendance, and who must also die. Even the Fjern guests who attended the ball must be killed, if they wanted to ensure no survivor went to the king with the truth. The Fjern guests weren’t islanders, a
nd so this would be considered a sin by the gods above—all of the kongelig in the room knew this—but still, Engel acted as though anyone who would attend an islander’s ball was deserving of their death.
Lothar had felt sick. It didn’t matter to him that my family was made of islanders. He’d never met the Rose family and had never seen me before as a child, but he knew that I’d been only six at the time, my sisters ten and thirteen, my brother barely a man at fourteen years old. It didn’t sit well with him, this plot to slaughter innocent children. But Lothar couldn’t afford to put himself in a dangerous position, either. If he were the only one who spoke out against the Jannik plan, then the kongelig might very well put a target on his back next. It was easier—safer—to go along with the group’s decision than to argue on behalf of my family’s lives.
Though Lothar could understand the murder of my mother, there was little reason to kill my sisters and brother and attempt to kill me; we were far too young to be invited onto Hans Lollik Helle for the storm season, and even if we had been offered a chance to replace our mother, the king obviously wasn’t as interested in us as he was in Mirjam Rose. Lothar had fully expected that he’d be the next regent, and as he also agreed that a family of islanders had no business holding a monopoly of one of the most lucrative businesses of Hans Lollik, he would simply find a way to tax our family until our coin ran dry and we were forced to leave for the north. A simple, logical solution.
The Jannik family wasn’t logical. Aksel was becoming more like his father with every passing day: drunk, shouting and stumbling incoherently; if Beata had lived, and the two had been wed, Lothar was certain Aksel would have eventually turned his fist to the poor girl. It was reasonable to assume that Aksel Jannik, in his pain and fury, would drunkenly stumble through the groves and decide to set fire to the first house of the kongelig he saw. He might’ve even have planned to set fire to every single house, including his own, before he understood the depth of his mistake and ran away like the coward he was.
Alida’s thoughts on the possibility of Aksel’s guilt are similar; she, too, has never respected the Jannik. Even Erik worries that his friend might be to blame for the death of Olsen Årud. It’s only Patrika, barely aware of the suggestion in the conversation that takes place, and Jytte, who is convinced of my guilt, who don’t place blame on Aksel in their thoughts.
It doesn’t matter. Konge Valdemar waves a hand at Lothar, who nods and stands. He begins his questioning of each of us. What do we know of the fire? Were we the ones who set it, or did we send someone to set the fire in our stead?
Erik was drunk, asleep—in bed with a slave girl; Alida, with me. Patrika was whale watching, just as she’d said. Jytte had been answering letters from Solberg Helle pertaining to her estate. The only person whose answers we don’t have is Aksel. I glance at Lothar. It isn’t lost on me that we don’t have his answers to his own questions, either.
Lothar speaks, taking his seat beside the king once again. “Assuming Aksel Jannik’s innocence, there’s another suspect we must consider,” he tells the king. “The Ludjivik wouldn’t have let the death of their patriarch go unanswered. Gustav Ludjivik’s cousins could easily be behind these deaths.”
I don’t see how the Ludjivik cousins could’ve spread their grasp onto the royal island so easily and quickly, but it’s not my place to question. The king seems to consider this. He nods, and in his silence, my vision flickers; I see the truth behind the screen of kraft. The king isn’t there, and behind him is the rotting wallpaper, the black mold spread across the empty chair that waits at the helm of the table. The lie returns, and the room is glistening in its mahogany and velvet and gold once again, the king with his soured pale skin and empty eyes. He smiles at me. For only a second, so quickly I can’t be sure any of the kongelig have even seen. He smiles, as though whoever has created this vision wants me to know that they’re aware of what I’ve realized, about the king and the house and this island itself.
“If it is indeed the Ludjivik,” Patrika says, suddenly invested in the conversation, “then I’d like to find my revenge myself.” She hadn’t been paying attention, had wished she hadn’t come to this meeting room, but now she hears a chance, finally, to release the pain and anger building beneath her skin.
The king asks her, “And how will you do this?”
“I’ll take my guards, and the guards of anyone else who is willing to offer them, and I’ll go to Ludjivik Helle and burn the island to the ground. There will be no survivors. The Ludjivik cousins knew this would be the response, and so they have no care for their people.”
“That isn’t fair to the innocents,” Alida tells Patrika—a surprise, to all around the table. Alida usually doesn’t speak. She tends to daydream, counting down the seconds to her freedom from the meeting room, but I can see that she’s shaken by the fire and Olsen Årud’s death. Beata Larsen’s passing was a tragedy, but now this is no coincidence. She sees the situation as I do: There has always been death on Hans Lollik Helle, yes, but now someone in this room means to be rid of each of the other kongelig, until they themselves are finally guaranteed the throne. Alida won’t look at Patrika, but I sense a suspicion in her: She knows that Patrika Årud didn’t love Olsen. Couldn’t it have easily been the woman, sacrificing her husband’s life in order to receive the crown she so desperately wants for herself? She could’ve killed him to take the guilt and blame away from herself by pretending to be in mourning, while she then continues to kill each of us without suspicion. The only question is how she—how anyone in this room—might’ve managed to trick Lothar Niklasson. Unless he himself is lying, Alida thinks—declaring that everyone in this room speaks their truths.
Patrika doesn’t look away from the king. “The Ludjivik signed away their lives the moment they killed my husband.”
“You have no proof that it was them,” Jytte says. “You only look for somewhere to place your anger. The answer might be closer than we think,” she tells Patrika, her eyes meeting mine.
“I’ve proven my innocence.”
“You’ve lied and tricked and schemed your way onto this island.”
“She’s proven her innocence,” the false king says, and Jytte falls silent in her seat. The king regards Lothar. “How do you know that it was the Ludjivik?”
“I can’t think of who else it might be.”
Konge Valdemar agrees to Patrika’s wishes. She’s to attack Ludjivik Helle and take the island for herself, to place under Årud rule. I swallow down my own arguments, trying not to think on the children who had raced after my carriage, the villagers washing their clothes and picking weeds from their gardens with their distrustful eyes. It’s impossible to justify the murder of innocents, the deaths of children. They’ll all be dead in a few days’ time because of this one woman’s need for revenge.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Løren walks me back to the Jannik house as the sun begins to set. Once I’ve walked through the front doors, he turns, heading for the slaves’ entrance to the kitchens so that he can go down the hall and to the library, where he still sleeps to this day; he can’t stand the slaves’ quarters on this island, there’re too many memories that haunt him at night and make it impossible for him to sleep, and no one has yet told him that he can’t make the library his own personal chamber, so that’s where he stays. I tell him to wait, so he waits. I ask him to join me in the sitting room. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to. He can’t be around me for much longer without letting the hatred inside of him seep into the air, into his words and expressions, and he’s supposed to have learned his lesson on how, exactly, he should treat his Jannik masters.
But he also can’t tell me no. He follows me inside, down the hall and through the sitting room doors. The nights have been cold enough to want a fire, to fight against the breeze that forces itself through the cracks in the house. The fireplace here hasn’t been lit, and Marieke has gone to bed. Agatha busies herself with lighting the fire.
“Is there
anything else you require, Elskerinde Jannik?” she asks.
I dismiss her, and as the fire crackles, Løren stands where he usually would, against the wall and at attention. I ask him to sit. He doesn’t want to, but his leg where the whip cut in pains him. He sits on the sofa opposite me, on the seat Aksel had taken just a few weeks before.
“How’re your wounds?” I ask Løren. “Are you healing well?”
He doesn’t believe I actually care to know, but he still answers. “I’m healing slowly.”
“It seems you should be used to such beatings. You have a lot of scars.”
He isn’t sure what the point of me mentioning this is; he sits in silence.
“I want to be your ally, Løren,” I tell him, “but you don’t help me if you do such things—hitting Aksel, that could’ve been a fatal mistake. You’re lucky I was able to convince him and the other kongelig to spare your life.”
“Is that what you think you did?”
He doesn’t say any more. I sit and wait, but it’s clear that he won’t speak. The minutes pass, and finally I break under the pressure of the quiet and his hateful eyes.
“I tried to help you.”
“Yes,” he says, “that’s what you continue to tell yourself.”
“You can feel it for yourself,” I tell him—an invitation to use his kraft on me, to take my ability and read my own thoughts, my own feelings, but he refuses. He feels unsettled whenever he enters my mind. I’m used to knowing the lives of the people around me, to slipping in and out of the minds and souls of others, becoming an entirely different person from one moment to the next; but Løren has never known anything but his own life. To suddenly become me—to see the world through my eyes, and to feel, for even a moment, the freedom I feel—takes a toll on him. It’s like having one of the many dreams he had as a child, dreams of his freedom, of walking from a boat and onto an island filled with escaped slaves of Hans Lollik—only to wake, still in the slaves’ quarters, still as trapped as he has been since the moment he was pulled from his mother’s stomach.
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