Queen of the Conquered

by Kacen Callender

  An invitation was sent to me to join the kongelig on Hans Lollik Helle for the storm season. Once I arrived on the royal island, so many years after their planning had begun, the uprising would spark. All of the kongelig on Hans Lollik Helle would be killed one by one. The killings would be careful, calculated. Each murder would create confusion, distrust among the kongelig, interrupting their rituals as uncertainty spread—uniting them against me in their distrust as they had a target to focus on, a target that was not the slaves, waiting for their freedom—until they were all dead.

  The slaves wouldn’t attempt to murder all of us at once. What if they attempted to put us all into a room and burn that room down? The kongelig were powerful, each with their own kraft; we could have fought back, could have survived, and then? The slaves would be realized in their plan, the uprising stopped with their beheadings. Patience, Marieke had reminded them—have patience and move slowly to remain unseen, unsuspected. The plan had worked. None of the kongelig considered that this could be the work of the slaves around us. We each thought that the murderer was of the Ludjivik family, or another of the kongelig, eager to be rid of the rest of their competition. The uprising, so far, has been a success.

  They used me against the kongelig as they organized the rebellions of the other islands through their network of whispers. Løren had escaped—run away in the middle of a storm—just so that he could get to Larsen Helle and relay the first of the messages, which spread from one island to the next. Each of the rebels on the islands of Hans Lollik agreed that the uprising will be this very night. The royal island, in chaos without its regent and without any one of the Herres and Elskerindes left alive to make their orders, will lose its grip on all the islands of Hans Lollik—and as one, the conquered will rise. They will take back these islands. They will kill every Fjern and kongelig. They will have their freedom.

  Løren can feel that I know the truth. He hasn’t bothered to block this from me. He wants me to know his mind now, to know the truth, now he knows that the attacks on the royal island have already begun. Jytte Solberg has proved difficult to kill, but if all has gone as planned, she will already be dead. Three of her guards are a part of this uprising; they will overpower her and cut her throat before any of the other slaves can stop them. Lothar Niklasson will be the last remaining kongelig. He will be kept alive as the most valuable hostage, something Marieke had suggested might prove useful based on her observations of the Fjern in the northern nations. The Fjern tend to barter and bargain, and if the islanders have someone the Fjern might consider valuable, there could come a point in time when they might be able to use Lothar Niklasson to cement their freedom.

  And Løren will kill me. He lets me knows this now. Løren had always been meant to kill me. This had been the greatest source of conflict among the slaves of Hans Lollik Helle. They knew that I was a true kongelig, and that I had no use to them after the uprising; they knew that my kraft was too powerful, and that I would have to die. But Marieke, time and again, couldn’t stop herself from asking the others if I could be spared. Perhaps there was hope for me, that I could change—that she could teach me to be like my people, to respect the spirits and to treat the islanders as equals rather than to dismiss them as slaves. Malthe has not wanted to consider this. I’m too dangerous. I could easily take over any one of the slaves and force them to kill themselves or someone else. Malthe didn’t want to take such a risk. And Løren—he hasn’t known what to think. He’d wanted to believe that there was a hope for me. In a way, I have been enslaved as well, he thinks—enslaved to my own mind, relying on the power the kongelig have granted me. He can’t help but want to show me a world I haven’t had the imagination to see for myself: a world where islanders walk with freedom and power in their veins. And yet he also knows the truth, plain before him: I have whipped him. I have beaten him. I have tried to force him into my bed, and I have tried to have him killed as well. And so I will have to die.

  This is the only reason he’s allowed me to sail away, to let me have these final moments of peace before he ends my life. He’ll kill me once we come close enough to Valdemar Helle. After I’m dead, he’ll return to Hans Lollik Helle, where the others wait for him now.

  “Are you afraid?” he asks me, still looking to the sea. I can feel my kraft reflected in him, so he knows the answer to this. He only wants to hear me say the words.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I’m afraid.”

  “I’ve never understood fearing death,” he says. “I was scared, yes, when I was younger. I wasn’t ready to die. But now? What is there to fear?” he asks me. “Once you’re dead, you feel nothing.”

  “I’m afraid to die before I’ve experienced my reason for life.”

  “You’ve fulfilled your reason.”

  “A pawn in your uprising?” I ask. “I’d hope I had more purpose than that.”

  Løren shrugs. He doesn’t know if I have any other purpose than this; it isn’t his place to say. I ask him how he plans to kill me, and he assures me that he’ll kill me quickly, with mercy, even if he isn’t sure I deserve such a thing. But when I ask if he can kill me on Hans Lollik Helle instead, he hesitates.

  “Why would you want to die there?” he asks.

  I tell him it’s a promise I’d made to myself; if I’m going to die, then I’ll at least have died trying to become the next regent. If I’m going to die, it will be on the royal island. We haven’t sailed for long, only a few hours; Løren doesn’t see the harm in agreeing to this. He tells the other slaves, all of whom follow his orders, all of whom know of the uprising that’s to come, all of whom rejoice in my death, and we turn back for Hans Lollik Helle.

  Hans Lollik Helle is on fire. I can see this in the distance, the bright spots burning as the fires had once burned Rose Helle so many years ago. The sun is setting now, smoke billowing into the darkening sky. The fire of Hans Lollik Helle acts as a signal to the nearest islands: They, too, start to burn, first the fields and then the groves, the plantations in the far distance alight.

  The ship anchors, and the same man who had rowed me onto Hans Lollik Helle at the start of the season is here to row me once more. This man, too, has been a part of the uprising, sharing his whispered messages to the slaves who come and go from the royal island. The answer to all of my questions had been so obvious, and yet I’d focused on the kongelig, believing only they to be capable of having the power to take these islands. And hadn’t Løren himself told me, not so long ago? His pity for me, that even those closest to me plan for my death.

  Løren is patient as we make our way into the mangroves, the branches snagging at my dress and hair. The fear in me churns, and though I’ve accepted my death, I feel sick as well, my hands slick, my vision blurred. I’m not ready to die.

  “Where should I do it?” he asks me. “The Jannik house?”

  I ask for him to kill me inside of Herregård Constantjin, where I’d so hoped to be named regent, and so he takes me there. Løren is more merciful than even he gives himself credit for. He doesn’t rejoice in my death, doesn’t celebrate having to kill me, even when he thinks of how I have treated him these past months, even when he thinks of his whippings and that I had ordered his execution. This isn’t revenge for him. This is simply what must be done, a step toward the freedom of our people. I should be willing to die. I should be a willing sacrifice.

  We walk up the dirt path that runs alongside the shore. We can’t take the usual path because the groves are burning, the slaves who had worked there for the storm season now disappeared. I can hear screams in the distance. The relatives of the heads of the kongelig families, I can feel in Løren. They had decided there would be no survivors. The elderly, and even the children that had been kept in the manors—each will be killed.

  I think of Marieke, the slaves who were massacred in the Jannik house, and I know now what a trick this must have been. The slaves of Hans Lollik Helle had been playing a game with me as much as with the other kongelig. They wanted to keep m
e confused, wanted me to be distracted by the murders that surrounded me. There’s the last slave in Løren’s thoughts, of course, the girl who had been a child, hidden away from the kongelig and told not to use her kraft unless she wanted to be hung by her neck. She is nearly grown now, and her kraft is stronger than anyone has ever before seen in these islands—stronger than even my own. She has delighted in the games she’s played with me, to the point where she’d become carried away, attempting to take my life before I was supposed to die, nearly walking me over the cliffs of Hans Lollik Helle. That had been a reckless and dangerous choice, one that she’d been berated for many times.

  Herregård Constantjin is the only house that doesn’t burn. Its facade is gone now; it crumbles in the night, torches unlit, smell of decay finding its way to me. The king has been dead for only one storm season now, but the slaves of Hans Lollik Helle stopped caring for the house many storm seasons ago, allowing the castle to fall into disarray around the king while the kraft of a perfect manor surrounded him. I’d thought for so long that the person behind the false king and the lies of this royal island must be one of the other kongelig. It was arrogant of me to assume that there couldn’t be another islander who held kraft as well.

  “I don’t think she’d want to see you now,” Løren tells me. He has seen why I wanted to come to Herregård Constantjin. I could see in his memories that this is where he and the others would meet. “She told me not to force her to see you killed.” Another reason, I realize, he’d allowed me to sail away from the island.

  “Please,” I tell him. “I only want to see her for myself. I won’t attempt to fight.”

  “She told me not to force her to see you die,” Løren says again. Løren knows that this is where they all are, waiting for his return following his final mission as my guard. We’re already so close to the meeting room now anyway, and since he’s done me this mercy and granted me this final wish, I might as well be brought before them.

  The council room is dark, save for a few flickering torches. It is as the meeting room has always looked, without the kraft that created a perfect image. Malthe sits at the head, where the king would normally sit. Beside him is Marieke, alive; I’d seen the truth of this, too, in Løren. I saw how Marieke had decided she couldn’t stand to be at my side any longer, not when she knew she would have to soon betray me and allow Løren to end my life; and so her death, and the deaths of the slaves of the Jannik house, was created as a mercy to her. Marieke’s eyes widen when we walk through the doors. The slave girl, Agatha, sits beside her.

  Løren takes his place on Malthe’s other side, though he doesn’t sit. He stands above the chair, and there’s some shame in him, this I can feel. He knows he should have killed me, shouldn’t have listened to my wishes and brought me back to this island and to this room. Løren is too merciful, despite himself. The three look at him with a range of emotions. Anger, for bringing me here as though I’m a guest, when Løren knows that I should be dead. Amusement, for the boy has always done exactly as he pleased, truly. Sadness. I can feel this come from Marieke, even as I also feel the surprise in her that I’m still alive. Seeing Marieke here—this is the deepest cut of all. I had loved her, I had mourned her, and I thought that she had loved me, even as she hated that I was a kongelig.

  Sinking into her, feeling even only the briefest of emotions, I see that she has grieved, thinking me already dead. This has been painful for Marieke. She grew to love me over the years, and so knowing that she would have to guide me to Hans Lollik Helle and ultimately to my death has been difficult, and nearly impossible. She’s betrayed her own proposal more than once: come to the others with the suggestion that perhaps I don’t have to die after all. The kongelig, and the ways of the Fjern, are all that I’ve ever known. I could be taught, she said.

  She asked Malthe to show me mercy, but Malthe could not. Marieke has had no choice but to agree. She has mourned me a thousand times. The others see a kongelig, traitor to her own people, and Marieke knows that this isn’t a lie; but she has also seen me as a child grieving the loss of her family, a girl with determination and strength. She has seen me crying, she has seen my smile. She knows me as a mother would, and what sort of mother would leave her child to die? This is what I want to ask her, but no words leave my tongue.

  Agatha watches me. She knows she’s tricked me. She knows I’m most surprised to see her. I’d been so dismissive of the girl. I’d thought her silly, not worth my thoughts as she tried so hard to impress me. Even now she wants me to be impressed by her—her power, her kraft. The girl isn’t any more than seventeen. Even at the young age of nine, she knew of the path she must take. She was so powerful that the slaves of Hans Lollik Helle protected her and showed her how to hide her skills. They had all depended on her for this final game they must play. She practiced over the years. Practiced conjuring the images she’d created in her mind. A flower for the Elskerinde, beautiful and blooming, actually rotting; a dress of lace, clean and pure, actually stained and torn.

  After the slaves killed the king, Agatha replaced his image for the storm season, carefully always in the background, standing against walls alongside other slaves, but just enough to fade. She maintained the image of the castle, even as it began to decay. This storm season has been most exhausting of all, as she aided in the deaths of each kongelig, one by one. Beata Larsen’s death was easiest. She simply made the girl dream that her parents were still alive on Larsen Helle, that they held her hands as they walked with her through the fields of their plantation. Beata Larsen was instead walked to the bay. Malthe waited there. He wrapped his hands around her neck and strangled her, and then left her body to the sea.

  Olsen Årud was next. The fire that took his house had been real, yes; his body burned. The slaves who had been killed in the manor were only a piece of Agatha’s imagination. Nine bodies found total—she’d thought this was a nice touch, a symbol of each of the kongelig who would die. She’d had little to do with the death of Erik Nørup. This was again Malthe’s doing; Erik had been given herbs to put him into a deep sleep and then brought to the courtyard of Herregård Constantjin. Each of the slaves lining the manor’s walls had been brought into the fold, and they watched. Malthe had been swift with the machete.

  Agatha was eager to kill me. She was disappointed when she was scolded for nearly walking me off the cliffs, angry when she was told to wait. She didn’t want to wait. She’s waited years to release the fury building in her; waited, silently, as the Fjern raped her and killed our people. I can’t blame her for the rage—the desire, the need, to take her revenge and to show her power. She’d tried to trick the others. Tried to make me stab myself and make it seem it had been my own doing, my own willingness to die, but both Malthe and Marieke had seen through this lie, and she was scolded again, told that she risked the freedom of all the people of these islands.

  Agatha had been angry, too, when she failed in the killing of Jytte Solberg. Agatha had been the one who held the knife, a perfect image of me—but she had been too weak against Jytte, and so had to run when the woman fought back. But she was given her chance once again. Jytte was brought to the throne room, hands bound, and Agatha asked if she could be the one to kill Elskerinde Solberg, and so she was given the knife to cut the woman’s neck. Now she watches me; she has enjoyed these last few months of killings. She hopes she will have the chance to take my life next.

  Malthe wants to know why Løren has brought me here. “She’s supposed to be dead.”

  Here, Løren shows a piece of truth he hadn’t wanted me to see. He knows I should die. It’s what I deserve. But the pity in Løren has also grown. He wants others to believe he is merciless; has needed all of them to think this so he could be a part of this uprising. If he had shown himself to be soft all of those years ago, he would never have been brought into the fold. With the blood of the Fjern, Malthe might have believed Løren would warn his brother and his father, and so he worked to cut that softness from his heart. Why would h
e want to show mercy to the kongelig? These are the people who have ruined these islands, taken our people’s freedom, tortured us—and I am one of them. It was easy to force himself to think that he’s without mercy. He hates me—hates all of the kongelig, as he should. But Løren has also always wondered if a person should have a chance for redemption.

  Løren admits it: He hesitates to kill me, though he knows that’s what he must do. “Perhaps she could still be of some use.”

  “We decided she would die,” Agatha says, frustration leaking into her voice, her eyes still on me. She finds Løren weak to even consider such a thing. She’s struggled to force herself to smile at me all these long months, to pretend to be the overeager slave and hide her true thoughts, but now, finally, she can look at me as she’s truly wanted—with all of her hatred, with all of her glee that she’ll get to watch me, traitor to her people, die as I should. Agatha hates me. Yes, all of the slaves of these islands do, but Agatha hates me like none have before. Agatha’s kraft is the only one I’ve met that is stronger than my own. She’s powerful. She’s more powerful than all of the other kongelig. Her kraft has grown so strong that, even across islands, she can envision a lie and have it appear as a new reality. Agatha knows her strength. She’s known that she’s more powerful than all of the Fjern who surround her, making their orders, beating her and forcing her into their bed. She has been a slave of Hans Lollik Helle all her life; the royal island that might have been hers, had she not been born with skin as dark as mine.

  And she saw me—the woman who managed to avoid chains and scars, who was allowed onto the royal island as a kongelig. Agatha hated me for betraying my own people, yes, but she hated me all the more because she wanted my freedom. She wanted the opportunity to sit at this table as I did, among the Fjern, and prove herself—her worth, her power, her strength. Even knowing that this was all a lie, she wanted to be a part of it, and this is what she hated more than anything else. She looks at me and she sees herself—what she might have become if she had been born a daughter of the Rose.