Queen of the Struggle

by Nik Korpon

  They move on to what I think is the kitchen. Once they’re out of sight, I hurry over to the bathroom. I’m just at the door when the pervert comes out of the kitchen.

  I stop short and hold my breath. He cocks his head.

  “Sorry,” I say, putting on a terrible smile. “Had to fix my makeup.”

  I start to head back upstairs when I see him reaching for the door. The unflushed toilet, the dry sink, any of that will give me away.

  “You might want to steer clear of that a couple minutes.” I manage not to smile when I say it. “Something about that sandwich meat didn’t sit well.” I shake my head, letting him fill in the blanks, and go back to my room.

  I flop down on the bed and stare at the ceiling, willing the letter safe delivery to Henraek. Willing safe delivery for Henraek.

  11.

  HENRAEK

  Ødven’s headquarters is surprisingly small, given his position. I should really stop saying that: surprisingly. Everything about this city, this country, these people, has been surprising. How clean it is. How welcoming the people are. His office reflects what I’ve seen in the city. Clean lines. Open space. A lack of ornamentation. Given my interactions here, however few, one could go so far as to say the aesthetic and architecture reflects the temperament of the people. And why shouldn’t it? People learn to make do with what they’re given.

  It’s clear to me now that the Tathadann fed us nothing but lies and rumors to stoke a fear of outsiders, keeping us reliant on them for our safety and well-being. It makes me wonder what outsiders – people from farther away than the hills or a few miles past Westhell County – would make of Eitan and its people.

  The only thing that hasn’t been unexpected was Ødven performing a ritual human sacrifice, though the brazenness with which he did it – and how fully the people embraced it – did take me back. Then again, after sixty years of near-constant war in Eitan, I’m not so positive we haven’t been performing our own version.

  None of that makes me feel any better about leaving the boys on their own. The only thing that gives me comfort here is that the wall separating this space from the waiting room is glass, so I can keep a constant eye on them. Sitting on the couch, both of them look reasonably composed after witnessing the horror show out on Evivårgen Torg, though Cobb seems more rattled than Donael. He has always been the more fragile soul. In some way, I admire Donael’s self-control, the way that he appears wise beyond his years, because Nahoeg knows the easiest way to be cracked is to show weakness. But that hard exterior also disappoints me, because it reflects me. Half of the reason I’ve fought so hard for the last twenty years is so that my children wouldn’t have to grow up in the same conditions as Walleus and I did, where one flicker of emotion could mean the difference between being labeled hunter or prey. And the fact that he easily suppresses emotion means, to some degree, that my life has been a failure. Then again, there are numerous other things pointing to that.

  “It wasn’t always like this.”

  I startle in my seat on hearing a voice, stuck so far inside my head while considering the boys. I turn and see a lithe woman standing by the window that overlooks Evivårgen Torg, a view probably not dissimilar from the one in our apartment. Something about her posture exudes regality, someone who doesn’t ask for things but merely says them to the air and expects them to manifest before her, someone who has always known the world to be that way. She casts a final glance outside before exhaling hard, her breath condensing on the cold glass. She turns to me and pulls aside a wisp of blonde hair with a thin pinkie finger before tucking it behind her ear.

  “What wasn’t?” I say.

  “This. Everything.” She gestures absently toward the city. “All of this concession, keeping everyone happy.”

  This must be Federijke, Ødven’s wife.

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  She lowers herself onto the desk with the grace of a crane, as if she could balance her entire body weight on a single toe and look effortless doing it, and crosses her legs. Her hands find rest in her lap, fingers crossed. It’s just now occurring to me that, in her long shimmering dress, she looks much more the part of party leader than her grey-fatigued husband. I’m sure that dress cost more than I’m worth, but it doesn’t look like it. As opposed to the Morrigans’ ostentatious display of wealth, Federijke Äsyr errs on the side of classy. It’s a dress that would look great on Emeríann, though she’d sooner die than be caught in something so expensive.

  “Years ago, when we formed Ragjarøn, Ødven didn’t feel the need to ask for things. When we united the provinces, we did it because we needed to make one sovereign state. We didn’t ask what everyone felt about the prospects. We knew what the people required and acted accordingly.”

  “If I might say,” I wager, somewhat hesitant to contradict her, “your husband just murdered a man in front of hundreds of people. Where I’m from, that doesn’t qualify as making concessions.”

  She dismisses it with a flick of the wrist. “That’s only theatre. Something the dumskålles need in order to clap.”

  “Dumskålles?”

  “I don’t know how you translate. Those who cannot breathe through their noses, always through their open mouths.”

  “Ah, right.” I glance out into the other room. Cobb is now lying with his head in Donael’s lap and, though he looks slightly annoyed, Donael is reading to him from a magazine. Or at least pretending to read, because I’m pretty sure that’s a local magazine. I doubt Cobb knows the difference and it’s a sweet gesture anyway. “Still, I have to say that it’s effective theatre.”

  “Oh, don’t tell him that or I’ll never hear the end of it.” She holds out her hand, considering her nails, which draws my attention to them, and it’s only then that I realize the slit in her dress has crept mightily up her thigh. “I’ve heard of what you did in Eitan. You, Henraek,” she says, conspicuously oblivious to her shifting wardrobe, “you understand what my husband no longer does. That good will is a wonderful idea, but it is merely what we wrap around war to comfort ourselves, convince ourselves that we are doing what is right, not what is just.”

  I swallow hard, feeling the heat radiating off her. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I follow.”

  “What this city needs,” she says, now fixing those eyes on me, so much that I feel the need to lean back in my chair, “is someone with passion. Someone who knows what they want, what they can’t live without, so they seek it out, destroy everything that stands between them. Someone who burns with righteous fury.”

  As she’s saying it, I can see in those blazing eyes what she really wants: someone to rule like the Morrigans ruled, with authority and a complete lack of compassion. But I also see – and, maybe, feel – the other ways she’s trying to convince me. And in that glint in her eye, I see the duplicity behind her. She wants me, wants me to help her, and wants me out of her way, all wrapped in one messy, volatile emotion.

  “Honestly, darling.” Ødven’s voice booms and I jump again, though Federijke sits unfazed. “How many times have I said it? Sleep with the help if you must, but not our comrades. Some things are more important than your momentary pleasures.”

  “It can last much longer than a minute, dear.” She regards me with one last long, searching look. “Not that he’d know.” Then she twists off the desk, making sure that her dress flaps up right at my eye level before leaving the room.

  “I see you’ve met the missus,” Ødven says. He reaches into a low bookshelf behind his desk and pulls out a bottle of liquor a shade somewhere between caramel and urine.

  “She’s… charismatic.”

  He pauses and regards me for a moment, then proceeds to pour the liquor into two bell-shaped glasses. “You’re kind to say that.” He hands me a glass and sniffs his own. “Smart, too, because I might kill you if you’d said otherwise.”

  I hold my glass as I wait for him to say just kidding. When it doesn’t come, I just swirl the liquor around.

&
nbsp; Seemingly satisfied, he lifts his glass up to mine, says, “Gutår,” then swallows his whole. I bring mine to my nose then hesitate when I get a full snort of it – it’s like a handful of black licorice caught fire atop a pile of pine – but throw it down my throat anyway lest I appear inconsiderate. I manage not to cough or pound my chest and consider that a small victory.

  “Ødven, if I may,” I push out past the fumes, “what am I doing? Why did you bring us here?”

  “What do you mean?” He pours himself another glass and I’m glad I’m still holding mine tight in my hand.

  “They said you needed my advisement. Given what happened,” I say, gesturing out the window toward the Torg, “I don’t think I can be of much help to you. I’m hardly the leader type. More the…” I bobble for the word, as whatever that liquor was sprints straight toward my head.

  “You see yourself as the spark. Not the match, not the kindling, but the spark.”

  I cock my head. “I think that’s a fair assessment.”

  “Yet I think you can be more.” He rises from his desk, hands crossed behind his back. “You have been inside many a fire. You understand them. How they start, how they burn, how they spread.” He slaps his heels together with military precision. “How they are extinguished.”

  I flinch slightly at the last comment, although I’m sure that’s not how he meant it.

  “I need you – and your boys, of course – to travel to Rën, a village near the sea.”

  “I’m not sure how much you know about Eitan, but we’re not well-versed with the sea. Or water of any sort, for that matter.”

  “The man you saw earlier. The Nyväg man. I wasn’t being theatrical, despite what my wife has doubtless told you, when I said that they want to destroy our way of living.”

  I spin the glass in my fingers, glance out and see both boys are napping on the couch. Good for them. They need it.

  “The dissidents are trying to destroy our power systems, those which provide heat, light, water, electricity. The plants are located in smaller villages around the country. Rën holds the largest one.”

  “If they’re so vital, why does Nyväg want to destroy them?” I recognize the irony of the statement as soon as I say it. We knew the water distribution plant was a necessary sacrifice when we went in.

  He gestures toward the crowd outside. “Choose your cause. Fourth-generation villagers who resent being brought into the union. Teenage anarchists with nothing else to do. Pigs from another party who don’t agree with my vision for the country.” He considers his glass, picks it up and swallows the contents before replacing it on the desk. “Their reasons are as varied as their names, but their desire is all the same: destroy a peaceful existence for the majority because of hurt feelings of the minority. I don’t think I need to tell you the consequences if they should succeed.”

  “I think I understand.” I slide my glass across his desk. He catches it with a wan smile and refills it.

  “Then you’ll understand why I need you to help restore order to the village.”

  And there it is. The real reason. Draw on my rebel past to track down the members of Nyväg and eliminate them. I dump the liquor down my throat, feel the warm, comforting hand spreading through my chest.

  “How many people am I supposed to kill to restore order?” Initially I’m not sure if he can hear the inflection in my voice, but his flatlined mouth says he gets it.

  “To that, I would remind you that your precious Emeríann is very comfortable back in Eitan, and she remains safe because of the word of my ally Brighid, and by her word only.”

  I swallow hard. “There is no way you would need to remind me of that.”

  “Then I would remind you that Brighid also beheaded her father but a few days ago.” He pours one last glass for himself, savoring this one.

  I nod.

  “Concern yourself not with the details of the job, but with fulfilling it. Are we clear?”

  I run my tongue along my teeth, tell myself to shut up while Emeríann and I are still alive.

  “I suppose we’ll pack our bags.”

  “Yes,” he says. “I suppose so.”

  12.

  EMERÍANN

  I’m staring at the blackened and bruised tip of my finger when the soldier knocks on the door.

  “Be dressed and ready to leave in five minutes,” he says.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Even through the door, I can hear him sigh. “I’m not going through this again.”

  “Then tell Brighid she can suck my dick. I’m not going to be her patsy and let her use me to assassinate all my comrades.”

  “Your rebel friends are the ones causing the problems, miss,” he says, with special emphasis on certain words. “Every time we try to rebuild something, they start firing at us. Meanwhile markets are bare, faucets are dry, and schools are in ruins. If they really want water and electricity like they say, then stop with all the bullshit and let us work.”

  “I guess one regime is the same as the next, right?”

  He doesn’t respond, and for a minute I think I’ve swayed him.

  “Now you have three minutes.”

  I jump to my feet and press my mouth against the door crack. “I told you. I’m not moving one goddamned foot for you people. You want to get me out of here, you’re going to have to shoot my ass and haul my corpse down to the car. And I know that Brighid will have your balls if you hurt me.”

  “I’m warning you, miss.”

  “Try me.”

  I lean back, smiling at the little shit. He thinks he can intimidate me? I’ve seen much tougher bastards in the field.

  Then there’s a crash and a splintering sound, then a dull smack on the wall behind me. I jump back and duck out of instinct. Wooden shards stick out from a small hole in the wall less than an arm’s length from where I was standing.

  “You asshole!” I say. “You almost shot me.”

  “No, I shot sixteen-to-eighteen inches from where your head was.” He clears his throat. “And now you have two minutes.”

  I stand up and set my eye in front of the hole, see his staring back at me. “Don’t watch me change, pervert.”

  His eye disappears and I pull on the grey fatigues they gave me last night. This is a moral compromise, clothing myself in their uniform, but after wearing the same outfit for nearly a week my clothes have become disgustingly stiff with dried sweat and I’m tired of smelling myself. These fatigues make me even more determined to avoid seeing anyone I know, lest they get the wrong idea.

  When I’m dressed, I knock on the door, tell him I’m ready.

  “Grey’s a good color on you,” he says with a smirk before he points down the steps.

  Brighid is in the sitting room, perched on a chair with a map spread across her lap. She looks up as I enter, running her eyes over the fatigues but choosing not to comment.

  “I’m not giving you any more locations,” I tell her. “That was some bullshit yesterday.”

  “Come off it, Emeríann. Speider blew up two of my vehicles with a car bomb – vehicles that were carrying parts to rebuild a generator.” She folds the map in half. “He and his people will fight anything I do, just because it’s me doing it.”

  “Maybe you should tell them what you’re doing.”

  She gives me a look that could flay skin. “We can’t rebuild the city into something better if we’re constantly under the threat of being murdered every time we set foot in the street.”

  “You murdered Speider’s mother. She was senile, for shit’s sake!”

  “At least she won’t suffer like the rest of us,” she says. “Stop playing the innocent. You’re forgetting who fought with you the last six months. I’ve seen you committing acts on the battlefield you’d rather not admit later.”

  I bite the inside of my lip, my hands nearly shaking I’m so angry. “I’m not telling you one more damn thing.”

  “Fine.” She folds the map again, shov
es it in a pocket by her knee, then points to the front door. “Then go.”

  “What?”

  “Leave. Go back to your city, the one you love so dearly.”

  “What, so you can shoot me in the back?”

  The chair creaks when she stands and she goes to open the front door.

  “I promise no one will shoot you as you’re walking out.”

  My feet start to move, but something about her statement sounds qualifying. “Once I’m off the grounds, I’m a live target.”

  “For us? No.” She motions toward the streets. “But to all of them, those who see you in those fatigues, those who have seen you riding with us?” She shakes her head. “I can’t offer you the same assurance with them. You are free to leave here, but you will be hunted by rebels, by Brigus who have seen you cavorting with the Ragjarøn soldiers who murdered one of their own. So, the way I see it, you have two choices.” She leaves the door hanging open and strides across the room, pulling up right in front of me. “You can go out there and face your fate alone. Or you can stay here, stop being such a cunt, and start working to make the city whole again.”

  Our truck pulls to a stop on the side of a street in Macha, the soldiers disembarking with Brighid behind them. I refused to speak the whole ride, no matter her question, but she already had the location of a former Tathadann cantina that’s housing two rebels in its basement. I’ve never been here before, but I recognized the name. Once I heard the location, I considered answering her questions with disinformation, but thought that would be too conspicuous a shift in tactic.

  I hate to admit it but she has done a masterful job of using me. The optics of everything are so damning. Contacting Melein was pure luck, but despite what he said, I don’t know if I can even go back to my old people. I vouched for Brighid at the start of all this. It was my idea to bring her in. Even if there’s no conspiracy theory swirling around about me being a deep-state infiltrator, I’d be gambling that the rebels won’t be so blinded with anger and bloodlust that they’ll shoot me on sight. And I don’t know that I can put my life on that thin a line.