Sigourney stands with her back to the door. She knows why I’m here. There’s no saving Patrika Årud. She has no allies on this island. The Fjern woman will be publicly executed by the end of tomorrow’s light. But Sigourney Rose might still have a chance to convince me otherwise. She might have a chance to save her life. This is what she thinks. A coldness that reminds me of Malthe has begun to fill me, but there’s a part of me that fights against this. The part of me that hopes she’s right.
“Back again?” She smiles, trying to hide her trembling hands. “You seem to love visiting me, Løren.”
This isn’t a visit between friends. “You already know why I’m here.”
“Yes,” she admits. She tells me that she’s not so sure I want her to die. “If you weren’t hesitant, you would’ve already had me executed.”
“I think it’s clear that I am hesitant.”
“Why?” she asks. She turns to me, and I can see the desperation in her eyes. The desire to cling onto any possibility that she might survive Hans Lollik Helle.
“Aren’t you able to see the answer for yourself?”
“I can’t find a clear reason if you aren’t clear yourself,” she says. “Whenever I try to see your reasoning, I find confused thoughts combatting one another. You want me dead because I was one of the kongelig, and you hate me for betraying my people and for keeping you as my slave, but you want me to live because you can’t help but have hope for me, and because Marieke loves me, and also because you’re too soft and merciful. It’ll be your downfall.”
I stare at her blankly. She enjoys these moments too much, reading others and feeling the power in understanding them more completely than they understand themselves.
“You’re right,” I tell her. “I am too merciful.”
The words suggest that I could give in to Malthe and let him kill her tomorrow alongside Patrika Årud. Sigourney flinches, though she tries to keep herself steady. She’s already begun to play this game. She can’t back down.
“There’s another path,” she says. “You’ve considered it yourself, if only briefly. This kraft of mine—it’s yours now, too. It’s created a new power between us. It reminds me of the twins, Erik and Alida Nørup, before Malthe cut off Erik’s head. When he lived, Erik and Alida could share each other’s thoughts. You and I—we do the same. Sometimes I see through your eyes, and you through mine. What would happen if we focused on our power simultaneously? What if we grew it and cultivated it? We’re already two of the most powerful to hold kraft. Together—”
“There is no together,” I say. “We’re not allies. You haven’t proven yourself to be trustworthy.”
“No, you’re right. We’re not allies—not yet,” she says. “And I’m acting in my own self-interest. I’ll admit to that. But if my self-interest can help you win the war against the Fjern, then why not use it?”
I hate that I must ask. She keeps the idea on the edge of her mind, a taste of what she suggests building curiosity in me. “What do you propose?”
“Send me to the Fjern.”
I almost laugh. I do smile, watching her as she looks back at me without blinking. “Is that a joke?”
“It’s not.”
“Send you to the Fjern —so, what, you can escape? Do you think I’m a fool, Sigourney?”
Her answer is yes, though she doesn’t say this out loud. “Send me to the Fjern so that I can act as a spy against them. We can’t be sure of how much distance our connection can withstand, but if we test our power—if you send me to Niklasson Helle—there’s a chance that I could pass you invaluable knowledge of the kongelig, their battle plans and strategy. Everything you would need to win this war.”
I’m shaking my head. “You would only run the first chance you have.”
“I doubt the Fjern would simply allow me to run. There are enough of them living that still want me dead.”
Sigourney is right. She has enough enemies that it isn’t likely she would survive escaping the islands of Hans Lollik. “I would be risking my life to help further your cause,” she says. “You’ve wanted proof—wanted me to show that I am on the side of our people. Let me go to Niklasson Helle. I can pretend that I managed to escape the royal island. I’ll tell them that I will help them with any information I can in exchange for my life, while in actuality I’ll be passing information to you.”
“You’ll betray us.”
“The way I see things,” she says, “I have more of a chance of life with you and my people, than with the Fjern and the dying remnants of their kongelig.”
Her face is impassive when she reads my thought: She may look like us islanders, but the Fjern are truly her people.
“I may not belong with the islanders,” she says. “Not yet. But I certainly don’t belong with the Fjern, either. Let me have a chance to prove myself to you.”
I don’t answer her. There’s confusion, hesitation, desperation inside of me. She can feel this, too. It’s difficult to figure out which feelings belong to Sigourney and which are my own.
“If I do leave here and betray you, I won’t survive long,” she tells me. “The Fjern won’t consider me useful. I know nothing of your battle plan on this island, because you don’t have a plan yet yourself. You’ve run out of resources and want to send the nonfighting islanders to the north. This is all that I can tell the Fjern, and they’ve likely already realized this. They’ll probably execute me before I have the chance to pass information on to you.”
“Then why take the risk?”
“I have a higher chance surviving by helping you, than staying here as your prisoner, to be executed tomorrow alongside Patrika Årud. If I betray you, Løren, and you manage to find me again, I’ll bare my neck to you myself.”
There’s a lot to consider, and I don’t have much time before tomorrow’s end, when I have to make my decision—and yet I already know which path I’ll choose. From the flicker of relief on Sigourney’s face, she realizes this as well. My thoughts come quickly—we would have to move fast, there’s too much of a chance that we’ll be caught, and how will she leave the shore without anyone’s notice?—but she keeps up.
“If you help me leave tonight in the darkness, you won’t have to contend with Malthe.”
“I will in the morning when he’s realized you’re gone,” I say. “And it isn’t only Malthe. The others—”
“They’ll respect your decision as long as you face them with command. If they see the fear and hesitancy that controls you,” Sigourney says with a slow smile, “then they will try to take your power.”
She’s insufferable. I let her see this thought, but she only continues to smile, knowing that she is safe and that I’ve given in. I have no intention of having her killed. Not now. Not yet.
“And what of Patrika Årud?” she asks. “If someone were on this island begging for the woman’s life, would you save her, too?”
“No,” I say simply. I have too many memories of the woman to ever want to spare her, and unlike Sigourney, she is undeniably a Fjern woman—a member of the kongelig who would do everything in her power to destroy this insurrection if she was given her life. Besides, I can agree with Geir and the others: We all need to see someone punished for the bloodshed of the battle and loss of Valdemar Helle and our allies. Patrika Årud will do just fine.
“A shame,” Sigourney says. She does not mean it’s a shame that I won’t spare Patrika’s life, but that she won’t be here to see the woman die. “Get Marieke. She’ll help in my preparations. You’ll need to send a loyal guard, someone you can trust, to help me with the boat.” Sigourney doesn’t like it, but she’ll need to be alone in that boat with few supplies. She’ll need to make it look like she really had managed to escape from Hans Lollik Helle. In a way, she will have escaped from us—just not in the way the Fjern will assume.
I leave Sigourney in her room. I still decide to bar the door behind me. This should be a sign. I’m about to send her to work on behalf of the revolution, but I
still can’t trust her. Is this a mistake? I ask the question again and again as I leave the manor, heading to the fields where islanders still camp along with the newcomers from Valdemar Helle. Marieke is bent over a pan, washing strips of cloth of blood so that they can be reused as bandages. I put a hand on her shoulder and whisper that Sigourney needs her. By the widening of Marieke’s eyes in the firelight, I see that she understands my meaning. She grips my hands for a brief moment, unable to show too much gratitude with curious and watchful eyes, and she leaves without another word. When enough time has passed, I find Georg. He eats a strip of dried goat by the fire. He’s confused when I ask him to prepare a boat and leave it in the alcove of the bay, but he doesn’t question my orders. He assumes that the boat is for potential scouts and nods, setting off to do his work.
The others expect me to stay in my new room in Herregård Constantjin, but I would feel better sitting by the firelight tonight, able to watch Malthe and see that he hasn’t suspected anything. The field is more crowded with the islanders of Valdemar Helle, the barracks overrun with the injured and ill. People still sit in separated groups. I notice the guard Arend, who had earlier voiced his anger against me and the other members of the circle. He speaks to Malthe. Malthe meets my gaze, and Arend pauses to look over his shoulder at me. I only nod and continue walking. Even if there has been fear of our people rising against us in anger, I’m heartened to see Anke sharing guava stew with a woman and her child from Valdemar Helle. Though there isn’t the same joy in the celebrations as before the Fjern ambushed us, there are gentle smiles as conversation fills the air like its own soft music.
There are other guards sitting around a third campfire. They’re surprised when I join them. Though the guards are glad to see that I haven’t tried to hide away, I can feel their discomfort, too. The guards are the very same who have not always accepted me. They had been cruel to me as we trained under Malthe. Frey remembers how he’d taken pleasure in knocking me to the ground again and again as Malthe roared at me to get to my feet. I was too thin and weak as a boy. Frey towered over me as my father once had. My father had also taken pleasure in beating me into the ground. I remember wondering how it can be that two men who live such opposing lives can have this one pleasure in common.
Frey offers a cup of sugarcane wine. While the water runs low, there are still jugs of rum and wine to last the entire island another month. It seems that the guards have decided to partake in what might well be the last days of our lives. I take the cup from Frey with a nod of thanks. I understand his apology in the gesture. With my nod, the silence around the fire breaks. Ivar smacks a hard hand on my shoulder.
“He’s as thin as bones, but this kongelig bastard can cut down a Fjern,” Ivar says. Laughter and shouts of agreement follow. They recount the battle from before I’d left for Valdemar Helle. There’d been fear in their eyes, but as I sit with them, the fear slowly turns to respect. The respect is mutual. The men before me have battled long and hard against the Fjern, not only in this revolution but for years as their guards, pitted against our own people from the different islands and trained under the scorching sun every day. I ask questions, the answers appearing before me. I try to push the kraft away to give the men the privacy they deserve so that they can each choose to answer in their own ways. I ask if they have families, if they lost anyone on the night of the uprising, what they will do once they have their freedom, how they would like to see these islands once we’re no longer under the power of the Fjern. The answers vary: drink and lie in bed all day, enjoy the company of a new wife, swim in the sea without punishment, simply exist in these bodies and this skin.
“And you?” Ivar asks me.
I realize I hadn’t envisioned a life for myself. I’d imagined the peace of the islands countless times, but I can’t imagine myself alive to enjoy the peace and freedom. I say this to nods of understanding. How can I have envisioned a life when all I’ve ever expected is death? Across the sparks of the flame of the fire, the air wavering in heat, I see Malthe standing by one of the barracks that remain with his arms crossed. He watches me without any expression or thought. The fear that, somehow, he realizes what I’ve done fades through me.
When the guard Ivar comes the next morning, declaring that Sigourney Rose is not in her prison, Malthe looks at me.
“What have you done, boy?” he asks. “You’ll be the death of us all.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Patrika Årud dies quickly. She doesn’t beg. She would never allow her last moments to be spent begging those she considers savages for mercy. But she can’t stop herself from crying. She tries to swallow her tears as she’s forced to her knees, and when Malthe swings his sword, she lets out a breath, the beginning of a scream that’s cut from her throat. Her head hits the ground. Malthe picks up the head by its red hair and holds it for all of the island to view. Its eyes are already beginning to bulge from their sockets and its tongue lolls, blood leaking from the bone of her severed spine. I’d thought there would be cheers and yells of approval, but everyone is silent. There’s satisfaction, yes—but everyone understands her death won’t save us. Her death won’t bring the end of this revolution. This is only justice, and even this wasn’t enough payment for the pain Patrika Årud has caused. Malthe hands the head to a guard with the instructions to put it in a boat that will drift on the current to Solberg Helle.
There are some who wonder how Sigourney Rose could have managed to escape. They want to see her death, too. I go to the tower that had been her prison and close my eyes. We’re far away, but I can still feel her connection. I don’t see from her eyes as clearly as when she had been in front of me, but when I clear my mind, I see images that are hazy and collide in a blur of confusion. Water black as night, shadows of islands in the dim morning light, waves washing and foaming onto shore. The Fjern waiting with their machetes. I know, without a doubt, that Sigourney has made it onto one of the islands ruled by the Fjern and that she’s been captured, just as she planned. The fact that I can still feel some sort of connection with her can only mean that she’s still alive. I’m not sure how long this will last.
“The people aren’t satisfied with the death of Patrika Årud,” Geir says. We sit in our meeting room, discussion having already lasted too many hours. “Though it helped, they’ll need more. If we don’t answer their concerns, their anger will only continue to build and we will fall apart.”
“We should have given them Sigourney,” Olina tells us.
“What secrets might she have carried with her when she escaped?” Kjerstin says. Her wound has nearly completely healed. The stitches still pull at her skin when she moves too suddenly, but she hides her pain well.
“Escaped—or released,” Malthe says, watching me.
Geir’s voice crackles when he speaks. “There isn’t any point in focusing on the past. We need to decide what action we’ll take next.”
I nod my agreement. “We can send the nonfighters to the north and to safety, with the message that we need the guards from the north to come to Hans Lollik Helle for our next attack.”
Malthe tightens and extends his fingers on the table, staring at his palm. “Or we can attack now, taking the guards to Niklasson Helle.”
Malthe had always wanted to attack Niklasson Helle without hesitation, but the problem we faced then still remains. “We don’t have enough guards to win a battle on Niklasson Helle,” I tell him. “We need the help of the northern islands.”
“Why can’t we do both?” Kjerstin says. “We can send a message to the north asking for reinforcements while the rest of the guards attack Niklasson Helle.”
“And give up Hans Lollik Helle?” Geir asks. Because this is what would inevitably happen. Us leaving the island would not go unnoticed, and the Fjern would take the royal island back into their control.
“Why not?” Kjerstin says again. “This island doesn’t offer anything but a central position. If we’re able to push forward and win ourselves another island
closer to the Fjern, then that should be the priority in winning this war.”
I shake my head. “We need an island that will continue to connect us to the north.” Especially after losing Valdemar, we need a base to act as a potential point of sanctuary. “We can’t simply charge forward.”
“Then we should retreat,” Olina suggests. “All of us, to the north—and not just to the northern islands, but to the northern empires. To freedom.” This is something she has argued for before, but no one has ever agreed with the concept.
“There is no one who would welcome us,” Kjerstin says.
“Though they haven’t yet offered help in the war, I can’t see why our brothers of the northern empires wouldn’t welcome us into their home. They, too, managed to escape and find freedom from these islands. They should be generous and understanding.”
“But it isn’t a guarantee,” Geir says. “They could easily see us as an opportunity: turn us over to the Koninkrijk Empire for coin and good favor.”
“And besides,” I say, “we shouldn’t be so willing to give up our home. These are our islands.”
“They are,” Olina agrees. “But are they worth dying for? We could create a new home in a new land.”
“They are worth dying for,” I say simply. “So many have already died for these islands. We can’t run away. Not after the sacrifices that have been made. We need to fight.”
Silence follows my words. In the quiet, I feel a pressure. It grows in my chest, spreading up my neck and to the side of my head, which begins to ache. It feels as it does whenever I struggled to block Sigourney from my mind with my kraft, but I’m losing. All around me, my surroundings begin to change. I still sit in the same room. This I can feel and taste and see, but only vaguely, like the remnants of a dream.
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