Because my power mirrors the kraft of those around me, I was able to see into Sigourney in the months leading to the rebellion. I rarely liked what I saw, but I could also see the hatred she had for herself. I saw the love she had for the family she’d lost and the respect and admiration she’d held for her mother. I saw the hatred she had for the Fjern and how, on the quietest of days, she would sometimes wish for a life away from these islands. Beneath it all, she’d wanted a life of peace. She has the potential to change and to join her people. And with a kraft like hers, no one can deny that she’s powerful. If Sigourney were to join our side, she could be an asset. She could help us win this revolution.
I want to show her mercy. It’s for no other reason that he says, “We should execute them. Both of them. There’s no need to keep either alive.”
Kjerstin is pleased. She openly smiles. Geir gives a single, stilted nod of approval. Only Olina purses her lips. If Tuve has an opinion on the matter, he doesn’t share it.
Marieke raises her chin. The woman has had her reasons to hate the Fjern as much as any of us. She has wanted her revenge against the kongelig. She blames them for the deaths of her daughter and the child’s father. She wants to see each and every one of them burn. But in her haze of fury and grief, she has a harder time seeing that she has attempted to replace her daughter with Sigourney Rose, and she doesn’t realize that she can’t love a woman who is her master, no matter if Sigourney claimed Marieke was free. I can feel the roil of emotion inside of Marieke. It’s a wonder that she manages to keep her voice steady. “You have no reason to kill Sigourney Rose. If you do, her blood will be on your hands, and the spirits will hold no love for you.”
“My hands are already stained red. All of our hands are, whether you held the machete that cut the necks of the kongelig or not. Tomorrow night. They’ll both die by beheading.”
Malthe would not admit it, but his decision is only because of his anger for me. He’s angry because he blames me for Agatha’s death, but he’s angry, too, that I do nothing, and yet seem to have the love of all the islanders on Hans Lollik Helle. He wants to kill Sigourney Rose—not because he feels her presence matters one way or the other, but because he wants to remind me of my place. He wants me to see that he has the power to declare the death of the woman that I wish to see live.
I don’t speak without thinking. With my father and brother, I learned early that to speak without thinking can be fatal. It’s a calculated risk that I say what I do. “No.”
Marieke looks at me with hope. Kjerstin, frustration. Olina glances between me and Malthe with uncertainty and Geir with a similar hesitation. Tuve looks up from the surface of the table, a quirk of his lips in slight amusement that he quickly hides.
Malthe doesn’t ask me to repeat myself. He heard me. Still, I say it again. “No. Sigourney Rose will not die. We need to keep her alive. Patrika Årud—yes, you can do whatever you want with her. But not Sigourney Rose.”
There’s a moment of quiet before Kjerstin gives a small laugh of disbelief. “I suppose what everyone says is true.”
Despite the respect so many have for me, islanders have questioned the closeness I kept with the woman I called master. They’ve thought that I might have shared Sigourney Rose’s bed. If it were true, most would see it for what it would have been: me, a slave, without choice and without pleasure. So many of us have been forced into the beds of our masters. Kjerstin herself understands this well. She realizes that she’s cruel, to suggest what she does—that I was a personal guard, looking for power or rewards by pleasing my mistress. I would have rather killed Sigourney Rose myself. There have been enough rumors on my past. There have been enough whispered stories of the ways the kongelig had treated me on this island when I was a child. Even now, the memories tighten my muscles beneath my skin. The insinuation by Kjerstin is a betrayal.
I tell her this. I speak the words plainly, and I can feel the shame in Kjerstin rising. It’s a long pause before she apologizes. “I spoke in jest. I see that it wasn’t funny.”
She lies. She hadn’t spoken in jest at all. But there isn’t anything I have to say to this. I address the others. “I want to show Sigourney Rose mercy because she is one of us and because she is powerful.”
“All the more reason to kill her, before she finds a way to become a threat,” Geir says, voice low.
“She was taught only one way to survive these islands. She was taught that she is a master. If she can relearn, she would be invaluable.”
“I do think she could learn, if given the proper amount of time,” Marieke adds.
“I gave her a choice,” I say. “She could have taken her own life to escape us. She knew she would face imprisonment, possible torture, and yet she chose to live.”
“Any coward would,” Malthe says. “This isn’t proof that she’s willing to join us.”
“She’s one of us,” I argue. “She’s an islander, skin dark as any of ours.”
“Don’t be so naive,” Malthe tells me, his voice rough. “Skin as black as night does not make her one of us. If we judged by the color of skin, then you would be dead with the rest of the Fjern.”
He misspoke. He sees it the moment the words leave his mouth. My skin is brown, and my hair and eyes as well, but the blood of the Fjern is still in my veins, and I’m paler than many islanders. Malthe doesn’t see this for himself, but perhaps this is what he hates about me most of all. But his words have gone too far, and everyone flinches on my behalf, except for Geir, who can see that the odds have shifted because of Malthe’s mistake.
“She will join us in this fight,” I say in the silence that follows. “Sigourney will live.”
CHAPTER THREE
My head begins to ache as I leave the meeting room. It’s a slow pressure that grows behind my eyes. I don’t often have headaches. As a boy training in my father’s guard, some of the other islanders might sometimes complain of pains shooting up their back after long days of hard work whether the whip had been used on them or not—and even then, most would keep the pain to themselves, their faces twisted into grimaces. Not many complained of headaches or pains that were caught in their muscles or stomachs or chests. It didn’t seem worth complaining about when everyone was hurt, when everyone had felt the bite of the whip and the blow of the fist.
The pressure grows and sharpens. I pause, my vision going red. It must be the stress. I haven’t had so much responsibility before. I don’t have a clear role in comparison to the others, but I’m still in this meeting room, in our created inner circle as leaders, voicing my thoughts and opinions and being constantly reminded that any misstep would mean all of our deaths.
When I close my eyes, the red of my eyelids covers my vision, and with my eyes still closed I begin to see images—but they aren’t the halls of this manor. I see a cot, the broken wall with its fallen stone, and the island: the burnt fruit trees and the groves of mahogany trees and the field where Malthe’s guards continue to train without his watchful gaze. The sea, as blue as the sky above, shimmers in the heat as its salt comes on the breeze. This sea, so beautiful, is the grave of so many of our people. I often wonder if their spirits walk the ocean floor. As she admires its beauty, Sigourney can’t stop the fear that trickles through her. Whenever she sees the ocean, she’s reminded of the way she’d fallen from the cliffs, Agatha following her—the force of her body hitting the waves, the saltwater pressing its way through her nose and mouth and throat, filling her lungs as she desperately swam through the water, black in night—she’d been so sure she was going to die—