I walk to the body of my fallen guardsman. I don’t even know his name. He was young—probably no older than twenty. His neck is cut, showing the red muscle beneath, the white of bone. Though his body lies on its front, his head is twisted, eyes stuck open. Some would say this was a good way for the boy to die. He stares at the gods and so will know which direction to turn in death. The gods were brought to these islands by the Fjern many eras ago; gods to be worshipped instead of the spirits of our ancestors, as our people had done since the islands themselves rose from the waters. Islanders are no longer allowed to pray to the spirits. If we do, we are hung, and so we learned the way of the Fjern gods. My enslaved people are told that if they worship the gods, they will be granted freedom after death. Most would rather pray to the Fjern gods, hoping for freedom, than fight for their freedom in life. In a way, I admire the dead rebels at my feet.
“His mother and father are on Solberg Helle,” Malthe tells me of the dead guard, “working for a Fjern merchant family.” Working. This is easier than saying his parents are slaves.
My eyes are still on the boy’s face and the blood seeping from his neck and into the weeds. “Have his body returned to them.” I should simply have his body sent to the sea, I know; it’s easier, less work for everyone involved, but I can’t help but think that the boy’s parents would like to bury him themselves.
Blood has sunk into the dirt. The smells of iron searing under the heat of the sun, of the smoking wood and the charred stone, overwhelm me. My guardsmen sheathe their blades and walk into whichever remaining homes are still untouched by the flames to check for survivors and conspirators, kicking over the fresh bodies that lie at their feet. I watch their work as I walk, Friedrich beside me. There’ve been rebellions before, but this has been a particularly devastating uprising; it seems nearly one hundred have died, and the damage to the property and crop won’t please the regent of Hans Lollik Helle.
The Fjern of Lund Helle have used the slave rebellions as an excuse to call for me to step down as their Elskerinde. To them, the rebellions prove that I don’t have the necessary intelligence to control my own people. I’m an islander, after all, who should be a slave along with my brown-skinned people—not ruling over them and this island. Flower-scented letters are sent to me with open threats: Elskerinde Sigourney Lund might soon find her own throat cut one night.
“You don’t feel any guilt,” Friedrich says as he bends over to check the pockets of one of the fallen rebels. There’s no question in his voice, just as there isn’t any question for the guilt he feels. Friedrich worked hard for his position in my guard—he wasn’t handed his title—but this doesn’t take away from the comforts he knows he has over the other slaves of Lund Helle and all his people in these islands. He lives in the barracks, which have beds, not the overcrowded slaves’ quarters, where his people sleep on dirt floors. He receives a meal of oats and banana in the morning and goat stew at night. He’s even allowed to drink guavaberry rum, when he isn’t escorting me across the islands. He isn’t beaten, except while in training with the other guards as they practice their skirmishes; he isn’t whipped for his mistakes. The scars he bears are fine, thin lines in comparison to the thick scars that cover the backs of the slaves who work the fields. It isn’t easy for him, knowing his people suffer while he lives in comfort—knowing it was simple luck that allowed him to be sold into training for the guard. He could just as easily be trapped in the fields, whipped and scarred; just as easily have been hung upside down by his feet while his master’s son practiced archery.
Friedrich stands from the body, mouthing a quick prayer to the gods. The gods don’t bring him peace. He knows that these are the gods of the Fjern, and that these gods only care for people whose skin is paler than his own. Still, he prays to them. This, like most of our people, is all he knows.
“Do you think I should feel guilt?” I ask.
He glances at me, my mouth, my neck. “It’s not my place to tell you how to feel.”
“That is true,” I say, and though he’d suggested the fact himself, shame still flourishes in his chest. “But I still want to know what you think.”
Friedrich doesn’t answer, not at first, and so I sink my consciousness into his, feel the pulse of his veins in my own. A jungle of voices echo in my mind: He wonders if I’m using my kraft on him and hopes that I don’t; he fears, as he always does, that I might decide I don’t want or need him anymore—fears that, though I would have no reason to, I might take control of his body in the same way I’ve taken control of so many others and force him to stab his knife into his own stomach. He thinks that the stomach is always the slowest, most painful way to die. Death should always be quick and clean. Ever since the first man he killed, Friedrich is careful to give merciful deaths to the slave rebels he fights.
And still, even with his fear of me, I can feel the emotion in him rising as though it’s my own: desire—for me, for my body, for my freedom, for my power. He thinks of me at night, dreams that he’s inside of me again even now. He doesn’t think the words, not consciously, but whenever he’s in my bed, he’s able to imagine for a moment that he’s not my slave. I’m not surprised. I know what Friedrich has convinced himself he feels: that he believes he, a knight in a Fjern fairy tale, has fallen in love with his mistress, his Elskerinde.
Friedrich glances at me again and swallows thickly, knowing that I’m in his head. He pauses beside another body, this time a pale-skinned Fjern—a woman, her face twisted in fear, her stomach cut open and spilling onto the ground. “I don’t think you should feel guilt.” He lies to himself, even he’s aware of this. “These men were rebels, murderers. They would’ve been executed eventually, even if they hadn’t died today.”
“Is that really what you think?”
It’s a cruel question. I know he’s too afraid to tell me the truth. The truth is traitorous, the words of rebels, punishable by beheading. But his feelings are clear: None of these men can be blamed for wanting, and fighting for, their freedom.
“They were driven to rebel and murder because they preferred to die rather than live as slaves to the Fjern,” I say. “I’m an islander. These are my people. I haven’t done enough to help them. At least, this is what those who hate me will say.”
Friedrich looks at me with pity. He thinks he knows me: his poor, misunderstood mistress.
He checks this woman’s pockets as well, then murmurs a prayer for her. Remarkable, watching a slave pray over the body of a slaver and to the very gods that oppress him. But I can’t judge Friedrich too harshly. These are my gods, too. I was never taught how to pray to my ancestors. Any thought of our ancestors, the spirits, was supposed to have died generations ago. I wait until Friedrich is finished, and we walk quietly for some time.
Friedrich says, “Only people who envy your power will hate you. The poor hate the rich. The slaves hate the kongelig. It’s only natural, isn’t it?”
I want to ask Friedrich if his envy of my freedom, my power, means he actually hates me as well, but the corners of his lips twitch into a smile, and he remembers an image, hoping that memory will become my own—a memory of only a few nights before, sneaking into my chambers, into my bed, beneath my sheets. I should be disgusted with myself. Ashamed. The boy is technically my property. Property, like the goats fenced in and awaiting slaughter. That is what the laws of these islands decree: Friedrich, and all other islanders, are not human. The color of their skin, the blood in their veins, make them undeserving of life. And so they must give their lives for the Fjern. There’s nothing beautiful in this, I know. In the same way there was nothing beautiful in the fact that my mother technically belonged to my father, before she was given her freedom; in the same way there was nothing beautiful in the fact that my father’s ancestors belonged to the Fjern, who took these islands. If I cared for Friedrich, I would give him his freedom, along with all the slaves of Lund Helle. I wouldn’t take Friedrich into my bed, pretending my company is something he wants, something he chooses, when he has no choice in a life he doesn’t own.