She sucks her teeth when she sees my clothes strewn across the floor, white dress stained yellow and brown from the island, ash from the fires. “It’s not too hard to pick up and fold your own clothes, is it?”
She walks into the adjoining room, and I hear her pour water into the tub. I stand, naked, and walk across the marble to join her.
“Why do you feel the need to mess with that boy?” she asks me.
I hesitate. I’d needed a distraction from the memory of the girl, a memory that returns to me now. Marieke is the only person I can trust with the truth, but there are some truths even she won’t want to hear. Instead, I change the topic, telling her to prepare new clothes for a visit to Jannik Helle in the morning.
“You’re visiting Elskerinde Jannik again?” she says. She believes I’ve accomplished enough with the woman.
“It’s not really your place to question, is it?” I ask. I sink into the white clawfoot tub and withhold a contented sigh.
“I’ll question whatever the hell I want. This isn’t only your life you’re playing with, Sigourney, and I have no plans to follow you to the gallows.”
“Good. Maybe then I’ll have a break from your nagging.”
Marieke begins to scrub at my arms, my shoulders, my back.
I ask, my eyes still closed, “Why do you stay if you hate me so?” Marieke is the first and only slave of the Rose household whose freedom I have granted—and yet, over the years, she’s remained.
She doesn’t pause in her scrubbing. “You already know that I have nowhere else to go.”
I can’t help but smile. This is why I love Marieke—her honesty, perhaps knowing there’s no point in trying to keep the truth from me, is refreshing. She stands and pours more water into my tub, and I open my eyes now and look at the wrinkles of her brown skin, the thick curls escaping her bun. She’d been the woman who found me waiting by the bay so many years ago, the night that my family had been massacred and Tante whispered that my mother would’ve wanted me to live. I’d climbed down the ladder, falling the last few feet and twisting my ankle so that it swelled and throbbed. I limped through the brush, thorns catching my dress and hair and skin, tripping over roots and rocks. Every now and then, I would hear a crunch, and I would stop, trying hard not to cry, fearing the guards had found me; and when no one came with their machete, I would keep moving—following the salted river as Tante had told me to, straight to the bay. I found the cave and sat motionless, knees to my chest. The entire night had passed and the sun was starting to rise, and Marieke found me there, covered in dirt and scratches and salt from my tears. A safeguard, I realized as I got older—a slave of the Rose family who had never come within the manor walls, and who knew to come to the cave if anything ever happened.
Marieke brought me to Lund Helle. I didn’t yet have my kraft, but it was plain to see that my cousin Bernhand Lund was shocked to see me alive. He’d watched the fires of Rose Helle in the early morning and had heard word of the massacre. He’d been told my entire family, myself included, had been killed. Marieke asked for shelter, but Bernhand Lund didn’t think this wise. In retrospect, it’s possible that he didn’t want to be tangled up with my family’s deaths, didn’t want my assassins to come back for me and decide to take his life as well. I’d been numb in those days, and have little memory of the conversations between my cousin and Marieke, but I imagine now how terrified Marieke must have been; scared that my cousin might simply decide to make both of us his slaves and take the coin of Rose Helle for himself. It would’ve been easy. My mother was no longer alive to stop him, and I was supposed to be dead.
But he did not. To this day, I honestly can’t see why he didn’t. It wasn’t out of love. My Lund cousins didn’t love us, and were often embarrassed to depend on my family for the sugarcane business, and if Bernhand Lund was afraid of my assassins, he could’ve offered me to the kongelig in exchange for his life. Perhaps he’d already considered the fact that he had no heir, and as shaming as it would be for him, he would need me to continue the Lund legacy. Maybe he simply decided to do what was right. Whatever his reason, my cousin sent me away for my protection. He gave Marieke coin so that I could travel the northern empires, from villas to cottages to cities. We became the guests of Bernhand Lund’s acquaintances, spending months in the grandest of manors; we would travel to a city and spend just as much time in an inn that smelled of ale. We lied about my roots to anyone who asked, and allowed the rumors to spread. The bastard child of Bernhand Lund’s and a forgotten slave, perhaps, or an orphan of the northern empires that Bernhand saw in the streets and took pity on. I became known as Sigourney Lund.
The northern mass of land is carved up into its own separate empires. Koninkrijk—home of the Fjern—is the farthest north, and the smallest of the other empire nations. Perhaps it’s because of this that the Fjern have spread themselves across the world, starting wars and claiming more land for Koninkrijk on behalf of their gods. The Fjern give those lands to regents so that coin and trade can be sent back north. The regents rule without mercy, slaughtering anyone who attempts rebellion. The islands of Hans Lollik are far from being the only lands that have suffered under the hand of the Fjern.
My islands are well known in the north for their beauty. Some strangers Marieke and I met even knew of my mother, the woman who had been a slave but rose among the kongelig. It was possible that some were spies, sent from my family’s killers to murder me. Marieke insisted that if I was to truly hide, I should change my birth name as well, but even as a child, I refused. It was the name my mother had given me, the name she had whispered as she kissed my forehead at night.
I’ve met some who have wondered—thought on how there was once a little girl named Sigourney Rose, who might’ve been the same age as me if she hadn’t been killed nearly ten years before, found dead in a pretty little dress beside the rest of her family, but no one has stepped forward with such a claim. No one has attempted to kill me for being a daughter of the Rose.
I spent seven years traveling the north with Marieke. I was thirteen when I decided I would sacrifice my freedom to return to the islands and take the power from the kongelig. I studied each of the kongelig: the Niklasson, Nørup, Solberg, Årud, Larsen, and Jannik families. My plan required the inheritance of the title of Elskerinde. Bernhand Lund didn’t have any plans to retire his title, and I held no love for him, as he held no love for me. I asked Marieke to slip a drop of poison from oleander flowers purchased from the Solberg markets into my cousin’s tea, and over the months he became ill. He left me everything in his will when he died. I could sense at his deathbed that he was grateful to have a name to write down on his paper, embarrassed that he’d lived such a long life but hadn’t grown to love anyone but himself, ashamed that he had no choice but to ensure his legacy continue by placing his wealth and land into my hands. Now only Marieke knows with any certainty my true identity.
Marieke’s rough fingers make their way into my hair. “And I don’t hate you,” she says. “You already know that.”
There’s an unexpected warming in my chest. I’m tempted to slip into her mind to see if she really means what she says, but Marieke is the one person whose privacy I’ve always respected. Besides, she has a way of knowing when I’m reading her thoughts, and she always has harsh words for what she calls “evil’s trickery.” Any other kongelig would have her killed for slandering what they consider the divine gifts.