“If only more people were like you, Marieke,” I tell her.
She sucks her teeth again. “What’s this? The grand Sigourney Rose, worried about what people think?”
I don’t answer. She’s silent, waiting for me to speak my worries. “Someone with kraft was found at the uprising today.”
Marieke pauses for a brief moment before her hands continue to make their way through my hair. “Someone is always found with kraft.”
I try not to think of the others—dozens—who had been brought to me over the years since becoming Elskerinde Lund after my cousin Bernhand’s passing. I had to announce their rightful deaths and listen to their screams and cries, their pleas for mercy. They would’ve been honored, once. Before the Fjern came and declared these powers belonged to only them, an islander with such a gift would be considered blessed by our ancestors. They would devote their lives to using their abilities to help others. Now an islander with such an ability only becomes ash.
“It was a girl this time—young, couldn’t have been any older than thirteen.”
Marieke’s fingers are stiff. Disgust emanates from her. I was right. Marieke wouldn’t have wanted to hear about the death of a child. The death of a child by my own hand, no matter if I have a choice in declaring her execution or not.
Still, she tries to comfort me. “It was your responsibility as Elskerinde.”
“Yes, it’s my responsibility to kill my own people. How many will have to die because of me, while I kiss the feet of the Fjern who enslaved our people and killed my family?”
“What do you propose you do?” she asks. “You knew what was in store the day you decided to return to Lund Helle. This shouldn’t come as any surprise,” she tells me.
I raise my hands and stare at my wet palms as if I can see the blood that stains them. The next words I can’t speak aloud, so I risk slipping into Marieke’s mind, implanting a thought of my own: It isn’t easy to be so heartless.
“You’ve never cared before,” she says, her voice lowering. “Why start now? There’s no harm in keeping your goals in sight.” Marieke tips another pan of water slowly over my head, water cascading over my face. She likes to nag, but I know Marieke holds the same wishes as I do. Her family had been inside my mother’s manor that night, too.
“Focus only on yourself and your ambitions,” she says, “and soon you’ll find that you care not what a single person thinks. Not even your gods.”
CHAPTER THREE
My guardsmen and I race across the fields of Lund Helle, cutting through valleys where goats graze on guinea grass and houses dot the horizon. We travel to a bay and its crescent alcove of white sand. A private ship is anchored at sea, the clear blue water reflecting the cloudless sky. Friedrich rows me out on a smaller boat, and we climb a ladder to the top deck, floorboards swollen with salt beneath my feet. The islands of Hans Lollik are grouped nearly in a circle while the royal island of Hans Lollik Helle rests in the center. It can take only hours to reach any of the neighboring islands, but to venture farther out to the other end of the circle, the journey can take days. Ludjivik Helle is one of the islands farthest away from all the rest. Malthe told me no ships that the executed slave girl had mentioned were found. It’s difficult to believe the Ludjivik family could truly have been behind the uprising.
Jannik Helle is only half a day away. Rose Helle is at our backs as we pass Niklasson Helle, then Solberg Helle, until finally the faded green of Jannik Helle is in the distance. Lund Helle is known for its farmland, its plantations and crops; Jannik Helle is known for its gambling dens, brothels, and rum. Jannik Helle had once thrived, providing the Fjern with entertainment, but when we arrive at the docks, it’s empty of sailors; the few anchored trade ships appear to be abandoned. Malthe leads me to an awaiting carriage, its arrival prepared in advance. Though Malthe is the captain, Friedrich is my bodyguard, trained to be at my side at all times; he follows me into the carriage, while my remaining guardsmen wait behind. It would be an affront if I brought them all to Elskerinde Jannik’s manor.
We ride for some time, out of the town of uneven streets that become dirt roads, the carriage clattering into the rocky countryside of Jannik Helle, until finally we arrive. Yellow elders of the Jannik insignia bloom on the path leading to the Jannik manor, Herregård Mønsted. The house is a pale blue, two stories tall, with a balcony that wraps around each floor, windows dark with their gauzy curtains. We step from the carriage and walk through the garden, blossoming with its fruit and flowers, bees and hummingbirds flitting through the air, flies surrounding the overripe mango and guava that hang from their branches and fall to the ground to rot.
Friedrich knocks on the door and announces us to the answering slave, who allows us into the manor. It’s not so different from my own. Dead family members, sitting in their portraits, line the opening hall here as well, and the wooden floors gleam in the dim light that manages to shine through the cracks in the curtains—yet there’s a smell here that’s sunken into the walls. The smell of decaying skin, yellowing teeth, of fruit rotting in the heat.
The slave is a woman with graying hair. She has one hand, warped with white scars. When I send myself into her mind, it’s only to know whether Elskerinde Jannik is awake and well enough to take visitors; instead, I’m overwhelmed with a memory that sits with this slave woman in the forefront of her mind, always lingering: She was a baby, barely able to stand on her own two feet, not yet sold to another island or Fjern family, when her mother—young, not any older than me—spilled hot tea on Elskerinde Freja Jannik’s hand. The woman’s pale skin blistered and stung. And so she had the young girl’s child—the woman who stands before me—taken to the kitchens, her hands forced into a pot of scalding-hot water. One hand had to be cut from the bone. The other is barely usable. The young mother was sold away, and the child remained here, serving Freja Jannik by sweeping and opening the door and carrying shaking trays of tea. She wonders about her mother sometimes, blames her for the loss of her hands. She doesn’t think to blame Freja Jannik.
The woman won’t meet my eye. She’s heard that I executed a little girl for having kraft, and she’s afraid I’ll somehow believe she has kraft as well. She believes that I’m evil, unworthy of the power I hold. Most of my people hold hatred for me, hatred that feels like water from the sea filling my lungs. I leave her mind so that I won’t have to see these thoughts.
“Herre Aksel Jannik is away,” she says.
“I’m not here for Herre Aksel Jannik.”
The woman stares at the ground beneath her feet. “The Elskerinde isn’t well enough for visitors.”
“The Elskerinde will never be well again,” I say, “which is why I must see her while I still can.”
She steps to the side and allows me into the shaded heat of the house. The smell of rot gets stronger as the slave leads us down the marbled halls. The windows are closed, the gauzy curtains attempting to block the sunlight. We turn corners and climb a flight of stairs until we stop outside the grandest door of all, the heavy mahogany wood even darker in the hall’s dim light.
The slave bows and leaves, and Friedrich waits in the hall beside me. “Would you like me to come inside with you?” he asks, even though I always have the same answer for him. It’s curiosity that makes Friedrich want to see the dying Elskerinde Jannik.