King of the Rising

Book 2: Islands of Blood and Storm

by Kacen Callender

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; African American; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

King of the Rising is the searing conclusion to an unflinching and powerful Caribbean-inspired fantasy series about colonialism, resilience and defiance.

A revolution has swept through the islands of Hans Lollik and former slave Loren Jannik has been chosen to lead the survivors in a bid to free the islands forever.

But the rebels are running out of food, weapons and options. And as the Fjern inch closer to reclaiming Hans Lollik with every battle, Loren is faced with a choice that could shift the course of the revolution in their favor -- or doom it to failure.

Islands of Blood and Storm

Queen of the Conquered

King of the Rising

Release date: December 1, 2020

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 480

Sample

They chased me through the groves. My heart pumped, fear slowing the blood in my legs. Air caught in my throat. Sharp stones cut the undersides of my feet as branches and brush and thorns ripped into my legs and arms and cheeks. Wet dirt sank beneath me, the root of a mangrove tree twisting around my ankle. I fell to the ground hard, rocks digging under the skin of the palms of my hands. I could hear their laughter. I knew that if they caught me, I would die. I’d made the mistake of reminding the boy that we shared blood. This wasn’t something he liked to acknowledge. He didn’t like what I’d implied. That he and I weren’t so different, even if he called himself master, and me slave.

Their footsteps crunched and paused. I hunched in the thorns of brush, air wheezing from my lungs. I could sense the power that filled my father’s son. His kraft let him see the abilities of others. He could see my ability—could sense me as I sensed him. He felt me hiding. He walked closer.

“I see him.”

I didn’t wait for my brother to grab me, to pick me up and tie his rope around my neck. I leapt to my feet. I ran in the only direction I could, through the thorns and weeds and the tangled roots of the mangrove trees. I burst out of the green and into the sloshing water that pulsed onto the rocky shore. I dove into the sea. Salt burned my eyes and the cuts across my skin. I swam as if I meant to swim to the northern empires and to freedom.

I stopped, because my arms and legs were too heavy and weak. I turned to see my brother and his friend standing on the shore, their hair and clothes and skin pale in the white moonlight. They waited for several minutes, and then they left, bored with the game they played. I should have felt relief, but I knew this wouldn’t be the last time they chased me through the groves of Hans Lollik Helle. It was impossible to feel relief when I knew I would forever have this body and forever have this skin.

The thought crossed my mind. It’s a thought that often does. The question of whether there’s a point to living this life. I’m going to die, whether it’s by the hands of my brother or by the whip of my father or by the years that always manage to catch up with us, regardless of the color of our skin. Does it matter if I die in a few days or a few years or now, saltwater filling my lungs? The result will be the same. If I were to allow myself to sink beneath the waves, it would be a death that would bring mercy. No more racing through the brush of this island. No more beatings and whippings, layers of scars growing on my back like the rings of bark covering the trees, marking how many years I have survived. And there would be no more nights when I was called from the corner of the wooden floor I slept on, marched through the groves and to the pain that waited, as it always does. Letting myself sink into the sea would bring me peace. It would bring me freedom.

The thought crossed my mind—but so did the urge to live. My desire for death and life was a contradiction. Both desires constantly battled inside of me. In the end, life always won.

I began to swim back for shore, but I didn’t notice that the waves of the ocean had already begun to suck me farther away from the island. The tide moved against me as I kicked. Waves became higher, knocking me beneath the surface. Seawater forced its way into my nose and mouth, filling my lungs. I choked with every gasp. Blackness covered my vision.

When I opened my eyes again, I sat on the sand of a shore. It was powdered white without any sign of seashells or footprints or life. The ocean was as still as glass. The sky was red with fire. Islands grew from the sea. Waves rippled as the hills formed, spreading toward the black clouds. My mother was there with me. She stood in the shallows. I could only see her back and the thick scars that wove over her skin, but I knew that it was her. This was often how she came to me, in my nightmares and in my dreams. She would tell me stories. Stories forgotten. Stories buried. My mother told me to listen.

“You’ll want to save them all,” she said.

I woke coughing, vomiting saltwater that burned my throat. Hot sand stuck to my face and my wet skin and clothes. The sky was blue though I’d been running in the night only moments before, the white sunlight scalding the muscle through my skin. Waves pushed and foamed around my legs. No one was on the shore with me. I couldn’t see anyone who might’ve saved me.

It wasn’t a surprise, that I hadn’t died.

It seemed the spirits were never done with me.

Shock vibrates through me and I feel a fear that isn’t my own. It’s a fear I know well—one that betrays the body whenever death is near. My heart begins to work in my chest. Sweat sticks my shirt to my skin. My limbs feel numb when I stand up. I’d been asleep on a hardwood floor, one I’d known as a boy in the room of an empty slave house where no one will sleep. The others take the empty mansions of the dead kongelig, living like they are masters. I prefer the slaves’ quarters only because I’m alone here, with nothing but the shadows and the ghosts. When I look out of the window, I can see the lights—pinpricks of red and orange fire in the night. The flame reminds me of the night of the revolt. The fire that had spread across the island, the screams and pleas for mercy, the metallic taste of blood that mixed with the salt air. The blood sank into the dirt, and for weeks it smelled as though the island of Hans Lollik Helle was rotting.

It’s not the night of the uprising, and these aren’t people who mean to set the island on fire. I feel their intent. I leave the quarters, shaking as I step down the splintered steps, walking along the dirt that’s filled with rocks and weeds that cut into the bottoms of my feet. The nights are always colder in these islands, but in the time following the storm season, the sun becomes hotter during the day, the dirt capturing the heat that lifts into the air. My legs are weak with sleep, but I force them to run. This fear that fills me doesn’t belong to me. She’s realized that the men are coming for her. She can sense their anger, their hatred. She can see the images of what they plan: to force her legs open, to cut her until she screams for death, to hang her body from a tree. The men are already halfway up the sloping path of the hill. And at the top is the main manor of Herregård Constantjin.

The manor is white against the black sky, glowing in the light of the full moon. It had once appeared like a castle that the northern empires might have, but it crumbles into ruin now, vines and brush and leaves attempting to swallow the manor and pull the stone into its grave, where its masters lay. It was hard work to put the kongelig with their pale skin into the dirt, but the Fjern of these islands believe they will find paradise if they are burned and buried at sea. We would not give them this.

I reach the top of the hill, past the garden of wildflowers and weeds, and walk into the courtyard. The stones are cracked and charred. The fountain, which had once shined in the center of the parties of the kongelig, collapses into chunks of rock. The men stand in a circle. They carry torches that gnats and moths follow, wings flickering in the light. One man comes from the front doors. He pushes the former Elskerinde Rose down the steps. She falls, skinning her hands and knees. When she looks up, her gaze lands on me.

Sigourney Rose could be mistaken for one of us. Her skin is dark enough to hold hues of purple and blue, and her hair is thick with curls. She has the features of an islander. We are known only as islanders because the name we once had was taken by the Fjern, along with our history and our freedom. Our stolen past is what connects our people, yet Sigourney has never been one of us. The proof has always been in the way she looks at us. With fear. Contempt. Longing. She wishes we would accept her, even as she believes she’s our better.

She stands to her feet in the center of the six men, her hair tangled, her dress of white torn and stained. She has been beaten, her bruises and cuts unhealed. Her face shines with sweat and fear in the torchlight, but she raises her chin. She was already prepared to fight for her life. Sigourney’s kraft has always been powerful. It might be one of the most powerful abilities in all the islands. She can enter the spirit of another. She can hear their thoughts and feel their emotions. She can take control of their body, if she so desires. Sigourney was prepared to take control of any one of these men with their machetes and have him cut all the others down, but she knew the chances of her surviving the fight were slim. She wouldn’t be able to take control of more than one man at a time. Even if she had managed to survive, she couldn’t fight her way to freedom from the entire island. She would be executed for killing guards, no matter that they’d attacked her first. I understand the mix of desperation and relief in her eyes when she sees me.

My voice echoes in the courtyard. “What’re you doing?”

The group of men whirl around. They’re surprised. They weren’t expecting to see me here. I recognize them all. I know each of their names. They were once guards that belonged to the Fjern across all the islands—guards who were trained to give their lives for the kongelig. They took the lives of the kongelig instead.

Sigourney doesn’t want any of these men to see her fear, and she worries I’ll feel her desperation. She takes a deep breath and holds the air in her chest, counting in her head, just as Marieke had once taught her to do when she needed to calm herself.

“Why have you taken Sigourney Rose from her chamber?” I ask. No one responds. Night birds and crickets and frogs make their noise. It’s almost hard for the men to hear me over the chorus. “Whose orders are you acting on?”

“Our own,” one of the men says. His name is Georg. He’s young—as young as I am, though taller and more solidly built, with the muscles of a man who had been made to work the fields before he was brought into the guard. He hasn’t been trained as a guard long, only a year and a few months, but he could still best me in a match if he were to attack—especially when I would be reluctant to fight him. I don’t see the point in hurting another islander. We already have too many enemies.

The other five men are guards trained under Malthe. I can see that they’re afraid that they will be punished for acting without their commander’s consent. All of the men look away from me with a mixture of shame and fear. One man named Frey, older than the rest, curses Georg in his head. It’d been the boy’s idea, and Frey had been stupid enough to follow along. Frey thinks he came only because of the guavaberry rum they’d drunk around the fire at camp. He can’t admit to himself that even without the rum, he might have come here so that he could help kill Sigourney Rose. Frey had belonged to her cousin Bernhand Lund before the man died, and for the last years he had been the property of the former Elskerinde. Frey wanted to see her die. Now, because he’s followed the stupid boy’s idea, he could be tied by his wrists to a tree and whipped by Malthe himself. This would be the lucky option, considering the chance that he could be hung by his neck instead. No one fights Malthe’s methods. These are the ways taught to us by the Fjern. It’s the only way that we know.

Only Georg holds my gaze. It isn’t that he’s braver than the rest. He has more anger. Rage pulses hot through him. He wants to see Sigourney Rose dead, like she should have died the night of the uprising. No, she is not a Fjern. But she, too, was a kongelig. She had her slaves. She’s had us tied to trees and whipped, myself included. She ordered my whipping and didn’t have the respect to stay and watch as the whip cut into my back and the scars already woven there, rising from my skin. Elskerinde Rose had ordered my execution. She stood and watched as I stood on a chair, a rope around my neck. She was as evil and merciless as any of the kongelig on this island. Georg doesn’t understand why she still lives. He doesn’t understand why I stop him from killing her.

Sigourney looks from me to Georg and back to me, watching us like someone might watch a game of cards. She learned from an early age that there’s power in pretending to hold control of herself and her emotions. But she sees that whoever wins this match will decide whether she will live or die.

“You don’t have the authority to take Sigourney Rose’s life.”

“Authority? You speak like the Fjern.”

“We each have our roles. We each have our commands.” I pause, looking from Georg to the other men. They still won’t meet my eye. “If we didn’t have our orders, the revolution would collapse.”

“And who’s to say we haven’t fallen apart already?” Georg demands. I can feel the frustration in him. The frustration has streaks of anger, but it’s tied to a helplessness and a hopelessness. It’s been nearly a month since the initial uprising, and we haven’t done anything more to force the Fjern and their royal kongelig from our homelands. Georg believes that we stay on this island, waiting for the moment we will be slaughtered by the Fjern. He isn’t the only person who worries that this revolution has been lost before it’s barely begun. At least in this, Georg will feel like he’s doing something of importance. Something that will help the war.

But he’s wrong. “Killing Sigourney Rose is a mistake.”

“It’s a mistake that she’s still alive.” He looks to his friends for help, but none will come forward. They fear me. This isn’t something that makes me glad. “You can’t keep her alive with no good reason, when everyone else wants her dead.”

“We don’t know if we’ll need her,” I say.

“Why would we ever need her alive?” Georg asks me. He speaks with an exasperated tone. He thinks that I’m lying to him. He thinks I believe him to be a fool. “Do you think the Fjern want her? She isn’t a hostage. We can’t use her in negotiations.”

I hesitate, but only for a moment. “You’re right.”

Sigourney sucks in a breath. It’s slight. Only she can hear it, but I feel the surprise in her. Even if this is the truth, there was no need for me to speak it. I could have said that the Fjern have declared a ransom for her, or that they declared they needed her kraft and were willing to negotiate—any lie I could think of in the moment to make these guards leave without attempting to take her life. But I’m not like Sigourney. I do not lie. When she had me as her slave, working as her personal guard, and as I took my steps in the downfall of Elskerinde Rose and the kongelig, I would always tell her the simple truth. I told her that those closest to her wanted her dead. I’ve never seen the point in lies.

“She isn’t useful collateral, and she’s made too many mistakes,” I say. “It would be satisfying to kill her and be done with it.” Sigourney worries that I’ve changed my mind. I continue, looking at her with the pity I can’t help but feel. “But she’s still an islander. We have a chance to rebuild our home. When you envision our homeland, what do you see?” I ask the men. “Do you see a land of blood and violence, fighting for power, an echo of the Fjern? Or do you see a land as it was meant to be?”

I feel the emotions of the men in front of me. Their rage. Their pain. They’ve all lost so much. Georg’s brother didn’t survive the night of the uprising. I see his memories as though they’re my own. His brother wasn’t family by blood but was a man Georg had always looked up to, who had cared for Georg as if the boy was his own. His brother had been made to join the guard years before. It was the reason Georg joined as well. He was trained under the heat of the sun, so searing hot that some men fell under its mercy and died of stroke. Georg was whipped nearly every day for any mistake he made in his training, his back a tangle of scars. And it was all so he could have a chance to be closer to the only family Georg had. His brother stood like an unbending tree in front of the kongelig. Even when he was whipped, hung by his wrists from a tree, it seemed to Georg that the man was unbreakable. The day the whispers had spread of a revolt, Georg’s brother had asked for him to stay in the barracks—to stay out of the fight. Let him and the other guards fight for their freedom. Georg was too anxious for his blade to cut flesh and bone. He joined the fight the night of the revolution. His brother learned that he hadn’t stayed in the safety of the barracks and left his position to look for Georg. Georg had found his brother dead on the beach, his stomach cut open. Georg punishes himself. He should have stayed in the barracks like his brother asked him to. Georg believes that he should be dead instead. But he’s still alive. This is what makes him angriest of all.

I scoop my hands into the anger. It’s wet like white clay, molding in my hands and draining between my fingers until I’m only left with the sharp glass of his pain. I push the glass into my palms, wincing as I try to absorb the emotion. I can’t take all of it. His pain is inconsolable, with the depths of the sea. But I do take some of the burden from Georg. I can see his face soften as he stands in front of me, his rage quivering as his eyes become wet. Sigourney Rose has always had the kraft to sense another’s thoughts and emotions, to control their mind and body—but she never considered how she could use her power with a little bit of empathy.

Georg doesn’t realize what I’ve done. His heart pounds and he tries to force down the swelling grief for his brother.

I continue to speak to him and all the men. “How do you envision our land without the Fjern?” I ask them. “When I picture the islands, there’s only peace. We rely on one another without attempting to cut each other down for power or coin. This is what separates us from them. We won’t use each other in the way that the kongelig have used us. If we want to be different, we need to begin that change. We won’t abandon our own people.”

The men hesitate. Georg works his jaw back and forth. The frustration he feels is with himself. He had been determined to see Sigourney Rose dead, but he’s beginning to waver. He doesn’t understand why he wavers, though I can see the shift in emotion. Sigourney sees it, too. She gazes at me openly. Fear echoes, but she’s curious as well. Astonished by the power she’s witnessed. She wants to understand how I managed to control Georg as I did. She wants that power for herself.

“Sigourney Rose could help us win this insurrection. We don’t know how she could be useful yet. But if we kill her, it’ll be too late when we need her in the future.”

The hesitance remains, but only because the men, Georg included, are afraid of what I will do once Sigourney is released. I could tell Malthe what happened here tonight. Malthe is not as merciful as I am. Though the kongelig are gone, Malthe has still used the whip on his guards when they don’t obey his commands. I’ve suggested that he not, as has Marieke, but Malthe has told us that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with how he leads his men.

“I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done tonight,” I promise them, my voice low. “You won’t be punished.”

Though anger and hatred still rages through him, Georg steps away. Without another word, he begins to march down the hill, returning to the barracks where the guards under Malthe have slept. The other men follow, their torches flickering. Some look over their shoulders at me as they walk. It’s strange to them that I would spend so much effort in saving a former member of the kongelig, especially one that had been my mistress—one that had tried to have me killed. It was only because of the weakness of the tree branch and the mercy of the spirits that I still stand here. I understand their confusion. I see how that confusion could take root and grow into mistrust and disdain. I need to be careful. The hatred that the men hold for Sigourney Rose could easily transfer to me.

When the guards leave me and Sigourney alone, we stand in the dark of the courtyard in silence. With the torchlight gone, the only light is from the silver full moon above. Sigourney’s legs are weak and shaking. She almost falls in her relief, but she would never willingly show me that vulnerability.

“Thank you,” she says. Her voice is hoarse.

There’s an echo between us. An echo as she feels that I know her thoughts, and that she knows mine. The longer I have been in Sigourney Rose’s company, the more her kraft has melded with my own. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. To suddenly enter another—their minds, their emotions—is invasive. The power is strongest with Sigourney. Her thoughts reveal that she believes it’s because she is the source of this kraft. She finds it interesting, the way my kraft has evolved. The ability to end another’s power and take that power as my own has grown tenfold.

“You’ve grown stronger,” she tells me. It’s been weeks since I last saw her.

I don’t bother to answer. She senses that I see this is true. Though it was a shadow in comparison to my ability now, my kraft hasn’t changed. I could stop the abilities of those around me for a time and borrow a shadow of that power in turn. But it feels like my kraft had only been embers, glowing dimly in the dark—and that Sigourney’s power was oil, sparking my kraft into a blazing flame. My power has begun to evolve in ways I’m not sure I understand. It’s odd to feel indebted to Sigourney Rose for this. I don’t like the feeling of owing her anything.

I gesture, and she walks without struggle. She marches back up the stairs and through the heavy front doors, down the dark hall of mold and dust, air covered with a layer of ash and salt. Paintings were torn from the walls, leaving faded shadows where they’d once hung. Rooms hold overturned pieces of furniture and rotting and tattered curtains. Some rooms leave scorched evidence of little fires behind. Sigourney wasn’t put in the dungeons, but in an empty room at the top of a set of collapsing stairs. One wrong step, and the staircase of stone might come crashing down. The room’s door is usually barred from the outside, locking her within. Inside of the chamber, part of the wall has fallen, giving a view of the island and the black night. The shadows of bats flit across the sky, and the chorus of birds and frogs and crickets rises to the moon and smear of stars. I can see the shimmer of the black sea in the distance and hear the gentle hush of the waves washing ashore.

Sigourney had once considered jumping from the fallen wall and risking death, but she’d decided against it. She was left here with her cot and ragged sheet. Marieke has taken care to nurse her wounds with aloe and herbs. The woman brings her food—salted goat and fish, mango stew and porridge in the mornings. She brings books to Sigourney so that she can read. She carries a bucket of saltwater to help Sigourney wash when the sun is at its height to help her cool off from the heat since she lives in this room without much shade from the burning light. Islanders see Marieke do this every day, and they see Sigourney living in a room of Herregård Constantjin, and they’re angry.

Sigourney wonders why I saved her as she steps into her room. I’ve saved her several times. I was supposed to have cut her throat the night of the uprising, and the day that I imprisoned her here, Malthe sent me with a blade to complete the job—but each time, I let her live. Sigourney can recognize that I hate her as much as I hate any of the kongelig. Why, then, do I show her mercy? She wonders this without speaking, knowing that I hear her thoughts. I leave and close the door, pressing the bar back into place.

The meeting room hasn’t changed. Mold still leaks from the stone floor, and the wallpaper cracks and peels like dirt under the sun. Seven of us are here. The newcomers, the ones who have joined us in this meeting room—Geir, Olina, Tuve, and Kjerstin—are at the other end of the table, while Marieke sits to the right of Malthe, and I’m on his other side. Malthe is at the head, where the dead king once sat. Agatha’s seat remains empty. The girl died almost a month ago, but we haven’t had time to properly mourn. Her burial at sea had been a quick ceremony without tears. Her memory deserved better, but there were too many plans and strategies to discuss, too much training to oversee, too much work to be done.

Malthe doesn’t look at her chair. He’s angry that he allowed her to leave the room that night, costing her life. He’s angry with me as well. If I’d cut Sigourney Rose’s neck as I was ordered to on the ship as she attempted to escape the islands, then Agatha would still be alive. Instead, I’d brought Sigourney here because she’d asked me to. I brought Sigourney here, questioning the decision to kill her and hoping to show her mercy. Malthe was furious. He demanded that Sigourney Rose be killed, and Agatha volunteered. Agatha had been eager for the chance to prove her power against the Elskerinde for a long time. She’d chased Sigourney from the room, hunting her across the island.

The events of the night are unclear when I see the memories in Sigourney’s mind. Too much of it had been muddled by Agatha’s kraft, and she couldn’t tell what had and hadn’t been real. The only fact is that we’d found Agatha’s body on the rocks, a deep wound in her side. Malthe guesses that she’d smashed her head as she fell from the cliffs. Agatha had been stubborn, and she’d let her anger control her, but her youth had promise. None of us said this, not out loud, but we hoped that Agatha would be the savior we needed. Her power—her kraft—had been the strongest I’d seen. She was stronger than me. Stronger than any of the kongelig—stronger than even Sigourney Rose. She’d had the potential to save us all, if she had lived.

We’ve spent hours in the meeting room already, as we do every day with our updates and maps and strategies and plans. Malthe is frustrated. “What are we waiting for? The spirits to come and free us from the Fjern? We must attack Niklasson Helle.”

Niklasson Helle is where the kongelig wait with their power. It’s where Lothar Niklasson went after he and other kongelig escaped from Hans Lollik—where he orders his Fjern to attack our islands.

Geir, an older man, is thin and gives the appearance of someone who might break if he were to fall, with gaunt cheeks and white hair. He’d spent his years hidden away on Nørup Helle. The man had been a part of the network of whispers, helping to organize the attacks to the north whenever messages came to him from Hans Lollik Helle. He made a habit of singing the songs of islanders in his mind, again and again, so that no one would be able to discern his thoughts. Whether they had kraft or not, it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. Songs fill his mind. The old habit is difficult for him to break.

His voice is low when he speaks. “They outnumber us with both resources and the number of Fjern guards who will fight for them.”

Olina is against this plan as well. “We would lose the battle. We’re safer here on Hans Lollik Helle. Would be safer, if we moved our command to the north.” Olina is older, perhaps in her thirties or forties, though she isn’t sure of her age. She has always been a cautious woman. She doesn’t take unnecessary risk.

“We’re in a war,” Malthe says. “We’ll never be safe. Don’t delude yourself.”

“It would be better to stay here, barricaded against the Fjern, and wait for aid. I’ve prepared letters making requests.” Olina has mastered the tongue of the Fjern and can write in their hand, trained by her master, now dead, so that she could write his letters for him whenever his fingers cramped in his old age. Olina regrets poisoning the old man, a cousin of the Solberg, when she really did have much to thank him for. These are the ways the Fjern have taken our minds. We should be grateful to them that they haven’t killed us and that they provide us with food and clothes as they take our freedom. There are some islanders that believe these lies. It worries me that Olina is one of them.

Malthe shakes his head. “You’ve prepared letters that won’t make it past Skov Helle before the Fjern find the scouts and send us back their heads.”

Though I agree with him on this, I also realize that we can’t attack Niklasson Helle—not yet. We aren’t ready. “We need to wait for the right opportunity.”

“This is the right opportunity,” Malthe says. He still can’t look at me. He hasn’t been able to, since Agatha’s death. “They wouldn’t expect an attack. We hold the advantage of surprise.”

“We have no advantage,” I tell him. “Our power is here, on Hans Lollik Helle. We need to communicate with the other islands first.”

The islands to the north. Our revolution was meant to spread to all of the islands of Hans Lollik as we took back our home from the Fjern. But our people lost the battles of Larsen and Jannik, and by the time the message to begin the slaughter of the masters had spread to Solberg and Niklasson and Lund Helle, the Fjern had been warned by the fires and smoke in the distance. Scouts and survivors that returned to the royal island reported that the Fjern atta