Tamaruq (6 page)

‘What did you do, before you did this?’

‘And what do you call this?’

‘Revolution.’ Adelaide looks at her. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Good a word as any, I suppose.’

‘So, before the revolution, what did you do?’ Seeing the refusal in Dien’s face, she adds, ‘I’m just curious.’

Dien takes her time answering, evidently considering the wisdom of engaging in more intimate conversation with a Rechnov, even one undisputedly under her control.

‘I was a nurse. Still am, when they’re desperate.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Does that surprise you? Course it does. I threatened to torture your friends. That’s not the actions of a nurse, you might think. But I’ll tell you something, Rechnov. Nursing teaches you a lot. Like suffering, it teaches you about that. It teaches you about pain, and the thresholds of pain, and when to alleviate it, and when to apply it, and how people behave when they feel it. When you’re a nurse you treat whoever comes your way and you don’t question what they did to get themselves in that state and whether they deserve to live or die. You just… plug the holes.’

For a moment Adelaide sees, very vividly, a shard of glass stuck in a man’s stomach.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll have been to the western hospital,’ says Dien. ‘It’s not a pleasant place, that’s for sure. It’s not a fair place, either. And you might be the most hard-arsed soul in the world, but until you’ve held a woman’s head with half her face shredded while she drowns in her own blood screaming for her mother and the ghosts, you haven’t seen shit.’

‘Was that what persuaded you? To join the resistance?’

‘A lot of things persuaded me,’ says Dien evenly.

‘Do you hate me, Dien?’

Dien looks to the window-wall, distracted by a passing gull. The bird beats its way upwards, lofting out of view, leaving behind the grey assault of the city. ‘I haven’t made up my mind.’

From the moment the speech is agreed, the apartment is abuzz with adrenaline as Dien’s crew prepare for the meet. Adelaide, always at the edge of someone’s eye, now feels almost invisible as they bustle about, tense and distracted. Adelaide herself presents a fresh problem to be solved: Dien is concerned that someone might stab her on the spot.

‘Before she has a chance to open her bloody mouth.’

‘Is that likely?’ Adelaide asks. She tries for a joking tone but no one will meet her eye. Dien takes her aside.

‘People are angry,’ she says roughly. ‘They want to be persuaded. We’ve had western fighters before but they’re all dead, every one of them is dead. We need someone who is immune to the system, and
you
, Rechnov – you have immunity.’

When the evening finally arrives it feels no more real or unreal than any of the strange events that have preceded it. They drive to the place in Dien’s boat. She listens to the voice of the sea, trying to make out a message in its whisperings, wondering if fate has an eye to her today. The meet is in a drinking house. Before they go in, Dien tells her that this was where Vikram and his friends Nils and Drake used to meet. Adelaide has no way of knowing whether it is true, or another piece of emotional ammunition to make her perform, but when they go inside she sees their photographs on the wall, pinned up with others, a collage of faces, southerners and Boreal, young and old. Among them is a man whose face is familiar from the newsfeeds, a man she watched drown: Eirik 9968. Beneath the collage is a tin of salt, the metal scratched and tarnished. Dien and the others go to the wall and perform the salt ritual, and Adelaide does the same, the grains falling somewhere behind her, over her shoulder – she can’t hear them land above the general rowdiness of the place.

It is a shock to see Vikram’s face. In the photograph he looks quietly confident, in a way she struggles to remember now but knows must have been true. The image must have been taken during his time in the City.

The place has a raw, unfinished quality with the upturned kegs and crates set out as seats, the naked bulbs swinging overhead. There are a lot of people here. Dien’s people are standing very close to her, all of them carrying concealed knives or handguns, and Dien’s flippant remarks about someone stabbing her take on an uncomfortable layer of truth and she realizes she is deeply, fiercely scared in a way she hasn’t felt for weeks.

‘Ready?’ says Dien.

‘Don’t have a choice, do I?’

‘No.’

Dien jumps onto a keg to speak. Her introduction is quick and energetic. She has a natural way with a crowd.

Having caught the room’s attention, Dien gets down to business.

‘All right. I said I had a surprise for you. And here it is. Or rather, here
she
is.’

Adelaide senses the people surrounding her tense in anticipation. Fear stiffens her spine.

This is it.

She has a fleeting memory, of standing on a podium amid the old-world grandeur of the Council Chambers, beckoning Vikram to join her.

‘I present to you our new speaker for western rights – Adelaide Rechnov!’

Dien bends down and with a theatrical, if slightly clumsy gesture, whips the hat from Adelaide’s head.

There are a few moments of silence during which Adelaide feels the weight of scrutiny, her face under the lens of a magnifying glass, like never before. Then the room erupts. Dien’s people gather closely around her, forming a barrier between Adelaide and the crowd, crushing her. Voices are raised in uproar. Through the barrier of familiar bodies she feels the impact of strangers, lunging to get at her.

If they reach me, I’ll be crushed before anyone can even pull a knife.

She hears a glass shatter. She hears Dien shouting above the melee, telling everyone to calm down. Hands grasp at her, pulling her up onto the table. Whichever way it goes she will be exposed. Now she’s standing next to Dien, an easy target. Dien has taken up a defensive stance, using her body to shield Adelaide from assault. A splash of liquid catches Adelaide square in the face and splatters over both of them. She can taste the tartness of alcohol on her lips, shocking in its sudden intensity. Dien is shouting and gesticulating with both arms.

‘Shut up! Shut the fuck up and listen to what she has to say!’

She shouts into Adelaide’s ear.

‘Go on. Go on! You’ll just have to start.’

A glass flies overhead, narrowly missing both of their heads.

‘This is insane!’

Dien shrugs and ducks.

‘Do or die, Rechnov.’

Adelaide pulls out the piece of paper on which she had painstakingly written out her speech. She glances at it once, then screws the paper up into a ball. She gathers her breath.

‘I used to live over there, with those people.’

‘Louder,’ hisses Dien.

‘I used to live over there,’ she shouts. The room reacts with jeers, but others shush them. She says it a third time, quieter this time, forcing the volume of the room to lower, until an abrupt, ambivalent hush settles. The westerners watch her mistrustfully, accusingly.

‘I used to live over there. There was a man I knew, a westerner. His name was Vikram. For a while, he lived where I lived. But he was never at home there. You know what they call people who cross over – what we call them. Airlifts. And Vikram – he could never find a balance. He was torn between two places.’

She gathers the courage to let her gaze settle on individuals, forcing herself to meet their eyes. Some look away but others hold her gaze. These westerners. These westerners, who she does not know.

‘I understand now how he felt. I don’t belong there any more. I can’t go back. You’re wondering what I’m doing here when the o’dio says I’m dead. Well, I could tell you how but the only thing that matters is that I was rescued, by two of you. Two westerners, who were kind to me. Who didn’t know, or care, who I was. They only wanted to help. Only, I’ve realized I don’t belong here either. I don’t belong anywhere.’

The room has fallen silent, enough to hear the sound of the wind whining through the shutters, the distant blare of a waterbus horn.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ she says quietly. ‘My brother – my twin – he went mad. That’s the truth. I didn’t want to believe it but it’s what happened, he went mad, and he killed himself. I know, I know, I shouldn’t speak of it. We never speak about that. But it happened. He believed in horses. He heard them speaking to him. Sometimes I see them and I think I might be going mad too, and then I think, no. It’s just this place. This city. What it does to us.’

She wavers. Dien is at her side, nodding encouragingly. She remembers Vikram, his voice falling onto the ears of the Council, his confidence in the face of impossibility. Both their confidence, that they could make something happen. She cannot help glancing at the photograph on the wall.

‘I’m here today without any expectations. I can’t condone the things my family did. The things I did, without knowing. Or maybe I knew but I didn’t care enough to stop. It doesn’t really matter which, I did them. And to be honest with you, I’m here because I was blackmailed into being here.

‘But now that I am here, I realize I can do something. This city isn’t a fair place – but it could be. It could become what it was meant to be, a long time ago. I can help. I can’t give you much but I can give you my voice, if you’ll have it. I’ll fight for you. I’ll give you whatever I have left, because I owe it, to that man.’ She points at the photograph. ‘I owe it to Vikram Bai, who I loved, and never told. And I owe it to all of you.’

She gazes around.

‘That’s all I’ve got. There’s nothing else.’

In the ensuing silence, Adelaide senses the mood in the room teetering, tipped to go either way with the least bit of provocation. Has she done enough?

A woman with grey hair says, ‘Why have you brought her here, Dien?’

Dien answers the question directly.

‘Because we can use her.’ She glances at Adelaide. ‘And because, despite everything, I think she means what she says.’

The room divides into clusters of mutterings. Adelaide hears, quite distinctly, a voice saying, ‘We should just kill her now and be done with it.’ And someone else: ‘What about the prophecies? What if it’s her?’

Her life hangs now on her ability to act a part, or to tell the truth, or some convergence of the two.

She waits. Dien waits.

A man at the bar says, ‘You haven’t said you’re sorry.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. Of course I’m sorry. There’s a lot of things I regret, that I’d take back now if I could. But you can’t live a life like that. Or you’re no better off than a ghost.’ Even as she speaks, the truth of what she is saying sharpens its focus. This is how she has been living, and from here she too has a choice: a path is being offered to her. She looks at the grey-haired woman who first spoke. ‘Well, you have a choice as well. You can use me, or not.’

The room is pregnant with anticipation. Adelaide can hear the breath moving in and out of her lungs. In these moments, she still has her life. How could she have been so careless with it?

The grey-haired woman says, ‘I’m with them.’

Adelaide has made enough speeches in her life to know, in that moment, that she has won. It’s a bittersweet victory, the kind that is squeezed from ashes and tears, but it is a victory. A binding one. Dien meets her eyes. There is no hugging, no screams of exhilaration. Just a nod of acknowledgement from the other woman, which Adelaide translates as:
You did all right
.

One of Dien’s crew comes up and murmurs, just loud enough for Adelaide to hear.

‘That little eel Ren snuck out five minutes ago.’

Adelaide notes the shift in Dien’s expression.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means we’ve got about five minutes to get out of here.’

Dien jumps up onto her keg.

‘All right, people. There’s going to be a skadi raid in about five, that’s five minutes! So get the hell out of here unless you want to wake up feeling even worse tomorrow than you’re going to already!’

No one needs to be told twice. What was boisterous chaos is now a systematic evacuation as punters stream from the bar. As Dien puts a hand on Adelaide’s shoulder and steers her towards the exit, she sees hands tearing down the photographs from the wall, all of the west’s dissidents, faces gathered up and shoved unceremoniously into a folder. This was just an arena, a pop-up show. Outside, people are splitting, heading either upstairs or down.

‘We’ve got the boat,’ says Dien, directing them downwards.

‘Is there time – you said five minutes—’

‘There’s time. Anyway, you should always go the way they don’t expect.’

They cram into the lift with a dozen others and drop down through the tower in a series of juddering fits and starts. The raft racks are crammed with people unmooring their boats. Dien leaps into theirs and starts the motor. Adelaide scrambles in after her and Dien powers the boat away at once. Looking back, Adelaide can see other boats moving out, their wakes creating a star-like formation around the base of the tower, licks of white extending over the surface, before their makers duck away into darker corners of the west. For a few moments, the tower appears as dark and desolate as any other western building at night. The air still, the water lapping. Her breath in the arctic night. Then they hear the whine of approaching boats.

Skadi boats.

‘Right on time,’ says Dien with satisfaction.

Dien is relaxed at the wheel; they are well away now, the tower receding fast behind them. By the time the skadi reach the bar, all they will find is a deserted room with a few empty kegs, and the dregs of beer in tankards.

‘So, Rechnov,’ Dien shouts above the engine. ‘You ready to do it all again?’

‘Who’s Ren?’

‘A snitch. Don’t worry. We keep an eye on those people.’

‘Will it be like this every time?’

‘Worse, probably. Once they get wind something’s up.’ Dien glances back. ‘But you can handle it, right?’

Adelaide nods. The evening is sinking in on her now. As Dien steers expertly through the darkness, she hears again the jeers of the crowd, her voice against theirs. The outcome tonight was as fine as the edge of a blade, and the sense of danger, absent in the adrenaline of the moment, now crawls back to nuzzle at her throat.