Tamaruq by E. J. Swift Read Free Book Online

will convince a crowd of westerners?
    After an hour, Dien returns. She looks at the blank paper. At Adelaide.
    ‘Time’s ticking,’ she says. Her mouth curls in a grimace that might be a twisted smile, Adelaide isn’t sure. She looks at Dien, thinking how the old Adelaide would have judged this woman. The slight irregularity of her features. The cheap cosmetics. She would never have seen what lies beneath that exterior, the courage or the cruelty; it would have been beneath her to offer Dien a second glance.
    She picks up the pen, and writes a line.
    ‘That’s right,’ says Dien.
    The door slams again.
    Adelaide stares at the words on the page.
    I used to live over there.
    I used to live over there, with those people.
    There was a man I knew, a westerner. His name was Vikram.
    Dien reads through the speech in silence. When she comes to the end she sits back in her chair and folds her arms, eyes narrowed in the familiar, shrewd expression. Assessing. Reassessing.
    ‘It almost reads like you mean it.’
    Adelaide says nothing.
    ‘Good. This is what we need. The meet’s tomorrow evening. It’ll be busy. You’d better practise.’
    ‘I want to see Mikaela and Ole.’
    ‘The meet,’ says Dien. ‘And then we’ll see.’
    She is clearly restless, but Adelaide senses her mood is closer to anticipation than irritation. She takes her chance.
    ‘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