by Karen Healey
He looked awkward, doubtless at the thought of me with a weapon in hand or anywhere near a secured communication route. “We have ample operatives for—”
“It doesn’t have to be exciting,” I begged. “I just want a task that keeps my hands busy, something I can do that helps the cause.”
He brightened. “How about kitchen duty?”
I made a face, the picture of impetuous youth restrained. Actually, I was delighted he hadn’t started with latrine duty. I’d have had to talk him out of it—and the longer I messed with someone’s thought processes, the faster they were likely to realize I was doing it. Instead he’d landed me exactly where I wanted to be.
“I know it doesn’t sound glamorous. But an army marches on its stomach. If you could put lunch together, that would be really useful, and we’d all be grateful.”
As if I wanted Lat’s gratitude. “I suppose that would be all right,” I said slowly, trying to sound reluctant but not so much that he’d try to give me another task. “All right.” I almost said thank you, but the words stuck in my throat, and he wouldn’t have believed them from me anyway. Instead, I turned on my heel.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
I turned back. “Should I?”
He frowned. “You can, but I understand why you don’t. You saw me hurt Tegan.”
“For things I did,” I said automatically. “Because I wasn’t good.”
There was pity in his eyes. I wanted to poke them out, so I wouldn’t have to see it. “No. Abdi, it wasn’t your fault Tegan was hurt. It was Diane who ordered it done.”
“And you who did it.”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Fury snarled through my veins. “You didn’t have to hurt her. You could have faked it.”
“I couldn’t. The implant monitored pain responses. Tegan knew why I had to go through with it. She said that made it easier.”
“Not for me,” I pointed out. “And you said… you said you’d hurt her in new ways. You said you’d make me watch.”
“Put the poker down,” Lat suggested.
I started, as if I were coming out of a dream.
I couldn’t even remember going to the fireplace, but I was definitely clutching the heavy poker in my upraised hand, point held low toward Lat. With exaggerated care, I laid it on the table, a thick black line across the maps. Then I stepped back, my hands held exaggeratedly out from my sides. “Were you scared? Of savage thirdie me?”
“I could have taken it from you,” he said, which I knew was true. “But I’d rather I didn’t have to. We’re not enemies, Abdi. We would have been once, I have to admit. But I saw Tegan’s story. I thought, this is wrong. And I thought of all the wrong things I’d been ordered to do in the years since I joined SADU, and all the wrong things I’d be ordered to do in years to come, and I thought, I have to help that girl.”
“So you had some sort of epiphany, and now you think we should be friends? That I should just forgive and forget all of those wrong things? You threatened to rape her!”
The word cut through the air like a clean knife.
Lat’s lips flattened. “I wouldn’t have. Never, even if they’d ordered. It was only a threat.”
“Sure. It was only to make me move, get me into position for an escape I didn’t even know was coming. Ever since I came to this stupid country people have wanted to make me their puppet. Just like Tegan, but less valuable. They want me to sing for them, run for them, scream for them—” I bit back the rest and swallowed it.
“I’m not saying you have to forgive me,” Lat said after a moment.
“Good. I don’t. Tegan’s the one who believes in absolution, not me.”
“We don’t have to be friends, either. But we should be allies. We want the same things.”
We want the same girl, I thought. But I didn’t dare say it. I could tell all my feelings were off-kilter—too strong, too raw, suspicion and rage coming too easily to me. Tegan was clearly more than a symbol to Lat, but I couldn’t be sure exactly how he felt about her. He was at least ten years older than she was—maybe he saw her as a little sister in need of protection and care. Or maybe he saw her as something else. And I didn’t know how much Tegan liked him back. Maybe she’d found comfort in his presence; maybe that comfort had turned into something more. If she’d found some kind of solace in our imprisonment, should I blame her?
I probably shouldn’t, but hot with jealousy, I knew I would.
“Allies, then,” Lat said, as if it were all settled. He held out his hand.
I had a mission. I couldn’t compromise it. I took his hand and shook it, palm pressed against palm. We released the grip together, and I resolutely did not wipe his touch off on my pants.
“Did Diane hurt you?” he asked, apparently apropos of nothing.
I stared at him. “You saw she did.” He’d seen me sobbing on the floor, begging for forgiveness, saying anything I thought might make her stop.
“I meant… hurt you.”
Diane’s hands, brushing my skin; Diane’s whisper in my ear. “Be a good boy, Abdi. Don’t make me punish you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I lied, and went downstairs to find the kitchen.
The problem was that I didn’t really know how to cook. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the task had been relegated to a category labeled “Servant’s work; probably easy enough.” This was shameful thinking—the same sort of stupidity that had people automatically labeling me a barbaric thirdie—but realizing the flaw in my logic didn’t help me put a recipe together.
When Tegan found me in the industrial-sized kitchen, I was swearing at a potato in French, which was my favorite language for curses. Something about the way merde spat out of my mouth was very satisfying.
Tegan looked at the chunky peelings in the sink and at the few potatoes I’d managed to rid of their skin, mostly by slicing off large portions of flesh with it. The potatoes in the pot were much smaller than they’d started out.
“You couldn’t find a potato peeler?” she asked.
I scowled at the knife I’d been using. There was a specific tool for potato peeling? Why hadn’t it been labeled?
Tegan rooted through a drawer and passed me a small, white-handled thing with a double blade. Then she casually slid a knife into her dress. She’d borrowed an outfit from Bethari, something long and flowing with lots of convenient folds.
“Beans in the pantry,” I said quietly, and watched, impressed, as she loaded herself with various useful staples and walked out again, looking perfectly calm. Just visiting her friend in the kitchen, not stealing supplies for a cross-Tasman journey, not a bit.
I got to work with the peeler and barely escaped scraping the skin off my thumb. How did people do this every day? I should definitely be more respectful of cooks.
A harassed-looking man stuck his head in the door and performed a double take. “But… Uh, hi, are you…?”
“Lat said I could make lunch,” I said, making no attempt to be friendly.
“Your help would be very—”
“By myself.”
His eyes flickered over the sad potato remnants. “Are you sure you don’t want a hand?”
“Call Lat,” I said, and turned my back on him. The man withdrew for a brief and predictable conversation. I caught the frustration in the man’s voice as Lat presumably told him to let me have my way and to stop bothering him with trivialities, and I wasn’t surprised when he looked back in to anxiously inform me that if I needed help, all I had to do was ask.
Left alone, I turned the potatoes into chunks and then eyed the onions. I was almost certain that you were supposed to peel them, then chop them, not the other way around. Tegan turned up again midway through the chopping process and grabbed my wrists before I could rub my stinging eyes.
“Rinse, don’t rub,” she said, sending me to the sink. By the time I turned around again, blinking furiously, she’d transformed my uneven onion chunks into fine, even pi
eces, her knife a blur in her practiced hand.
“You’re good at that,” I said.
“My mum was a chef, remember?”
I did. And there would have been no servants in her house. I’d been pampered.
Sometimes, when I was really honest with myself, I had to acknowledge that some of my resentment at the way Australians treated me was because at home I’d been the wealthy, important one, not the strange, poor relation to be pitied. The change in status had been hard to take.
“I was making vegetable curry,” I said. I’d grown up on curries, so I’d reasoned that at least I’d be able to taste if I was doing it wrong. And I’d seen my Australian host father make them. It seemed the method was to chop the ingredients into pieces and boil them together until they became thick. Add seasoning to taste, and eat with your starch of choice, which was going to be rice. It seemed fairly easy.
“That works. Go and see if there’re some canned tomatoes in the pantry. We’ll want cumin, cayenne pepper, turmeric if they’ve got any. Salt.”
Maybe not so easy. I rummaged things up for her, and after being sent back twice—“Cumin, not coriander. Oh, and see if there are any dried chilies”—I leaned against the bench as she mixed spices and threw them into a huge pan with a lot of oil. The domesticity was unfamiliar to me but reassuring all the same. She tipped the onions in and stirred, while a warm, fragrant smell swelled to fill the room. Not a lot of ventilation down here, but I couldn’t find myself caring much. In fact, it would be a bonus if Lat’s room, wherever that was, got extra stinky.
“Carl found me,” she said quietly. “I told him that I wanted a couple of days to get my head together but that I’d be glad to do a ’cast then. I think that works with whatever schedule he’s got for that army-base attack.”
“Good.”
“And I talked to Zaneisha, but I really can’t tell which way she’d jump. She’s so restrained.”
I nodded. “Then we won’t take the risk. We’ll plan to leave without her.”
“Anything else you need from me?”
“Not right now.”
She sighed. “Figures. People don’t want me to do. They just want me to be. And sometimes I think they’re right.”
“How do you mean?”
“I look at my friends, and I don’t know why you bother. Joph’s a chemist. Bethi’s a journalist hacker. You speak four languages and wrap people around your finger at will and sing like an angel. Compared with that, what can I do?”
I stared at the fragrant pot. “I can’t imagine.”
The joke didn’t go over well. She twisted to scowl at me.
Her self-pity might be justified, but it was annoying. I scowled back. “You discovered a human-rights abuse scandal that had been kept secret for months, jumped over rooftops to put down a hostile military response, escaped imprisonment by religious freaks, and then gave up everything to expose the Australian government to the world. That people didn’t capitalize on that the way we’d hoped isn’t your fault. You did plenty, Tegan.”
“And where did that get us?” she said, dropping her gaze.
“Here,” I said. “And eventually, home to Djibouti.”
“Your home,” she said. “My home doesn’t exist anymore.”
The quiet desolation in her voice was much worse than the self-pity. I wrapped one arm around her, careful not to impede the movement of her wooden spoon as she shifted the onions about. “You can come with me, if you like,” I said tentatively. “Make a new life.”
Tegan bit her lip. “It’s just… if I can’t stay here, I think I’d like to come with you. I mean it.” She tilted her head up at me, her eyes solemn and sincere, and my heart turned over in my chest.
“But,” I prompted.
Tegan broke eye contact. “But I don’t know what Marie wants. I need to talk to her first.”
I nodded, trying not to look as wounded as I felt. Of course she’d do anything for Dr. Carmen, just as I’d do anything for my mother. “Take your time.” I had to resist the urge to make stronger arguments, to get her to see things my way. I could do it, maybe, but it wouldn’t be right. If she came with me, I wanted it to be her decision.
“I’ll think about it. I promise. But I’ve been trying so hard to make a new life here. Or I was trying, at any rate.” She shook her head. “ ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.’ ”
It sounded like a quote. “What’s that from?”
“The Bible. Saint Paul talking about the end of the world. ‘The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.’ ”
The Bible. Ugh. “You’re perishable,” I said, and poked her in the side.
She didn’t react to this joke, either. “But changed. And maybe not changed enough to cope with this world. I thought it would be better, Abdi. I thought the future was going to be so much better than this.”
I’d thought so, too. I’d been working my whole life so I could make it happen. That was what my mother’s games were designed to do, after all: put me in a position where I could make positive change.
I held her a little closer, unsure of what else I could do and disturbed by the note of despair in her voice. She seemed to be feeling something similar to what I had before our rescue, but where escape had improved my outlook on life, it seemed to have damaged hers. Or maybe it was that she’d been given an opportunity to hope, that she’d been told that soon she could stop being a political mouthpiece… and then her rescuers had made clear that they expected her to keep talking. The new players were on the opposite side, but they still wanted her to be a pawn.
Tegan was strong, but everyone had limits.
There was a furtive knock at the door, and Tegan stiffened, moving away from me before the intruder came in. “What is it, Lat?” she asked, her tone ordinary.
“Dr. Carmen’s still asleep, but the doctor says she can have visitors now,” he said, glancing at me and then back at her.
“Marie!” Tegan thrust the spoon into my hand. “Put the potatoes in, add the tomatoes, throw in eight cups of water, and simmer until the potatoes are done.”
She slipped past Lat without another word for me, or even a significant look. He watched her go, smiling slightly, and then came closer to where I stood by the pot, spoon gripped tightly. “How’s it going?” he asked. “Smells good.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s pretty hot up there,” he tried. “Bushfires to the west. They’re readying evacuation orders.”
I remembered the smell of smoke in the garden. “That sounds serious,” I said.
“It’s probably not a big deal. We just need to keep an eye out, in case the wind changes.”
I cocked my head at that. “This place isn’t fireproof?”
Lat looked encouraged by the fact of our conversation. “Well, there are protective measures in place. It’s really not something you need to worry about. We had three fire warnings in the summer, and nothing came of them. The only issue is that if the fire does reach here and the cottage collapses, rescue services coming afterward might find the complex underneath.”
“Right. Not so secret a secret location, then.”
His lips flattened at my tone. “When’s lunch going to be ready?”
I turned back to the pan. “Soon,” I said, and hoped I was right.
I was wrong, but thanks to Tegan’s cooking prowess, the trickle of people who moved into the kitchen to fill their bowls didn’t seem to mind waiting. Most of them thanked me, the harassed-looking man from earlier doing so with justified, if insulting, surprise. Nobody seemed worried about the fires Lat had mentioned; they gathered in small groups to have focused, but not particularly tense, conversations about whatever they were working on for the next stage. I tried to eavesdrop without making it look obvious but stopped the second time a conversation topic shifted in midphrase. Wherever Hurfest and Lat had found these people, they were well practiced at keeping secrets.
Which was probably just as well, given that we were all fugitives. But it was frustrating.
I thought about getting a curry bowl of my own, but the girls hadn’t turned up yet. Instead, I casually grabbed a few cans of preserved fruit and wandered out, hoping to find them. It would be nice to eat with Tegan. We needed a chance to have a normal conversation.
Tegan and Bethari’s room was empty, but Joph was sitting on the bed in our room, checking the contents of a little red bag. “Got plenty of painkillers,” she said.
I held up the cans I’d taken. “Got plenty of… what are these, peaches?”
“Nectarines.”
“Those. Where’s Tegan?”
“Still in the infirmary with Marie, I think. And Bethari’s upstairs working on the EMP, making a lot of noise about how she’s going to make it smaller for next time.”
I hadn’t asked about Bethari, mostly because I was just happy she wasn’t here. But it was hard to get that kind of neglect past Joph, who was as observant as she was good-tempered.
“Did you want to get lunch?” I said instead. “Tegan mostly made it, so it’s good.”
She rolled off the bed. “Let’s go.”
The second I stepped into the kitchen area, I stopped moving. Tegan was back from the infirmary. She was sitting at one of the mismatched tables with Lat and a couple of bowls of curry.
And she was laughing.
It was her real laugh, the one she’d given me earlier, but now it was for Lat, not me, and he was gazing at her with an expression I’d felt on my own face. And she was grinning up at him, seeming just as pleased with his company as she had been with mine. In a second, she’d be climbing onto the table and kissing him.
“Hey,” Joph said, and laid a hand on my arm.
My jaw was clenched so tightly it was actually painful. I forced it to relax. “I’m okay.”
Lat caught sight of me and looked momentarily uncertain, and the movement prompted Tegan to look over her shoulder.
