Invisible Armies

Chapter 12

Estelle comes to join Danielle for yoga the next morning. Still basically strangers, they are a little skittish around each other, and Danielle is glad when small talk ends and the class begins. She clears her mind, focuses on her breath and body, as they move through the namaskaar series, the warmups before the Primary Series begins.

The class is gruelling and fast-paced, and though Estelle is fit and experienced, she has to stop and rest a few times in balasana, child's pose. Danielle pushes herself through the strain, past the sweat and hoarse breaths and aching limbs, until the rhythmic powerful ujjayi breathing at the core of the practice manages to extinguish past and future, until she is entirely in the now, all body and no mind.

At the end of the class, they lie back in shivasana, which Danielle privately calls naptime. She feels sore and wrung out, but deliciously loose and relaxed, at peace with the world. Whatever happens will work out, somehow, she is sure of it. She tries to ignore the nagging voice telling her that that's just endorphins talking, that real problems aren't fixed just by going to a yoga class for an attitude adjustment.

After the class Danielle and Estelle sip tea in the ashram's open-air cafe.

"Thanks for having me here," Estelle says. The remains of her Southern accent are more palpable now; she seems to have let down her social guard. Danielle feels more at ease too, now that they have sweated together.

"No problem."

"Did you like living here?"

Danielle looks around and chooses her words carefully. "It was a valuable experience. I think it's best that it didn't continue much further."

"What are you going to do next?"

"I haven't really thought past getting out of the country in one piece."

Estelle nods. "Understandable. Here's one option you might want to think about. Angus and I, we don't know you well, obviously, but we do like you. Keiran speaks very highly of you. And you're obviously tough as old nails. We'd like you to think about working with our movement in some capacity."

Danielle's instinct is to immediately decline. This is what she always does, when she is asked to join or support a political group, a gallery, a movement. She assumes, whenever asked, that she is being approached for her and her family's wealth. But Estelle probably doesn't even know she is rich, Keiran isn't likely to have mentioned it. And besides, Estelle is right. Danielle has been tough and resourceful. Their desperate escape from Kishkinda feels far enough behind her now that she can feel proud of it. It feels good to be approached because of what she is, what she can do, rather than her ability to write fat cheques. Danielle isn't sure it's ever happened before.

"I'd have to think about it," she says.

"Of course."

"What capacity do you have in mind?"

Estelle says, "Depends on what you're comfortable with. But we might, for instance, have you help organize protests. We're considering a possible major protest in Paris in two months' time."

"That's what you do? Organize protests?" Danielle says disbelievingly. "That's why you hired my ex-boyfriend the uber-hacker?"

"No." Estelle hesitates, then says, "Our inner circle does more challenging work. But we can't ask you to join that yet. That's not a decision either side can make lightly. We have to completely trust the people we work with. You understand, we don't necessarily play within the rules set down by governments."

Danielle looks at her. "What does that mean exactly?"

"Well. I can give you a lot of soothing euphemisms, but what it really means is, we break the law. No violence against people, unless absolutely necessary, and it hasn't been yet. But we can't afford to play nice. Not in a world where ten percent of the population holds the other ninety in chains." Estelle's voice turns grim as she speaks, her eyes harden, she seems to change before Danielle's eyes from a friendly, playful woman into a vengeful angel. "Strong preying on weak, rich feeding on poor, like fucking vampires, everywhere you look. And it's the strong and rich who make the laws. We can't be bound by the law if we want to break the chains. Legalized slavery and mass murder, that's what it boils down to. You were there. You saw them dying in Kishkinda."