The Olive Conspiracy (26 page)

23. The Pale Queen

Queen faced queen in the chill of the sumptuous
Imbrian salon. Shulamit stood, waiting, her gloved fingers
fidgeting with the fur edging of her cloak as she watched Carolina
read the letter. That lovely, pale face grew even paler, almost
green; her dark eyes grew larger and seemed to turn into vast,
gleaming stones of polished onyx. Her body was still like a statue,
but Shulamit could tell that inside the sculpture of nobility there
was a woman crumbling to dust.

Finally she spoke, and Shulamit was so tense
that the sound startled her. “He should never have taken this
action.”

“
I’m so sorry, Carolina.” Shulamit
hoped her tone conveyed the full weight of her
sincerity.

“
No,
I’m
sorry.” Carolina
set the letter down and took one of her hands in hers. She stared
into Shulamit’s eyes as she continued. “Imbrio is Perach’s ally. We
are Perach’s friends. The throne does not condone this.”

“
Thanks.” Shulamit’s voice cracked,
and she sounded adolescent to her own ears. She drew herself up and
tried to feel twenty-five. The Imbrian chill wasn’t helping; winter
had come in full force, and she felt cold inside her bones. It made
her want to run to Isaac and hide in his capes, snuggling like a
child. But Isaac wasn’t even human right now; for reasons of state
he’d entered the room in Rivka’s hair.

“
He worked this plan as my father
lay ill and dying, to build my reign on treachery,” Carolina
murmured, almost to herself. Then, louder, “What fate for his
conspirators?”

“
Extradition or trial in Perach,”
said Shulamit. “There’s the matter of that man they
murdered.”

“
You may keep them,” said Carolina
scornfully. “This is not what I wanted for my reign. This is not
what I wanted for my country!”

Shulamit paused, knowing she was about to touch
the bruise again. “What will you do?”

“
He cannot stay here.” Carolina’s
gaze fell. “His lands will be taken and he will go into
exile.”

“
I’m sorry,” Shulamit found herself
saying again, immediately feeling stupid.

They were interrupted by clattering from the
corner. Shulamit looked over to see the Imbrian princess sitting in
the middle of a collapsed tower of blocks. The little girl let out
a wail of frustration.

“
It will be okay, Sophia,” Carolina
said in Imbrian. “Now you can build something even
prettier.”

Shulamit’s gaze traveled under fluttering
lashes back and forth between mother and daughter, fighting a
sinking feeling. “Carolina, this isn’t…
very
bad, is it?”
This is none of my business, but I so badly don’t want it to be
true… I have to know.

Carolina looked at Shulamit with puzzled eyes,
then followed her gaze to Sophia and understood. “No.” She shook
her head slowly. “No,” she repeated, and then, in the tiniest of
voices, “not then.”

“
I understand,” said Shulamit, full
of meaning. A flash of insight reminded her of how vulnerable she’d
been, herself, after the death of her own father. She would have
gladly run off with any woman who’d held her hand, even an ax
murderer.

“
We traveled the countryside
together,” Carolina reminisced, “and he showed me our farms, up
close. Not as I’d seen them as a princess, not in the farmhouses
stuffed full of treats and waiting for compliments from the
landowners. In the fields themselves. We watched the people
working, and he told me their stories. He told me, you know, this
one likes poetry, and that one is saving up so that he can pay to
heal his ailing son. He made them all real for me.”

Shulamit took a deep breath. “He was right
about
them
, even if he was wrong about us.”

Carolina looked dreamily into space. “I had new
visions for my country in his arms. Now I wonder if they were all
just fantasies.”

“
What he showed you was true,”
Shulamit insisted. “He just took it in a horrible direction. I
mean—if he hadn’t been in love with you since childhood, think, he
might have even started an uprising
against
you. But you two
were…” She gestured meaninglessly. “…so he had to twist it around
in his head and somehow make it
my
fault. Or my country’s,
anyway. I know this wasn’t about me.”

“
Uprising…”

“
Start loving your people,
Carolina.
All
of them. You saw what they’re really like.
Imbrio really
can
be great.”

“
Of course I love my people!”
Carolina’s eyes flashed with expressiveness. “But there are
different types of people, yes? It is part of the way the world is
put together—some people work this way and some that. Would it not
be too much for someone from the other classes to try to do what we
do?”

“
There’s no inherent difference.
You remember Aviva?” Heat pounded in Shulamit’s face as she grew
more impassioned. “She’s the love of my life and one of the
smartest people I know, and she’s from the working class. Not even
lower landed gentry like João. Her father’s a tailor and her mother
was a laundress before her back problems started. Would you have
known she was working-class if I didn’t tell you?”

Carolina, stunned, shook her head. “She has
such poise and confidence!”

“
She saved my life when I was
younger”—Shulamit looked her deep in the eye—“when all you could do
was beat the cook.”

The pale queen swallowed uncomfortably. After a
time, she said, “He will have the Imbrio he wanted, but he will not
be here to see it.”

“
I guess it’s too much to ask that
he be extradited with the others?” Shulamit half grinned in a
grimace.

“
I would prefer to strip him of
title and banish him to the north, to Zembluss,” Carolina answered.
“His crimes were all on our soil—the murder he admits to in this
letter, and his plotting. So, technically, legally, he is my
responsibility.”

Shulamit nodded. “That makes sense.”

“
Oh, dear Shulamit…” Carolina
sighed, and rubbed her temples. “These crowns, these crowns, they
are shackles for us. To be a queen is to be surrounded by people
always, but so lonely. You will stay my friend, yes? Because who
else can understand?”

Shulamit nodded, but she didn’t feel lonely.
She didn’t want to say it out loud because it felt like bragging,
but to love Aviva was to love her people. It seemed just and right
and good and
blessed
that a queen should love a woman so
representative of all that she cherished about the country she
led—hard work, generosity, and the richness of Perachi agriculture.
Aviva fed Shulamit just as the land fed her people.

What she said out loud was “You should come and
visit us some time.”

“
When I am no longer in mourning,”
said Carolina. She adjusted the crown on her head, replacing it
from where she’d disturbed it in her dramatics. “Why do you not
wear a crown?”

“
It’s on my bedside table,” said
Shulamit. “It’s too heavy for me and also too big.”

“
But surely you can have your own
made!” Carolina gestured to Shulamit’s earrings and the tiny jewels
she wore in her hair. “You are so fond of ornaments and
fashion.”

Shulamit licked her lips. “In my country, that
would mean melting down my father’s crown, and I’m… I’m having
trouble. It’s like it’s still
him
, somehow. I know it’s
silly, but I like having the crown there because it’s like he’s
in
it, somehow.”

“
I understand,” said Carolina.
“Maybe, then, could you have your crown made and then with what’s
left, his portrait in gold? Because there will be some left over if
his crown is bigger and heavier. You could wear a circlet like I
do.”

Shulamit nodded slowly. “That might actually
work! Wow.” She was surprised at the direction the conversation had
taken, but pleased.

Carolina sighed and gazed out the window at the
white sky. “I will take my leave of you for now… it is time for me
to do what I must, before I lose courage. If I do it quickly, maybe
it will not hurt as much.”

“
Thank you for not hating me,” said
Shulamit.

“
I promise I will visit when things
are better.”

“
Bring your children too! Isaac
will tell them all his adventure stories.”

“
You are lucky to have him,” said
Carolina. “He did not come?”

“
He’s downstairs with the rest of
my guards looking after the carriages,” said Shulamit.

Isaac was not downstairs looking after
anything. Right now, Shulamit could see him perched on the wall
behind a candleholder, holding still to blend in with the
decoration.

“
Be careful of him too, I
suppose.”

Shulamit nodded. She was used to hearing that,
and it was only natural, coming from Carolina after the kind of
shock she’d had. But she was pretty sure of her loved ones at this
point.

“
Good-bye, Caro.”

“
Good-bye, Shula.”

They parted with an awkward hug.

***

Isaac watched his wife and the three other
guards who’d followed Shulamit into the palace escort her out
again. His presence here was vital; was Carolina telling the truth
about her shock? Was this all just an elaborate scheme all along?
Or, more likely, was she innocent but weak, and wont to forgive
João his sins out of her adulterous love?

When the room had emptied of all visible
Perachis, Carolina called over a servant. “Please take the princess
to her governess to practice her alphabet. Then have the Visconde
summoned.”

“
Yes, Your Majesty.”

The little girl was ushered out, leaving her
coliseum of blocks half-built in the corner.

The door closed with a click, and Carolina—or
so she thought—was alone.

She seemed in a trance, moving slowly at first.
Then Isaac saw her breathing grow heavier and heavier. Finally, in
a swift and sudden movement she seized a vase from an end table and
hurled it against the wall.

As it crashed and shattered, she convulsed with
a single sob.

She was facing away from the door when it
opened again. João walked in, alone, and began to approach her.
“Caro…”

Carolina spoke without turning around. “Did you
think you were king?”

“
What?”

She whirled around, clutching the letter
firmly, and he tensed. “Was it a lie? Was everything lies?”
Crouched against the candleholder on the wall, Isaac shivered as he
beheld her transformed face. The statue was gone; in its place was
a face of flame, trembling in rage and pain.

“
When did I ever lie to you?” João
spoke quietly, moving toward Carolina with tenderness. “If I did
anything, I only kept from you—”

When he tried to embrace her, she threw off
both his arms. “When you held me, did you mean it? Or was I just
the throne to you? You have seen the woman inside the queen. I gave
you what I had no right to give. Was it love that pulled me to that
place, or lies? We were children together, yes. But did that
beautiful young man from my girlhood ever return from the war in
Zembluss, or did he send back his hardened, deceitful double? Was
it
ever
about me, or was I just another part of your
plan?”

João looked deeply into her eyes. “I have loved
you since we were children and that love has never faltered. I
swear it now and I would swear it if I were dying. Those years in
Zembluss, the thought of you kept my head on straight when I saw
nothing but fire and blood. Even now, in your anger, you are
beautiful and noble.”

Carolina was still, the storm clouds on her
face melting into sadness. The silence in the room was so
oppressive Isaac was afraid even a lizard’s movement would be
heard. Finally, she spoke, looking away. “I wish you had
lied.”

“
Why?”

“
I wish you had lied and said you
never loved me. Or I wish it was true. Either way. Could you not
have been less cruel and said this to me?”

“
Why would you want me to say I
never loved you when I live for you, my beautiful Caro, queen of
everywhere but nowhere so much as my heart?” He reached for her
hand, but she withdrew.

“
Because you must leave Imbrio.”
Her voice was quiet but firm. “If you hadn’t loved me… if these
past weeks had been a lie… it would be easier to banish you. But
now your exile is my exile. You cruel, cruel, impossible
highwayman.”

“
Why banish me, my darling?” He was
smiling at her. “If you hold that letter, then surely you can see
that Imbrio’s glory is impeded by Perach’s success. The flourishing
of our people—”

“
You killed for this, and what’s
worse, you could have started a war,” Carolina explained wearily.
“Plus, Queen Shulamit is my
friend
. I have so few
friends.”

“
That ineffective little clothes
hanger?” said João dismissively. “It’s the wizard who runs Perach.
What can she—”