The Olive Conspiracy (3 page)

She eyed him warily.

He frilled the red dewlap on his throat
flirtatiously. “I’m not even a real lizard. Come on.”

“
It’s not like I can control it!”
She sighed in exasperation. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for
this. One minute!” she called out to the locked door.

Yael’s hand was open and waiting for him, even
if her face said otherwise.

Isaac could feel her goose bumps as he crawled
up her arm. She shivered involuntarily. “I wore this specific tunic
so there would be plenty of places for you to hide in the folds.”
It had a lot more decoration than he was used to seeing on a cook.
“And, obviously, it’s green too.”

“
That was smart.” He curled up
inside one of the folds, safely out of view.

Yael took a deep breath. Then she went to the
door and opened it.

“
Morning, madam!”

It was the dairy maid. “Oh, morning.” From his
unusual perch, Isaac felt Yael’s chest deflate and
relax.

Yael helped the dairy maid bring that day’s
supply of milk and cheese into the restaurant. “Macadamias today,
madam?” asked the girl.

“
Sour orange and macadamia roglit
with every meal,” said Yael, and Isaac grinned. Roglit was the same
thing as rugelach, and he was excited at the prospect. “Or guava
and cheese, now that you’ve brought the cheese.”

“
You don’t have any ready yet, do
you?” The dairy girl blinked and smiled hopefully.

“
I don’t even have dough rolled out
yet, child!”

When the girl left, Isaac stayed in her
clothing while Yael worked. He could easily monitor her mental
state from being so close to her beating heart, and once he
finished the story of his scar he thought of other topics to keep
her mind off their mission. “I’m interested to know how you met
your husband.”

“
Oh!” she exclaimed in happy
surprise. “Well, years and years ago, down south in the Sugar
Coast. There was a big cooking contest, with chefs from all over
the Coast and other countries. I’d say about half the chefs were
local and half from, you know, Perach, Imbrio, City of Red Clay,
City of Lakes, wherever.”

“
All the way from Imbrio down
there,” mused Isaac. “But maybe they were already living there for
other reasons.” He was mostly just filling time, still distracting
her.

“
Yes, there’re some people who go
down to the Sugar Coast and stay there… people who came looking for
the beach lifestyle.” Yael was moving swiftly in many directions at
once, and Isaac snuggled farther into the folds of her tunic. “My
husband and I had never met before when we entered the contest, but
we noticed each other as one of the other Perachis. Then, just
after one of the first events, a couple of local guys went through
some of the foreign booths and wrecked or stole half the
ingredients.”

“
Oh no!” Isaac was used to his
human conversational partners needing audible reassurances that he
was still there or still listening when they spoke to him in his
lizard form.

“
I know.
They didn’t like how well some of us did in the first round and
wanted only Sugar Coast competitors,” said Yael. “It could have
meant the end of the contest for both of us, but instead of
competing we decided to combine our resources. By chance, between
ourselves, everything we still had left intact was nearly a perfect
pantry.”

“
That was very lucky!”

“
I suppose it shows that the
nationalistic jerks went into it without a plan,” said Yael, “or
they’d have all destroyed the same things. There was a catch,
though.”

“
Oh?”

“
In order to stay in the contest
and not break the rules, we had to pretend to be a couple already.
Group entry was only open to families.”

Isaac chuckled. This was exactly his favorite
kind of story. He also wondered if Yael had already been presenting
as female at that point, but as someone who guarded his own
personal information as if his life depended on it, he would never
have actually asked.

“
So we pretended,” Yael concluded,
“and I guess we forgot to stop pretending. It was… it was magical.
It was God. God’s gifts are great.” Isaac felt a change in her
physiology and would have bet his promised rugelach that tears had
started to form in her eyes. A heavy exhalation reinforced this
impression.

“
May his memory—”

“
Thanks,” she interrupted him in a
flat voice. “Sorry.”

“
You don’t have to apologize for
your feelings.”

“
I don’t want to be like this when
Ezra shows up.”

“
Even if you were, I’m sure he’d
think it was just in reaction to him.”

“
Bloodsucking little
gnat.”

“
Too bad he’s not,” said Isaac. “If
he were a gnat, I could eat him!”

There was another knock at the door, and Yael’s
breathing became a loud little wind. “I can do this.”

“
Yes, of course you
can.”

He could hear her fingers fumbling on the door
instead of opening it efficiently.

“
Oh, good morning.”

It was a man with a basket of eggs. “You don’t
look happy to see me! I promise they’re today’s.”

“
I’m in mourning, remember?” Yael
said gently.

“
I am so thoughtless. Here. Take an
extra egg this morning, no charge.”

“
Thank you, dear.”

“
He was a good man. Always a good
customer.”

When Yael and Isaac were alone again, she
started rolling out dough that she’d prepared the day before. “It’s
pretty busy around here!” he commented.

“
Yes… and it’s only going to get
busier. My help will be here soon, with vegetables and chickens
from the market. I expected Ezra a lot earlier.”

“
Did he respond to your
message?”

“
Yes, last night,” said Yael. “He
said he’d be here just after sunup, and that I didn’t have to have
the money with me today—today was just to talk. He said, ‘I’m a
reasonable man.’” There was acid in her voice.

“
It’s far beyond sunup.”

“
I know.”

Once Yael’s two assistants arrived, their arms
full of baskets of raw ingredients, the jig was up. She’d already
told him she didn’t want them involved in something so personal and
awkward, and if Ezra showed up at this point, she wouldn’t have
spoken with him with them around.

“
I’ll be right back,” she said to
the staff and slipped into the sunlight.

Isaac hopped off her fingertip and onto the
outside of the building so that he could crawl down the wall
instead of down her body. He transformed and stretched his arms,
his human arms.

“
Thank you anyway,” said Yael, her
face puzzled. “I don’t know what happened. He seemed so…
organized.”

“
We’ll be in touch. Please let us
know if you hear from him again.”

“
Thank you.” She handed him
something. “Here.”

Isaac grinned when he realized the pouch
contained his favorite pastry, fresh from her morning’s work. “I’m
looking forward to this!”

He walked back to the palace, the cloak folded
over his arm now that the sun was bright and burning.

Isaac did not expect the flurry of activity he
faced when he returned home. Horses and carriages were lined up in
the front courtyard, just within the walls, and there were servants
running around in all directions with three times as much urgency
as usual. He furrowed his brow and frowned, considering which was
the likeliest place to find Rivka or Shulamit in case of
emergency.

A servant noticed him and called out to her
coworker before addressing him directly. “Isaac is back. The queen
is in her chambers—she’ll be glad to see you. There isn’t much
time.”

Isaac did
not
like the sound of that.
But the carriages reassured him that nobody was dying.

Growling because he didn’t like feeling left
out of knowledge, he hustled toward Shulamit’s private
room.

A servant nearly smashed right into him as she
hurried out of the queen’s room at top speed. Isaac peered through
the open door she’d left behind.

“
This one and that one, and the
jewelry that matches, but not the bracelet. It hurts my arm,”
Shulamit was rummaging through her wardrobe. Aviva hovered nearby,
holding the baby and watching over Shulamit with a concerned
expression.

“
That bracelet was adjusted,
Majesty,” said the servant.

“
Was it? Never mind, I can’t think
about this now.” Then she noticed Isaac through the open door. “Oh
good, you’re here.” She was breathless and a little frantic, and
continued rummaging through her wardrobe as she spoke to him. “I
was almost going to go send someone for you.”

“
What’s going on, little
one?”

“
The King of Imbrio is dead. He
died three days ago.” Shulamit exhaled deeply and bit her lower
lip. “We’re all going up to Imbrio for the state
funeral.”

3. Imbrio in Mourning

The people of Imbrio gathered in the streets of
their capital city, feeling the teeth of an autumn chill biting at
their arms even through the sleeves of their mourning clothes. It
seemed appropriate that the season had turned so suddenly this
year, coinciding with the loss of their king. Children huddled into
their parents’ arms, watching the streets for the first signs of
the procession.

King Fernando’s spirit had gone on to live with
the Gods, but what was left of his body had been purified in fire
and would be taken through the city to the great temple that housed
his forebears. Sad, chilled, but a little excited by the spectacle,
the Imbrians waited on both sides of the city streets, peering
toward the palace for the black horses.

“
There they are!”

“
Praise the king!”

“
All praises to King
Fernando.”

They couldn’t see inside the black carriages,
led by jet-black horses that frightened some of the children, but
they knew King Fernando’s ashes were inside, and they followed them
anyway.

The people flowed down the street in rivers of
dark fabric. A cold wind pushed them forward and swirled dead
leaves over their heads as they walked.

The Temple of Dead Rulers rose over the streets
in stark marble lines, a king itself among buildings. People
crowded around its steps on all sides, spilling out into the street
as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Their speech dwindled to silence as the
carriages began to open.

First, there was the Prince-Consort, husband to
their Crown Princess. It gave a sobering reminder of the nation’s
tragedy to see his usually jolly face without its smile. He stepped
into the street, waved at the crowd, and then bent back into the
carriage to fetch the little princess who was his daughter. His
son, next in line but still a very young boy, stepped out of the
carriage on his own accord.

The mothers in the crowd put their hands to
their hearts and clucked over the poor children, surrounded by
luxury but deprived of their grandfather.

Next emerged Queen Ines, wreathed in a mass of
black veils that were somehow both all-consuming yet delicate
enough that her face was still visible. She was shaking, and when
she saw the temple for the first time as one of its widows, she
collapsed into sobbing and had to be held up by her
son-in-law.

The little prince ran to her and held her other
hand. At this, all the mothers and grandmothers in the crowd cried
with her.

The carriage then yielded up the country’s next
monarch. An ankle that was both shapely and feminine yet sturdy and
strong appeared in the doorway, and after it came the rest of the
woman. She was struggling with her enormous hoop skirt, since her
hands were otherwise occupied.

Crown Princess Carolina stepped into the cold
autumn sunlight, holding her father’s urn in both hands.

She was a tall woman, towering above her
countrywomen from at least five foot eight or nine, large and
curvy, with the jet-black hair and pale skin of her people. With
large brown eyes she surveyed the crowd, her every movement slow
and deliberate.

The people could tell that Carolina knew what
she was holding. It was also obvious that she knew that she was
about to trade it in for a scepter.

The royal family of Imbrio lined up on the
steps of the temple and waited.

With a blast of trumpets, the ceremony began.
It started with the national anthem and continued with several
speeches from various important figures of government. Most of the
crowd couldn’t hear them, so at this point there was a lot of
excited gawking at the foreigners who had arrived to pay their
respects.

Both sides of the civil war in Zembluss were
there. There would no doubt be interesting analyses tomorrow in the
taverns of the way each faction looked—did the royalists look like
they were regaining strength, based on what they wore to today’s
funeral and the size of their guard complement? Why had the
insurgent faction not worn appropriately dark clothing?