The Olive Conspiracy (7 page)

“
But the two men who spoke, they
were Imbrian?”

Yael nodded. “All three men were light-skinned
like you, except with black hair, and the two who were talking
spoke in Imbrian. They were a pretty profitable table. Went through
a lot of wine.”

Drinks like a fish
, Rivka read off the
paper. “Was one of the men missing a tooth?”

“
I didn’t notice,” said Yael, “but
maybe one of the waitresses did.”

“
You probably want me to wait to
talk to them until there’s a lull.”

Yael’s face softened. “I like that you’re
willing to do that.” She cut a piece of twine and stitched up the
duck cavity. “Should I be ashamed that I only really care about
this so much as it clears my name? I mean…
Ezra
.”

“
Maybe it helps to think that Home
City is a place where even people like him are not allowed to be
killed in the street.” Rivka’s eyebrows went up slightly as she
talked. She meant what she said, very solemnly.

Of course, she had her own motives for pursuing
the strangers, motives that were secret palace business at this
point, but Rivka took her position seriously and meant what she
said. Perach, especially with Shulamit at its helm, was a fair
land.

***

Rivka was gone for several hours. When she
returned to the palace, she headed straight for the queen. The
afternoon had been productive, and she was a vessel eager to dock
and deliver.

Reminding herself that there might be a
sleeping baby inside, she altered her pounding step as she
approached. With a nod to the guard standing at the door, Rivka
entered the throne room.

The floor was completely covered in parchments
and other papers, spread out in what Rivka took for a haphazard
disarray that definitely didn’t resemble straight lines. She was
surprised to see fine sand beneath them in some places—where had
that come from?

In the center of the paper explosion sat Queen
Shulamit, kneeling, and crouched over in a position that made Rivka
subconsciously stand up straighter to protect her own back. She was
holding something that looked like a flat gray stone, staring at it
intently.

Isaac paced in the back of the room. His right
arm held Princess Naomi against his right shoulder. In his left
hand, he held a piece of parchment, and he looked like he was
studying it intently while he walked and bounced the fussy little
girl. He’d stripped down to something short-sleeved, and Rivka felt
an unexpected jolt of sensuality at the sight of his formidable
forearms.

Shulamit looked up when she saw Rivka. Lifting
the hand that held the rock, she greeted her. “I hope you found
your enemy because I found mine.”

Rivka drew her brows down. “Rocks, they’re
using to kill the olive trees?”

Shulamit shook her head, beckoning with her
other hand.

The captain squinted down at the rock when
she’d come close enough to see. In the center of the polished
stone, fixed with resin, sat a fat little insect that reminded
Rivka of a locust. It had a long, segmented stomach, and its
shining, red wings were flecked with hints of blue.
“Oh.”

“
Someone in the Division of
Agriculture was kind enough to fetch me one while we were up in
Imbrio,” Shulamit was busily working at the end of her filmy,
yellow scarf with her thumb and forefinger.

Rivka blinked at the bug. “You want I should
interrogate it? Ask maybe where the Imbrian conspirators
are?”

“
Nahh, we can leave that to His
Lizardhood over there.” Smirking, Shulamit nodded to
Isaac.

Still bouncing the baby, he walked over and
joined them. Rivka hadn’t noticed it before because he’d been
singing so quietly, but there was a rumbly lullaby being murmured
into Naomi’s ear.

“
All princesses in need of guard
should have such a strapping dragon.” Rivka knew that, even masked,
he could see her eyes of conquest.

He flashed her an impish half smile that was
all the more magnetic for its subtlety. “Captain Riv did battle
today with a tavern?”

“
What? Oh.” Rivka looked down at
her stained tunic. “I guess that means you can see it.”

“
I can
smell
it,” said
Isaac.

“
I’m glad for it,” Rivka countered.
“The man who spilled it on me by accident was so desperate not to
be in trouble with Captain Riv that he spilled a lot of other
things.”

“
Was that at the Frangipani Table?”
asked the queen.

Rivka shook her head. “No, after, when I went
down to the river docks. There were no witnesses to the murder, but
our clumsy beer-drinking friend was sleeping it off in a dark
corner one night and overheard a key interchange. They must not
have noticed him or thought he was just a knocked-out
schnorrer
.”

“
What’d he hear?”

“
He said there were two Imbrians
and a Perachi woman meeting in the shadows, and that the woman
seemed to be giving them directions on a map. He thought they were
looking for bawdy houses.”

Shulamit chuckled, then collapsed back into a
frown. “Do you think that’s our Lovely Valley traitor, then? I
mean, it would make sense, if she was sharing a map of the farms
with the Imbrians.”

Rivka nodded. “That works with what I found out
from Yael and the waitresses. I don’t think everyone on Ezra’s list
was actually at the table that night. There was only one woman, for
example, and I think that’s the one he labeled
‘unknown.’”

“
And this André probably wasn’t
there either.” Shulamit studied the original list.

“
The waitresses said they were
speaking mostly in Imbrian,” said Rivka. “They probably thought
they wouldn’t be understood, but Ezra must have spoken enough
Imbrian to figure out what they were up to.”

Shulamit rolled her eyes. “That’s their own
fault. What a silly assumption!”

“
Does Aviva speak
Imbrian?”

Shulamit sputtered a little. “That’s not the
point. They were taking a pretty big chance that
nobody
would speak it.”

“
Maybe they still kept their voices
down,” Isaac pointed out, “but Ezra, being a career eavesdropper,
had his tricks.”

“
You don’t mean magic, do you?”
Shulamit narrowed her eyes and did not look pleased.

Isaac shook his head. “No, just ordinary
cunning. Oh,
shayne maydeleh
, you must be in such pain,
little one!” he added to the infant in his arms. “Here. Maybe this
helps.” He handed the paper in his left hand to Rivka and then
placed its index finger in Naomi’s mouth.

Rivka noticed as she took the paper from him
that his hand was startlingly cold, colder than a corpse. It was
like ice. It was unexpected and startled her, but it seemed to
soothe the poor teething baby. “That’s clever,” she blurted,
staring.

With calculatingly sultry eyes he accepted her
compliment and began to sing again.

“
Oh, now, that’s just not fair,”
she murmured in their native language.

That just made him sing slightly louder, his
lips moving sensually and deliberately in her direction.

Rolling her eyes, mostly at herself, she looked
back at the queen, and at the floor beneath them all. “Wait! I just
figured out why all these papers are everywhere.”

Shulamit grinned. “Yes, Isaac made me a map! He
cast a spell on the sand outside and drew it in here, in the shape
of all Perach. That way I could place the papers down on the map in
the right place.”

Rivka shook her head slowly, smiling at the
effectiveness of the idea. “Nice.”

“
Each one is a report of an
infestation,” the queen continued. “They’re not all the same as the
olive blight, which is apparently carried by these little
brats”—she gestured to the stone—“but I wanted to have all the
information in front of me so I could think.”

“
And so what do you
think?”

Shulamit pointed to one of the farms and looked
up at her captain. “I want to go here tomorrow and see, on the
ground, what this really looks like. Who knows—maybe Zayde Lizard
really can eat all the bugs himself.”

“
I’m a growing boy,” said the
forty-eight-year-old, stocky wizard.

Aviva appeared in the doorway, and as usual,
Shulamit lit up on cue. “Look, I’m more queen than I’ve ever been,”
she called out, gesturing to the map. “I’m literally sitting inside
my country.”

“
You’re a pretty little spider in a
web of parchment,” said Aviva, looking around the room.

Shulamit’s face hardened into determined lines,
and her head rose resolutely. “Then I hope my webbing is strong,
’cause I’ve got a
lot
of bugs to catch.”

7. The Kiss of Your Land

When Aviva walked into the throne room and saw
Shulamit sitting on the floor, immersing herself in the study of
how she might better her country, she fell in love all over again.
The feelings swelling in her chest made her think of what it was
like to hold a jug beneath a merry stream as it splashed over the
rocks of a tiny waterfall, watching it fill up and overflow and the
cool sweetness washing over her hands. There was water everywhere,
and Aviva bathed in it, submerged up to her broadly smiling
face.

It was late now, some time after dinner, and
the baby was asleep with Rivka’s mother, Mitzi. Shulamit sat in the
center of her bed in her sleeping robes, braiding and unbraiding
the fringes of one of the decorative blankets. Her fingers, like
her mind, refused to lay still. “Rivka’s beggar witness said the
traitor from Lovely Valley was shedding chicken down.”

“
Looks like she has more than one
reason to make you sick.”

“
I know, right? I’d be laughing if
I wasn’t so worried.” She looked down at the blanket. “Rivka’s
sworn to hunt her down, as well as all the Imbrians involved—so I’m
glad we have at least that lead.”

“
What about the
invasion?”

“
The latest report showed the
infestation reaching down as far as a big family farm owned by a
man named Gil, but no farther—not yet,” said Shulamit. “I told the
guards to ride on ahead at sunrise and wait for me
there.”

“
And you’ll catch up to them with
Rivka on Isaac’s back?” Aviva was used to such
practices.

Shulamit nodded. “Bring Naomi over to the main
kitchen when she wants to nurse. One of the scullery maids is
nursing right now. She knows you might need her.”

“
Naomi and I will see if we can’t
have ourselves some adventures with sweet potatoes while you’re off
in battle.”

Shulamit looked up sharply. “Battle?
Right…”

Aviva lowered her eyelids seductively. “I
should anoint the general before her campaign.”

“
Anoint?” Shulamit’s eyelashes
fluttered in confusion.

Walking over to a corner of the room, Aviva
retrieved a small vessel she’d smuggled in when they retired for
the night. “You carry all the hopes of the country with you
tomorrow,” she said as she returned to the bed. “You should also
feel the hope of the olives themselves.”

She revealed what was in her hand.

“
Is that olive oil?” asked the
queen.

Aviva nodded.

Shulamit’s face twisted. “But what if it—what
if there’s—should we be wasting it like that?”

“
I used less in dinner.”

The corner of Shulamit’s mouth twitched upward
in smirking admiration. “You were planning this.”

“
Of course I was planning this. I
might
talk
rubbish, but there’s more in here than just
carrot scrapings.” Aviva grinned and knocked on her head with her
finger.

“
C’mere.”

Aviva climbed onto the bed carefully, holding
the vessel at a safe angle. She took up a position behind Shulamit,
kneeling so that the queen’s small backside was nestled in between
Aviva’s comfortably padded thighs.

Shulamit sat perfectly still as Aviva pushed
her robe off her shoulders and down to her waist. With gentle
fingers, Aviva flicked the straps of Shulamit’s nightie one at a
time downward, letting the silky material collapse in weightless
folds around her tiny waist.

Aviva poured a rarified amount of olive oil
from the vessel into one of her hands and began to work its slick
softness into the queen’s skin.

“
This is what you fight for,” Aviva
murmured as she massaged. “This is precious. It needs you; it loves
you. This is the kiss of your land.”

Shulamit let out a voiced breath, an indistinct
rose petal.

“
You should remember this touch
when you’re out there, in the fields,” Aviva continued. “You fight
for our food. You fight for our fuel. You fight for the lights we
see by in the dark, and for our country’s prosperity.”

Her lips were close to Shulamit’s ear now, and
she purposely exhaled into it. Shulamit’s warm body let out a
quaking shudder, and Aviva nuzzled her face against the side of her
head.