The Olive Conspiracy (2 page)

“
Nah, I’ll… I’ll deal.” Yael didn’t
look thrilled, but her features were softening. “Your Majesty, I’m
sorry, but I didn’t know he was there when I told you all of that.
It’s all
very
personal, as you can imagine. Is anyone else
hiding in here, if a commoner has a right to ask?”

Shulamit shook her head. “Not unless Captain
Riv’s hair counts as a whole second guard.”

“
I should braid it like yours for a
day, see if your subjects can tell us apart,” quipped the captain,
who was several shades lighter and nine inches taller.

Shulamit was pleased to see that Rivka’s quip
loosened Yael’s tense shoulders and made her smirk. “But, really,”
she continued, “I’m sorry about the breach of privacy. Isaac’s the
only one of him around here, we swear, and we also swear that you
can trust him. I trust him with my life, in fact. And I’m flattered
and gratified that you trust
me
. What made you trust me with
something like that, by the way?”

Yael looked her over with large, frank brown
eyes. “
Riv
trusts you. And I guess with someone like you
trusting Isaac, he must be the real deal.” This last sentence was
directed at Rivka, a woman who was content to let most of the
kingdom mistake her for male to avoid prejudice against women
soldiers. Yael turned her attention back toward the queen. “And of
course, if it’s okay for me to mention, you’re a little
unconventional yourself, right? I mean, you and the
cook—”

“
I wish
more
people would
mention it,” Shulamit groused. “We should be recognized like any
other family, without me having to make some kind of big
announcement in my Rosh Hashanah speech or something.”

“
Oh, well, that’s good, then!” Yael
put her hands on her hips. “But, honestly, most of it? Most of it
is just that I’m too pissed off and insulted to give a rat’s ass.
I’m too old, and I’ve worked too hard to be talked to that way. He
needs to learn a lesson, and I almost taught it to him with one of
my wooden spoons!”

“
I’d have liked to see that,”
rumbled Isaac.

“
Here’s the plan,” explained the
queen. “You’ll send for Ezra, and make him think you’re ready to
play his game. When he comes to see you, Isaac will be hiding
somewhere in your clothes. That way, a representative of the Royal
Guard will be witness to his crimes.” Isaac wasn’t technically a
member of the Guard himself, but as its captain’s husband, and the
orphaned queen’s surrogate father, he was definitely attached to it
somehow even if nobody was sure what his rank really
was.

“
He has to be in my
shirt?”

“
Your hair isn’t big and wild like
Captain Riv’s, soooo…”

Rivka tossed her head, sending the thick,
golden mess everywhere.

“
I understand your discomfort, but
I promise he’s a gentleman,” Shulamit added.

Yael smirked a little. “It’s not that. I’ve got
forty years of practice with men in my shirt. I’m just not wild
about lizards.”

Shulamit’s eyes flashed over to Isaac, but he
was smirking. She reached into a small silk purse that rested
beside her in the seat. It matched her violet clothes. “Here, take
this,” she said, placing a single coin into Yael’s hand. “Send a
messenger to his house and tell him to come and see you tomorrow
morning before the restaurant opens.”

Yael nodded. “Yes, Majesty.”

“
Isaac will be there at
sunrise.”

“
If he shows up too early, I might
put him to work shelling nuts,” Yael quipped. “I mean, he does
magic, right?”

“
You can pay me in rugelach,” Isaac
murmured.

“
Thank you for this, Majesty,” said
Yael, serious again. She took Shulamit’s hand in both of hers and
venerated it a little. “He can’t do much to me, but that’s only
because we already thought of this.” She shook her head. “Someone
else in my position—some other woman might have secrets… beast.
He’s a beast.”

“
It’s the only way I know how to
rule,” Shulamit replied. “Do my best to take care of everybody.
Otherwise, why would I deserve this pretty new dress?”

“
Oh, is it new? I love it,” said
Yael. “Love the lilac.” Half of Shulamit’s wardrobe was either pink
or lilac, but this outfit was new off Aviva’s father’s sewing
bench, and particularly beautiful. “Will Isaac turn human again and
arrest him once he has the proof you’re looking for?”

Shulamit nodded. “That’s the idea. Thank you
for bringing this to the crown’s attention, Yael! We’re lucky
you’re in a position to help us stop him.”

Yael smiled and bowed slightly. On her way out
of the sukkah, she nearly collided with Rivka’s mother Mitzi, whose
arms were full of the infant princess.

“
Baby!” Shulamit lifted both arms
and accepted her little girl into her lap. She bounced her up and
down, then moved the lulav into one of her tiny hands. “Can you
shake it? Shake shake?” She left the etrog in her lap so things
wouldn’t get too fiddly.

“
Was that a man?” Mitzi asked her
daughter in a stage whisper, peering outside the sukkah.

“
No,” said Rivka in passionless
deadpan.

Heat sprang into Shulamit’s cheeks, but one
couldn’t really expect anything different from Mitzi. She forgot
her embarrassment as she pressed her lips to the side of her
daughter’s forehead. “Om nom nom,” she mumbled. “Baby for
dessert.”

“
I think I’ll go to the market and
look at fans,” said Mitzi idly. “The new year’s designs should be
in by now.”

“
Could you please stop by Aviva’s
kitchen on the way out and ask her to bring me a snack?” Shulamit
fiddled with her clothing to give Princess Naomi access to her
breast.

“
What do you want?” Mitzi
asked.

“
Oh, she’ll surprise me with
something good.” Shulamit smiled. “She’s in charge of the royal
stomach for a reason.” Aviva was in charge of the royal heart too,
for a better reason.

“
See everybody later!” Mitzi was
gone, in a whirl of extremely fashionable clothing.

“
I think you care about snacks just
as much as I care about buying myself a ball gown,” quipped Rivka.
“You just want to see Aviva.”

“
It’s not like you’re wrong, but
that’s funny coming from the person whose husband literally rides
around on her shoulder all day,” Shulamit retorted, a sassy gleam
in her eyes.

Isaac lifted an eyebrow. “It’s only fair,
considering how often it’s the other way around when I’m a
dragon.”

“
She’s latched,” Shulamit
announced, looking up from her daughter. “Who’s next out
there?”

Rivka left the sukkah to go check, and Isaac
resumed his lizard form. He was sitting on top of the queen’s head
doing a very bad impression of a fascinator when the captain
returned, leading two men.

“
Season’s greetings, Majesty,” said
one of the men. The other one simply bowed.

Shulamit’s arms were around the baby, so she
couldn’t offer the lulav. But she nodded back at them in response
and gave them a serene half smile. “How did the trials work out?
Was the new variety of melon resistant to the blight?”

“
Moderate success, Majesty,” said
the one who had already spoken. “The fruit are smaller, and the
yield isn’t quite where we want it. But the blight only sort of…
annoys it, rather than choking it off.”

Shulamit nodded slowly. “That’s good. That’s
very good.”

“
We have already begun to cross
them, hoping to obtain a variety with both traits,” said the
visitor.

“
I appreciate the update. I’m so
grateful for all of you. Perach is grateful,” she corrected
herself. “Perach’s wealth is in its farms, so you’re almost like my
soldiers out there, protecting them.”

“
We try our best, Majesty,” said
the man, “but there is always one more blight. We saw a new worm on
the litchis recently, and something new is attacking the olive
trees up north and down along the river.”

“
I trust you,” said Shulamit
solemnly. “I trust all of you.” And alongside the babe suckling at
her breast, she felt the presence of the country to which she was
also a symbolic mother.

But she didn’t have to mother alone, either the
princess or the nation. Soon, a beautiful bosomy vision appeared in
the doorway of the sukkah carrying a plate of fruit dusted with
salt, sugar, and cayenne, and Shulamit’s heart leapt up just as it
always did.

“
I like your hat,” said Aviva with
a giggle as she bent down to plant a sweet kiss on her queen’s
mouth.

“
All the fashionable queens are
wearing lizards instead of crowns nowadays,” Shulamit shot
back.

“
Nobody would mistake you for
anything but fashionable in that new plumage,” Aviva remarked,
smiling as she looked over the purple dress with its diaphanous,
lilac sleeves. “Here. Fashionable queens need mangoes.”

2. The Little Green Spy

Under the veil of an aging night, Isaac left
the palace walls and walked to the Frangipani Table in human form.
It wasn’t ideal, because if anyone saw him, his size gave him away
even though he’d tossed a black, hooded cloak over his head. Most
of the natives of Perach were shorter than six feet, and he stood
inches above. After a few moments of feeling exposed, even though
he saw no other people, he used magic to draw any nearby humidity
in the air closer to him so that his path would remain slightly
foggy.

He could have just walked the whole way as a
lizard and remained totally unseen, but this seemed easier. What
was the point of magic if you had to walk for hours to get
somewhere that was really only fifteen or twenty minutes’ walk in
human steps?

When Isaac got to the restaurant it was still
too early for Yael to be there. He shrank down into his lizard form
and crawled up the wall in front of the door to rest on the
mezuzah. It turned out to be made of marble, and the cool
smoothness felt good against his little lizard stomach after the
overdressed, humid walk.

Yael arrived as the sky edged toward silver.
While she fussed with a big metal keyring attached to her belt,
looking for the right key in the dark, she kissed the fingertips of
her other hand and reached out toward the mezuzah.

Isaac wasn’t a
total
jerk though. “Good
morning,” he said in a jaunty but half-volume voice.

Yael, startled, dropped her keys and spun
around, tense and angular. “Who’s there?”

“
It’s me. I’m on the
mezuzah.”

Yael picked up her keys and leaned in closer,
squinting. When saw him, she cried out in disgust. “I almost
touched you!”

“
That’s why I warned you, didn’t
I?” The lizard was smirking mischievously.

“
Ugh,” she said again, shaking her
head, but he could see a smile forming across her face.

“
What, I should wait here for my
secret mission as the tallest and whitest man in the city? Some
secret.”

Yael finally got the door open. “Let’s go
inside.”

Since there was plenty of time before they
could reasonably expect their prey, Isaac resumed his human form
once the door was safely shut. Yael began her prep work for the
day’s service, and just as she’d promised, she wasn’t shy about
sharing it with him. “Here. You have any magic that can get these
shells off?”

“
I’d better—it’s just about the
only way I can shell nuts!” He showed her the palm of his right
hand. Her eyes bulged when she saw the huge ugly, raised scar that
snaked from his hand down half the length of his forearm. “These
fingers don’t close.” He demonstrated by tensing his fingers and
thumb as if to try.

“
That’s some scar!” Yael nodded,
clearly impressed. “I got this from hot oil, and this one from a
knife that slipped.” She was pointing to various bits of bare skin
that had indeed seen action, if of a very different type than
Isaac’s.

As she bustled around the kitchen getting
things set up to prep, Isaac could see the tension in her limbs.
Her grip left dents in the sack of flour, and sometimes she walked
back and forth from the dry goods storage area to the prep table
without whatever she’d gone there to fetch. When he had to use
magic to stop a clay bowl from shattering after she knocked it off
the table, he decided he needed to distract her before her
agitation set the building on fire.

“
I got that scar over twenty years
ago.” He picked up nuts in his left hand and aimed the fingertips
of his right hand at them, popping the shells open one by one with
wizardry. “Far away from here, across the sea in the north lands. A
young prince was taken, and in his absence, a pretender claimed his
name and his throne. My wizarding order got involved,
and…”

He’d been telling the story for so long that it
was easy to drone on automatically while still keeping one ear open
for noises outside the restaurant.

After some time, there was a sound and a knock,
and Yael froze. Isaac transformed, scattering nut shells, and
crawled across the table toward her.