“That is the silliest excuse ever, from the queen with the biggest wardrobe since—”

  Shulamit threw her head back and groaned. “Okay.”

  A few minutes later, Shulamit clad in something sleeveless, roomy, and usually forgotten, the two women entered the barracks practice area. With no guards there, and therefore no men, Shulamit seemed to be relaxing in spite of herself—just as Rivka had planned. Rivka handed her the weights she thought appropriate for Shulamit’s lack of habitual practice and showed her what to do with them.

  On the tenth rep, Shulamit finally spoke. “We have to save our farmers.”

  Rivka nodded without breaking the rhythm of her bicep curls.

  “But,” Shulamit continued, “what would Perach be if protecting her meant selling out the Imbrian working class?”

  “She’d be your responsibility.”

  “Then can it really be my responsibility to doom Imbrio to another generation of inequality and torture? We’d be prospering at her expense, just as they would have done to us. And it would be the poorest who’d suffer, not those who deserve it. If I discredit João…”

  Rivka transferred her weight to the other hand. “He’s killed one of our citizens, even if he was a chazzer, and he’s trying to ruin our country. What happens if you do nothing and let him keep running Imbrio behind the scenes?”

  “Then we fall into economic ruin,” Shulamit muttered, and panted with exertion. “I mean, even if we figure out a way to stop the bugs, he’ll try something else. He’s dangerous.” She put the weight down. “Look, Rivka, I want to save us. I have to save us. But it would be buying our happiness at the direct cost of thousands of others.”

  “What would your father want?” Rivka pushed her guilt away into the curls. It was a low blow, and she knew it. She just hadn’t realized it ’til the words were out.

  “He wouldn’t have trusted me with this,” Shulamit replied. “Which doesn’t exactly help.”

  “If it does help, Isaac trusts you. And he’s the one who’s seen you grow up these past five, six years. Sometimes your philosophy differs from your father’s, and that’s okay.”

  “He wouldn’t have understood. He would have wanted me to put Perach first, without thinking.”

  “Then don’t put it first without thinking,” said Rivka. “Think, first. That’s your favorite hobby, right? Overthinking? After reading and picking out new pink and purple dresses.”

  Shulamit let out a sad little giggle. “I love you,” she mumbled, looking away.

  “Let’s do a little spiel. Pretend you do nothing. Then what? Just, pretend that’s your final decision.”

  Shulamit was still for a moment, her eyes focused on an empty corner of the room at which she was obviously not actually looking. “No. That’s unacceptable.”

  “So you have to find a way to expose him to Carolina,” Rivka insisted. “Something that you can live with.”

  “I just wish he wasn’t…” Shulamit looked up at the ceiling and sighed deeply.

  “Go back to the reps; it’ll help you think.”

  “Things are so screwed up over there, is the thing,” said Shulamit as she obeyed. “Carolina only listens to the highborn, and no highborn Imbrian is sticking up for the workers. João was a fluke, a special case. Without him—”

  Rivka looked directly into her eyes and spoke with solemnity. “She would still have you.”

  Shulamit slowly nodded. “You’re right. I’m the only other person who could talk to her. I guess this means I have to go back.”

  “We will of course go with you.”

  “My God,” Shulamit blurted suddenly. “Naomi caught my cold. She can’t go up there this late in the year. The Imbrians have a real winter—”

  “She’ll be safe here with Aviva and the wet nurses.”

  Shulamit’s face quivered with emotion. “I’ve never been away from either of them for that long. But you’re right. I’m the only one left who can reason with Carolina about the working class. I’m the only other person she’ll listen to. I mean, not that she really listened to me before, but maybe now it’ll be different since she’s seen the farms up close.”

  “It’s not going to be a fun conversation.”

  “If it works, I can save both our countries at once.” Shulamit paused. “If she even listens to me after—after.”

  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—”

  Carolina shook her head. “You don’t know her as I do. She’s smart, and she’s devoted to her people. If she trifles with clothing, what is it to you? You have been fooled by her awkward manners and her size. It doesn’t take a body like a palace to house a queen. You’re just used to mine.” She was beginning to speak louder and loftier, and these last words were said bitterly.

  “But our farms—”

  “Can flourish without sabotaging our competition. Really, João!” Carolina sniffed and shook her head. “You speak of fairness, but why do you not consider the Perachis just as human as our own farmers? They may not be Imbrian, but isn’t that the same as those class differences you’re so fond of erasing?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I understand too much, and it makes me sad. I understand that I lost my father, and you were there with your guitar, and… and that grief is a dangerous drug.”

  “You wished for it your whole life just as I did. Do not lie.”

  “Of course I did, but do you think I ever wanted to hurt my father, or my husband?” She looked down at the ground, then looked up again resolutely. “Good-bye, João.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Don’t worry, it already hurts.” Her voice sounded hollow and dead. She sounded a gong, and Imbrian guards rushed in. “Put the Visconde under arrest and then bring me my legal counsel. I have orders and a proclamation to write.”