Certainly the most interesting foreign delegation was from their neighbors to the immediate south, Perach. Their darker skin made them easy to find among the places of honor. What a tiny woman their queen was, standing in the middle of nearly a dozen guards! Not only short but slender. And was that her child strapped to her chest? Did she not have a nurse?

  Some of the less cosmopolitan mothers in the crowd had to be reminded by their friends that Perach had different customs.

  There was a very beautiful woman with heavy hips and a large bosom standing next to Perach’s queen. Her presence confused some of the Imbrian celebrity-watchers. They knew she wasn’t the queen’s sister, but neither could she be a servant in those clothes.

  Anyone in the crowd who had the queen’s proclivities understood, and many were pleasantly surprised.

  What attracted even more attention than Perach’s queen and royal mistress, however, were the two guards closest to Queen Shulamit. One of them was a blond man with bulging arm muscles. He was taller than all the other guards and seemed to be in charge of them. The other one was an enormous dragon, dark green-black like the way the Imbrians painted their shutters. He curled himself around the Perachi royal family like a resting cat and watched the crowd with enormous gold eyes.

  There was a blast from the trumpets. The teary-eyed Imbrian nobles had stopped droning, and Princess Carolina stepped forward. In all this time, she had never taken her hands off her father’s urn.

  Absolute quiet fell over the mourners. Not even a foot stepping on a crunchy leaf split the air.

  The Crown Princess bowed to the crowd, a slight nod of the head. It was to be her last acknowledgment of them as princess. Then she turned around and entered the temple.

  When she emerged, the urn was gone from her hands, and on her brow a sparkling crowd of diamonds rested.

  The crowd rose up in an enormous thundering cheer.

  Queen Carolina nodded back at them somberly.

  4. Queen Carolina

  Visitors floated through the palace in puffs of finery and etiquette. These were the people whom fate had set apart from the teeming masses outside; they were the elite, the nobility, the wealthy merchants, and the foreign monarchs. It was time for them to pay their personal respects to the royal family in their time of mourning.

  Isaac waited with the Perachi delegation just outside the royal family’s private parlor while the Imbrian guards checked the basket of fruits and other edible gifts that Shulamit had brought. He was human again, or an approximation thereof—the past few nights he and Rivka had been on the night watch and sleeping by day in one of the carriages, so at the moment he was keeping himself awake with a combination of wakeful magic and seven cups of tea.

  Shulamit used the downtime to breastfeed. Isaac could tell she was doing it as much for herself as she was for Naomi; these past few days she’d been anxious and distracted, and now that she was here in the Imbrian palace, there was a practically visible tension radiating from her tiny body.

  Isaac wanted to help, but he knew she’d come to him for help when she was ready—if she needed him. He wondered how much of it had to do with her teenaged crush on Princess Carolina, now Queen, and how much was the funeral itself. Queen Shulamit was never close to King Fernando, but surely the funeral of another king, a king who had left behind a daughter to rule in his place, was triggering memories of her own sorrowful coronation.

  That couldn’t be pleasant.

  Isaac didn’t want Shulamit to feel stared at, so he looked away at random. His eyes fell idly on a nearby servant as she hurried past. The woman started like a hunted animal when she noticed him, and he heard water sloshing in the basin she carried. He smiled at her and hoped it was enough, then looked somewhere else.

  As he stood idle, his mind wandered back to Home City and the Frangipani Table. How troublesome that Ezra had not shown up that morning! It would have been such a graceful opportunity to catch him in the act. Now, with the palace’s only shapeshifter out of the country, Yael had no choice but to hold him off for another week or two. Or call the whole thing quits—it was within her right.

  Isaac growled slightly in his throat at the thought of prey lost due to the vagaries of fate.

  The Imbrian guards returned with Rivka and the fruit baskets. “All good, Your Majesty,” said a guard in broken Perachi.

  “Obrigada,” said Shulamit in Imbrian.

  Isaac noted surprise and approval on the faces of the guards and enjoyed the moment. His little queenling wasn’t a brainiac for nothing.

  The doors were pulled open for them, and in a cluster they filed into the salon with Rivka at the lead.

  ***

  There were about a dozen other mourners there already, some speaking with each other quietly in the corners, some orbiting the royal family. At the center of the room was Queen Carolina, her enormous skirts spread out over a small, curving sofa. Her little boy and girl were playing under the furniture, and her husband stood to one side holding a glass of port. He was speaking with the man who stood on her other side, a tall gentleman wearing a vest, whose hands were busily cracking nuts open with a metal implement. He had a full beard that went all the way around his face—unlike Isaac’s own graceful afterthought.

  “Here, I’ve finally gotten one of the damned things open,” Isaac heard the man with the beard say in Imbrian. He was surprised at how much he understood, given that the last time he’d been up this way he’d been under a curse and stuck in the body of a horse—with an intellect to match.

  The bearded man tried to hand the nut to Queen Carolina, but she waved it away. “I can’t; I’m not hungry.” Her voice was a flat murmur.

  “Oh, but Caro, you must eat!” her husband protested.

  Isaac watched her ashen face, saw her pain, almost smelled her tears.

  “I really—” she began.

  The bearded man lifted her hand, the one closest to him, in his own. “Here,” he said, pressing the nut into it with his other hand. “Don’t eat for hunger. Eat for life. The country needs life and you are the country now.”

  Carolina turned to look at him, and Isaac saw things in her face he didn’t expect. It was as if night was reaching out to pull its own dawn closer.

  Instinctively, he looked at Rivka, the blazing sunlight to his own gray dusk. She was scanning the room for possible hostiles, and his heart leapt a little with admiration and love. She wasn’t about to get distracted from her life’s work by gossip fodder.

  Queen Shulamit stepped closer to the other queen’s sorrowful bower. “Carolina,” she said in a cracking voice, in Imbrian. “I’m so sorry.”

  Carolina’s attention shifted abruptly as she turned her head at the sound. “Shulamit! Thank you, thank you for coming.” The words poured out in voluble fluent but accented Perachi. “Oh, Shulamit, Shulamit, tell me… how long does it hurt? How long do I feel like screaming? Like… breaking? There is something breaking.”

  Carolina’s husband rubbed her shoulder soothingly. On her other side, the bearded man squeezed her hand, then let it drop and wandered off.

  Shulamit smiled wistfully. “I wish I had the answer you want to hear. It’s just going to take a lot of time.”

  “How long with you?” There was an intensity about Carolina.

  Shulamit sighed. “Couple of years? You never really stop being sad, not all the way. But you’ll go longer and longer without the really hard bits. And eventually you’ll just be sad that he’s not there, not sad that he died. If that makes any sense.”

  Isaac noticed her shrinking back into Aviva, who was waiting supportively just behind her with entirely non-platonic closeness. Ever since they’d entered the Imbrian capital city but especially here in the palace, Shulamit had been physically clingy with her sweetheart. Had she been a different type of woman, Isaac would have wondered if she was trying to show off to Carolina, her old crush, that she had a pretty girlfriend. With Shulamit, it seemed to be more about Aviva being a security blanket.

  He understood the feeling, a little. On the rare occasions women who weren’t Rivka piqued his interest, it disturbed him and made him immediately want to seek her out, to recalibrate his settings back to normal.

  “I’m glad you came,” said Carolina, “and I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, you know, five years ago. I had just given birth to this little one, you see…” She gestured to her daughter, who had gotten bored of sitting quietly and was lying on the floor clapping her hands.

  “But your father was there,” said Shulamit, “and I never forgot that. So now, I am here for him. And, well, to see if there’s anything I can do to help you.”

  “Just that you came means something.”

  “Um.” Shulamit licked her lips. “This is Aviva.” Then came the awkward, grimacing grin she usually kept hidden, because, as Isaac knew, she thought it looked like the face of an angry ape.

  “Pleased to meet you, Your Majesty,” said Aviva.

  A light of understanding came into Carolina’s eyes. “Ahh, I remember those things you said! When you visited, what was it, nine years ago?”

  “Think so.” Shulamit bounced Naomi in her wrap, burning off spare energy.

  “I’m glad things worked out for you the way you wanted, that way,” said Carolina.

  “We’ve brought you…” Shulamit turned around, motioning to her guards. “We’ve brought all kinds of food. I don’t know very much about your mourning customs, but in my culture, when somebody dies, we have days where people come and bring us food, and take care of us, and let us… you know, tell stories, or just cry, or whatever we want. And we cover the mirrors so we don’t have to see ourselves ugly-crying.”

  Carolina let out a smirking sniff, the closest thing to laughter her grief would allow. “I don’t need a mirror. I have to see my little ones crying.”

  Shulamit looked down at Naomi protectively as the guards set the gift baskets in front of Carolina. “A sampling of Perach’s agricultural riches, hand-picked just for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  The children playing on the floor started to pick through the basket. “Ooh! Papaya!” said the tiny princess. “Mamae, can I have it? Can I have it?” It was so large compared to her tiny, roly-poly frame that she could barely lift it.

  “Go see if Papai will call a servant to cut it up for you.” Carolina patted her on the head affectionately.

  Really? thought Isaac. He needs a servant to slice open a papaya?

  “What’s this?” asked the little prince in Imbrian, half holding a bottle that was much too heavy for him.

  “Fernando, no! Put that down,” said Carolina.

  “Extra pure olive oil,” said Shulamit. “First press.”

  “How wonderful,” said the bearded man, returning with a glass of port. “We will finally have the chance to do a blind taste test of our two country’s oils.”

  “Nothing tastes of food right now,” said Carolina.

  “Perhaps the Prince-Consort will try his hand at it, then?” Then, turning his head toward Shulamit and her family, he bowed deeply. “Your Majesty. I have not yet had the honor.”

  Carolina looked from him to Shulamit, then back again. “Yes, you have, nine years ago! Shulamit, I don’t know if you remember João—Visconde João Carneiro de Façanha?”

  “He was the one playing the guitar, right?”

  “When I sang! Yes, that was him. Wow.” Carolina shook her head. “Nine years. How long it’s been.”

  Isaac eyed the glasses of port that were being passed around. He didn’t want alcohol muddying his thoughts and his reflexes, but the foreign wine appealed to his sweet tooth and there were constant reminders that it was available on the other side of the room.

  Arms folded across his chest, he remained with the other guards and distracted himself by continuing to eavesdrop.

  “Such beautiful baskets you brought us,” said the Prince-Consort as he examined its further contents.

  “Representing the very best of Perach’s wealth—her farms and her groves,” said Shulamit, adding, “Well, everything that would make the week’s journey without spoiling, anyway.”

  “Oh, wow, coconuts!” exclaimed the little prince as he continued to rummage in the basket.

  “Imbrio, too, is proud of the riches she grows,” said the Prince-Consort. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? Let me get you something to eat from that beautiful spread over there. I’ll call a servant.”

  Shulamit, wide-eyed and speaking far too quickly, blurted out, “No, that’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

  Isaac’s eyes narrowed. From his position with the other guards, he could see her knuckles standing out from her hands—sharp, pointy bones that spoke of stress. What was going on? She’d been brushing off offers of food for years, ever since finding out about her sensitivity to wheat and fowl. That’s how one falls in love with a cook. Why was today different?

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, Shulamit, you must try a Rissol de Frango, a chicken pastry pocket,” said Carolina warmly. “Since eating gives me nothing right now, you go enjoy it for me.”

  “No, thank you,” Shulamit repeated.

  Isaac stepped in and rescued her with a blatant lie. “The queen is fasting for Simchat Torah.” Now he had to hope the Imbrians were as uneducated about their customs as he was about theirs!

  Shulamit lifted Naomi up to kiss her on the forehead, but from Isaac’s angle it was obvious that she was using her daughter’s curly hair to mask her smirk.

  “Ah, then I wish you an easy fast,” said Carolina with sympathy.

  “Thank you.” Shulamit managed to get the words out with a straight face.

  “Some other time, then,” the Prince-Consort continued, “you must return and sample our bounty. We have so much that is known all over! And not just food. There is indigo, there is cotton—” He paused. “Queen Shulamit, I think your… er… wife would like to say something. She looks quite distressed.”

  Aviva’s eyelashes fluttered as everyone turned to stare at her. “I… it’s not a good topic for a room of tears.”

  “What is it?” Carolina pressed. “Querida, it’s not like I can get any sadder.”

  Aviva looked at Shulamit. Taking the queen’s slight nod as approval, she said, “There are many in our country who find Imbrian cotton and rice to cost something we can’t pay—that of human misery.”

  Carolina’s mouth opened slightly. Said the Prince-Consort, “Oh, but you have been listening to rumors!”

  Shulamit shook her head. “Too many of our brokers have come back and told us the same thing. Plus, there are a few who have escaped, and we listen to them too.”

  “Ungrateful.” Carolina looked hurt. “We gave them food and steady employment. What more does the lower class need?”

  “Jobs where they have a chance to improve their lives,” said Shulamit. “And where they aren’t forced to stay… anyway, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but surely you know I’ve been in negotiations for months with representatives from your father’s trade ministry about these issues.”

  “I did know, yes,” Carolina admitted.

  “Some Perachis don’t want to buy Imbrian when they hear about these things.”

  “Yes, my father mentioned it.”

  “I’m very sorry, Carolina,” Shulamit added hastily. “Please don’t hate me. And don’t think about any of this today.”

  “I could never hate you.” Carolina looked up at her with a placidly sad, pale full moon of a face. “Who else do I have so much in common with, now?”

  “And she’s right, you know, Caro,” João interjected.

  “What?” The Imbrian queen turned sharply to look at him.

  “If it’s our farms that make us strong as a nation, why can’t we all share in those riches as one united people?” His voice was smooth and frank.

  “We do share,” said Carolina. “But people are not all the same. Some people work the fields, and some have to lead them.”

  “I don’t see any ‘have to’ about it,” said João. “A country belongs to its people, not its rulers.”

  “You have interesting philosophies, sir! You will have to tell me all about them when I have awoken from my sorrows.” Carolina looked at her husband. “I don’t know. Maybe I am hungry after all. Those Rissóis, I kept talking about them…”

  “I will get it for you.” The Prince-Consort stood up straight to his full height, a thin, gangly shape dripping with ceremonial medals, and snapped his fingers in the air.

  Almost instantly a quaking servant in a crisp, white apron appeared before him and bowed. “Sim, sua Alteza Real?”

  “Bring the Queen a chicken pastry and a glass of port,” the Prince-Consort told her in Imbrian.

  “Sim, sua Alteza Real.” The servant bustled away toward the food table on the far side of the room away from the windows.

  “Did you see that wrinkled apron?” the Prince-Consort commented to Carolina under his breath.

  Isaac heard, and wanted to smack him like the silly boy he was. On what planet did “I will get it for you” mean “I will summon a servant, whose clothing I will then criticize despite her impeccably efficient performance?”

  The wizard drew up to his full height of seventy-seven inches. He had the bad habit of relishing the feeling of superiority, and right now, he was very happy to be Perachi.

  5. The Map

  Four days after the queen and her party had bid farewell to the mourners in Imbrio, the royal procession stopped at a roadside inn in the north of Perach. Its back kitchen door opened up to a lake thick with cattails and lily pads, and there were pink wading birds with beaks shaped like wooden spoons poking around between them for water bugs.

  Inside, Aviva worked her knife diligently against the hard winter squash. Rind collected in her wake, beautiful streaked rind that reminded her of the unevenly streaky sunset she could see through the doorway. The squash was badly bred and difficult to peel, but she enjoyed feeling her muscles burn. After her days of idleness in Riachinho de Estrela, she felt power rushing back into her soul as she resumed the work that meant so much to her. She understood why Shulamit had insisted that she dress up and refrain from any behavior too productive in a land as class-conscious as Imbrio, but oh, the relief to make things again.