She forced her knife down harder into the almost-rocky, orange flesh. There. There was the soft spot. “Oh, so you have feelings after all, you little—”

  “Are you sure I can’t help you with any of that?” the innkeeper called to her from the other side of the kitchen and then started to walk closer. Her arms were covered in flour and raw dough up to the elbows. “I don’t want anyone thinking I wasn’t a good host to the queen.”

  Instinctively, Aviva placed her padded body between the dangerous flour and Shulamit’s dinner. She smiled warmly. “Thank you, really, but I’ve got it. And you are a terrific host. Trust me.”

  “You sure?” The other woman was bright-eyed and wanted to help.

  “I am golden,” said Aviva with a toss of her head. A strand of black hair worked itself loose from her hairsticks, and she tucked it behind her ear. “As long as all the guards are fed, I can take care of the queen.”

  “Those squash can be pretty hard.”

  “I was noticing that!” Aviva grunted as she pressed the knife down into the orange impossibleness again. “I’m used to the ones we get down in Home City, I guess. But as long as it softens up when it’s cooked…”

  The innkeeper was nodding. “Oh, yes, yes, don’t worry.”

  A noise of boots at the door made both women look up. Rivka was standing in the doorway holding a basket of raw meat. She was masked as usual, but from the way the corners of her eyes were turned up, Aviva could tell she was grinning. “All ready for you!”

  “Perfect timing—I already cut up all the onions and garlic.” Aviva peered into the basket. “Oh, you’re such a sweetheart. I thought you were just going to butcher it!”

  “I guess I got maybe carried away?” Rivka chuckled. “You’re already cutting up enough things with your onions and garlic and, what is that? Squash?”

  “Squash that wants to be a brick when it grows up,” quipped Aviva. “I feel like my arms got ripped off at the elbow.”

  “But it feels better than hanging around Imbrio pretending to be a woman of luxury, right? I know you.”

  “Mmmm,” Aviva purred as she began to toast some chopped garlic. “My hands smell like spices again.” I don’t know who I am when my hands don’t smell like spices.

  She cast the thought into the pan along with the pieces of onion and let it cook away.

  ***

  Between the guards and carriage drivers, Shulamit’s royal party completely filled the inn’s dining room. The guards were happily eating chicken and couscous prepared by the innkeeper. The queen herself had staked out a pleasant little table in the corner so she could lean back against the wall while she nursed the little princess. Rivka and Isaac were sitting on either side of her playing checkers with green and black olives when Aviva appeared carrying her pot of food.

  “Smells a lot better than it did when I caught it,” Isaac quipped, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Three hours in the school of flavors makes the deer learn all kinds of new things.” Aviva placed the steaming vessel between all of them on the table, narrowly missing several olives.

  “You should write these down,” said Rivka as she eagerly dished herself out a portion of the venison stew.

  “Huh? What did I say?” Aviva blinked.

  Shulamit chuckled and adjusted her tunic. “You are one of a kind. You are…” she trailed off, her face peaceful and happily lovesick. Tears sprang into Aviva’s eyes. It was such a welcome contrast from the tightly wound, fearful bundle of twigs she’d held in her arms these past few days in Imbrio.

  “Oh… I just feel so lucky right now,” Shulamit added, hugging Naomi gently. “Lucky to have all of you. My dragon-tateh caught the deer, Riv cut it up, and you cooked it. Just so I could have food without…” Words paused as her face crumpled into tears. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  Aviva darted into the bench and sat down, pulling her into a sideways embrace. “We love you.”

  “I know,” Shulamit sobbed into Aviva’s shoulder. “And I love all of you. I’m sorry. Okay, I guess I needed that. Screw Imbrio.”

  Aviva giggled.

  “I don’t even really mean that.” Shulamit sighed. “And you really are one of a kind. So many people would be scared of me seeing someone I’d loved as much as I loved Carolina, back when I was younger.”

  “I believe in us,” said Aviva. “Besides, you always said she didn’t like women the way you do or something would have happened back then.”

  “Right. Exactly. I mean, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I must have been so obvious!” Shulamit finally began to eat her food.

  “I’ve been wondering ever since we left,” said Isaac. “Who’s that minor nobleman—João?”

  “He was around back when we were teenagers,” Shulamit said through mouthfuls of venison and squash. “He and Carolina were in love with each other—”

  Isaac looked extremely pleased with himself. “I guessed as much!”

  “Yeah, I guess he’s still hanging around,” said Shulamit. “They couldn’t get married because of how much she outranks him. I don’t know what the situation is now. Who knows—maybe she has the Prince-Consort and then João on the side, and everybody knows about it. Or maybe not. I have no idea.”

  “Her husband certainly didn’t look jealous,” said Isaac, “so he’s either completely aware and fine with it, or in denial.”

  “He used to accompany her on the guitar,” said Shulamit, “when she sang. She has a great voice.”

  “I hope they’re not hurting her husband,” said Aviva, “because I liked João. He was sticking up for the working class.”

  “If she listens to him,” said Shulamit with great seriousness, “if she’s actually paying attention to what he says instead of just focusing on his eyes or whatever, then maybe we can get this Imbrio boycott problem solved. I don’t want to sound like I’m glad King Fernando died, but if João can influence the throne—” she took a drink of the inn’s sweet, rustic wine “—it’s a whole new market. I have to say, I’m proud of our culture and our people that they think about things like this, even if it means diplomatic headaches for me.”

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” Rivka was peering into Isaac’s hand.

  “Oh, it’s the last of Yael’s rugelach.” Isaac offered it toward her.

  “Now I really know you love me.”

  “You know, that whole thing is so weird!” Shulamit commented. “I wonder if we’ll ever find out why Ezra never showed up?”

  ***

  “Dead?” Shulamit, who had arrived back to her home palace thirty minutes ago, stood in the sunny courtyard with her mouth hanging open like a broken door. “Ezra. Dead.”

  “Yes, Majesty.” Tivon, Rivka’s second-in-command in the Royal Guard, scratched his beard. “Knifed in the back down at the docks, the night before you all left for Imbrio.”

  “Wow.”

  “The body wasn’t found until after you were gone.”

  “Wow,” said the queen again, rather stupidly.

  “Whoever killed him dressed him up like a foreign sailor,” added another guard, “hoping we’d assume it was just someone who’d come in from the river and gotten killed in a tavern brawl.”

  “But because of the report from that woman at the Frangipani Table, we got suspicious,” said Tivon.

  “And rightfully so!” Shulamit exclaimed.

  “We thought maybe she did it—” said the second guard, but stopped talking when he saw the queen’s face.

  “Don’t worry,” Tivon reassured her. “I know that doesn’t make sense with everything in the report on her, and besides, she takes in boarders and they swear she was inside the whole night until she left for work in the morning.”

  “Right…” said Shulamit. “She wouldn’t come and report him and then kill him. Not after telling us everything he had on her anyway!”

  “Still, we sent a patrol youth to watch her restaurant,” said the second guard.

  Shulamit rolled her eyes. “So what else do you have?”

  “We went to his house and collected all his papers,” Tivon answered, “figuring that if he’s blackmailing one woman, maybe he’s blackmailing another? Or more than another. Could be many victims.”

  “I’ll look at them on my throne.” Shulamit shook her head as she walked out of the sun. She was surprised as anything, but her blood raced in anticipation of launching herself full speed at this new puzzle.

  ***

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Shulamit from her throne to Rivka, who was standing beside her. “Ezra definitely knew how to keep himself entertained.” There was a look on her face somewhere between unimpressed and withering.

  “Why, what’s that one?” Rivka peered over at the paper on top of the pile on Shulamit’s lap. Tivon, as requested, had delivered all the papers the guards investigating Ezra’s murder had retrieved from his rented room.

  “A list of all the women Avi the cheese man was visiting on the sly.”

  Rivka lifted an eyebrow. “Are they suspects? Or just Avi himself?”

  “You look it over. You’re head of the police, right?” Shulamit passed her the paper.

  The captain scanned it briefly. “More than half of these women are married.”

  “How many?”

  Rivka counted to herself in her native language. “Five?”

  Shulamit chuckled bitterly. “Wow. I had no idea cheese was so popular with married women.” Rivka made an odd sound, and Shulamit looked over to her quickly. “What?”

  “Isaac has made a joke you don’t want to hear,” said Rivka dismissively.

  “Never mind,” said Shulamit archly. She was smart enough to put two and two together. “Do you see any of those women going down to the river docks late at night and stabbing Ezra?”

  Rivka considered each possibility. “No, not really, but if pushed to desperation…”

  “So we have six suspects just from this one paper alone.”

  “At least he kept very good notes. What’s that one?”

  “Oh, this?” Shulamit held up another paper. “Ezra threatened to tell this man’s rich wife that he had a young mistress over in Ir Ilan. He got a lot of money out of him before the wife died and he didn’t have a reason to pay anymore.”

  “That one is then probably not involved,” mused Rivka.

  “We don’t even know that Avi and the Cheesettes are involved, not necessarily,” Shulamit pointed out. “These look like starter notes.”

  “Oh, like he maybe hadn’t approached any of them yet?”

  “Right,” said Shulamit. “Look, here’s what I think happened. I think he was on the take from the man with the mistress. Then, when the wife died, Ezra lost his main source of income. So he had to find someone else to blackmail.”

  “And that’s why he was taking notes on Avi,” said Rivka.

  “Exactly. Meanwhile, he found out about Yael and bothered her too.”

  “Does it say how he found out about her?”

  Shulamit shook her head. “I haven’t gotten to that part yet. Did you see this one?”

  “What is it?” asked Rivka.

  “It’s notes from the Marquis’ servants. He was trying to figure out definitively if Liora and the Marquis are a couple.”

  Rivka snorted. “Is he kidding? Liora would pay him to talk about her.”

  “Anyway, we know they had nothing to do with the murder,” Shulamit pointed out. “They left on tour right after Yom Kippur.” That was a week before Yael’s audience with the queen in her sukkah.

  “What’s that one? It looks like a map.”

  Shulamit shifted papers around. “Mmm,” she agreed, turning the paper slightly and studying it more closely. “It’s a map of Perach. But I don’t know what all this mess is.” She squinted and shook her head. “I don’t know; it looks familiar, somehow.”

  “Well, you do run the country.”

  “This line… these patterns…”

  With one arm folded across her midsection and the other arm upright so that her fist rested against her nose, Shulamit raked her memories. Those swirly bits. That pair of streaks. Why did they look so familiar? Why did she feel like she’d seen it before, what seemed like ages ago before the emotional upheaval of visiting Imbrio again and seeing Carolina?

  “Oh my God!” Heat flared in Shulamit’s cheeks. “Rivka, this makes no sense, but—Guard! Who’s out there?”

  One of the guards appeared at the doorway. “Majesty?”

  Shulamit held out one pointing finger. “Can you please bring me my latest notes on our agricultural pests?”

  “Absolutely, Majesty.” He disappeared into the sunlight.

  Rivka squinted at her. “I don’t get it.”

  “You think I do?” Shulamit skin tingled as she waited for the papers to show up and either prove her wrong or show that she was absolutely right, thus opening up nothing but a cartload of further questions. Both hands fidgeted with the ends of her filmy, yellow scarf.

  Shulamit felt like every second was bloated and lazy until the guard reappeared. Where was he? Finally, the requested papers arrived, and she tore into them with such ferocity that several fell onto the floor and had to be retrieved.

  “There!” she finally exclaimed triumphantly.

  “What?” Rivka leaned over her shoulder eagerly, and Shulamit heard a soft thud as Isaac leapt off Riv’s shoulder onto the back of her throne to get a better view.

  “The olive blight,” said Shulamit, her lips barely moving as she tried to make sense of the completely unexpected connection. “Ezra drew a map of the olive blight and put it in the middle of his blackmail notes.”

  “Is there anything else on the paper?” said Isaac in his normal voice.

  Shulamit turned it over. “Oh, I’m so nervous, I’m not thinking straight. This is the map I already had.”

  She flipped over the correct parchment. In Ezra’s lazy scrawl, it said,

  Imbrian man (Name: Rui?) *possibly leader

  Imbrian man with missing tooth. Drinks like a fish

  Perachi woman (from Lovely Valley?) Money-minded

  Unknown man (Light skinned. Imbrian?)

  Unknown woman (Perachi?)

  Who is “André”?

  “There is no way this means anything good.” Thoughts whirled through Shulamit’s mind, thoughts that she was afraid to put to words. What did Imbrio have to do with agricultural pests? What about—what about Carolina?

  “Malkeleh,” said Isaac, interrupting her mental maelstrom. “Let me see Ezra’s map again.”

  Shulamit flipped the paper back over.

  “Look,” said Isaac. “His map—the infestation goes down the river straight into the Lovely Valley.”

  Shulamit shook her head slowly and groped around for Rivka’s hand. She clung to her friend’s arm with both hands like it was a bellpull, then hugged it tightly to her chest. “Whatever this is, we have to stop it. We have to stop them.”

  6. Agent of the Crown

  Rivka headed over to the Frangipani Table, her own hastily scribbled copy of Ezra’s list tucked into her belt. While Shulamit pored over the farm maps she’d spread all over the floor of the throne room, Rivka wanted to get cracking on tracing the criminals. She had years of practice at this, both as Shulamit’s Captain of the Guard but also before that, on the road as an independent bounty hunter and mercenary, and all her instincts told her that the list was the key to everything.

  After all, it made the most sense—if Ezra had stumbled onto some kind of international conspiracy, its perpetrators would have every reason to silence him—even without his likely threat of blackmail. His chosen “profession” just made it worse.

  There was no reason for the Imbrians to have been at the Frangipani Table specifically, other than its popularity, but she figured it was a good place to start. After all, he had been there often enough to figure out that Yael warranted further scrutiny, so maybe he spent enough time there for such lucky guesses to be reasonable.

  Men from the Royal Guard were milling around in front of the restaurant when Rivka arrived. She heard “Look, the Captain’s back!” and both of them stood up slightly straighter.

  Rivka, too, felt her posture straighten, and the rest of her approach was a fluid swagger. “Peace.” She waved to them. “You can go back to the palace now.”

  “Oh, but what about—?”

  She shook her head dismissively. “She’s not the one who knifed Ezra.”

  The guards looked at each other, then back at Rivka. “Yes, sir,” said one of them.

  “Just in case, I can stay if you—”

  “No,” Rivka said simply. “You’re relieved. Thank you!”

  They treaded off down the road, and Rivka entered the restaurant.

  Patrons eating their lunch swiveled their heads when they saw her. Since she knew they couldn’t see her smile at them from behind her cloth mask, she waved slightly. After Lord knew how many days of the place being under guard, she wanted them to know this was a friendly visit. Questions only.

  Yael was arm-deep inside a duck when Rivka broached the kitchen. Her eyes widened when she saw the captain, and she froze slightly.

  Rivka showed both palms in reassurance. “It’s fine, I sent them away.”

  Yael exhaled, and her arm began moving around inside the bird’s cavity once again. “They weren’t that bad, but…”

  “I know,” said Rivka sympathetically. “Bad for business.”