“It’s hard enough trying to live up to my husband’s memory without rumors flying around.” Yael found a small handful of salt and rubbed it over the duck’s naked skin. “I have to be twice as good as we were together, just to make sure they think it’s the same. Those guards tried their best to be nice, but…”

  “They thought you carved up Ezra like one of your ducks.”

  Yael nodded. “And the worst part was, I could have… I mean, someone else in my situation might have. I couldn’t kill a man, but another woman might.”

  “We’re looking into that,” said Rivka, pulling the rolled-up copy of the list from her belt as if unsheathing her sword. “When was the last time you had any Imbrian customers?”

  Yael’s brows descended. “Do you mean anyone from Imbrio or new people I didn’t recognize?”

  “I’m not talking about people like the chair-maker’s wife who’ve been here for years,” said Rivka. “Not one Imbrian at a table full of Perachis either. Imbrians eating together.”

  “I did have… these men… it was during the holidays.” Yael frowned in thought. “I remember because I was still taking reservations for breaking the fast.”

  So sometime between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Rivka recorded mentally. Maybe a week or so before he bothered Yael. “How many men?”

  “Two. No, three,” Yael corrected herself. “I forgot about the third one because he wasn’t speaking much. They had a Perachi woman with them, but I don’t think she was from here. She didn’t say much either, except to help them order their food if they didn’t know a Perachi word.”

  “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.

  ***

  The olive groves lined the far side of the mountain ridge parallel to the great river that Perachi ships used to take their cargo south to the Sugar Coast or north to Imbrio. Here, on the Home City side, the mountains trapped both clouds and warmth, and more tropical crops such as banana and litchi fruit flourished. But over on the other side of the mountains, the air was drier and the soil more poor. This made perfect conditions to grow the hundreds of thousands of olive trees that gave Perach its cooking oil, light, and snacking olives, with plenty left over to export and grow rich.

  If one followed the river south, of course, the mountain range flattened completely into the rich, dark soil of the Lovely Valley. This was the true source of Perach’s wealth.

  Shulamit’s primary goal was to do whatever she could to keep the insects, and their rotting blight, from reaching the Valley.

  Her guards were riding on horseback through a pass in the mountains, and they’d most likely reach Gil’s farm by lunchtime. Since Isaac’s dragon flight was faster than a horse on land, she and Rivka could leave after breakfast and still get there at the same time.

  The mountains were as beautiful as always, but at first Shulamit couldn’t enjoy it. She kept peering down among the trees, wondering where the horrid little creatures lurked.

  But the sky was like a clear blue bolt of silk, and the wind rushing past Shulamit’s face and ruffling the filmier parts of her clothing soon improved her spirits. With Rivka’s sturdy body behind her and strong, reassuring grip on her waist, Shulamit reveled in the wonder that was dragon flight.

  It took the sight of a field of brown trees to wipe the smile from her face.

  “Oh, Rivka.” Shulamit, wide-eyed, pointed to the grove as Isaac began his descent.

  “Looks pretty ugly, doesn’t it,” Rivka agreed in a flat voice.

  Shulamit narrowed her eyes. There was so much famine in the world already—how could someone cause it purposely?

  “I see people,” said Rivka.

  “That’s where I’m headed,” said Isaac, his magnificent wings sparkling in the sunlight as he altered his course.

  There were more than a dozen people waiting for them on the ground, right in front of a building Shulamit took to be the farmhouse.

  First, there were four of the Royal Guard who had ridden on ahead this morning through the pass through the mountains, so that the queen wouldn’t be traveling through the countryside with only Rivka and the dragon protecting her. Shulamit had done things like that in her youth, but that was over five years ago and she knew better now.

  The rest of the crowd looked like they might be Gil and his family, the farmers who lived there, and perhaps some of his neighbors. These were the people who stared up at Isaac as he descended, mouths unselfconsciously open in wonder. It was possible this was their first view of a dragon. The wild ones, the beasts without reason, preferred the unpopulated wilderness, and trained shapeshifters like Isaac weren’t terribly common either.

  Isaac landed, and Shulamit, conscious of the dead foliage and broken trees all around her, tried her best to smile anyway as she waved at the farmers.

  Rivka hopped unceremoniously off the dragon and then, as usual, helped the dainty queen get down to the ground without too much damage to her stylish, light pink clothing.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Shulamit saw Isaac transform into his lizard form and scamper up to his perch on Rivka’s shoulder as the two women approached the company. “Good morning!”

  A tall, broad man in his middle age stepped out from the group of farmers. “Good morning, Majesty!” he said, his voice almost swallowed up as he faced the ground in a respectful bow. “Thank you for coming.”

  Shulamit nodded. “You must be Gil.”

  He nodded back at her. “Yes, Majesty. These are my sons and daughters, my younger brother, and that’s my eldest daughter’s husband over there.” A braying noise attracted Shulamit’s attention, and she turned to see a couple of donkeys grazing near a large stone. Gil chuckled. “They’re part of the family too. But they’ve been idle lately, I’m sad to say.”