The Olive Conspiracy (8 page)

***

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.”

“
They power the wheel that crushes
the olives for oil?”

“
So it’s true that the queen is
well learned!” Gil beamed, but even through his flattery Shulamit
could see the stress lines in his face and the fire of nervousness
in his eyes.

“
Tell me about the
flies.”

Gil sighed and nodded slowly. “Walk, and I’ll
show you.”

Followed closely by Rivka and the rest of the
guards, Shulamit let Gil lead her over to the trees.

“
These trees are our oil crop, so
they have smaller leaves,” he explained, his hand thrust into a
cluster of brown strips. “If they were healthy, they’d all look
like these.” He gestured over to the few plants here and there that
still carried the silvery gray-green leaves of a healthy olive
tree.

He didn’t have to point out the bugs to the
queen. She saw them everywhere—in the air, on the branches, on the
leaves themselves. They glittered in the air as if they were
literally making off with the queen’s jewels instead of her
country’s economic prosperity. “Ew.”

“
They’re not the worst of it. If
only they were,” Gil continued sadly. “First, there’s this.” He
pointed out how some of the leaves that hadn’t turned brown still
carried a strange black smear that reminded Shulamit of soot or
even eye kohl, which was what Aviva would have said. “They carry
that
,” said Gil, “and what’s worse, they carry an invisible
blight that moves with them from tree to tree.”

“
The perfect weapon,” Shulamit
murmured. This was all horrible, and unthinkable.

“
That was a long flight,” Isaac
spoke up from Riv’s shoulder, startling Gil, “and I think I deserve
a nosh.”

Rivka chuckled low in her throat. “You
certainly have your pick of them.” She approached one of the trees
so that Isaac could crawl into their infested branches, then
stepped back and watched as he prowled.

Shulamit watched with amusement as Isaac caught
one, then another of the insects, wolfing them down in two or three
gulps with no chewing.

“
He can have as many as he wants,”
said Gil, smiling bitterly. “I wish he could eat them
all.”

There was a rustle in the midst of the olive
tree as all six feet five inches of a transformed, human Isaac
stepped out of it. On his face was a sly smirk that Shulamit knew
meant he was feeling extremely full of himself right now. He
brushed dead olive leaves from the sleeves of his black
sherwani
, commenting, “Let’s see what I can come up
with.”

All of Gil’s family filtered over to observe
curiously as Isaac began to wave his hands in the air. As magical
energy flowed through the wizard’s massive body, his gaze traveled
slowly and deliberately over the grove. He was targeting his
prey.

Shulamit watched with admiration as the insects
began to pop. One by one, here and there, they disappeared in tiny
bursts of light. She noticed that with each fizzling insect,
whichever of Isaac’s hands was nearest its tree twitched
slightly.

The farmers began to applaud and hoot, and
Rivka smiled widely enough that it was obvious even through the
mask because her cheeks were sticking up.

But the process was too slow, and with each
insect that was killed, two more appeared from other trees to take
its place. Isaac’s eyes blazed with determination, and his hands
twitched faster. The miniature explosions continued, more at a time
now, so that the trees nearest them were glittering as if sunlight
sparkled on a rippling sea.

The film of lights expanded to cover more trees
as Isaac widened his influence, and Shulamit was startled to hear
him breathing heavily, almost panting. His skin had grown
alarmingly pink, with the sweat rolling off his face in
drops.

“
Isaac…” Shulamit called out to him
with alarm.

Pop, pop, pop
, the insects went off all
around them. Isaac was shaking.

With a gasping noise that felt like a knife in
Shulamit’s stomach, Isaac went limp. It was only thanks to Rivka’s
great strength that she was able to cushion his body as he fell to
the ground, motionless and unconscious.

8. Mi Shebeirach

Isaac awoke drowning in pain. His skull
squeezed at its tender contents until he felt sure he would throw
up if he moved. Even the scant amount of light filtering in through
a window was enough to make him clamp his eyes shut again in
revulsion.

The indistinct murmur of voices from another
room also felt like torture. He tried to get purchase with his lips
to talk, but the first thing that came out was just a breathy
groan.

Somebody clutched his left hand. Hoping his
guess was right, Isaac clutched back and muttered, in his native
tongue and Rivka’s, “My head.”

“
What do you need?”

Beautiful, radiant battle-goddess. He pulled
her hand to his head and plopped it across his face. The pressure
from without helped somehow with the pressure within.

“
My head hurts. Breathing hurts.
The light hurts, the sound—”

“
Shh…” She massaged his temples
with both hands. “I’ll get you a cloth of hot water.”

“
Maybe also ginger?” He wished the
sound of his own voice wasn’t part of the problem.

“
I’ll see,” Rivka answered. “Before
I go—are you too hot, too cold? I opened your jacket in case you
needed air.”

“
I wish I could take off the
jacket. Everything is…” Isaac looked for a word.
“Unpleasant.”

“
I’ll try when I get back with the
cloth,” said Rivka, “but you might have to roll over.”

“
I don’t know if I can without
throwing up.”

“
Oh, Isaac…” Rivka’s fingers dug
into his scalp as if she were trying to dig out the source of his
distress. He felt long hair splash across his face and then her
kiss on his forehead. “You brave, generous idiot.”

“
Tell Aviva when she plans her
menus that I’m off bugs for a while.”

An unexpected wetness on his hairline told him
just how worried his wife had been.

***

Moderating her usually heavy step as if she
were tracking a criminal, so that her footfalls wouldn’t disturb
her husband, Rivka quickly found the communal room of Gil’s
farmhouse. The murmur of several conversations between guards and
farmers ceased instantly when they saw her.

Shulamit, who was sitting in the center of the
room nursing Gil’s youngest, looked up sharply and met Rivka’s eyes
with a face of deep anxiety.

“
He’s awake. He’s alive. I need hot
water and a cloth,” Rivka barked. “And ginger tea.”

Shulamit let out a long, slow breath, her chest
heaving. She hugged the strange baby absentmindedly. “What
happened?”

Rivka shook her head. “He… just overdid it.
He’ll be fine.”

“
But the bugs…?”

“
I don’t think the bugs have some
kind of magical anti-Isaac warfare properties, if that’s what
you’re asking.”

Shulamit shrugged. “This is a nightmare. I
don’t know
how
far it goes.”

A woman had appeared at Riv’s side. “If you
come with me, I can help you with those things you
needed.”

“
This is Gil’s wife, Eliana,” said
the queen. “She came back from the neighbor’s while you were in
there holding vigil.”

Rivka nodded at Eliana respectfully and
followed her into the farmhouse kitchen.

There was already a fire going, so it was
simple for Eliana to pour water from a nearby bucket into a kettle
and hang it over the healthy flames. She was talkative as she
worked, the words spilling out in enthusiastic, breathless bursts.
“The queen is as generous as the rumors said. I’ve been having
trouble making enough milk for my little one, and that’s why I was
at the neighbor’s. But she’s sick right now, so she sent me home.
It was a miracle that the queen was here. She offered right away.
She said she would have had to express anyway, since it had been
hours since the princess last nursed, but still—the queen! And us
just simple farmers!”

“
She may be young, but she’s wise
enough not to look at the world that way,” answered Rivka as she
watched the water simmer. She didn’t want to talk too much about
the queen’s personal business, but Shulamit already behaved as if
the entire population of Perach nursed at her breast. She took her
queenship very seriously, seeing herself more as an overpaid public
servant with a responsibility to earn all her pretty dresses and
jeweled earrings, than someone whose will should control her people
simply by virtue of an accident of birth.

“
Will this cloth work?” Eliana held
up a clumsily woven piece of undyed linen. “One of my daughters
made it for practice when I was teaching her to weave. She was so
proud of it and gave it to me as a present. In a way, it’s almost
more useful than something perfectly made, because then you’re not
as afraid to ruin it with the things you’re cleaning up,
right?”