***
When Isaac returned to the palace, it was only a few hours before dawn. He expected everyone to be in bed except the night guards, but on his way back to the quarters he shared with Rivka, he saw lamplight flickering from an open doorway. Within seconds, he heard the distressed wail of an infant and knew why there was still activity in the royal wing.
He slipped inside the room, which was Mitzi's. "What's wrong?"
"Her first tooth is starting to... tooth." Shulamit looked bleary and overcooked.
Meanwhile, Mitzi was rocking Naomi back and forth, singing to her softly in her native tongue. A bottle of wine stood open on an end table.
"On the bottom." Rivka gestured on her own mouth.
"She woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep," said Shulamit. "She's in too much pain."
"Mammeh was still up, so I figured she'd know what to do."
"Shh..." Mitzi walked over to Rivka. "Can you put please some more wine on my finger?"
Rivka helped her mother get a fingerful of wine, which she proceeded to rub across the baby's sore gums. "Is that really enough to numb her?"
"It might," said Mitzi. "We did this with you, back years ago."
"Here's the string of amber beads from Queen Aafsaneh." Rivka offered them to her mother.
"Oh, I was wondering where those were," said the queen.
"Majesty, I can take her through the night if you want to sleep," Mitzi offered. "I've done this before. Isaac, you should have seen when Rivka was this age. No matter how much it got me in trouble with my brother and his wife, she wailed for a week solid. Meanwhile, all his girls, they were quiet even when they were fretful."
"Rivka's not a quiet soul," said Isaac evenly.
Shulamit yawned. "If you're sure. Thank you, Mitzi." She walked out into the hallway, and Isaac followed. "What did you find?"
He showed her what he was holding in his left hand, and she looked up at him with studious eyes.
"What about...?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Where was it?"
She listened as he told her. There was more, and she received the news solemnly.
"Very well. Gather everyone together in the morning—"
"Everyone? Not just—"
"No, everyone involved. For some of those people, having their name cleared will be very important."
"And what about the crown?"
"The crown will see justice served. But for now, the crown is going back to bed."
Chapter 19: A Summons to Breakfast
Esther was washing her face in the basin the next morning when she heard the knock. "I'm sorry, I'm almost ready," she called to Eli.
It wasn't Eli. "The palace guards are here," said the innkeeper from the other side of the door. "The queen's summoned us all for breakfast."
"What? Oh, okay." Puzzled, Esther dried her face on a linen towel. She felt among the dresses she'd washed the night before for one that had dried completely. Perhaps the queen was summoning her to the palace to collect her violin, finally retrieved from wherever Tzuriel had hidden it, but then why invite the innkeeper? Who was "us all," anyway?
Eli was waiting for her in the courtyard with the innkeeper. "What's all this about?" he asked.
"I don't know, but maybe I'll finally get my violin back."
"I hope you'd worry this much about me, if I were missing."
"You know I would."
The guards, who had been waiting patiently, beckoned to them. "All three of you, please come with us," said the one with a great big beard.
The early morning air was pleasant and cool, not like the heat of day, and Esther looked upon the bustle of the marketplace setting itself up as they skirted its outer rim. Birds chirped in the trees, and a breeze picked up the edges of her filmy clothing and made it dance around. She felt in the sweet smell of morning that everything was going to be all right soon.
The first time she'd seen the palace, the morning after the theft when she was questioned, she'd been too distressed to notice its beauty. Tall palms rose like sentinels on either side of the great gates, and inside the walls, the white, gleaming houses reposed against the backdrop of the lush gardens, capped with curving tiles of red clay. There were other grand buildings in the capital with similar design, but none so fine, so lavish, so immaculately clean.
Once inside, the guards showed them into a large reception area. Liora was already there, on the arm of the marquis, and she approached Esther as soon as she saw her. "Good morning! Any word on your fiddle yet? I have no idea why we're here. It's a good thing I was up and dressed already when the guards showed up. Getting in some extra practicing—I'm leaving on tour myself, soon. I have new tunes I want to introduce to the world."
"I haven't heard anything yet, but I guess that's why we're here." Esther looked around. Besides herself and Eli and the innkeeper, there were Liora and her marquis and also the street youth—Micah. She was startled to see Tzuriel, but there were guards everywhere and she figured the queen had something up her sleeve. He shot her a look full of meaning, but she didn't meet his eye.
There were covered dishes on a table at the side of the room, and cushions had been set up on the floor. Esther didn't feel comfortable touching anything in the royal setting until she was told to, however, and everyone else seemed to feel the same way.
"Her Majesty Queen Shulamit," announced one of the guards.
In walked the rose-clad queen with the infant princess strapped to her chest, followed by her foreign bodyguard. The wizard was the last to enter the room, and he remained in the background.
The company bowed. "Thank you for coming, everyone," said Queen Shulamit. "I've had them offer breakfast for you all." The guards removed the covers from the dishes, and Esther saw bread that had been dredged in egg and covered with sugar. "Please, eat!"
"But we must wait for you, Majesty," the marquis reminded her.
"Oh, I've already eaten," said the queen pleasantly. "Believe me, I'd love to join you, but if I ate that, I'd get sick."
"My dear Majesty," said the marquis, "if you only gave up this nonsense about wheat, your life would be so much easier."
Captain Riv bounded across the room in two paces until he was nose to nose with the marquis. "Wheat is for her literally poison, you uncompassionate schmegeggeh. Like your attitude on my ears. She provides for you this breakfast, and you—"
"Riv." Shulamit, smiling, held up one hand. "Thank you. Marquis, I'd love to eat that. I really would. I just love not having stomach cramps more." The baby fussed, and Shulamit adjusted her in the wrap. "Sorry, she's teething. Seriously, eat."
Micah didn't need to be commanded, and was already heaping the sweetened toast on a plate. Esther, still a bit puzzled by the strange collection of people in the room, including Tzuriel, wound up farther back in the line than she'd intended to.
While they were arranging themselves on the cushions, one of the guards brought in a chair for Queen Shulamit. She sat, kissing her baby's forehead and murmuring soothing words.
"Everyone is fed, Majesty," pointed out another guard.
"Thank you," said Queen Shulamit. Then, addressing her guests, she began, "As a result of yesterday's adventures, we now know that Esther's violin was stolen with the aid of a shapeshifting potion."
There was a general gasping among her audience. "Wizards!" grumped the innkeeper, and Esther saw him glaring at Isaac.
"Isaac had nothing to do with it," Queen Shulamit interjected. "He's loyal to me and therefore to the law of my throne, and he would never sell anything that would cause that much trouble for keeping the peace." She paused to take a breath. "Someone obtained the potion through an illicit source that has since been neutralized, left the room during the innkeeper's dinner, and then reentered it in the guise of a servant headed through the inner courtyard towards the kitchen. Then, while hidden in the curtains that shield the doorway, the disguise was changed to that of Esther herself. That was how the rabbi and the two wom
en saw nobody but Esther enter her room during the dinner."
Esther looked around the room in bewilderment. Someone had pretended to be her?
"We originally thought it was Tzuriel," the queen continued, "but that was determined to be a lie resulting from a bribe." She studied the faces of the group as if looking for a reaction. "Besides, we searched his wares and he didn't have the instrument."
"He's a dealer," the innkeeper called out quickly. "He could have sold it already."
Queen Shulamit shook her head. "It wasn't him. The person selling the potion had never even seen him. So I was down to one of the rest of you. I thought I'd ruled you out, actually, because if you'd wanted to frame Tzuriel, you could have set up the bribe from the beginning, since you knew he was coming to the party."
"What do you mean, you thought you ruled me out?" The innkeeper's brow furrowed.
"Well, then I realized—" She paused. "If you and Tzuriel were working together, then you could have bought the potion and then double-crossed him the next day. By that time, you'd already have the money from him buying it from you, and he'd be the one found with the violin. In a way, it's almost kind, at least to Esther, because it puts the instrument back in her hands."
"But it's not true!" the innkeeper protested, standing up and looking around him.
"I know that, so please sit down," ordered the queen.
Confused, and looking irritated but pacified, the innkeeper sat. He glared at everyone else suspiciously.
"Marquis, it would have been awfully convenient for you if Esther's violin had gone missing," Queen Shulamit continued. "I know it's not true, but everyone thinks of Esther as Liora's competition, and without Esther's violin, Liora could get publicity raising money for a new one. You may even have been able to benefit from selling her the other expensive violin. You have a lot of motives."
"You must think I have a lot of patience too," said the marquis petulantly.
"Relax, she knows we had nothing to do with it." Liora patted his arm gently. Then, under her breath, Esther heard her add, "And you don't want to get Captain Riv mad at you again."
"Do I?" Shulamit asked. "The one who bought the potion could have been you. You're tall, for a woman, so you could have pretended to be a man—in the right clothes."
Liora simply looked at her without saying anything.
"But... it wasn't you two, either." The infant princess was fussing again, and then started to cry outright. The queen looked distressed.
"I'll take her." Isaac dove in and collected the baby. He walked her back and forth and let her chew on something he was holding. Esther couldn't help but follow him with her eyes. She'd been a little bit scared of him ever since their first meeting, but seeing him in such a kindly role—this was new.
Her attention was once more diverted back to Queen Shulamit when she noticed the queen was holding something up in her hand. They were silver and rectangular, and they looked—singed? "Esther, do you recognize these?"
Esther shook her head. "No."
"They're hinges," said Queen Shulamit. "I think they're from your violin case."
"From my—where were they?"
Shulamit looked at her uneasily. "In the ashes of the kitchen fire at the inn."
Esther felt like the inside of her skull was a mass of wadded-up laundry. No thoughts would form. She would not let them. "What do you mean?"
"I was looking at this case all wrong," said Queen Shulamit. "I thought our thief was someone who wanted the violin for what it was—either for its monetary value, or for its intrinsic worth. Not someone who wanted it for what its absence would be."
"What do you mean, was?" said Esther. She put down her plate and felt sweat running down her torso, inside her dress.
"That's how I know it wasn't the innkeeper. He wouldn't have done that. He wouldn't have—" Shulamit looked at her uneasily. "—burnt it."
"No." Esther's trembling fingertips flew to her lips.
"Isaac, please tell everybody what you found last night."
The princess had quieted down some, so Isaac was able to speak relatively uninterrupted. "Last night I went out in my lizard form. I located the residue of sparkling paint in both orange and yellow where it had scraped off on the underside of the bed in Eli's room."
Esther whipped her head around to face Eli. "When did you have my case?"
"It was Eli who took your violin," said Queen Shulamit. "I'm sorry. When he was at the marketplace buying your scarf, he overheard someone talking about a shapeshifting potion and took advantage of the opportunity."
"I never did anything like that!" Eli protested. "Esther, tell her!"
To the queen, she protested, "Why would you—" But Esther stopped, thinking about the paint on the bed.
"I didn't have time to do anything like that!" shouted Eli. "I was never gone for that long from the room where we were all eating!"
"You didn't burn it at first. That's why you stuck it under the bed," said Shulamit. "You burned it later."
"The wizard! He's against me!" Eli pointed at Isaac accusingly. "He's lying about the paint on the bed."
Isaac stepped forward and fixed Eli in his piercing blue stare. "You were just going to take it for a few hours, to see how she'd react, to show her a world where she didn't need it. And then, you saw how well she got along with Tzuriel, and you decided she needed to be tied to you more permanently. Into the fire it went."
Eli glared at him, then turned to Shulamit. "You call yourself a fair ruler, but you let this sorcerer break the laws you promised your father you'd uphold? You promised us when you invited a wizard into the palace that he wouldn't be going around reading all our minds."
"He's not," said Shulamit, stony-faced. "He doesn't. But it's awfully interesting that you immediately assumed he was."
Chapter 20: Truth and Rebirth
Rivka was tense and ready; at any minute the accused man could lash out either verbally or physically, and if he did, she was in charge of the guards who would subdue him.
Eli looked around him at the roomful of shocked people, then turned toward Esther. "It's for your own good," he said. "It's not healthy for anyone to care about a thing more than they care about the human beings in their life."
"But that's not..." Esther's voice was broken and the tears had started. "You know how important my family—my baby sisters—"
"Your Majesty, you don't understand." Eli turned to face the queen. "She wasn't eating. I mean, I know she's not going to waste away, but think how it made me feel to see her destroying herself over something like this. Isn't that proof that she needed to be jolted out of it?"
"Think how it made you feel?" asked Shulamit dryly. Rivka could see the remnants of her interrupted night in her unimpressed face. "You destroyed something not only precious to this woman you're supposed to be in love with, but precious to this throne for historical reasons, and we're supposed to think how it made you feel?"
"That thing was ruining my life!"
With one eye on Eli, Rivka glanced quickly at movement she had perceived elsewhere in the room. Micah was looking at her nervously, and she wondered what was going through his mind.
"She was like an addict," Eli continued. "If she was ruining her life from drinking or poppies, you wouldn't question my rescue. She should have been home with her family, with me, starting our life, finally. I've worked for years to study the law, but I can't be an advocate if I'm following her around all the time. Everything was on hold."
"But you said you wanted to come—it wasn't even my idea—" Esther could only weep. Liora walked over and folded her into her arms, and the young woman sobbed on her shoulder.
"Of course I had to come! What would happen if I let you run around the world by yourself?" Eli gestured to Tzuriel. "Think of all the men who would have tried to take advantage of how innocent you are!"
Rivka kept watching Micah, until he finally hopped off his cushion and approached her. "Captain Riv, I've got to talk to you."
&
nbsp; Tuning out the rest of Eli's ridiculous defense, she looked at him sharply. "Is it about this? Otherwise, we will talk later."
"It's about this."
"I'm tired of listening to this," called out Shulamit. "Eli, you're under arrest for illegal use of shapeshifting potion, and for theft, and for destruction of a historical treasure."
"You don't understand!" Eli protested as Tivon and another guard took him by both arms.
"You're right!" said Shulamit sharply. "I don't. I understand the kind of love where you support someone's dreams and admire her achievements. You are just a selfish manipulator. Don't listen to him, Esther."
Esther peeled the blue scarf off her neck and let it fall to the ground.
"That scarf—that's so you could prompt her to go back to her room for it in the middle of dinner," said Shulamit. "So when the people in the courtyard said they saw her enter her room, she'd have had a reason to go back for real."
"And then you tried to blame it on me!" Tzuriel glared at him.
"You were trying to steal her!" Eli snarled.
"You can't steal a human being," bellowed Shulamit. "Guards, seriously, get him out of here. This is toxic." Tivon and the other guard hustled him away. Rivka could hear him still protesting as they drifted into the distance.
Meanwhile, Micah whispered to Rivka, "Did you use the ripening crystal or does the wizard still have it?"
"What?" Rivka followed his line of reasoning. "No, I don't want to use it."
"So he has it?"
"I suppose so."
"Will he give it to me if I give you something?"
"I don't know. What are you offering?"
"My violin," said Micah, "because I think it's Esther's."
Rivka looked him deep in the eye. "What do you mean?"
"I didn't know it was hers. I took it from Eli's room. I took it out of the case while he was at dinner. If he threw something on the kitchen fire, it was an empty case."
Rivka exhaled sharply. "Of course we need it back."
"You'll never find it without my help."
A Harvest of Ripe Figs Page 13
