Climbing the Date Palm Page 11

  Settling herself into her seat, she alternated between sipping her drink and playing with one of the braids that rested over her shoulders. She didn’t particularly care for sports -- it didn’t interest her whether or not one of the shawl sellers could lift more coconuts or jump farther than one of the woodcarvers -- but the Marketplace Games were a beloved event in the culture of her capital, and she knew it made her people very happy to see her there.

  Energy was in the air, and everyone around her was talking about something different.

  The announcer was celebrating the agility of the man on the field, who apparently sold chickens and eggs.

  Aviva was animatedly explaining to her parents that the lady vendors had successfully organized so that next year the Games would have women’s events as well. Shulamit knew Aviva was happy to be here, to cheer on her favorite vendors -- those men from the marketplace who, in her expert opinion, sold the best raw ingredients for her culinary masterpieces.

  Tivon, who was on duty at Shulamit’s side, was telling Rivka’s mother, Mitzi, some anecdote that was making her alternately laugh and quizzically ask him what a word meant.

  “He’s pleasing to look at, isn’t he?” Kaveh said, admiring the man on the field. He turned to Shulamit. “I can’t thank you enough for giving me a place where I can say that out loud, without fear you’ll throw me off the platform.”

  She gave him a distant smile. Her mind was still on the Jahandar problem.

  Only Rivka and Isaac were silent. They stood as grim sentinels at each forward corner of the platform, eyes on the crowd, as “on duty” as two human beings could get. There may as well not have been games going on before them; their “game” was watching the population. Isaac was even wearing armor for once.

  Shulamit was more than safe behind the watchful care of her two towering northern guards.

  “Yessss!” Aviva shot up from her seat, arms in the air. She nearly knocked her father’s coconut askew in her zeal to cheer on the shepherd who produced her favorite cheese, as the announcer officially declared that the shepherd could lift more coconuts on his back than anyone else.

  Everyone else was content simply to clap. Shulamit clapped without caring. Had Jahandar gone home for the High Holidays or Passover with one of his classmates? Were princes even allowed to do that? Her father certainly never would have allowed it, but he was exceptionally protective. Plus, she was a girl.

  Wait, they don’t have those holidays over there... She felt sun-silly that she’d forgotten that for a moment, and took another sip of coconut water.

  Then she noticed Aviva’s parents were looking at her, or more accurately, sending fleeting glances in her direction, and talking quietly to each other. What was that about? She wearily hoped they weren’t pointing out how little their queen and de facto daughter-in-law was focused on the games.

  Finally, Leah spoke up. “Majesty, darling?”

  “Hmm? What?”

  “I didn’t know if it was important enough to say anything, but Ben talked me into it.” Oh, so that’s what the whispering was about. “I started reading some books about Jahandar’s father, in case there were more clues.”

  I guess there were books I still hadn’t gotten to yet, thought Shulamit. “King Omeed? What did you find?”

  “There was a story,” said Leah, “about a necklace of jewels that King Omeed had bought for his wife, the queen. The book said that he’d paid far more for the necklace than it was worth, and a rumor sprang up that it might have magical powers, to justify the extra cost. Do you think it--”

  Trembling and leaning forward, Shulamit stared at her. “Jewels? He paid more for jewels? Oh, my God. How long ago? How old was Jahandar when this happened?”

  “I--I think--maybe... thirty years ago? Jahandar must have only been in his teens.”

  “That’s it, that’s it, that’s it!”

  “What?”

  “The man who was paid off to keep his daughter away from the wealthy man’s son! That wasn’t just a wealthy man, that was the king! It was King Omeed! And he paid off the jeweler to keep his daughter away from Jahandar, because he was the Crown Prince at the time! Leah, Leah, you did it! Yesss!” She sprang out of her seat with both fists raised.

  On the field, a poor honey seller squinted into the sun with a smile on his face, happy that the queen had cheered the length of his jump. He didn’t know the queen was such a fan of his honey, and he swelled with pride.

  “Are you sure?” Leah blinked in happy bewilderment.

  “Covered in jewels! The poem said, covered in jewels! All we have to do is find the jeweler and we’ve found her!”

  “I visited a jeweler while Isaac was with Farzin,” Tivon offered helpfully.

  Shulamit’s brow furrowed. “A jeweler? For what?”

  Mitzi fidgeted conspicuously and played with her hair, clumsily trying to draw attention to a silver hairpin Shulamit couldn’t remember having ever seen before.

  “I wanted to welcome our captain’s mother to our household,” Tivon explained gallantly.

  Mitzi batted her eyelashes.

  “Was it a good transaction? I mean, if you went back and... pumped him for information, do you think it would go well?”

  “I was happy with how much I paid, and I’m pretty sure he was too.”

  “I’m not saying he’s our jeweler father, but hopefully all the jewelers in the city know each other and he’ll be able to tell us something. Kaveh, what about you? Do you know anything about the necklace?”

  Kaveh shook his head. “I liked my grandmother, but I don’t remember any of her jewelry. Sorry!”

  “That’s okay. This is great! We’re making progress!”

  “So once you find her, you beg for her help... and she goes to my father and pulls his head out of his ass,” Kaveh speculated.

  “And then Farzin goes free and his men get paid,” said Shulamit. “All their wages.”

  As if on cue, the crowd cheered. Shulamit didn’t care that it was for something else.

  A little while later, a woman with a baby in one arm and holding a toddler’s hand in another worked her way through the crowd and called out, “Your Majesty!”

  Tivon turned toward Shulamit with questioning eyes. She responded by standing and approaching the edge of the platform. “Yes?”

  “Majesty, I wanted to thank you for cheering for my husband. He’s so shy he couldn’t bring himself to meet you himself, but it meant the world to him.”

  “Your husband?” Shulamit flushed and fiddled with her left braid. Who had she cheered for?

  “Yes, my husband Simon. He sells honey in the marketplace and competed in the jump.”

  “Oh, the honeyman! Yes, okay.” Inside Shulamit’s head, an army of kittens were scrambling around, hoping she could fake her way through this. “I love honey with yogurt.”

  “So do we. Do you hear that? She likes her honey on yogurt just like you do!” The proud mother was talking to her toddler. Then she turned back to the queen. “Will you hold my baby to bring her luck?”

  Shulamit drew in her breath sharply. This was the future, calling to her.

  She reached out her hands and accepted the child. Her arms shook, and she felt as though she was holding the whole world. Well, I guess this is someone’s whole world -- its parents’. It was warm and snuggly in her arms and winked up at her as it wriggled slightly.

  Shulamit’s heart was beating heavily.

  Then the baby shifted around harder than she was expecting, and she had to hold on tighter so it wouldn’t fall. It whined. Then it began to wail. Panicked, she whipped her head around to Mitzi and Leah, those who had mothered before her.

  But she needn’t have panicked. Aviva was at her side, taking the squalling child and soothing it against her chest. She bounced it up and down gently. “They like this,” she commented under her breath to Shulamit. It stopped crying, but then it started pawing at Aviva’s chest for its next meal.

  Aviva handed the hu
ngry baby back to its mother, who bowed slightly to the queen and thanked her again before going off to breastfeed.

  Shulamit remained standing, watching them go. Aviva squeezed her hand. “We can do this together,” she said quietly.

  Two mothers. Shulamit tried the idea out in her mind. Ima and... and something else. Perhaps they could use Rivka’s word for her mother -- Mammeh?

  For the first time, the thought of a baby -- their baby -- began to make her smile.

  Chapter 15: The Jeweler’s Daughter

  Isaac landed at a conservative distance beyond the City of the Red Clay just as before, and, once Tivon was on the ground, quickly turned human so King Jahandar would have no idea that a Serpent-Master had entered his kingdom. They walked down the red clay together, as real lizards darted in and out of crevices in the large rocks that lay to either side of the path.

  “You made really good time -- unless he’s closed up early, I’m sure the shop’ll still be open.”

  “Thanks,” said Isaac. “That was the idea.” The part he didn’t tell Tivon was how much his back and shoulders were burning with exertion, and how much he wished for Rivka to be there to pound on his shoulder blades with her fingertips. After all this was over, he wondered if Shulamit would let him and Rivka spend a day or two at a mineral spring.

  “Do we have a plan this time, or are we just going in and asking?”

  “I’ll be a lizard and hide in your cloak,” said Isaac. “That way, if you’re unsuccessful, I still have a chance to go back in there and try another way. But I think you’ll do fine.”

  “I know some of your philosophy,” said Tivon. “Don’t worry -- I won’t volunteer too much information.”

  “No, no, actually, I want you should overshare. Tell him all about Mitzi and giving her the present and anything else you can think of, as long as it’s unimportant.” Isaac turned to face him and looked him in the eye as he added, “People say a lot when they feel like you’ve shared first.”

  “Hm. I guess that’s true.”

  “Mitzi loved that present, but I’ll tell you something else,” said Isaac. “She loved that you gave it to her.”

  Tivon smiled. “I’m not a complicated man, and I don’t need a woman to be complicated, either. She’s easy on the eyes and thinks I’m interesting. What else is there?”

  Isaac could have said a lot of things, and was certainly thinking them, but instead he returned to the mission. “Here’s another thing you can do. People love to correct. Not always to be mean or show off, but -- well, I’m sure this has happened to you. It happens to me, anyway. If the sky is blue and someone stands up and says, ‘No, it’s green,’ there’s a feeling you get -- the knowledge gathers inside and bursts out, and if you try to keep it inside it becomes an irritant.”

  “How does that help me?”

  “Say something you know isn’t true. It might get you further than just to ask.”

  Tivon pondered this for a moment. “Maybe I could suggest that the stories in the book are all made up.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You might as well transform again now. If we walk any closer, someone might see you disappear.”

  Isaac took Tivon’s outstretched hand in his own and began the transformation. When he was safely a lizard, he crawled up Tivon’s arm and settled on his shoulder, just inside his collar.

  Once inside the city, they headed straight for the marketplace. Tivon walked past the fruit sellers and the ladies with cheese; he passed the man putting chairs together out of pieces of wood, and the man selling shawls. “That one would go with Mitzi’s hair,” Tivon murmured in a voice so low it was intended only for Isaac.

  “Later,” was Isaac’s only reply.

  “Buy a parrot?” A young woman, almost a girl, darted directly into his path. The bird on her wrist flapped angry red wings at both of them.

  “No, I’m sorry.” Tivon jerked his head to the side to avoid a faceful of feathers, and Isaac darted further inside Tivon’s shirt. Ultimately, he was safe and could have just transformed back to human form if the parrot had gone after him, but that would have blown their cover.

  Cats chased each other across the pavement, but Isaac was relieved that in none of them did he sense a human soul.

  They passed a shop that, from the decorations and sign, usually sold the meat of geese, but during the Month of the Sun, when no meat was eaten, it had switched to selling feather pillows. “That’s clever,” Isaac whispered to Tivon admiringly. “Most likely they save the feathers all year round to make sure they’ll have an income during the sacred month.”

  “Here it is,” Tivon murmured, entering a pleasant stall just beyond the goosedown pillows.

  The jeweler inside was hard at work with his tools, but when he saw Tivon come in, he jumped up and smiled. “The gentleman from the foreign Guard! And how did the lovely lady like her present?”

  “Very much, thank you,” said Tivon. “She wore it to the Marketplace Games. You don’t have those here, do you?” Isaac smirked, as much as a lizard could smirk, anyway; this was a great plan for dragging the conversation toward Memoirs of the Marketplace.

  “What, where all the vendors take a day off for sport and see who can run the farthest or whatnot? Not here.” The jeweler shook his head and smiled cynically. “Too much going on -- nobody wants to close the whole thing down at the same time. Maybe some of us meet and throw a ball against the wall when we have someone else who can watch the shop.”

  “Do you all get along pretty well?”

  “Some of us. It’s like with anywhere. You make some friends, you make some enemies, and everyone in between you just, you know... get on with. What brings you back here? I have some earrings that match the hairpin...”

  Isaac, perched just inside Tivon’s cloak, felt his pulse rise as the conversation drifted away from the culture of the market. “Buy the earrings and then tell him how you entertained Mitzi with stories out of the book,” he whispered, hoping Tivon would be able to understand him at that volume, especially with his odd northern accent.

  Luckily, he did, and Tivon made a big production of choosing between the two sets of silver earrings the jeweler showed him. “I was a little worried at first that she wouldn’t feel at home down here, but now I think she’s starting to enjoy herself,” he chatted, his tone far more casual than his tense muscles betrayed to the creature riding in his collar. “And who knows? She may even like me for more than the presents. I read a funny book the other week, and while we were at the games I told her some of the stories. She didn’t always understand the words I was saying, but she looked like she was having a good time.”

  “Of course she was -- you’re a respectable gentleman of the Guard!” Then the jeweler told him the price.

  Isaac was glad that Tivon pretended to haggle to avoid suspicion, even though they both cared more about finding out where the other jeweler was. “You might even know the book, as it’s from around here,” he added after he named a counter price. “Memoirs of the Marketplace. Picked it up last time I was here.”

  Good, thought Isaac. That sounds natural.

  “Oh, yes, yes! An old one, but a classic. About the earrings, I really have to insist on...” and the jeweler went back to talking about prices.

  Tivon counter-offered yet again. “It’s definitely a fun read, but I think most of the stories in the book came out of the author’s head. Imagine someone offering a jeweler twice the price of something to split up a pair of lovers! Sounds like something from a legend. What happened next, they throw themselves off the bridge at the full of the moon?” Here Isaac knew Tivon was speaking from the heart. The guard made no secret that he found the old, “beautiful” tragedies a bit laughable.

  “No, no, the stories, they’re all true.” The jeweler smiled up at him frankly. “Even the one you mentioned. I was there the night Old Grey-Brows got drunk and told a whole roomful of other merchants, even though the man who bought the jewels had made him promise not
to tell. Well, okay, maybe he was lying. I guess we’ll never know. But Nouri was telling the truth when he wrote it down, all those years ago. And I didn’t hear anything about any suicides,” he added. “Probably they both just went off and forgot about each other. It’s been decades. They’d both be growing older surrounded by their families by this point. As you say, life isn’t a legend.”

  Life is weirder than legends, thought the lizard who had spent three years under a curse as a mare, being ridden by the woman he had been cursed for loving, without being able to tell her he had survived.

  “Old Grey-brows?” inquired Tivon.

  “That’s what a lot of us called him,” said the jeweler with a look of nostalgia. “He was my rival for thirty years. He’s gone now, but his daughter Delara still runs his old shop on the other side of the marketplace. Fine woman. Good head for business.”

  “Did he have many daughters?”

  “Just the one... had several sons with his second wife. Much younger than the daughter. Well, there was the daughter who died.” Isaac held his breath, and he was close enough to Tivon’s skin that he could feel the human doing the same. “Think she was about five or six. Very sad.” Human and lizard exhaled with relief, Isaac a little self-conscious at feeling anything but grief at such a sad tale.

  Somewhere in the middle of all this, Tivon and his jeweler managed to settle on a price for Mitzi’s earrings, and then Tivon escaped from the shop. He walked out of the marketplace as quickly as he could and then hid in an alleyway so Isaac could transform.

  “So. Delara. Other side of the marketplace.”

  “Good work, Tivon. That was perfect.”

  Tivon nodded slightly. “Thank you.”

  “Wait for me in the inn,” said Isaac. “I have my own plan to talk to Delara.”

  “I’d love to know how you’re going to get a woman to tell you whether or not she slept with the king,” Tivon commented.

  The wizard simply smirked at him calmly, enjoying his secrets as usual. “Let’s just hope I can do it.”