Climbing the Date Palm Page 9

  “I still can’t believe any of this happened. I’m just an engineer!”

  “You’re a very brave one, from what I hear.”

  “I was just standing up for what I thought was justice.”

  “Not everybody does that. It’s very, very easy not to.”

  Isaac stayed until the sun went down, asking Farzin lots of questions about the prison, about the planned execution, and anything else he thought Riv might find useful in planning an attack strategy -- should Shulamit’s quest fail.

  “We’ll save you -- not just because we care about you,” Isaac reassured him, “but because without you, my queen has no heir.”

  “I still can’t believe Kaveh’s promised himself as a breeding stud to save my life.” Farzin shook his head. “Please... tell him that thinking about him is keeping me smiling down here.”

  “I will.” Isaac scrambled back up the wall to the window and slipped through its bars.

  “Wait!” Farzin called after him. “On your way home -- find my mother and tell her what’s happened--” But Isaac had already disappeared, and Farzin slumped with a sigh on his bench of stone.

  ***

  Isaac ran over stones, clay, and dirt until he had cleared the prison, then hurried down the streets and alleyways, looking for a secluded place in which he could transform back into a human unnoticed. So focused was he on watching out for humans that he missed a nebulous gray form creeping around in the shadows behind him.

  The cat had pounced only milliseconds after he realized it was there. With both front paws holding his neck to the ground, it purred in a human voice, “Gotcha! Now I’ll find out what you’re up to.”

  Isaac quickly transformed, leaving the cat’s paws fastened around his neck as he grew into his full height beyond six feet. But it began to transform nearly as quickly as he had, and the next thing he knew, the arms around his neck belonged to a woman, around his age, with long hair and dressed in the clothes of the working class. She was so close he could smell her, cardamom and sesame oil and other cooking smells -- and the fragrance of a woman’s sweat beneath.

  He was disconcerted by how good she smelled. Highly disconcerted. Irritated, even.

  “Hmmm!” she breathed, in that same purring voice as before. “Ain’t you a tall, handsome drink of water. Hey, Serpent-Master, do you have time to show me your snake form?”

  “Sorry, Pussycat -- I already have a snake charmer.” So this is a duel, woman? ran his growling internal monologue. I’m supposed to be impressed by clever speech? Too bad. I can match you blow for blow. You have absolutely no power over me.

  The woman’s mouth broke into a wide grin, and she chuckled ribaldly. “That was great. Just for having such a way with words, I’ll buy you a drink. Come to Mother Cat’s with me. They’re closed for the night, but that’s okay -- I own the place.” She relinquished her hold around his neck and stood back to look at him.

  “Mother Cat’s?” Isaac lifted an eyebrow and gave her a weak smile.

  “I know. Isn’t it an awful name? And inaccurate too -- I’m nobody’s mother. But it was the name when I bought it, and I didn’t want to make waves or attract attention by changing it.”

  “What else do they call you, Not-Mother Cat?”

  “Eshvat. Who are you, and what are you doing here besides not coming home with me? I didn’t think there were any others with animal form in this city -- the old Master who taught me’s been dead many years, and the other woman he taught alongside me left town.”

  “I’m not from here.”

  “Ya think? You’re from somewhere up north, aren’t you? With that hair?”

  “Yes, I’m from the north.”

  “What were you doing in the prison?”

  “What prison?”

  “Very funny. Nothing can creep in the dark places without being seen like a cat. I know you came from the prison.”

  “Since you know everything, why don’t you tell me?” Isaac folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, focusing his blue-eyed stare on her as if it were a weapon.

  “I think you came from the cell of that engineer,” she replied promptly, “who built the bridge.”

  “What do you think of the king’s decision?”

  “I’m a business owner -- what can I think?” Eshvat threw up her hands in defeat, jangling the bracelets that hung from both her wrists, and looked at him innocently. “Of course I’m loyal to the king. It’s not my fault if a stray cat that I feed sometimes steals my leftovers and drags them over to the men on the bridge.” She shook her head as if in exasperation, her lips pursed.

  “Do you also have a problem with your apricot supply going rotten before you have a chance to serve them?” Isaac inquired. An idea had crept into his mind about Kaveh’s story of the woman who had thrown spoiled fruit and heckled the king, and then disappeared completely. It would be awfully easy to do that as a cat, slipping here and there between the legs of the crowd.

  “You were at the royal wedding?”

  “No, I arrived only this morning.”

  Eshvat’s eyes widened. “What’s your secret, Serpent-Master?”

  “Who says I have one?”

  “I do. I say you have nothing but secrets.”

  “The prince sends his regards.”

  She grinned and nodded slowly. “I think I understand. Tell him to be careful, this prince of yours. Love is delicious until it burns your tongue.”

  “Spoken like a true cook.”

  “I promise you’d like my food.”

  “I should get back to my colleague.”

  “Some other time, then. Look me up when you’re lonely for your own kind.”

  With a last, deep look into his eyes, she slipped back into her cat form and disappeared into the night.

  Isaac walked the rest of the way back to the inn with a cross expression on his face, missing Rivka fiercely. Somewhere along his walk, he plucked a cat hair off the shoulder of his cloak.

  Chapter 12: If Only I Were Not Unworthy

  “He compared you to a rabid goat?”

  “It’s really not that big of a deal. He’s said stuff like that before.” Kaveh looked away into the palace’s inner courtyard and fingered the rim of his teacup. “He just...”

  Shulamit hastened to return the conversation to a less sensitive topic. There was something specific she wanted to know, anyway. “The books say that you and your brothers all went to secondary school once you were old enough, instead of learning from tutors like I did. Wasn’t your father worried something would happen to you?”

  They were sitting on one of the shaded porches of the palace’s inner courtyard with a pot of tea between them. The tea had gone cold, but the conversation was still piping along.

  “He’s far too confident in his reputation. I mean, I did get beaten up, but that was before they knew who I was. His power is absolute, accepted like... like the blue of the sky, and pretty much unquestioned -- that’s probably why he reacted so badly to being challenged by Farzin. I’m still amazed he had the courage to do that. By holy Sunrise, he’s the most incredible man--” Kaveh’s hands clutched at his chest.

  “The other students at the school,” Shulamit interrupted deftly and not for the first time that day, “I read that they weren’t just from the nobility, but also from wealthy commoner families. What’s your father’s attitude about that? Did he want you to choose your friends from among the noble-born?”

  “Actually, no,” answered the prince. “He always taught us that if a commoner amasses wealth honestly, it’s an indication that he’s fit for the upper classes. I’m a little bit ashamed to admit that I never really questioned it until Farzin came back to build the bridge. He’d take poor men from the working class out to dinner with us, and, honestly, they sounded just like us, sometimes... and it made me wonder, if Farzin hadn’t been born into the nobility, even with that great brain of his, would his family have been able to afford to send him to a school fit for teaching him?”
>
  “So your father’s opinion of the poor among the common folk...” prodded the queen, holding out her hand.

  “He thinks they have flaws that keep them poor. That day we finished the bridge, he said some pretty stupid things to Farzin--”

  She nodded. “That pretty much reflects what I’ve read about him. It doesn’t sound like he respects poor commoners, but rich ones pass muster.”

  “You’d be right about that. Whereas Farzin--”

  “In other words, if he respected a woman greatly, so much so that if he put her opinion above his own, she’d probably--” Noises from the center of the courtyard attracted her attention, and she stopped midsentence to jump up and squeal, “They’re back!”

  Kaveh followed her over to the recently landed dragon. Tivon had already dismounted and was stretching his limbs, and Aviva was standing by, ready with cold drinks. “Isaac,” Shulamit asked with a giggle, “why do you have a garland of flowers around your neck?”

  “Because your sweetheart is a weirdo,” growled the dragon affectionately. He poked at the queen’s nose with one claw, then transformed back to human form. “Where’s my--”

  A blur of blonde hair and leather armor cartwheeled across the green and smashed into him with a hug. Rivka whispered into his ear before pulling away.

  “I missed you too, Mighty One. That was impressive, just now. I love to watch you work.” It had always been clear to Shulamit that some of Isaac’s love was flavored with hero worship.

  “I was going to say that he’s off training, but I think that’s a little bit obvious,” said Shulamit.

  “For the rescue?” asked Isaac. “What about the peaceful solution? Nothing yet?”

  “I do have one idea... but I want to hear all about your trip too.”

  By this point, a group had gathered, so the men told them the two things they wanted to know the most. “In regards to the marriage of Queen Shulamit to Prince Kaveh -- King Jahandar has granted us his enthusiastic cooperation,” said Tivon.

  “Mazel tov!” said a number of voices.

  One hurdle down, but am I ready for the next one? Shulamit wondered, relieved and slightly nauseated with panic at the same time. She smiled weakly at her courtiers.

  “As for Farzin,” said Isaac, looking pointedly at Kaveh, “he’s fine, for now. They don’t torture him in prison, and he wanted you to know that thoughts of you bring him comfort.”

  Kaveh’s face shook with emotion. “I wish I’d been there with you.”

  “Now that we’ve satisfied everyone’s immediate curiosity,” Isaac continued, “Tivon and I would like to disappear into the kitchen and replenish ourselves.”

  “You may have been flying all day, but I was doing backflips. I need food too.” Rivka trudged along behind them.

  By the time Shulamit joined them in Aviva’s kitchen-house, Tivon had finished eating and was off to go see to his own affairs. “Did Rivka already fill you in on what she’s turned up on Jahandar’s battle philosophy?” She kissed Aviva, who was puttering around her pantry mostly ignoring them, on the cheek and then sat down across from Rivka and Isaac at the table.

  “No,” said Isaac, flashing an impish look at his wife.

  “We talked about something totally different,” said Rivka. “Isaac met another wizard over there. Some woman who can turn herself into a cat.”

  “Yes, and she seemed to think I was her prey,” Isaac grumbled. His brow was furrowed and he was frowning, but his unnerved expression melted away into relief when Rivka draped both of her muscular arms over his shoulders and rested her head against his.

  Shulamit giggled. “Okay. Well, anyway, while you were gone, I ran out of books to read about the king, so I started looking at all the other books, leafing through them quickly to see if I could turn up any time he was mentioned briefly, even if the book or chapter wasn’t really about him in particular.”

  “All the other books?”

  Shulamit nodded. “I don’t want a war.”

  “I guess you don’t!” Isaac began peeling another litchi. “So, nu, what did you find?”

  “Hardly anything, but....”

  Then she picked up a piece of parchment that had been sitting on her lap, and slid it across the table to him. He read out loud in his sonorous bass voice,

  “My love, my love, her eyes are figs,

  Deeply dark, dripping with sugar, large and moist

  Do they weep for me, that I am imperfect?

  They weep for me, for I am unworthy,

  Though I wear gold on my head, I am unworthy.

  My love, my love, her breasts are melons--

  He paused to lift an eyebrow at Shulamit, who was giggling quietly. She grinned sheepishly and fell silent.

  Round and sweet and yet locked away behind the rind of cloth

  That she calls a dress. I will never taste

  Of their sweetness, for I am unworthy,

  Though I wear robes of silk, I am unworthy.

  She is a bird, and she has flown.

  She knows compassion and truth and godly wisdom.

  She knows justice and mercy alike,

  And she has found me wanting,

  Though I am earnest, I am unworthy.

  She is a bird, covered in jewels,

  And in some beautiful shell I have never touched,

  She keeps a pearl I will never kiss,

  For I am unworthy, and she is lost these many years.

  She said I am heartless, and thus, unworthy.

  If she had only stayed to teach me

  All those years before we were grown.

  If she were to return I should be her slave,

  Though my house is a glorious house,

  She knows Right as I only know Myself

  I would give Myself solely to her.

  If only I were not unworthy.

  “I don’t understand,” he added when he had finished.

  A little nervously, Shulamit explained. “This poem is supposedly, possibly about King Jahandar, back when he was a teenager. In fact, depending on whether or not you find one of the sources credible, it might have been written by Jahandar himself.”

  “He wrote that when he was Crown Prince?”

  “No, he wrote it years later -- after Kaveh was born, in fact,” said the young queen. “He went through a phase of poetic excess between Kaveh’s mother passing away, and his marriage to his second wife.”

  “That must be who she was, then. She did come back.”

  “It can’t be. He had only known Queen Maheen for a month before he married her.”

  “And we all saw how long that lasted,” Rivka snarked.

  “Then who’s the woman in the poem?” asked Isaac.

  “That’s just it. Nobody knows.” Shulamit leaned across the table at him, her eyes big and earnest. “But I feel like if we can find her, if we can piece together enough clues and figure out who she is, she seems like she’d be somebody who’d sympathize with Farzin and his men on the bridge. Justice and compassion and mercy...”

  “And he’d listen to her.” Isaac nodded.

  “If she’s even still alive,” said Rivka. “And if the poem’s not fictional.”

  “Right,” Shulamit admitted.

  “We really don’t know anything,” said Rivka.

  “That’s not entirely true,” said Shulamit. “From my reading, and from talking to Kaveh, it doesn’t sound like he’d give this kind of respect to a poor commoner. So she’s either a rich commoner or a member of the nobility. Or foreign royalty, I guess. That’s always a possibility.”

  “Surely, Malkeleh, Queenling, I don’t have to remind you that the king might be a hypocrite,” said Isaac. “Kings fall in love with scullery maids, despite their own professed beliefs.”

  “That’s true, but someone as obsessed with his own power and prestige as King Jahandar -- I feel like if he’d gotten himself into a situation where he felt that someone who was supposed to be that far beneath him were his moral super
ior and held that much power over him, he’d lash out in anger instead of worshipping the ground she walked on.”

  Isaac lifted an eyebrow. “Good point. What are your ideas?”

  “Rumors,” said the queen. “I have to catalog all the women whose names have ever been linked with his.”

  “We know his two wives are out, Kaveh’s mother and the Lady Maheen.”

  “The poem says he never lay down with her,” Aviva added, “if that bit about the shell and the pearl means what it would mean if I said it.”

  Shulamit fought a sudden impulse to hide behind her own braids.

  “Or at least that he didn’t by the time he wrote the poem,” Isaac reminded them. “She could have returned after he divorced Maheen. Maybe she even had something to do with that.”

  The queen shook her head. “Kaveh says his father’s devotion to romantic love is in earnest. He doesn’t cheat, and he’s not a hypocrite about it. And, as hard as it is to get that man to think about anything besides Farzin, I’ve been grilling him all day, and there really weren’t any spare women hanging around. Everyone in that palace is in each other’s space, and he’d have known.”

  Isaac nodded, digesting the information. “Shula, if it doesn’t feel like an intrusion, I’d like to see your notes after we finish up in here.”

  Shulamit nodded.

  “As for my part of the research,” said Rivka, “his military philosophy’s exactly what I’d expect from a petty dictator in a very small nation. He tries to make up for their size by beefing up their ego--”

  “Which is bad news for our rescue efforts,” Shulamit interjected.

  “We swoop in there with swords waving to rescue that engineer -- he’ll see it as an act of war,” Rivka continued. “No way would he believe for a moment Farzin was ever the point. He’d think the whole workers’ wages thing was just an excuse for Shulamit to show off how much more powerful we are over here than he is, and he’d retaliate, even to his own great loss.”

  “He loves his City,” said Isaac softly, “even to the point that to have it be called Great, he would destroy what makes it so.”