The Olive Conspiracy Read Free Page A

them, popping the shells open one by one with
wizardry. “Far away from here, across the sea in the north lands. A
young prince was taken, and in his absence, a pretender claimed his
name and his throne. My wizarding order got involved,
and…”
    He’d been telling the story for so long that it
was easy to drone on automatically while still keeping one ear open
for noises outside the restaurant.
    After some time, there was a sound and a knock,
and Yael froze. Isaac transformed, scattering nut shells, and
crawled across the table toward her.
    She eyed him warily.
    He frilled the red dewlap on his throat
flirtatiously. “I’m not even a real lizard. Come on.”
    “ It’s not like I can control it!”
She sighed in exasperation. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for
this. One minute!” she called out to the locked door.
    Yael’s hand was open and waiting for him, even
if her face said otherwise.
    Isaac could feel her goose bumps as he crawled
up her arm. She shivered involuntarily. “I wore this specific tunic
so there would be plenty of places for you to hide in the folds.”
It had a lot more decoration than he was used to seeing on a cook.
“And, obviously, it’s green too.”
    “ That was smart.” He curled up
inside one of the folds, safely out of view.
    Yael took a deep breath. Then she went to the
door and opened it.
    “ Morning, madam!”
    It was the dairy maid. “Oh, morning.” From his
unusual perch, Isaac felt Yael’s chest deflate and
relax.
    Yael helped the dairy maid bring that day’s
supply of milk and cheese into the restaurant. “Macadamias today,
madam?” asked the girl.
    “ Sour orange and macadamia roglit
with every meal,” said Yael, and Isaac grinned. Roglit was the same
thing as rugelach, and he was excited at the prospect. “Or guava
and cheese, now that you’ve brought the cheese.”
    “ You don’t have any ready yet, do
you?” The dairy girl blinked and smiled hopefully.
    “ I don’t even have dough rolled out
yet, child!”
    When the girl left, Isaac stayed in her
clothing while Yael worked. He could easily monitor her mental
state from being so close to her beating heart, and once he
finished the story of his scar he thought of other topics to keep
her mind off their mission. “I’m interested to know how you met
your husband.”
    “ Oh!” she exclaimed in happy
surprise. “Well, years and years ago, down south in the Sugar
Coast. There was a big cooking contest, with chefs from all over
the Coast and other countries. I’d say about half the chefs were
local and half from, you know, Perach, Imbrio, City of Red Clay,
City of Lakes, wherever.”
    “ All the way from Imbrio down
there,” mused Isaac. “But maybe they were already living there for
other reasons.” He was mostly just filling time, still distracting
her.
    “ Yes, there’re some people who go
down to the Sugar Coast and stay there… people who came looking for
the beach lifestyle.” Yael was moving swiftly in many directions at
once, and Isaac snuggled farther into the folds of her tunic. “My
husband and I had never met before when we entered the contest, but
we noticed each other as one of the other Perachis. Then, just
after one of the first events, a couple of local guys went through
some of the foreign booths and wrecked or stole half the
ingredients.”
    “ Oh no!” Isaac was used to his
human conversational partners needing audible reassurances that he
was still there or still listening when they spoke to him in his
lizard form.
    “ I know.
They didn’t like how well some of us did in the first round and
wanted only Sugar Coast competitors,” said Yael. “It could have
meant the end of the contest for both of us, but instead of
competing we decided to combine our resources. By chance, between
ourselves, everything we still had left intact was nearly a perfect
pantry.”
    “ That was very lucky!”
    “ I suppose it shows that the
nationalistic jerks went into it without a