The seven girls accepted Belinda with cheerful good grace and set about helping her gather up blankets and pillow, washcloth and towel and other necessities from the storage shelves, to make her bed shelf-room comfortable.
Just before dinner, the boys on watch duty all around the weavers' shop were relieved by the next shift, and returned to report that the couple had stayed in their shop all day. Merrigan and Aubrey's relief was short-lived when the oldest of the group, Lars, added, "But there's some mean group of men what looks like they're made out o' stone—know what I mean? They been going in and out o' the back all day, hauling away sacks and crates and such. Just put somethin' on their shoulders and walk away, and they don't come back for hours. Don't know where they gone. Must 'av been a long walk."
"The city gates." Aubrey muttered several guttural words under his breath, and for a moment his angular face took on a stern, chiseled look that made Merrigan feel slightly queasy.
The same queasy feeling she got when Belinda's features had shifted back and forth.
There were times before her widowhood, when she had raged against what she considered the injustice of magic and declared herself allergic to magic. What if the repetition had made that true, and she was allergic to the spells cast on Belinda? Yet if that were true, was there a spell on Aubrey, too? Yet who would cast a spell on a mere apprentice?
That thought caught on something at the back of her mind. The problem was she had too much to worry over to pursue the hazy ah-hah feeling trying to strike a light in that dark, brooding tangle.
Before Merrigan could recover her breath, Aubrey gestured for the boys to follow him, and dashed out of the warehouse. Most of the other children and adults who might have noticed were busy setting the table or herding younger children to wash up for dinner. Nobody asked any questions, and that was another nice thing about living here in the orphanage warehouse: people helped and cared, but they didn't intrude.
Truth be told, despite their insistence on being too optimistic for common sense and taking up responsibilities no one had put on them, Merrigan somewhat admired the odd assortment of folk who ran the orphanage. Even more odd, despite their noise and smells and uncanny ability to get dirty ten seconds after putting on clean clothes, she even liked the children. Most of them, anyway. She was actually rather fond of her seven girls. They even giggled when she referred to them as her dwarves, because they were much too clever and mature to be merely little girls.
Aubrey came back just as Nasius and Robard were preparing to send someone to look for him and the boys. The boys were all excited and chattering and filthy-sweaty from running. Aubrey, on the other hand, looked exhausted and as stricken-pale as a man who had seen his own specter standing on a freshly dug grave. All but for two angry red spots in his bony cheeks and a growing fire in his eyes.
"What happened?" Merrigan asked him, when he returned from washing up and changing his shirt. The noise from all the children gathering around the tables gave them some privacy.
"The shop is empty. The weavers are at dinner in the Scepter Rose, where the entire city seems to be stopping by to congratulate them on a job well done." He snorted. Quite eloquent expression of his feelings. "I have boys posted at every door and window so they can't sneak out without us knowing."
"All those men carrying bags and crates—"
"Carrying away all the cloth and gold. Nobody noticed a man walk away from the shop, they'd only notice wagons. These people are entirely too clever. It's too well-planned."
"They've done this before." She shuddered, thinking about the gold and all that rare cloth, a lifetime of collecting, that Gilbrick had traded for nothing but embarrassment. His coffers would be greatly reduced, and he would have a brutal struggle to rebuild his reserves, with his reputation so thoroughly destroyed. The thought of Gilda suffering because of her father's stupidity infuriated her. Why did women have to suffer for the blindness and obsessions of their menfolk?
Ah, Leffisand. If I ever loved you, I have quite gotten over it. If only I had told Nanny Tulip to shut up, and had been wise enough to love Bryan.
"They'll do it again." Aubrey's voice cracked. "It isn't enough to try to stop Gilda and Master Gilbrick from shaming themselves tomorrow. We have to stop the weavers before they flee beyond the tales of what happened here. They might even cross the ocean, to a country that won't hear about what happened here for years, if ever." He sagged back against the wall. "What do we do?"
"I ... have some friends in Seafoam," Merrigan said. "I made the princess's wedding dress, and I know the captain of a ship. Maybe ..." She shrugged, unsure what she was about to propose. Maybe this was more of Clara's interfering magic, nudging her to get involved in things that were none of her business and certainly none of her responsibility?
A surge of heat that resolved into anger yanked the words from her tongue. Was this what had been happening all along? What had guided her steps? Some magic making her help people? Had it been fooling her into thinking she was looking out for her own interests when she took the side of people she had come to like? Had she been forced to become a champion for others?
If she could have, Merrigan thought she might pack up and flee this town tonight, just like the weavers. In fact, maybe she should look for them. How hard would it be to track them down at the most expensive and popular inn? She could tell them she knew their tricks, and she wanted in. She could offer to use her skills and connections as a seamstress to royalty to add more believability to their story. Then when they were comfortable in their next scheme to steal from some trusting, good-hearted yet gullible innocent, she could reveal all and—
"Do you have any friends left at Gilbrick's warehouses?" she hurried to say, to cut off the full-blown plan screaming through her mind. It made her head hurt, and her stomach twist.
"Several friends," Aubrey said, frowning. "Why?"
"Any of the messengers? Anyone willing to leave immediately and ride all the way to Seafoam?"
"What if they don't go to Seafoam? There are a dozen other countries with three times as many ports they can sail from."
"Yes, but if the princess of Seafoam and the family that runs the premier inn in Windward and the captain of one of the largest ships in the port all join together and ask port masters and captains of ocean-crossing vessels up and down the coast to look for the weavers and not take them on board ..." She smiled as she let Aubrey finish the thought for her.
"Mistress Mara." He choked and tears brightened his eyes, strangely at odds with the fiercely exultant expression that made his face once again, just for a few seconds, look chiseled and determined and handsome. "You are a treasure. You are a heroine. You are better than ten faerie godmothers all rolled into one." He picked her up by her shoulders and kissed both her cheeks.
Merrigan quite lost her breath, her toes dangling several inches off the ground and a strange tingling, buzzing sensation fizzing through her blood and bones. Aubrey put her down and she sagged back against the wall while he dashed away, shouting for someone to bring him pen and ink and paper.
What just happened? Bib demanded, his voice loud in Merrigan's head. Never mind—it just showed up in my pages.
How? Merrigan nearly asked the question aloud. She staggered to her sewing room, blessedly quiet now.
"Magic," he said, his voice muffled, coming from behind the curtain of her bed shelf. "Two magic spells colliding. Meaning Aubrey—"
"Is under a spell too." She settled down on her bed and rested a hand on Bib's open pages. "So ... did it do anything to my spell, or was that just the feeling of two hitting each other, nothing changed?"
"If I miss my guess..." His pages riffled, nearly trapping her hand for a moment. "Sorry about that. It helps if I do a little actual physical searching. I know that makes no real sense, but it seems to help me sift things through, sort them out and ... ah...hmm..."
"That didn't sound very definite or certain."
"If I miss my guess, there's an undercurrent
to both your spells that matches."
"Meaning?" She might have shouted the question, might have picked up Bib and tossed him across the room, but Merrigan couldn't get through the unsteady sensation bubbling through her. All that from a couple of kisses? They weren't even on her lips, so they really didn't count, did they? They were brotherly, for all that Aubrey was definitely exuberant and grateful and celebrating.
"There's healing magic in royal hands, and even stronger magic in royal kisses, in the right circumstances. If I miss my guess, the breaking of your curse—excuse me, the breaking of the spell to reform your character and destiny, has a codicil for a standard spell-breaking clause."
"Meaning?" A tiny flicker of heat shoved away some of the unbalanced feeling.
"You, Princess Merrigan, were just kissed by a prince. If Aubrey's heart wasn't totally fixated on Gilda, and he had kissed you on the lips, he might have broken your spell."
"Well ..." She wondered why the news left her feeling flat, a little sad, but not infuriated, cheated, insulted, as it would have a year ago. "I like Gilda too much to take her prince away from her ... Wait." Her head cleared a little more. "Aubrey is a prince?"
"All the indications confirm it. The ripples in the magic, the sense there is more to him than he appears, his general goodness and honesty and leadership skills. The best kind of prince. A prince under a curse. It's always the good ones who are targets of curses."
"You don't think ... What was it Gilda said about the curse on King Auberg's missing son?"
"It had something to do with seeing ... I think." Bib chuckled. "I seem to be affected by the spell as much as everyone. It seems to be a misdirection spell, an adaptation of you-don't-see-me and you-don't-remember-me."
So she wasn't ill or suffering some sort of aberration the few times Aubrey's features changed, just for a second or two. The question was, what should she do about it? Could she do anything?
Why do I keep thinking the problems around me are my concern?
She spent the dinner hour writing several letters to Warden and Dulcibella, to Quincy and Rosa, Miles and Elli, explaining the situation and asking for their help. As soon as Aubrey had her settled with writing materials and assigned two of her girls to make sure she was fed and no one bothered her, he had run off to Gilbrick's warehouse, to track down his friends among the messengers. When he didn't come back right away, Merrigan feared he had run into trouble even getting in, much less finding his friends. Or worse, everyone he approached laughed at him, mocked him, refused to listen. She nearly cried out in relief when the familiar face of Bigsley peered around the doorway. That evening when she had met him on the hill looking down on Alliburton felt like a lifetime ago. He informed Merrigan there had been a scuffle among the messengers for the privilege of taking the messages to Seafoam, once Aubrey explained what had happened. Not all the senior apprentices believed him, but they had at least given him the benefit of the doubt and went off to check the weavers' shop and verify his story. Aubrey was still trying to convince Gilda to refuse to put on the magical clothes, when word came back that the shop was indeed utterly empty.
All three warehouse managers were at that moment, according to Bigsley, confronting the weaver and his wife at the Scepter Rose. Bigsley was of the opinion that they would be nowhere to be found, and he had been entrusted by Aubrey with getting the letters from Merrigan and heading out on the road immediately. The word needed to get up and down the coast to keep the tricksters from even approaching a ship ready to cross the ocean.
"He loves her incredibly, doesn't he?" Belinda remarked, once Bigsley had raced away on his horse. She and Merrigan stood in the doorway of the orphanage warehouse, looking out into the darkening streets, where shadows grew long and were swallowed up in encroaching twilight.
"Who?" Merrigan pulled her thoughts back from Seafoam. She wished she could ride with Bigsley, to see her friends again. She knew the spell would keep her from retracing her steps, and not for the first time she regretted leaving Seafoam at all.
"Aubrey. He loves the merchant's daughter. That's an awful lot of worry and work and fury for just admiration." She sighed and followed Merrigan back into the massive building, where the sounds of bedtime activities trickled out toward them.
Merrigan liked the giggles of children as they played their games to delay the moment when they had to climb under their blankets and close their eyes and mouths. When she moved on, she would miss the tedium. The comfortable routines. Even, oddly enough, the smells of sweaty little boys with twenty different stains on their faces and clothes. The little girls who insisted on climbing into her lap during the bedtime story, making her legs fall asleep with the weight of their hot little bodies.
"I wish ... I wish I weren't quite so picky," Belinda confided in her as they settled down in the sewing room, just the two of them, with a pot of sweet tea, so heavy with spices the spoon almost stood up in it. For the next half hour, while the sewing girls helped bathe the younger girls, they had a few moments to themselves. Since she was new to the orphanage, she hadn't been assigned duties yet, other than sewing.
"Picky?" Merrigan had to struggle to focus on what she was saying. "Picky about what?"
"His name was Bayl. He was five years older than me, and at the time, I thought that was incredibly old. I had just decided that I wasn't going to settle for the first younger son prince who came calling. I liked him. I think I liked him far more than anyone else I had ever met. Father didn't think much of him, since he was the fourth prince. At that time, he still had some hopes that I could make a marriage alliance, joining two kingdoms together." She sighed, offering Merrigan a lopsided little smile. "I liked Bayl enough that it actually hurt a little when I turned him down. Father was pleased—can you believe it? Actually pleased when I turned down a marriage offer. He wanted me to hold out for a second-born prince from the kingdoms surrounding ours."
"They found other princesses?" Merrigan guessed.
"They found enchanted goose girls and swan maidens and millers' daughters who spun straw into gold. When Father started encouraging third-born sons, I held out for Bayl. For a while."
"He found someone else?"
"His family's kingdom fell under some awful enchantment. Everyone who has tried to get into the palace, then the capitol city, and finally anyone trying to go within a day's journey of the capitol ..." Belinda shrugged. "They never come back. They're trapped."
"Sylvanglade?" Merrigan whispered.
"How did you know? Yes, Prince Bayl of Sylvanglade." She sighed. "Father got to the point where he insisted I had to take a prince, any prince, no matter how poor his kingdom. All that mattered was royal blood, and not the brain or the personality or even the cleanliness of whoever showed up claiming to be a prince. Then he threatened me with enchantments, to make the princes prove they were worthy. At one point, he decided to put me and all my sisters into the enchantment, thinking that we'd have better luck with a traveling band of younger sons, working together. He would let them choose which of us the princes wanted to marry, without letting them know who was the heir to the throne. Oh, were my sisters furious! Bythia was furious enough—she has some magic of her own—she threatened to put a curse on me, as if it was all my fault the rest of them would be forced to marry someone they didn't like. Well, now they all knew how it felt to be just a prize hanging from the highest branch, waiting for anyone who could jump high enough to snatch us." Belinda burst into tears.
Merrigan patted the girl's shoulder, unsure what to say to soothe her. After a while, she rubbed her back, then moved on to wrapping an arm around her. Fortunately, Belinda's tears stopped soon after she turned and snuggled her wet face into Merrigan's shoulder. Even more fortunately, she stopped crying before the other girls came back from helping with evening baths, so there were no uncomfortable questions.
"How old are you?" Merrigan asked, under cover of the chatter and giggles as the seven girls scrambled into their nightgowns and robes and slippers, bef
ore heading to the main room for story time.
"Twenty-five. Yes, I know, I'm ancient for an unmarried princess." She sighed. Then for a moment she grew thoughtful. The disguising spell rippled just enough that her own face showed through the mask of childishness. "How old are you? And what's your real name?"
"My—my real name?"
"Oh, there's so much magic soaked into me, after all this time, I can tell when someone else is tangled up in a few spells. I figure you're royalty of some kind. The nastiest, most complicated spells get wrapped around us. Something about inherent magic in royal blood, I think. One of the tutors for Bythia and Barbarina, when they were first learning magic, had a funny theory. He believed there were some elitist majjians out there, or at least they wanted to be majjians, who were trying to dictate who got magic and who could use magic. So anyone who is born with magic potential, even if it's just to have magical things happen to us, we become targets. To somehow control all that power." She shrugged. "It makes sense to me, I suppose, but what do I know about magic? I wasn't allowed to learn useful things. I was just a prince trap."
"Aren't we all?" Merrigan muttered, thinking of Bryan. She found it wryly amusing, in a sad sort of way, that she and Belinda had the same sort of experience with the royal brothers. Those who knew better didn't think the boys who loved them were worthy.
"Besides," the other princess continued, "you have a magical book—that has to mean you're a princess, at the very least."
"Yes." Merrigan felt that queasy-yet-light sensation wash through her. How long since she had told anyone her real name, besides Bib? "I used to be Princess Merrigan of Avylyn. I was married to the king of Carlion, but when he ... well, honestly, my late husband was an idiot, one of the most selfish ... well, I thought I loved him. He hung himself in his own lies. Only a fool believes his own lies, don't you think? When Leffisand died, he left me in such a mess and this is what happened when I tried to fix it." She gestured at herself, from head to foot.
The Kindness Curse Page 24