Her face warmed with pleasure as she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. He escorted her through the wide archway into the next room of the royal apartments. They stopped in front of a massive wardrobe, with three sets of doors. King Auberg bowed Merrigan into a chair, set Bib down next to her, then tugged a long chain from inside his shirt and unlocked the middle set of doors. This section of the wardrobe was all shelves full of carved wooden boxes. He brought down one long box, about eight inches tall, and set it on a footstool in front of Merrigan, then took a key from a hidden panel in the left door and unlocked the box. Inside were five tiaras, varying in grandeur and beauty.
"These belonged to my beloved wife," he explained, after bowing his head over the box and its contents for several moments. "I intend to give them to Gilda for her birthdays, and when she and Aubrey have their first child, but I believe my Rosamund would be pleased to donate one to the cause of defending a princess in distress." He beckoned for Merrigan to join him.
The crown they chose was a deceptively simple one, of pink gold woven into a wreath. Emerald dust spotted the leaves, and tiny flowers made of chips of sapphires and rubies peeked out from among the leaves, creating a rainbow shimmer when the light hit it just right. Auberg smiled with a hint of tears as he raised the circlet and nodded to Merrigan. She tugged off the cap that covered her braided hair, bowed her head, and her heart seemed to stutter in those few seconds before the delicate weight of the wreath rested on her head.
"Ah, yes," Auberg whispered. He rested a gentle hand on her shoulder and guided her a few steps to the right. Another key opened the right set of wardrobe doors, and Merrigan flinched as she was confronted with a full-length mirror. She tried to focus just on the circlet in her hair, but she couldn't help noticing ...
"Bib, you were right," she whispered. In awe, she touched her hair. Dark silver and sable had replaced the thin mass of snowy white. When she washed her hair, she tried not to look at it, doing everything by feel. Granted, there weren't any mirrors in the orphanage, and she hadn't missed them. Her braids had thickened from bodice laces to plump sausages. She wondered that she hadn't noticed the change when she brushed and braided her hair every morning and evening.
Merrigan knew she was wasting time, so she turned her gaze away, but not before she saw other changes in her appearance. Belinda was indeed right—she stood taller, straighter, and had fewer wrinkles. Her nose didn't look quite so much like a hawk's beak. Her jaws weren't nutcrackers. And no warts.
"They might just believe me," she said, her voice crackling a little, as she turned to face King Auberg. "When the princes track down Belinda. When I take my cap off and they see the crown, they just might believe me when I tell them I'm a princess."
"Of course they will. Because you are indeed a princess. A real princess." His smile went crooked and he patted her shoulder. "I daresay, more of a princess now than you ever were."
Merrigan didn't want to think too long or hard on just what he meant. Like so many other things she had thought about and learned since Clara cursed her, she knew she wouldn't like these new revelations about herself.
By this time, everyone in the city seemed to know Mistress Mara on sight, friend of Prince Aubrey and Princess Gilda. Merrigan's face and neck actually hurt from smiling and nodding greetings to everyone who called her by name on the long walk back to the orphanage. She wished she had accepted the carriage King Auberg had offered her, but she had decided to walk to attract as little attention as possible. That had been wasted effort.
"Look on the bright side," Belinda offered, when she and Merrigan and Bib were alone just before dinner. "You proved that it won't easily fall out of your hair." She lightly reached up to touch the circlet, still sitting securely among Merrigan's braids.
Merrigan wrinkled up her nose at her, and a moment later the two shared some giggles. Ordinarily, she wouldn't be quite so lighthearted about being responsible for the lovely old circlet, especially when it was very obvious it had deep sentimental value for King Auberg. However, Bib was the perfect guardian for the treasure when Merrigan wouldn't be wearing it. Just like other things he had hidden in his pages for safekeeping, the circlet would be safe, with no damage to it or his pages.
Their mirth buoyed them up against the depressing news that came the next afternoon, when a guardsman in palace livery delivered a thick packet of papers from the king. Of the fourteen princes who had been hunting Belinda, nine had come to the royal wedding. Two had targeted princesses who were the only siblings of unmarried kings, meaning they could inherit the throne. Both princesses were rather long in the tooth and hadn't been considered beauties even in their heyday. Belinda declared that served her unwanted suitors right. Seven lingered in Alliburton. King Auberg had assigned trustworthy men to keep track of the princes, and he promised to send daily reports on their activities.
Merrigan thought they were very well off, considering the circumstances. Forewarned was forearmed. Then Belinda picked up another piece of paper from the packet. This was a list of royalty currently without a throne. King Auberg's secretary who had compiled the information noted that while the princes, princesses, dukes and other assorted nobility were of no threat to the runaway princess, he thought it worthwhile to watch their activities until they left Alliburton.
"Oh, no, no, no," Belinda murmured, staring at several lines at the top of the list.
"What?" Merrigan thought she might have to tear the paper to get it out of the other princess's hand.
Belinda's eyes filled with tears. She handed Merrigan the paper, slumped back in her seat, covered her face with her hands, and trembled as the tears dripped through her fingers.
Merrigan read through the list. Thanks to interfering Fae and enchanters, evil wizards and other majjians, the list of royalty deprived of their thrones stayed relatively short. They won someone else's throne, regained their own kingdom, vanished, or they renounced their thrones altogether, to pursue a simple life. She read the list three times, her gaze skipping over a specific line.
Stop being such a ninny. For good measure, she clenched the fist not holding the paper, digging her nails into her palm.
Chapter Fifteen
The pain helped, surprisingly. Merrigan read Sylvanglade, with a squeezing sensation around her heart. Then she saw Prince Bayl's name and understood entirely. Poor Belinda. How it had to pain her, to know the prince she loved was in Alliburton. She never saw him during the wedding festivities. Even if he had looked right at her, the disguise spells interfered. She tried to think of something she could do or say to distract Belinda, to—
Wait. Had she read correctly? She checked the list.
Prince Bryan of Sylvanglade was also on the list.
The brothers were traveling together.
Merrigan put the paper down and smoothed it out flat on the table for good measure. The slight trembling in her hands, the hollow sensation in her chest, made absolutely no sense whatsoever. What was wrong with her?
"I wonder how soon dinner will be ready," she murmured, and reached over to pat Belinda's shoulder. "We both need something in our stomachs, or at least some hot, strong tea, with plenty of honey. It's been a trying day for both of us."
"Oh, Merrigan," Belinda whispered, and knuckled her eyes dry as she tried to smile. "I am so thankful you're my friend. What would I ever do without you?"
Merrigan bit back a tart response that Belinda was in a sorry state indeed, to consider her a friend and be grateful.
You're too hard on yourself, Mi'Lady, Bib retorted, his voice stern and bracing in her mind. You've put yourself in the arrow's sight, so to speak, for her sake. Only a true friend would do that. I daresay you've become worthy of that pretty bauble you're wearing.
Dear Bib, always thinking better of me than I deserve.
The shivering sensation in her chest stopped. Merrigan managed to laugh at herself for nearly forgetting to put her cap back on, to hide the circlet, before she and Belinda went to the kitchen
for that tea they both needed.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE decoy plan was that it did them no good if the princes hunting Belinda didn't come close enough to actually see Merrigan. After three days, King Auberg's men reported that the princes were still in the city despite most of the other wedding guests having departed. The "most" qualifier bothered Merrigan. Belinda had whispered Bayl's name several times in her sleep. The trio decided they had to do something. Bad enough that rainy, sloppy fall weather kept the children indoors, but waiting for the enemy to wander in was nerve-wracking.
"You need bait," Nasius said, when they listened to Bib and brought the old philosopher into the plan and the team. "Send up a beacon, so to speak."
Belinda shivered a little, and her throat convulsed in anticipation.
The words didn't have to be said. Merrigan was thankful that Nasius had joined them in the plotting. It was left to him to have the largest cooking cauldron filled with dried peas and put on to soak, to make the richest pot of pea soup the warehouse orphanage had ever cooked. Belinda blanched when the pot of soaked peas and seasonings and chunks of salt pork went on the fire. When she broke out in a sweat, Merrigan checked, and found the water had started bubbling. The ripples of convulsions in Belinda's throat made Merrigan queasy, just watching her.
They tried to sketch new clothes designs, just to calm their nerves. Sewing required steady hands they didn't have. The squeals of the children at their games made them jump, even though it was pleasant to hear them laughing and shouting and jumping and running into the shelf frames. The drumming of the downpour outside made pleasant, almost soothing counterpoint to the sound. From the corner of her eye, Merrigan saw several little bodies lift up the curtains over her and Belinda's bed shelves to climb in and hide.
"No. Not happening today. Not a chance," she muttered, getting up from the long sewing table with enough force to knock her chair backwards, and earned a shriek from Belinda. "Sorry," she threw back over her shoulder, and stomped over to the shelves. She yanked up the curtain and saw two little girls just sitting there, eyes wide, and getting wider as they waited for punishment to descend on them. The little white-blond girl clutched at the hands of her dusky-skinned partner-in-mischief.
The angry words died in Merrigan's mouth, and left a bitter taste behind. She could only imagine the fury twisting her face. What made the neatness of her bed more important than the children having fun? They were stuck indoors. It was cold outside, sloppy wet, and the noise of the rain drumming on the high roof had made lesson time difficult.
"You don't want to be on the bottom shelf," she said. "They won't expect you to hide higher than your beds."
Their giggles washed away a knot forming in her belly. Totally inexplicable tears blurred her eyes when they held up their arms, asking for help climbing up two shelves higher.
Belinda shook off her growing nausea to come over and help the little ones hide. She slipped coming down from the shelf above Merrigan's bed, and her left foot swung out and then in, trying to find purchase. It banged against the magic box, which had been disturbed by the little girls scrambling across Merrigan's bedding.
"I'm an idiot," Merrigan said, staring at the box while Belinda finally got her foot back into the notch in the shelf support bar and climbed down.
She snatched up the box and carried it over to the sewing table. Bib lay surrounded by a new batch of books sent over from King Auberg's library. The magic book was so busy absorbing more knowledge, he didn't notice Merrigan right away.
"We never thoroughly explored Morton's gifts, did we?" Merrigan said, tipping up the lid. She reached in and carefully removed the things she had used before, especially the sticks for the magically renewing fire.
"If you mean we never found the bottom of the box, no." Bib explained the box and the story behind it to Belinda, while Merrigan dug, removing one thing after another. Most items on top were her own, non-magical, simply put in the box because it could hold anything and everything.
Every time Merrigan found something she didn't recognize, she put it on Bib's open pages for him to analyze. A ring that, according to the ancient writing on both sides of the band, allowed the wearer to understand the language of the birds. Limited to northern climate birds, Bib added after further reading. Another ring for southern birds. A third ring for breathing underwater. A headscarf that improved hearing. Socks that allowed the wearer to leap as high as the third story of a building.
"Very useful for thieves," Belinda remarked, with a trembling smile.
"I have the feeling Morton used us to get potentially troublesome magic items out of Seafoam, along with helping us," Bib added.
Merrigan searched the box faster. Any moment now, the soup's influence would take Belinda from sweating to heaving. The whole purpose of searching through all the minor magical trinkets was to find something to prevent the nausea. Merrigan finally explained what she was doing, after finding a magic waxed paper bag that kept pouring out sweets until they had a pile taller than the box. As far as Bib could tell, the sweets in assorted flavors and colors had no magical properties other than soothing sore throats.
"But what if stopping me from being sick somehow ... I don't know, interferes with the tracking spell?" Belinda said.
"You don't know unless you ask." Merrigan wished with all her might that they would find something they could use, right this moment, as she reached into the box.
Belinda fled for the garderobe just as Merrigan's fingers touched a soft fold of cloth. She pulled the small bundle out and unrolled it to find a simple, conical sleeping cap. A note was pinned to it in Morton's distinctive, neat blocky handwriting: Do not use when you are alone. Merrigan put it inside Bib's pages for him to analyze.
"It is just what it appears to be—a cap for sleeping. Very dangerous," the book announced, as Belinda came back to the table, looking a little white around the mouth, and the hair at her temples dark with sweat.
"Dangerous how? Could we use it as a weapon?" Merrigan said.
"Only if we could convince our enemies to put it on, then for the next man in line to take it off the sleeping man and put it on his head, and so on."
"But the first man would just wake up, so what good would it do?" Belinda said, stroking the long tassel of silky black threads.
"Taking off the cap doesn't wake you." Bib ruffled his pages so the cap slid off.
Merrigan shuddered, grateful Morton had put that note on the cap. What if she had put the cap on just to keep her head warm, say if she was caught in the rain?
"Surely there has to be some way of reversing the sleeping spell. Who would make such a thing?" Belinda wiped her shaking hand on her skirts.
"Reverse." Merrigan could almost laugh with the relief that shot through her. "Bib, if we turned the cap inside out and put it back on someone's head, would that wake them?"
"It should," the book said after a moment. "Turn it inside out and put it back on me." He sighed loudly, riffling his pages from top to bottom down one side. "I do hate these limitations to my powers of analysis. Someday, there's going to be something very sticky and wet and staining that I will have to study, and I dread thinking of the damage to my papers when that happens."
Belinda and Merrigan smiled, but neither could laugh. Merrigan's fingers itched as she turned the cap inside out and laid it on Bib's open pages. After a few moments, he announced that yes, she was right—reversing the cap reversed the sleeping spell.
"You don't sneeze and you don't heave when you're asleep," Merrigan said, handing the cap to Belinda.
"But I've awakened myself ... Oh. Yes. When I'm deeply asleep, during the middle of the night, I'm not sick. The spell only starts working when I'm waking."
"You'll be more comfortable while we wait, and hopefully the bait will still work. Besides," Merrigan added, as Belinda walked over to her bed shelf and lifted the curtain, "we can't have you sneezing like mad when those idiots walk into our trap."
"You are brilliant," Belinda said
as she lay down. "What did I ever do to deserve a friend like you?" She settled herself, tugged her skirts straight, and pulled up the blanket. She pulled the cap down over her thick curls and sighed. "Oh, I feel bet ..." A soft snore escaped her before her eyes finished closing.
"You're under a curse," Merrigan murmured as she stepped over to pull the curtain down to hide her from sight. "That's what you did to have a friend like me."
Later, when the peas had been boiled soft and chunks of ham and carrots and onions were added, Nasius suggested they put several bowls of soup around Belinda's bed, to increase the spell's reaction. A few snorts issued from the sleeper when the clouds of steam from the bowls first seeped through the curtain, then she quieted again. A far as Merrigan could tell, the other princess was comfortable, no suffering from the proximity of peas.
"What if the sleeping spell totally cancels the spell to bring the princes to her?" she said to Bib, when lunchtime passed and still no foreign princes had invaded the warehouse.
"They're dilettantes," he responded. "The rain only stopped an hour ago. My guess is that they've stayed indoors this whole time." He chuckled, a delightfully malicious sound. "You'd think that all the privations of hunting for so long would weed out the weak and unworthy, so that in the end, only one prince would be left, who has become worthy through effort, and Belinda would be happy to let him carry her back home to her father's kingdom. With all the warping done to her disguise spells and the quite frankly nasty, childish nature of the detection spell, I'm of the opinion that these young men are holding on out of vanity. They can't believe a princess wouldn't want them. Still, their basic nature is showing, when they won't hunt in the rain and cold."
"Meanwhile, Belinda suffers. Why do little girls want to be princesses? It certainly isn't fun or comfortable to be the target of magic spells. Not even for the lovely clothes."
"Especially when you have the skill to make them for yourself."
The Kindness Curse Page 27