"Quite all right, Mi'Lady. Rolf and his two brothers are old friends. They are bound to a tinderbox that once belonged to my master. A witch stole it during the chaos. I'm delighted to meet up with him again. All three have had some exciting adventures."
"Then we sat in a cave for seventy years or so," the dog, Rolf, added in a tone that was part growl, part whine.
"True. The witch made a very serious miscalculation and she lost control over the tinderbox. She had to find someone willing to go down into the hole in the ground to get it, who wasn't interested in the tinderbox for his own sake. Most people took one look at her and either ran in fear or were stupidly greedy and thought they could cheat an old woman. Why does everyone think the elderly are witless or helpless?" Bib chuckled. "Appearances are deceiving, aren't they, Mi'Lady?"
Rolf laughed too, a panting sort of sound that necessitated his tongue hanging out. It was an enormous tongue that Merrigan thought she could use as a hand towel.
"So whoever helped the witch get the tinderbox out of the hole in the ground managed to take it away from her?" she guessed.
"A soldier, newly released from the army and still young enough to enjoy the rest of his life. He's staying here at the inn. Rolf here has an interesting story. He and his brothers take turns going into the palace every night to fetch Princess Dulcibella back here to the inn for their master."
"To do what?"
"My master is a romantic," Rolf said. "He is wooing the princess. They play checkers or walk, while he listens to her silly chatter and tells her she's smarter than everyone thinks she is."
"Is she?"
"Everyone in Seafoam expects her to be an absolute dunce, so of course, any brains she was born with are fading away." The big dog snorted. "Like seafoam."
"Why do they expect her to be stupid?" Merrigan climbed over the foot of the bed and sat on the mattress. She hoped Miles' story lasted a good deal longer and Elli stayed downstairs, so they wouldn't be interrupted.
"That's the curse of the kingdom. The king was a younger son, cast off by his stepfather and robbed by his older brothers and stepbrothers. He came to Seafoam, which was in ruins. Generations ago, some upstart who wanted to be king tried to dismantle the protective magic. It turned everything inside out. Someone in the royal family had created a spell to keep them from ever losing the throne. Essentially, Seafoam will vanish if there isn't someone of the royal bloodline in residence, at all times. The royal family thought they were clever, and when everything started falling apart, they whipped up magic to let them sleep until someone fixed things. They slept for maybe five years, until the current king got through a wall of briars, found the princesses, and kissed the oldest and smartest." The big dog snorted, his mouth dropping open in a wide, wet canine grin, so his tongue lolled out for several seconds before he licked his chops and resumed speaking.
"The former king and queen decided they would rather be sailor merchants, so they took off on a ship and haven't been heard from since. The two younger princesses grabbed a chest of gold and set off in search of a king to marry, and haven't been heard from since, either. They're probably prisoners of an enchanter who collects princesses."
"So what is the curse that makes this princess stupid?" Merrigan asked, to keep from remarking that she had met the two princesses, and she felt sorry for whoever had captured them.
"Well, it became tangled with the magic that requires a member of the royal family in residence. As the heir is, so will the rest of the kingdom be. Someone tried to trick the heir into marriage, and when she outsmarted him, he warped the spell, to turn all the royal women into dunces. Arabella married the first prince who came along and crossed the ocean to get as far from Windward as she could. Proved she had some brains. Everyone expects Dulcibella to be incredibly stupid. Every time she hears someone say how silly she is, she grows more silly. Honestly, the soldier I work for is good for her, and good for the kingdom."
"As soon as Rolf and his brothers sensed my presence," Bib explained, "they decided to come to me for advice."
"What sort of advice?" Merrigan asked.
"Our master is smart enough to know he doesn't want to be in charge of a kingdom, or be stuck with a silly princess. He likes her, but how much work will it take to convince her she's smarter than she thinks she is? It takes all the king's hard work and concentration to counteract the queen's silliness, otherwise Seafoam would be in a horrid mess. She does silly things and he wears himself out fixing her messes and keeping people from believing she is an idiot. What they believe becomes reality. Do you see what I'm getting at?"
"All too clearly. What do you expect me to do?"
"Our master is hesitating too much. Dulcibella likes him. She wants to marry him, but can you imagine the ruckus if she tells her parents she's in love with a soldier? Just wait until she tells them she goes to bed, and the next thing she knows she's waking up in a bedroom somewhere, with this man, and they sit and play checkers and talk. Then she curls up on his bed and when she wakes up she's in her own bed."
"Well, I imagine they will employ several tactics to try to figure out where the princess goes each night, or prove that she's just having a strange, recurring dream."
"And
