Merrigan shuddered to think that a lost prince had to depend on such a flighty girl. Yes, Gilda was good-hearted and loyal and sweet, and as frustrating as she sometimes could be, staying angry with her was impossible. Still, what made her qualified to be the lifeline to pull a prince out of a vicious enchantment?
"There ought to be a law that no one with magical powers of any kind should be allowed near any christening taking place, on pain of death. More mischief happens at christenings than anywhere else, all the rest of the year," she muttered.
"All I can remember of the curse is that the prince can't come home until he helps to make the blind see at last." Gilda sighed and shrugged again. "For a few years after he vanished, King Auberg sent messengers to every healer hall throughout the world, on the chance that the prince was being forced to work with blind people. That doesn't make much sense, does it? I suppose that's what happens when you're desperate."
Merrigan could understand desperation.
The wagon slowed at last. Gilda brightened and gathered up her cloak and staggered toward the door at the back. Merrigan cautiously stood and stretched and finished straightening her clothes. Gilda's words got her thinking.
Maybe ... maybe the illusion that surrounded her, so everyone saw and heard a little, thin, bent, white-haired old woman ... was becoming real? Sinking into her bones, so to speak? She shuddered at the idea. Bib claimed that her hair seemed to be darkening in spots, and some of the sunken spots in her cheeks had plumped, but she couldn't see it no matter how hard she stared into mirrors and willed her own, true face to appear. That just proved what a good friend Bib was, to encourage her, even if he had to lie.
"And here we are," Gilbrick announced, jumping down from the front of the wagon as it finally creaked to a stop. He raced around to the back in time to help Gilda and Merrigan climb down. Like a triumphant warrior, he spread his arms wide, in welcome.
The warehouse facility belonging to Gilbrick was three massive buildings, three stories high. They faced a central area with plenty of room for wagons to come in and be loaded, several at a time from the massive doors at the front of the warehouses. Everything was clean and neat, and despite the evidence that horses constantly inhabited the cobblestoned yard, did not smell of horse droppings and other filth that came from heavy traffic.
Young men and women came running from all three buildings. They all wore dark gray trousers and skirts, with white blouses, and long, gray vests with Gilbrick's symbol of the wheel and coin blazoned on the right breast.
Merrigan was overwhelmed by the apparently genuine, joyous welcome of the apprentices and workers, the overseers and older men and women who managed the accounting books and inventory and processed orders that came from distant cities. Whatever his faults, Gilbrick's people loved him. She compared his homecoming to times she and Leffisand had returned from trips to other kingdoms or distant cities in Carlion. There had been plenty of pomp and pageantry when they departed and returned, but none of the joy she saw here.
"I'm simply tired." She gave herself a mental shake, to focus on the present moment and not grieve what would never be again.
Gilbrick introduced her to his people and assigned two girls to settle her in the guest quarters in his house. Then he beckoned for his senior managers and they stepped aside, out of the way of the laborers unloading the wagons. Gilda sighed and tried to smile at Merrigan. Clearly, the girl was increasingly concerned about her father. The latest news was that the weavers wouldn't open their doors or take the curtains off their windows to let the city see their miraculous cloth until noon. Gilda seemed to grow a little more cheerful after that. She persuaded her father to go home, wash, eat and rest, and try to attend to business.
"I wish they wouldn't ... encourage him," she confided to Merrigan, as Gilbrick stepped back once more to confer with the older men who oversaw his business. "It isn't that they're obsessed with the cloth, but they'd do anything to make him happy."
"It's a fine thing to be so greatly loved," a young man observed from behind them, in a melodious baritone voice.
"Aubrey." Gilda's face lit up as if she had swallowed a mouthful of sun. She turned, and for a moment Merrigan thought she would hug the overly tall, gangly, pockmarked young man. Instead, she hurried to introduce him to Merrigan, and announced Aubrey was one of the most talented, intelligent young men who had risen through the ranks of Gilbrick's little kingdom
That earned a deep blush as Aubrey bowed to her with an elegance entirely at odds with his awkward, overgrown appearance. While everyone else looked neatly turned out, pressed and tucked and wrinkle-free in their livery, his cuffs were wrinkled and frayed, his vest was a size too large and his trousers rode so high Merrigan could see the thin spots in his stockings. Still, there was no disguising or mistaking Gilda's feelings for the young man.
Merrigan envied her. Just for a moment.
"Ah. Aubrey." Gilbrick stepped over to join them, finished with his senior managers. "I hear you voted against sending for me, so I could be here to see the cloth that might satisfy my years of searching. What do you have to say for yourself, lad?"
"Sir." Aubrey gave him a
