"What kind of spell?" She put down the scissors. They wouldn't be much good against magic, would they?
"A cheater's spell."
"Hello?" A heart-shaped face surrounded by a cloud of amazing, brilliant red curls, peered around the canvas wall that surrounded the sewing area. "Are you Mistress Mara?"
"I am."
"Millicent said I could help you. I'm new here. I'm good with a needle." She stepped into the sewing area, hands clasped at her waist, bouncing nervously on the toes of her slippers. She looked like she was between twelve and fourteen. "I'm Belinda."
"She's the source," Bib said. "She has several spells to disguise her, but they aren't dispelling the nasty magic someone cast on her."
"Is that ... a talking ... book?" Belinda's voice dropped the squeaky little girl exuberance.
Her outline flickered, and for several seconds she wavered back and forth between a twelve-year-old and a dainty grown woman. Her face elongated and shortened, her cheekbones sharpened and then vanished under baby fat, back and forth. The most disturbing part of the momentary flickering was how her breasts pushed out her bodice just enough to be noticeable, and then flattened again. It looked like a small animal bounced around inside her clothes.
"Either take off the talismans maintaining your disguise," Merrigan said, closing her eyes to fight the nausea, "or steady your control over them. I don't need to lose my soup on my sewing."
"Please tell me that isn't pea soup I smell." Belinda turned her head in the direction of the kitchen. "I'm allergic to peas of any kind. If I touch them, I break out in spots. If I smell cooking peas for too long, my nose runs and I sneeze for hours. If I eat it ..." She shuddered, then sank down at the table and hid her face in her hands. "I am deathly sick, and it's nearly impossible to run when they find me."
"That's the spell, isn't it?" Bib said.
"What spell?" Merrigan could barely restrain herself from shouting. "When who finds you? And why do you need to run?"
"You're a princess, aren't you?" The book flipped open and pages riffled until they displayed a page with writing on it.
"Spare me. The old 'princess and the pea' gambit?" Merrigan nudged Belinda's arms so she could fold up the cloth and get it out of the way. It didn't look like she was going to finish cutting out the coats today. "Isn't that usually used to prove a princess in rags is a real princess? Who are you hiding from?"
"Princes." The girl took a deep breath and lowered her hands. Her appearance steadied back into the almost-too-cute twelve-year-old. "Third and fourth and fifth-born sons who have no chance whatsoever of inheriting a throne. I'm my father's oldest daughter. Oldest of six daughters."
"Whoever marries you becomes king after your father. No chance whatsoever that you'll be crowned queen and you can keep your husband a prince, make sure he can't take over?"
"My father is so utterly old-fashioned. I barely escaped being stranded on the top of a glass hill, waiting for a prince who passes a dozen tests and can ride a magical black steed to the top of the hill and sweep me up into the saddle. None of my sisters wants to take my place as the prize. They all were allowed to learn useful occupations like spell-casting and managing libraries and two of them were allowed to become sword maidens. I had to concentrate on maidenly pursuits and politics and persuading hide-bound old counts and dukes to play nice with each other. I love sewing, but I wasn't allowed to do anything but embroidery for four years before I finally had to flee for my sanity. I swear, I'm very good with a needle for useful things." Belinda gestured at the dark, thick, sturdy coat material. "Please, let me be useful."
"What do you look like without the disguising spells?" Merrigan shook her head and waved a hand, as if brushing away that question. "Forget that. I caught a glimpse. I don't think I want to see you ... melting back into what you really look like. It really is a clever disguise, making you look like a child."
"Someone had enough sense to track you by your talismans," Bib said. "I think that's part of the problem. They wrapped their tracking spell around your disguise spells. Everything is twisted. Tangled."
"Extremely twisted. I haven't been able to eat or even smell or cook anything with peas in it since I went on the run," Belinda said. "Whenever I eat pea soup, it's like lighting a beacon fire and they all find me."
"Unfortunately, peas are very cheap and nutritious and filling, so guess what most people donate to feed the orphans?" Merrigan murmured.
She honestly wanted to feel sorry for Belinda, but the whole situation struck her as quite humorous, in a nasty, see-how-we-can-twist-magical-traditions sort of way. The best she could do was refrain from giggling from time to time.
By the time the girls finished their lessons for the day and returned to the sewing area to get to work on the coats, Merrigan, Belinda and Bib had come up with a good cover story. They weren't able to untangle the tracking spell the princes had put on the fugitive princess. It was too tightly twisted around the disguise talismans. To untangle them, Belinda would have to remove all the talismans and stop using the disguise through two cycles of full moon and new moon, according to all the information on disguise spells Bib could find. Until they could come up with a new disguising talisman, they would have to find excuses why she couldn't eat pea soup or peas porridge or put in duty shifts in the kitchen. Only the nobility, who had access to the best-educated and most modern of healers and physicians, understood the concept of allergies. However, Merrigan thought she could convince the warehouse's foster parents to accept Belinda's eating restrictions. After
