"What can stop it?" Merrigan had the awful feeling she knew.
"The ingredients of the triggered spell have to be separated," Bib said, his voice muffled under the covers of Merrigan's bed, which was end-to-end with Belinda's shelf bed. Their pillows were separated only by a slanting board that supported the shelving around them.
The three of them had been up late the night before, talking quietly, remembering other royal weddings they had attended or stories of royal weddings Bib had gleaned from history books. In the two moons since Belinda had come to the orphanage, they had become quite good friends. It was amazing all the things they had in common, their opinions on certain royal traditions, their frustration with magic spells and interfering enchanters and Fae, and the dictates of fashion.
"Separated as in ...?"
"I have to leave." Belinda's voice crackled, but she admirably held off the tears. "Actually, it would be more accurate to say I have to run. The problem is, at this time of the morning, anywhere I run, chances are good someone is cooking peas porridge. But the longer I stay here, the closer they could get, drawn by my reaction to the peas porridge, which reacts to them getting closer, which makes me sicker, which just makes the beacon drawing them closer even brighter, which—"
The panic blanching her face warned Merrigan in time, so she scuttled backwards and only got a heel in her chest when Belinda leaped from the bed and dashed for the garderobe again.
"Unfortunately, she's right," Bib said.
"How hard can it be for even a prince who celebrated too much last night to figure out that she's here?" Merrigan growled. "We should have thought of that—a royal wedding draws useless second and third and fourth sons like ..."
She scrambled for a fitting simile. Flies to honey did not suit. Flies to a corpse, however, did. Yet, hearing Belinda give one last loud, dry heave, she didn't want to say it. She liked Belinda more than any other princess she had ever met. The girl had gumption and a lot of common sense and a dry, sharp wit. The stories she had to tell about playing tricks on her younger sisters were hilarious. Especially the rather messy, embarrassing tricks.
This time, Belinda didn't have to change her nightgown when she stopped heaving. The girls were awake by this time and they surrounded her with sympathy and helped to bundle her back into bed. One offered to let Belinda sleep with her doll, another offered to run to the nearest bake shop—a long trip, even though she was one of the swiftest runners among all the orphans—to find her something for breakfast. By now, everyone knew peas made Belinda ill.
Everyone knew ...
"Oh!" Merrigan could barely keep back a stream of curses that wanted to fall from her lips. She didn't know whether to be grateful for the time on the ocean with Quincy's sailors, or not.
"I don't know," Belinda said, when the girls had gone off to breakfast and the three of them were alone again. Merrigan had just explained what had occurred to her. "How could we have kept something like this secret? Children are curious, and they talk, and everyone thinks I'm a child too, so they have to wonder why I don't have to eat the same things they do. But I don't think we're in that much trouble. To find out that someone who is allergic to peas porridge is here, those dolts chasing me would have to ask lots of questions. Those princes have to win a kingdom through marriage because they don't have the ambition or cleverness to earn a kingdom the old-fashioned way. Killing ogres and dragons. Performing twenty hard labors for a Fae queen. Digging a kingdom out of the bottom of the sea or something else that requires some guts and brains and sweat." She sighed.
"How long have they been chasing you, Princess?" Bib asked.
"Oh, let's see, I ran away when I was ... Oh." She lost a little of the color she had regained. "You're right. If they're still holding on in the chase after five years, they might have learned to do some hard work. Or at the very least, they're desperate enough to listen to gossip, or even talk to people. Anyone they meet on the street."
"How likely do they think you are to hide among orphans?" Merrigan asked.
"How many fables are there of groups of children under enchantments?" She shrugged. "I've hidden anywhere I could, disguised as any number of things. I was a goose girl, a miller's apprentice, a milkmaid, a gardener. I even took shelter among some friendly trolls for almost an entire year. You would think the smell would make me invulnerable to the scent of peas cooking. Those wretched princes found me when someone planted an entire field of peas over the trolls' underground lair. At harvest time, someone cooked freshly harvested peas and there was enough magic to make me ill. So ill, even the trolls didn't want me around." She let out a sigh that seemed to make her deflate among her blankets. "They won't stop until they find me. How many princesses can there be in this city?"
"The day after a royal wedding?" Bib chuckled. "You were in the palace, finishing up Gilda's dress. Didn't you glimpse the guest book?"
"I did." Merrigan shook her head. "It's pitiful, all the women who hold tight to the title of princess even though they're so many generations removed from the throne, a plague would have to wipe out half a city for them to have a chance to wear a crown."
"Look on the bright side, then. Those princes could be drawn off on a dozen
