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
