It was a feat for Niccola to feign ignorance the morning after her trip to the Talakova. Sleep deprivation certainly helped. Between the time distortion, the long trip back to the Bel Ilan manor, and the number of tasks Lady Selah expected of her before the family awoke, she'd not even snagged a nap before the fire needed stoking and a kettle set on the stove to boil. Niccola knew it would likely be a long day. But all that was worth it when Leah proved first to fling wide her curtains come daybreak. Her shriek echoed through the house.

"Mother! Look outside, quickly!"

Footsteps all across the upper floor moved to the windows. It was not long before Leah thundered down the stairs, her brown skin pale as if she'd smeared ashes on it.

"Niccola!" she ordered, her high, petulant tone not managing to disguise the fear in her voice. "There is a whole flock of crows in the front tree. Go chase them off; Esther and I need to go shopping today."

Niccola treated her to a chilly look. "And what, disrespect any of those who might be lapsed barrowers? Do you know what bad luck that is for this house?"

A noise of distress escaped Leah. It was impossible to know which crows were ordinary crows and which were barrowers who'd defaulted on their Crow Moon obligations at some point in the past. The Talakova's time distortion ensured the birds lived far longer than one would expect of them, and folk wisdom dictated that those who'd once been human flocked to places that had once been familiar to them. For all the Bel Ilans knew, the lapsed form of a Calisian necromantic could be perched outside their home at this very moment.

Leah stormed off. Furious whispering in the sitting room indicated conspiracy with her sister, whose sharp tone indicated agreement with Niccola's warning. The argument went on for some time before Lady Selah marched in.

"What is this, now?" she said.

"Mother, we want to go shopping."

Lady Selah huffed. "Then go. Are you afraid of a flock of birds? Have you forgotten the ball?"

Silence marked the sisters' discomfort. Niccola perked up, suddenly intrigued. She had not expected Lady Selah to dismiss her daughters like this. Distrust of magic and superstitions about its associations increased linearly with class, and no one in this house cared about her nobility more than Lady Selah.

Esther chose her words carefully. "Mother, I don't think it would reflect well on us to play games with chance like this."

"Nonsense. What of chance? What are the chances that one of those birds is of malicious origin?"

"They're the eyes of the Talakova," whispered Leah.

"Who told you this?"

"Lady Efrat and her son. Mother, all the people in the Belman party speak about this. Have you not been listening?"

Another awkward silence followed that proclamation. Niccola's mind galloped to process it. Lady Selah had her quirks, but this indicated for the first time that maybe there was more to the story. Was she not highborn herself? For all her care about appearances, her daughters seemed more attuned to the Calisian elite than she was.

Niccola had thought she would have to goad them herself, but the Lady was doing it for her. She rather liked this turn of events.

"I have been listening," Lady Selah bluffed. "I simply disagree with the neuroticisms of Lady Efrat and her son, and all the rest of them. The crown prince of Calis is holding a ball in a day's time. No daughter of mine will compromise her preparations out of fear of a flock of birds."

Niccola clenched a fist in triumph. With that, she had the timing of the ball. She was still missing other critical information, but at least now she knew what timeline she was working with. She returned to feigned cooking while Lady Selah continued to argue with her daughters. It took some time for Leah and Esther to cave, but cave they did. They took only a small breakfast before hovering at the door, reluctant to exit it. Lady Selah kicked them out.

Niccola cracked the kitchen window wider. When the sisters' heels clip-clopped to the middle of the front walkway, she whispered, "Fly."

The crow hidden in the garden outside took off with a caw to its brethren. The whole flock did the same. They did what birds do as they departed, and the sisters both shrieked. They ran back inside in near-hysterics, hair and clothes alike adorned with bird droppings.

"I told you, mother!" howled Leah as she stormed upstairs.

It took the rest of the morning for Lady Selah to coax her daughters from their rooms. By now, the crows were gone, and the day had unfolded in glorious, sunlit colour. Niccola bided her time. Soon, Leah and Esther clip-clopped cautiously down the walk again. The moment they were out of sight, Niccola was rewarded by a creak and thud as Lady Selah threw open both her daughters' windows.

A crude means to a simple end, but oh, it was a satisfying one.

"I'm going out," said Lady Selah, returning from upstairs. "Bake bread this afternoon, so there is some for tomorrow. I daresay your help shall be needed for the preparations."

She was gone before Niccola could so much as nod assent. The door slammed a second time, and the house fell silent.

"Come to me," said Niccola out the window. A crow fluttered down from the roof and perched on the windowsill. It was not the mute one; she still had not appeared since the day Niccola had last solicited her help. But that did not matter.

"There are two open windows at the front of the house," she told the crow, and ran through the familiar description of where to find the keys inside. In under ten minutes, she was into both rooms.

Leah's was a mess. Her soiled dress lay in a heap on the floor, together with the rest of the clothes—stockings, shoes, a scarlet ribbon—that she'd discarded upon changing because they no longer matched. Niccola left these all where they lay. Leah's dresses would not fit her, so she only checked the desk by the window. There lay the invitation for the ball.

Niccola leaned on the desk to read it without disturbing the necklace dropped across its lower half. She would need a mask, and would have to pass the door-guards a single sunflower seed upon entry as indication that she'd received an invitation. Calisian paranoia. Niccola scanned the remaining instructions, memorizing them as she did. Then she called the crow to return the first key.

Moving to Esther's room, she went straight to the closet. Esther's dresses were arranged in order of her preference for wearing them, typical of any vain, rich person who had far too many for any normal human to remember. Niccola dug to the back of the row. Here were some she'd never seen Esther wear, even with at least two clothing changes a day for the last three moons. Niccola picked through them until one stayed her hand.

At the back of the closet was a black, sleeveless satin gown. It hung dull in the shadow of the other garments, but when its fabric caught the light, it glistened with the iridescence of crow feathers: blue and green and royal purple, all dancing like fire. Niccola pulled it out. This would be distinctive; she knew it would. There was a risk that Esther would recognize it more readily than the rest of her neglected clothing. Yet the familiarity of the colour and the stunning cut of the dress drew Niccola to it like the Talakova had the night before. It stirred up memories of sitting with Phoebe in the palace rookeries, petting baby crows and tickling one another with feathers. Of dusting down show birds to sit on her family's arms when they walked in parades, and watching as that shimmering colour emerged from the crows' feathers like a setting dye. Of learning to weave feathers into her and Phoebe's hair, a skill she'd been forced to master after both their parents passed.

There was still a chance the dress might not fit. Niccola checked through the windows to ensure no member of the house had returned, then slipped out of her frock. Cool satin kissed her skin as she donned the dress. It fit. It fit perfectly, and when she turned to look at herself in the mirror, she caught her breath.

She looked like her mother.

The dress was regal, every inch of it alive with its colours and shadows. It hugged her figure with an easy comfort that did not abate as she turned to and fro, and when she mimed a dance, it swept low enough to ripple, but not so low as to interfere with her dancing. Niccola turned back to the mirror. She imagined the plain bun of her hair done up into a braided crown woven with crow feathers and the beads that denoted enthroned royalty. She would never wear those beads. With the passing of their parents, Phoebe was set to inherit the family line. She was, after all, the only one who had inherited the family magic by birth.

Niccola made a bitter face. Her only regret with her plan to find her sister was that she might not make it back to Varna to prove them all wrong. All the people who'd ever looked at her askance as a child for trying to help her parents run their realm, when she hadn't magic in her veins. All the diplomats who'd ever seen her standing proud beside her family, armed with everything they needed, and turned to Phoebe instead. Her parents themselves.

That one hit the hardest. They would never know how much it hurt her. They'd both died before she had the chance to tell them how it stung to approach them with her young propositions for helping the realm, only for them to smile, pat her head, and go back to discussing how they would train their first barrower child. Even when conceiving that child took years of trying, just as Niccola had. Or how hard she'd tried to please them, to make herself useful, to become more competent in leadership than any barrower she knew. How they'd brushed off her very presence after Phoebe was born.

Niccola would never forget the celebration the whole realm threw when that birth was announced, then the even bigger one on Phoebe's fifteenth birthday. She had never seen the likes of it. Because, of course, such a celebration had never been thrown for her.

Niccola turned again, watching the dress from all angles, but not really seeing it at all. She looked like a queen. If only Varna needed her as one.

Esther kept her shoes in the space beneath the dresses, arranged on tidy racks by colour and formality. Niccola stopped short of perusing them. Tomorrow was a Crow Moon. If the ball was then, she would have to leave it at moonrise to go straight to the Talakova. Any shoes she wore would get muddied between the palace and the first secret place she found to change clothes, and Esther's shoes did not clean well. All other accessories were also off-limits. The more she stole, the more chance of Esther recognizing something.

Niccola took one last look in the mirror. Not that she needed accessories other than the mask she'd bought covertly while ribbon-shopping the day the invitation arrived. If she did up her hair and shed the servant's walk she had adopted these last three moons, she would have no trouble fitting in.

It was almost painful to shed the dress again. The authority it commanded shed with it, leaving in its place an acting demi-queen in the guise of a serving-woman. Giving back the Bel Ilan family's authority to push her around. Taking the dress was only a minor consolation. Niccola folded it up beneath her bedcovers and set about preparing what she would need for the following evening. She found herself practicing dance steps around the house as she cleaned it. When Lady Selah returned, Niccola took off on her own errands under the pretense of needing new flour for bread. She had many things to set up if tomorrow evening was to go smoothly.

The next day was every inch the whirlwind Niccola had anticipated. The sun was setting by the time Lady Selah and her daughters piled into a coach outside, dressed up like peacocks set for mating display. It was fortunate that Lady Selah was a meddler. While she herself was middle-aged and had no interest in marrying the prince, she would not leave Leah and Esther to their own devices at the ball.

Niccola had every right to be exhausted, but the buzz of anticipation coursed through her veins like magic as the coach drew away. She went straight to her room. Her gown and mask were both packed in the bag she would hide her clothes in when she changed in the forest closer to the palace. Ordering a coach would require her name. Stepping out to the hallway mirror, Niccola uncovered her hair. She had braided it up in the Varnic royal style, sparing only the feathers that would give her away to any well-educated Calisian. She inspected the braids. They had held up well beneath the scarf she'd hidden them under throughout the day. Satisfied, Niccola returned to her room and pulled out the shoes she had finally chosen to wear.

Phoebe's thin, beaded slippers glittered like the motes of light that made the Talakova sparkle. These had always been her favorite. So beloved that Niccola had never stolen them, even as she and her sister swapped other clothes, their figures a perfect match once Phoebe's matured. Niccola had brought these shoes to the wayfinders who'd used them to find the abrupt end of Phoebe's trail. She'd brought them to the diviner who'd used them to draw the sketch of the woman she sought. She'd brought them to Calis, too, even after passing moons had stripped her sister's trace from the tough silk and delicate beadwork, leaving only shoes behind.

She would be able to wear these into the Talakova. Phoebe often had, in the summer moons when the soil was soft and the air warm enough not to necessitate stockings. They would be chilly tonight, but they were soft and practical, good for walking, unrecognized by the Bel Ilans, and easily washed come morning. Niccola slipped them on with a pang in her chest. In the dress she'd taken, she may be a demi-queen, but the shoes turned her back into an older sister. Niccola picked up the mask from the bedspread beside her. Tonight, it would erase both.

Tonight, she would set foot inside the palace, home of the family of the person she was looking for. She would talk to the prince again, and this time, direct the conversation the way she needed it to go. Since seeing the diviner, this was the first true lead she'd found on her sister's disappearance. The prince would help her. She would make sure of it.