It was cat's play for Niccola to duck into the shadows beneath a tucked-away gazebo, and to navigate from there to the palace wall that loomed over the back of the garden. The silence was eerie. A rustle in the bushes made her catch her breath, but when she stood still, it did not come again, no matter how long she waited. A rabbit, perhaps. No cover in her vicinity was thick enough to hide a human. Niccola moved again with a pounding heart, but no guard leaped to seize her as she returned to the servant's door she'd snuck in through at the start of the ball.

This was the most covert route away from the palace, for one who knew how to walk softly. A long finger of the Talakova reached up the Calisian-Varnic border, which lay less than an hour from here. The trees were left to thicken after the two realms cut ties. This far from the lowlands, the great knotwoods of the Talakova blended with smaller species to form a more benign forest that butted close to the palace. This alone told Niccola that Calis had not seen war in generations. Nowhere in Varna were trees allowed to grow so close to defensive walls, where anyone seeking entrance could scale them with little more effort than a bug or a cat.

Safe outside the wall, Niccola stripped off her mask and surveyed the tree canopy. The shadow of a crow caught her eye.

"Could you come help me, friend?" she called softly in its language.

It perked up. Its thoughts hummed across her own: it wanted to know if she was an enemy, and how it would benefit from helping. Niccola pulled out a handful of crackers she had filched from the ballroom refreshments table.

"These can be yours," she said. "Come bolt this door again if you want them."

The crow was convinced. It vanished over the wall, and Niccola was rewarded shortly thereafter by the click of the bolt on the door's other side. The crow reappeared. Rather than come for its reward, though, it perched in the branches above her.

"Come down," said Niccola with a smile, holding out the crackers.

It would not. "Enemy is down."

Even in the cold of the air, a chill crept over Niccola's skin. She glanced through the forest that spread out to either side. It was a Crow Moon tonight. The Talaks would be roaming, though she'd never heard of one this far from the Talakova proper on the Varnic side of the border. They concentrated down in the lowlands, where barrowers gathered to make their Crow Moon offerings.

"What enemy?" she asked.

The crow gave a low caw. "Enemy."

She would get no more out of this bird, it seemed. Niccola set the crackers on a stump for the crow to gather. Then she followed the palace wall to the stick she'd leaned against it this time yesterday. She turned directly out into the forest. In another minute, a three-trunked oak emerged from the darkness. Niccola pulled her bag from the hollow in its third trunk. The air set her shivering as she stripped out of her gown and switched to common clothes, wishing they'd been sitting near a fire before she donned them.

She pulled off Phoebe's slippers last of all. Their beads caught the starlight through the canopy and glittered in her hands as she turned them over. These no longer carried enough of her sister's trace to be useful to wayfinders or diviners, but the Talaks were far more attuned to such things. The dress, too, would be a bad thing to carry into the Talakova. It was Esther's, and though Esther had likely not worn it in more moons than Phoebe had last worn the slippers, Niccola did not want to take chances. Talaks recognized people by their traces, and committed barrowers to memory. Mingling her own trace with that of others on a Crow-Moon night made her a target, and walking alone, she was already more vulnerable than she would be otherwise.

The gown, shoes, and mask went into the bag. Niccola returned this to its hole in the tree, then stepped back and made sure she'd memorized the lay of the land so she would be able to find this spot again. It made her uneasy to leave her sister's shoes unguarded. Yet though her temptation to stash the bag closer to the Bel Ilan manor ran high, Niccola knew it would be safer here. The farther down the realm she went, the more people would be out in the Talakova come morning, making their living despite the danger.

The walk to the lowlands took the full two hours Niccola had estimated, even on public roads. She admired Isaiah a shred more by the end of it. Verde had said he made the trip often, even daily at times. When Niccola reached the band of the realm where chicken-keepers raised Calis's main export, she wove back to the forest's edge. The cage she had brought here last night was still stashed beneath a canvas tarp between two dilapidated sheds. The crow inside eyed her warily as she hauled its prison from hiding.

It had been seven moons now that she'd done this every Crow Moon, but seven Crow Moons was not nearly enough for the pang of guilt to fade. Making a sacrifice of the birds was harder when Niccola could hear them. After a lifetime of visiting the Talakova with her mother and Phoebe each moon, carrying her sister's crow-cage, she would have thought she'd numbed herself to it. She had, but only when she wasn't the one making the sacrifice. Niccola dropped a cover over the cage. Then she pulled the scarf she was wearing up over her head, hiding her face in shadow. She slung the cage over her shoulder. This way, she would hear the crickets on the pathsides more clearly than the whispering thoughts of the crow.

The first townspeople joined her on the road two streets later. They walked alone or in pairs, their clothing dark and their motions furtive. Each carried a cage or basket of some kind. Nothing could have been further from the Crow Moon festivities that lit the streets of Varna every night the moon rose dark. In Calis, there were no children with candle lanterns, no bright costumes and decorative hairstyles, and no festive music played on flutes and fiddles as families trekked down to the Talakova together. If this was Varna, the lights would wend like rivers all the way to the forest's edge. There they would pool, as those without magic made their rituals in order to pass safely beneath the trees. Aromas of food would fill the air. The Talaks did not care for human food, but it was common for families to eat together beside the graves of their ancestors, after making the offerings that would keep them from lapsing for another moon.

People in Calis feared the Talakova. It hit home in a different way here than it did in the daytime, and Niccola filled her thoughts with memories of home in order to keep the contagion of their anxiety from disquieting her mind. The Talakova deserved respect, yes. Respect in abundance. But it was harder to maintain that sentiment alone when everyone around her showed fear.

True to that fear, a long line of torches mounted on stakes marked the boundary between the lowlands and the Talakova. Fire to keep the Talaks where they never strayed from anyway.

A scant few people stopped at the forest's edge. None made entrance rituals. The ones who continued on were all barrowers, whose footsteps sped up the moment they were beneath the trees. Niccola fell into line with some of them. She dispersed when they did, when the forest's edge was far enough behind them that the torches no longer glittered through the trees. Niccola swung the cage around in front of her and opened its door.

The crow burst from captivity in a panicked frenzy. Its wingbeats filled the night as Niccola let the pulse of magic in her chest reach up her throat and escape her in a sibilant chant. It was not the crow language. The words of her contract spilled from her in the tongue of the Talaks themselves, weighing down the wings of the bird she offered. It did not caw. It bolted into the forest until something powerful surged in the darkness. The wingbeats disappeared.

The chant sealed the offering as Niccola hissed the words that ended it. It lasted barely longer than the crow's survival.

Niccola was left breathing heavily in the darkness. The night around her rustled with the chants of other barrowers, and the doomed escape of the offerings they had brought. She was numb to this much. To the deaths of so many creatures that would take place tonight, in exchange for the magic that the highest predators of the forest had to offer. Niccola closed the empty cage. Her footsteps found the path again, and carried her back into the lowlands as she left the scene of silent carnage behind.

She arrived back at the Bel Ilan manor before any of the Bel Ilans. Niccola shed her shoes at the door and carried them through the cold, dark house to her room, where she could brush the dirt from them out the window. Her hand stopped over her hair. Releasing it from its braided crown felt like releasing everything she had held at the ball. All the freedom, autonomy, and control she had donned like the gown she no longer wore. She pulled out the first pin. Then another. The braids loosened and came apart beneath her teasing fingers. With them went Niccola the demi-queen, rearranged into a more practical style that would serve her through the week to come. Niccola smarted inside. The only thing worse than having all her fantasies of power stripped away was having them given back for just a moment, only to be stripped away again.

It was like this that she sat on her bed in the darkness, savoring the silence until the clatter of carriage wheels pulled up in front of the house. Niccola dragged herself to her feet. She should have stoked the fire again before the carriage returned. She did so now, and the sisters proved tipsy and giddy enough that it took them until the flames leaped to make it into the house anyway.

"And then," giggled Leah, and hiccupped. "Then, he looks at me, and—you're laughing at me!"

"No, I'm not," said Esther.

"You are! Just because you didn't get a second dance, doesn't mean—"

"You didn't get a second dance, either."

"Nope, but I got a first one." Leah giggled again. "Oh my goooosh, he is so handsome. It's not fair! And then she had to steal him for half the night. Hic. Could have shared."

Niccola's hands stopped dead over the firewood pile.

"I didn't recognize her," said Esther, and Niccola had to brace her feet not to drop against the wall as her breath returned to her. "Who do you think she was? She danced..."

She trailed off. Niccola could almost hear the frown on Esther's face as she searched for words in her drink-addled vocabulary.

"Different," said Leah confidently. "Hic. She was pretty, though. Pity she left after. And kept her mask on. I'd have danced with her, too."

"Ew, don't breathe on me. You reek like alcohol."

"And you don't? I remember you tried to drink away allll your sorrows when he picked that other girl who—"

"I said not to talk about that."

"Okay, fiiiine. But Esther, Esther, did the prince say anything to you, too? He complimented my dancing. The prince!"

They both teetered off towards the staircase. Lady Selah was still outside, presumably paying the coach. She entered as her daughters disappeared into the hallway at the top of the stairs. She'd drunk considerably less than they had—in fact, likely nothing at all—and her eyes were still clear and sharp as they landed on Niccola in the kitchen doorway.

Niccola forced a smile. It would not take much acting for her to play the part of a disappointed house-maid hiding the pain of not having gotten to come to the ball. "Did you have a good dance?"

"A decent enough one."

Lady Selah was never a woman of many words. She said nothing more, and Niccola didn't keep probing. Lady Selah retired to her rooms. Now Niccola did lean back against the wall. She was grateful for her travel-rumpled clothing and the ash smears on her apron from stoking the fire. If Lady Selah suspected her, she would have a hard time proving Niccola's guilt. All that was left to do was retrieve the dress and return it to Esther's room, and the ball would be behind them.