The walk back to the palace was a different experience in the daytime than at night. Like in the lowlands, no building or property abutted the forest, leaving a half-wild stretch of it as a buffer between trees and houses. Niccola found and followed the closest road: the one she'd taken in the other direction just the night before. She had bushwhacked from the forest to meet it then, but that would be rather more obtrusive in the daytime, so she kept her eyes peeled for a trail.

The paranoia of Calis's upper class soon revealed itself here, too. Nowhere along the road was there even a semi-formal entrance to the forest's edge. Niccola bit her tongue as the palace came into view. She did not want to look suspicious, but it looked like she would have little choice. She backtracked to a part of the road with as few windows as possible facing the forest—luckily, there was a dearth of these as well—and forged into the underbrush as if in search of flowers. From there, it was a stone's throw to the much clearer land beneath the trees.

The trees here were much smaller than in most of the Talakova. Their tall, thin trunks held aloft canopies like leafy crowns, shaken cheerily whenever the breeze blew through. Such breezes did not reach the understory. Dappled sunshine danced over a carpet of pale, dead leaves, through which the occasional wood aster, mayapple, or bloodroot forced its way. Birds chirped shy songs in the treetops. Niccola could see none below.

The moment she could walk straight again, she picked up her pace. She wished for the soft soles of her sister's slippers as her footsteps crunched brightly. Not that anyone would come after her if they heard her going by in the forest—they would presume she was a beast, and steer well clear—but she still felt the tension between haste and subtlety. She had no doubt the time distortion of the Talakova was still present here, even in diminished form, and she still had to be at the palace by ten.

Even with her racing mind, the walk passed more quickly than expected. Niccola's shoulders loosened as she spotted the three-trunked tree ahead. Her relief lasted only until she reached it, however. One of her bag's straps hung from the hole she had tucked it into, and the fabric of its flap had been forced open at the side. Niccola yanked the bag from hiding and looked it over. There was no sign of damage, but she had only to flip it open to realize what was missing. One of her sister's slippers, tucked up on top of the satin gown, was gone.

Niccola spun on her heel, scanning every inch of the ground around her. There was no sign of footprints, but she had never been a tracker, and would no doubt miss the signs of the burglar even if those signs were there. Cussing under her breath, she retraced her footsteps to the palace wall, then along it to the servants' door where she'd let herself through the night before. There was no sign of the slipper. Not only that, but the sun had crept across the sky faster than she was comfortable with. Apprehension and anger knotted themselves in Niccola's gut as she forced herself to retrace her steps so she would not emerge from the forest in full view of palace guards.

A bell in the midlands gonged a distant ten o'clock just as Niccola returned to the road. Scarcely pausing to brush the leaves from her skirt, she walked straight back to the palace gate: a monumental wooden thing as imposing as it was impenetrable, and maybe even more so. Before Niccola reached it, a guard stepped from the shadows of a small door to its left and extended her spear. "State your name and purpose."

"Niccola Landau, crow-keep. I am here to see the prince."

The guard's stance eased. Isaiah had informed her of Niccola's arrival, then. She opened the smaller door she guarded with two different clicks from a heavy ring of keys, then nodded to Niccola. "He should be in the front garden."

Niccola thanked her with a smile. Silence fell like a cloak as she passed through the door into the wind-sheltered palace grounds. Here, adjacent to a broad carriage-path, these grounds consisted almost entirely of meadow-lawns. Their soft sea of autumn wildflowers was threaded with walking paths and dotted with benches, a scene somehow both wilder and lovelier than the more strictly groomed gardens on the palace's right. Niccola scanned them for the prince. He was here, just ahead, and already walking towards her up one of the paths. His guide dragon, Pekea, bobbed on his shoulder, watching—stalking—butterflies.

"I heard your arrival," said Isaiah when they reached one another. His smile was tight. "Shall we walk?"

Niccola did not take his proffered arm. It was just as well, perhaps, for Pekea eyed her with the expressiveness of an intelligent animal, and the possessiveness of one guarding a beloved master. "Would it not give a more accurate impression if I walked alone?"

"My parents will interpret wrongly either way."

"That sounds overbearing."

That earned her a wry smile from Isaiah. "Few in Calis would criticize my parents that way."

"Then it is a good thing I am not Calisian, is it not?"

Isaiah, infuriatingly, did not stop smiling. If anything, it became more genuine. "I suppose it is. Walk with me to the side entrance, then. My mother shan't have time to accost you if we don't take the front doors."

Being accosted by the queen would not just be unpleasant, if Niccola's secondhand impressions of Isaiah's parents were to judge. It would subject her to a questioning that her feigned backstory might not withstand. Unless this was a different kind of trap, Isaiah was holding true to his word on helping her keep her cover.

Perhaps sensing her hesitancy to follow him, he lowered his voice and trailed a hand along the waist-high grasses, a cover for his stalling. "It would be my preference not to run into her either. I have put up with quite enough querying about my choice of bride since last night, and my mother has an eye for walking patterns and other small details. There is no guarantee she would not recognize you." He glanced at her. "Am I correct in assuming you are in disguise right now? I did not hear a carriage approach."

"I am in disguise whenever I am not at the grand ball of the prince of Calis."

That contagious smile tugged the corner of his mouth again. Pekea snapped at a passing bee. Isaiah put a hand over her face; she shook it off, disgruntled, but stopped leaning so far, she nearly fell off his shoulder whenever he moved.

"Unless I am home," finished Niccola. "But if I were in such attire, I suspect your mother would be a great deal less pleased with my walking around your palace."

"Is Varnic fashion so distinct from ours?"

An odd sequence of thoughts sparked in Niccola's mind. The first was anger that he did not know, a symptom of Calis's self-imposed isolation, then recollection that he had no way to, even if he'd met Varnic people before. And he must have met them, to have recognized her accent so quickly. Was he just making small talk, then? He seemed genuinely curious.

"You do not have to tell me," said Isaiah, turning away. "I apologize if you don't want to talk about it."

His voice remained light, but Niccola detected a note of disappointment in it. She stepped to join him as he took the path towards the side of the palace.

"I miss it, that is all," she said. "We dress less colourfully than Calis does. There's not much use in colour when half the realm works in the rookeries; clothing requires scrubbing too often, and colour only confuses the crows. Most wear their sleeves looser than here, as well. Easier to lift an arm to call down a bird. I find the dresses here... constrictive. Beautiful, but they would be impractical at home."

"Do you not wear dresses, then, or simply a different cut?"

"Dresses can be pried from my cold, dead hands."

Isaiah laughed. "Point taken. Did you have your hair up last night? That is something my mother always notes."

He was trying to get a sense of what she'd looked like the night before. Niccola obliged, though she hesitated when she reached mention of her sister's slippers. Isaiah had told her last night that Pekea stole shoes. She would not have been inclined to describe them if not for that—for the chance, however slim, that he might know something about her slipper's disappearance.

"And beaded slippers," she finished. "Sewn from light pink silk with leather soles. I love them dearly."

She could not say one was missing without rousing suspicions about her means of departure from the ball. Few ladies, if any, would remove or change their shoes before taking their carriages home, and excusing herself before midnight on a Crow Moon had already been trying enough. Niccola searched Isaiah's face for any sign that he recognized her description, but he remained somewhere between impassive and pensive, his smile once again lost to the strain that underlaid his expression.

"So I was right that you looked beautiful that night," he murmured at last. Before Niccola could respond, they reached the side entrance to the palace, a door simple enough to be intended for servants. Isaiah paused with a hand on the handle. "It would be best if you did not mention the ball inside."

"I am sure we will find plenty else to talk about."

Sure enough, she saw his face shadow briefly before he tugged the door open and followed her in.

The palace was chilly and quiet. It had the unique property of being both expansive and claustrophobic, somehow, trapping all who walked its halls between cold stone ceilings and cold stone floors. Few decorations graced the walls. Niccola would not have thought it unusual had it not countered her expectations of a realm that had not been decimated two generations before. The walls of Calis should be richer than this. Filled with the wealth they had retained while Varna bled dry, and dotted with portraits of past royals. Instead, there were no portraits in sight. She would not be able to find her target the easy way.