The last of the prisoners began sobbing when the cuff finally fell from his ankle. Niccola caught the eye of another, who stepped in to comfort his companion. However long they had known each other, or however many others they'd seen killed or taken away, Niccola neither knew nor asked. This wasn't the time to grieve. The body of the woman Dinah had killed still lay crumpled between the trees. Niccola didn't look at it as she ushered the final prisoners into the clearing, where the rest stood huddled together like birds in a nest. Two held torches cobbled together from the forest and lit from Niccola's own. A third torch was in progress.

Niccola addressed the group as a whole. "Is any one of you a wayfinder?"

They shook their heads in silence.

She switched to the language of the crows. "I need a guide to the edge of the forest. Which of you is returning there?"

Two birds hopped forward.

"Lead these people to the shiny ones outside," said Niccola. "The people will feed you."

Both crows cawed their affirmatives.

Niccola turned back to the people. "These two will take you back to the lowlands. Make sure you reward them when you get there."

The once-prisoners watched her fearfully. Warily. Niccola had long since blown her cover as a barrower, and had little patience for their continued hesitancy now that she'd proven she was on their side. When she pointed them after the waiting crows, none of them followed.

"You can take the guide, or you can stay here," said Niccola shortly. She snatched up the torch she'd thrust into the ground while she freed the prisoners. "I'm going after my sister before that woman slits her throat."

"Wait," said one of the prisoners. He was currently the calmest of their number, and met Niccola with a level eye when she turned to him. "There are no barrowers who speak to crows in Calis. Who can we say sent us, so they know to trust our story?"

Niccola smiled. "Niccola Hadani, demi-queen of Varna and partner to the Calisian prince. If you have any issues with the Guard, take it to him. He'll see it settled." With that, she called to the crows above her again. "Does the woman who took my kin shelter here?"

"Not far," replied several, their voices overlapping in a chorus.

"Take me there."

They began to fly. Niccola turned to the prisoners a final time. "May luck and fire see you out of the Talakova safely."

She ran after the crows before the people could reply.

Dinah's shelter was not far. The crows pulled up near a deeply forked tree, their eyes glittering in the darkness as Niccola raised her torch. Some two stories up the fork was a cabin. Its floor was made of logs, crudely cut and laid on wedged cross-beams. Its walls were made of properly hewn timber. Dinah must have stolen that from Madeiran workshops at the Talakova's edge. The fringe of a roof thatched with leaves was visible over the whole construction. Niccola circled the tree in search of a way up. Madeiran timber camps were built in the trees like this, but those had ladders. Dinah's abode did not.

Only when Niccola lifted the torch again did she spot a coil of thin cord clung over a peg hammered into the tree, well out of reach. She cast about for a stick. She found one, too: a whittled branch longer than she was tall, with a small fork at one end. This was clearly Dinah's doing. It caught the cord easily and brought it slithering down the tree. Niccola picked it up gingerly. Like everything this deep in the Talakova, it was cold to the touch, damp and slimy with mold. Niccola gave it a light tug.

Something clattered against the tree-cabin's bottom. Niccola yanked the cord harder. This time, a rope ladder sprang from hiding and clattered down, unfurling like a runaway bolt of cloth. Its ropes too were moldy, and its bars slick to the touch. Polished, even, by repeated use over the decades Dinah must have been living here. Niccola tested them. The ladder creaked, but held. Niccola buried the guttering torch upright in the loam again, tied Dinah's dead lantern to one of her dress-strings, and began to climb.

Proximity revealed a crude latch and a trapdoor set in the floor of the cabin. Niccola found the latch well-oiled, and the trapdoor too lifted with a press of her hand. No traps activated. Niccola pushed the door all the way open and made sure it would stay before she located the handholds that would let her release the ladder and pull herself inside. She emerged into darkness. Her torch flickered like a red star below her, feeling very far away.

Niccola felt around her instead. The floor she sat on was smooth and dry. Timber planks. Niccola ran a hand over them, then gasped as the torch went out. The ladder beneath her twitched sharply. Niccola snatched it up. Something had its other end. Niccola wrenched back with the strength of fear, biting back the urge to shout. The thing let go. Niccola reeled in the ladder as fast as she could. She tossed its cord into the cabin beside her and lay flat on her stomach to stash the ladder in its box again. Then she slammed the trapdoor shut behind her. Another latch met her fingers. She locked it.

Utter darkness and silence fell. The walls of the cabin blocked out the faint non-sounds of the Talakova, and Niccola's breathing and pulse seemed suddenly too loud for comfort. She fought to quiet her breathing. She would need another light. There had to be one in here, or at least fuel and something to re-light the one she already had. Niccola felt across the floor again, then lifted her hands to the empty space above. There was a wall to her left. Niccola stood unsteadily, afraid the floor would give out at any moment. A probe of the wall revealed a shelf, and on top of that, a variety of objects. Niccola's hand met metal. Her anxiety eased as the contours of a lantern took shape beneath her hands. Its weight meant it carried oil—a full jar, even. Sitting beside it was a striker.

The matchbox beside that was empty.

Anxiety flared to near-panic in an instant. Niccola's hands shook as she felt along the shelf, fingers scrabbling for any sign of another box, or even a single loose match. She found neither. As her breathing loudened again, she stumbled back. Floor. The floor was safe. Niccola sank to it and hugged her knees, rocking back and forth. She closed her eyes. Somehow, that made the darkness easier to bear. No matter that it was darker with open eyes than closed, absent the bright spots that splashed across her inner eyelids. Choosing this darkness gave her back a modicum of control.

Niccola caught and slowed her breathing again. Darkness was Isaiah's everyday existence. He would always be better at this than she would, but if he could do it, so could she.

She got to her feet again. She moved slowly this time, with a hand on the wall to keep herself grounded. Isaiah often circled new spaces to get a sense of their contours. Niccola did so now. The first thing she encountered was a paper on the wall. She felt around it. Her hand met another, then another still. Using both hands, Niccola spread her reach wide and found the whole wall papered over. Most of the sheets were torn along one edge like they'd been disassembled from a book or notepad, and warped from damp or heavy writing. She could not read these without light. Niccola returned to her circuit of the room instead, careful not to dislodge them.

What she found was a roughly square space stuffed with possessions. Between the papers on the walls, coiled ropes hung alongside stolen tools: a shovel, a rasp, a hammer, a saw. The ceiling was thick with dried corn, dried meats, and bunches of herbs. Dinah slept on a cot padded with furs. In the room's center was a shin-high table with a cushion for a chair, and on this table, more papers. A clay-lined box in an alcove proved to be a miniature fireplace, complete with a lintel and mantlepiece. Niccola could not help but marvel at its engineering. Dinah had made herself a home out of foraged and stolen materials, and made it quite cozy indeed.

It was in her exploration of the fireplace that Niccola's fingers dislodged a sheath of metal that clattered to the floor. She snatched it up. It was a container of sorts, which rattled when tipped or shaken. When Niccola found and wrestled off its cap, matches spilled out. A half-laugh, half-sob escaped her. Fire wasn't just safety. Light would make this all so much more bearable.

It took several tries to light the second lantern. At last, its oil-soaked wick spat up flame, dousing the cabin in a ruddy glow. The papers on the walls were a vast array of maps, sketches, schematics, and pages upon pages of notes in Dinah's elegant handwriting. Niccola resisted the temptation to read them. Instead, she worked systematically over the shelves that also lined the room, home to jars of food, writing materials, and other supplies. She needed a weapon. A knife like Dinah's, or even a wire she could use to strangle someone. She was not taking Dinah on again with a rock, a stick, or her bare hands.

There was nothing. Finishing with the kitchen area, Niccola abandoned it and moved back towards the cot. The items on the shelves here were more personal. Several leather-bound notebooks stood like little soldiers, battered but upright, beside a comb and a gold-inlaid wooden pen. Beside them was an amethyst brooch. Niccola snatched it up. This was Phoebe's. She'd been wearing it the day she'd disappeared. Niccola cradled it to her chest, the sting of her eyes mingling with something deeper and much, much colder.

Dinah had taken this from her. Her sister, her realm's respect, her will to survive. If she was Dinah, she would sleep with a weapon. Gripped by a sudden urge to smash something, Niccola snatched the tattered blankets beside her and wrenched them off the bed.

Dinah slept with a bow.

The weapon lay alongside where the woman would rest at night, ready at hand for her to grab if the threw off the covers. Calisian paranoia.

On the bed's other side was a quiver of arrows with crow-feather fletching. Their stone heads proved small, and their shafts stained with blood. Dinah reused her arrows. Niccola took a rope from the cabin wall and belted both the quiver and lantern at her sides. She slung the bow over her shoulder. Hands free, she fixed the brooch to her dress over her heart and returned to the cabin's trapdoor. It did not creak as she opened it a crack. Nothing rustled below. The lantern's heat bled through Niccola's skirts as she let down the rope ladder and began to descend. She could feel the Talaks' presences by the time she reached the forest floor.

She called to the trees instead. "Do any of you know which way the two people went? The woman who speaks with Talaks, and the girl with white patches on her skin?"

A murmuring of crows' voices replied. None had followed the pair, but some had spoken to others who had. In a hundred heartbeats' time, Niccola had a direction.

"Are they together?" she asked, because the chances of Dinah killing Phoebe or using her as a diversion were uncomfortably high.

"Seen together."

Relief flooded Niccola's body. With it, though, the coldness from before only settled deeper. Perhaps that was a Talak-turning symptom, that lent such satisfaction to the thought of putting an arrow through Dinah's throat. Niccola did not care. She hoped the woman could sense it. Dinah was dead either way, but if she put a single scratch on Phoebe, Niccola would make her wish it was the Talaks who would drag her to her fate.