Chapter Fourteen

                                    

                                          
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.