As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Seventeen

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.