carefree, gluttonous, and drunken excess.
“Besides,” Daemon said, “I thought we just decided to get serious. Would the heroes in your mother’s stories crash a party?”
Sora paused to think about it. But then she grinned. Being mischievous and being renowned weren’t mutually exclusive. “The most legendary figures did all sorts of outlandish things. It’s part of what makes their tales worth retelling. So yes, if there’s a once-in-a-lifetime event in the middle of nowhere, I think it would be part of Kichonan lore. And we should definitely go.”
As they got close, though, Sora frowned. A wall of wood surrounded the camp, looming eight feet high above them. She’d seen it from far away, but Sora had been so focused on the party inside, she hadn’t registered that the beams were actually spiky protrusions, more like fortifications to protect from enemies.
“That’s . . . strange,” Daemon said.
Sora nodded. But then she shrugged. “Like you said, Takish Gorge is full of wolves and bears and other predators. It would really ruin a party if any of those got inside.” She walked right up to the logs and began to study them, figuring out the best way to get inside.
Daemon hung back a moment. “This isn’t an ordinary Autumn Festival celebration. Maybe we should rethink going in.”
“Nope. We already agreed that we should definitely go in if it’s not an ordinary Autumn Festival celebration.”
He chewed on his lip, then sighed. “All right. But let’s cast moth spells on ourselves before we go in.” It would mute their whispers to an ultrasonic level inaudible to the human ear, but which they could use to communicate while in the camp.
Sora laughed. “You really want there to be a hidden conspiracy so we can report something interesting to the Council, don’t you?”
Daemon looked so mortified, though, that Sora shut up. She shouldn’t have said that. They quickly formed finger-fluttering mudras and chanted the moth spell. Sora’s voice box tingled as the enchantment took hold. Daemon needed a few tries before his spell worked.
They slinked up to the edge of the camp and hoisted themselves over the wall of logs. Sora landed on the ground as quietly as a ghost—her near-soundless movement, after all, was why she’d been given the taiga name Spirit.
Daemon lowered himself from a nearby section of the perimeter wall, tugging on a wire that trailed him. He’d secured one end to a tree outside the wall and planned to tie off this end inside the camp. It would be easier to leave via tightrope on their way out than scrambling over these slippery logs again.
Lanterns on posts cast a dim red glow over everything. Sora and Daemon crept through the spaces between the tents, sticking, as always, to the shadows. After a few minutes, she found a tree they could climb to get a better view.
She glanced over her shoulder to confirm they were still alone before she wriggled her fingers in a mudra and whispered: “I am a spider, I am a spider, I am a spider.” Immediately, her fingertips felt fuzzy, as if there were hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs to help her climb and grip.
Then she jumped to the tree. Her hands and feet made quiet contact with the bark, and the spider spell adhered her to the trunk. She scuttled up the tree, limber and arachnid quick. Daemon followed, although he didn’t need a spell. He’d been climbing trees since he could crawl.
There was a sound below them, a rock skittering over the ground. Sora and Daemon froze.
A few seconds later, a pair of guards in light armor walked by. They didn’t look up.
She exhaled but spun to face Daemon. “Why would an Autumn Festival celebration require armed guards?” she asked, audible only to him at this moth level.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably the same reason they would have log fortifications. I told you something was off about this party.”
The easy, feline grace that had accompanied Sora now tensed. On alert, she was more panther than cat.
She pushed her way through the branches and climbed to the roof of the nearest tent. They hopped their way across the camp until they were just outside the circle of dancers and the bonfire.
A reedy melody weaseled itself through the air. It came from a long woodwind with a curved bell.
“What is that?” Daemon asked.
Sora had never seen nor heard that instrument before. “I don’t know,” she said. But the number of “I don’t knows” was beginning to heap up to