While the main festival was in the courtyard and the city streets, there seemed to be a smaller, more exclusive celebration within the palace walls. Ayla could see more lanterns and banners, more smoke, the shift of a second crowd. The gates were open, though still heavily guarded. She tapped Benjy’s wrist as they approached, nodding in the direction of a troupe of what looked like actors or dancers. Even with the masks, it was easy to tell who was human. Automae carried themselves less like people and more like statues that sometimes moved. They were tall, angular, their skin smooth and poreless, their movements measured. Their hair was always sleek and shiny, dark in Rabu and lighter here in Varn, where fair hair was more common. Human bodies were more varied: a thousand different shapes and sizes, skin freckled or scarred or pockmarked, hair any number of lengths or textures. Ayla had always thought that was the great irony of the Automae. They were created to be perfect, inhumanly beautiful, and all it did was make them less interesting to look at.

Unless they were bent over a book, a tendril of loose hair curling at the nape of their neck. Unless they were sliding into a tide pool, silver under a Reaper’s Moon. Unless they were her.

Don’t.

Beside her, Benjy huffed. “I don’t want to wear a wig. Or take off my shirt.”

The actors were all human. They were masked, like everyone else, but their masks weren’t plain white—they were painted in bright, swirling colors, green feathers trailing off the edges. They were in costume, though Ayla didn’t recognize any of the characters. A woman in a blue yarn wig, another in a shining silver crown, a trio of men all shirtless, their bare chests painted with red and orange flames. Must be a Varnian folktale. “Relax,” said Ayla. “Look, there’s some in the back dressed more plainly. They don’t look so different from us. We can probably blend in with them.” She started forward, but Benjy’s hand shot out to grab her arm.

“Wait,” he hissed. “Look at their wrists.”

Ayla turned and saw the actors—and everyone else waiting to be let in the palace gates—had a green ribbon tied around their left wrist. There was something small and shiny dangling from each ribbon. Ayla squinted, blinking away tears from all the smoke, and realized the shiny thing looked like . . . a bell? No, a gold coin. The guards were checking everyone’s wrists, inspecting the coins carefully, holding them up to catch the firelight. There was no way Ayla and Benjy would be able to get inside the gates without those green ribbons unless they scaled the walls. Ayla actually considered it for a moment, but the walls were twenty feet high and the white stone looked completely smooth, and anyway there were guards prowling around everywhere. That was a no go.

“Okay, new plan,” Ayla muttered. “Everyone’s in green, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple ribbons.”