“I saw you yesterday.”

Taza laughed.

“You had fever.”

“I know your face.”

The camp erupted.

Taza stepped backward.

Keme grabbed his arm.

And Taza drew a pistol.

The shot caught Keme high in the chest.

Chaos exploded.

Taza ran.

Gideon twisted against his bindings.

“Cut me loose!”

No one listened.

Taza reached a horse.

Ayana seized a knife from a stunned warrior and sliced Gideon’s ropes.

Keme gasped on the ground.

Blood spread across his buckskin shirt.

Gideon grabbed a rifle.

He aimed at Taza.

Ayana shouted, “Alive!”

Gideon shifted his aim.

The shot struck Taza’s horse saddle strap.

Leather snapped.

Taza crashed into the dirt.

Warriors seized him.

For several terrible seconds, Ayana believed Keme would die.

Gideon knelt beside him.

“Bullet passed through.”

Keme stared at him in disbelief.

“You’re helping me?”

Gideon pressed cloth to the wound.

“Apparently I make poor decisions.”

Taza refused to speak.

For two days he sat bound inside a lodge.

Then, during the second night, someone tried to poison him.

The attempt failed only because Ayana had changed the guard.

Now she knew the betrayal reached beyond one man.

Taza finally broke.

“There are papers,” he said.

“What papers?”

“In Fort Harrow.”

Gideon stiffened.

Taza looked at him.

“You already know.”

Gideon’s face darkened.

“Vale.”

Taza nodded.

Captain Silas Vale had never left the territory.

He had risen.

Major now.

Commanding Fort Harrow.

Taza admitted that Vale had paid scouts from several communities for years.

Information.

Routes.

Names.

Water sources.

Sometimes something darker.

Vale created attacks and blamed them on tribes.

Then he used retaliation to seize land.

Black Mesa had been one of those operations.

Ayana wanted to vomit.

“Why help him?”

Taza’s eyes burned.

“Because your father chose peace.”

Ayana slapped him.

He smiled through blood.

“Nayati believed agreements would save us.

Vale told me peace would make men like Keme weak.

He promised rifles.

Horses.

Land.”

“And Ka?”

Taza looked away.

Ayana grabbed his throat.

“What happened to my sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said you found her!”

“Keme found a body.”

Her hands froze.

Taza slowly looked at her.

“The face was burned.”

Ayana stopped breathing.

Keme, pale from his wound, stood in the lodge entrance.

“That’s true,” he whispered.

Ayana turned.

“You told me you buried Ka.”

“I thought I did.”

“You thought?”

“The body wore her dress.

Her pendant was gone.”

Ayana reached beneath her shirt.

The turquoise pendant Gideon had found.

Something impossible opened inside her.

“Then Ka may be alive.”

Three nights later, Ayana and Gideon rode for Fort Harrow.

Keme wanted to come.

His wound made it impossible.

Before Ayana left, he took her aside.

“You are different.”

“So are you.”