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afterthought.
    No matter how this turned out, all I had to do was get this stone home, and I’d be a rich man. The river chiefs would trade a whole season’s harvest for a stone
that had once belonged to Lady Night Shadow Star of the Morning Star House at Cahokia!
    “War Chief Flint Knife!” A sharp voice broke my reverie.
    I turned to see Bear Heart Tenkiller, his face grim, eyes hard. At his gesture six warriors surrounded me.
    I shot a wary glance at the men, Earth clans, all of them. They watched me with calculating eyes, war clubs at the ready.
    “Bear Heart? Who are these men? I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m—”
    “You’re summoned to the Keeper’s. Your father has a message for you.”
    As the warriors prodded me forward, I asked, “I don’t understand. Why do you care? You’re Evening Star, you said.”
    His thin lips curled as if hiding a smile. “It never pays to underestimate the Keeper, or the people who work for her.”
    It hit me:
He’s one of her spies!
Pus and blood, what had I told him last night? Anything that could be considered treasonous or threatening?
    By then we were climbing the long ramp, its wooden stairs shivering under our weight. At the top I touched my forehead respectfully as we passed the Eagle guardian posts, and I was ushered across the veranda and into a palace that made the opulence I’d seen in Green Chunkey’s seem paltry.
    The wall benches were carved magnificence. Above them hung gleaming copper-and-shell reliefs. Colorful fabric hangings were everywhere, as were exquisite carvings of the Spirit Beings, the Four Winds spirals, and an accumulation of war trophies. The floor matting, in the Cahokian style, had been woven in one piece, carried in whole, and laid across the packed clay. A fire crackled in the central hearth. Behind it, on a raised dais, the Keeper was being dressed, her people fitting a beautiful feather headdress to her gray hair.
    She fixed gleaming eyes on mine, as if measuring my souls. A deer felt that same sick realization when it discovered a hunched cougar staring down from a higher ledge.
    Glancing past the servants and slaves, I located Father, seated on a bench on the south side, his wrists bound. Two guards stood over him and now watched my arrival.
    Without hesitation I hurried over to him, heedless of my following escort.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Fine.” He barely hid his sarcasm. “The Keeper’s company can only be described as
charming
. Somehow I’ve made her late to a meeting at the Tonka’tzi’s Council House. News from the north, I gather.”
    “Get to the point,” Bear Heart interjected before I could respond.
    Father shot him the kind of look he’d give a water moccasin before he smacked it with a club. Then he fixed me with his intent gaze. I could see both strain and indecision in his face as he said, “I have made a deal with the Keeper. As part of our agreement, I need you to return to Horned Serpent Town and collect our warriors. As soon as you have everyone together, return immediately to the canoe. It must be on the river and headed home with our warriors aboard by tomorrow morning. You need to be in Copper Falcon Town within a moon.”
    “A moon? But I don’t—”
    “You don’t need to understand. Given the limited time you have, you’d better be hitting the trail to Horned Serpent Town if you’re going to be on the river by morning.”
    “Father, this—”
    “This is an order from a high chief to his war chief. That is all.” His expression had hardened.
    “I don’t understand,” I muttered in T’so, my sidelong gaze trying to read Bear Heart’s satisfied glint.
    “Do it,” Father insisted in T’so.
    Bear Heart tapped his war club. “We said, no foreign tongue.”
    “My war chief will follow his orders,” Father declared hotly. “He is not some undisciplined barbarian.”
    That was uttered for my benefit, and it stung me to the core. “I’ll follow orders,” I