> The spotted people are powerful as spirits only because they have fixed memories and other arts. Now that we have copied their arts, will we not become as powerful as spirits?

– Attributed to Amiwa, early Algonquian philosopher (Baktun 10 Katun 12 Tun 13)

Officer Weentamawaaci Inoka knew he had made a mistake as soon as he entered the alley.

His drone's cameras were sensitive enough to pick up the trash on the ground, the cracks and stains on the plaster-smeared walls of the Waapils' houses, garbage glowing in the moonlight. The prostitute with the bruises, however, was gone. She'd led Wentama's drone into this alley and vanished.

"Vengeful ghosts," Wentama swore. He had flown his valuable municipal machine into a trap.

Wentama pushed out one hand and rotated the other. Away in the slum of Waapilookinki, his drone reversed direction, panning with its camera eyes. There was still no sign of people, but Wentama knew they were closing in. Even from his control cradle in the District 18 police station, he could feel it. But the woman's bruises had been real.

"Miss?" Wentama's amplified voice echoed between the wooden boxes that the Waapils called houses. Was that movement among the trash? An animal? A twitchy ambusher? Wentama imagined skinny forms huddled under IR-opaque blankets, pale, spiderlike hands clutching their smoking weapons. Wentama forced his jaw to relax. His hands remained steady in the air, directing his drone.

Outside, the night air would be cool and close, full of moisture—and no doubt stink—from the lake. In his cradle, Wentama felt none of it. He was safe. He couldn't pull out. Not yet.

"Miss, you need medical attention." His drone's articulated plastic fingers reached into the darkness. "I know you lured me in here, but if you let me—"

They hit him from behind.

Wentama's point of view skewed as something slammed into the lower tip of his drone. Red warnings crackled in his opticals and his earbuds shrieked with the sound of expensive equipment being violated by savages.

The emergency rescue beacon went off, shamefully loud in the crowded control room. Wentama hunched in his cradle, trying to pretend nobody was looking at him.

Gritting his teeth, Wentama forced his fingers to form the signs that would right the drone, turn it. The attackers slid into view, hunched silhouettes against the cloud-glow. One of them was still holding the metal pipe he had used to smash the drone's lower casing.

"Freeze!" Wentama's voice blared out of speakers in the drone's chest. "Stop and surrender your weapons, or—"

The one with the pipe grunted something and Wentama's point of view shuddered again. Another crop of warning pop-ups. Another attacker. Or group of attackers. How had they gotten behind him?

Wentama pushed out his hand, twitched his fingers, and his drone's anti-personnel arsenal self-armed. A crackle and hiss, and a storm of metal motes flew from their canisters, carried by a wall of force that smashed the attackers back. Wentama didn't speak English, but he recognized the cursing of his attackers.

"Fire on East Peoria." That was the voice of Wentama's sergeant, not in the slum alley but here in the control room. "Drones to the pin I've dropped. All drones to the pin. Except Wentama."

Wentama opened his mouth to protest. He would be there. He'd fight off these Waapils and help.

The drone's suspension field failed. His point of view dropped. To his attackers' chest-level. Okay, but feed from the Grid was still good. He could bring the right arm back up, and activate the lightning rod.

Wentama pointed his weapon at the Waapil with the pipe in his hand. He had wondered what it would feel like to taze someone in a fight. "This is your last warning. You have one more chance to get out of here."

The thug said something. His upper face was concealed under a knitted mask, but Wentama could see his thin lips pull back from crooked, oversized teeth. The attackers drew in.

Wentama squeezed his fist, but his rod didn't fire. The video window fragmented and his point of view lurched sideways. Wentama had time to recognize the blurred silver rings as they swung past his drone's cameras. Heavy-gauge, electrically conductive, metal chain. His earbuds burst into static.

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"Spirits and impaling ghosts!"

In the control room of District 18 police station, two and a half miles from the edge of Waapilookinki, Wentama surged up from his control cradle. He peeled the computer equipment off, cursing.

Every other police officer smiled up from their work.

"Welcome to Waapilookinki," said the nearest.

***

"You lost a drone," said Kwihsitawiko Inoka.

Wentama blinked. He had just settled into the cradle in his boss's office, and he hadn't said a word yet.

"Don't look so shocked." Kwisit's eyes were mild over the carmine sergeant's stripes on his cheeks. "There was an office pool going to see how long you'd last before screwing up. I lost money on it."

"I'm sorry, sir," Wentama resisted the desire to rub at his own face paint. The inverted triangle of paint was still fresh and uncomfortable on his forehead, cheeks, and nose. "But that woman's injuries looked real."

"They probably were."

Wentama tried to remember the next step in procedure. He hadn't spent enough time memorizing what to do after a screw-up. "I'll forward the drone logs to you?"

"You think they'll tell me anything I don't already know?" Kwisit reared up in his cradle, stretching. He was shorter than average for an Ilinwa man, but almost as powerfully-built as a Gondwanan. "All we can hope is they use the money they get fencing the parts of your drone to pay for the girl's stitches. Not that one of those people would ever willingly visit a hospital."

Wentama kept his expression neutral. He respected Kwisit enormously. The man was a hero for what he'd done during and after the Transition, but sometimes the generation gap loomed large. One of those people?

"I'm sorry, sir," was all Wentama could think to say.

Kwisit looked at him impassively. Eventually, finally, Wentama's superior broke the silence. "You want me to tell you did the right thing, but I can't do that because you didn't. You fell for a trick, officer. You got played." Kwisit spread his rough, brown hands. "So, think of what happened as an object lesson. Which is not to say that your carelessness will go unpunished." The cradle rocked forward again, and Kwisit's forearms came down on his knees. "You get more work in Waapilookinki."

Wentama controlled his expression. Watching Waapils was supposed to be temporary, part of the hazing that every new District 18 officer went through, before transfer to somewhere useful. And now Wentama had impaled the job and extended his stay. What was he going to tell his mother?

"Also," continued Kwisit, "in light of the cultural sensitivity you've demonstrated tonight, I'm adding you to our task force investigating the latest dust-up: the arson/manslaughter."

Arson/manslaughter? "You're talking about the fire up on East Peoria? Who was killed?"

"The owner." The captain signed commands and Wentama's opticals flickered. "Here're the photos."

The window opened in Wentama's lower vision: a death certificate on top of a column of photographs. The cracked-eggshell roof of the burned house. Pieces of broken bottle, with appended notes from forensics about hydrocarbon residues. No fingerprints. And at the bottom of the stack, as if buried, the blackened body.

"Mr. Kiiyaahkweepiici Kaskaskia," said Kwisit.

"'He is drunk'? That's a pretty terrible received name."

The sergeant chuckled. "An accurate one. It seems Mr. Kiyahk was a user of ethanol."

This whole conversation, Wentama had been trying to keep his expression blank. Now, he tried harder.

"Kiyahk was apparently in a stupor in his bed at the time of the crime," Kwisit continued. "According to the preliminary report from the spiritualist, he asphyxiated on the smoke before the fire reached him. Never even woke up."

Wentama memorized the dead man's features, then banished the photo into his com's memory. "You think it was someone in Waapilookinki who did this?"

"Of course I do. And of course they did it. Kiyahk's registered tribe was Kaskaskia, but the little bastard was obviously a Moundbuilder."

Wentama nodded. The Moundbuilders ran ethanol down the Mihsisiipiiwi river to Bayou City and the Gulf of Meshika, a business so lucrative that the crime syndicate had practically grown into a tribe in its own right.

"And that points to the Waapils, who make the stuff for the gangsters. My guess is this was some sort of scare tactic from small time moonshiners who want to cut in on distribution. It would be nice, Wentama," he said, "if you could prove that for us."

"Us?" Maybe this assignment wasn't just a punishment. If Wentama could work alongside a municipal Council to untangle this mess, it might mean good things for his career.

"In this case," said Kwisit, "'us' means 'me.' Because I'm here to shield you from the Kaskaskia tribe, most specifically the boss of the late Mr. Kiyahk, who is also his aunt."

A new picture appeared, one Wentama knew.

"Petkina Moundbuilder."

"And her entire network of, ahem, legitimate businesspeople and friendly Council-members. So, you go into the slum, Officer Wentama, and you find us a nice, criminally-inclined Waapil." Kwisit's teeth showed, broad and white. "Then you nail him to a tree."