Neytiri Tsyal had warned four clans this moon, and four clans had laughed at her. Tonight she stood before the elders of the fifth, under their great ancient tree, and told them the steam-barons were coming to strip the land. The barons burned forests to feed their machines. If the blue clans did not unite, each would fall alone. The oldest elder tapped his staff. "We have never seen these machines," he said. "You bring us stories. Stories do not march. Go home, Tsyal." Neytiri's throat tightened. She had seen the barons' work with her own eyes, a valley of stumps and ash where her mother's clan once lived. But a burned valley was a day's climb away. These elders would not walk it on her word. Her small mushroom-capped pet nosed her ankle, sensing her shame. She had nothing to show them. No proof. Only a scar and a warning they would not believe. That night she could not sleep in the guest burrow. She heard a sound outside, a sharp metal clicking against stone. She crept out. In the moonlight, something moved near the roots of the great tree. It was a ferret, but wrong, wrapped in brass plates and tiny spinning gears. Beside it scuttled a hamster fitted with goggles and a little cog on its chest. Scouts. The barons' machine-beasts, sniffing the clan's land, mapping it for the burning crews behind them. Neytiri's heart slammed. Here was her proof, alive and moving. But the brass ferret turned and bolted toward the dark treeline, carrying everything it had learned back to its masters. If it escaped, the elders would wake to find nothing changed. She ran. Her pet darted ahead and bowled into the hamster, pinning it in the dirt. Neytiri threw her net over the ferret. Gears screamed. The thing bit and thrashed, but the net held. She dragged it back into the firelight, lungs burning. She hauled both captured beasts to the elders' tree and dropped them at the feet of the sleeping old man. "You wanted something that marches," she said. The elder woke, saw the brass ferret straining in the net, its mechanical eyes glinting. His face went gray. Clan members gathered, touching the cold metal, the sharp gears, the goggles. No one laughed now. The oldest elder gripped his staff hard. "They are already here," he whispered. "On our own roots." By dawn the fifth clan swore to stand with Neytiri. But the victory cut both ways. The scouts had not returned to their masters. The barons would know their machines were taken. They would come for this clan first, and come soon. Neytiri had won her believers. Now she had painted a target on them. She looked at the captured ferret, still twitching in the net, and knew she had traded one impossible task for a deadline.