Amero reached Nianki’s tent with some difficulty. The cowhide shelter flapped and lashed in the wind, threatening to blow away. Amero left Nianki on her bed roll and grappled with the whipping flaps. He tied them off, one by one, until the open shelter became a dark, dry, enclosed room.
Rained drummed on the roof. Amero snugged down the center flap. In the dark he could hear Nianki moving.
“I’m almost done. Feeling any better?” he asked. There was no response but her even breathing. Was she asleep? “Hulami’s wine is good, but it creeps up on you like a viper.”
With the tent secured, he wiped the rain and sweat from his face. “Sleep well, Nianki.”
“Amero.”
He paused at the door flap. “Hmm?”
“I love you.”
Though he’d always known she cared about him in her own rough way, he’d never heard his sister speak such tender words before. She sounded tired, a little lost.
“I love you, too,” Amero said before he ducked out into the storm. “Sleep well.”
Soon after the storm broke, the shore was empty, the feast over. A single towering figure remained outdoors, close to the water’s edge. Rain pelted Duranix in his true reptilian shape, running in thick streams down his massive face and off the scales on his back. He didn’t bother to unfurl his wings and use them to protect his eyes. A dragon’s vision was more acute by night than by day. He could see just fine, rain or no rain.
High above Yala-tene, at the very edge of the cliff overlooking the nomad camp, stood a solitary onlooker. To Duranix, his warm blood painted him against the night in a rose silhouette. He and the dragon stared through the night and the storm at each other.
“Vedvedsica.” Duranix’s rumbling whisper was swallowed by the wind.
Looking down, the elf cleric smiled to himself. The nugget, wrapped in fine gold wire, hung from a slender chain around his neck. He turned away, laughing.
Chapter 17
After their night of indulgence, the villagers had to rise with the new day and go about their work. Cattle had to be fed and watered, the gardens weeded, and ripe vegetables harvested. Summer was over, and cool-weather crops like cabbage and onions had to be planted. In addition to all these chores, there were pots to throw, timber to harvest, and hides to tan. Red-eyed and yawning, the villagers rose from their beds and silently went to work.
Not so the nomads. It was their custom to sleep in the remains of their revelries until thirst and hunger forced them to face the day. When they feasted a good hunt or a victory in battle, they got up only when their heads stopped throbbing, then mounted their horses and moved on. In the days after the Moonmeet feast, Karada’s band continued to carouse after dark. The only one who might have stopped them, Karada herself, was strangely absent from the scene.
Amero, like the rest of the villagers, had been busy. Three days went by before he found time to visit his sister. By then, the nomad camp resembled the scene of some terrible disaster. The thunderstorm on the night of the feast had collapsed most of their carelessly pitched tents, and the plainsmen had been too inebriated to do much about it. The most hard-drinking nomads slept where they fell, spending their nights exposed to the elements.
The only good-humored nomad Amero met was the amiable giant Pakito. He spotted the big man sitting outside his lopsided shelter, pouring rainwater out of his boots and smiling. A less violent, but no less dampening, rainstorm had rolled over the valley the night before.
“You’re in good spirits, considering,” Amero said, hailing him.
“Considering what?” asked Pakito.
“Considering your boots won’t be dry for days.”
Pakito sighed happily. “What do wet feet matter on a glorious morning like this?”
Amero was about to inquire what made it so glorious, but he was interrupted by Samtu. The dark-haired plainswoman poked her head out of the tent, squinted her eyes against the feeble morning light, and croaked, “Oh, help! Is there water? By all my ancestors, I think I’m dying.”
Still grinning, Pakito handed her a waterskin, and she ducked back into his tent. Amero had to laugh. “Now I understand. You’ve taken a mate!”
“Been taken, more like. I’ve always been a stumbling ox when it came to women, but Samtu wouldn’t let me go.” He flung a boot high in the air and yelled for the simple joy of it. The boot came down on a nearby sleeping nomad, who bounced up, cursing. From inside the tent, Samtu groaned and told Pakito to shut up.
“Sounds like love to me,” Amero said, and with a wave, moved toward Nianki’s tent.
With much groaning, coughing, and cursing, the nomads roused themselves from their latest stupor. A general cry for water went up, and this time there wasn’t enough to go round. Several blinking, stumbling plainsfolk made their way down to the lake, where they fell on their bellies and lapped up the cold water.
Reaching his sister’s tent, Amero called out to her. Nomads lying nearby cursed at him. He ignored them, saying, “Nianki, are you here?”
“Yes,” was her low reply.
He lifted the flap and squatted down to look inside. Nianki was sitting up, her back to the opening. She wore only a thigh-length doeskin shirt. Her long hair was tangled and matted.
“Nianki?”
“Amero.” She did not turn to greet him.
“Are you well?”
She hung her head. “I had a strange dream,” she murmured. “I thought it was a dream, but I’m awake and it’s still going on.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Her tanned face seemed quite pale, and he could see dark circles under her eyes, even in the dimness of the shelter.
He knelt in the opening, his back holding the flap up and letting daylight in. “Your people were at it again last night,” he said. “Are you well? I haven’t seen you since the feast.”
“Come inside, Amero. Let the flap down.”
He crawled in. It was close and steamy inside the small tent, and very dark. A few narrow beams of light penetrated through small holes in the hide.
“Something happened to me,” Nianki said. She still sat with her back to him.
“What? Are you ill?”
“Not… not in the usual way.” She drew a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “Amero, do you believe we are brother and sister?”
A strange and surprising question. “Of course,” he said.
“Is it possible our memories are wrong, that we’re not related at all?” Her voice sounded taut, almost desperate.
He settled down on the ground and stared at her hunched shoulders, barely visible in the sultry shadows. Her questions confused him, but her tone told him this was important to her. “Our memories match,” he said. “Our experiences are the same up to the day the yevi attacked us, all those years ago.”
“But suppose we’re not really siblings — suppose you were a baby found abandoned on the savanna. What if that were true, and Oto and Kinar just the people who raised you and not the parents of your body?”
Confusion became shock. “What are you telling me? Am I not your brother?”
She turned suddenly and seized his hands in her own. Her eyes were dark and troubled as she whispered, “What if it were true?”
He looked down at her rough hands, gripping his with fervor. “I’d be very surprised,” he said lamely. “All I remember from my childhood is Oto, Kinar, Menni, and you. If I were a taken-up babe, I wouldn’t know it unless I was told.” He slowly raised his eyes to hers. She was weeping, soundlessly. He’d never seen Nianki cry before, not even as a child.
“You’re only two years older than me,” he went on. “How could you remember when I was born, much less
