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 found?”
Nianki dropped her hands and turned away again. “You weren’t found, Amero,” she muttered. “You are my brother.”
His head was spinning. He felt like the victim of a prank, only the prankster was weeping at him instead of laughing.
“What’s this all about?” he demanded. “Why are you acting so strangely?”
She scrubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands, taking in deep draughts of air as though to clear her head. “It’s nothing,” she said, sounding stern again. “Too much wine and too many bad dreams.”
Amero got up on one knee. “I’d say the same things were afflicting your band,” he said. “All but Pakito.” He explained how the strapping warrior and Samtu had come together.
“Good,” she said, quite clearly. “A man needs a good mate.”
Shouts erupted outside, hoarse male and female voices. Amero stood and flung back the tent flap. Nomads were running past Nianki’s tent toward a small crowd gathering at the edge of the village. The loud, angry voices came from there.
Sighing, he said, “There’s been nothing but trouble between your people and mine, since the feast. If this keeps up…” He left the thought unfinished and hurried away to the disturbance. Nianki followed, still clad in the long, doeskin tunic, shading her eyes against the hazy daylight.
Amero worked his way through a hostile crowd of nomads. They were massed around the house of Hulami the vintner. At first Amero thought they were blaming Hulami’s wine for their pounding heads and raging thirst, but when he got closer, he discovered they were besieging her with requests for more wine.
Hulami was backed up against her own door. Her two apprentices stood on either side of her, stout stirring paddles held up like clubs. Amero recognized the man yelling at her as Tarkwa, one of Nianki’s leading warriors.
“Whatta ya mean, you won’t give us wine?” Tarkwa bellowed. “You gave away a vat full three days ago and now it’s gone!”
“That was a feast!” Hulami replied hotly. “I expect the villagers to send me food and goods for the wine I make. I can’t afford to give it away every day! If you smelly fools want more of my wine, you’ll have to barter for it like everyone else!”
Amero winced at the vintner’s harsh words. Karada’s band shouted insults right back. “Bloodsucking viper” was the kindest one he heard.
Tarkwa stepped forward from the crowd. The apprentices presented their paddles, pressing the grape-stained ends against Tarkwa’s chest.
Someone shouted, “Kill’em Tarkwa! We’ll take what we want over their dead bodies!”
Amero ran to the front of the mob, yelling and waving for attention. The shouts of the crowd drowned him out and no one paid him much heed until Nianki appeared and stood close beside him.
“What’s the problem?” she said loudly.
“This sour wench thinks she can fill us with wine one day and keep it back from us the next! We’re going to teach her different!” Tarkwa snarled. The mob at his back howled approval of his words.
Nianki turned and shoved the two young apprentices aside. Hulami looked to Amero for help, but before he could say anything, Nianki whispered something in her ear. Whitefaced, Hulami stood away from her door.
Tarkwa gave a rousing cry. The mob echoed his cheer and surged forward. Nianki put her hands on the doorjambs, bracing herself and blocking their way.
“What’re you doing, Karada?” Tarkwa said.
“I’ll get out of the way,” she said calmly, “and you can drink up everything you find — drain the chamber pots, if you want — but if you take away this woman’s livelihood today, there won’t be any more wine in Arku-peli. Ever.”
She dropped her arms. Her angry followers hesitated.
“It’s some kind of trick,” said a woman in the front ranks. “Karada’s playing with us.”
“No trick,” Nianki replied. “If you pick all the apples off a tree one day, you know there won’t be any apples tomorrow. If you guzzle all the wine in the village, it’ll be gone, and you’ll be just as thirsty and heavy-headed tomorrow.” She moved out of the doorway, folded her arms, and leaned against the wall. “So go ahead.”
Some of the nomads took halting steps toward the door. Nianki eyed them. “It’s not just the wine you’re giving up you know,” she told them in the same matter-of-fact tone. “You start robbing the villagers, and there won’t be so much as an ox tongue for you tomorrow.”
“But we’re thirsty!” someone cried.
“There’s a whole lake over there, or didn’t you notice?” she snapped.
Slowly, grumbling all the while, the mob of nomads receded from Hulami’s door.
“What’s the matter?” Nianki called. “Lose your taste for wine?”
The crowd broke up sullenly as the parched nomads headed for the free water of the lake. Tarkwa lingered a few steps behind. Out of the press appeared Hatu, looking surprisingly well compared to the others. He spoke to Tarkwa, and they fell to talking.
Hulami went into her house and returned with a clay jug of wine. “Karada, this is for you,” she said, beaming. “You saved my life!”
Amero joined them. “You handled that well,” he said.
Nianki set the brimful jug of wine at her feet and smiled faintly. “Fierce as they are, they’re like children. They want what they want, and they want it now. You can either beat them into obedience — which I’m too tired to do this morning — or you can try to point out what they’ll lose if they do as they want.” She shrugged. “It usually works.”
Tarkwa and Hatu watched them from twenty paces away. After a short exchange, they left, following the others to the lake.
Nianki picked up the wine jug and gave it back to Hulami. The vintner was puzzled.
“Don’t you want it?” she said.
“I’d better not. I can’t pay the price of it either.”
She walked away, slowly and rather stiffly. Amero and Hulami watched her go.