“Hold on. Drei is your head tax. I know that one. But what’s pernato?”
“One without a lupus father.”
“Without … oh, you mean like the ones you call throw-backs or lost ones? Only these pernato are known to the clan.”
“Exactly. A pernato is lupus because of recessives in both parents’ genes. In this case, Cobb’s daughter proved fertile with a young man who is essentially human, but whose maternal grandfather was lupus.”
“A pernato grandson wouldn’t be considered full-blood.”
“It’s a distinction without a difference. Pernato are lupi. Sometimes they’re below average in one of our abilities, but there’s variance among the full-blood, too.”
“Why haven’t I heard about pernato?”
“Pernato clan are rare in Nokolai. Leidolf is known for throwing them more often than most. It’s one reason they’re the largest clan.”
“Plus they have a habit of absorbing smaller clans, though I don’t see how the—no, I’ll ask that later. This gym Cobb owns. Do you know its name and address?”
“I don’t have the address. It’s called Cobb’s Gym.”
“Not an imaginative guy,” she said, making another note. “You say his clientele is human except for those two nights a week. That suggests he’s comfortable being around a lot of humans a lot of the time, even training them.”
“It does.”
“It doesn’t suggest someone balanced on an unholy edge, teetering toward multiple homicide.”
Rule considered what to say. How much to say. He snuggled her close so he could speak very softly. “You read about the fury in that history of the clans the Rhej gave you. You asked me about it.”
“You’re talking about the berserker thing. One of the clans—I don’t remember the name—had a bad rep with the others because its members fell ‘into the fury’ too often. This was a long time ago, well before the Purge, and there wasn’t a lot of communication between the clans, so the Nokolai guy who wrote the history didn’t know the details, but—wait, stop, I’m sidetracking. Basically, you said, the fury is when a lupus goes berserker in battle.”
“That’s the short version. You need a longer one to understand what may have happened.”
“I’m listening.”
“Pack wolves and lone wolves fall into the fury easily—that’s one reason they’re so dangerous.” Pack wolves were clanless wolves who’d gathered in a small pack—something almost unheard of these days, since the clans allowed very few lone wolves. Lacking a mantle, they were susceptible to the fury. “Clan wolves are more protected, but in battle we can succumb, too, if we’re fighting two-footed and aren’t trained to avoid it.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Not when you’re wolf?”
“No. The fury is …” He spread his hands. “The fury is of the wolf, but the wolf doesn’t experience the fury. You might call it an unhappy blending of the two states arising from the way the man experiences the wolf during battle. It’s born of rage, but it isn’t rage. Just as anger may be born of fear, but isn’t fear.”
Her brow pleated in concentration. “You think it’s a truly separate experience. Not some composite of other emotions, but an emotional state humans don’t have.”
He shrugged. “The closest analogue in humans seems to be the berserker state, which is why I explained it that way before. The fury is raw and red and dangerous. In its grip, pain has no meaning. We lose all intentions but one: to kill our enemies. And everyone within sight or scent of us is the enemy.”
She tipped her head. “You’ve experienced it.”
“As part of my training, yes. I was fourteen.” He smiled ruefully. “The fury is uncommon in adults, but not in adolescents—who are, as the saying goes, all balls and no brain. We have to experience it to learn how to avoid it, so it’s triggered in us intentionally, in a controlled situation.”
“What happened?”
“I thought I was in a normal practice bout, but Benedict had arranged for two opponents to attack me from behind quite … unexpectedly.” At fourteen, he hadn’t yet attained certa, the optimal battle state, which rendered the fury impossible. Back then, no one knew if he would. Many lupi didn’t, so they had to learn other ways to avoid the fury. By Changing, for example. You couldn’t fall into fury if you were wolf.
“Is an unexpected attack a trigger?”
“Triggers vary, but Benedict knew me well enough to have a good idea of what would work with me. Ah … let’s just say he was right. My opponents were well-trained adults, of course,” he added. “Not other youngsters. They knew what to expect, so the moment they smelled it on me, they got out of the way and Benedict pinned me until it passed. Then he, ah, spoke firmly to me.”
“Firmly. I’ll bet. Does it pass quickly, then?”
“It depends on the situation. Benedict pinned me so I couldn’t fight. Fighting feeds it.”
“You think that’s what happened to Cobb. He fell into the fury.”
“If the information we have about what happened is correct, I have no other explanation. He didn’t Change, so he wasn’t beast-lost. He seems to have had no reason to kill, much less to do it so publicly.”
“Lupi don’t just go nuts sometimes?”
“Define ‘go nuts.’ We aren’t subject to psychoses, hallucinations, or other physically based forms of insanity.”
“But you are—sometimes, in some situations, for some individuals—subject to the fury. Something triggered it in Cobb. A threat?”
“I don’t know. Adults don’t react like adolescents, except …” He shifted his legs restlessly. “Some lupi, like some humans, have what you might call anger issues. Those who carry habitual anger, if they also have trouble with control, might slip into furo without being engaged in actual battle. Such clan are usually brought to live at or near Clanhome.”
“Nokolai does this, too? They bring the angry ones to Clanhome?”
He smiled. “If you’re worrying that the lupi you meet at Clanhome are dangerous, don’t. When such clan have more contact with—I will say with their Rho”—because he couldn’t mention the mantle—“they’re calmer, more able to control themselves.”
She looked down at her notebook, but obviously was consulting her thoughts, not the few things she’d written there. When she looked up at him again, her expression was carefully neutral. “You aren’t living at Leidolf Clanhome.”
“No.” And it gnawed at him. That he was doing the best he could didn’t mean it was enough. A Rho should live among his clan. They needed the sight and smell of him. They didn’t have to like him—which was just as well, because many Leidolf couldn’t stand him. They still needed him.
“But what you carry doesn’t depend on proximity. The clan still feels it, even when you’re on the other side of the country.”
“In the most important sense, yes. But I can’t use it directly from a distance, plus there’s a psychological need, especially for those whose control isn’t great. They need to know someone can control them, if necessary.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “They find that calming?”