It was exactly the same motion Vashet had used to chastise me a thousand times in the last month. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.
Vashet and Shehyn glared at me. Actually glared.
Magwyn turned to look at me. She didn’t seem upset. “Do you laugh at the name I have given you?”
“Never, Magwyn,” I said trying my best to gesture respect with my bandaged hand. “Names are important things.”
She continued to eye me. “And what would a barbarian know of names?”
“Some,” I said, fumbling with my bandaged hand again. I couldn’t add fine shades of meaning to my words without it. “Far away, I have made a study of such things. I know more than many, but still only just a little.”
Magwyn looked at me for a long time. “Then you will know you should not speak of your new name to anyone,” she said. “It is a private thing, and dangerous to share.”
I nodded.
Magwyn looked satisfied at this, and settled back onto her chair, opening a book. “Vashet, my little rabbit, you should come and visit me soon.” Gentle chiding fondness.
“I will, grandmother,” Vashet said.
“Thank you, Magwyn,” Shehyn said. Deferential gratitude.
The old woman nodded a distracted dismissal, and Shehyn led us from the cave.
Later that evening, I walked back to Vashet’s house. She was sitting on the bench out front, watching the sky as the sun began to set.
She tapped the bench beside her, and I took a seat. “How does it feel to no longer be a barbarian?” she asked.
“Mostly the same,” I said. “Slightly drunker.”
After dinner Penthe had pulled me away to her house, where there was a party of sorts. Call it a gathering, rather, as there was no music or dancing. Still, I was flattered that Penthe had gone to the effort of finding five other Adem who were willing to celebrate my admittance to the school.
I was pleased to learn the Adem impassivity dissolved quite easily after a few drinks, and we were all grinning like barbarians in no time. It relaxed me, especially as much of my own clumsiness with the language could now be blamed on my bandaged hand.
“Earlier today,” I said carefully, “Shehyn said she knew a story about the Rhinta.”
Vashet turned to look at me, her face expressionless. Hesitant.
“I have searched all over the world for such a thing,” I said. “There are few things I would value more.” Utter sincerity. “And I worry that I did a poor job of letting Shehyn know this.” Questioning. Intense entreaty.
Vashet looked at me for a moment, as if waiting for me to continue. Then she gestured reluctance. “I will mention it to her,” she said. Reassurance. Finished.
I nodded and let the subject drop.
Vashet and I sat for a while in companionable silence as the sun slowly sank into the horizon. She drew a deep breath and sighed expansively. I realized that, with the exception of waiting for me to catch my breath or recover from a fall, we had never done anything like this before. Up until this point, every moment we had spent together had been focused on my training.
“Tonight,” I said at last. “Penthe told me she thought I had a fine anger, and that she’d like to share it with me.”
Vashet chuckled. “That didn’t take very long.” She gave me a knowing look. “What happened?”
I blushed a bit. “Ah. She . . . reminded me the Adem do not consider physical contact particularly intimate.”
Vashet’s smile grew practically lecherous. “Grabbed hold of you, did she?”
“Almost,” I said. “I move more quickly than I did a month ago.”
“I doubt you move quickly enough to keep away from Penthe,” Vashet said. “All she is looking for is sexplay. There is no harm in it.”
“That is why I was asking you,” I said slowly. “To see if there was any harm in it.”
Vashet she raised an eyebrow, at the same time gesturing vague puzzlement.
“Penthe is quite lovely,” I said carefully. “However, you and I have . . .” I looked for an appropriate term. “Been intimate.”
Realization washed over Vashet’s face and she laughed again. “What you mean is that we have been sexual. The intimacy between a teacher and student is greater by far than that.”
“Ah,” I said, relaxing. “I’d suspected something of the sort. But it is nice to know for certain.”
Vashet shook her head. “I had forgotten what it is like with you barbarians,” she said, her voice heavy with fond indulgence. “It has been so many years since I had to explain such things to my poet king.”
“So you would not be offended if I were to . . .” I made an inarticulate gesture with my bandaged hand.
“You are young and energetic,” she said. “It is a healthy thing for you to do. Why would I be offended? Do I suddenly own your sex, that I should be worried about you giving it away?”
Vashet stopped as if something had just occurred to her. She turned to look at me. “Are you offended that I have been having sex with others all this while?” She watched my face intently. “I see you are startled by it.”
“I am startled,” I admitted. Then I did a mental inventory and was surprised to discover I wasn’t sure how I felt. “I feel I ought to be offended,” I said at last. “But I don’t think I am.”
Vashet nodded approvingly. “That is a good sign. It shows you are becoming civilized. The other feeling is what you were brought up to think. It is like an old shirt that no longer fits you. And now, when you look at it closely, you can see it was ugly to begin with.”
I hesitated for a moment. “Out of curiosity,” I said, “how many others have you been with since we have been together?”
Vashet seemed surprised by the question. She pursed her mouth and looked up at the sky for a long moment before shrugging. “How many people have I spoken with since then? How many have I sparred with? How many times have I eaten, or practiced my Ketan? Who counts such things?”
“And most Adem think this way?” I asked, glad to finally have the chance to ask these questions. “That sex is not an intimate thing?”
“Of course it is intimate,” Vashet said. “Anything that brings two people close together is intimate. A conversation, a kiss, a whisper. Even fighting is intimate. But we are not strange about our sex. We do not feel shame about it. We do not feel it important to keep someone else’s sex all to ourselves, like a miser hoarding gold.” She shook her head. “More than any other, this strangeness in your thinking sets you barbarians apart.”
“But what of romance then?” I asked, slightly indignant. “What of love?”
Vashet laughed again then, loud and long and vastly amused. Half of Haert must have heard it, and it echoed back to us from the distant hills.
“You barbarians,” she said, wiping moisture from her eyes. “I had forgotten how backward you are. My poet king was the same way. It took him a long, miserable time before he realized the truth of things: There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE
Caesura
The next day I woke somewhat blearily. I hadn’t drunk that much, but my body was no longer used to such things, and so I felt each drink three times that morning. I straggled to the baths, dunked myself in the hottest pool I could stand, then scrubbed the vaguely gritty feeling away as best I could.
I was heading back to the dining hall when Vashet and Shehyn found me in the hallway. Vashet gestured for me to follow, and I fell in step behind them. I hardly felt up for training or a formal conversation, but refusing didn’t seem like a realistic option.
We wound our way through several hallways, eventually emerging near the center of the school. Passing through a courtyard we approached a small, square building that Shehyn unlocked with a small iron key: the first locked door I had seen in all of Haert.