Penthe gestured sullen irritation. “I should not be surprised,” she said. “Everyone tells stories about the barbarians. Some of it is training, so I can move well among you.” Wry however. “Since I have not been out among them yet, they also tell stories to tease me.”
“What sort of stories?” I asked, thinking of what I had heard about the Adem and the Lethani before I had met Tempi.
She shrugged, slight embarrassment. “It is foolishness. They say all the barbarian men are huge.” She gestured far above her head, showing a height of more than seven feet. “Naden told me he went to a town where the barbarians ate a soup made of dirt. They say the barbarians never bathe. They say barbarians drink their own urine, believing it will help them live longer.” She shook her head, laughing and gesturing horrified amusement.
“Are you saying,” I asked slowly, “that you don’t drink yours?”
Penthe froze midlaugh and looked at me, her face and hands showing a confused, apologetic mix of embarrassment, disgust, and disbelief. It was such a bizarre tangle of emotions I couldn’t help but laugh, and I saw her relax when she realized the joke.
“I understand,” I said. “We tell similar stories about the Adem.”
Her eyes lit up. “You must tell me as I told you. It is fair.”
Given Tempi’s reaction when I’d told him of the word-fire and Lethani, I decided to share something else. “They say those who take the red never have sex. They say you take that energy and put it into your Ketan, and that is why you are such good fighters.”
Penthe laughed hard at that. “I would have never made the third stone if that were the case,” she said. Wry amusement. “If keeping from sex gave me my fighting, there would be days I could not make even a fist.”
I felt my pulse quicken a bit at that.
“Still,” she said. “I can see where that story comes from. They must think we have no sex because no Adem would bed a barbarian.”
“Ah,” I said, somewhat disappointed. “Why have you brought me to the flowers then?”
“You are now of Ademre,” she said easily. “I expect many will approach you now. You have a sweet face, and it is hard not to be curious about your anger.”
Penthe paused and glanced significantly downward. “That is unless you are diseased?”
I blushed at this. “What? No! Of course not!”
“Are you certain?”
“I have studied at the Medica,” I said somewhat stiffly. “The greatest school of medicine in all the world. I know all about the diseases a person might catch, how to spot them and how to treat them.”
Penthe gave me a skeptical look. “I do not question you in particular. But it is well known that barbarians are quite frequently diseased in their sex.”
I shook my head. “This is just another foolish story. I assure you the barbarians are no more diseased than the Adem. In fact, I expect we may be less.”
She shook her head, her eyes serious. “No. You are wrong in this. Of a hundred barbarians, how many would you say were so afflicted?”
It was an easy statistic I knew from the Medica. “Out of every hundred? Perhaps five. More among those who work in brothels or frequent such places, of course.”
Penthe’s face showed obvious disgust and she shivered. “Of one hundred Adem, none are so afflicted,” she said firmly. Absolute.
“Oh come now.” I held up my hand, making a circle with my fingers. “None?”
“None,” she said with grim certainty. “The only place we could catch such a thing is from a barbarian, and those who travel are warned.”
“What if you caught a disease from another Adem who had not been careful while traveling?” I asked.
Penthe’s tiny heart-shaped face went grim, her nostrils flaring. “From one of my own?” Vast anger. “If one of Ademre were to give me a disease, I would be furious. I would shout from the top of a cliff what they had done. I would make their life as painful as a broken bone.”
She gestured disgust, brushing at the front of her shirt in the first piece of Adem hand-talk I had ever learned from Tempi. “Then I would make the long trek over the mountains into the Tahl to be cured of it. Even if the trip should take two years and bring no money to the school. And none would think the less of me for that.”
I nodded to myself. It made sense. Given their attitudes about sex, if it were any other way, disease would run rampant through the population.
I saw Penthe looking at me expectantly. “Thank you for the flowers,” I said.
She nodded and stepped closer, looking up at me. Her eyes were excited as she smiled her shy smile. Then her face grew serious. “Is it enough to satisfy your barbarian rituals, or is there more that must be done?”
I reached down and ran my hand along the smooth skin of her neck, sliding my fingertips under the long braid so they brushed the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and tipped her face up toward mine.
“They are lovely, and more than enough,” I said, and bent to kiss her.
“I was right,” Penthe said with a contented sigh as we lay naked among the flowers. “You have a fine anger.” I lay on my back, her small body curled under my arm, her heart-shaped face resting gently on my chest.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “I think anger might be the wrong word.”
“I mean Vaevin,” she said, using the Ademic term. “Is that the same?”
“I don’t know that word,” I admitted.
“I think anger is the right word,” she said. “I have spoken with Vashet in your language, and she did not correct me.”
“What do you mean by anger, then?” I asked. “I certainly don’t feel angry.”
Penthe lifted her head from my chest and gave me a lazy, satisfied smile. “Of course not,” she said. “I have taken your anger. How could you feel such a way?”
“Are . . . are you angry then?” I asked, sure I was missing the point entirely.
Penthe laughed and shook her head. She had undone her long braid and her honey-colored hair hung down the side of her face. It made her look like an entirely different person. That and the lack of the mercenary reds, I supposed. “It is not that kind of anger. I am glad to have it.”
“I still do not understand,” I said. “This could be something barbarians do not know. Explain it to me as if I were a child.”
She looked at me for a moment, her eyes serious, then she rolled over onto her stomach so she could face me more easily. “This anger is not a feeling. It is . . .” She hesitated, frowning prettily. “It is a desire. It is a making. It is a wanting of life.”
Penthe looked around, then focused on the grass around us. “Anger is what makes the grass press up through the ground to reach the sun,” she said. “All things that live have anger. It is the fire in them that makes them want to move and grow and do and make.” She cocked her head. “Does that make sense to you?”
“I think so,” I said. “And women take the anger from men in sex?”
She smiled, nodding. “That is why afterward a man is so weary. He gives a piece of himself. He collapses. He sleeps.” She glanced down. “Or a part of him sleeps.”
“Not for long,” I said.
“That is because you have a fine, strong anger,” she said proudly. “As I have already said. I can tell because I have taken a piece of it. I can tell there is more waiting.”
“There is,” I admitted. “But what do women do with the anger?”
“We use it,” Penthe said simply. “That is why, afterward, a woman does not always sleep as a man does. She feels more awake. Full of the need to move. Often full of desire for more of what brought her the anger in the first place.” She lowered her head to my chest and bit me playfully, wriggling her naked body against me.