The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN Anger

“What were you thinking?” Tempi demanded. Disappointment. Fierce chastisement. “What fool sets his sword aside?”

“She threw her sword away first!” I protested.

“Only to lure you in,” Tempi said. “Only as a trap.”

I was buckling Caesura’s scabbard so the hilt hung over my shoulder. There hadn’t been any particular ceremony after I had lost. Magwyn simply returned my sword and smiled at me, patting my hand in a comforting way.

I watched the crowd slowly dispersing below, and gestured polite disbelief to Tempi. “Should I have kept my sword when she was unarmed?”

“Yes!” Absolute agreement. “She is five times the fighter you are. You might have had a chance if you had kept your sword!”

“Tempi is right,” I heard Shehyn’s voice behind me. “Knowing your enemy is in keeping with the Lethani. Once a fight is inevitable, a clever fighter takes any advantage.” I turned and saw her coming down the path. Penthe walked beside her.

I gestured polite certainty. “If I had kept my sword and won, people would have thought Carceret was a fool and resented me for gaining a rank I did not deserve. And if I had kept my sword and lost, it would have been humiliating. Neither reflects well on me.” I looked back and forth between Shehyn and Tempi. “Am I wrong in this?”

“You are not wrong in this.” Shehyn said. “But neither is Tempi wrong.”

“Victory is always to be sought,” Tempi said. Firm.

Shehyn turned to face him. “Success is key,” she said. “Victory is not always needed to succeed.”

Tempi gestured respectful disagreement and opened his mouth to respond, but Penthe spoke first, cutting him off. “Kvothe, are you hurt from your fall?”

“Not badly,” I said, moving my back gingerly. “A few bruises, perhaps.”

“Do you have anything to put on them?”

I shook my head.

Penthe stepped forward and took hold of my arm. “I have things at my house. We will leave these two to discuss the Lethani. Someone should tend to your hurts.” She held my arm with her left hand, making her statement curiously empty of any emotional content.

“Of course,” Shehyn said after a moment, and Tempi gestured a hasty agreement. But Penthe was already leading me firmly down the hill.

We walked for a quarter mile or so, Penthe holding my arm lightly.

Eventually she spoke in her lightly accented Aturan. “Are you bruised badly enough to need a salve?” she asked.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“I thought not,” she said. “But after I have lost a fight, I rarely wish to have people tell me how I lost it.” She flashed me a small, secret smile.

I smiled back.

We continued to walk, and Penthe kept hold of my arm, subtly guiding us through a grove of trees, then up a steep path carved through a small bluff. Eventually we came to a secluded dell that had a carpet of wild papavlerflower blossoming among the grass. Their loose, blood-red petals were almost exactly the same color as Penthe’s mercenary reds.

“Vashet told me barbarians have strange rituals with your sex,” Penthe said. “She told me if I wanted to bed you, I should bring you to some flowers.” She gestured around. “These are the best I could find in this season.” She looked up at me expectantly.

“Ah,” I said. “I expect Vashet was having a bit of a joke with you. Or perhaps a joke with me.” Penthe frowned and I hurried to continue. “But it is true that among the barbarians there are many rituals that lead up to sex. It is somewhat more complicated there.”

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.

It was pleasantly distracting. “Does this mean women have no anger of their own?”

She laughed again. “No. All things have anger. But women have many uses for their anger. And men have more anger than they can use, too much for their own good.”

“How can one have too much of the desire to live and grow and make?” I asked. “It seems more would be better.”

Penthe shook her head, brushing her hair back with one hand. “No. It is like food. One meal is good. Two meals is not better.” She frowned again. “No. It is more like wine. One cup of wine is good, two is sometimes better, but ten . . .” She nodded seriously. “That is very much like anger. A man who grows full of it, it is like a poison in him. He wants too many things. He wants all things. He becomes strange and wrong in his head, violent.”

She nodded to herself. “Yes. That is why anger is the right word, I think. You can tell a man who has been keeping all his anger to himself. It goes sour in him. It turns against itself and drives him to breaking rather than making.”

“I can think of men like that,” I said. “But I can think of women too.”

“All things have anger,” she repeated with a shrug. “A stone does not have much compared to a budding tree. It is the same with people. Some have more, or less. Some use it wisely. Some do not.” She gave me a wide smile. “I have a great deal, which is why I am so fond of sex and fierce in my fighting.” She bit at my chest again, less playfully this time, and began to work her way up to my neck.

“But if you take the anger from a man in sex,” I said, struggling to concentrate, “doesn’t that mean the more sex you have, the more you want?”

“It is like the water one uses to prime a pump,” she said hotly against my ear. “Come now, I will have all of it, even if it takes us all day and half the night.”

We eventually moved from the grassy field to the baths, and then to Penthe’s house of two snug rooms built against the side of a bluff. The moon was in the sky and had been watching us for some time through the window, though I doubt we showed her anything she hadn’t seen before.

“Is that enough for you?” I said breathlessly. We were side by side in her pleasantly capacious bed, the sweat drying off our bodies. “If you take much more of it, I might not have enough anger left to speak or breathe.”

My hand lay on the flat plane of her belly. Her skin was soft and smooth, but when she laughed I could feel the muscles of her stomach jump, going hard as sheets of steel.

“It is enough for now,” she said, exhaustion plain in her voice. “It would upset Vashet if I left you empty as a fruit with all the juice pressed out.”

Despite my long day, I was oddly wakeful, my thoughts bright and clear. I remembered something she had said earlier. “You mentioned that a woman has many uses for her anger. What use does a woman have for it that a man does not?”

“We teach,” she said. “We give names. We track the days and tend to the smooth turning of things. We plant. We make babies.” She shrugged. “Many things.”

“A man can do those things as well,” I said.

Penthe chuckled. “You have the wrong word,” she said, rubbing at my chin. “A beard is what a man makes. A baby is something different, and that you have no part of.”

“We don’t carry the baby,” I said, slightly offended. “But still, we play our part in making it.”

Penthe turned to look at me, smiling as if I had made a joke. Then her smile faded. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me for another long moment. “Are you in serious?”

Seeing my perplexed expression, her eyes grew wide with amazement and she sat upright on the bed. “It is true!” she said. “You believe in man-mothers!” She giggled, covering the bottom half of her face with both hands. “I never believed it was true!” She lowered her left hand, revealing an excited grin as she gestured amazed delight.

I felt I should be irritated, but I couldn’t quite muster the energy. Perhaps some of what she said about men giving away their anger had some truth to it. “What is a man-mother?” I asked.

“Are you not making a joke?” she asked, one hand still half-covering her smile. “Do you truly believe a man puts a baby in a woman?”

“Well . . . yes,” I said a little awkwardly. “In a manner of speaking. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. A mother and a father.”

“You have a word for it!” she said, delighted. “They told me this too. With the stories of dirt soup. But I never thought it a real story!”

I sat up myself at this point, growing concerned. “You do know how babies are made, don’t you?” I asked, gesturing serious earnestness. “What we have been doing for most of the day is what makes a baby.”

She looked at me for a moment in stunned silence, then dissolved helplessly into laughter, trying to speak several times only to have it overwhelm her again when she looked up at the expression on my face.

Penthe put her hands on her belly, prodding it as if puzzled. “Where is my baby?” She looked down at her flat belly. “Perhaps I have been sexing wrong these years.” When she laughed, the muscles across her stomach flickered, making a pattern like a turtle’s shell. “I should have a hundred babies if what you say is true. Five hundred babies!”

“It does not happen every time there is sex,” I said. “There are only certain times when a woman is ripe for a baby.”

“And have you done this?” she asked, looking at me with mock seriousness while a smile tugged at her mouth. “Have you made a baby with a woman?”

“I have been careful not to do such a thing,” I said. “There is an herb called silphium. I chew it every day, and it keeps me from putting a baby in a woman.”

Penthe shook her head. “This is more of your barbarian sex rituals,” she said. “Does bringing a man to the flowers also make a baby where you come from?”

I decided to take a different tack. “If men do not help with making babies, how do you explain that babies look like their fathers?”

“Babies look like angry old men,” Penthe said. “All bald and with . . .” She hesitated, touching her cheek. “. . . with face lines. Perhaps the old men are the only ones making babies then?” She smirked.

“What about kittens?” I asked. “You have seen a litter of kittens. When a white cat and a black cat have sex, you get kittens both white and black. And kittens of both colors.”

“Always?” she asked.

“Not always.” I admitted. “But most times.”

“What if there is a yellow kitten?” she asked.

Before I could put together an answer, she waved the question away. “Kittens have little to do with this,” she said. “We are not like animals. We do not go into season. We do not lay eggs. We do not make cocoons, or fruit, or seeds. We are not dogs or frogs or trees.”

Penthe gave me a serious look. “You are committing a false thinking. You could as easily say two stones make baby stones by banging against each other until a piece breaks off. Therefore two people make baby peoples in the same way.”

I fumed, but she was right. I was committing a fallacy of analogy. It was faulty logic.

Our conversation continued along this vein for some time. I asked her if she had ever known a woman to get pregnant who had not had sex in the previous months. She said she didn’t know of any woman who would willingly go three months without sex, except those who were traveling among the barbarians, or very ill, or very old.

Eventually Penthe waved a hand to stop me, gesturing exasperation. “Do you hear your own excuses? Sex makes babies, but not always. Babies look like man-mothers, but not always. The sex must be at the right time, but not always. There are plants that make it more likely, or less likely.” She shook her head. “You must realize what you say is thin as a net. You keep sewing new threads, hoping it will hold water. But hoping does not make it true.”

Seeing me frown, she took my hand and gestured comfort into it as she had before in the dining hall, all the laughter gone out of her face. “I can see you think this truly. I can understand why barbarian men would want to believe it. It must be comforting to think you are important in this way. But it is simply not.”

Penthe looked at me with something close to pity. “Sometimes a woman ripens. It is a natural thing, and men have no part in it. That is why more women ripen in the fall, like fruit. That is why more women ripen here in Haert, where it is better to have a child.”

I tried to think of some other convincing argument, but none would come to mind. It was frustrating.

Seeing my expression, Penthe squeezed my hand and gestured concession. “Perhaps it is different for barbarian women,” she said.

“You are only saying that to make me feel better,” I said sullenly and was overcome with a jaw-popping yawn.

“I am,” she admitted. Then she gave me a gentle kiss and pushed at my shoulders, encouraging me to lie back down on the bed.

I did, and she nestled into the crook of my arm again, resting her head on my shoulder. “It must be hard to be a man,” she said softly. “A woman knows she is part of the world. We are full of life. A woman is the flower and the fruit. We move through time as part of our children. But a man . . .” She turned her head and looked up at me with gentle pity in her eyes. “You are an empty branch. You know when you die, you will leave nothing of any import behind.”

Penthe stroked my chest fondly. “I think that is why you are so full of anger. Maybe you do not have more than women. Maybe the anger in you simply has no place to go. Maybe it is desperate to leave some mark. It hammers at the world. It drives you to rash action. To bickering. To rage. You paint and build and fight and tell stories that are bigger than the truth.”

She gave a contented sigh and rested her head on my shoulder, snugging herself firmly into the circle of my arm. “I am sorry to tell you this thing. You are a good man, and a pretty thing. But still, you are only a man. All you have to offer the world is your anger.”