The Book of Forbidden Wisdom (14 page)

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Then I heard the guards. The moon was casting deep shadows, and I motioned to the others until we were all huddled in the black penumbra of a large oak. Perhaps the moon was not malevolent after all.

We waited, afraid to move, nervous that the horses would give us away by a shake of the head, the clink of a bridle.

The guards came close to us. Very close.

Silky lifted her crossbow. I made an abrupt motion, and she lowered it.

Silky could have easily picked off one of them, maybe two, but we would still have to contend with the rest of the mounted guards, not to mention the foot soldiers. And Silky would be incurring more bloodguilt.

The mounted troops passed us by. And still we waited, for fear more guards would follow them.

None came.

Finally I turned Jasmine off the trail in a direction that would lead us away from the soldiers. Silky and Fallon followed.

We rode under the trees at first and then under the night sky and that ominous moon.

“This is
spooky,
” said Silky.

Fallon told her to be quiet. No “Lady Silky” this time.

The going was easy now; we were on old pathways that skirted fields of hay. Bard Fallon took the lead. In the east, streaks of pink heralded the dawn.

He stopped in front of a small farmhouse.

“Niamh lives here with her son,” said Fallon. “Trust her.”

“You're leaving us,” I said. It wasn't a question.

“Our journey forks here,” he said. “I'll make sure to leave some visible tracks once I'm away from Niamh's. Perhaps the soldiers will follow them for a while—­but I'm not going to stay to find out if they do.”

He had put his life up for us, and all I could say was “Thank you.”

“I saw you run at Garth,” he said to me. “Even if I put that act in bardsong, no one would believe it.”

“If I'd been thinking,” I said, “I probably wouldn't have done it.”

He looked at me speculatively. Then he mentioned our Bard by name.

“If you do see the Bard Renn again,” he said, “tell him the debt is paid. Although”—­he seemed to hesitate—­“although I would rescue you again, even if there were no debt. I don't believe in pedigrees—­those that know anything of
The
Book of Forbidden Wisdom
don't—­but I believe in courage. Lady Angel. Lady Silky.” And his horse broke into a canter; he turned in the saddle once, and, like the freeman in the river, he put his hand over his heart; he bowed his head. He turned back to face the road, and was gone.

 

A
moment later, a woman came out of the farmhouse.

“Get off the horses,” she said without preamble.

We dismounted. She took the horses and began walking them to the back of the house. A young man, maybe a year older than I was, came out the front door after her with a broom.

“Better get inside,” he said. And he began brushing away our tracks.

Minutes later we were sitting in the garden of Niamh's house, sipping icy water from the well and eating ripe summer figs. Niamh and the young man with the broom—­her son—­sat and listened to our story.

Niamh had deep black hair and wide dark eyes. Although I saw no signs of a husband—­and she didn't wear the Shibbeth gold marriage bracelets—­she
was
branded. I tried hard not to stare, but when I looked at her face, my eyes were drawn to the cat-­shaped scar. She was, perhaps, thirty-­five. Certainly no older, in spite of having an almost-­grown son.

The son, Jesse, scrutinized us both carefully as we spoke, but I noticed, to my annoyance, that his eyes kept returning to Silky. I admit that she was looking particularly beautiful. She had unbraided her gold hair, and it tumbled, tousled, down her back and framed her delicate face. The excitement of the escape and the wind, which had been in our faces as we rode, had put extra color in her cheeks. There was a glow to her. No wonder he was staring. I saw, too, that she was looking at Jesse as much as he was looking at her.

As Silky took a turn with our story, I reached for another fig, narrowed my eyes, and considered Jesse.

Although he might be no more than seventeen, he was like a young giant; outside, he had towered over all of us. His hair was blond, but not golden, like Silky's, and his eyes were the same peculiar deep shade of blue as his mother's. His face still had the appealing softness of youth, and, despite his size, there was nothing at all about him that seemed dangerous.

Except the way he looked at Silky.

Silky reached the present moment in our narrative. She had been circumspect and had left out a great many details, including Garth's death.

“You don't need to worry anymore,” Niamh said. “We've never refused to help a woman, and we're not going to begin now. I'll get you out.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“This is a way-­station,” said Niamh. “The last way-­station for ‘Lidan women escaping Shibbeth for Arcadia.”

“We're going to Parlay,” I said.

Niamh continued as if I hadn't spoken.

“We can have you out of Shibbeth in three days,” she said. “Jesse and I will guide you. The backroads to Arcadia are narrow and steep, and we'll have to go on foot. I'll sell your horses on the black market—­with the money, you'll be helping the next woman in need.”

I was near panic. We had to get to Parlay. As for Jasmine, on the black market horses became horsemeat—­no dealer would leave a horse alive and risk having his merchandise recognized. Meat was anonymous.

“We're not going back to Arcadia,” I blurted. “We're going to Parlay.”

Niamh stood suddenly, but not at my words. There was a sound on the walk outside and then a loud knock on the door.

Silky's eyes widened. I picked up the crossbow. Silky reached over and took it from me.

“Wait,” whispered Niamh. Jesse crossed the room and looked out the side of the window, where the curtain met the frame.

“Two horses by the trees,” he said. “Troops, by the look of the tack. I can't see who's at the door.”

The knock came again.

“A moment,” Jesse called out. “I'm coming. My mother's not fitly dressed.”

“Come on,” said Niamh. She pulled us into the bedroom.

“One soldier with the horses,” murmured Jesse to us over his shoulder. “There may only be one at the door.”

Niamh didn't appear to be listening. She closed the bedroom door behind us. A moment later she was tugging at the floorboards; Silky and I began to help her.

There was a crawl space big enough for two. Just.

Silky and I curled around each other so that we fit. Niamh threw our saddlebags on top of us and began to put the boards back.

We could hear Jesse speaking, but we couldn't hear what he was saying. Then there was a single angry raised voice. “I will search your house,” came the voice. “And I will do it now. ”

Jesse mumbled something.

As Niamh prepared to put down the last floorboard over us, I saw the crossbow on the floor, grabbed it and pulled it in, hitting Silky on the head in the process.

“That
hurt,
” she said.

“Silky,” I said as firmly as I could. “You have to be quiet.”

Niamh, her lips now pressed firmly together, shut us in.

At first there was light from a thin crack in the floor. I had a brief glimpse of Niamh lifting a rug, and then Silky and I were in absolute darkness.

I could hear Niamh rustling on the other side of the room, where the bed was.

The guard was very loud.

“There's been a murder,” he said. “A great Lord. You've been thought to harbor fugitives before. It's said you deal in women.”

“Does this look like a brothel?” asked Jesse. “We abide by the law. You'll find no murderers here.”

The bedroom door creaked open.

“Who's the woman in the bed?” asked the soldier.

“My mother,” said Jesse. “She's ill.”

The rustling must have been Niamh getting under the covers.

“What's wrong with her?”

“The shuddering sickness.”

“There's no quarantine mark on this house.”

“We've let no one in,” said Jesse. “I was going to seal the door within the hour.”

Next to me, Silky moved suddenly and then was still.

“
Itch,
” she said in my ear. “
Nose
.”

Her arms were pinned to her sides, but my arm was around her shoulder. I scratched her nose.

“I'm sick, sir,” said Niamh.

The soldier didn't answer.

I could hear him move around the bedroom. His footsteps came closer. I thought he was going to walk right over us, but he stopped.

There was silence.

He lifted the rug.

A beam of light fell across my eye. Silky gave a small gasp.

For an instant, the soldier and I were looking directly into each other's eyes.

He lowered the rug back into place.

“My comrade and I,” he said, “could tear this place apart if we wanted to. Just for the fun of it.”

“I understand,” said Jesse.

I didn't.

I heard the soldier walk out of the bedroom.

An hour later, Silky and I were still brushing off dust and stretching.

“That was scary,” said Silky.

“A murdered Lord,” said Niamh. “We could do without that. They'll be watching the trails for weeks—­our whole operation will have to be suspended until they catch the killers.”

Silky looked anxious.

“We didn't mean to kill him,” she said. “I thought
he
was going to kill
us
.”

“Silky,” I said.

There was silence.

“You?” asked Niamh. Jesse stared.

“Well,” said Silky. “I helped. But it was
mostly
Angel.”

I
n the end, I told her a more complete version of our story: how we had become separated from our friends and were supposed to meet them in Parlay.

“I don't like this,” said Niamh. “They're very close on your trail.”

“The roads to Arcadia will be closed now,” Jesse said to Niamh, glancing at Silky. “We might as well get them to Parlay.”

“How long will your companions wait for you?” asked Niamh.

“Some days more,” I said. “A week. Maybe.”

“Oh, more than
that,
” said Silky. “Trey would
never
leave Angel.”

“
Silky
.”

“Just saying.”

And Jesse smiled. At Silky.

It took only a day to prepare for the journey. Jesse disappeared for a little while and came back with bread, dried meat, fruit and skins of water.

“There were soldiers in the village,” he said. “We need to leave now.”

I assumed we would take turns riding Jasmine and Silky's horse, but in the afternoon a man rode up leading two sturdy ponies and a small goat. He tethered them to Niamh's gatepost and then cantered away.

“Many ­people are in debt to my mother,” Jesse explained to me. “For the lives of their friends, their sisters, their mothers. They would give her anything. I borrowed the horses, but the goat is a gift. We'll slaughter it, and what we don't eat tonight, we'll take tomorrow.”

The goat was small and white and stood out against the green grass. When Jesse cut its throat, red streamed down the white of its chest. It didn't struggle.

With Jesse's guidance, I helped him cut it up, until both of us were soon in gore up to our elbows. Unlike most Great Ladies, I had seen animals butchered on my father's estates, but I had never dreamed I would ever help in the dressing of a carcass.

I had a handful of kidney, and Jesse was skinning the haunch, when he finally spoke of Silky.

“Is your sister running from a contract?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “No contract. No pre-­contract. No attachments. She's only fourteen.” I put emphasis on “fourteen.”

“She's old for her age,” he said.

“You don't even know her,” I said. “You'll find that, if anything, she's young for her age.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“You wouldn't approve of my knowing her better.”

“Not even remotely; not even hypothetically.”

“I see.”

“She'll never be ready for a pre-­contract with a ‘Lidan.”

In one deft movement, Jesse removed the entire intestines of the goat without contaminating any of the surrounding meat.

“Niamh raised me well,” he said. He began washing out the inside of the goat with water from a pail. “Lady Angel, I help her rescue women from the branding and the silence.”

“Good for you,” I said.

Really. Silky. Marriage.

Not a chance.

I thought the subject was closed. Jesse cut out some goat chops. “I'm saving her the prime ones,” he said.

“You won't get Silky's heart with a goat chop,” I said. “And you certainly don't have my permission to court her.”

“I worry a little about your heart, Lady Angel,” he said.

I didn't say anything. There was nothing wrong with my heart. Nothing. It was healthy and strong and whole. It was safe. It was a fortress.

 

T
he roast goat was delicious.

Jesse, I saw at once, had saved the prime chops not for Silky but for me. He knew where he needed to gain favor; he was more astute than I had given him credit for. And while a nice piece of goat wasn't going to get him my permission to court Silky, I admired the effort—­and the juiciness of the chop too.

We set out a few hours before dawn. I, in my veil, rode Jasmine, and Jesse rode Silky's mount, the one we had stolen from Garth. Niamh and Silky wore veils and sat sedately on the stocky ponies that the man had left the day before.

“Jesse will do the talking,” said Niamh. “He's big and, more importantly, male.”

Silky frowned.

Niamh and Jesse were in the lead, but Niamh soon dropped back to be with me, and Silky, on her coarse little pony, left the two of us in conversation and rode up to Jesse. I watched as Jesse edged his horse closer to Silky's. It was neatly done.

“My son likes your sister,” said Niamh.

“I'm going to have to chaperone if he rides any closer to her,” I said.

Niamh sighed. “You know, Angel,” she said, “you can relax with me. My whole life is given over to making sure bad matches aren't forced on anyone, especially the young.”

“The young are quite capable of making bad choices on their own,” I said.

Niamh laughed briefly. We rode in silence for a while. From time to time Niamh turned in her saddle and looked back.

“Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

“I'm expecting pursuit.”

“If soldiers were after us on this road,” I said, “we'd have been taken by now.”

“That's what worries me,” she said. “That soldier said the house was under suspicion. Yet I saw no soldiers there this morning—­we rode out of there as easily as if we were innocents taking the country air.”

“Maybe we were just lucky,” I said.

“Oh, Angel,” said Niamh. “There is no such thing as luck.”

We traveled two nights, sleeping roughly. When I made it clear that I expected Jesse to sleep at the perimeter, Niamh raised an eyebrow.

“Jesse knows how to behave,” she said. “We've traveled with women a lot more afraid of men than you are.”

“I'm not afraid,” I said. “He can eat with us if he chooses.” Silky's eyes went wide, and I knew she was remembering Trey's sleeping next to the fire and the Bard's sharing of food with us.

But she would never undermine anything I said.

Five hours into the third day, I saw a shimmer on the horizon. Soon a city seemed to rise out of the plain.

“The walls of Parlay,” said Niamh. “We'll get as close as we can and then wait for dusk to approach the gates. There's a big bustle to get in at night. We shouldn't be noticed.”

We stopped a good distance from the city walls and grazed the horses in the shadows cast by a small copse of trees. While Jesse groomed first his horse and then Niamh and Silky's ponies, I brushed the sweat off Jasmine. In the process, I transferred a lot of horsehair to myself. As I was trying to pick it off, I caught Jesse staring.

“I was going to groom your horse, Lady Angel,” he said.

“No need,” I said. I wanted nothing from Jesse, not goat chops, not horse grooming. The truth was that he couldn't possibly have groomed Jasmine even if I had asked him to. She wouldn't have tolerated him.

Jasmine hated men. She wouldn't have let him near her. Trey was the only occasional exception.

It seemed that evening would never come. I couldn't help but wonder if Trey and the Bard might be waiting at the entrance to the city, and that thought filled me with anxiety even as it filled me with hope. Finally the afternoon waned and evening set in. We mounted our horses and rode up to the great gates of Parlay.

They were enormous, taller than the gates of our House, and carved with intricate scenes of hunting, and gardens, and nobility with hawks on their hands, and scenes of battle and, at the bottom left of the door, a merry group of skeletons engaged in a dance of death.

The guards on either side were watching. They ignored most of the ­people, although some of them they greeted by name; others were pulled aside and questioned. But no one was denied entrance, and the guards barely glanced at those departing. I took note of that. Eventually, after all, we were going to have to get out.

It didn't help, though, that one of the guards was a traditionalist.

“Step it up, Lordling,” he called to Jesse. “You slow the crowd.”

“My sisters aren't used to riding,” Jesse said.

“That's a nice horse,” said the traditionalist guard as he looked over Jasmine with an experienced eye.

“My sister rides one of my best,” said Jesse. “I'm taking her to her groom.”

“I wish her happiness,” said the guard politely.

“It will be a joyous day,” said Jesse steadily.

Apparently I shouldn't have worried about the traditionalist guard. It was a good cover story and well delivered.

Jesse annoyed me.

I focused on the city of Parlay as it opened up in front of us. The streets were full of ­people, of colors and scents and movement, and the horses, even the staid, coarse little ponies, became nervous. Luckily, the crowd split in front of us as we negotiated the main street. Horses clearly had right of way.

Jesse eventually found an inn near the gate. It was set back from the main thoroughfare and built up against the wall surrounding the city. The innkeeper welcomed us and gave us two rooms—­one for Jesse, and a women's room for the rest of us. Niamh and Silky and I went to our room in silence—­it would have looked strange if we had done anything else.

“We'll wait two days,” said Niamh as we began settling in. “If we haven't found your traveling companions by then, I'll take you to Arcadia. You'll find a life in a corner of your country somewhere. It's not safe to linger here.”

“There's nothing for me in Arcadia anymore,” I said.

Niamh looked at me sadly.

“You don't know how much that ‘nothing' is, Angel,” she said. “You have no idea.”

N
iamh had given us good used clothing when we were at her house, and now we pulled the excess out of the saddlebags and draped it on the bed to air. Then, careful to use the women's staircase, we went down to the public room, where Jesse was waiting.

“We're family,” he told the innkeeper, and we were allowed to sit together in the small, airless room. At one of the other tables, a man and a branded woman wearing marriage bracelets sipped at tall glasses of water. We spoke of the weather until they left.

When they did, we confronted a problem I hadn't foreseen: neither Silky nor Niamh nor I had freedom of movement. Jesse, of course, could move around as he wished, but he had no idea what Trey or the Bard looked like.

“Your companions may be hiding in places women can't go,” said Jesse. “Let me ask around. Perhaps your Bard friend has been plying his trade.”

“The Bard's not my friend,” I said sharply. “He's a bard.”

“Go, Jesse,” said Niamh. “But be mindful.”

Jesse went out into the streets. We had no choice but to return to the women's bedroom, where Silky and I couldn't stop fidgeting. Even Niamh couldn't sit still.

“We should rest,” she said. But none of us were resting.

“Can't we at least go downstairs?” asked Silky.

“We could go and eat in the women's public room,” said Niamh. “I'll tell the innkeeper's wife to let us know when Jesse returns.”

It was, I suddenly thought, an excellent idea.

I waited until we were all veiled up and impenetrable to the male view. As Niamh opened the door to leave, I sat down abruptly on the bed, pushed away the clothing we had set out and lay down.

“I don't feel well,” I said.

“What is it?” asked Silky.

“My shoulder.”

“Your wound?” Silky asked. Her voice was subdued, and I was sorry to give her worry. Niamh knelt by the bed and looked closely at me.

“It hurts,” I said. “And I feel so hot.”

“That was
sudden,
” said Silky.

Niamh's face showed only concern, but Silky was giving me The Look. As children we had not infrequently faked fevers to get out of unwanted tasks.

“Perhaps it's my childhood sickness,” I said, and I saw understanding blossom on Silky's face.

“Are you
sure
?” she asked, but she wasn't asking me how I felt. She was asking me if I needed assistance with my lie.

“I'm sure, Silky,” I said.

“Your wound could be
infected,
” she said helpfully.

“Show me,” said Niamh. I bared my shoulder, and she probed it with skilled fingers. I flinched. The pain never really went away.

“No oozing,” she said. “No infection or swelling. I've never seen a wound this large so smoothly and thoroughly healed. A hole this big should have killed you for a dozen reasons. Infection. Blood loss.”

“Garth cauterized it,” said Silky.

“Impossible,” said Niamh.

“Angel was
really
brave,” said Silky. “When she passed out, she did it
very
quietly.”

Niamh looked at me as if her perception of me had changed in some way.

“I'm going to sleep,” I said. “I just need some rest.”

“We'll bring you food,” said Niamh. “You can't go out of this room alone—­one wrong turn, and you might end up in the men's section. It's not safe.”

“All right.”

I lay there until they left. Silky turned back for a moment before they went out the door and looked at me with concern. She knew I was up to something.

As soon as they were gone, I went to the door and opened it a crack.

I saw Niamh and Silky at the end of the corridor about to take the stairs. Quickly I changed into riding clothes and braided my hair like a traditionalist. It was so unlikely that a Shibbeth woman would dress like a man that I was sure I could get away with it. I crept down the stairs and slipped outside.

The bustle in the streets almost knocked me over. Earlier, as a woman on a horse, ­people had given me more room. Now I was hemmed in, and the bright sun, the number of ­people, the greens and blues and reds and purples of ‘Lidan garb confused me. It took me a moment to figure out the direction of the great gate.

As I moved through the crowds toward the gate, a plump woman wearing a veil and carrying a basket of purple turnips knocked me off balance. I stepped in a horse pile and almost went down just as three or four horsemen rode by—­perilously close to me. A big man with a gruff voice pulled me out of the street by my arm.

“Watch yourself,” he said, and was gone.

So when I saw a lone horseman coming, my first thought was to back up to the wall—­but my way was blocked by an orange-­seller. The horseman came so close that the man's stirrup was inches away from my head. I tried to step back, and, as I did, I looked up into his face.

Our eyes met.

And it didn't matter that I was in man's garb with my hair done in the ‘Lidan traditionalist way, or that I was darkened by the sun and by the dust and dirt and grime of our journey. It didn't matter that the last place the horseman might have expected to see me in was Shibbeth. None of it mattered.

He would have known me anywhere.

“Angel,” he said. Then he reached down his arm, and I grabbed his wrist, and a moment later he had pulled me up and into the saddle.

It was my father.

My father urged the horse to a trot, and the pedestrians in front of us scattered like geese, swearing, a few of them letting out screams, some shaking fists at us. Then my father took a narrow street that branched off to the left, and, when we were alone, he pulled up his horse.

“I'm not going to have you executed,” he said. “Although given that you've come with me, I assume you've guessed that.”

I had. With Kalo by his side, he was capable of almost anything, but alone with me, he was a different person.

“Will you help me?” I asked.

He sighed. “I don't know,” he said. “You're certainly not safe here in Shibbeth, and especially not in Parlay. Kalo's estates aren't far from here, and he's in the city now. Leth told him you took the Great North Way. And everyone seems to be looking for you regardless—­they say you killed a Lord of Shibbeth.”

“It was mostly an accident,” I said.

“Angel,” he said, “if anyone could find trouble, it would be you. I make you a perfectly nice marriage, and you run off with Trey, a man not even related to you by blood. If you'd only waited, I might have sorted out your contract to Leth.”

“Sorted it out?” I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. “Father, you were allowing Kalo to dispose of me as he saw fit.”

He avoided my challenge as if I hadn't spoken.

“Your will should have been subjugated for the family's good.”

I felt angry, and I felt confused, too. Nothing he wished was supposed to anger me, but the old protocol of a daughter's absolute obedience to her father seemed like part of another life. I realized that I had begun, in very small ways, to live by other rules.

“You never subjugated Mother's wishes,” I said, touching on forbidden territory. “The village still speaks of it.”

Pain twisted his face. But only for a moment.

“We won't speak of your mother.”

“We never do,” I said. “Maybe we should. You mourn her endlessly, but you're indifferent to her living daughters.”

“You've changed, Angel,” he said. “You're not speaking as an obedient child—­but I will answer you in this: I am not indifferent to you or to Silky.” He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps this can be mended, even now.”