The Book of Forbidden Wisdom (26 page)

 

Z
inda and Lark and a dozen of their sisters guarded Kalo and Leth all the way into Southern Arcadia. We moved quickly and, many times, ate in the saddle.

When we were two days out from home, I finally asked my father.

“Did you kill Gwen Pan?”

“I—­no,” he said. “She died of the shuddering sickness a month after Kalo was born.”

I nodded. He was lying of course.

He wouldn't have done the killing himself; his Steward probably arranged it. But it didn't matter in the end: Father knew that I knew.

It had been a long journey.

Then we were one day out. We sat around the fire. Renn sang. He was looking forward to seeing Niamh and Jesse in Arcadia—­and Silky had already asked me if we could invite Jesse to our House. Even my father deferred to me now.

Silky put her head on my shoulder, as my father took his time ringing the fire with stones. Trey was next to me.

“Will you and Trey get married as soon as we get back?” asked Silky.

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Yes,” said Trey. He took my hand, and I didn't pull it away.

A wedding.

I had been branded a harlot, and I had brought down both Leth and Kalo. I had seen pain and death and courage and heart. I had been wounded, and the pain from that wound would probably never entirely go away. I could bear all these things.

But a big, arbitrated ceremonial wedding?

I didn't know.

I wound my fingers through Trey's, and, for the moment, that was all that mattered. The flames grew and danced and flickered. My father went to find more stones.

After a while, I stroked Silky's long golden hair. She would be all right. Much as I had always loved Silky, I had never given her enough credit for her strength and courage.

Father rejoined us.

“So while the door was coming down, you finished reading
The Book of Forbidden Wisdom,
” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“So you know it all,” he said. “Your forever-­memory is still there.”

“Yes.”

“You read it to the end?” he asked.

“We don't have to talk about it right now,” said Trey.

“We certainly
don't,
” said Silky. She lifted her head from my shoulder and glared at my father.

“I just want to understand,” he said. “What was the wisdom? Why was it forbidden? Did
The Book
ever say? Was there no wisdom at all?” He looked at me with a kind of desperation.

I looked into the flames of the fire.

“There was no wisdom,” I said.

My father sighed, but it was a sigh of relief. I had mentioned Gwen Pan, so he must have known that I had garnered knowledge from
The Book
. Wisdom? Wisdom came with time. I had the knowledge to destroy my father's House, and so my own, and also many others', but I didn't yet have an idea of what I should do. Whatever I did, all Arcadia would change.

“We came a long way for nothing,” said Silky, but she was looking at me suspiciously.

Trey laughed softly. He knew that I was lying outright, and he knew, too, that I would tell him about
The Book
. I would tell Silky, too. I would tell a lot of ­people. I would have to reshape our world—­because I had read a book.

At the very end,
The Book
had asked a question.

Who owns the land?

We live on it for our time, and then we fade. Other men and women come to live on it for a while. Who owns the land?

Call that question wisdom.

But it wasn't really true that I had read
The Book
to the end. After all, the last page had been missing, torn from the binding a long time ago, if the brown and stained ragged edges were anything to go by.

“Of Love” was the title of the missing section—­the title that came before the page that had been ripped away.

I thought I would never know what forbidden wisdom was there. As I watched Silky gazing into the fire, as I raised my eyes and caught Trey looking at me, eyes brimming, as I felt his hand still in mine, I wondered if the kind of wisdom that is truly forbidden could go in books. Perhaps it couldn't be spoken or read; it could only be felt.

Perhaps that was the meaning of the missing last page. Perhaps there had been nothing written on it at all.

T
he next morning we crossed into my father's estate.

 

S
ilky woke me up.

“How can you sleep so late?” she asked. “It's the most important day of your
life
.”

“Again.”

“That is
not
funny,” said Silky. “Leth does
not
count.”

“Not anymore,” I said grimly, but Silky didn't catch my ironic tone. One has to be a little mean to use irony, and Silky didn't have a mean bone in her body. Not one.

“I don't even want you thinking about Leth or Kalo,” said Silky. “Or worrying about anyone showing up and claiming you.” We both knew whom she meant, but Renn and I had become good friends at the end. There would be no challenge from him. Kalo and Leth would be imprisoned for a time and then sent, stripped of Arcadian land, to Shibbeth. I was sure that they would find trouble enough to start there, but first Kalo would have to keep an eye on his lands—­his status was now so unsteady that the ‘Lidan Lords would be watching his estates like crows waiting for pickings.

Silky threw my wrap to me.

“Time to get ready,” she said. “You haven't even had your Ceremonial Bath yet. And wait until you see the
roses
. This time, they're
perfect
.”

I had almost come full circle. But no Leth was waiting for me. No soft, spoiled, lazy landowner about whom I cared less than I cared for my horse.

This day was very different.

“Where did the roses come from?” I asked.

“
He
brought them,” said Silky.

They would be wild and fragrant cups of scent and color. Blush roses.

“All right,” I said, grabbing the wrap. “I'm up. Nervous, but up.”

“You weren't nervous
last
time,” said Silky critically.

“I had nothing to be nervous about. I didn't care.” I saw that Silky had already been to the hand and throat painters. Her loose fair hair set off the dark markings, and I had a glimpse of what she would be like on her own wedding day.

Silky went to the closet. My mother's wedding dress had been ruined during our escape, but this one was a miracle, with portions of the old dress sewn in and the whole softly lit by pearls embedded in silk. Silky gently touched the lace.

I had long ago thought Silky wanted to wear our mother's wedding dress because it was beautiful and because it was our mother's. I had been wrong. She had known I would inherit the dress.

She simply wanted to wear it after I had.

“This dress will be yours,” I said. “When the time comes. If you still want it.”

“Of
course
I'll want it,” she said. “But Father would never let me.”

“Ever since the journey, you've tied Father around your little finger. The dress is yours.” I paused. “Jesse arrived today, didn't he?”

Silky blushed deeply, but she only said, “Well,
you
invited him.” She paused. “You really think someday I'll wear the dress?”

“Yes,” I said. “But don't grow up too fast.”

Silky smiled. I reached for my robe for the Ceremonial Bath, and the wrapper fell open.

“Your scar.”

“It'll never go away, Silky.”

“You're still perfect.”

“The journey marked us.”

And she was unusually quiet for a while.

Violet, again my witness, now a year older and as far from a groom as ever, led me to the Ceremonial Bath. When I burst out of the water to the surface, there was applause, and, as I made my way to the skin artists, the witnesses began snacking on little lavender tea cakes and lemon drop tarts.

I thought of my trip to the quiet country and of speaking to my mother. This was all very different—­bustle and hurry and talk and ceremony. Lots of ceremony.

I wondered how my groom was faring.

Silky talked more about the flowers as the skin artist drew intricate patterns on my hands and up my arms and across my chest and throat. It came to me that Silky was nervous too. The whole ceremony was all too much like the wedding to Leth.

The soft brushes tickled, and I pulled my hand away from the skin artist who was working on my wrist.

“Sensitive skin,” said Silky. Then she put something in my hand. It was a little lavender tea cake.

“If you get that down your front,” she said, “or if you have sticky hands at the ceremony, I will
not
be pleased.”

“It's going to be all right, Silky,” I said.

“Look at the blush roses,” she said. “I've never seen any so fresh or so plentiful at
any
wedding. Not any.”

“He grows them on his land.”

“He doesn't have any land.”

I laughed. “He has enough,” I said.

“I was going to put some wild roses in your bouquet—­the way I did when
Leth
was the groom—­but he had already done it.”

“Show me.”

Silky handed me the bouquet, and I touched the wild roses with my fingertips. The skin artist had finished, and she packed up her brushes and pots of ink. She seemed happier than she had been at my last wedding.

“Thank you, Scilla,” said Silky.

“A magnificent job,” I said.

We both knew the skin artists. They were the most celebrated artists in Arcadia; their work was exquisite. And then, without warning, I was overwhelmed by the past.

So much death.

Someone was tuning an instrument outside the preparation tent. The bard had arrived. Renn wouldn't be singing; he and Niamh and Jesse were guests of honor.

Charmian, Niamh had told me, had reluctantly settled into her new Arcadian home in the west.

The bard was now in tune and had started a quiet ballad. I went to the tent opening, looked out and found myself staring at Bard Fallon.

Silky followed my gaze. “Father found him,” she said. “He was singing for pennies. Father's going to pay him
a lot
to do the wedding festivities.”

“There isn't enough money in the world to repay him for saving us from Garth,” I said.

“He wanted to play for
free
,” said Silky.

Bard Fallon looked up from his playing, met my eye and smiled. Technically he was overstepping his station even by looking me squarely in the face, but, given our adventures, we were on even footing. Or, more accurately, I was in his debt. And the rules and ceremonies that so enforced the divisions between high and low were changing. I had already spoken with the heads of some of the more oppressive Houses; I knew their nasty secrets now, and caste lines were beginning to blur. There would be more to come. Much more.

Then Silky was at my side again, pulling me away from the tent opening.

“It's time to do your hair,” she said. “Or you're going to leave your groom waiting about an hour with the merger officials and the Arbitrators, and you
know
he'll hate that.”

“He will,” I agreed. “I wonder what he thinks about all this.”

This, apparently, was finally too much for Silky.

She pulled me to a chair, pushed me down into it, and shooed away the honor girls, the hair-­wreath maker, the comfit maker waiting for me to taste her samples, the two extra personal maids, the seamstress, my father's legal advisor, my own legal advisor, even Silky's legal advisor—­all there to make sure that not an inch of land ended up in the wrong hands. She found two stylists engaged in brief sexual congress behind a screen, and she shooed them out, too. Not much could shock Silky anymore.

She faced me, an arm on each side of the chair.

“Do you want to marry him?”

There it was. Bold and plain and clear.

“There's nothing more I want in the world.”

“You're a Great Lady, Angel,” she said. “Your dowry is a nice chunk of Arcadia, and if you
wanted
—­“

“Don't go there, Silky.”

“You're a
Great Lady,
” she said. “There. I said it again. You could play the part a little more.”

“Let me see your toes.”

“What?”

“Your toes.”

She had had them painted in three shades—­cherry, plum and sunshine—­and the designs announced that she was a Lady of a Great House, and single, but of a status that meant that marrying her probably wasn't even worth dreaming about.

“It took
hours,
” she said, “and I loved every minute. I wanted to celebrate your wedding, Angel. I hope you don't mind.”

“I love your toes, Silky,” I said. “And you more than deserve the pleasure they give you. It's not the same for me.”

“
Why not
?” she pushed at the chair with each word.

“I'm damaged, Silky,” I said. “You're young, and you're bright and fair and wonderful, and you heal fast. I'm one of those stupid little maimed songbirds you used to pull away from the cat and try to nurse to health.”

Silky looked deeply unhappy.

“Some of them did all right,” she said. “Keet the Robling was all right.”

“Keet was a deeply troubled Robling.”

“You just have to get through today.” She curled up and sat at my feet.

“You know better,” I said. I lifted my eyes.

Above Silky's head, through a crack in the tent, I could see towering black storm clouds on the horizon; they were joined to the earth by a dark, sweeping curtain of rain. I watched as bolts of lightning lit up the inside of the clouds. I had never seen anything like it. A storm as tall as Heaven.

“Look, Silky,” I said. She stood and peered out of the tent.

“You'll be married before it reaches us.” But she looked a little alarmed.

“Maybe.”

There was a polite scratching at the tent opening. A servant called in—­ “The hair artist's here. Havelok.” The servant, obviously curious, peeked into the tent. “He's here all the way from the other side of Arcadia.”

“Go away,” said Silky. “Go away
now
.”

The servant left.

Silky, with her fingers, traced the intricate paintings from my hands up to my throat.

“You're beautiful.”

“I suppose we should get on with getting ready.”

“You want to be rescued again, don't you, Angel?”

“There's no way in the world I can be rescued,” I said. “I need to be rescued from myself.”

And as I said it, there was a noise at the back of the tent, as if someone were throwing pebbles.

Silky scrambled to her feet. She smiled. And she was sad.

“I think your groom's going to rescue you anyway,” she said quietly.

Trey slipped into the tent and into my arms. His face had healed more, but only his eyes, green and deep, would ever give away his thoughts. They did so now.

He smelled of wild air and roses.

“I'll hold them off,” said Silky. But just remember—­when you're done undamaging each other, or
whatever
you've planned (you notice I
don't
ask
), I'll be waiting here. Because I go where you go, Angel.”

There were tears in my eyes, but I was giddy with joy. “I'll be back for you,” I said.

Trey took a wreath of wild roses and put it on my head. I dressed for the road with the clothes I had originally worn into the tent.

“It looks like we'll be going through a storm,” he said.

“We've been through other storms.”

“Bran and Jasmine are at the back,” he said. “Shamble will be our packhorse—­I think the stable boy wonders where you got such a plain beast. I didn't mention you stole him.”

“Where are we going?”

“We'll be married on my land. By the old forms. We'll sleep in my bed.”

“I'm not listening,” said Silky.

“We'll start to heal.”

“Trey,” I said. “You've given me my life.”

“We'll return soon enough,” he said. “But a little more on our terms. And, of course, we need to get Silky.”

Silky was weeping, but I was too excited now for tears.

The enormous number of wedding preparers waited outside the front gate. We stepped out the back, through the rip that Trey had made into this brittle, artificial world, and soon we were on the outside of all of it.

Renn was holding the horses. Jesse and Niamh were by his side.

Silky stood back against the tent, her golden hair acting as a curtain of protection.

“Stall them, and give us half an hour to get away, Silky,” I said.

And Silky ceased weeping.

“Of
course,
” she said. And she handed me my bouquet of roses.

I turned to Trey, and I realized I had never seen him look so happy.

Now my mind was on the road in front of me. I mounted, as did Trey, and we turned toward the bridge across the stream that marked the property.

The future, at that moment, curled around me.

Trey. And a child. And Silky and Jesse. And later more children, who had names that marked our journeys. Outside, sometimes, a raging summer storm. But inside, the storm stilled. We would grow older, and the world would change, and we would pass through it together. Suddenly Silky laughed, and I realized we wouldn't be alone. And I understood at last the final word in
The Book of Forbidden Wisdom
. I understood love.