The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

 

Dedication

To Callie, my sister,

with love—­as always.

 

Epigraph

Et in Arcadia ego

 

Contents

 

PART I

 

M
y name is Angel.

All of this is true.

T
hey said the straight roads were old beyond the memory of memory. I dreamt of them from time to time and of the deep past and the cataclysm that had brought Arcadia into being. Everyone knew of the wars and the sickness that had preceded the creation of the Great Houses. But perhaps not everyone had dreams about the long ago.

On my wedding day, which was also my sixteenth birthday, I awoke from a dream in which I walked one of the Old Roads as my dead mother destroyed the world. She whispered in my ear—­something about
The Book of Forbidden Wisdom
—­as I continued my journey to a destination beyond my understanding. I could feel the earth close down like a paper box, and the casteless rise where the Great had been.

I sat up and blinked for a while in the darkness. My mother had died rather suddenly some years before, and perhaps it was natural that she should come to me before I wed Leth. I would, however, have expected something more celebratory from her than this odd and, even as it faded, vaguely upsetting dream.

I had no wedding jitters to keep me awake, so I lay down and went back to sleep. Details of the ceremony weren't the sort of thing that kept me up worrying—­I was unimpressed by lavish marriage ceremonies, although mine was going to be more lavish than most. Yes, I was ready to marry Leth. But I wondered if we needed quite so many flowers and quite so much food—­and bards and jugglers and body artists and a Ceremonial Bath constructed just for me, just for this one occasion.

My younger sister, Silky, felt quite differently about marriage. She had thought of her wedding constantly when we were children. She would drag me away from the edge of the swamp to play Wedding Day. I much preferred the swamp. If I were lucky I would catch a snapper turtle and add it, carefully, to my basin. Swamp turtle soup. But I always let the turtle go back to making bubbles in the waterweed. It would not have done to give it to Cook.

Cook was literal-­minded about turtles and soup.

Silky held her nose when she got near the swamp, and she only would go near when she wanted to play with me. Although I was two years older, she was always Bride when we played Wedding Day, and I was content to play the bit parts: flower-­maid, ring-­bearer, bard, even Groom, stiff and silent (as they always were). Silky took the game seriously. If it were summer, she picked small bouquets of Queen Anne's lace, blue cornflowers, purple clover, red poppies. The bouquets varied with the seasons—­in winter she had me carrying herbs and twigs. The game, however, was always the same. Silky would walk across meadow grass (if she could get me away from the swamp), while I would trail in her wake, holding flowers and the woven grass that served as a ring. On occasion she would chide me.

“Come
on,
Angel,” she would say. “Play as if it were
real
.”

If it were real, it would be unlikely that she would be the bride. From the time she was a child, Silky was a beauty with a heart-­shaped face and a rain of golden hair, but, as eldest, I had inherited our mother's estates. Until I could create a dowry for her, she would be unmarriageable. But she never envied me. There was no avarice in Silky.

Sometimes, if our father were away, she would sneak into our dead mother's room and find a long dress to wear. Then my job was to hold up the edges like a train—­all of our mother's clothes were too long for her. But she never put on Mother's wedding dress, although I knew she wanted more than anything to wear it to her own wedding. She couldn't, of course. As eldest, the dress was supposed to be mine on my wedding day. Frankly, I wished there were a way it could be hers.

But there wasn't. The rules forbade it.

When I opened my eyes for the second time, I saw Silky at the foot of the bed.

She was sitting on my feet.

“I'm not going to let you sleep away
the
most important day of your life,” she said. I looked her over. She was wearing a wrapper over her Honor Gown, and her throat and arms were already intricately decorated with the lacy designs that were a sign of our House, our land status, our aristocratic roots.

“The day I was introduced to Leth was probably the important day,” I said. “Or the day his parents asked Father if he could marry me.”

“
Boring
. Plus, after this, you'll get to see Leth all the time, Angel,” said Silky. “No chaperones anymore. This is the day that changes
everything
. You only get married once. Unless he dies, of course. But second ones are never so nice. There's always
gloom
.”

“Silky—­“ I began to object. My sister was a romantic about weddings, but about the rest of life—­less so.

“Come on, Angel,” she said. “I've already spruced up your bouquet with wild roses. I know you love wild roses. The flowers they sent were
not
adequate.”

“I'm sure they were fine,” I protested. The flowers were from the groom's family.

“Come on,” said Silky. “I'll sneak you out so you can look. Some of them are wilted, and I
bet
they came from the pre-­contract dinner.”

“Flowers are expensive,” I said. “And who cares?”

“
Angel
—­“

“It's all right, Silky. I'll come and look at them.”

I sat up in bed and threw back the covers. I had my favorite coverlet on the bed. I was supposed to start my married life with everything new, but there were more than a few items I planned on smuggling with me. I would take the coverlet, for example, and certainly the lucky quartz pebble that my best friend, Trey, had given me. It wouldn't be politic, of course, to tell Leth I was keeping something from Trey, but I could hardly help it that Trey was a boy. A man, really. He was on the cusp of his eighteenth birthday—­and a thought occurred to me:

Time for him to find a bride
.

He would have to marry someone with land, of course, because, as a younger brother, he had none, but he was handsome in a dark and interesting way, and a landed girl might well feel drawn to his green eyes. Trey's parents would probably seal such a match immediately. Trey didn't have the option of having sentiments. Sentiment was no substitute for land.

There were, however, worse fates than not loving your land-­partner. I myself had chosen something better than love: I had chosen affection and respect and a most suitable of matches. Between the two of us, Leth and I would own much of Arcadia—­not, of course, the Arcadia set apart by
The Book of Forbidden Wisdom,
but a considerable chunk of the rest of it. We would hold in common forests, meadows, mountains. Lumber, cattle, mines.

Of course with my land holdings, my father could have married me to anyone, but the merger with Leth of the House of Nesson made sense—­the only single man with nearly as much land as Leth's family was ten years older than my father and wrinkled like a winter apple. My father never considered that match. I didn't know if it was from care of me or because the old man didn't have quite as much land as the Nessons.

But I knew Father's final choice had nothing to do with love.

Neither had mine.

Love was a great unknown that, as far as I had seen, generally led to trouble and then went away. I had seen girls in love. They made bad land deals; they lived with regret.

Silky broke into my reverie. “Are you
dozing
?” she asked suspiciously.

“No,” I said. “I'm up.”

Silky threw a wrap at me and then quietly, contemplatively, she went over to the closet and gently fingered the lace on our mother's wedding dress.

“So fine,” she said. Her voice was low.

Once more I wished she could be the one to wear it, but the dress could never be hers, and we both knew it. It would pass to me and then to my female line. The least I could do to make up for the huge discrepancies between our fortunes was to let Silky shepherd me through the wedding. She cared so deeply about all of it—­down to the last petal on the wild roses by the great door of our House.

“Shabby,” she had proclaimed two days previously. The gardener had been hard-­pressed to prepare the grounds to her satisfaction. First he left the wild roses too shaggy, and then he lopped them too closely. When I found him trying to tie some of the branches back on, I gave him a silver piece, told him to desist and did the best I could to rein in Silky.

“Where's Leth?” I asked when I was out of bed and in my wrapper.

“
His
Ceremonial Bath,” snapped Silky. “Come
on,
Angel, you should have had yours an hour ago. And you shouldn't
mention
the groom when you aren't dressed.”

“You're the one who had me picturing Leth in the bath,” I said. “Besides, in not too many hours, Leth and I will be—­doing the required.“ I couldn't resist teasing Silky, despite the proprieties.

Despite my own anxieties
.

Silky put her hands over her ears. “La, la, la,” she said. “I can't
hear
you.”

“Well,” I said reasonably, “something like that has to happen after the wedding. Or else it's not valid.”

“Angel.” Silky was shocked. “You
promised
not to talk about that. It isn't maidenly.”

And I had indeed promised. I had told Silky I would behave and let her play Wedding, this time with me as Bride. She had always left out what happened after the wedding. Sometimes I wondered if she, in all her play weddings, had ever thought beyond the ceremony itself. Truthfully, I was a little nervous about that part. The matrons had been so vague about everything. Luckily, only yesterday, when the chaperone was looking away, Leth had taken my hand for a moment. That small intimacy had felt good. Everything would surely be all right.

I changed into my robe before the Ceremonial Bath and then walked outside, Silky right behind me, and into a crowd of ­people from the village and from villages beyond. One man stood by the door, bent under the burden of all the flowers he was carrying for me to inspect. But I focused instead on my friend Violet, who had crimped her red hair for the occasion and who waited to escort me to the Ceremonial Bath. I looked past the skin artists, with their tiny brushes and elaborate pots of color, and the baker, who wished me to see the sweets for after the feast. And I deliberately ignored the legal advisors—­our father's, mine, Silky's, Leth's, that of Leth's parents—­all making sure that not one iota of land changed hands that shouldn't. They all began talking at once.

“Later,” I said. “I have to go put on something to take off for the Ceremonial Bath.” The Ceremonial Bath was done naked.

There was silence. No one so much as smiled. Not even Violet. Not even Silky.

“Angel,” said Silky. “Can't you be more
discreet
?”

“I'll try,” I said. “Lead away.” Silky and Violet, my witness, escorted me to the Bath. Violet was sixteen, like me, and with her round figure and face, she reminded me of a lemon drop. Once I was married, she would be considered the best match for five hundred miles. Coal and opals.

Other women, most of whom I knew from the village, were waiting at the Bath to act as observers, witnesses and guardians of the ceremony. All of them would receive presents from my father.

Under Silky's critical eye, I played my role to the hilt, immersing myself completely and then bursting to the surface as if reborn—­which was, after all, the point.

Then it was the turn of the skin artists. Luckily it was a fine day, and they chose to work outside. I knew that Leth admired the skill of the decorators, so I tried to be patient with them, although it meant keeping still for ages and ages and ages. I sat for four hours as they sent a fine filigree of paint up my arms, over my shoulders and, in terrifically fine detail, across my chest and onto my throat.

I only jerked away once.

“Angel's ticklish,” Silky explained indulgently. I sometimes had trouble remembering she was only fourteen.

And then my father was there, and it was time for our final father-­daughter conversation. He had asked the question every month since Mother's death, although I think he had long given up believing there was an answer. When we were done today, the question would become Leth's.

“Come,” he said, and gestured toward the house.

“Am I done?” I asked the skin artists.

“For now, Lady Angel,” said one of them. “We'll do your hands right before the ceremony.”

We went into my father's study, a dark room filled with shelves of old books. He favored treatises and books of law, but there had been times I had caught him reading improbable traveler's tales or a romance set down from a bardsong.

My father was always direct when he questioned me, but it had become more of a ceremony than anything else. The questions and answers were always the same.

“Did your mother tell you the secrets of
The Book of Forbidden Wisdom
?” he asked. Recently, he had grown more intense in his asking, but I was sure that if he really thought I had an answer, he would long ago have hit me to try and get it.
The Book,
after all—­if any of the stories were true—­would have made him the richest man in Arcadia. That hope would end once I passed into Leth's hands.

“No,” I answered.

“And the Spiral City?” he asked. “Does it exist? Is
The
Book
there?”

“The Spiral City is a fantasy or a ruin,” I said. “You know what I know. I don't keep any secrets from you.”

Almost true. He didn't know that Trey and I had continued in our friendship to the present moment. He didn't know everything.

“Angel,” said my father. “It would be better to tell me than have Leth try and force it from you.”