Paladins of the Pickle Goddess

“Smile, everyone.” We approached the bottom of the spire. I had put the Abyssal Blade back- Duran had taken it with reverent hands, more respect in his eyes than I think I’d ever seen before- but they all treated me with a little more reserve. Once a woman swings a blade around, you never know when she’ll do it again. “Let’s see if they’ve got that trebuchet already.”

The night had slipped away without me noticing it. I shuddered in horror. I had hoped to slip away before the Flight, escaping the beetles after dealing out Andrena’s justice. Instead, in a last cosmic joke on her part, I had been trapped. Dawn approached.

Soon, the colony would fly. “Are you sure they still live?” I said, leaning over to the Baron. “Don’t beetles… wouldn’t fire hurt them?”

He leaned away and held out a paper. “Your copy,” he said. “You didn’t take it up in the tower.”

“Oh.” I didn’t really live a life where anyone checked my divorce paperwork. I took it anyway, stuffed it in my cloak. Andrena, I’ve got my soul back now. So when we’re through, I expect it in my body! No scratches, paint still fresh!

“Well,” he said.

We had all clustered behind him. It was a mutual agreement; if someone had to be sacrificed, it might as well be the Baron. He would look as unappealing in death as he did in life.

He hesitated for a moment, then pulled open the door.

We stared down the barrel of a cannon. “Hold fire!” he shouted. “All is at peace!”

Behind the cannon, a woman- I thought it was a woman, anyway, there were a great deal of robes- rose. She wore green and brown, the colors of the beetle. Her eyes were covered by massive multi-faceted glasses. The lenses of an Imago, made to imitate the beetle.

“He lives!” She shouts. “Everyone, our Voice is delivered! The world rolls onwards!”

“Ah,” said the Baron. A crowd surged forward and tried to pull him from the tower. He went, although very slowly. More of a gentle walk than a run.

“How did he even get chosen?” I said, after a moment. We had all been roundly ignored. “Surely there was someone else… better. For anything.”

“The Beetle needs someone who can understand it,” said Apis. “And, well…” He made a vague gesture. “It’s a beetle.”

“I think that was almost an insult,” I said. “Well. With that in mind, let’s proceed. Everyone, grab onto something you don’t want to lose. If it gets too bad, I’ll take out the Abyssal Blade.”

That hadn’t been a request for people to guard me, but somehow I made it through the mass of beetle followers with them all huddled in a little cluster, keeping the crowds away. Even the city guards that Sylvia had talked down escorted me, swords out.

Sometime in the middle of the night the fire in the festival grounds had been put out. I walked through the crowd and towards where the stage had been, glancing over the wreckage. Some of it still shouldered, damp with water. A few trees had clung onto life.

The stage had crumbled, too, but beneath it was a stone foundation that looked steady enough to stand on.

People had begun to gather. It didn’t matter that there had been a riot, that there had been a fire. The Beetles would fly soon, and they would fly here. Luck mattered more than a little smoke inhalation.

Stupid. But it would help me.

I hauled myself up, grunting with the effort. Duran shadowed me as I strode to the middle of the stage, clearing my throat. “Everyone! Eyes up here!”

“You’re a pretty big beetle!” shouted someone in response. “Going to start flying, or is it too early?”

“Be quiet!” shouted Duran, but I waved him down.

If the city was recovered enough to be rude, that was a good sign. “We’ve emerged from the Spire to give news of negotiations,” I said.

The crowd, which had briefly turned to pay attention to me, turned away again. Behind me, I heard a groan of annoyance as the elderly Voices of Cabellus and Ursus helped themselves up on stage. “We’re making major changes!” I shouted. Still no response.

Someone was selling fried meat on a stick in the corner of the festival- it must have been built overnight, since everything had burned- and was getting more attention than I was.

This called for a special skill of mine. Shouting loudly. I cleared my throat. “THE VOICE OF CELERES IS NOW AN UPPER VOICE!”

That got their attention. A hundred or so faces- loosely gathered in the grounds, spread out as far as I could see- all turned to me at once. One woman stopped mid-chew of her meat-stick.

“What?” said a man, below the stage. “That’s preposterous. What is she, the god of seagulls?”

“There will be a guild audit,” I proclaimed. There was a rustling. I was losing their attention. “The Voice of Teuthida will lead it!” Their attention came back. “Assisted by Lord Julian and Lady Sylvia. They will run the audit with a committee of six rotating Small Gods.”

The Lady Sylvia cleared her throat, next to me. When I had suggested the audit- telling her to clean up her own mess- her words had been, in short, absolutely not, are you mad, and this will look ridiculous.

She gave the crowd a half smile. “I live to serve you, and our people,” she said.

“There is a new complaints office!” I shouted, before they could go away. My final price. “Contact the Voice of Celeres if you know of any evasion, corruption, or problems with the Spire.”

“But who burned down the Temple of Andrena? I thought they were retreating to consider it!”

That shout came from the back of the crowd.

I could have said the Voice of Teuthida. It was true. She was only being punished via tax audit, which wasn’t a real punishment for murder. She had tried her best to destroy the Spire, too- scared a teenage girl, imprisoned small boys. All to try and gain a minor amount of power.

Still. She’d done all that, and gained absolutely nothing. Now I was going to force her to spend day after day with Sylvia, who had betrayed her. Force them both to confront the problems they’d caused.

Would it have been more satisfying to execute her, the way they’d wanted to execute the letterboys? Maybe.

But I had a feeling that would have escalated to an all-out battle. And I wanted to be done with being a Paladin.

“The Voice of Andrena’s temple burned down due to an unfortunate accident,” I said. “No one was at fault. Her soul was carried well to the garden of the gods.”

I bowed my head in a moment of silence. I hadn’t known Voice Marcia at all. But she had offered me a drink, once, in the afterlife. That deserved a memorial.

I pointed to the Voice of Celeres. “Please! Ask her all further questions!”

I backed rapidly off-stage, jumping at the end, as the crowd rushed in. I dove towards the back of the field, where a few stands weren’t completely gone and some burned wood remained. I hid behind a plank and listened to the outcry of the public.

It felt good to be done.

“Well,” said Apis. “What next?”

“What next? You saw it! I’m finished!”

“I just meant…” He shrugged. He’d followed me under the burned stand, keeping a look-out for the crowd. It seemed no one thought I was important enough to follow. “Well, you’re exiled from the city now.” Sylvia had pointedly not revoked her statement of exile. For me or Apis. “I just thought you might, well, have plans elsewhere,” he said. “Sorry for prying.”

“I guess I was going to go back to the inn,” I said. I squinted out into the crowd. “Duran, don’t.”

He stopped mid-gulp. “The sword-swallower could do it!”

“That doesn’t mean you should test it with a kebab. Get over here, we’re planning.”

He looked over his shoulder once more at the crowd, but obligingly trotted to join us. He leaned against the burned wood, nearly knocking it over, before he stood back up and brushed himself off like nothing had happened. “What are we planning? Are we going to save another city?”

I looked around us. The festival grounds were burned. There was nothing left of the Temple of Andrena. I’d told the Council to use Candida as a substitute for the Voice of Andrena, but the other priestesses would probably be very angry about it. My mother would be furious that I’d divorced the best husband she’d acquired for our family in years. At least the Baron Vindex probably didn’t care one way or the other.

“No,” I said. “It would probably be best for everyone if we stopped saving cities for a while.”

“Oh.” He put his hands in his pockets and kicked at a piece of burned grass with his shoe. “So where are we going, then?”

“I thought we’d go back north.” I watched his face fall further. “You like it up there! There’s snow. You never get snow in the capital. Just a white ash you shouldn’t breathe.”

“You don’t get coaches, either. Or big temples, or festivals, or parties where you get eel on crackers,” said Duran. “Or fermented shark! Or boats.”

He had a point. All of those points, however, were exactly why I wanted to leave the capital. “Well, I can’t stay here. Also, I’ve just stolen you from your father. I need to return you at some point.”

“No, you don’t! I’m your apprentice. You’re in charge of me now.”

With anyone else, I might have questioned that. With Duran, he had a point. Durandus the First still hadn’t noticed his wife had left, and it had been ten years. She had even bothered to make the divorce official.

It wasn’t like I’d especially liked that inn in the first place. But… well, it had been home. I’d ended up there, years ago, and I’d settled in. I frowned. “I don’t have any other ideas,” I said. “Suggestions?”

“I have a little money,” said Apis. “We could try and get on a coach, see if anyone’s hiring just outside of city limits?”

“You’re coming with us?”

“I can’t stay here.” He glanced away. “Not that you have to allow me to- of course I’d go my own way, if you didn’t want me to come with you.”

“Oh, this is stupid.” I rolled my eyes. “Yes, you’re fine to come with me. The hive, I presume, will come as well?”

“Yes, of course! I would never abandon them like that.”

“Well, that narrows things down substantially.”

I frowned. I hadn’t wanted to break into it already, but… “Look,” I said. “The divorce settlement gave me some money.” It hung, satisfyingly, on my hip. He'd practically thrown it at me, as if I would use the sword to extract money from him. “Enough to buy- well, not a good place. Not even a mediocre place. Probably a broken-down place, in the middle of nowhere. But…”

“I could brew,” said Apis.

“I could do the rest. Seems like a decent plan.” Gone from the city. No longer having to deal with Durandus the first. It was a dream.

“And an entire garden for the bees!” said Apis.

“Let’s not get too optimistic.”

“You’re leaving already?”

We all turned. Somehow, in the midst of the conversation, Servius had snuck up on us. I sighed. “Not you too. I already said, I’m leaving. I’m certainly not getting involved with you.”

The worst part was, he didn’t even argue. He just nodded, turning to Duran and giving him another solemn nod. I should feel completely fine leaving him here. He would be safe. Well-fed. Probably made into some fancy politician.

But something in his eyes… well, it reminded me of me. Before I’d been able to escape. Stuck in that horrible room, watching Baron Vindex ignore me. Thinking I was stuck there for the rest of my life.

“Look,” I said. “I’m sure we won’t be hard to find. If you ever need to, you can come by.”

“It’s a bargain!” He stood up painfully straight and saluted me.

The conversation ended there. Not because I had nothing more to say, but because the sun had finally come up. With a great fluttering of wings, a quiet sound that built on itself to be thunderous, the beetles flew.

They came from every direction. Unlike a normal festival, it seemed that guardians of the beetles had taken the colonies and run. The beetle colonies streamed out of open windows, out of baskets, out of a single boat I could see anchored on the silty dry bed of the Used-to-Be. They all joined above us in a single stream, spiraling together in front of the sun like a strange eclipse.

Then, one by one, they began to split off. Looking for new homes. I shuddered in horror as a fat beetle flew a little too close to me, on the edge of a colony heading for a half-burned tree in a pot that hadn’t been rescued in time.

At first, the colonies leaving made no impact on the buzzing mass in front of the sun. Then, as they whittled down, it became a more distinct shape. There wasn’t just one mass of beetles; they were a group of ten colonies, then nine.

Finally, only one circled in front of the sun. Picky. We watched as they descended, spiraling towards a storefront with an old oak in front, protected from the blaze with what looked like sodden blankets. The crowd, previously so unruly, had quieted. Waiting. The beetles settled on the branches of the tree. A single leaf remained.

The sun was pale behind the clouds, barely above the horizon.Beetle’s Flight was over.