Paladins of the Pickle Goddess

The first hour, we didn’t say much. Apis and I each took a chair, and we watched each other, from our mutual locations of misery. What was there to say? We had failed.

The second hour, or what served for it, I tried to sleep. I couldn’t.

I finally sat up, back aching. The lantern was flickering. Neither of us could bring ourselves to blow it out; I was afraid we wouldn’t get another one, and I didn’t much like the idea of sitting in the dark for hours. Apis was probably leaving it alight out of politeness.

“Do you really care that much about my soul? I thought being in service to the gods was your whole thing.”

Apis was slumped in the chair, staring at the flame. “It’s one thing to dedicate yourself on purpose,” he said. “It’s another to be forced.”

The light flickered. I let my head fall onto the table with a thump. It hadn’t taken long to catalogue everything in this room. The bare wooden walls. The single table, well-built if sloppily maintained, with edges weathering and a few rude sayings etched beneath it. The two chairs. The lantern.

Nothing else. At this point, I would take torture. At least it would be interesting.

“You could have just left without marrying him,” he said. He put his head down, stared at the flame. “Then you would still have your soul.”

“Well, the dress had already been made. Besides, it would have been a violation of the contract.”

“Ah.”

The silence stretched out a little too long, then. I cleared my throat. “What do you suppose Duran will do?”

“I hope he’ll go back and speak to the priestesses,” said Apis. “Candida will keep him safe.”

“So we’re both agreed that he’s not going to get us out of here.” I ran a hand along the table, feeling for where the wood was splintering apart. “Ugh! I should have recruited a better apprentice.”

“I thought he tried very hard,” said Apis. “I liked that salad.”

“You don’t cook anything. You would accept the bare minimum.”

“Well, he’s learning. You had to start somewhere, too.”

“My grandmother would never have tolerated that.” I scrunched up my nose. “Although…. Well, yes. I was pretty awful when I started, too.” I sighed. “Andrena should have chosen a lawman for this. I was the worst person for this job.”

“Her options probably weren’t very wide.” Apis hadn’t moved. “I’m surprised you offered yourself.”

I froze. “What do you mean, offered myself?”

“She can only select an instrument of her will if someone offers their service willingly,” said Apis. “To be honest… well, I’ve been wondering why you did.”

“I didn’t-” That time, kneeling in front of the alter. Anything you want, so long as I don’t have to stay here- “Goddess below,” I said. “It was my fault.” I stood up, wanting to pace, and then sat back down again. There was nowhere to go. “This is what I get for praying!”

“You really didn’t know.” Apis sounded like he was on the verge of- laughter, almost. But not the happy kind. “How could she choose you, if you didn’t know?”

“Maybe no one’s offering themselves,” I said. “Did you?”

“Well- I already serve her,” he said. “I assumed she would offer me the choice if she needed me.”

“So you didn’t!” I grabbed at my hair. “Who does, these days? She’s the most unpopular of the four major gods, isn’t she?”

“That’s a harsh way to put it, I’d say-”

“People want to follow glory. They want to follow truth. Even those priests of the wild, wandering around and setting up shop in the woods, have a certain mystique. But people only go to Andrena once there’s already a problem. No one becomes a dedicant!”

“Everyone likes the spring festival,” said Apis. “Dancing around the pyre, throwing the flowers. Honoring the honey.”

“Yes, but no one dedicates their lives. Even your priestesses were saying they weren’t able to get dedicants. I’m sure Cabellus is still turning people away, and no one worships Cabellus properly anymore. But being a priest of Cabellus- that’s impressive.”

Dedicants were lifeblood to gods. If prayer gave gods the magic running through their veins, the ability to do miracles and save lives- like my unfortunate run-in with the pickles earlier- and other gifts- like Cabellus’s famous swords - dedicants were their actual workers on the ground, both on the surface of the world and in the realm of the gods. I had been assuming that Andrena had chosen me because she hadn’t liked her other dedicants. Now I saw the truth.

“Fine,” muttered Apis. “So she’s less popular. But people still pray to her! More than most. People need Andrena. In the darkest points of their lives, when they need new beginnings. She’s not- she’s not falling. In fact, compared to other gods, she’s got belief flowing endlessly. People care about what she can do. ”

“Of course she isn’t.” I laughed. “But suddenly I understand why she chose me.”

It wasn’t about my pickles, or about any ability of mine. It wasn’t my past, or my strength of mind. It was for one reason, and one reason only. I’d never been able to keep my mouth shut when it mattered.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” I said. “And I never paid attention in temple school when they told us what to say and what not to say when praying.”

“She wouldn’t have chosen you if you weren’t suited,” said Apis. He leaned forward, face intent. “You can’t just think she would have been so- so random-”

“She had no other option,” I said. “Face it. This is where this always would have ended. Neither of us is competent enough to fix this.”

I slumped back, in the chair. I should have felt thrown away, like I had failed. But knowing how I had been chosen had actually improved my mood. There was nothing special about me; no technique I could have used to fix this.

I was in this little room, with its two small chairs and the lantern slowly running out of light, because Andrena needed to improve at recruiting.

“Those letters,” said Apis, when the lantern flickered again. “Have you-”

“Is there a point?” I said. “What are we going to do with them?”

“I’m bored. Can we not at least look?”

I had no point to counteract that, so we unveiled them. The lantern was getting low, then, several hours in; we had to lean in, shoulders pressed together, to make out the words.

Whoever the priest of Teuthida had been corresponding with had awful handwriting. It was all scrawled out, in a great hurry, as though they were worried they’d be stopped at any moment. Even worse, as far as I could tell… they had been receiving messages that made no sense.

Twenty-two bells ring as I write this; is it fourteen, sixteen, or three more hours to wait? Stay lucky until then.

-A

When I was thirty-one, I saw the moon cross over the sun and try to set us into darkness. Did you see it, too? Did you wonder if we were trying for something too large to understand?

-A

“Do you think-”

“Who knows what they meant,” said Apis. “Not very clear messages, are they?”

I frowned. The third and fourth were more bland, a code I couldn’t see, or maybe just genuine exchanges of pleasantries; speaking about the weather, and someone’s new baby. “I wonder who A is. When was the last eclipse?”

“Must have been twenty years ago,” said Apis. “I don’t remember one happening since I was a child. Unless you were aware of another one?”

I shook my head, flattened more messages.

The fifth seemed more suspicious.

24 / 28 / 39 / 40 / 16 / 13 / 14

“I just don’t get it,” I said, finally, frustrated. “Why all of the numbers?”

Apis frowned, tapping his lip as he sat back. “The numbers don’t make sense, either. If these notes are from the Voice of Teuthida…”

“What?”

“Well, she’s too young. She’s only in her thirties. It doesn’t line up with the eclipse.”

I frowned. “More than that. No one’s ringing twenty-two bells on any clock tower.”

What did they mean by this? We both leaned in again. “Why so many numbers?” The other messages were clean of numbers, just generic enquiries about people’s health and welfare. “Do you know the voice’s given name?”

Apis shook his head. “I only knew Voice Marcia. And even she… well, we weren’t close. She was important.”

The lantern flickered again. I watched the oil lower, tried to turn over everything I’d seen so far.

“If it’s a code,” I said, “It has to be something they could decipher easily.” I closed my eyes, tried to picture the office. “A memorized index? Something to do with a religious text?”

“That sounds too obvious,” said Apis. “What if someone else knew it? They’re priests.”

I couldn’t remember any obvious indices from the office of the priests anyway. I let out a sign of frustration and tried to think again of everyone we’d met. How had we spoken to so many people, gathered so many clues, and yet I had still ended up here?

People slotted into different camps, pretty easy to categorize; those that aligned with Voice Marcia, and didn’t much care why; those that cared about the small gods; and those that didn’t.

I frowned. There was only one that didn’t really make sense. “The man at the temple of the small gods. The caretaker.”

“What about it?”

I had taken a long time to think. Apis was re-reading the notes, hand running over the small text again like it would say something different this time.

“The book from Small Gods,” I said. “Where will the World Go?”

I didn’t remember reading it as a child, just associated it vaguely with being a children’s book. I did know, though, that it wasn’t a small god’s book; it was the beetle’s book, through and through.

Apis looked up, brow furrowed. “You’re right. That doesn’t make sense. Why would the priests have been reading that? It's for children.”

“Teuthida isn’t aligned with the beetle, either.”

I had written a few ciphers of my own, in school. Nothing advanced- just sending out invitations that the schoolmarm or my mother couldn’t decipher.

The easiest had always been to assign numbers to words in a text, track it to a specific book.

What were the chances that two cases of arson, in different parts of the city, were both seen next to the same book? A children’s book, no less?

“It’s not solid evidence,” said Apis. “I don’t have the book memorized, unfortunately. We need a copy.”

“Sylvia has to meet with us eventually,” I said. “Maybe I’ll request some reading material.”

“Of course. I’m sure she’ll be happy to help.”

I thought he might have smiled, but I couldn’t quite tell. The lantern flickered out.

We were, finally, in complete darkness.