Paladins of the Pickle Goddess

My head kept clanging. For once, I was glad we were in the dark, even with the dim lantern. I spent most of a few hours staying very still, on the floor, watching the flames dance against the ceiling and trying not to vomit.

Head injuries. Never again.

“You can still see?”

“I told you,” I gritted out, through the headache, “I can see. Through both eyes. You don’t need to swing your finger back and forth.”

“It’s only- I’m checking your pupils-”

“Apis,” I said, “If you get close to me again, I will vomit on you. That is a threat.”

He withdrew. I inhaled, very slowly, and then exhaled. Well. That had gone badly.

At least, after a few hours of sulking on my back on the floor, I began to feel a little better. I hadn’t done well for myself, the last few days. Running through the city, being thrown to the ground, trying to fight guards. Not to mention all of my time traveling on carts and sleeping on Apis’s horrible guest mattress.

I finally pushed myself up as the door creaked open slowly for the next day’s meal. An entire night must have passed without me noticing. The guard pushed it in with the end of his weapon, keeping his body well out of range. “Is she alive?”

His voice was shaking, a little. I let myself feel some satisfaction with that. So: I was a failed Paladin, with no weapon or magical abilities. At least a slightly post-pubescent guard was afraid of me.

Then I reached forward to grab the food and realized how far I had fallen. Being proud of intimidating one guard?

“She’s alive,” said Apis.

The door slammed shut. The lantern flickered. At least Sylvia had left more oil in this one.

“You’re feeling better, then?” He looked hopeful. I stuffed some of the dry biscuit in my mouth and tried to muster up enough spit to make it tolerable. When I finally swallowed, I sighed.

“What do you know of Paladins?”

Did I even want to try, anymore? Andrena was… there was no other way to say it. I had to admit it. She was an upper goddess. She was terrifying, full of magic. She controlled what was about a fifth of all belief in the world. She held life in her hands.

She was also an idiot. She couldn’t have given me just one message about the sword? Did I really want to do a task for someone like that?

“Paladins?” Apis had started gnawing at his own biscuit ration. The biscuit was winning. “Ah… didn’t they all disappear, after the… incident, during the Northern War?”

Apis was about my age. We were both too young to have seen Paladins in action properly.

As such, we both just gnawed at the biscuits thoughtfully. When I’d made it through another bite or so- my jaw getting tired- I managed another sentence.

“That’s what Andrena wants me for. Her Paladin.”

Apis dropped the biscuit. “You’re her paladin? Those don’t exist anymore!”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

Apis coughed. “Well,” he said. He looked down at the biscuit, half-fallen on the floor, and then apparently decided to give up. “Well. Ah. I’m sure she had- a good plan for you. A reason she didn’t give you the power to be her Voice, instead.”

Why she’d saddled me with a sword and vague hope, instead of the magic of the gods? Yes, it was definitely a well-considered plan instead of some whimsical impulse. I ground a piece of crumb between my teeth.

“She says she has to use all of the Belief she’s got to keep Marcia in the…” I gestured vaguely. “I don’t know. Some field of flowers.”

“She kept Voice Marcia as a bodily vessel in her godly palace, not just a spirit?”

“Sure.”

“No wonder she’s sent so few messages,” said Apis. “A spirit that dies before the given time craves freedom. She must be keeping Voice Marcia anchored so that she can see Justice done.”

“That doesn’t help me do that justice!”

“…well, no,” he said. “But we’ve made so much progress! We haven’t even decoded the letters, yet!”

It felt easier to yell at Apis. He didn’t have godly powers, just a stale biscuit. “What do you know about it,” I snapped. “I don’t even know Voice Marcia. Never did! I just went on this quest because Andrena threatened me. If she’s got no power, I don’t think she can even follow through. If Sylvia’s going to pay me off to not investigate, what’s it worth to me to finish the job?”

“But-”

In the flickering lantern light, Apis’s face fell.

I folded my arms. “This whole tangle is a mess way too bad for me to deal with. I’m just a cook.”

“They murdered her,” he said.

“A job for the guard.”

“The guard won’t help!”

“Not my problem.”

“Your- Sylvia- locked you up. She called you a friend, and then laughed at you. Not to mention, she stole your apprentice from you. You’re going to take her side? Your head’s still got blood on it from where that guard attacked you!”

He had a point, there. I frowned.

“Besides, those boys down there, she’s got them imprisoned, too. Someone’s framed them for Voice Marcia’s murder. If the guard catches them, they might actually be-”

“Fine! If you care so much, you go deal with it. Didn’t the temple raise you to help? Prove it, for once!”

I felt like a child again, refusing to participate in one of my mother’s schemes, taking the curls out of my hair. Apis stilled. “Fine.”

“What?”

He was pulling out the letters. “I’ll try,” he said. “You’re right. We already made a start. I’ll figure out who did it, and then I’ll present my conclusions to the spire. That Lady Sylvia might let me out. She doesn’t even know who I am.”

I had pushed a cart down a hill, and now I was watching it crash into the sea. “But they’ll- Apis, there’s a mob at the base of the Spire.” They would rip him apart. When they started bludgeoning him, he probably wouldn’t even fight back. He might apologize to them, for getting in the way.

“They don’t know who I am either.” He was turning the pages of the letters, turning through the book. “Please stop speaking. It will make your wound worse.” He looked up. “Also, you’re distracting me.”

What had gotten into him? Was there poison in those biscuits?

I watched him for a moment, scribbling. He looked very… focused. It had to be poison. Some sort of sudden-onset illness. He had been involved with the quest before, but he hadn’t taken charge like this before.

“Look,” I said, “Neither of us should be involved. This is dangerous.”

Apis pointed below us. “It’s dangerous for them, too.”

With nothing to say to that, I lay back flat on the wood, listening to the chatter of the letter-boys.

Voice Marcia. Why did everyone care so much about her? Sure, she had been murdered. Tough luck. But at least she’d had an interesting death. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, trying to stop my throbbing headache.

She had passion. A mission. Something you certainly lack, said the part of my brain I generally tried to avoid. Some people had a sense of morality. I liked to think I’d left mine to rot a long time ago, out behind a shed where no one could find it.

At times like this, though, it had a bad habit of coming back to bite me. Like it had gone rabid out there. She cared about people, it added. She was close to equalizing the balance of power in the church, and now that could be ruined for good.

I didn’t care about that. I didn’t! Marcia’s goals weren’t the same as mine. The small gods could go up a river for as much as I cared.

You’d be proving Sylvia right by taking that bribe. She thinks you aren’t even good enough to make a living as a cook.

I pushed myself upwards. I had missed that implication, caught up in drama that was years old. How dare she! I hadn’t come south because I was… running out of money, after fourteen years, like some kind of… of failure! My pickles were endorsed by the Pickle Goddess herself!

“Have you translated the letters yet?”

Apis jumped at the question, dropping one of the letters. “Sorry?”

“Don’t apologize, tell me!”

“I thought you didn’t want to be involved.” He actually sounded hurt.

“You were-” I paused. Did I really want to do this? “…right. I don’t want to take Sylvia’s side. My head does ache. So what do they say?”

Apis cleared his throat. “Well. Ah. Let me just…” He fumbled through the letters.

“The first one that said Twenty-two bells ring as I write this; is it fourteen, sixteen, or three more hours to wait? Stay lucky until then… I think the numbers mean Move believers to shadow. The one about the eclipse just says Rumple-and-tumble? Just that word, strangely enough… and finally, World askew new prayer to stray believers. No punctuation. Frankly, they don’t make any sense.”

I moved to look over his shoulder. He’d translated the book, which was a description of the world’s terror after the beetle stopped rolling it, into the code by using the order of each word. It was a desperately simple code, but it seemed to work.

That didn’t mean I understood it, not really. “Do you think the one about moving believers to shadow was about the letter-boys?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But what about the others?”

I could only shrug. Before I could ask any further questions, the door opened again.

Apis and I both froze.

It wasn’t time for our daily feeding and chamber-pot emptying. I knew the timing like clockwork by now, my impatience making me twitchy and forcing me across the room. It wasn’t time for the end of Flight’s Feast, either.

No. There were two more days left, until then. So who could be at the door?

I didn’t stop to check. I lifted the chair and started running. Last time, I had been a little too slow. Now I had the throbbing headache and bloody skull to prove it.

This time, with my certified Chair Shield Technique (I would figure that out as I went) I was sure to defeat all six guards they brought.

The man behind the door shrieked and backed up. He had come with a crowd- I couldn’t make out their faces in the sudden brightness. Some of them were armed. Friends, or foes? I held the chair up, just in case. “Who are you?” I said.

The laundress pushed his glasses up and held up the bundle of clothing. “I’m here to deliver your cloak,” he said. “You never arrived at the Guild.”

My cloak. My cloak, the one I had saved up, the perfect color of boring brown, the one I’d worn to a dozen late nights and woken up in the morning wearing nothing else. I held out a hand, touched the fabric. It was real.

I stared up at him. “How.”

“I take professional failures very seriously,” he said. “I sought you out when you didn’t appear. You seemed to care about the cloak, so I doubted you would have avoided the appointment.” He squinted into the darkness. “Am I correct that the priest of Andrena is also with you?”

“I’m not a priest,” said Apis. “Why does everyone think that?”

He emerged out of the darkness, and I got my first real look at him since we’d been thrown into the cell almost a week ago. He had a thick bruise around his eye, and a scrape on his neck, from the fights with the guards. We were both filthy. He was also holding back a grin. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “The Laundresses-”

“Hold up!” The woman behind him shouldered forward. “That isn’t in the agreement.”

She gestured forward. A set of guards- city guards, with the cloaks and swords to prove it- tromped forwards. Before I could use the chair, a set of manacles clicked over Apis’s wrists. He pulled back in horror.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re under arrest for the Arson of the Temple of Andrena,” said the Guard. He pulled Apis away from the room, with the flickering lamp. I pulled back on Apis’s elbow.

“No, he’s not! He’s done nothing.”

“We have the evidence, miss… ah…”

“Elysia,” said the woman. She was small, very compact, but she wore the clothing of a housekeeper. I thought I recognized her from somewhere- one of Lady Sylvia’s? From a few days ago, maybe? “Elysia Ferrers.”

“Miss Elysia Ferrers, we’ll be retaining him in Kingshome until he can be taken to trial. Please don’t worry. We have all required evidence.”

I tried to kick at the guard’s shins, but it was too late. They’d bundled Apis up and pulled him away. I was left standing with my cloak in my hands. In front of me were the housekeeper and the Laundress. The Laundress smiled at me, face smug.

“So!” he said. “That went better than expected.”

The housekeeper poked me in the chest, hard. “Where,” she said, “Is your boy.”