The beetles were last. Well, really, the beetle was last. Just one, all by itself, but with its wings and its horns, the dark body large as a hand, it caused enough fuss. Six legs scraping the floor, beetle feet audible in kk-kk-kk stepping, was it not loathsome? Too large to be squashed, it was poked with a stick. Oh, go on, you. Get, get out of doors. But rather than oblige the priests’ impolite nudging, the beetle rose in the air, wings a terrible whirring. It hovered, red-pincered and heavy—Get it away!—first here in the air, then there in the air, until it finally alighted on the shelves with the scrolls. Too quick to be caught, it scurried into the curve of a parchment and hid its great body away.

The priests pulled all the scrolls till they found it—Quick! Drop it outside! But it clung to the parchment, claws holding tight to the words Alba, Apprentice, as the priests flapped and flapped the pale sheet.

Alba, Apprentice? The priests stopped their flapping. The beetle horns pointed to the words I search for the twins.

Forgotten now in a different commotion, the beetle dropped and scuttled off—kk-kk—into the leaves. And when no one was looking, when the priests were all bent white-robed and shouting over the writing, the six-legged creature opened its wings. It buzzed away gracefully, the thick beetle body becoming smaller and smaller, until it was finally no more than a dark, inky spot on the pale parchment of sky.

XXVII

INKY BEETLES OF TRUTH

They came for her in the depths of night.

When they shook her, Alba could not find herself in the dark to make sense of the shaking. It was hands all about her and a hissing, Oracle-Apprentice, arise, but the hands pulled her outside before she could rouse herself. Air moonless and damp all around, she was standing, but not standing, someone was holding her, several someones were holding her, upright and shivering. Her body was borne on their anger, and finally she was awake enough to feel terror, and she struggled against the forms carrying her into the dark.

The knowledge came to her in a flood: She was being sent to the wilderness.

“Oracle!” she tried to cry, but a hand was clapped over her mouth. She squirmed. She bit. It did not matter; she was held fast.

She was carried through shadows by a horde of priest shadows. Feet half dragging, she could feel their descent down the mountain: They were heading away from the chamber. Away from her home.

She stopped struggling. Mind racing, she let the priest-shadows bear her along. It had to have been her writing. Maurus had warned her. How many times he had warned her. But she’d written it all anyway. Parchments… years of parchments. She imagined the priests unrolling the scrolls.… She imagined all her little inky beetles of truth finally crawling to the light and skittering around the priests’ chambers. I, Alba, the Oracle-Apprentice, saw in a vision.… I, Alba, the Oracle-Apprentice, saw the king… saw the twins.…