Page 103 of The Salt King

“Do you ever look at quantum theory and think that?” Avelyn said back. “Don’t . . . say ‘replicable results.’ You aren’t doing the quantum double-slit experiment every second Tuesday to make sure it’s still right. You just trust the experts who get the results because they all agree after years of peer review. So do I. So do mine. Just—the way that you see Einstein, and Lovelace, and Galileo? That’s the way I see saints. They did things and discovered things that are important. And true.”

“Okay,” Jericho said.

“Okay?” Avelyn said, tentative.

“Okay,” Jericho told him again.

They were looking at the same painting, and Jericho thought it was nauseating, and Avelyn thought it was beautiful, that was obvious, but it was better than fighting.

They had reached the stables, and the horses were still there: looking puzzled about the light, and whether or not that might have any implications for their usual supply of apples, but whole, and still horses. Jericho put his lamp on a fence post close to the standing stone that had once been Matthew, and helped Avelyn lift down tack and saddle two tall mares who were keen to investigate everyone’s pockets. Jericho opened the paddock gate to let the rest of the herd out onto the fen, so that at least they would have plenty to eat out there in case nobody came to feed them. The snow was falling thickly again, and the air zinged with salt. A foal put one foot into a snowdrift, bewildered. Some of the others cantered out into the dark, running for the sake of running.

As Avelyn and Jericho were fastening the last of the buckles on the saddles, a stag walked past. It was like the one from the mine, but this one was even taller. Avelyn could have stood between its front legs and only just been able to stretch enough to brush the fur on its chest. Although it was a mighty thing, it made barely a sound as it paced over the salt-frosted grass. Between its antlers, it had a salt crown. Avelyn went still, and put his hand back for Jericho.

The calm golden eyes settled on them both for a moment, and then, a leviathan shadow in the night, the stag walked on.

Jericho was looking out across the fen. Avelyn did too.

There were lights.

As the breeze moved a bank of fog and salt light, he caught the silhouette of high battlements.

Watch your north.

He turned slowly all the way around. The town was behind them, salt-ruined and dark, but still there. The customs house. The stables. South, southeast, and . . . so, Hreodwater should have been due north up this path.

The path didn’t lead due north. It was veering northwest, towards the lights and the castle that shouldn’t have been there.

“We can’t go there,” he said. Stories crowded into his head. The cursed knights who rode forever on the fen, not knowing they had died a thousand years ago; the children who went out into the snow to catch eels, and never came home; the witches who lost their minds and walked into a blizzard, knowing they wouldn’t walk out the other side. The rare soul who befriended the King, and who he saw safely home, with a treasure trove of silver.

Behind them, the salt light was vicious. The insane joy was a pressure on the back of his head, and it was getting closer. Something was coming this way.

“We can’t stay,” Jericho said.

They both stepped up in the stirrups and guided the horses onto the path that did not go north.

Ahead of them, the lights of Caer Halen brightened.

PART IV

One day before the waking of the Salt King

39

Amman, Jordan

Sally lived at the top of a crooked four-storey apartment block. None of the buildings on the street matched; some were tiny, some tall, some had gardens of fig trees, some had balconies full of washing and plants. It was right behind a cemetery and a miniature mosque with a turquoise dome. When he unlocked his front door and pushed it open with his shoulder, there were framed pictures of tarot cards on the wall in a striking design she’d never seen before. An old camera, the kind with a concertina section, sat on a tripod by the balcony window, and from the ceiling hung lines of string with photographs pegged to them. Shelves full of books and film canisters and about forty different kinds of cameras from different centuries took up every scrap of space on the walls.

Sally went around turning on lamps. The little sitting room had two mismatched armchairs that looked like he’d salvaged them from a gentleman’s club two hundred years ago, and a view of the cemetery. The air smelled of photographic chemicals. The pictures must have been his: no wonder he knew how to develop the dosimetry tests.

“You like photography then?” she said, surprised. He was so young, he must have grown up attached to a smartphone.

“Love it,” he said, with some feeling. He took a roll of aluminium foil from the drawer, and some tape. “I love how difficult it is, and how you can see the chemistry working in front of you. But don’t look at the ones hanging up, they’re all terrible.” The pipes clicked as he turned the heating on. “I haven’t got much of this stuff, so—what do you think? Do we make a little shelter with the table, put it on ourselves, on the wall . . .”

“I think . . . if we put it on ourselves, we’ll just tear it. And the under the table—we still have to move around. We need to cook, go to the bathroom . . .”

“I haven’t got anything to cook,” he said.

“Oh. I have. I stole some stuff from those boys who were rude to you.”