Page 24 of The Salt King

As soon as they sat down with her, Sister Annunciata was immediately and obviously the sort of person who went on long hikes to go wild swimming in some punishing loch where she would defeat any monsters who tried to interrupt, and then wrote lovely nature poetry about it.

“Morning! Oh, God, that was manic,” she said, moving her cane so they could sit down. “How are you? I don’t know why you come to Mass, Jericho, do you just not sleep?”

“I like the singing,” Jericho said. “And this is Avelyn, he’s just come from Rome.”

“Hello,” offered Avelyn. Her cane had a Ping-Pong ball on the end, with a little fluffy tail pinned to it so it looked like a scurrying animal whenever she moved it. He decided she was a good person. Jericho was just easily startled.

“Oh,” she said, sounding intrigued. They were all speaking low, under the song. The congregation was big enough that it didn’t matter. “From Rome. Will you be here to look into what happened to Matthew?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

“What’s that accent? I’m usually good at accents. Say something else, I want to guess.”

“In the beginning,” said Avelyn, deciding he would bake her a cake if she could guess, because nobody ever could; a Hreod accent sounded as though it was wandering across all the chilly bits of Europe. “God made the heavens and the earth. But that earth was void and empty, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” He always wanted to say “darknesses,” because in Hreod you could have lots of little darks, just like in English you could have lots of little lights.

She guessed Danish first, then Scottish, then German.

“An hekwos, weyktis Deigom neve a ekmtom,” he said, to give her a clue, in the same rhythm so that she would know he was just repeating that first line of Genesis. “A va ekmtom gan hruth . . .”

“That’s Hreod! You’re Hreod!”

“Points, all the points,” Avelyn said, pleased that she was pleased. Then he paused, because Jericho had been making throat-cutting motions, and now he’d put his hand over his face.

“You and I are going to have breakfast together later,” Annunciata told him. “I have things to ask you. I’m a linguist. I’ve been writing about Hreod for years.”

“For what sin?” said Avelyn.10

“What are you talking about? It’s gorgeous. Anyway, I’m only here for another week, so don’t be too funny or nice, or I’ll be even sadder when I have to go. Only your blandest and most boring stories, all right? Nothing about the time you were on missionary work in the Congo and almost eaten by zebras.”

“What are you called, if you’re from Congo?” Jericho said distantly, not in the way of someone who expected to be listened to. “Is it Congo . . . nese? No. It can’t be. That sounds like tennis elbow.”

“What did I just say?” Annunciata said to him.

Jericho looked frightened. “Sorry?”

“This is what I’ve been dealing with this whole month,” she said to Avelyn. “Will he make an effort? Will he sod. Jericho, do I really have to go home on Wednesday? I can’t pay a squillion pounds and stay?”

Avelyn realized something odd then. It was that the salt light particles were behaving differently around each of them.

They brushed off him, as always.

Annunciata they loved, with that halo. The light motes were powering towards her, passing straight through her veil. They must have been clinging to her hair, because they were glowing through the fabric.

That was peculiar enough, but something else was happening too. Those same particles of salt light hated Jericho. He had a clear aura of darkness; the salt light wouldn’t get nearer than about three inches. Then it ricocheted away. Sitting side by side, Jericho and Annunciata were making the light behave as though it were made of minuscule iron filings dropped between the two poles of a magnet, one positive, one powerfully negative.

“You do,” Jericho was saying, “I’m sorry.”

Aware he looked odd, Avelyn rubbed his own sleeve to see if he could move the particles. They went through the fabric, but he could brush them off his arm. He could see he wouldn’t be able to brush them off Annunciata. The light was under her skin. He wondered suddenly if she knew. No, of course she didn’t. None of them would, the people with this halo. Unless they happened to take an awkward selfie with a silver-clad camera, and even then, it would probably come out on film looking like a lens flare.

“Do you suppose anyone’s ever, you know, run off into the mine and lived there secretly, predating on kitchen leftovers and stolen marmalade?” Annunciata asked. When she moved her head, the salt light halo moved with her. It was mesmerising.

“We have a large population of feral nuns living in the mine, yes,” Jericho said, with every sign of seriousness, “but we try not to talk about it because we don’t want people to put it in the reviews.”

“Hmm, I see, I see,” she said.

Jericho folded his arms, plainly feeling the cold, and no wonder, because the mine wasn’t warm: the salt light was warm. Jericho must have been moving around in his own pocket of coldness. He had a purple jumper on now, and since they had sat down, he had shrugged into a heavy herringbone coat with moss-coloured velvet on the inside of the collar.

Avelyn held one hand out to that dark aura around Jericho, and stopped when he felt it. Yes. About three inches away from him, the air was freezing. Jericho saw him do it and gave him a questioning glance with half a smile in it, because Avelyn looked as though he’d been caught out just before a stealth-poke.