Page 28 of The Salt King

“Ssh,” the man behind them hissed.

Avelyn broke. “Ssh yourself. What kind of sociopath eats a peach during Mass anyway?”

The man scowled at him but put the peach awkwardly in his pocket.

On Avelyn’s other side, Jericho put one hand over his mouth, but not in time to cover up how he was smiling.

The priest was praying for the usual things; peace in the Middle East, good health for the afflicted.

Avelyn watched everyone. The people who seemed most ill were sitting at the front, and there was a raptness to them—to the whole congregation—that he almost never saw. The salt light from the great window scattered colours across them.

He waited for the priest to mention Matthew, but he didn’t. That was a significant thing to leave out, but nobody else seemed surprised. The priest moved straight on to the Eucharist. Avelyn shot a puzzled look at Jericho. A man had died here: there should have been prayers for weeks. Jericho shook his head slightly, like someone witnessing a bad verdict in a courtroom. Avelyn opened his hands, a little mime: Why?

“A lot of people think Matthew must have done something wrong,” Jericho whispered, leaning closer. So near to him, Avelyn could feel how cold the mine was without the salt light. “Sin, something, a misuse of his cure; and the salt was judgement. There haven’t been any prayers.”

“Great,” Avelyn muttered.

The salt light glowed around the bread and the chalice. “This is my body,” the priest intoned, in the singsong way an awful lot of priests fell into when they had said Mass too often, “and this is the chalice of my blood . . .”

Jericho gave it an uneasy look. Avelyn understood. If you weren’t a Catholic, it all looked like so much cannibalism. Avelyn caught his eye to say it was all right to ask if he wanted to.

“Is it really true it isn’t symbolic?” Jericho asked him. “People—genuinely believe it’s actually transforming into flesh and blood?”

“We do,” said Avelyn. “The substance changes, the accidents are the same.” He winced. If you weren’t careful with a theology degree, you ended up quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle to innocent passersby. He kept catching himself doing it. “It looks like bread, it’s still made of flour and water, but it is God. The breadness has gone and been replaced by Godness.” He thought some more, trying to find a way to it that would make sense if you were outside the faith. “It just means . . . things can be two things,” he said at last.

“Oh, so like trans people,” Jericho said, sounding relieved.

“Sorry?”

“Like, you can have the physical attributes of a woman but really you’re a man. Accidents: ovaries, oestrogen. Substance: man. It’s the same idea, isn’t it? Things can be two things?”

Avelyn watched him for a second, almost angry, before he realized that Jericho meant it genuinely and that in fact, Jericho probably didn’t understand the idea of being anything but genuine. “Y . . . es, though my thing is a holy sacrament and your thing is a mental illness.”

Jericho gave him a look that Avelyn just had time to be concerned about: it was full of quiet merriment. “In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”

“Exactly?”

“Why does that have to mean two separate things and not that we all have both inside us?”

Avelyn blinked. “Sorry, are you . . .?”

“I,” said Jericho cheerfully, “am not going to tell you.”

“No. No!” Avelyn only felt the full diabolical genius of it in stages. “You bastard! This is anti-weaselling protocol, isn’t it? That isn’t fair! Why would you lay cruel and unusual weasel traps? Just tell me things about yourself like a normal person! You don’t need to be all cool and mysterious, you need to be nice to weasels!”

“Weasels? What?” said Jericho, the very picture of mildness. “Anyway, hadn’t you better go up?” he added, about Communion.

“I can’t,” said Avelyn.

“How come?”

Avelyn inclined his head, not wanting to say it aloud again and hoping that Jericho knew that lust was a mortal sin, and that you shouldn’t take Communion in a state of mortal sin any more than you should go home to your partner covered in the gore of your latest victims. If you had to murder someone, then you did, but you didn’t have to get it all over the carpets.

“This is a challenging faith, isn’t it.” Jericho sighed.

“When you say ‘challenging,’ do you mean ‘stupid’?”

“No,” Jericho said quickly.