Page 4 of The Salt King

“You mean,” he said, “that there might be an angel at Hreodwater.”

“Well.” Li coughed again. Avelyn wondered if he should be hunting around for some kind of theological EpiPen. “There are questions, anyway.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Whatever this is, is the opposite of a miracle. And whatever is down that mine, it is categorically not an angel.”

Li breathed in deep and slow. He clearly wanted to say that there was no Salt King, this wasn’t anything to do with Hreod stories, but the video was autoplaying again between them.

“That’s what we need to determine,” Li said, very softly. “You know what these investigations are for. Once we’ve ascertained it’s real, the question becomes whether it’s real and from God, or . . . real and not God.”

Avelyn nodded slightly. The verification of a miracle was a long process, and it was only the first step for the local bishop to confirm what had happened with witnesses and medical professionals. The next step was for the Vatican to send someone.

There were not many someones at the Vatican who spoke Hreod.

In fact, there was only one.

He dragged his eyes up to meet Li’s again.

Li looked wretched. “I’ve got to send you out there.”

The vow was: poverty, chastity, and obedience.

“Yes, Father,” he said.

Li was gouging a tiny Christmas tree into the leather surface of his desk with his thumbnail. They had never spent Christmas apart. Li’s family had disowned him: to their view, he had abducted a minor from an English village and trafficked said minor into Italy at the height of the abuse scandals. The Church would probably have taken the same stance if Avelyn hadn’t obviously worshipped the ground Li walked on and twice got into fights to defend his good name, but even now, there were sometimes murmurs at formal dinners.

Without Avelyn, Li could have been a cardinal by now. Sometimes Avelyn woke up in the middle of the night thinking about that.

“You speak Hreod,” Li pressed. “You understand Hreodwater. You’re clergy. This is a Venn diagram with only you in the middle of it.”

For Li, what you actually said was a barely noticeable tissue wrapping over what he thought you meant, and so even though Avelyn never argued with him, Li had a frustrating way of responding to “Yes, Father” as if he’d said anything at all on the spectrum from “Fantastic!” to “Please invite a passing eagle to peck out my liver so that I may be excused.”

“I know. I said yes,” said Avelyn. He wanted to say, I can’t go at Christmas, you’ll be on your own, but if he did say that, they would both cry.

“I know you wanted never to go back,” Father Li said, miserable now. “And I know you’re not an investigator. But I don’t think anyone has a better chance of finding out what’s happened.”

“I’m thinking of taking up dressage,” Avelyn said, in case anything would go in, and because he couldn’t listen to Li argue with what he wasn’t saying anymore.

Li looked pensive. “Isn’t women’s underwear awfully expensive, with the extra lacy bits and whatnot?”

Avelyn took a breath and held it while he worked out where Li had veered off. “You’re thinking of cross-dressing.”

Li gave him a wicked little glint, then slid across a plastic wallet with a debit card and a boarding pass in it. “You’re booked onto a flight tomorrow morning. All the details are there; train tickets for the other side, and all that. Now . . . I want you to get out of Hreodwater every morning, and call me, or I swear to God I will come and fetch you.”

Avelyn believed him. “Yes, Father.”

Li smiled ruefully, maybe half convinced that that one was a genuine “Yes, Father,” but he didn’t seem finished. His eyes were skimming over Avelyn’s face, over his whole self, even though he looked like he always did, in the black cassock with its thirty-three buttons and cinched waist. Something Li was seeing was worrying him. “I know that . . . God has never shown himself to you. I know that you can sit through a hundred Masses and feel nothing except a bit cold.”

Avelyn found himself going very still. This was not their normal afternoon conversation. It was a conversation they had spent twelve years meticulously not having at all.

When Li had first brought him to the Vatican and taken him to Mass, Li had said, How did that make you feel? Avelyn said, It was freezing. Li laughed at first, but he kept asking, and every time Avelyn shook his head—no, he felt no wave of acceptance or love or tranquillity—Li looked graver and graver. It had taken Avelyn a long time to understand that what Li was asking him was whether he could feel God.

He couldn’t. He never had. Burning Hreodwater and its madness out of his mind, coming to the understanding that the Salt King wasn’t a god, and stags weren’t spirits but ordinary animals built of blood and horn . . . it was the same as burning off his tattoos. To get all the ink, the laser had to burn deeper than was safe, so those places were scarred over—he could drip candle wax on them and feel nothing.

Burn out the Salt King, and you can’t feel God.

Li believed it, though, and Avelyn believed Li.

“Father,” he began, wanting urgently not to have this conversation now, or ever. He knew Li didn’t think it was a good idea to be in holy orders if you were as godblind as the staunchest atheist, but having opinions about someone else’s vows was the same as having opinions about someone else’s marriage: you kept it to yourself.