Page 52 of The Salt King

He had to admit it would be nice to have a second opinion, one that wasn’t Jericho’s rose-tinted one. Rose-tinted: what an understatement. Jericho was seeing through primordial wildernesses of roses. “Well. There’s a thing with the salt . . .” He looked for some salt to cast, but it was all solid and crystallised.

The eels were still close, though, trying to understand what Annunciata was. Among the dark masses of them, one or two—the Eel Queens, in the witches’ stories—had markings in salt light around their throats that looked like crowns.

“Hold on,” he said, and raided the tiki bar’s honesty box for silver coins. When he had a small handful, he threw one into the water.

The eels looked down, interested in this sudden void in the salt light.

Avelyn threw the next coin slightly further in, then the next to the side, the next closer, landing the coins in a rough circle. The eels followed, and then went around again, then again, and soon they were spinning in one heaving mass just below the surface. Within that orbit, the coiling bodies began to make other shapes.

“Can you see that?” Avelyn asked. For him, it was uplit in salt light.

Annunciata was staring. “Who is that?”

In the eel-made image, there was a woman walking down a long stairway, holding a lamp ahead of her in one hand and a walking staff in the other. She limped.

Avelyn frowned, because he had expected the boy on the causeway again. “That . . . is Saint Hildegard.”

Annunciata tore her new eyes away from the lake and looked at him instead. “What does it mean?”

“It means,” a voice said behind them, “that the King is calling once more for a great witch to wake him.”

The Balen shift foreman was standing just behind them. Avelyn had never known any Hreoda to talk unsolicited to an Outsider before, and for a moment he was too surprised to say anything, but he could see why she had: she was looking at Annunciata with that particular fascination which some children aimed at decomposing birds.

Behind her, the rest of the shift was coming through the silver gates; about forty people, which was fewer than it should been.

“Grandmother,” he said. “The King keep you.”

“And you, tua-Brocken. What were you scrying for?”

It was more polite than anyone had ever spoken to him when he lived here.18 “Nothing particular. Actually we were waiting for you.”

“For me?”

“If you have a moment.”

“What does a witch want with me?” she said, laughing a little. It was nearly nervous.

“It’s about this lady,” Avelyn explained, nodding to Annunciata. “Some of the Outsiders at the abbey—w . . . est at the abbey—are attracting the salt light in this way. I was hoping someone from the mine might know what it is?”

Above them, the salt light from the gateway shot a flare out over the lake, faint but visible. They both looked.

“The King is restless,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if she was talking about the light, or about Annunciata.

As people always did across a longish walk, the clan had strung itself out, everyone walking in pairs or threes, but now the ones at the back were catching up, and more and more of them were studying Annunciata. The halo shone in something deep in their eyes and gave them a purple glow.

It wasn’t curiosity, the way they were looking. He saw some uneasy glances sling between the teenagers.

Peripherally, he noticed that there must have been new rules about what you wore down the mine. When he was young, you could wear whatever seemed sensible; sometimes even Outsider jeans. Now, though, it was more uniform. Despite the warmth of the salt light, everyone was dressed in leather, even the children, with high collars that had buckles on them as though they were supposed to attach to something else.

“This halo comes with improvements to their health,” Avelyn added carefully. “You don’t happen to have seen it on any Outsiders before? I just wanted to know if it’s going to—I don’t know, do anything else?”

He thought the foreman was going to say something along the lines of, Your guess is as good as mine, isn’t it odd, maybe one of the bards or the witches will know but I wouldn’t bet on it. He was getting ready to ask whose witch or bard would be best, and where to find them, and he was even gearing up to the steep walk to the surface and Jericho’s inevitable wrath when he got back.

“We’ve been told we can’t speak to anyone from the Outside about it,” the foreman said.

Avelyn had already built at least a few hours’ worth of future on what he’d expected her to say, and so when she didn’t, it all fell down on him and he had to blink, disorientated.

“You’ve been told what? Why?”