Page 53 of The Salt King

She looked uncomfortable. “Aren’t you forward,” she said roughly, but it was artificial and awkward. “Keep your nose out of other clans’ business.”

“It is my business. The man who died had this halo too,” he pushed. As he spoke, he noticed some of the others looking away—not from him, but from Annunciata. It was as if, he realized with an unpleasant prickling feeling, they were seeing someone whose sleeve was on fire, and they’d been forbidden from pointing it out. “The Outsiders think it means their god is choosing them, but if it isn’t . . .”

He trailed off, because above them, the salt light flashed an aurora curtain overhead, dancing with mauve and gold particles. It was much clearer and brighter than that last flare. Everyone looked up. Avelyn stared. It was glorious, and he never seen salt light do that before, even in the deep. The colours took a long time to fade, painting themselves into the lake too. The surface churned with eels. Annunciata, who could only see the eels, not what was driving them mad, looked at the water, surprised.

A man about Avelyn’s age crouched down to a little girl who must have been his niece and pressed something over her face: a blank silver mask, without openings for the eyes. The little girl didn’t protest. She just hurried along beside her uncle as he started for the surface.

Other people were holding masks too, and walking away. Fast.

“I can’t talk to you, I’m sorry,” the foreman said.

“What are the masks for?” he asked.

“Safety,” she said steadily.

“If you won’t tell me what’s happening, then let me go down and see.”

“I can’t,” she said again. “You’d need the approval of Lady Balen for that, or Lady Hringen or Lord Harkta.” Her eyes caught on his leg, and he realized he was standing awkwardly, even though it still didn’t hurt much. Guilt skimmed over her face. “I’m sorry, son. You were brave, trying to save that Outsider. My hands are tied.”

“I understand,” he said, though he didn’t at all. More people were putting on those masks. The silver was thin: they must have been able to see through it, just about. Even knowing that, it looked horrible. Blank face after blank silver face, like some kind of dark ceremony. “Where is Lady Balen tonight?”

“The Witan is in session.” The last of the other miners passed her, and she stepped outside the gate and pulled it firmly shut. She was studying Annunciata again. Much lower than before, too quiet for anyone else to hear: “You need to get her out of the mine.”

She walked away under the storming light.

Annunciata brushed his arm. To her, it must all have happened in almost total darkness. The only ordinary light came from the windows of An El and the high glow of the chandeliers. “What was all that? What did she say?”

Avelyn turned back, not sure what to tell her. Those masks were sticking in his mind. They were so uncanny, and they weren’t just about helping the miners see in bright light. You could wear glasses for that. “She said . . .”

If a known liar told you that an avalanche was coming, you ran away, because maybe there wasn’t, but the worst consequence of running was looking silly, whereas the worst consequence of not running was dying.

“She said to get you out of the mine. She wouldn’t tell me why, but the way they were all looking at you . . . it was like you were on fire.” He looked back through the silver bars of the gate again, overrun with that familiar frustration. Above them, the salt light coiled. If he stayed exactly still, he could hear singing, right on the edge of everything else, nothing to do with the King’s hymns. “I can’t tell if it’s something real, or something they only think is . . .”

Was this what it was like for atheists who tried to talk to Catholics?

Annunciata thought about it, much less bothered by any of it than he was. “Ah, so. Better ask Jericho if there’s anything wrong with me.”

The salt light flickered a new, faint aurora over the lake, just for long enough that he managed to take a picture of it to show her. He was glad, though, for some reason he couldn’t trace, that she hadn’t been able to see the silver masks.

Jericho listened to what they said, let Avelyn tell him it might be nothing but might be something, asked Annunciata how she was feeling—perfect—and then said that she seemed very well to him, but she was to tell him straightaway if anything changed. Avelyn watched her go to meet her friends in the courtyard, four nuns from the same convent, who were playing cricket under the salt oaks with some increasingly traumatised Dominicans.

Avelyn knew he ought to go out and help the Dominicans—he could have, his leg didn’t hurt at all now—but he wanted to stay in here. The fire was crackling to itself, the salt light was gold, and Jericho was the only person he had met so far who he could talk to with no effort. If he had to go out there and speak to the others about what they couldn’t see and what he thought and what it all looked like, and then he had to repeat himself because they couldn’t understand his accent . . .

“All well?” Jericho asked him.

Avelyn glanced up at him, checking for incoming questions about his family, but Jericho didn’t add anything. He really was asking about now, not dragging the conversation back to where they left it earlier.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you before,” he said.

Jericho looked lost. “When?”

God, forget making blind nuns see: it was Jericho who was the miracle. Avelyn wasn’t sure he’d ever met someone so gentle who was also so bulletproof. Usually gentle people needed you to be gentle with them.

“Well, I did, even if it bounced off,” he said. “And I’m still sorry.”

Jericho was pouring out some hot chocolate now. He gave Avelyn the first cup, and a look that had opinions about how anxious young people were. “How’s the leg after walking?”

“Fine, I think. Thank you,” he added about the chocolate. He hadn’t known it was what he wanted, but now he was holding it, he would have defended it with his life. “When we found the miners, though, they were wearing these . . . masks. Silver. Have you seen that?”