Page 54 of The Salt King

“Like the witches do?” Jericho said.

“Sort of, but—these things have no eyes. They’re bloody creepy. And the men were putting them on the children first, like it was . . . I don’t know, like they were shielding them.”

“Against the salt light?”

“It has to be, but I don’t know why they aren’t just wearing normal visors. Have you seen the salt light from the . . .? No. This is what it’s doing now.” He showed him the photograph of that aurora light dancing over the lake.

“Christ,” Jericho said softly. “It looks like a storm.”

“I’ve never heard of salt light hurting anyone. But the way they were looking at it, and at Annunciata, it was like they were waiting to be struck by lightning. I’m just . . . I don’t know.” He didn’t have any real idea. He just wanted to talk, and for it not to be something only he knew. “I’m wondering if they’ve seen something in the deep where it’s really bright. Maybe they know something we don’t. Maybe . . . people with the halo shouldn’t stay down here.”

Jericho looked troubled. “There’s nowhere for them to go,” he said. “It’s snowing, and the inns up above are all full with the stranded Outsiders. I’ve put up a family of five in our only spare room.” He was quiet for a moment. “But all the rooms here are silver-clad. If the salt light is doing something damaging . . . at least when people are inside, nothing’s happening to them.” His eyes slipped to the window, to the cricketers outside. They must have met the family of five, because they had acquired some children.

“Maybe this has something to do with why the rooms are all silver-clad,” Avelyn said. “I noticed it last night, and I couldn’t think of a reason to do it.”

The angle of Jericho’s eyebrow sharpened, pensive.

Avelyn bumped back in his chair. “I don’t know why I’m taking what Hreoda think so seriously all of a sudden. Fion in the kitchens thinks you’re imaginary, did you know that?”

“Everyone does,” Jericho said, as if that were a reasonable thing to think about a person. “Hreoda won’t talk to me unless it’s an emergency.”

“Why?”

He lifted his shoulder a little, the wry sketch of a shrug. “They haven’t said.”

“Christ’s sake,” said Avelyn. “Why do you put up with it?”

“Oh, you know. Everyone has their ways,” Jericho said, unflustered, and then tilted his head so that some of his wild curls fell to one side. His black eyes and their stars went over Avelyn twice, fully up and down. “Sorry, this is an odd thing for me to say, but were you that pale when you arrived?”

“Pale?” said Avelyn, who was forever being mistaken for a person who spoke Arabic or Spanish, or really anything but the languages he did in fact speak, and had never been or been called pale in his life. But when he looked down at his arms, Jericho was right. He was two shades lighter than he should have been. Across his elbows, under his sleeves, he was a little bit darker, but not right. He had a sudden thought and looked down the front of his top, moving aside the crucifix that had been sitting above his heart. There was a precise outline of the silver cross stamped in his normal colour. He pulled his collar down so Jericho could see.

“It . . . looks like the opposite of a tan,” he said, perplexed. When he turned his arms over, the light sheened strangely on his fingernails. Now they had a pearly shine, not unlike the acorns in the salt oak trees outside. “It must be the salt light.”

Jericho took his hand to see when Avelyn showed him. His own was cold, and Avelyn had an urge to clasp it until he warmed up. “God, look at that. There’s silver in you, and it’s . . . coming up to the surface to protect you, just like melanin would in the sun.” He looked up. “I didn’t know Hreoda did that.”

“Neither did I,” said Avelyn, unnerved.

Jericho was holding a candle close to see the light move over Avelyn’s nails. “That’s beautiful.”

Avelyn took his hand back and pulled his sleeves down, though he could see that Jericho only meant it in the sense of biologically fascinating. “I’ll add that to the pile of things to ask about when I can get up to the surface,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” Jericho told him, stern now. “At the earliest. I mean it, Brocken. If you try to abscond tonight, I will tell everyone you’ve gone off to enjoy the company of a nice young lady with a whip and some fluffy handcuffs, and you know what? Everyone will believe me.”

Avelyn looked up slowly, glee dawning. “Jericho. Are you secretly a monster who only pretends to be an incredibly lovely doormat so that when you do strike, everyone will blame Fabian?”

“Find out. I dare you,” said Jericho, dead straight.

Avelyn didn’t want to find out. It was getting toward nine o’clock, and for all he’d slept through the early afternoon, tiredness was landing on him now like an oil tanker. It was making him look longingly at the couch. But he shouldn’t stay.

He had teased Annunciata about Saint Sebastian, but she had been right too. This habit he had of loving where he shouldn’t was a blessing. It was a psychological assault course: exhausting, but strengthening. One day, he would be so good at it he could just strangle the feeling the moment it lifted its head.

Hreodwater Avelyn was watching. And that’s consolation, is it?

“I could read more of The Exorcist,” Jericho said.

“No, I should . . .”

“Avelyn. I’ve met Jesuits before—you’re all at least six-tenths Catholic macho nonsense. You’re either upright and building a school in Mexico or you’re unconscious. Sleep down here. Or if you want to be in your own room, I’m going to need to keep checking on you through the night.”