Page 63 of The Salt King

He sounded light, but Avelyn could see that it was an effort. “You’re a much better Lord Hringen than I would have been,” he said.

Ras smiled a smile with old sorrow in it. “Well. The air is always sweeter on the road not travelled,” he said, and led the way.

Avelyn wondered if he had just made a horrible mistake.

When the Witan was in session, the porters set red salt into the lamps, so that it cast a ruby glow across the front of the building. The hall was at the top of Hreodwater’s steep hill, capped with a dome made of perfectly translucent, mirror-polished halite that poured both sun and salt light into the chamber below. Avelyn had never been inside before. If he’d tried, he would have been tossed out into the street by Wolkvos guards, but with Lord Hringen, they didn’t even look at him twice. The lining of Ras’s coat flashed silver as he walked, and the salt beads in his hair glittered as though he had just broken his way out of a mirror behind which another, grander world waited, and he was still covered in shards. The group of Outside tourists who were clustered outside the Witan, waiting for a decision or some news, went quiet; Avelyn doubted any of them knew who Ras was, but it was clear he was someone.

“You need to ask them what the fuck they’re doing about some madman shooting people on the fen,” an older man said to Avelyn. “They haven’t even sent anyone out there yet, and that poor man!”

“I know,” Avelyn said. “They should have something to say soon.” He had no idea what that would be. He doubted the Witan would be sending anyone to cross the Flood, not if the lights still burned where Caer Halen . . . wasn’t.

“This is ridiculous, they have to get us across, it’s their responsibility!” someone else called. “They believe something weird, there’s some nutter shooting people, fine, but I need to get back to work!”

“Have you thought about letting the annoying ones do it?” Avelyn murmured to Ras as they passed inside.

“Thoroughly,” said Ras.

He led Avelyn through the antechamber. It was much older than the Hringen house, which had been lived in and improved and rebuilt always. Here, the pillars were broad and crouching, the ceiling low. No windows, except for tiny slits. Red salt lamps lit the way, the weird colour turning their shadows very, very black.

Beneath a frieze of the Salt King lying asleep on an altar surrounded by his seven oak trees, the heavy doors into the main chamber were shut. A guard nodded to Ras and eased one open, just enough to let them slip through, though not without a curious look at Avelyn.

Avelyn gazed up at the King as they passed underneath and felt that old hollowing of loss.

It was such a silent entry that nobody inside paid it any attention.

Ras touched his arm to make sure he stayed back, behind the circle of high-backed seats.

After the dimness of the antechamber, it was bright in here, under the salt dome. The sunlight was struggling through snow clouds, but the salt light was brilliant, and because it was coming from everywhere, there were no shadows. Avelyn wondered if that wasn’t the point: you couldn’t hide anything here. The clear halite wasn’t just the ceiling: it curved right down to the floor. From here, you could see for miles and miles—or, you would, on a clear day. Now, the fog shrouded everything further off than the black spar of the minehead. Salt light poured from it like smoke.

You could see the towers of Caer Halen too, reaching above the fog.

“—might be a good thing,” someone was saying. “It’s terrible, but . . . perhaps the Outsiders will understand now why we can’t let them cross.”

There were nine clans, and nine clan heads. Avelyn was a little shocked to find he recognised all of them. In his head, he had been away for a lifetime, but of course it had only been twelve years.

“They aren’t going to understand,” said Lady Teksa. She was one of the youngest, maybe in her thirties; Ras’s older sister. “I sent my bard and my witch to explain, but they think we’re telling them fairy tales and they’re seeing some sort of illusion in the air. More of them will try to cross. I’m astonished they haven’t already. Their women have barely any hold on their sons, and I’ve seen the boys talking.”

Lady Wolkvos sat forward, nodding. She was, like most of them, in her seventies or so, but seventy looked different in Hreodwater to the Outside. She was broad and strong. The black paint stripe covered her eyes. It made her look like she was about to punch someone, though she had a light voice. “They don’t understand shame our way, either. If they were Hreod we could embarrass them into not going, but no matter what we say to them . . . I don’t think they’re going to understand anything but the stocks or a cell.”

“We can’t do that; they aren’t criminals. As Lady Teksa says, they’ll go one way or another.” Lord Harkta. There had been a Lady Harkta years ago, but she had been a nasty, violent drunk and nobody liked her, and everyone had agreed it was best not to look into it too closely when Lord Harkta said that she’d drowned in the fen. “If they all go at once, and they all really do believe Caer Halen is only a story . . . that might be enough. How many of them are there; sixty?”

There was a calculating, charged quiet. Avelyn looked at Ras, confused. Ras, though, was watching the Witan, eyes sharp.

“Do they believe it enough?” Lady Teksa said.

“It only takes two hundred at An El, to keep the King asleep,” Lady Balen said, and everyone except Avelyn seemed to know exactly what that meant, because there were thoughtful nods.

It was typical. You could understand every single word of Hreod coming at you, and still have no idea what was going on.

“There will be trouble from the Outside if they vanish,” Lady Teksa said.

“If there is trouble, we can always remind Whitehall of their debts to us. They borrowed significantly during the pandemic. We can increase our interest rates,” Lady Balen said, dry as an accounting ledger. “Or mention their default to their other creditors. The London mortgage market hinges on our goodwill.”

Avelyn had to give himself a shake. Of course they were that rich. You didn’t stay a tiny, independent state in the middle of what had used to be an empire unless you had some money tricks.

He thought again of what Annunciata had said to him. The language was the same, down thousands of years. The people, the culture . . . extraordinarily lucky, however much you factored in the farsightedness of the Witan.

“Well, that’s sensible,” Lady Wolkvos said. “How many aye?”