Page 76 of The Salt King

“Sedem,” said Tallis, because it sounded familiar and not.

“Sodom,” said Veronique. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She kept dragging her sleeve across it, but it kept coming back. She couldn’t have been far off collapsing.

“It’s not a real place,” Sally said, almost laughing. “It’s a story, it’s like Camelot.”

“No, no one has ever been able to find it,” Veronique snapped, her voice splintering with frustration. “For God’s sake! The satellite images, the salt!” She looked between them. “Everyone says there’s no Bronze Age ruin on the Dead Sea, but something out there is turning normal matter to salt, so don’t you think the answer is fucking obvious? They can’t find a city around the Dead Sea, because it is the Dead Sea!”

Tallis looked at Sally and saw everything she felt reflected back at her in his face. She had a knee-jerk instinct to say not to be so bloody stupid. The salt in the Dead Sea was there because the River Jordan carried salt into it and the lake didn’t drain anywhere else, so the water evaporated in the fierce heat and left salt behind, that was all: simple. You didn’t need an imaginary doomed city to account for that. But yesterday, birds had fallen out of the sky as they turned to salt.

“Listen to what I’m telling you,” Veronique said, lower. “Somebody sealed something in a tower thousands of years ago, put a huge danger sign on it referencing Sodom, birds there are turning to salt and so is anything electric, you both captured images of something that is clearly alive in there, and at a place in England with the same conditions, a man has turned to salt. Something is happening . . .”

She trailed off. Something was happening in the concourse too. People had mobbed the banking kiosk. At first, it was just shouting, but now there was a huge crash: someone had just smashed the glass pane above the counter with a restaurant chair. Tallis, who had always flinched easily, jolted right back. As Sally pressed one hand to her shoulder, she saw a burst of hallucination insects, locusts, everywhere, so realistic that she snatched her arms close to her chest, hating the idea that one could get down her collar.

God’s sake. She closed her eyes, concentrated on how the impression of having seen something was different to seeing, and opened them again. Gone.

Sally was still holding her shoulder. She wanted to tilt her cheek down against his knuckles. She didn’t.

The three of them stared as people poured through the bank, shouting. Tallis couldn’t catch any of it.

“Something about . . . needing their money before it runs out,” Sally said, looking just as confused as she felt.

Back at the counter of the café, the barista called nervously that the card machine wasn’t working, so it would have to be cash only. At the food shop on their other side, someone was putting up a sign that said the same thing. As Tallis watched, a young man ran in, took all the bread from the bakery section, and ran out again with it in both arms.

“What the fuck is happening?” Sally said, his voice high.

It had flashed up on the news. Everyone else had seen too. Quiet spread across the concourse as rapidly as the chaos had. The Central Bank of Jordan had just announced total collapse of the banking system, and there was going to be, said the newsreader, an emergency broadcast from the palace.

“I don’t . . . I don’t feel good,” Veronique said in a small voice.

“Okay,” Tallis murmured. “Let’s get you back upstairs while it’s still quiet, and then we can—”

She had been going to say, Find a doctor. She stopped, though, because Veronique looked terrible. She had gone an awful grey. Even her hair. Even her clothes, and now it was . . .

Tallis thumped back down into her chair. Sally saw and sat down too, looking worried, and all Tallis could do was point to the chair opposite them, upholstered in brilliant pink, where Veronique had been sitting with her head in her hands. She wasn’t sitting there anymore. There was just a faintly person-shaped formation of red salt.

29

Hreodwater, England

Avelyn still couldn’t find anything ahead of him. He was walking on the forest floor, so surely there would be a tree soon, surely the only open space was the road, but he would have felt that, it was brick—or was it? Had he remembered that properly?

Something horribly like a claw brushed the back of his neck. He jolted away from it and thumped into a tree. With a mirror clarity, he realized he was going to die down here. No one was going to come down here in this light storm for him. He would just be another witch lost to the deep. Father Li—oh, God. Father Li would never know.

“Avelyn.”

It couldn’t be Jericho.

That was mad. Nobody ever answered prayers, but when he reached out, a cool hand caught his and squeezed—cool through his glove, despite all the powering heat of the salt light, because of course it didn’t reach Jericho, he was always cold . . .

“Jericho! I can’t—can you see what it is, is it—”

“It’s all right, I’ve got you.” Jericho turned him about ninety degrees. “There’s nothing here, it’s just us.”

“No, there’s something—’

“There’s nothing,” Jericho said, and put some strength into his voice then, that singer-strength that came from deeper than most people went. “The echoes are weird, that’s all: I think it’s because of the surface of the salt face over there. I promise, I’m holding a lamp.” Jesus Christ, yes: for Jericho, it was pitch-black down here. “I can see. There’s nothing.”

Rasping breath, like it was moving through something decayed, right next to them. Avelyn flinched, and again his eyes tried to open by themselves, and again, it was like trying to stare into burning magnesium.