Page 78 of The Salt King

“Jericho!” Avelyn heard his own voice crack. Why did he even speak at all when nobody ever listened to him? Maybe he really should take up dressage. “You don’t understand—”

“I understand,” Jericho said, and those lights in his black eyes were there again. “But it’s safer not to be in salt light, to hear what I’m going to say.”

The first pale shafts of daylight were just reaching them when Ras Hringen ran down the corridor, along with Redspear. Avelyn saw them a fraction of a second before they saw him: they both looked as though they expected to find him dead at the edge of the forest.

Then there was an explosion of Hreod swearing, but it was swearing with, not swearing at, and Redspear thumped him and told him never to wander off with idiots again, and Ras was almost crying, apologising for Lady Hringen.

Avelyn looked between them, shocked. He had thought Ras would have been quite pleased with the idea of leaving him in the forest, and Redspear . . . she was probably the most senior elder in the town. He was a gnat to her. It was a revelation to find that not only had Ras wanted to fetch her, but she had come.

Jericho stood back. He wasn’t smiling. He was holding his sleeve where the fire had been.

“You’re not hurt, lad?” Redspear asked, with real, raw worry like he’d never seen on her before.

“I’m not, I’m not . . . why do you . . .” Care?

Ras was turning his hands over, checking him for Avelyn didn’t know what. He seemed to shrink whole inches with relief and hugged him again. Avelyn squeezed him back, perplexed.

“Why are you so upset?” he asked. “You don’t like me.”

“Oh, shut up, you prick!” Ras half shouted at him, into his hair. It was a joyful little revelation to find that Lord Ras Hringen even knew how to swear.

“The last of the Brocken comes home, called by the King at his first waking for a thousand years, and then wonders why anyone minds what happens to him?” Redspear said. “The nailed god has done a number on you, my boy.”

“I wasn’t called by the King, I was sent by the Department for Foreign Relations,” Avelyn said, laughing the slightly mad laugh that came from—from this, from finding that three entire humans minded what happened to him. It was as powerful as the King’s grace.

“How did you get out?” Redspear demanded.

“Jericho fetched me. He followed us,” Avelyn said, looking gratefully back.

He had thought the other two would say thank you, but instead they went still, and quiet, as though he had just pointed out a well-mannered monster, still steaming sulphur vapour from some inferno they never wanted to think about. Jericho looked back at them, still expressionless, with those lights in his eyes.

“You’re high in the mine today, Dream,” Redspear said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Avelyn understood now. Those things in the mine with the dark halo—it was the same as Jericho’s. If people thought that that impossible stag was a dream, then . . . of course they thought Jericho was too.

Hreod Thinking at its finest. There could have been any number of reasons for salt light to behave the way it did, attracted to some things, repelled by others, neutral to still more. Maybe the stag hadn’t been a dream at all, just the descendent of an ordinary herd that had wandered into the mine millennia ago and adapted to the salt light just like Hreoda, but differently. Perhaps some Outsiders with a certain innocent genetic marker were immune. He could believe that a lot more readily than the notion that the doctor who had stitched him up yesterday was a figment of some sleeping god’s imagination.

“For special occasions,” Jericho said politely.

30

The daylight was a shock. The sky was silver, and right across the fen, the clouds hung low, blending with the fog into one great haze. Silent whorls of snow looped in the still air. Although it could only have been just past two o’clock, the gloom was twilightish. The fires were still burning on the green, tinting the white ground merry gold, throwing the shadows around. The dancers were still dancing, but with the children this time, and even some of the clergy from An El. Someone with stag antlers was whirling a laughing nun around, her veil floating behind her, along with the first wisps of the Blessing.

It was so good to get away from the salt air in the mine. Out here, there was still a tang if you knew to think after it, but mainly it was hot wine and the lovely green smell of new-cut holly and ivy for the wreaths. All the stalls were selling them, as well as little dolls of Saint Hildegard, ornaments and jewellery made from cheap salt that looked like diamonds, scarves woven with silver thread, tiny stained windows painted just like the great window down at An El, hot pistachios and pecans and salt cakes. Caramelised sugar tided in the air, and for a mad second, it was hard to remember that anything was wrong.

“Can somebody please tell me what in God’s name is going on?” Avelyn asked.

“Yes,” said Ras. “But let’s get you some wine first, you—need to sit down.”

He wanted to say that he did not need to sit down, thank you, he just needed to understand, but Ras was right. Everything seemed too vivid, his thinking had gone giddy and disjointed, and when Jericho pressed his shoulder to guide him onto a bench at a free table, he was glad of it. He watched Ras flit to a wine stall—the one run by the annoying lady he had cursed earlier—and then looked down when Redspear handed him a fox cub. The cub was a heavy ball of white fluff, and when Ras came back with the wine, it wanted to know what wine was like, then sneezed disgustedly when Avelyn gave it some. He felt a bit better.

Ras set Jericho’s cup down with an anxious look at Redspear, as though he thought he might be doing something wrong. Redspear ignored it, and when Jericho said thank you, Ras looked fixedly at the ground.

Avelyn took the photographs out of his pocket and laid them out on the table. The edges were salt-crumbled, but the images were all right. The forest. The huge, impossible stag thing. And then last . . .

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t shown us that,” Redspear said heavily.

Ras had gone a horrible colour. Avelyn had never seen that happen to anyone in real life before.