Page 80 of The Salt King

Avelyn reflected a little bit madly that if he had to speak Hreod or interact with Hreod Thinking ever again, it was going to be a thousand years too soon. “No.”

“No, but you have to!”

“Avelyn,” Jericho said, and of course, of course Jericho would forgive her, but then, Jericho would forgive someone who had introduced him to a set of thumbscrews. He would fret about their horrid childhood and that they hadn’t had any proper economic opportunities, except the thumbscrewing.

Well, fuck that.

Avelyn looked past the vintner’s shoulder again, higher, and higher, and pretended to see something there, leaning over her.

The vintner swung around, and let out a strangled noise.

Ras put his hand over his face. “We just told you . . .”

There was something behind her. It was outlined in salt light, a dark void in the bright particles—they veered away from the shape just like they hurried away from Jericho and from the stag in the mine, but this time, there was nothing solid for them to avoid, just a shadow. It was huge, and as they both stared at it, it leaned down over her.

She yelled and ran. Ran, like you never saw adults run, and whatever the thing in the light was, it tore after her at a hyena lope Avelyn couldn’t perfectly follow, because it was still just a void in the salt glow, a clear shadow in the patches where there was plenty of light, the barest ghost where it faded.

She scattered people, and dove straight into a knot of nuns who had been writing their names in the air with sparklers. The nuns tried to get out of the way, but the trader was sticking with them, trying to hide behind them, and above all of them, that shadow thing ran too. It had claws, and wings.

Other Hreoda had seen. Some people were jolting away, scooping up children, running. Others, like Avelyn, were frozen into place. Among them, Outsider pilgrims twisted around, confused, because they couldn’t see what people were running from.

Only distantly in control of his own hands, Avelyn lifted the silver camera and took a photograph just as the thing opened its wings, crouching towards the trader like an owl shielding prey.

“Gwen!” Redspear roared at the trader. She could make her voice carry right across the green. All the Witan could—it came of keeping teenagers in line in the mine—but she could have martialled legions. “Get behind the Outsiders! You in the blue, stand around her!”

The Sisters didn’t understand, but what they did understand was that a huge Hreod trader was trying to barge through them, and they were trying to get away from her.

“She’s not trying to hurt you,” Jericho called. He was already running that way. “Stand around her. It’s all right, she’s just scared, she wants you to protect her from a curse.”

“Anyone Hreod, move right back!” Redspear ordered. “If you’ve got salt eyes, put your hands over your eyes. I said over your eyes, tua-Brocken!”

Avelyn’s elbows obeyed without any intervention from his mind. He was built to obey voices like that. He pressed his hands over his eyes, and was sharply aware that all around him, at least two hundred people did that too. Suddenly no one was running anymore.

“Mind like a rock,” Redspear said over everyone, quieter now that there was a humming, dead silence. “Sing to the King, and nothing else.”

People sang. It was a Yule hymn. It lifted eerie into the quiet. Avelyn wanted to take his hands away, and he almost did, but then Redspear came up beside him and held his wrists in place.

“Seeing is believing and believing is true,” she said, quite gently. “Come on, sing to the King.”

As she said it, he could hear Jericho talking to the Sisters. “She’s asking you to say a deliverance prayer to Mary.”

There was an extraordinarily strange stillness, in which the Sisters prayed—Ave Maria, gratia plena—and the Hreoda sang. And then . . . nothing.

“All right, it’s gone,” Redspear said. “Well done, everyone.”

Avelyn took his hands away from his eyes. There was no more thing in the salt light. The Sisters were all looking at each other, confused, and at the wine trader with shades of feeling between scepticism and concern, and . . . not a single one of them could see that with them, just outlined enough in salt light for Avelyn to make out the folds of her clothes, there was a trace of a woman. She was quite small, not old or young, with a veil over her hair but not like a nun. As he watched her, she walked away, fading into nothing.

“It was his fault, the witch from Rome!” the vintner said shakily. “He cursed me!”

“Don’t offend witches then,” Redspear told her, but her eyes ticked over Avelyn. “Well, Dream,” she said to Jericho, who had come back. She coughed, strangely awkward. She glanced over at Avelyn again, and it was different to the way she had been looking at him before. She would have liked, he realized, to wall him into a silver room and leave him there. “A fine witch we have here. Nearly as good as you.”

Jericho half smiled, but he was watching the sky as though he expected to see something terrible there.

Redspear looked troubled, and then back, because someone was calling for her. “I’ve got to talk to my sisters. No more curses, though, Avelyn. You’re a long way too convincing.” She turned away and headed towards the far end of the causeway, where most of the Witan were waiting.

Avelyn was still falling down a long set of internal stairs. He finally hit the bottom. “I just saw the Holy Mother in the salt light,” he whispered.

“I expect so,” Jericho said, still watching the sky.