Page 92 of The Salt King

“Wait,” she said slowly, and held up her phone, aiming the camera downhill, towards the view over the city and out into the desert. It showed the city lights, normal enough. She held a slip of aluminium over the lens.

The city vanished. But in the sky: light. Lights, hairline zithers across the sky, thousands, helixing in swarms.

Sally reached over her shoulder and pressed record just as the lights plunged to the ground, all towards the same point, by the Dead Sea.

Salt light exploded on the horizon like a nuclear bomb. Soundless, invisible except through the screen, the light blasted upwards and outwards, tearing into the atmosphere, and then billowing in a mighty cloud that ate the sky. Inside the cloud, violet lightning raged, and the salt light kept rolling in towards Amman.

“That was our site,” Sally said after a long, long silence.

“How fast is that moving?” Tallis said, about the light storm.

“I can’t tell.”

She gave him the phone, still recording. He understood straightaway and held it focused on her. “Everyone who sees this in Amman needs to get inside now. High exposure to salt light is going to cause matter to halify, to turn to salt. We don’t know how much of it does that, but as you can see, there’s been a significant explosion of it at the site we’ve just left on the Dead Sea. Aluminium helps to block salt light, that’s how we filmed that footage just now, so if you have any . . . it can protect you a little bit. Silver shuts it out completely,” she added, on the off chance that anyone was—what? A jeweller? Working in a museum alongside some medieval cavalryman’s suit of silver filigree armour? “Good luck, everyone.”

34

Italy

The plane was halfway down the Italian coast, almost at Rome, when the pilot called Cai into the cockpit. He was a painfully young man from the Swiss Guard, and he looked grim.

“We’ve just had an alert from the tower that they’ve lost touch with Palermo and Catania in Sicily, Father,” he said. “Naples used your filming method, and they saw a salt light explosion over the Realmonte mine. The—the lights in the sky above it, they appeared to be moving north. We’re not sure how fast, but the tower thinks it’s fast. They’re getting all the planes they can onto the ground in the next ten minutes. It’s going to be steep.” He tucked his head. “And if it’s a choice between getting us down or a commercial liner with four hundred people on board, they’re going to choose the liner.”

“All right. So I should strap in and have a word with the man upstairs?” Cai said, patting the pilot’s shoulder.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Father,” the pilot said, making an effort towards a smile.

“Right you are,” Cai said, and kept up his cheerfulness until he was buckled into a seat again. Then he took his phone out—it was connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi—and called Avelyn’s number again. He smiled when he heard the familiar answer message.

“Hello, lovely boy. I, er . . . I’m on a plane, close to Rome, and the tower reckons there’s salt light coming north from Sicily. We’re not sure we’ll be able to land in time. If we don’t—I love you. You’re the best thing God ever gave me.”

It was hopelessly insufficient for a whole life, but it was all he could say. He held his phone in his lap and rested his eyes on the floor. He never asked for anything from God; he had never tried to negotiate, or say, Please don’t let this happen. There was no use in that. Things happened in the world either because of natural processes or because every thinking creature in it had free will; ordinary things, evil things, good things, they all came about because someone or something chose it. To ask that evil things didn’t happen to you was just another way of asking for God to restrict something else’s ability to choose what to do, and that one thing in all creation was the most sacred; it would never change.

Now he listened to the part of his mind that was never alone—the part that could feel someone else reading holy words with him as if they were leaning against his shoulder, the part that could feel the incandescent love from the tabernacle, and which had heard the command to take Avelyn away from Hreodwater.

Like always, that presence was with him. It would be sad to leave Avelyn behind alone, but part of him sang to think where he would be going instead.

“We’ve got a landing slot,” the pilot called. “This is going to be fast. Three, two . . . one.”

A few minutes later, they were on the ground and unexpectedly alive. Cai unfastened himself from the seat and stood up slowly, testing his knees. The pilot came out from the cockpit, looking as though he had just seen his life flash before his eyes. Cai told him he hadn’t doubted him for a moment and helped him open the door. It was as they were both on their way down the steps that two passenger jets came down too close on the runway, and one crashed into the tail of the other.

As he watched both planes spin and break apart through a shroud of fire, Cai had the horrible realization that he was not the kind of person who ran towards an accident. He was rooted in place, unblinking. A cabin bag, smouldering, was slung so far from one of the wrecks that it hit the ground right in front of him. There were bright stickers on it. Pokémon. Just starting to peel off as the canvas burned.

“Into the terminal,” the pilot said tightly, hauling him by one arm.

They ran in through the nearest door, where some shocked baggage handlers were staring at the fires, and at the bags and other things scattered across the runway. Cai didn’t look, in case there were people there too.

Up some bleak back stairs, up more, then suddenly out into the terminal, where everyone had surged to the windows. Some people, perhaps quicker on the uptake, were heading away fast. Others still were watching the gigantic concourse television screens. Footage of Sicily, and for the first time he had seen not on the screen of his own phone, of salt light, combing high in the atmosphere.

An announcement came across the tannoy. Italian airspace was shut. Everyone needed to leave.

He turned towards the airport train station, towing the pilot with him. In a better world he would have taken the poor man to a doctor, because he was plainly in shock, but any doctors here would be occupied with the horror on the tarmac now.

“Cai—Cai!”

It was Steve: Steve from the Observatory, pushing through people, a laptop clamped against his chest.

“Saw you land,” Steve explained, breathless. “Come with me, I drove.”