Page 98 of The Salt King

“It looks like jet trails,” Avelyn said uneasily. “They’re coming towards you. I don’t think the electronics are going to last much longer. Listen, you need to do what Saint Hildegard did in Hreodwater: you need a firewall of the most faithful people you can find, the ones who truly believe in the mercy and grace of Heaven, and—and if you can, get some scientists who don’t believe in anything—”

The screen fizzed in a marbling pattern, and then the connection cut. At the same time, the lights flickered. Outside, all the streetlamps and mobile phones and speakers cut too. Then: total darkness, lit only by the candles down in the crowd below.

Just for a moment, there was silence. Nobody moved; but the lights didn’t come back. Slowly, Cai’s eyes adjusted, and all the people in the room became shadow figures whose angles were brushed gold by the candles down in the square. The crowd below was stirring, like a worried hive.

“What did he mean, ‘jet trails’?” someone asked.

Cai dropped his phone as salt hissed from its plug ports. Above them, one of the light bulbs burst, and down in the square, something similar must have been happening, because there were yells.

Then—joy.

Overwhelming, wonderful joy, the kind Li felt whenever he looked at the altar of the basilica, but amped up a hundred times louder.

He saw everyone feel it. Everyone swayed. Down in the vast crowd between the encircling arms of the colonnade, there was a wind-in-the-rushes sigh that was tens of thousands of people stopping still.

In one mighty choir voice, everyone in the room, everyone down in the square, all those tens of thousands, said:

Gaudezhte *khiram.

37

Outside Hreodwater, England

Avelyn dropped the phone into his lap, not quite able to believe what had just happened. The Pope had asked him questions about salt light. The Pope. He had basically called a cardinal an idiot.

He had said they were angels.

He was going to be defrocked.

And what in God’s name were those lights in the sky beyond the window? It had been salt light, that was for sure, but Avelyn had never seen it way up in the atmosphere like that.

Partway through the call, Jericho had guided him into the lobby of a hotel, out of the cold, where enough people were coming and going that nobody asked if they were guests or not. He had disappeared for a few minutes, and now he was back with coffee from the bar. After the salted hot chocolate at An El, it tasted of nothing, but Avelyn was glad for the heat of it all the same. Peripherally, he heard someone trying to trade a diamond ring for a room. He looked around properly for the first time. Something strange was happening. The foyer was so busy because people were hurrying in from the street, and the hotel staff were turning them away, and people were arguing, and . . .

“Something’s happening to the banks,” Jericho said. “It’s all cash only.”

They were right next to the window. The street outside was busy, the Christmas lights sparkling and the buses full as they rumbled by, but now that Avelyn was looking more closely, it had a different quality than an ordinary Christmas late-night rush. There was a huge queue outside the bank, and then, as he watched, a cry of dismay from everyone outside when a clerk closed the doors.

“We have to leave,” Avelyn said. “Whatever happened in Poland—it’s happening everywhere, all salt mines, and they said it’s coming here.”

Jericho nodded once. He was watching the crowd at the bank. Someone smashed the windows, and there was a surge as people poured in. It made Avelyn jump, but Jericho couldn’t have looked less surprised.

“Come with me,” Avelyn said. He didn’t know he was going to say it until he was saying it. “Please. We need to get a message back to Hreodwater, and then—we need to go. You can’t stay here, no one c—”

As if they had overhead him, sirens whooped outside. They both looked out in time to see four police cars blocking the road. In Italy, car horns would have started blaring straightaway, but there was an odd, expectant quiet now. The blue lights flashed, and Avelyn’s eyes stung. Police were getting out of the cars. He twisted in time to see mounted officers ride by. He had never seen that before.

“We are evacuating this area,” another officer called through a megaphone. “You’re within five miles of a salt mine at extreme risk of a catastrophic event . . .”

The voice was lost under the confused shouting as people leaned out of cars or stepped into the traffic to ask what was going on.

“Avelyn,” Jericho said, and nodded towards the broad television on the wall.

There was an emergency broadcast.

“. . . of the catastrophic loss of life in Poland, Sicily, and Canada, we are sealing off all salt mines in the UK,” the Prime Minister was saying from a podium in front of two British flags. “That means that if you’re within five miles of a salt mine, you must evacuate. We hope very much that this will be a short-term measure . . .”

Outside, there was a wave of disturbed voices. Army trucks were arriving.

Avelyn looked up at Jericho, at a loss. “What about Hreodwater?”