Page 99 of The Salt King

Hreodwater wasn’t part of England. Just like southern Ireland wasn’t on maps of the UK, and so Northern Ireland looked like it was a tiny island in the sea, it wasn’t on maps of East Anglia. The fen looked like a lake. Even on Avelyn’s phone, Hreodwater didn’t appear, because no mapping company had ever flown a drone over: there was just blank green and blue.

So the police didn’t believe him when he said there was a town on top of the salt mine.

“We haven’t been told about anything like that,” an officer repeated for about the fifth time.

“No, you don’t understand, I’m from there, we just came from there now, you have to let us back through so we can—”

“I’m afraid you need to leave the area, sir—”

“There are four thousand people on the fen, including a lot of tourists—look, this is the website to get a visa for the day—”

“What do you mean a visa for the day? We’re not telling you to leave the country, just—”

“No, I’m telling you, Hreodwater is a different country, the border is right there—”

“I’m going to have to ask to ask you to step—”

Avelyn tried to duck past her, which was a huge error.

The police officer’s expression shut down. She spun Avelyn around and thumped him chest first into the side of a car. “I’m arresting you for obstructing officers in the course of their duties—stop resisting or I’ll break your arm—”

Avelyn gasped, because she was about to break his arm anyway. Urgent pain shot up his shoulder.

“Oh, hello,” Jericho said, singing it, like he had recognised her from school.

The officer blinked. “Hello,” she said.

“I wonder if I could steal him back from you?”

Avelyn thought she was going to give Jericho a baton to the head for that. But instead, she stepped back a little. He saw her face in the reflection in the car window. She looked as though an old friend really had jogged up to her over a hockey pitch, laughing and still glad they had both survived the legendary match of nineteen ninety six. Was Jericho just that devastatingly attractive? No. Nobody was. Were they?

“Of course you can,” she said, and handed Avelyn over.

Jericho smiled. “Thanks.” He put his arm around Avelyn and steered him through the police cars toward the Hreod border, where other officers looked straight through them. Not quite as if they weren’t there—nobody bumped into them—but as though they were exempt from ordinary notice. Not far away, a soldier rugby tackled a huge, drunk man who was trying to go the wrong way, but nobody came after Avelyn and Jericho.

The air glimmered with salt light. A fine mist of it was rolling in from the fen, the softest purple-amber glow. As denser patches drifted through, the police radios crackled and engines and blue lights stuttered.

“How did you do that?” Avelyn hissed, one hand still flat to his chest where his breastbone was complaining that it had the imprint of a car door on it.

“Oh, it’s a knack,” Jericho said.

“What do you mean, a knack!” Avelyn heard his own voice go at least an octave higher than normal. “She just handed me over!”

“Because,” Jericho told him, “I believe that humans are basically kind and helpful, and since there is salt light here, they . . . are.”

Avelyn remembered to close his mouth after about two seconds. “You aggressively believed your way out of being arrested.”

“I did,” said Jericho. “Like I say, it’s a knack.”

It was still percolating. “How do you know there’s salt light?”

“Your eyes are still violet. You’re like an angry dosimeter.”

“Right,” said Avelyn. He had expected to be less stunned after he had thought about it for a few seconds, but it hadn’t worked. All he could think was that he had just seen magic. Real, honest-to-God magic. “Thanks.”

“Welcome,” said Jericho.

To either side of them, police and soldiers were knocking on doors, hustling confused, angry, upset people out and away. He could hear snatches of the conversations. People were protesting that the banks were closed and they couldn’t access any money, that they had nowhere else to go with the baby, that they were still waiting for someone to come home from work; the police were saying implacably that they had four minutes to get ready and get out. Some men were being hauled out of a pub, protesting that it was nowhere near closing time yet.