Page 108 of The Salt King

“Okay,” he heard himself saying, “you’re okay. It’ll be fine . . .”

Only, he couldn’t see how a burn from molten silver could possibly be fine. He couldn’t envisage how it could heal properly. Did you end up with silver fused into your hand forever? Surely that would get infected, and . . .

“It’s all right,” Jericho said, breathing more normally again. He gripped Avelyn’s hand with his good one. “You don’t need to do the rest. That was perfect. Thank you. Just, um . . . hold your mind blank for a few seconds. I know it looks awful, try to think about something else.”

Avelyn slid into that dead zone of thought that he had in all those endless imprisoned hours of “quiet contemplation” at the seminary, and before casting salt in the mine.

Jericho let his breath out slowly, and the wounded part-healed right there and then. He lifted the silver away from his fingertips. It had formed perfect prints. Under it, there were fresh scars, and they looked angry and sore, but there was no blood anymore, no blackened skin.

“Christ,” Avelyn whispered. “How do you do that? I could only just convince myself there was a hole in the roof.”

“I’ve lived here for years,” Jericho said with a pale smile. The wound was better, but he looked shaken. There was a sheen of sweat across his skin, and his lashes were wet.

Avelyn took his bad hand too and cradled it between both of his. Very unlike usual, Jericho’s skin was hot, as though he hadn’t healed the burn exactly, but just diffused it into a scald up his whole arm. There were limits, then, to what he could convince himself of. Avelyn pressed some new snow into his palm and watched it melt, and for the second time that night, he thought how it didn’t add up. However long Jericho had been at An El, he had absolutely not been there when the salt light was bright enough to do . . . this. How did he know? In ordinary times, you would have to go right down into the deep to find light bright enough to practise anything like this.

“Thank you,” Jericho said again. When he blinked, those shock tears fell and tapped onto his knee. “Sorry. I . . . I’m not so good at it when . . .”

“Oh, funny that,” Avelyn said. “I have to say I’m not spectacular at anything when I’m in screaming agony either. We’ll sit here and be garbage together. Christ’s sake.”

Jericho snorted and rocked forward.

“How did you practise all this?” Avelyn asked, soft, and trying hard not to sound as if he were being—well, himself. It sent his voice light and high. “The salt light is never usually like this.”

Jericho’s eyes ticked up to meet his, then down again. “I’ve . . . spent a lot of time in the deep.”

Avelyn frowned. “Jericho, that’s so dangerous. Even if you can hold your mind perfectly blank, there are a hundred miles of tunnels—if you got lost, no one would ever find you. They wouldn’t even look, if you were beyond the witches’ doors . . .”

“No, I know.”

“Don’t do that anymore.”

Jericho nodded.

Avelyn had the strangest feeling he had misunderstood, but he couldn’t see where there was room to. “Sorry, I’m not trying to yell at you, I just—don’t—want anything to happen to you. I know I don’t even know you, but . . .” He trailed off and touched Jericho’s heart through his shirt, wishing he could say that the idea of that heart failing alone in the deep was much worse than any fear he had for his own.

Jericho covered his hand but looked up at the shuttered window. “Where is it, can you tell?”

“No.” Avelyn picked up another handful of snow and threw it at the shutters. They didn’t hiss. He edged one open—the slats were fused together but the hinge still worked—to snap a photograph. The camera dutifully chugged out the image.

The thing was over the far side of the courtyard, about fifty yards away. Moving, it was impossible to see properly. It had been three or four things at once, fluxing and mad, but the picture had caught it in a split second. Faces, and wings, and claws, and a coil of fabric like a cloak, and something blurred that must have been spinning.

Further away, under the gateway, there was another one, and beyond that, just a star on the fen, a third.

Avelyn almost smiled. “Hmm. An El. The angel. The King looks like these things, in Hreod images. I thought it was just Christian iconography making its way into Hreod folklore.”

“Christian iconography?”

“Have you read Ezekiel?”

“Is that a normal thing to have read?” Jericho said tentatively.

“He was a prophet. He saw these, a long time ago. Described them . . . quite well, though God knows how, unless he could see salt light.” Avelyn gazed down at the photograph. “He knew to be scared, too.” He lifted his eyes. “So I was right. There’s a fallen angel in our mine, maybe in all those salt mines the journalists were talking about, and now . . . these ones have come to find them all.”

Jericho was watching him as though he were waiting for something awful to happen.

“So ours has been waking because it can hear them coming, I suppose,” Avelyn mused. “Like you said. Well. Problem solved in a way. No need for exorcists if . . .” He had to laugh at the ridiculousness of what he was going to say. “If the Archangel Michael is dealing with it for us. I feel like you owe me a drink, by the way?”

“Why?”