Page 51 of The Salt King

“I do. The Salt King, An El, the angel, whatever we want to call him . . . he’s been doing a good job here.”

The eels were still following the light of her halo. Avelyn smiled once and nodded, because she had just got her sight back and she was happy, and he didn’t want to rain on that when he had no proof and a severely dwindling certainty that he knew even faintly what was happening here.

16 Avelyn’s least favourite saint. Sebastian was shot almost to death by the Romans, and rescued and miraculously healed by Saint Irene . . . but was then so annoyed about not being martyred properly that he then went out, hectored Emperor Diocletian about his sins, and was promptly clubbed to death. Avelyn could only imagine Saint Irene had thereafter hung a sign on her surgery door saying NO TIMEWASTERS.

20

It was warm in the light from the deep mine, so warm in fact that on the lake shore in front of it, some enterprising clergy had set up deck chairs and a tiny honesty tiki bar under an umbrella, where cocktails and wine17 lived in a silver-clad cooler that kept them the nearly frozen temperature that the mine naturally was, with no salt light. Avelyn turned back his sleeves and Annunciata pulled off her jumper as they settled to wait for a miner to accost. He wasn’t sure what was going on with the mining shifts—everyone had left late last night—but people would be coming and going as long as someone was down there. They decided to wait half an hour before bothering with the toil uphill to the surface. Jericho would be cross if Avelyn did that, and Avelyn already had a deep-seated need not to upset him.

“What are those?” Annunciata asked suddenly. She was looking at his tattoos.

He explained what tattoos were, and then what they meant here. “Different clans have different tattoos. They show who you belong to and what you do. My clan used to mine the King’s Way, which is a shaft in the deep, so Brocken tattoos were always of the King.” He studied the stuttering lines. Beneath the lasered ink, the salt still glowed. “There’s a legend that the Brocken were descended from the witches who originally sang the King to sleep in the deep. They were supposed to be able to talk him.”

“How come other people didn’t talk to the King?”

Avelyn shook his head. “I don’t know. It was supposed to be difficult, and dangerous. You could get lost in his dreams, and his nightmares. It’s all very airy-fairy and annoying,” he added.

She was studying him with worrying interest. “Jericho says you don’t think the King is an angel.”

“I don’t know what he is,” Avelyn said. “But he is fucking with me.”

“How?”

“Well, the ras making me feel as though bad is good, for a start.” He had to half close his eyes against the memory of the way Jericho had talked to him as if everything was fine, but held his knee so gently. “I have to say, I’m not loving the way that consolation currently feels like it’s heading directly away from God.”

“Are you sure that isn’t just the difference between what God wants and what you think God wants?” Annunciata said.

Avelyn was quiet, because he had thought about that, and now he thought about it again. To the surprise of a great many people, Christ said not one solitary thing about the way he was feeling about Jericho. Leviticus did, but Leviticus also banned clothes of two different weaves; it was a set of laws for a particular time and place, not eternity, and so cleaving to it now was like trying to obey speed limits imposed on mule wagons in classical Rome while you were driving to Fiumicino. Saint Paul . . . you could argue until the cows came home about the Greek terms Paul used and what those had really meant.

There had been a Jesuit once who had said exactly that, and said that since God was love, then anything that took you towards genuine love was sacred.

He had been thrown out of the order.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“Well, tell Jericho,” she said. “He might be able to give you something to take the edge off. Whatever it is here, it certainly does bugger about with some kind of chemistry. Maybe it’s hitting you strangely; maybe you just need a bit of diazepam or whatnot.”

“No, I’ve bothered Jericho enough.”

“He won’t mind. He’s got a soft spot for you.”

“I don’t think so,” Avelyn said, surprised. “I’m a very frustrating person. He’s just polite.”

Annunciata laughed so much it echoed. “Only when he likes. Someone a few weeks ago tried to convert him and then asked him the best way to drive to Oxford for a person who hasn’t driven in England before, and Jericho told him to be sure to go through Slough.”

Avelyn knew only two things about London: one, that several alumni of the Venerable English College had been horribly martyred there, and two, that it had a suburb called Slough whose roadplan had been designed, according to Father Li, by the Devil himself.

“That’s diabolical,” Avelyn said, in awe.

“It’s a thing to behold.” She bumped him lightly, elbow to elbow. “Just ask him.”

Avelyn nodded and didn’t say that he shouldn’t overlap with Jericho any more than necessary, if he wanted not to be in a chronic state of mortal sin while he was here.

She quirked her head at him, more serious now. “Is there anything else bothering you? About the King, I mean.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean for this to turn into confession,” he said, uncomfortable. He hated people who made everyone else lug around their baggage.

“I owe you,” she told him. “You never said ‘candlestick.’”