Page 58 of The Salt King

“I just want to make sure,” he said. “Something’s going on in the deep. It would be stupid not to talk to someone.”

“You need a drink first,” she said. “Jericho! Time for wine.”

There was already a queue for the mulled wine stand. Jericho came to wait with them, looking relieved at the prospect of being drunk.

Avelyn wanted to touch his ribs to ask if he was all right, so he shoved both hands into his pockets instead.

He took a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t drink anything else. I’m going to go and see Lady Hringen,” he said.

“No, what about Irish courage?” Annunciata protested.

Jericho looked down at him like an interested swan.

“I drank a lot yesterday, I’m honestly a bit fragile now,” Avelyn said. “Hreod men aren’t supposed to drink—I think we’ve been bred to have an intolerance to it. I can’t keep up with an Irish person, I’d die.”

“Boo,” Annunciata said. “Down with the matriarchy. Boo.”

“Hold on, Lady Hringen?” said Jericho, and Avelyn saw him hunting for a diplomatic way to voice his alarm. “Is it not possible that she might . . . not . . . be completely delighted to see you?”

“How come?” Annunciata asked, whippet quick.

Avelyn held his breath, getting ready for the torrent that was about to ensue. “I was—look, this sounds different to what it was, okay? I was sixteen and she was fortysomething. It’s not what it is on the Outside, it’s more like a job in diplomacy, it’s like being an attaché at someone else’s embassy. My grandmother negotiated the contract—”

“They were engaged,” Jericho provided.

“Aaaah.” Annunciata grinned.

“She’s the closest I have left to family,” Avelyn said, trying to sound brisk. “She might consider it an obligation to help me. I think it’s the best chance I have for getting any sort of answers. And—how do you know?” he asked Jericho, feeling set upon.

“Everyone knows. The Hringen and the Brocken are incomprehensibly rich,” Jericho explained to Annunciata. “It was as close to a celebrity wedding as we get here. Very big scandal when it fell through.”

“Why did it fall through?” Annunciata said.

“I ran away to Rome with an insane Welshman,” Avelyn said, defeated.

“Sound.”

They were at the front of the queue.

“Oh, hello. Three, please,” Jericho said to the wine seller.

The wine seller ignored him. “I’m not serving that,” she told Avelyn in Hreod, as if Jericho wasn’t there. She was a big, solid Harkta, as tall as Jericho, about Avelyn’s age. He recognised her vaguely. “It’s not real, take it back down the mine where it belongs. And anyway, a young man like you shouldn’t be drinking. For shame.”

In his soul, something was wagging its tail in the hopeful way of a Good Dog who had hardly murdered anyone at all recently, not even Fabian, and had done a wonderful job of making everyone forget that Father Li had rescued it when it was a puppy and told everyone it was harmless, even though it was, if you looked properly, now really quite big and grey.

“Oh, come on. It’s the fair. Please?” he said, so nobody could say he hadn’t tried being sweet first.

She folded her arms, which showed the bear tattoos.

Wag wag wag.

Avelyn looked her dead in the eye and said the first few lines of the Roman ritual in Latin.

She leaned back, alarmed. “What was that?”

“The nailed god has cursed you.”