CHAPTER 55
One year since the waking of the Salt King
The celebration was explosive. When the news reached them that London was safe, Caer Halen filled with a zinging potential energy as everyone started baking, and the musicians and the bards rehearsed, and the bonfire pyres went up in the courtyards.
Then, after three days, all the relief and happiness burst their banks, and it became a carnival.
People gave flower crowns to the witches, Hreoda and Outsider the same.
On the steps of the castle the King knighted them, and announced the reformation of an ancient clan whose name they had all earned twelvefold.
They would all be Clan Brocken from now on, and whether they decided to leave or stay, the Brocken manor would always be there to welcome them.
There was a roar of approval that turned to awe when the castle doors opened inward, showing them the hall, and the feast waiting inside.
Fizzy with embarrassment and joy and the sort of belonging she’d never thought she would know, Tallis stared upward to take it all in.
There were dream acrobats spinning through silver hoops and around silver ribbons—they weren’t real, she could feel it even from the ground—and beautiful clan banners hanging from the rafters.
Holly and ivy climbed the pillars, little lights dancing among the leaves, because of course it was Christmas once again, and the hearths crackled over cedarwood logs whose perfume smoked all through the air.
Salt oaks stood above the tables, branches full of lamps and little stained salt windows that caught the light and shone coloured shadows onto the benches.
The trees were real: she couldn’t see how Avelyn and the King had persuaded them that being inside the hall was a good idea.
“All right, how did you do that?” she said to him, because he was glowing with that impish glee he always had when he knew he had done something powerfully annoying.
“Do you want a clue?”
“Go on.”
“Find north.”
“You know nobody can really do that,” she muttered. “You just know the area well, and you know where the landmarks are.”
“Eh-er. Incorrect,” Avelyn said. She had thought they would fight like wolves, a Catholic and a weapons-grade atheist. It was true that Avelyn would eviscerate people he didn’t like with terrifying efficiency, but those people never came from any one religious or irreligious group.
They were the sort of people who said I love that for you!
and The Holy Spirit told me to buy a first-class ticket.
That was to say, exactly the same people who made Tallis want to bring back gladiatorial games.
He could seem serious and even intimidating—until he jumped at you from a cupboard because Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition, playful as a puppy and motivated mainly by hot chocolate.
“You are very frustrating.”
Sally, the traitor, was turning his head slowly. “Wait,” he said. “North is . . . over there. That’s wrong. Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, laughing suddenly. He smacked Avelyn’s arm. “You moved the castle.”
“Ugh, you know all my tricks,” Avelyn said, disgusted.
“You are unoriginal and dull,” Sally agreed.
Two puppies. Somehow she had ended up with two enraging puppies.
They had taken to each other instantly. Sally had been practising going up the stairs of the Brocken manor in perfect silence, better to surprise Avelyn and carry him bodily down to dinner.
Avelyn had become amazingly accurate in his ability to conjure a snowstorm that happened only over Sally, and followed him around.
And if you asked them what they were training the foxes to steal, you got two identically innocent gazes that promised nothing nefarious was happening, they were blameless, and was it time for more hot chocolate yet?
She had never been happier.
_____________
Avelyn drifted away to leave Sally and Tallis alone for a little while; if he stayed, he and Sally would turn into fourteen-year-old boys, and nobody wanted to sit with those at dinner.
Off somewhere to his left, he could feel the Yule-morning happiness that was Jericho.
He didn’t go that way. Kings needed time to do things beyond talking to witches.
Ras stopped him to remind him to go to the Witan in the evening, and while he was sitting at the Hringen table, Avelyn’s new steward—or rather, his grandmother’s old steward23—ran through the discussion points, and other people came to tell him about unfairnesses to raise, regardless of which clan they belonged to, because perhaps it was a problem for the Witan or perhaps the King, and without ever being given a job description, Avelyn had become the herald between the two.
Somebody patted him on the shoulder, and somebody else said oink, so he assumed Redspear was passing by.
All of it should have made him feel like he belonged, but instead all he could feel was separate.
He hadn’t felt so alone among so many people since seminary.
In the way it did only when he was already restless or unhappy, it was bothering him more and more that he was surrounded by people doing things he couldn’t—pouring their own wine, dancing, winning things at the coconut shy.
“And . . . someone is here to see you, lord,” the steward rounded off.
There was an odd note in her voice. Whoever it was, she didn’t think they ought to be admitted for an audience.
She was a snob, though. He had it from reliable sources that she wrinkled her nose at the mention of the Hringen, because they had used to be—ugh—silversmiths.
If she had her way, Lady Hringen would be made to use the back door.
Avelyn nodded and thanked her, half expecting someone from one of the worst-hit places, maybe Bradford or Birmingham, where the annihilation was almost total; now that London was clear, there would be petitioners from smaller cities.
He saw the steward’s blurry silhouette motion to someone to come over, then slip away.
“Oh, my boy,” Father Li said, and hugged him.
“Father!” It came out high, because he couldn’t believe it, and then he had a bolt of raw fear, because what if he disbelieved Father Li to nothing?
Tallis had done it by accident to an unsuspecting octopus trying to steal cutlery, and she had been devastated, and she hadn’t even known the octopus personally.
“Oh, my God! How did—what happened, I thought Rome was completely—”
“Oh, I told you I’d come and fetch you,” Father Li said, and kissed his forehead. He laughed. “Bloody hell, don’t you look different! Is it the salt light, would it tarnish your clericals?”
“Not if I had them made from cloth from here,” Avelyn said, with glass in his throat and wishing this could have waited until later.
There was so much else he wanted to talk about first: Li’s journey, Rome, all the changed world, but he wouldn’t be able to turn the subject now.
Should he lie? He could just say—no. Li would understand.
He would. Li had always understood when Avelyn chafed against the Magisterium, and that was what he had let go of.
Not God. “I’m . . . I gave it up, Father. ”
There was silence. Avelyn had never more wished that he could see. Then, “Why?”
“It was the only honest thing left. Trying to cleave to Church dogma—all I had from it was desolation, and all I’ve had from the King is consolation. You were right. There was an angel here, and—”
“No. No, Avelyn, angels are what’s out there now, what’s in the mine here is not .
. . Angels are holy things, they show what’s truly in people’s hearts, the only way to survive is to believe in God, not in a thing from a cave in England.
” He said it gently, but his voice was shaking.
“They’re killing what’s in the mines. That can only be one thing. ”
“I do believe in God. I do! But we are here because the King saved us. He’s saved so many people—Father, he’s good—”
“Nothing is good,” Li said quietly, “that turns you from God—”
“The Church! The Church. Not God.”
“The Church and God are the same. You can’t get to God without the Church. How could you think that? After all the years—oh, Avelyn. You’ve been seduced. This is wrong.”
Avelyn hadn’t seen his own reflection for a year, but he knew he was losing any colour he might have held on to. “He saved us,” he said again. “He makes this light, it’s how the witches are clearing cities of . . .”
Li took his hand. His own felt frail now. God knew what he had waded through, to get out of Rome. “Listen to yourself. Clearing cities of angels. Which are righteous things.”
“Righteous! They murder—”
“Then we are the new Sodom and Gomorrah, and it was time for us to be murdered,” Li said over him. A sigh. “In a choice between dying and renouncing God . . . it’s so much better to die.”
“Just talk to him. You’ll see,” Avelyn said softly. “Please, Father. His name is Jericho because he was the angel of Jericho, once. He isn’t what you think.”
Li laughed a little bit. “Of course he is. I know you think what you’re feeling is consolation, but—if those stories I’ve been hearing about the Devil and his favourite witch have anything to them, which, knowing you and how your head turns every ten minutes, they do—it’s not consolation. It’s lust.”
Avelyn couldn’t say anything. Anger and dismay and shame kicked him in the chest and stole his voice.
He flickered when someone behind him put one hand on his shoulder. For a leaping instant he hoped it was Jericho, but Jericho was still speaking to some children who wanted to be witches. It was Tallis.