The Wolf Age (58 page)

Morlock spent part of the afternoon teaching Hlupnafenglu a new set of multidimensional polytopes, and the red werewolf reciprocated by teaching Morlock how to read. Written Sunspeech he could understand, after a bit of effort, but he was deeply ignorant of the ideograms used in Moonspeech. He did not think he would live long enough to make much of this knowledge, but he had to have something to do at night besides drink, and he thought reading might be worth a try.

The last part of the afternoon they spent playing cards. Hlupnafenglu was unlike most werewolves in his disinterest in gambling, but he loved the deck of paper images and often used them in the mantic spells Morlock had taught him.

Before sunset, the red werewolf returned to the old refectory of the irredeemables to eat. It was thought the Sardhluun might try some sort of night attack after the rally, however it went-and, anyway, Hlupnafenglu wanted to wait for the rally results with his fellow irredeemables.

Morlock returned to the den he shared with Liudhleeo and spent some time reading a scroll that Hlupnafenglu had given him, written in Sunspeech ideograms. The exercise of recognizing ideograms was fairly interesting, the story less so. It was some minor epic about two immature werewolves in the night shape and their human slave, Spilloiu. It was possible that the lines had some sort of poetic force that Morlock was not sophisticated enough to recognize. They seemed mostly to be exhortations that one child shouted at the other to look at Spilloiu as he ran or did not run. Morlock finished the scroll and, irritated by the inefficient format, sliced the pages apart with a razor and sewed the pages together to a cloth binding to make a passable codex book. He was wondering what to use for a cover when Liudhleeo came home, her hands full of covered dishes.

"I brought dinner," she said.

"Not supper?" he said. He had just learned the ideogram for that word. (See Spilloiu! See Spilloiu fetch supper!)

"Don't be more ridiculous than you can help. Supper is a meal eaten by sophisticated citizens after a night howling about the town. Dinner is eaten by working-class citizens around sundown."

"Dinner, then."

"That's what I said."

She set the dishes down on the floor next to him and gracefully sat down across from him. "You'll never guess what it is."

"Not meat, I hope."

"Not for you." She uncovered one dish, plucked out a steaming fragment, and popped it in his mouth before he could protest.

"Hm." He chewed the oily, leathery stuff for a moment. "Smoked fish of some kind."

"Yes!" She was absurdly delighted. "The First Wolf gave it to me. It's from the new colony on the Bitter Water. I had my friend Ruiulanhro cook it up. She runs a hot-pot as well as a smoking lair and a poison shop, you know."

Morlock hadn't known. In fact, he wasn't sure what a hot-pot was: some sort of restaurant or refectory, it seemed. "It's good," he said.

"Do you really like it?"

He did. He was never hungry or thirsty, but his illness seemed to be intensifying all his sensations. He didn't feel the need to eat, but the act of eating was intensely pleasing.

"I have red meat, of a sort, for myself," Liudhleeo added. "You may partake if you like. It's guaranteed not to come from a never-wolf. In fact, it looks to be some kind of bird."

A seagull, Morlock guessed, looking in the dish. This had not been smoked, and was somewhat gamy by his never-wolvish standards. Also, it had not really been cooked so much as warmed, and the innards did not seem to have been removed at all. "No thanks," he said. "I'll stick to the fish."

"Knew you would. Coward."

Morlock shrugged, picked up a piece of fish, and ate it.

"Have you been practicing your ideograms? Oh my ghost, what have you done to Hlupnafenglu's little reader?"

"Made it into a proper book." He lacked the terminology for codex books since, apparently, he had just introduced them to Wuruyaaria.

She licked her fingers fastidiously and flipped through the primer. "I suppose it's easier to handle," she said.

"The pages won't crumble as it gets older," he pointed out.

"Nice stitching. You sew better with one hand than most people do with two."

He nodded to acknowledge the compliment. She gave him an amused glance and held the gaze too long for Morlock's comfort, so he glared at her a little. She dropped her eyes then, but not her smile.

They ate and talked desultorily until about sunset, and then they walked down through the hot humid air of evening to the marketplace to wait for election news with the other outliers. Liudhleeo walked on his left side and casually put her arms around him when the crowd threatened to push them apart. A little too casually: as he looked sideways at her profile, he thought she was enjoying the experience of being Khretvarrgliu's escort. Not improbably, that was why she had resisted the change to the night shape.

There was a carnival atmosphere in the market: torches and lamps lit the place almost as brightly as day. The citizens swarmed in the night shape, the day shape, and every gradation of semiwolf in-between. The air was dense with smoke from cooking fish and other seafood-a pleasant smell, in a town that had come very near to famine. Another noticeable smell was bloodbloom, one of the few crops hardy enough to thrive in the nightmarish weather of the past couple years, and more in demand than ever.

One female citizen was wandering the crowd, selling bowls of bloom to all and sundry. She was a semiwolf who wore the day shape except for bristling doglike fur that covered her from head to toe, and hence she had dispensed with the apish vulgarity of clothing.

Liudhleeo saw her, and was no longer interested in having people see her. She turned her head against Morlock's shoulder and seemed to shrink into herself.

But the smoke-selling semiwolf saw her and cried out, "Liudhleeo! How are you, you slinky bastard's brach?"

"Putting the bite on things, Ruiulanhro," Liudhleeo replied politely, but said nothing more to promote conversation.

Ruiulanhro, however, needed no encouragement. She looked Morlock up and down and said, "So you must be the never-wolf she's trying to regrow her hymen for?"

"Eh," Morlock said. "Thousands have."

"When I-What was that? What was that? Never mind. I don't really want to know if you're joking or not. I guess there's more to you than meets the eye, anyway. Have a bowl of bloom."

"No, thanks."

"On me!" she protested.

"I don't smoke."

"Oh, I don't think you two are going to get along. Have a bowl on me, gravy," she said to Liudhleeo. "For old times' sake. We miss you round the old den. We'll still be there when this one is off hunting fresher hymens."

"Thanks, Ruiulanhro," Liudhleeo said. "But not bloodbloom. Spiceweed, if you've got it."

"Some. I was expecting more children to be here." She blew a spark onto one of the bowls of herb on her tray and then offered it to Liudhleeo. She took it, saluted Ruiulanhro with it, and inhaled deeply of the smoke. Some of it reached Morlock; it smelled of cinnamon and cloves.

"Farewell, my meatpies," the vendor said. "I was young once." She moved on through the crowd, hawking her smoky wares.

After a moment of silence, Liudhleeo said reflectively, "So this is what it is like to long for death. I've often wondered."

"Don't gnaw yourself."

She looked at him gratefully. She offered him the fuming bowl and said, "It doesn't make you drunk, exactly. It's mostly for scent and flavor."

"I'm getting plenty," he said.

Her eyes widened in alarm. He gripped her shoulder briefly to tell her nothing was wrong. She smiled waveringly. Inhaling smoke deeply, she nestled into his side.

The news came soon, and it was worse than anyone expected. There was much resentment at the reports of how many volunteers the Alliance had brought to do their fighting, and the reports of severed heads as standards raised howls of rage from every quarter of the crowd. Morlock had seen werewolves do worse, even to other werewolves, but apparently the fact that this happened in the city, in an election rally, was genuinely shocking to the citizenry. About politics he knew very little, but he wondered if the Alliance might have gone too far.

Around midnight, Rokhlenu and his cantors made an appearance in the market square. The outliers gave them a loud welcome, howling and shouting. There was a great deal of singing and speaking going on, most of which Morlock didn't understand; werewolves could follow many songs at once, with a skill he had not yet learned to match. But he did see, or thought he saw, that Rokhlenu was ill-at-ease, never standing in one place for long, his eyes scanning the crowd of citizens.

This would be the first rally the outliers could be said to have lost, at least as far as Morlock knew, and perhaps that was all that was bothering his old friend. But Morlock added some things together: the number of severed heads the Aruukaiaduun had displayed, the number of Rokhlenu's brothers (plus his father), the fact that at least one of the heads was a fresh kill, according to reports, and that two of Rokhlenu's brothers had been reported missing when the others were killed.

No wonder Rokhlenu was distressed: the Aruukaiaduun had been boasting openly that they had killed his family, and he had been compelled to flee from the rally. Morlock knew his old cellmate fairly well, and guessed that shame and grief would be eating away at him now.

Rokhlenu stopped scanning the crowd; he was now looking directly at Morlock.

Morlock met his eye, across the surging tide of citizens. He pointed deliberately at Rokhlenu, then at himself. He pointed at himself, then Rokhlenu. What he meant was, You and me against them. Although he didn't think his friend knew it, he added the Dwarvish signal blood-for-blood. his hand clenched twice in front of his chest.

Rokhlenu grinned a long wolvish grin. He threw back his head and laughed. Either he had understood what Morlock had signalled, or understood something else that put his mind at ease.

"You don't say much," Liudhleeo said wryly at his side, "but you sure seem to make it count."

"Eh."

"Except when you say that."

Rokhlenu's laugh had surprised most of the audience, and they fell quiet, watching him. Into the semi-silence he sang a clear, concise song. It was true they had been defeated, and the taste of defeat was bitter. But one rally was not the election, and they would force that bitterness down their enemies' throats until they learned to love it. They would pay blood for blood. He thanked the citizens for coming and suggested, in brief, that they go home and begin working for the defeat of the criminal Alliance.

The crowd roared. The word criminal struck at the heart of their anger. Were they dogs or cattle, for the rope-twisting Aruukaiaduun to kill for their entertainment? They were citizens of Wuruyaaria, and there would be a reckoning. So they said to each other. Rokhlenu and his cantors were gone from the rostra, and the meeting was breaking up.

Morlock and Liudhleeo were at the edge of the market and found it easy to slip away on a side street. They were soon away from any crowd, but Liudhleeo kept her arm around him and he did not push her away. They walked home in silence and climbed the dark narrow stairs to the den.

She didn't say anything, so neither did he. He planned a long day tomorrow, making copper and gold so that they could flood the bookies with bets on a Union victory. The night was hot, as the nights always were these days, so he stripped to his shirt and lay in the shadows against the wall under an open window.

He had almost fallen asleep when he felt her press up against his back.

He turned to face her, holding himself up from the floor by his right hand.

Her red eyes were black in the blue moonlight. She whispered to him, "I don't need you to say anything. I don't need you to feel anything for me. I don't even want that. I know you don't care. I don't care that you don't care. But please. Please. Please."

He did care, but he didn't tell her that. He felt death in him and near him all the time, and she was alive, was life. Her lean naked body was strangely beautiful. Her mouth was hot and wet and smelled of cloves. She pressed it against his as she frantically tore the buttons from his shirt and they at last met, skin to conscious skin.

He worked for two straight days making copper and gold. He invested a third day in helping his old apprentice to teach his new apprentice the making of copper and gold. He thought of his new apprentice as the apprentice of his old apprentice, Hlupnafenglu, but no one else seemed to. His new apprentice was the clumsy thief who had tried to pick his pocket in the Shadow Market, a young citizen who was named Lakkasulakku.

Now that he had two apprentices, he never taught the same thing to both. His idea was that they could pool the skills he taught them after his death. They both looked disturbed when he told them this, but he could not understand why: he could feel the dead area preceding dissolution creeping up his neck and through his chest. His shoulder was beginning to fade. They could cherish illusions if it suited them; he didn't have the time.