When the pair mating on the dais assumed their night shapes, and a tide of moonlit transformations spread across the room, the coupling began in earnest, many pairs eschewing the couches and tumbling about on the floor. There were wolves, semiwolves, and a few unfortunates in their day shape, apparently unable to make the transition. Morlock thought this-and nearly laughed aloud. Werewolf notions seemed to be soaking into his skin. If he stayed among the werewolves much longer, at the next wedding he might actually join in. That was an amusing thought, and this time he did laugh.
He looked around for the wine jar: time to grab it and make his escape. He found it. He also found that Liudhleeo was still standing beside him in her day shape. Her eyes were half closed; she was smiling at him with shy eagerness.
"I'd've thought you'd've switched shadows by now," he said, waving his wine bowl vaguely at the rest of the room.
She looked hurt, then sly. "Is that what you'd prefer? Some never-wolves like it-coupling with a partner in the night shape."
"They're not as never-wolfy as I am. I've never coupled with someone who was not a never-wolf." Morlock covertly tried to count up the number of negatives in that sentence, was unsure of his total, and added hastily, "I have only ever coupled with never-wolves. If you see what I mean. It's worked out pretty well for me so far," he said wryly, thinking of his ex-wife. There was a little wine left in his bowl, so he emptied it.
"There are none like that here," Liudhleeo replied. "If there were, she'd be a slave or meat. You aren't only because of who you are. I'm not the only female in the room who finds that fascinating. Or your scent fascinating."
"I never argue about matters of taste-or, in this case, smell."
She laughed too much and took his arm. He impatiently shook her off.
"Why are you being so cruel to me?" Liudhleeo asked, not as if she really minded.
"I don't know what's going on," said Morlock, "but I can't believe you look on me with favor."
Liudhleeo was amused. "Why not? You smell so wonderful, like blood and burning bone with a hint of poisonous leaves. And you're perfectly dangerous. Ghost, when you glare at me like that I just melt. And maybe you're not as beautiful as my sweet Hrutnefdhu, but nobody is, and anyway a female doesn't have to look at her partner during sex…." She paused, horrified by a thought that struck her. "Unless. Unless they do it …face-to-face. Do you do it that way, Morlock?"
"Sometimes. It doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter? It bites me what males think matters. Not even monkeys do it that way, you know, face-to-face. It seems so depraved. Soft wet mouths and soft wet bellies pressing against each other. It seems so nasty. So nasty. Oh. Oh. Oh, ghost. You have to do that for me. I know you don't care about me. I know you don't care about anybody, but you can't leave me after putting that idea in my head."
"Now I see why Hrutnefdhu didn't attend," Morlock said. "Did you ask him to stay home?"
Now she stepped a pace back from him, her brows knitted in bafflement. "No," she said. "Of course not. But how do you suppose he'd feel if he were here, right now, with pairs coupling all over the floor and the room stinking of sex-"
"-and his mate trying to couple with his old friend-"
"Is that it? You don't understand. You really don't understand. It's not a betrayal."
"And I never will understand."
She bowed her head, defeated. "Do you want me to find you another female, then? Or a male, perhaps? There are other never-wolves in town."
Morlock stared at her. "My love life, grim and empty though it may be, has never been soiled by the presence of a pimp."
She stood back another pace, tears leaking from her eyes. She gave him a last reproachful look and fled.
Morlock took his wine jar and a couple of still-sealed ones for backup. He made his way unsteadily out of the moonlit room, stepping carefully around (or, in one case, over) groups of werewolves in various stages of sexual congress.
The air outside was clean, by contrast, but warm as a summer's night. He drank a jar of wine as he walked slowly across the outlier settlement, dropping the empty into a stretch of swamp showing next to a walkway. When he reached the lair-tower, he found that he couldn't face Hrutnefdhu (drunk Morlock was a coward, among his other vices), so he decided to sleep that night in his cave. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the wickerwork boat, finishing another jar of wine.
The night was dark, though moonlit. The swamp water was darker and smelled bad. His mind was darker still and smelled worse.
PART THREE
MASKS
Chapter Twenty-two: The Shadow Market
From then on, Morlock drank himself to sleep every night. Sometimes he slept in the lair-tower apartment with Hrutnefdhu and Liudhleeo, but he didn't like to. If it was him and Hrutnefdhu alone there, he was conscious of why Liudhleeo was absent. But when he woke up, and looked across the room to see them wrapped around each other, blissfully empty of thought as they slept, joined by something more powerful than sexual union, he felt strange, an intruder. Werewolves had no sense of privacy with those they considered old friends, but Morlock did. Besides, when he drank so much that he grew sick and felt the need to vomit (which was almost nightly now), the cave was more convenient.
He was not yet drinking in the day, though. Morlock had been through this before, and he had a sense of fatalism about it. He knew that drunkenness would come to rule his life entirely and that he would be able to think of nothing else.
Perhaps that wasn't so bad, this time. He was, after all, dying. The ghost sickness had progressed so far that he could pick up nothing with his left fingers: material objects passed through the misty flesh as if it were air. If he was dying, if this was the end of all his days, did it matter if he died a drunk? He would be no more alive if he died sober.
But in the day he did not drink, not yet. He threw himself into projects and worked fiercely. He developed a wooden hand that he could wear over his ghostly hand like a glove. It was no good for fine work, of course, but it could bear weight, and the fingers could clamp shut for a grip, if need be.
For two-handed work, he had Hlupnafenglu. The red werewolf was strikingly improved after the removal of his spike-but he knew nothing about his past. His memory had been almost entirely scrubbed by the madness induced by the electrum spike in his brain. He could speak Sunspeech and Moonspeech, but he didn't even know his real name, so everyone continued to call him Hlupnafenglu.
He was intelligent and strong, though, with extremely deft hands. He fell into the role of Morlock's apprentice. The outliers could use many skills Morlock had, but he clearly would not be around forever to assist them, and he trusted Hlupnafenglu's character as well as his talent.
Together they forged glass weapons and armor for the outlier fighters. They began the challenging task of shoring up the outliers' defenses. Once Wuinlendhono found out what they were doing, she had a crowd of citizens put at their disposal and the work went faster: new watchtowers, armed with catapults and crossbows, soon bristled along the settlement's verge.