"There is a thing or two I must tell you," Rokhlenu began.
"This is about politics, I guess."
Rokhlenu was silent for a moment, looked past Morlock's shoulder, met Morlock's eye, and said, "Yes, in a way. How did you know?"
"I don't understand it and I don't understand your politics."
"All right. I think this murder was aimed at me-an attempt to make me do something irrational."
"You can leave that to me."
"That's what I'm worried about. The election is in balance just now, Morlock. If the Aruukaiaduun stay neutral, or at least separate from the Alliance, our Union has a fair chance of winning most of the couches on the Innermost Pack."
Morlock looked at him and waited; he could not see why this mattered.
"Most of the City Watchers are members of the Aruukaiaduun," Rokhlenu explained, when he saw that an explanation was necessary. "If we go into the city, asking questions, getting in fights, maybe killing someone, it could push the Aruukaiaduun into opposition. That may be the motive for this murder."
"Rokhlenu-" Morlock began, and found he could not go on.
"It's dangerous to be too predictable, Morlock," Rokhlenu said. "You're too good a fighter to not know this."
"Rokhlenu, I will have blood for my friend's blood. For our friend's blood."
"Is this what Hrutnefdhu would want?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter, anyway. I am myself, not him."
Rokhlenu looked away. "I don't want them to get away with it, either. I miss him already."
"Then."
"If-" He glanced up the stairway. There were doors open, citizens gathering on the turns of the stair. He looked back at Morlock. "I have an idea. You drunken, drooling, farting spongebag of a never-wolfs brach."
Morlock was confused, then amused. He thought he saw what Rokhlenu was aiming at. "Your mother shaved her nose every morning," he shouted back, red echoes of pain bouncing around his head. "She could juggle at midnight!"
"Don't talk about my mother, you cow fondling, milk-drinking, ape-toed refugee from a freak show!"
"I never fondled your mother-" Morlock began, and Rokhlenu howled, "Thats it!" and seized him by the shoulders. They struggled for a bit, snarling theatrically for the benefit of the audience.
"Have to take it outside," Rokhlenu muttered. "Need more eyes on this." He released Morlock's shoulders and flew away down the stairs as if he'd been struck.
Even if he weren't hungover Morlock wouldn't have been up to similar acrobatics; the ghost sickness was throwing off the balance of his entire body. But he thundered down the steps as fast as he could, and they broke together through the door leading into the street.
The plank road was littered with broken jars, stained with wine like purple blood. The reek of it nearly did make Morlock furious, and he never remembered afterward the insults he hurled at Rokhlenu in the street. He remembered the awed looks on the citizens standing around, though. The crowd had begun to gather-drawn by screams and hurled wine jars, no doubt-before they took their ostensible quarrel out into the sunlight, and it only thickened as they stood there screaming and shoving each other in the hot morning light.
"Good enough," Rokhlenu muttered eventually. "Have to end it somehow."
Morlock threw back his head and shouted, "Tyrfing!"
The sword, its black-and-white blade glittering like crystal in the day's fierce light, flew from the window of the topmost den and landed in Morlock's outstretched hand.
Rokhlenu spat at his feet. "Go ahead and use it, coward!"
"Get out," Morlock snarled. "Come back with a weapon and we'll finish this."
"I'll come back in my night shape and rip your belly open."
"Dogs bark. Citizens act. This is over."
"It's not over!" shouted Rokhlenu, and stormed away through the crowd.
Morlock turned back to the dark doorway and stepped out of the sun and the gaze of the crowd. There were still citizens goggling on the stairway, but they skittered away like mice when they saw him returning, sword in hand. He mounted the stairs back to the topmost den, his thoughts grim.
If Rokhlenu thought, as he obviously did, that this stagy break between the two friends would help him politically, Morlock was willing to oblige him. But he didn't relish the thought of investigating a political assassination in the largely unknown werewolf city. If Hrutnefdhu could help himbut, of course, it was Hrutnefdhu who had been assassinated. There was Hlupnafenglu, of course. But, if he was not mistaken, Rokhlenu had been trying to warn him about Hlupnafenglu for some reason.
As he approached the still-open door to the den, a thought occurred to him. How had the assassin entered the den? He pulled the door half closed and examined the lock. The glass eye was missing, and the coppery sinews of the lock mechanism had been severed somehow. Not by a blade, he thought: something hot enough to melt copper. Yet it had not set fire to the wooden door. Interesting, and revealing.
Ulugarriu had a hand, or a paw, in this, Morlock decided. At least, he had supplied the means.
Morlock's feelings lightened a little bit. Political assassination was as beyond him as was most politics. But murderous sorcerers were a more familiar matter.
He reentered the den. Liudhleeo was now flanked by two females Morlock didn't recognize, one a semiwolf with a hairless canine face and the other a bitter crone who was staring at Hlupnafenglu with naked hatred. When Morlock entered, she alternated her glare of hatred between the two males.
Morlock got the sheath for Tyrfing, threw it over his shoulders, and sheathed the blade. He tossed a cloak over his ghostly arm and grabbed a bag of money, tying it with his right hand to his belt. Then he stepped over to the red werewolf and said to him quietly, "What did you see in Hrutnefdhu's wound?"
"I don't want to say," the red werewolf admitted. "Maybe I'm wrong. Look yourself."
Morlock did, and then he motioned Hlupnafenglu to join him on the stairwell.
"They can hear us just as well out here," the red werewolf said. "Except that evil old never-wolf, maybe, may her eyes fall out."
Morlock sensed an evasiveness in Hlupnafenglu, a sort of slyness, that was new to him. But not new to Hlupnafenglu, he guessed. Perhaps it had come back to him with his memories.
"The neck was severed below the level of the shoulders," Morlock said. "It would have been easier to sever it higher. But the cutting was done by a practiced hand with a clean sharp blade-a surgeon rather than a butcher. Why?"
"I don't know, Chieftain. But it seemed odd to me."
"How can it be odd? Have you seen many werewolves with their heads cut off?"
"One haunted the prison where we lived, the Vargulleion. I often saw it there."
Morlock was silent a moment under the shadow of the dread memory. Then he said, "You are not answering me. I find that troubling."
"Didn't the gnyrrand tell you about me, Chieftain? I saw him looking at me."
"You will answer my question."
The red werewolf shrugged despairingly and said, "Yes, I have seen many decapitated werewolves. I have cut the heads off many myself. It is the best way to kill a citizen in the night shape. Before I was sent to the Vargulleion I was an assassin. They called me the Red Shadow."
"Oh." Morlock was vaguely aware that werewolves distinguished sharply between assassination and other more open forms of murder. Morlock himself did not, though. "That may be a useful set of skills for us. Rokhlenu thinks this was a politically motivated killing."
The red werewolf was staring at him. "You are not …you still wish me to help you? You are still willing to teach me?"
"Yes."
Hlupnafenglu closed his golden eyes, then opened them. "Thank you," he said. "Hrutnefdhu was my friend, too. I would be sorry to miss the hunt."
The stairwell below them was suddenly flooded with females. Looking down, Morlock saw Wuinlendhono at their head.
"All males not dead, get out!" she shouted.