“What does that even mean?”

“Ulugarriu sent me—Ghosts-in-the-eyes. I am to help you, if I can.”

“It’s your world, too, is what this Ulugarriu is thinking.” The ululation of her howl made it clear that by your she meant werewolves in general.

“Yes.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Survival.”

“What’s in it for you?” Ambrosia used the short bark that designated an individual.

“May I come closer?”

“Sure.”

Liyurrriyu loped downhill toward them. He (the werewolf was clearly male, and the -u ending to his name was masculine) sat down seven human paces away and held up his right forepaw.

But it wasn’t a paw at all. It was an ape’s compromise between a hand and a foot.

Ambrosia vocalized an interest in approaching nearer. Liyurrriyu tilted his head left and right in assent.

She walked over and knelt down beside him, taking his hand. It was covered in a leather glove—or maybe more like a shoe for the hand. She tugged the glove off and examined the astonishingly human hand within.

“You see how it is with me,” Liyurrriyu sang in whispered vocables. “I am a nightwalker, never able to assume the day shape. But I am also a neverwolf—never able to fully free myself from the ape.”

“And this Ulugarriu says he can fix you.”

“Of course Ulugarriu can fix me. He says that he will fix me, if I do all that I can to help you kill the Sunkillers.”

“Calm yourself.” Ambrosia put Liyurriu’s hand shoe back on his hand foot. “What do you think you can do for us?”

The werewolf growled thoughtfully. “I have lived on these plains all my life. I know many things. I can track and find. I can kill and kill and kill.”

“We’re all of us pretty good at killing.”

“You must be better. The bitter cold in the far north is sending all beasts fleeing southward. You must swim through a wave of cruel hunters, desperate to find prey. You are prey. I am hunter.”

Ambrosia had her own opinion about that, but nonetheless said, “You’re hired.” She rose to her feet. “Tell me about the city to our west.”

“Aflraun. We’re not going there, are we?”

“We are.”

“Urrrr. Better that than Narkunden, I suppose. They make werewolves wear muzzles there, or swear self-binding oaths not to eat fresh meat within the city limits.”

“Monstrous.”

“Dried meat. Burned meat. Salted meat. They put salt in it, do you see? Or they stain it with smoke!”

“Each to their own.”

“I suppose you’ve been there.”

“Frequently. And I have to warn you, if you travel with me, you will see me and my companions eat those variously mistreated meats. Nerve yourself up to it.”

The werewolf shuddered and sang, “I can face what I must face.”

Ambrosia hoped that this was true. She had an idea to make Liyurriu acceptable to the townsfolk of Aflraun, and she suspected it would test his determination to its limits.

The next morning, before dawn, Jonon, signudh on duty for the Shortgate guards, came to a rather sleepy alert and confronted a group of travelers coming from the trackless east.

This was odd. Few lived east of Aflraun, and those that did weren’t the type to travel to a city market or sample the secret joys of Whisper Street.

One was a dwarf. One was a Vraidish barbarian, from his hair and weaponry. One was a woman, crooked as an Ambrose, apparently the leader. The fourth was an odd one—as tall as the woman, but hunched over, he wore a long coat with sleeves and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his face. He seemed to have a pretty heavy beard.

“Greetings, travelers,” Jonon said when they were in speaking range. “Do you come in peace, war, or business?”

“Peace,” said the crook-shouldered woman Jonon had tagged as the leader.

“Have you got any food for trade?” Jonon asked. This was not an official question. But sometimes he made good purchases from food traders before they found out how much they could charge in the city markets.

“Food for ourselves; none to trade,” the woman said, disappointing but not surprising Jonon.

“Is your companion a werewolf?” Jonon asked. This was an official question. Wuruyaaria had made several raids against the outskirts of Aflraun and Narkunden; more were expected. They had been instructed to watch out for spies.

“Which one?” asked the woman ingenuously.

“The one that appears to be a werewolf.”

“My friend Laurentillus, here?” the woman said as if she were surprised, turning toward the shaggy one.

“If that’s his name.”

“Nonsense. Laurentillus, shake hands with the guardsman.”

Laurentillus didn’t move.

“Do the thing,” the woman urged. She nudged Laurentillus in the side. “The thing.”

Laurentillus started, then pulled off his right glove. He held out his right hand to Jonon. It was an undeniably human hand—calloused from much work, with an oddly hairy wrist. Jonon slapped the offered palm, causing Laurentillus to jump and withdraw suddenly.

“He doesn’t seem quite human,” Jonon observed.

“Doesn’t he?” said the woman, deftly slipping a coin into Jonon’s still-outstretched hand.

“Well, not much.”

Another coin surreptitiously changed hands.

“Well, who am I to judge? Still, my men. . . .”

“How much more?” the woman asked briskly.

Jonon hated to use his position to squeeze money out of travelers, but times were hard; even meat was getting expensive. He glanced at the coins in his palm. They were foreign, of course; Vraidish by the look of them. “Two more of these,” he said.

She supplied them cheerfully. He followed them through the gate, chatting of this and that. He didn’t want any of his underlings to squeeze any more coins out of them.

When they were well into Aflraun, and Jonon was about to turn back, the crooked woman caught sight of something and grabbed him by the arm. “Jonon, my friend,” she said, pointing at the sky over the cluttered western horizon, “what is that?”

He looked, but he knew what she meant even before that. “It’s there sometimes, sometimes not. It keeps getting bigger. No one’s sure what it is, truthfully. People say a crazy man is building something in the sky over Narkunden. Maybe it has something to do with the end of the world.”

“A crazy man, you say? Tell me more.”

After he parted company with Angustus, Morlock walked down to the southern edge of Narkunden and made camp in an open field. The next day he left his things under occlusion and wilderment and went into town to buy food and drawing paper. He had two or three different designs for a flying ship in his head and he wanted to sketch out some of the ideas before he chose between them.

Food was expensive, as he had feared after his conversation with Angustus. A loaf of fresh bread cost two fingers of gold. Fresh meat was cheaper, but a rather odd selection: most of it was from game animals and predators.

But it didn’t matter much. Morlock was no epicure. He bought meat, bread, and mushrooms and set out to find drawing paper.

The cheapest place, so a dwarvish mushroom merchant told him, was Shardhut Scrivener’s shop near the Lyceum. Paper and ink were agreeably cheap there, as he discovered, but the place was dense with dark-gowned savants from the Lyceum.

Morlock collected the supplies he needed and went to stand in line so that Shardhut, the warty but agreeably cheerful shopkeeper, could take his money. Shardhut had three hulking assistants who didn’t seem to do anything, but perhaps Shardhut didn’t trust them with the cashbox. In the general confusion Morlock might easily have walked out of the shop with the goods in hand, but he had been raised by his harven-father with an exaggerated sense of property.