It didn't seem to be morning. The light was flickering, dim and bluish-- unlike dawn, or torches. Through the fitful light, he saw a cloud of red worms descending from the ceiling toward Thelyphron's corpse.
Morlock surged to his feet, screaming, "Get out! I'm still in here, corpse-chewers!" He leaped onto the corpse-table and, although a wave of darkness passed before his eyes, he managed to keep his footing and his consciousness. He pounded on the ceiling and shouted wordlessly.
The red worms withdrew slowly. But nothing moved up on the roof. He heard faint whispers. They were waiting. They knew he couldn't last much longer.
Morlock glanced desperately out the doorway, hoping to see some sign of approaching dawn. He didn't, but what he did see caught his full interest.
His vomit was burning.
Morlock carefully stepped down from the corpse table and walked over to the door. He had not been mistaken. The candle he had thrown out had landed at the edge of the pool of vomit on the path outside, and now a flickering blue flame ran across the top of the greasy fluid.
Morlock knew what it was to concentrate the spirit of wine many times, to make a more intoxicating — and flammable — beverage. Perhaps that was what had been done to the wine from the magic cup. Or perhaps the drug in the wine was highly flammable. If it is strong enough to make my vomit burn, how much will it burn without being diluted?
And he had an unlimited supply of it.
Morlock staggered to the barrel to get a fresh candle and the magic wine cup. He staggered back to the doorway and bent down to light his candle from the flickering blue flame. He climbed back up on the corpse table and, holding the wine cup and candle in one hand, he punched a hole through the roof with his other.
Morlock stood up, with his head and arms passing through the hole in the roof to the open air. The light of the candle revealed the Strigae scattered about the patchy roof. They look like owls, with great wing-like folds of gray hair on either side of their bodies. But rather than raptor claws, each had a single soft foot, like a snail. And no heads. Instead, two greenish eyes glowing near the top of each body and wide toothy mouth grimacing mid-torso, the multi-branched red worms of their tongues hissing like snakes. The Strigae retreated out of his reach, but no farther.
"Good night, ladies," cried Morlock, "good night, good night." He doused the roof and the nearer Strigae with cupfuls of drugged wine — then he touched it off with the candle.
Flame leapt from the roof up into the cloudy sky. The Strigae screamed like screech owls and retreated, off the edge of the roof and out of his sight.
The wet wood of the roof burned for an hour before it caved in. By that time the edge of the sky was gray with dawn.
The world was full of dim gray light when Myrrhina appeared, running from the fairgrounds to the corpse-house, her lips and face as gray as the sky.
She saw Morlock standing by the door and paused.
"I'm all right," he said, answering her unasked question.
"And my Thelyphron?" she whispered.
He nodded toward the corpse-house door. Glancing in, she saw the corpse was intact and gasped. "But the roof is gone!" she said. "You must have—"
"It was a rough night," he said. "Over now. I'll take the crow-coin."
"I do not have it with me," she admitted shame-facedly, looking oddly like her son.
"Oh?" he said. But it was the way he said it.
"I will pay you, though. Indeed I will, Sir Morlock! I'll swear any binding oath you ask."
"I'm just asking for the coin."
"I can't get it for you now. The funeral will be soon. The procession will be here shortly. Will you come to my house after the funeral?"
He looked at her for a few moments. Finally he nodded. "I will give you until then."
She flushed and bowed her head gratefully. "Thank you, Sir Morlock! And now, if you wouldn't mind, the procession will be here shortly, and I would like a few last moments alone with Thelyphron."
Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and nodded indifferently. He'd pulled the mirror-gates at dawn, and the stream was settling into a muddy puddle. He helped the fastidious Myrrhina across the threshold and turned away to give her privacy. He wandered off for a few steps and kept his back toward the corpse-house. Presently he heard her come out.
He turned in time to see her smiling at him with her red mouth. Then she turned away and hurried toward the fairground, where the funeral procession was already forming up.
He stared after her thoughtfully. A few moments with Thelyphron had certainly put the roses back into her lips. Her cheeks had seemed fuller, too.
A dark suspicion stabbed him through the heart. He rushed back into the corpse-house.
Thelyphron's nose had been eaten away, along with large stretches of his cheeks and chin. The red cavities of gnawed flesh glared out at Morlock, in contrast with the waxy white flesh around them.
Myrrhina, Morlock realized, but why? Why go through this rigmarole if she was a Striga herself? Or had it been a Striga disguised as Myrrhina?
It didn't matter. They had won. And he thought he could hear the funeral procession approaching. If they caught him here they would mutilate him, as Thelyphron had been mutilated. And if he ran, Myrrhina would never pay him the crow-coin, and it would all be for nothing.
He slumped down in despair by the overturned barrel, where the last of his candles was guttering in a pool of its own white wax.
* * *
Morlock waited on the steps of Myrrhina's house at noon when she and Zatchlas returned from Thelyphron's funeral. Zatchlas drew up short when he saw him, but Myrrhina did not seem surprised.
"Sir Morlock, good day," she carolled. "I suppose you have come for your coin."
"Yes."
"Zatchlas, perhaps you have something to do around town? Sir Morlock and I have a few things to discuss."
Zatchlas turned on his heel and walked away.
"Poor boy," said Myrrhina warmly, reaching into a pocket for her house key. Morlock, glancing down, saw that her pocket had a number of interesting things in it, including Thelyphron's nose. "You set him back badly with the Sisterhood last night."
"You are both Strigae," Morlock said flatly.
"Well," Myrrhina said, as she unlocked the door and led the way in, "I am, and he aspires to be. We are mostly Strigae in this town. We fly at night and walk during the day, you see."
"I don't," Morlock said, following her. "If you are a Striga, why didn't you just bite Thelyphron's nose off yesterday and have done with it?"
"Oh! That would be against the rules. The family of a dead person don't have a chance at him until at least a night has passed after his death."
"Hm."
"Oh, it may seem cruel," Myrrhina continued, leading Morlock into an inner room with a strongbox. "But, otherwise, as soon as a family member died, his own family would chew him down to the bone, and no one else would ever get a mouthful. So this is really fairer. Don't you see?"
"No," Morlock admitted. "Yesterday you seemed genuinely concerned about Thelyphron."
"I was. I am. We meant a great deal to each other. But: he's dead. And you can't imagine how useful a dead man's nose is in certain kinds of binding magic. Or how rare it is around here. I thought I'd just risk biting it off, since you gave me the opportunity. Although it was a bit of a wrench: I'd have been the first widow in fifty years to bury her husband intact. What a mark of status that is in the Sisterhood! Although, as far as anyone else in town knows, that's exactly what happened." She put a brown hand over her red mouth to hide a slightly hysterical laugh. When she had calmed herself, she lowered the hand again and said, "Morlock, may I ask you a question?"