-what they had achieved, she snapped.
-what she had achieved. And they would be together now, forever. That was the greatest victory of all.
She told him to prove it, and their minds turned to other matters.
The next morning he had not slept much, but his mind was clear as ice (which he wondered if he would ever see again: it was another murky glaring day). He and Yaarirruuiu woke early so that they could climb the long stone stairs up to Iuiunioklendon, where the first meeting of the Innermost Pack traditionally took place. Aaluindhonu had commandeered the audience hall of the Goweiteiuun's Inner Pack for the occasion.
The first issue they tackled was the admission of the outliers under the name of the Ekhaiasuteiuun ("the border-runners"), as chosen by a majority of the outlier citizens. A copy of the treaty was sent down to the outlier settlement for the First Wolf to sign.
As the other singers began to rise from their couches, Rokhlenu said, "And now for the main business. I want the Aruukaiaduun gnyrrand and the Werowance of the Sardhluun arrested."
This quelled anyone's interest in leaving. Three of the singers were standing with their mouths open, but no song or speech came from them.
Aaluindhonu smiled wisely, as if he had been expecting something like this from the hotheaded young First Singer and said, "Understandable, but quite impossible."
"Essential," Rokhlenu disagreed.
"What charges will you prefer?"
There was a smiling ambiguity in Aaluindhonu's question that Rokhlenu disliked intensely. He said bluntly, "The Werowance, as the representative of the Sardhluun Pack, is guilty of theft from the city. They took money every month for the feeding and housing of prisoners they had sold as slaves or butchered for meat. That's a crime against the city, against every citizen."
"Subject to a certain interpretation-"
"That is nonsense, my friend, and you know it. The disbursements were marked in the city accounts `For the maintenance of prisoners.' The dead do not require maintenance."
"Yurr. I see what you mean. You have actually read the city accounts?"
"Skuiulaalu sent them to my residence last night, of course. I read the relevant parts as I walked up here this morning. Yaarirruuiu has them, at least a portion of them."
"You have hit the ground running, I see. It bites me to admit this, but I think our fellow citizens made the right choice. But what is it you have against the gnyrrand of the Aruukaiaduun? What is his name again?"
It turned out no one there could remember his name. But Yaarirruuiu had some notes from the campaign with him, tucked into the city account books (he had held them while Rokhlenu read them), and after consulting them he could tell his fellow singers that the gnyrrand of the Aruukaiaduun was named Norianduiu.
"All right," Aaluindhonu continued smilingly, "what have you got against poor Norianduiu?"
"Murder. The Aruukaiaduun under his leadership secretly murdered my family. Their display of the severed heads as campaign banners at that damned rally was an open admission. My youngest brother had been dead less than an hour. You saw the head, Aaluindhonu: what do you think?"
The old politician's smile was finally gone. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, you've got something there. But won't it look like you're using your position for private vengeance?"
"No. Because if I were, I'd go after Rywudhaariu. Everyone knows that he pulls the strings in the Aruukaiaduun Pack. But Norianduiu was legally responsible for the campaign, so he will be charged. I'm putting this to a vote. I want unanimous support. If I don't get it, I'm going to resign my office and kill those rat-bastards with my own teeth and claws. Because if the secret murder of citizens is not a crime, if theft from the city is not a crime, if treating female citizens like meat for export is not a crime, then nothing is a crime because there is no law. And if there is no law, there is no city. Say your say; do it now."
They all agreed to the arrests. But Aaluindhonu added hesitantly (no longer smiling, thank ghost), "But, Rokhlenu, a suggestion."
"Yes?"
"You should not direct the arrests or prosecution yourself. Let me do it. I can get justice without appearing vindictive. It will be better all around that way."
Rokhlenu had never found himself able to trust Aaluindhonu; they had been thrown together by circumstance rather than choice. But he did trust Yaarirruuiu, and he saw his former reeve approved the plan, so he nodded. "Good. I'll leave it to you, then."
"There's something else we could do to diminish the appearance of a grudge," one of the other Goweiteiuun singers said-a citizen named Naaleiyaleiu. He was unremarkable, except for his overuse of the pungently piney pack-scent of the Goweiteiuun. "The Neyuwuleiuun are fending off some attack on their northern colony-the place that served as a hunting ground and a station for their airships. If you take some fighters and defend the Neyuwuleiuun, it will show this is not about the election."
Yaarirruuiu was nodding at this, but asked, "What kind of attack? We don't want to lose our First Singer on his first day on the job."
They all smiled at that. Some laughed.
"Werebears, I'll bet," the other Goweiteiuun singer said. (Dhuskudheiu was his name.) "There have been lots of them roaming around the fringes of the city."
The smiles faded. Werebears were nothing to laugh about.
"I'll go and reconnoiter," Rokhlenu said thoughtfully. "If it looks too risky, we'll get out and come back with a stronger force."
They all agreed, and on that note the Innermost Pack ended its first meeting. Rokhlenu and Yaarirruuiu left, hauling the city account books, deep in conversation. llhuskudheiu departed on some mission of his ownpossibly lunch. Aaluindhonu started to go, paused by Naaleiyaleiu's couch a moment as if he would speak, twitched his nose, then hurried on.
Naaleiyaleiu was left alone in the chamber, chittering to himself. Eventually, his jaw swung open like a gate, exposing the long-nosed pink wererat within. Naaleiyaleiu's hand reached into a pocket and grabbed a jar of scented oil. Naaleiyaleiu's hand doused the were-rat in Naaleiyaleiu's head generously with the scent, and then did the same for the were-rats controlling the other parts of the body.
Naaleiyaleiu had a more difficult job than most of the meat-puppets scattered through the city. But it was nearly over, thank Ulugarriu: so, at least, Naaleiyaleiu's crew chittered hopefully to each other.
Rokhlenu left later that afternoon. He picked a crew of nine irredeemables to go with him, and Yaarirruuiu was not among them, much to the latter's annoyance.
"Look," Rokhlenu said, when he had heard his fellow singer's fifteenth reason why he should come along. "I need you around town to keep an eye or two on that slippery Aaluindhonu." And that convinced him.
But he did take Lekkativengu and eight other survivors from the fifth and fourth floors of the Vargulleion. And, on reflection, he stopped by Morlock's cave before he left and had Morlock's remaining apprentice, a reedy little citizen with a big nose, get him two of those nightmarish glass spears with a silver core in the head.
He disliked even the feeling of being around them, and when he rejoined his fighters he knew that they felt the same way; their faces fell and they started to twitch. So he explained to them about the spears. His thinking was: werebears don't like wounds from silver any better than werewolves do. His fighters agreed, but they still weren't enthusiastic.
To placate his fighters, Rokhlenu stopped by Ruiulanhro's poison shop and picked up some spearheads imbued with wolfbane. That cheered them up a little: citizens didn't get to use poison weapons very often, but in their former lives as criminals many irredeemables had been fond of them.
It was well after dark before they got anywhere near the Neyuwuleiuun's northern colony, and that was intentional on Rokhlenu's part. He wanted half his crew to wear the night shape, the better to sense danger, half of them to retain the day shape, so that they could use weapons. But as it turned out, only Rokhlenu himself and ape-fingered Runhuiulanhu had practiced the discipline of resisting the call of the night shape. Rokhlenu wasn't happy about it, but it was his own fault: he had picked the crew. He and Runhuiulanhu divided the weapons between them, abandoning what they could not carry.