“We should find the nest,” said Yagharek. “I can take us to it.”

The adventurers nodded and began an automatic inventory of their weapons and equipment. Isaac and Derkhan looked nervous, but set their jaws. Lemuel looked away sardonically and began to pick his nails with a knife.

“There is something you must know,” said Yagharek. He was addressing everyone, and there was something peremptory in his tone, something that would not be ignored. Tansell and Shadrach looked up from carefully rummaging through their backpacks. Pengefinchess put down the bow she had been testing. Isaac looked at Yagharek with a terrible forlorn resignation.

“Three moths left by the broken roof, dandling mindless cactacae. But there are four. Vermishank told us. Perhaps he is wrong, or perhaps he lied. Perhaps another has died.

“Or perhaps,” he said, “one has stayed behind. Perhaps one is waiting for us.”

Chapter Forty-Four

The cactacae patrols huddled together at the base of the Glasshouse, arguing with the remaining elders.

Shadrach crouched behind an alley, out of sight, and pulled a miniature telescope from some hidden pocket. He flicked it out to its full extent, played it over the congregated soldiers.

“They really don’t seem to know what to do,” he mused quietly. The rest of the intruding gang were huddled behind him, flat against the damp wall. They were as unobtrusive as they could make themselves in the moving shadows cast by the elevated torches that sputtered and burnt above them. “That must be why they have this curfew going on. The moths are taking them. Of course, it may always be in place. Whatever-” he turned to face the others “-it’s going to help us.”

It was not hard to creep unseen through the darkened streets of the Glasshouse. Their passage was quite unimpeded. They followed Pengefinchess, who moved with a weird gait, halfway between a frog’s leap and a thief’s creep. She held her bow in one hand, in the other an arrow with a wide, flanged head for use against cactacae, but she did not have to use it. Yagharek moved with her, a few feet behind, hissing directions at her. Occasionally she would stop and gesticulate behind her, flattening against the wall, hiding behind some cart or stall, watching as a brave or foolhardy soul above her pulled back the curtain from their window and peered into the street.

The five monkey-constructs scampered mechanically beside their organic companions. Their heavy metal bodies were quiet. They emitted only a few strange sounds. Isaac did not doubt that for the cactus people of the dome, the regular diet of nightmares would that night be amended to include some metallic scuttling thing, some clattering menace that stalked the streets.

Isaac found walking in the dome deeply unsettling. Even with the red-stone additions to the architecture and the spitting torchlight, the streets seemed basically normal. They could have been anywhere in the city. And yet, stretching over everything, creeping inwards from horizon to horizon, encircling the world like some claustrophobic sky, the enormous dome defined everything. Glimmers of light came through from outside, warped by the thick glass, uncertain and vaguely threatening. The black lattice of ironwork that held the glass in place ensnared the little townscape like a netting, like a vast spider’s web.

At that thought, Isaac felt a sudden shuddering lurch of emotion.

He felt a vertiginous sense of certainty.

The Weaver was somewhere nearby.

He faltered as he ran and looked up. He had seen the world as a web, for a split second, had glimpsed the worldweb itself, and had sensed the proximity of that mighty arachnid spirit.

“Isaac!” hissed Derkhan, running past him. She pulled him with her. He had been standing still in the street, gazing skyward, desperately trying to find his way into that awareness again. He tried to whisper to her, to let her know what he had realized, as he stumbled after her, but he could not be clear and she could not listen. She dragged him with her through the dark streets.

After a twisting journey, ducking out of sight of patrols and glancing up at the glowering glass sky, they halted before a clutch of dark buildings, at the intersection of two deserted streets. Yagharek waited until they were all close enough to hear him, before turning and gesturing.

“From that top window there,” he said.

The swooping dome bore down inexorably on the tail of the terrace, destroying the rooftops and reducing the mass of the street’s houses to ever-more-squat piles of rubble. But Yagharek was pointing at the end furthest from the wall, where the buildings were mostly intact.

The three floors below the attic were occupied. Glimmers of light spilt from the edges of curtains.

Yagharek ducked back around the edge of a little alley and pulled the others in after him. Way off to the north, they could still hear the consternated shouting from the confused patrols, desperate to decide what to do.

“Even if it wasn’t too risky to get the cactacae on our side,” hissed Isaac, “we’d be fucked if we tried to get them to help us now. They’re in a damn frenzy. One sniff of us and they’ll go berserk, hack us up with those rivebows faster’n you can say ‘knife.’ ”

“We must go past the rooms where the cactus people sleep,” said Yagharek. “We must get to the top of the house. We must find where the slake-moths come from.”

“Tansell, Penge,” said Shadrach decisively, “you watch the door.” They looked at him for a moment, then both nodded. “Prof? I reckon you’d best come in with me. And these constructs…you think they’ll be helpful, yes?”

“I think they’ll be damn well essential,” said Isaac. “But listen…I think the…I think there’s a Weaver here.”

Everyone stared at him.

Derkhan and Lemuel looked incredulous. The adventurers were quite impassive.

“What makes you say that, prof?” asked Pengefinchess mildly.

“I…I could sort of…sense it. We’ve dealt with it before. It said it might see us again…”

Pengefinchess glanced at Tansell and Shadrach. Derkhan spoke hurriedly.

“It’s true,” she said. “Ask Pigeon. He saw the thing.” Reluctantly, Lemuel nodded that yes, he had.

“But there’s not much we can do about it,” he said. “We can’t control the bugger, and if he comes for us or them, we’re pretty much at the mercy of events. He might do nothing. You said it yourself, ‘Zaac: he’ll do whatever he wants.”

“So,” said Shadrach slowly, “we’re still going in. Any arguments?” There were none. “Right. You, garuda. You’ve seen them. You saw where they came from. You should come. So it’s me, the prof, the bird-man and the constructs. The rest of you stay here, and do exactly what Tansell and Penge tell you. Understood?”

Lemuel nodded, uncaring. There was a glowering moment with Derkhan, as she swallowed her resentment. Shadrach’s hard, commanding tone was impressive. She might not like him, she might think him worthless scum, but he knew his business. He was a killer, and that was what they needed right now. She nodded.

“First sign of any trouble you get out of here. Back to the sewers. Disappear. Regroup at the dump tomorrow, if need be. Understood?” This time he was speaking to Pengefinchess and Tansell. They nodded brusquely. The vodyanoi was whispering to her elemental and checking through her quiver. Some of her arrows were complicated affairs, with thin, spring-loaded blades that would whip out on contact to slice almost with the savagery of a rivebow.

Tansell was checking his guns. Shadrach hesitated a moment, then unbuckled his blunderbuss and handed it to the taller man, who accepted it with a nod of thanks.

“I’ll be at close quarters,” said Shadrach. “I’ll not need it.” He drew his carved pistol. The daemonic face at the end of the muzzle seemed to move in the half-light. Shadrach whispered; it seemed as if he was speaking to his gun. Isaac suspected that the weapon was thaumaturgically enhanced.