It was not yet completely dark. Alarmed and curious faces peered from windows up and down the street. Rudgutter ignored them. He took the funnel of iron away from his mouth and turned to Eliza Stem-Fulcher. His face was creased in irritation.
“This is an absolute bloody shambles,” he said. She nodded. “Well, however inefficient they are, the militia can’t lose. A few officers might be killed, regrettably, but there’s no way der Grimnebulin and his cohorts are getting out of there.” The faces peeking nervously from behind windows all around suddenly annoyed him.
He raised the loudhailer sharply and yelled into it: “Get back into your houses immediately!”
There was a gratifying flurry of curtains. Rudgutter stood back and watched as the warehouse shuddered.
Lemuel dispatched the other stingbox-wielder with one elegant and careful shot. Isaac hurled his table down the stairs taking two officers with it when they had tried to rush him, and now he continued with his chymical sniping. Yagharek was helping him, at his direction, showering the attackers with noxious mixtures.
But this was all, could not but be, doomed valiance. There were too many militia. It helped that they were not prepared to kill, because Isaac and Lemuel and Yagharek had no such constraints. Isaac estimated that four militia had fallen: one to a bullet; one to a crushed skull; and two to random chymico-thaumaturgic reactions. But it could not last. The militia advanced on Lemuel behind their shields.
Isaac saw the militia look up and confer for a minute. Then one of them raised a flintlock rifle carefully, aiming it at Yagharek.
“Down, Yag!” he yelled. “They’ll kill you!”
Yagharek dropped to the floor, out of sight of the assassin.
There was no sudden manifestation, no creeping flesh or vast stalking figure. All that happened was that the Weaver’s voice sounded in Rudgutter’s ear.
…I HAVE BOUNDED UNSEEN UP TANGLING WIRES OF SKYNESS AND SLIPPED MY LEGS SPLAYED WILLY-NILLY ON THE PSYCHIC DUNG OF THE WEB-REAVERS THEY ARE LOW CREATURES AND INELEGANT AND DRAB WHISPER WHAT HAPPENS MR. MAYOR THIS PLACE TREMBLES…
Rudgutter started. That’s all I need, he thought. He replied with a firm voice.
“Weaver,” he said. Stem-Fulcher turned to him with a sharp, curious gaze. “How nice to have you with us.”
It’s too damned unpredictable, Rudgutter thought furiously. Not now, not bloody now! Go and chase the moths, go hunting…what are you doing here? The Weaver was infuriating and dangerous, and Rudgutter had taken a calculated risk in engaging its aid. A loose cannon was still a lethal weapon.
Rudgutter had thought that the great spider and he had something of an arrangement. As much, at least, as it was possible to maintain with a Weaver. Kapnellior had helped him. Textorology was a tentative field, but it had borne some fruit. There were proven methods of communication, and Rudgutter had been using them to interact with the Weaver. Messages carved into the blades of scissors and melted. Apparently random sculptures, lit from below, whose shadows wrote messages across the ceiling. The Weaver’s responses were prompt and delivered even more bizarrely.
Rudgutter had politely bade the Weaver busy itself chasing the moths. Rudgutter could not order, of course, could only suggest. But the Weaver had responded positively, and Rudgutter realized that stupidly, absurdly, he had begun to think of it as his agent.
No more of that.
Rudgutter cleared his throat. “Might I ask why you have joined us, Weaver?”
The voice came again, resonating in his ear, bouncing on the bones inside his head.
…INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE FIBRES ARE SPLIT AND BURST AND A TRAIL IS TORN ACROSS THE WARP OF THE WORLDWEB WHERE COLOURS ARE BLED AND WAN I HAVE SLID ACROSS THE SKY BELOW THE SURFACE AND DANCED ALONG THE RENT WITH TEARS OF MISERY AT THE UGLY RUIN WHICH STEMS AND SPREADS AND BEGINS IN THIS PLACE…
Rudgutter nodded slowly as the sense of the words emerged. “It started from here,” he agreed. “This is the centre. This is the source. Unfortunately…” He spoke very carefully. “Unfortunately, this is a somewhat inopportune moment. Might I prevail on you to investigate this-which is indeed the birthplace of the problem-in a little while?”
Stem-Fulcher was watching him. Her face was fraught. She listened intently to his responses.
For a strange moment, all the sounds around them ceased. The shots and yells from the warehouse momentarily died. There were no creaks or clanks from the militia’s arms. Stem-Fulcher’s mouth was open, as she hovered ready to speak, but she said nothing. The Weaver was silent.
Then there was a whispering sound inside Rudgutter’s skull. He gasped in consternation, then opened his mouth in outright dismay. He did not know how he knew, but he was listening to the uncanny sound of the Weaver picking its way across various dimensions towards the warehouse.
The officers bore down on Lemuel with a remorseless precision. They tramped across Vermishank’s corpse. They held their shields triumphantly before them.
Above, Isaac and Yagharek had run out of chymicals. Isaac was bellowing, hurling chairs and slats of wood and rubbish at the militia. They deflected them with ease.
Derkhan was as motionless as Lublamai, who lay still on a cot in the corner of Isaac’s living space.
Lemuel let out a desperate yell of rage and swung his powder-horn at his attackers, spraying them with acrid gunpowder. He fumbled for his tinderbox, but they were on him, truncheons swinging. The officer with the stingbox approached, twirling his blades.
The air in the centre of the warehouse vibrated uncannily.
Two militiamen were approaching this unstable patch, and they paused in puzzlement. Isaac and Yagharek each carried one end of an enormous bench, ready to hurl it at the officers below. Each caught sight of the phenomenon. They stopped moving and watched.
Like some eldritch flower, a patch of organic darkness bloomed from nothing in the centre of the room. It expanded into physical reality with the animal ease of a stretching cat. It opened itself, and it stood to fill the room, a colossal segmented thing, a massive spider-presence that hummed with power and sucked the light out of the air.
The Weaver.
Yagharek and Isaac dropped the bench simultaneously.
The militia stopped pummelling Lemuel and turned, alerted by the changing nature of the aether.
Everyone stopped and stared, utterly aghast.
The Weaver had manifested standing directly over two trembling officers. They let out little cries of terror. One dropped his sword as his fingers numbed. The other, more bravely but no less ineffectually, raised a pistol in his violently shaking hand.
The Weaver looked down at the two men. It raised its pair of human hands. As they cringed, it brought one hand down on each of their heads, patting them like dogs.
It raised its hand and pointed up at the walkway, where Isaac and Yagharek stood dumbfounded and afraid. Its unearthly singsong voice resonated in the suddenly quiet room.
…OVER AND UP IN THE LITTLE PASSAGE IT WAS IT WAS BORN THE CRINGING THUMB THE TWISTED RUNT THAT FREED ITS SIBLINGS IT CRACKED THE SEAL ON ITS SWADDLING AND BURST OUT I SMELL THE REMNANTS OF ITS BREAKFAST STILL LOLLING OH I LIKE THIS I ENJOY THIS WEB THE WEFT IS INTRICATE AND FINE THOUGH TORN WHO HERE CAN SPIN WITH SUCH ROBUST AND NAIVE EXPERTISE…