Arachne was there, working at one of her tables. It didn’t really surprise me that she was still up; Arachne doesn’t follow human sleep patterns and I never know when she’ll be around. Sometimes she’ll seem to be in her cave for weeks on end, and other times she’ll just disappear. I’ve never asked her where she goes—for all her hospitality, Arachne’s quite private—but I think it’s got something to do with the tunnels beneath her lair. “Hey,” I said as I walked in.

“Hello, Alex,” Arachne said without looking up. She was concentrating on something, working with all four front legs at once. I could feel magic radiating from it, complex and layered. “Can’t sleep?”

I shook my head, dropping onto one of the sofas. “Did that cache have the items you needed?” Arachne asked.

“Yeah. Thanks for holding on to them.”

“When will you be using them?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I see.”

“Will and the Nightstalkers aren’t going to stop,” I said. “I’ve checked.”

Arachne kept working. “Do you think I’m making a mistake?” I asked.

“You’ve always been good at surviving, Alex,” Arachne said. “I think the reason you’ve been so good at it is that you focused on it completely. You didn’t have any doubt or hesitation; you just did what you needed to stay alive. Now for the first time you’re wondering whether you deserve to stay alive. Before you can face your hunters again, you’ll have to decide how much your life is worth.”

I was silent. “Here,” Arachne said, shaking out what she was working on. “Come and take a look.”

I rose and walked over, looking curiously at the outfit on Arachne’s table. It looked like some kind of black-and-grey uniform with mesh layers. “What is it?”

“Armour.”

“Who’s it for?”

Arachne gave me a look. It’s hard to read a giant spider’s body language, but I had the feeling she was exasperated. “For someone able to see the future, you can be remarkably slow on the uptake.”

I blinked. “It’s for me?”

“The outer layer is a reactive mesh,” Arachne said, tapping the jacket with her left front leg. “It responds to impacts by stiffening to spread the force over a wider area, and it can adjust its angle to change a direct blow into a glancing one. Enough to turn a knife or a blade. It should resist most other low-velocity impacts, but once an attack gets fast enough it does become difficult for the mesh to react in time, and of course anything with enough penetration can still punch a hole. It doesn’t stop momentum either, so—”