Twelve checked her axes, tightened her furs, and settled Widge next to her bag on the ground. He tried to follow her, but she sent him back firmly, unwilling to endanger him on the web. He’d had more than enough excitement for one day. Slowly and steadily, hand over hand, she climbed the rope until she was able to throw an arm over the branch to haul herself up. She sat astride it, facing toward the web.

“Be cautious,” Dog called. He gazed up at her, unblinking, his concern obvious.

Twelve nodded but didn’t look down.

“Remember: constant vigilance,” she whispered to herself. She could feel her senses sharpening and imagined Victory nodding her approval.

One of the web’s anchor threads was attached to her branch where it narrowed. Gently, she shifted her weight toward it, listening for telltale creaks or cracks in the wood, but there was nothing. It held firm.

Foxpaw had fallen silent, but she heard him gasp with the others when she reached for the silk on the underside of the branch and swung down onto it. For a dizzying instant, her stomach swooped as the silk creaked under her weight. Above, she was vaguely aware of the tug sending ripples of tension across the web, but she held her concentration, gripped hard with her hands and feet, and began to climb.

By the time she reached the main web, her shoulders were screaming. She clambered onto it gratefully, climbing upward more easily now, as though it were a ladder. Foxpaw was near the center and, when she drew level with him, he wriggled frantically until his cocoon spun to face her. The silk was thickly wound but thinner around his head. Through the opacity, Twelve could see a small face with enormous golden eyes staring at her.

“Are you really going to do this?” he whispered.

“Of course,” Twelve said, more impatiently than she’d meant to sound. “I haven’t climbed all the way up here just to chat.”

He gulped audibly as Twelve pulled her knife from her belt.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, trying to sound reassuring, “but I have to cut through this webbing.”

Foxpaw tried to nod and a shivering vibration spread outward along the shining silks. Twelve paused and tracked the movement with her eyes as it vanished into the canopy high above. She suppressed a shiver of her own, hoping the deathspinner was nowhere nearby to feel the disturbance in its web. She set to work, cutting carefully through the sticky mass.

“Be quick!” Six called from the ground. Twelve nodded, her tongue poking out between her teeth and a frown of concentration on her brow.

She was so intent on her work that she didn’t feel the first vibration quivering back toward them.

Chapter

Twenty-Nine