Slowly and silently, Bentham Rudgutter reached into the bag he carried and brought out the large grey scissors he had had an aide buy in an ironmonger’s on the lowest commercial concourse of Perdido Street Station.

He parted the scissors without a noise, held them up in the cloying air.

Rudgutter brought the razor edges together. The room reverberated with the unmistakable sound of blade sliding along sharpened blade, and snapping shut with an inexorable division.

The echoes trembled like flies in a funnelweb. They slid into a dark dimension at the room’s heart.

A gust of cold sent gooseflesh dancing across the backs of those congregated.

The echoes of the scissors came back.

As they returned and crept up from below the threshold of hearing, they metamorphosed, becoming words, a voice, melodious and melancholy, that first whispered and then grew more bold, spinning itself into existence out of the scissor-echoes. It was not quite describable, heartbreaking and frightening, it tugged the listener close; and it sounded not in the ears but deeper inside, in the blood and bone, in the nerve-clusters.

. . . FLESHSCAPE INTO THE FOLDING INTO THE FLESHSCAPE TO SPEAK A GREETING IN THIS THE SCISSORED REALM I WILL RECEIVE AND BE RECEIVED . . .

In the fearful silence, Rudgutter gesticulated at Stem-Fulcher and Rescue, until they understood, and they raised their scissors as he had done, opened and sharply shut them, slicing the air with an almost tactile sound. He joined in, the three of them opening and closing their blades in macabre applause.

At the sound of that snapping susurration, the unearthly voice resonated into the room again. It moaned with an obscene pleasure. Each time it spoke, it was as if what faded into audibility was only a snatch of an unceasing monologue.

. . . AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN DO NOT WITHHOLD THIS BLADED SUMMONS THIS EDGED HYMN I ACCEPT I AGREE YOU SLICE SO NICE AND NICELY YOU LITTLE ENDOSKELETAL FIGURINES YOU SNIP AND SHAVE AND SLIVER THE CORDS OF THE WOVEN WEB AND SHAPE IT WITH AN UNCOUTH GRACE . . .

From out of shadows cast by some unseen shapes, shadows that seemed stretched-out and taut, tethered from corner to corner of the square room, something stalked into view.

Into existence. It bulked suddenly where there had been nothing. It stepped out from behind some fold in space.

It picked its way forward, delicate on pointed feet, vast body bobbing, lifting multiple legs high. It looked down at Rudgutter and his fellows from a head that loomed colossally above them.

A spider.

Rudgutter had trained himself rigorously. He was an unimaginative man, a cold man who ruled himself with industrial discipline. He could no longer feel terror.

But, gazing at the Weaver, he came close.