I urge you to continue your fabric work, of which I find myself a devotee.

Most faithfully yours,

W.

Isaac looked up slowly at Derkhan.

“Gods only knows what the rest of The Digest’s readers will think of that . . .” he said in a hushed voice. “ ’Stail, that damn spider’s powerful!”

Derkhan nodded slowly. She sighed.

“I just wish,” she said unhappily, “I understood what it was doing . . .”

“You never could, Dee,” said Isaac. “Never.”

“You’re a scientist, ’Zaac,” she said sharply. She sounded desperate. “You have to know something about these damn things. Now please try to tell us what it’s saying . . .”

Isaac did not argue. He reread the note and rummaged inside his head for whatever scraps of information he could find.

“It just does whatever it has to to . . . to make the web prettier,” he said unhappily. He caught sight of Derkhan’s ragged wound, and looked away again. “You can’t understand it, it doesn’t think like us at all.” As he spoke, something occurred to Isaac. “Maybe . . . maybe that’s why Rudgutter’s been dealing with it,” he said. “If it doesn’t think like us, maybe it’s immune to the moths . . . Maybe it’s like a . . . a hunting dog . . .”

He’s lost control of it, he thought, remembering the mayor’s shouts from outside. It’s not doing what he wants.

He turned his attention back down to the letter in The Digest.

“This bit about tapestry-work . . .” Isaac mused, chewing his lips. “That’s the worldweb, isn’t it? So I think it’s saying it likes what we were . . . um . . . doing in the world. How we were ‘weaving.’ I think that’s why it got us out. And this later section . . .” His expression became more and more fearful as he read.

“Oh gods,” he breathed. “It’s like what happened to Barbile . . .” Derkhan’s mouth was set. She nodded reluctantly. “What was it she said? ‘It’s tasted me . . .’ The grub I had, I must’ve been tantalizing it with my mind all the time . . . It’s tasted me already . . . It must be hunting me . . .”

Derkhan stared at him.

“You won’t get it off your tail, Isaac,” she said quietly. “We’ll have to kill it.”

She had said we. He looked up at her gratefully.

“Before we formulate any plans,” she said, “there’s another thing. A mystery. Something I want explained.” She gestured at the other alcove across the dark room. Isaac peered curiously into the filthy obscurity. He could just make out a lumpy, motionless shape.

He knew what it was instantly. He remembered its extraordinary intervention in the warehouse. His breath sped up.

“It wouldn’t speak or write to anyone else,” Derkhan said. “When we realized it was here with us, we tried to talk to it, we wanted to know what it had done, but it completely ignored us. I think it’s been waiting for you.”