The caves were lined with webbing, strung with lines. Every step that Nth took connected the delicate hairs of his feet with the furious activity of the nest. He knew that there was a larger cavern ahead—probably an old brood chamber from when the colony had been smaller—and he caught snatches of instruction and report from all around. The dwellers in the caves had chosen a place to make their stand and repel the intruders. They were frantically stringing up webs and traps there even now. Nth could well imagine what that would entail. There would be great webs of strands as strong as metal, as translucent as glass, to catch those who tried to run or to flank. There would be lines tensioned tighter than bowstrings, so that any that stumbled into them would be whipped up toward the ceiling, there to dangle helplessly. There would be thick-laid snarls of webbing to catch feet and limbs. And the ceiling and walls would be dense with the natives, and more would pack out the many tunnels that led to that cavern. The nest’s whole complement of hunters had been mobilized.

He tried to recapture his daydream: the glorious triumph over the human invaders. He tried to picture it, but he pictured it as human eyes would see it, not as the complex interplay of vibration, scent, and spatial awareness that would be that same scene to a spider.

And still he led on, and still the humans followed him, ducking and twisting through the passageways, their eyes blinded by their own lights to everything else that transpired around them.

And he was dreadfully aware of time moving past him: it was a common concern of man and spider, the fine-running sands that led to the perfect moment of attack. He and the nest were linked to the same glass, slaves to that instant of ambush and violence that was coalescing inescapably in their shared future. In leading the humans, he was the attackers’ accomplice.

And he felt the twist inside him, telling him he needed to do something.

He tried to ignore it, but it was insistent, a growing clamor that doubled with every few pattering steps. The solid, leaden steps of the humans accused him, thump, thump, thump. Each impact resounded through the organs of his body, betrayer! And he tried not to care, but the feeling grew and grew. He must do something. He could not pretend that he was in some way a spectator to the upcoming clash. He was the fulcrum. He was responsible.

It’s Penthos’s laws, he told himself. They’re making me care. This is doing them harm, so I’m not allowed to do it. But he could not know if that was true. Did the slipshod constrictions the humans had placed on him stretch to cover this eventuality? He did not know. He would only find out when the pain visited him.