The Weaver bent its elbows up a little and held these hands together, clasping and rubbing them together slowly and incessantly. It was a furtive, disturbingly human motion, like that of an untrustworthy, simpering priest.

The spearpoint feet crept closer. The red-black claws swivelled a little and glinted in the non-light. The hands stroked each other.

The Weaver’s body rocked back and alarmingly forward again.

…WHAT OFFERING WHAT BOON THE HINGED SPLITTERS YOU BRING ME…it said, and suddenly held out its right hand. The militia officers tensed at the quick movement.

Without hesitation Rudgutter stepped forward and placed his scissors into its palm, taking a little care not to touch its skin. Stem-Fulcher and Rescue did the same. The Weaver stepped back with unsettling speed. It looked at the scissors it held, threaded its fingers through the handles and worked each pair rapidly open and shut. Then it moved to the back wall and, moving quickly, it pressed each pair of scissors into a position on the cold stone.

Somehow, the lifeless metal stayed where it was put, clinging to the damp-patterned stone. The Weaver adjusted its design minutely.

“We’re here to ask you about something, Weaver.” Rudgutter’s voice was steady.

The Weaver turned ponderously back to face him.

…THE WEFT OF THREADS SURROUND ABOUND ABOUT YOUR TOTTERING TITTERING CARCASSES YOU TUG AND SHRUG UNRAVEL AND REKNIT YOU TRIUMVIRATE OF POWER ENCASED IN THE BLUE-CLAD BRISTLING WITH SPARKING FLINT BLACK POWDER IRON YOU STILL-POINT THREE HAVE CAUGHT HANGNAIL-SOULS ON THE FABRIC SNAGS THE FIVE WINGED RIPPERS RENDING UNWIND SYNAPSE AFTER GANGLIOL SPIRIT SUCK ON MINDFIBRES…

Rudgutter looked sharply over at Rescue and Stem-Fulcher. All three of them were straining to follow the dream-poetics that was the Weaver tongue. One thing had come across clear.

“Five?” whispered Rescue, looking over at Rudgutter and Stem-Fulcher. “Motley bought only four moths…”

…FIVE DIGITS OF A HAND TO INTERFERE TO STRIP WORLD-FABRIC FROM THE BOBBINS OF THE CITY-KIND FIVE AIR-TEARING INSECTS FOUR FINELY FORMED NOBLE BERINGED WITH SHIMMERING DECORATION ONE SQUAT THUMB THE RUNT THE RUINED EMPOWERING ITS IMPERIOUS SIBLING FINGERS FIVE A HAND…

The militia guard tensed as the Weaver stalked its slow ballet over to Rescue. It spread out the fingers of one hand, held it up in front of Rescue’s face, pushed it closer and closer to him. The air around the humans thickened at the Weaver’s approach. Rudgutter fought down an impulse to wipe his face, to clean it of that unseen clinging silk. Rescue set his jaw. The militia murmured with dithering impotence. Their uselessness was brought home.

Rudgutter watched the little drama uneasily. The last but one time he had spoken to the Weaver, it had illustrated a point it was making, a figure of speech of some kind, by reaching out to the militia captain flanking Rudgutter, lifting him into the air and filleting him slowly, drawing one of its talons through his armour up the side of his abdomen and around under the chin, drawing out bone after steaming bone. The man had screamed and flopped and screamed as the Weaver eviscerated him, its mournful voice resonating in Rudgutter’s head as it explained itself in its oneiric riddles.

Rudgutter knew that the Weaver would do anything that it considered improved the worldweave. It might pretend to be dead or reshape the stone of the floor into a statue of a lion. It might pluck out Eliza’s eyes. Whatever it took to shape the pattern in the fabric of the aether that only it could see, whatever it took to Weave the tapestry into shape.

The memory of Kapnellior discussing Textorology-the science of Weavers-flitted in and out of Rudgutter’s mind. Weavers were fabulously rare, and only intermittent inhabitants of conventional reality. Only two Weaver corpses had been procured by New Crobuzon’s scientists since the city’s birth. Kapnellior’s was hardly an exact science.

No one knew why this Weaver chose to stay. It had announced in its elliptical way to Mayor Dagman Beyn, more than two hundred years ago, that it would live below the city. Over the decades, one or two administrations had left it alone. Most had been unable to resist the pull of its power. Its occasional interactions-sometimes banal, sometimes fatal-with mayors and scientists were the main source of information for Kapnellior’s studies.

Kapnellior himself was an Evolutionist. He held to the view that the Weavers were a species of conventional spider that had been subjected by some Torquic or thaumaturgic fluke-thirty, forty thousand years ago, probably in Sagrimai-to a sudden, short-lived evolutionary acceleration of explosive velocity. Within a few generations, he had explained to Rudgutter, the Weavers evolved from virtually mindless predators into aestheticians of astonishing intellectual and materio-thaumaturgic power, superintelligent alien minds who no longer used their webs to catch prey, but were attuned to them as objects of beauty disentanglable from the fabric of reality itself. Their spinnerets had become specialized extradimensional glands that Wove patterns in with the world. The world which was, for them, a web.

Old stories told how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act-to Weave-was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.

A beauty unrecognized by humans or other denizens of the mundane plane.

Rudgutter was praying fervently that the Weaver did not decide that slaughtering Rescue would make a pretty pattern in the aether.

After tense seconds, the Weaver retreated, still holding up its hand with splayed fingers. Rudgutter exhaled with relief, heard his colleagues and the militia guard do the same.

…FIVE…whispered the Weaver.

“Five,” agreed Rudgutter evenly. Rescue paused and nodded slowly.

“Five,” he whispered.

“Weaver,” said Rudgutter. “You’re right, of course. We wanted to ask about the five creatures loose in the city. We’re…concerned about them…as, it sounds, are you. We want to ask if you will help us clear them out of the city. Root them out. Flush them out. Kill them. Before they damage the Weave.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the Weaver danced suddenly and quickly from side to side. There was a soft, very fast drumming as its sharp feet pattered on the floor. It jigged bizarrely.

…WITHOUT YOU ASK THE WEAVE IS TIGHT RUCKED COLOURS BLEED TEXTURES WEARING THREADS FRAY WHILE I KEEN FUNERAL SONGS FOR SOFT POINTS WHERE WEBSHAPES FLOW I WISH I WILL I CAN COILS OF MONSTERS SHADE SLATESCAPES WINGS MOIL SUCK WORLDWEAVE COLOURLESS DRAB IT IS NOT TO BE I READ RESONANCE PRANCE FROM POINT TO POINT ON THE WEB TO EAT SPLENDOUR REAR AND LICK CLEAN RED KNIFENAILS I WILL SNIP FABRICS AND RETIE THEM I AM I AM A SUBTLE USER OF COLOUR I WILL BLEACH YOUR SKIES WITH YOU I WILL SWEEP THEM CLEAN AND KNOT THEM TIGHT…

It took several moments for Rudgutter to realize that the Weaver had agreed to help them.

Cautiously, he grinned. Before Rudgutter could speak again, the Weaver pointed straight up with its front four arms…I’M TO FIND WHERE PATTERNS GO AMOK WHERE COLOURS RUN WHERE VAMPIR INSECTS SUCK BOBBIN-CITIZENS DRY AND I AND I WILL BE BY BY-AND-BY…