As Simple As Hunger

by D Des Anges

  To her concealed joy, the re-listening to old faults was interrupted by the passing of a figure bearing a bear-skin muff, his head down and his strides quick, evidently trying to rid himself of the cold as swift as any man could now.

  Hana made her excuses and left the Dean to his miseries.

  She circled the School the opposite direction, and met with Radigis as if by chance on the path that led to the never-used canal path.

  “Emira!” Radigis cried, kissing the air before her cheek. “The sun shines more brightly for your countenance.”

  “You look hale,” Hana replied, “Good health upon you and your house.”

  “I come to you burdened with a name that will bring your heart pleasure and sorrow,” Radigis said, guiding her away from the canal path and toward the town without seeming to guide her at all. Hana was, despite herself, a little impressed.

  “I come to you with sicknesses and stories and rewards and the falling of the sun,” she replied, recognising the quotation and replying in kind. “And with an answer to the misgivings of one Yorkshireman.”

  “You are a jewel among women,” Radigis said cheerfully, his face red beneath his pale beard. “Did you ever meet a descendent of the great thinker al-Wassid?”

  The tree ahead was laden with crows. The ornithomancers of Durham would be sketching their predictions as soon as the birds went up, and for a moment Hana wished she had training on their bird minds, the better to direct their flight and through them the minds of the city.

  “I met Naim himself,” Hana said, and as Radigis offered his arm she took it. “I was a very little girl, and he was a very old man, and he told me that kindness may be a knife between the ribs as often as a hand to raise the fallen. He spoke of battles, of course, but by then – he was so very old – he spoke for himself, too.”

  She affected to watch two errand boys racing each other the length of the street, their pricked-red thumbs flashing as their arms swung back and forth.

  “Did he tell you how to determine if the kindness needed was a hand or a blade?” Radigis asked, and his question seemed genuine.

  “He might have told my father,” Hana said with a sad smile, “But it did him no good. Thaleb Abdul Mummat thought the kindness needed was a sword, and we were never consulted.”

  “I believe,” Radigis said with sudden, strange sincerity, “that kindness may be neither a blade nor a hand, but a reshaping. That kings may be throned without bloodshed, and without their blood undergoing examination for the faults of their fathers.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I also believe that you have written to Ioan Twelling, and received reply, and are a most gracious and patient Emira in answering me so freely.”

  “It is a pleasure,” Hana said. “Freothogar is supported by all but Wig. Twelling and Gemis discord over Durham, and in the last –” she paused and regarded Radigis’s face carefully, “—the curiosity of both is aroused, and penalties sought for foul conduct.”

  “Hana al Fihri Auda Bedu Ird, confidante of Naim al-Wassid and scholar of forgotten arts,” Radigis said, drawing to a halt that she must halt also. “You are a great friend to my house, and my debt is your treasure. Keep it.”

  “You are too kind,” said Hana, as the crows took off in a great black cloud: across the city, she knew, the pages of the books of ornithomancers began to turn feverishly in search of guidance. “Perhaps now you will give me, O friend of my house, the names of my kin that live, and those that do not?”

  Chapter 17

  His arachnid speed took him in great strides north of the Black Sea towards the very north-most of the earth. He might surmount more obstacles than horsemen or mere foot-walkers, but El Alacrán still had many days’ travel to which his mind gave over whole-heartedly to worrying at his tiny morsel of new knowledge.

  As to whom held responsibility for the abduction of John there seemed a hundred possibilities. As El Alacrán raced for his final task on the journey home, he reasoned that, truthfully, there were only two.

  Either abduction was the work of some hostile faction not his own, completed by some arthropod who had discovered him, or who had employed some human agent through means he knew not (but to what end?); or it was his own faction, under the aegis of the General or perhaps completed by the General in the light of the same discovery (but to what end?).

  Humanity acting in their own, at least, might be expelled from the ranks of the possibilities at once. Were they to come for John, he would be ‘arrested’ not ‘abducted, and there would be no mystery for the Wireless to proclaim. No news should have come to El Alacrán at all: it was why he had always borne this fear of John’s arrest so firmly in his mind, and not considered this sudden occurrence too.

  He found hunting less fraught on his own side of the Wall: there was no call to choose his prey with caution to avoid detection. As consequence El Alacrán ate well, recovering from his long months, his more-than-a-year in hiding.

  He might have endangered himself to enemies of the same phyla as he, but this land was of the neutral faction: they who worked the orgone. They might despise him, but they would not attack. They attacked none, fearful of the wrath of all, and especially of the Northmost.

  Was this last call so important? Should he not set about searching for John, though he knew not where to begin? Should he not avoid confrontation?

  The great dome of silk was mere vanity, of course. It was the home of philosophers, the mathematicians, the eight-legged thinkers and calculators and their doctor friends.

  The engineers, the makers, the orgone-workers, they kept their labours to the north, within the earth. They dwelt by the warmth of the burning rocks that allowed their work, and engaged in no such displays of prowess. They had no need.

  El Alacrán did not stop running until he came to the groundmost entrance to the edifice of his unacknowledged cousins. He halted then only when one of their number descended gracefully from above and clacked her jaws at him in threat:

  Piss off, scorpion. You know the rules.

  Rules, lies. There were only suppositions and hatreds.

  El Alacrán did not budge, but raised his tail and lowered his claws to cover his head.

  Get out, scorpion, there is no place for you here. Back to the high deserts with you. Backstabber.

  The spider clacked her jaws with nervous aggression. It was the move of one who has heard all scorpions are treacherous cowards, but who knows that a desperate coward is as stern a danger as a brave beast.

  I come on behalf of the General-leader and his Political-leader of the Northmost Faction, El Alacrán hissed, his tail curved and ready, for your news, your dues, and your cooperation as ever. Would you like me to tell him you would not cooperate because you’re a petty-minded collection of mammal dung? I’m sure the Mantid encampments are comfortably far away at this time of year and you would have no reprisals to fear.

  It will not threaten, she squeaked, using the same address for him as for one of the faction-slaves: ‘it’. Not ‘you’.

  El Alacrán knew to expect no better, but it did not change his view that the spider should spend a few years having her legs plucked off until she learned that she was no better than her cousins.

  It will not threaten, she repeated. It came from the South, not the North—

  A scorpion may do as he pleases, since nothing he does pleases anyone else, El Alacrán informed her. Ämblik knows me. Call her. Or let me in now, because I’ve a good mind to chew a fucking hole in your wall, and a strong enough stomach to do it.

  Any misdemeanour or assault on our faction, and you will die slowly, she hissed. The spider drew herself back out of his way on her thread as gracefully as she had descended, but with a lot less confidence.

  O you try to poison me and see how well it goes, he clicked, plunging on into the sticky labyrinth of the dome. I am poison from feet to tail.

  We should hang you and starve you, she hissed, from above, dangling on her thread.

  And see how long that
takes you, El Alacrán hissed to himself: it would carry along the strands to her all the same, if it did not rise to meet her.

  He crawled flat-tailed through the maze of cords. To find his own path was easy enough, for though the spiders might swing themselves through every elastic gap they came upon, their poor servants were compelled to walk upon planking roads through the web. They left behind their scent just as he left his: it was no matter to taste the neuter-mantids’ footprints on the wood, and their congregation would take him, one way or another, to Ämblik and her sister-scholars.

  He had not followed the sad trails of indentured neuters far into the web dome when a most unexpected sound came to him.

  Amid the under-plank splashes of the doctors in their channels, the tiny doleful thud of gonadless male-mantids trudging upon the planks, and the twang, thrum, and chatter of the spiders as they navigated their aerial domain, he heard human voices.

  El Alacrán knew too well every distortion and muffled cadence of John’s voice to hope for even a moment that by some madness the spiders had contrived to abduct him to their own unknown end. There was, too, more than one voice.

  He changed his way, following the vibrating strands as they touched the fine bristles upon his tail. He pushed through the net as a spider might, without regard for planks. He sagged lower in the mesh than his class-cousins, but he had skated over the shifting sands of the Great Locust Desert, and the singing strands of the web were no matter to him.

  There was more than one voice, and the voices spoke Albiontongue.

  The neutral faction abutted no territory that spoke any dialect of Albiontongue: the dominions of Albion came to rest against the Wall within the grasp of his own faction, the Northmost.

  Was there some design in this? Had they taken intentionally only Albionmen?

  One of the voices was a woman. Still the content was lost on him: only the cadence and not the meaning reached through the maze.

  El Alacrán pushed on through the strands. How the great mesh amplified and communicated: he heard the spiders tell each other of him, scurrying along their silken highways, but they also conveyed to each other his faction, his affiliation. They would not come after him no matter their cries and tempers, for he was of the Northmost.

  “Why are they making all that noise?” was the first of the Albiontongue he understood

  He saw in fragments through the weave the forms of three humans sitting upon a sprung-floor of planks amid the remnants of a little feast. There was one fair, two dark; one female, two male, and they were as unconcerned by their spider captors as they might be by the presence of cattle.

  “I don’t know, why the fuck would I know?” asked the female voice.

  A third voice said, “Four.”

  Four, clicked one of the spiders.

  She was not one with whom El Alacrán was familiar, but then he’d never been permitted to talk to anyone but La Araña of the mathematicians and Ämblik of the Orgone Technologists before.

  Four.

  El Alacrán peered through the white-grey fibres and sure enough, the fair male human (who was as slender as a mantis and dark of hair) held out four widely-spread fingers to the eyes of his spider captives.

  “Four,” said the fair-hide male again.

  Four.

  Fascinated, El Alacrán crept closer, but the fibrous lattice of the chamber walls rendered him visible to his cousins’ sharp eyes. The all-too-audible cries along the cables had alerted them to his potential presence before they even glimpsed him.

  He had not fully-birthed from his struggles among the silken strands before they had all four – five – six – turned upon him like weathervanes and encircled him like wolves.

  In the channel beside the sprung-floor, a doctor-leech reared his head alongside another of his fellows.

  El Alacrán lowered his tail carefully in a gesture of peace – not surrender – not for the studiers but for the three humans who had balked behind them.

  “What the wyrm dick is that?” cried the dark male, in some alarm.

  El Alacrán observed the studiers and their doctors, and the situation, and began a half-Fold. It was as painful, and would suffocate as a full Fold, but its effects extended no further than his organs of respiration. For the time being all he required was their use for diplomacy.

  He lowered his claws also, braced his feet against the planks upon which he now stood, and concentrated not on the angry hissing of the spiders but on the alignment of speech.

  When at last his Folding was complete, and he felt constricted and stretched all at once, he called out to the humans in Albiontongue, “How long have they had you here and how did they come by you, Albionmen?”

  “W—did that just—it—have—what’s—?” the dark male spluttered, pointing at El Alacrán as he got to his feet. He cast an anxious glance at the female and the fair male, for confirmation.

  They seemed no more comforted by a familiar language than he.

  “Alright,” the dark male snapped, apparently finding his tongue at last, “what’s going on now?”

  “What if I answer your question, and you answer mine, Goodman, would that be acceptable?” El Alacrán asked, as the spider-scholars stared at him and one of the doctor-leeches fled down his channel without apparent cause.

  Are you speaking to the humans? hissed one of the six. How are you doing this? Where did you learn it?

  What are they saying? asked another.

  How are you doing this? clicked a third, too excited to be enraged.

  El Alacrán flicked his tail at them in an impatient threat. To unFold now would cause further pain and only require reversal in a second. They could wait their turn for answers.

  The humans – the dark pair, at least – were in conference. The third, the fair male, looked at him as if in some trance.

  “We’ve been here four days,” said the female, apparently elected speaker for the humans, as she broke apart from the dark male. “Your friends –” the word was laden with sarcasm, for it was doubtless as obvious to her as to any thinking creature that El Alacrán was no friend to the spiders, “—picked us out of the woods and ate our horses. They brought us here.”

  What did she say? squeaked the smallest of the spiders.

  El Alacrán waved his claw at him angrily. Had he the use of hisses he would have hissed and threatened the male-spider, but instead he could only click his claw in a menacing approximation of go fuck yourself and be quiet which sounded a great deal like suck a horse dry when so imprecise.

  “What the fuck is going on?” the dark male insisted.

  “That is a very general question,” El Alacrán said. “I may need another answer first. What were you doing on the woods on our side of the Wall?”

  He noticed that both the dark female and the dark male looked briefly at the fair male, then at each other, before the dark female shrugged, and the dark male said, “That is a very complex matter.”

  “As to ‘what is going on’,” El Alacrán replied, “I can tell you only that I have just arrived on business from my leader, and in exchange for your cooperation, I will share what our friends here are up to as soon as I have it from them.”

  It was to be a painful day of Folding and unfolding.

  El Alacrán was grateful now of his earlier gluttony, for the pain would else exhaust him down to a stupor. He lay still against the planks, one claw raised in protection as the spiders regarded him with wary eyes. Once the unFolding was enough complete, he hissed a sore and wretched hiss:

  What are you doing with them?

  We are not obliged to tell the Northernmost faction of every discovery made in our own land— began one, indignant and shrill.

  Yes you are, El Alacrán corrected, you are obliged to tell every-faction of every fucking discovery because transparency and cooperation is the price you pay for neutrality, you pernickety word-weaving hairy ball of mammal shits.

  Then we are not obliged to –

  I asked what
you were doing with them, not why you were refusing to tell anyone you had them, El Alacrán reminded the smallest of the spiders.

  His entire respiratory process hurt and would hurt more in a moment. The humans were gathered together, the fair male farther apart, all staring at the discussion as if their eyes were tied to it.

  As far as I can tell you’re playing swap-word in a language you physically cannot speak and feeding them apples. Why?

  You couldn’t possibly understand, the smallest spider explained.

  I could stab out your eyes, El Alacrán pointed out. It might not help me to understand with my poor ignorant devious backward scorpion mind, my fellow-arachnid, but it would make me feel better.

  We will learn from them of human civilisations – clicked one of the others, which was a little more help.

  Civilisation, El Alacrán corrected, they’re all from the same one.

  They’re different shades! squeaked the smallest.

  It’s complicated. El Alacrán clacked his claws at the smallest spider.

  He was beginning to wish there was some way to make only one of them talk at once, but spiders were never good at waiting their turn or coming to a consensus. It was how, he thought, they had remained at the mercy of others for so long; they would not cooperate for long enough to fight outsiders.

  You mean to examine the whole of human culture through these three?

  Not all three, clicked the largest, that won’t be necessary. And La Sangijuela wishes to know more intimately the placement of their organs and movements of blood.

  Thank you, a straight answer at last. You bloody spiders. And with this, El Alacrán pressed his body down against the planks in the hopes that this would bring less pain to his body as he reFolded his respiration and maw once more.

  It did not.

  “What is to become of us?” asked the dark female as he pushed himself once more from the floor.

  Darting under the tallest of the spiders without warning, he came to the sides of the humans.