Today on Fantasy-Faction we are excited to reveal the cover for Alex Thomson’s Spidertouch from Angry Robot. Even better, we have an exclusive preview of Chapter One! But who is Alex Thomson and what is Spidertouch about? Let’s find out!
Alex Thomson is the author of Death of a Clone, published in 2018. He lives in Letchworth Garden City—home of the UK’s first roundabout—and his day job is a French and Spanish teacher in Luton. And here is the official blurb for the book:
Enslaved by a mute-race of cruel dictators, Razvan learns their touch-language and works as a translator in order to survive. But war is on the horizon and his quiet life is about to get noisy.
When he was a boy, Razvan trained as a translator for the hated Keda, the mute enslavers of his city, Val Kedi?. They are a cruel race who are quick to anger. They keep a tight hold on the citizens of Val Kedi? by forcing their children to be sent to work in the dangerous mines of the city from the age of eleven until eighteen.
By learning fingerspeak—the Keda’s touch language—Razvan was able to avoid such a punishment for himself and live a life outside the harsh climate of the slums. But the same could not be said for his son.
Now a man, Razvan has etched out a quiet life for himself as an interpreter for the Keda court. He does not enjoy his work, but keeps his head down to protect his son, held hostage in the Keda’s mines. The Keda reward any parental misdemeanors with extra lashings for their children.
Now the city is under siege by a new army who are perhaps even more cruel than their current enslavers. At the same time, a mysterious rebellion force has reached out to Razvan with a plan to utilize the incoming attack to defeat the Keda once and for all. Razvan must decide which side to fight on, who can be trusted, and what truly deserves to be saved.
Sounds interesting, right? Well, here is the cover!
And here is Chapter One of Spidertouch—read and enjoy!
Spidertouch by Alex Thomson
Chapter One
The touch for /Donkey/ is infuriatingly close to the touch for /Mother/ in fingerspeak.
For /Donkey/, the forefinger and thumb squeeze the middle band, and then the little finger taps the lower band twice, whereas /Mother/ uses the middle finger.
This is just a small example of why whoever came up with this bastard language should be thrown from Traitors’ Rock into the Southern Sea.
Unlike the handful of other known languages, fingerspeak also has no permanence. You can repeat a foreign word in your head, and then mull it over until you can winkle out its meaning, but you can’t repeat someone’s touch to yourself, or replicate a sensation. If you had to dream up the most inconvenient language for us to learn, you would be hard pressed to improve on fingerspeak.
Which is bugger all use complaining about in my current position. I say ‘current’ as though it’s a choice, like I’m weighing up a range of exciting career opportunities. The truth is that the elders will never let me leave; there’s too few of us who can interpret fingerspeak. That fact used to make me think I was a cut above the other kids from the quarter—you could see their limited lives mapped out for them in the wrinkles of their fathers’ leathery skin—but who turned out to be the fool in the end?
I stand in the High Chamber, and wait my turn, watching the councillors in conversation. They all wear hooded cowls and their crimson robes denote the highest rank of the Keda. They are in pairs, each with their right hand on the other’s bare left arm, fingers dancing between the three silver bands worn there.
There is one advantage of fingerspeak: it’s virtually impossible for anyone to eavesdrop on your conversation. Even now, ten paces away—I’m not stupid or vulgar enough to stare at the Keda—I can see Double’s fingers moving, but I don’t have a clue what xe might be saying.
For over a century the Keda have ruled Val Kedi?, and yet there’s still so much we don’t know about them. The language barrier keeps us apart, with us translating to maintain a purely functional relationship. The majority of Keda, in their blue robes, have next-to-no contact with citizens; it’s only the councillors and Justices who matter. And the less we know of them, the greater power they have over us. Gender, for example, is a closed book. Someone introduced the pronoun “xe” to describe them a century ago, and there’s been no advance ever since. Their mouths are another example: hidden by their cowls, but thanks to servants’ gossip, we know they do have them—twisted and grotesque, but mouths for eating, all the same. Just not speaking.
There’s only a handful of the Council I know by name—Double, because xe’s the main contact for my quarter. Xe is the one who summons me to pass on instructions and information. Xer name is, by its nature, untranslatable to our tongue—being a mixture of taps and squeezes and no spoken words—but I know xer as Double because it’s a repeated sequence of taps.
Then there’s Giant, who I’ve never fingerspoken with, but xe is unusually tall for the Keda. Xe is the same height as me so xe always stands out.
The most senior member of the Council though—they have no leader, but it is clear that xe is the top dog among them—is known to us as Eleven, because of the complicated series of eleven taps that make up xer name. At a rough guess, it means something like “xe-who-lives-by-the-eastern-something-something-tranquil-grove”. But who knows. The taps all blur into one.
Then there’s Chicken. Now xe, I can’t stand. I mean, obviously, I hate all the Keda—they stole my son, they squeeze us dry, they’ve sucked the life out of our city. They are our captors. But Chicken? Xe is a real pain in the arse.
It pleases us to call xer Chicken because xer given name is not far away from the touch for /Chicken/. It also reduces xer somehow, takes away some of xer power over us. But no matter what we call xer, I can’t forget the way xe looks at me.
You don’t see much of a Keda beyond the bare left arm—their cowls cover most of their heads, so you can only see their flat noses and threatening eyes in the gloom of the hood. But I’ll never forget that one time when we were fingerspeaking, I had to ask xer about the quotas due from our quarter. I essayed a phrase, something like:
(Question) / Number / Barrel /.
It was a simple squeeze and trill of the fingers. But the look of disgust xe gave at my clumsy accent took my breath away. The contempt blazing from xer flared nostrils and eyes was like hard chips of marble cutting my skin. I wanted to scream at xer, “Don’t blame me for not being touch-perfect in your stupid language!”
Needless to say, I sucked it up, received xer answer, and bowed before withdrawing.
Anyway. What I’m trying to say is, there are Keda and there are Keda. Most are anonymous; you see their robes, their piggy little eyes, you hear the occasional snuffly exhalations they make to express shock, pleasure or humour. While they’re all scum, the ones I can’t stand are those like Chicken, who treat us with open contempt.
I catch Ira’s eye. She’s standing by a column twenty paces away, waiting, as I am, for the Keda to summon her services. I raise my eyebrows a fraction, trying to convey “how boring is this?” But she studiously ignores me.
I used to do that with Borzu all the time, trying to read each other’s minds and having a whole conversation with eyebrow twitches, side-eyes and grimaces. Afterwards, we’d compare notes, see how much of each other’s part of the conversation we had understood. Very little, was the usual answer. But Borzu… well, it doesn’t do to dwell too much on what happened to him. He is a salutary lesson as to why the best thing to do is keep your head down among the Keda and be as dull and obedient as possible, as Ira has clearly set out to be.
Astonishingly, some people act like it’s a cushy number being an interpreter for the Keda. Some resent the occasional perks given to us: our interpreter’s residence, and the fact that we skipped our seven-year service in Riona. It was only so that we could learn fingerspeak. But people ignore those years of study and the fact we’re now on the front line, dealing with the Keda and their banal whims every day. Trained monkeys that appear at the snap of a finger. Our lives are not our own, not in the way most citizens can say, and I sometimes wonder why anyone would choose this path on purpose.
As if on cue, Double inclines xer head towards me, and beckons me with xer forefinger. Xe stands a foot shorter than me, but xe stands imperiously as if towering above me. I approach, bow, and xe places xer long, cadaverous fingers on my left arm. Like all the Keda, xer right-hand nails curve round like vicious scimitars, the better for fingerspeaking. Although I’ve been doing this a while, I can’t help but swallow a grimace when I feel the nails’ prickly caress on my skin.
In preparation, the rest of my body zones out and my whole attention focuses on the three bands that enclose my arm. Murky bronze, of course, unlike the delicately embroidered silver ones that the Keda earn the right to wear on their thirteenth birthdays. It pays to keep ours unpolished—these small status signifiers mean a lot to the Keda, especially anything to do with fingerspeak.
I close my eyes and shut out the distant whisper of the sea, and the buzz of Val Kedi? outside. I switch off everything that I don’t need right now, and I feel.
Visitor / (Future) / Day /, Double says without preamble, From / (Unclear).
It’s some distant land; I don’t know the touch and don’t need to know.
Pulse / Fish / Vegetable / Nut / Date /—xe breaks off to make a gesture with xer left hand, like “etcetera, you get the idea”.
(Positive) /, I say. Prepare / Many / Good / Food / Council /.
Double does not react. There is no word for “thankyou” in their language. Or perhaps there is, we’ve just never heard it. Then xe frowns, and grasps my upper band: (Past) / Fish / Small / (Disgust) / Many / Bone / (Question) / Reason /.
I ache to make a sarcastic retort, to say, “A million apologies, Excellency, our lazy fishermen must have guzzled all the plump mackerel themselves, I’ll have them whipped.” But I stifle my irritation and take xer bare arm to respond. It tenses, like it always does.
(Regret) / Councillor /, I say, (Negative) / Many / Fish / Now / (Question) / More / Vegetable /.
Double listens to me, then replies with a curt series of touches.
More / Fish /. Then, as an afterthought, xe spreads xer fingers and taps, Girl / Send / Many / Girl /.
– – –
It was my old teacher I have to blame. Myriam, I think her name was. I adored her, and her classroom. It was down by the beach, next to the wharf where most of us lived, where our fathers fished. The rest of Val Kedi? called our quarter The Stain—a fetid blot that festered outside the city walls—but we didn’t care. The shacks sprouted off each other like a fungal growth, staggering off in all directions, creating twisted alleys, and eaves that jabbed into other buildings. A reek of fish clung to the walls and our clothes. It was a dirty slum, but it was our dirty slum, and most of us stayed happy there, insulated from the rest of the world.
We knew little of what was going on in the city proper, still less of the Keda who rarely troubled to come out to such a distant fringe of Val Kedi?. Occasionally, you might see a green-robed Justice striding down the alleys, but we were warned to keep clear of them, and they were the bogeymen in our bedtime stories.
By the time I was seven, I was helping my father unload his fish in the market each morning, and in the afternoon I would go down to the school by the beach. There we learned our numbers and letters, and if the heat was tolerable, Myriam would take us outside to the famous black sands, and we would practise counting with shells and pebbles.
I found it all easy—couldn’t understand the trouble numbers and letters caused the others—and I soon found Myriam was taking a special interest in me. At first, I noticed the lessons were increasingly directed towards me as the sole audience, while the others were allowed to play and bicker. Then, around the time of my eighth birthday, I took the first steps towards becoming an interpreter.
Myriam had sent the other children home, and sat down by me, unrolling a piece of parchment. She spread it across the table, displaying two lists of words in scratchy calligraphy.
“What’s this?” I asked her.
“This is a different language,” she said. “It might look funny, but just think of it as a secret code.”
“Like the one they use in the market?” I said, thinking of the argot they all used to describe fish and customers—gillies for sunfish, stump for the massive lobsters that were considered a Val Kedi? delicacy, dryden for outsiders who were ripe to be exploited, and so on.
“Exactly,” she said. “I want you to take a look at the code, and see if you can learn it.”
So I sat there, greedily drinking it up. I started to understand that I was good at this, and that not everyone could do it. Sometimes I asked her about a word from the list, checking how it sounded, but mostly I absorbed it alone. Years later, I realised she’d given me a glossary of Gerami, a creole from Mura—our nearest neighbours over the Southern Sea and a major trading partner. At the time, all I saw was the magic of language, and the realisation that the concept of bread was no longer just “bread” but had doubled in size to both “bread” and “deenah”.
I learned it as best I could, allotting two names to every one of the concepts. Then she quizzed me: “Three lemons?” she would say in Gerami, and I, with the parchment in front of me, would have a go at understanding the message, and coming up with a suitable response. I loved it. It was a game, a good one, and my brain started creaking into life after years of fiddling around with numbers and letters.
We did that for a while, gradually getting harder, Myriam taking away the parchment, and giving me more complex constructions to decipher. I found it a challenge, and struggled to remember everything, but she didn’t seem to mind.
Then, one afternoon, she took me to the beach, and told me to sit on a boulder. “There’s someone who wants to meet you,” she said. “He’d like to have a chat with you about what you’ve learned. Could you do that for me, Razvan?”
I nodded, a wary eye on the man who had emerged from behind the limestone steps that led up to the wharf. He was small, Mecunio, clean-shaven back then, a young man but already wearing the black sash of the city elders. He approached me with a bland smile on his lips, and Myriam turned away, leaving us to go back to her classroom.
“Your teacher’s told me all about you, Razvan,” he said in a deep, raspy voice that didn’t sound right for such a small man. “She says you’re a bright boy. That right?”
I didn’t know what to say, so stayed silent.
“Show me,” he said. “Show me what you can do.” Then, in rough Gerami, “Where do you live?”
I recognised the words, and pointed towards the slum beyond the wharf. “The Stain,” I said.
“Describe it for me. In the words you learned.”
“Small house,” I said in Gerami, “near… fish shop.”
It was a long way from perfect, but he seemed impressed. We did a few more exercises like that, with him probing to see the extent of my knowledge, trying to trick me with some words that could easily be confused. Then he took out a baat pipe, tapped the stem, and lit it. It was an odd habit for someone his age, but I was to learn he had always been a septuagenarian, trapped in a younger man’s body.
“Have you ever thought, Razvan,” he said, “that languages don’t just have to use sound?”
I didn’t answer, so he went on. “What’s that smell?” he asked, sniffing.
“The sea.”
“The sea. Right. But go a hundred paces to the east, and you’ll receive a different message to your nose—the stink of The Stain. The fish market.”
“I suppose.”
“Same with taste. I could blindfold you, give you a variety of foods, and each one would be sending you a different message. You’d be able to work out what food I was giving you, even though you couldn’t see it. And touch is no different. Close your eyes.”
I shut them, and he grabbed my hand and shook it twice. “What message is that?”
“What?”
“What am I saying to you with this touch, this movement? Translate it for me, just like you did with the words.”
“Pleased to meet you?”
“Good. What about this?” He delivered a stinging slap to the back of my head, and I opened my eyes, glared at him.
“Ow!”
“Translate.” He raised his hand, palm open.
“I’m cross with you?”
“Right. But what if we could make it more complex than that, base the whole language on touch alone…?”
And that was how it began. Mecunio came to my father’s stall with me that afternoon, and I sat by the fountain while the two of them had a long conversation in the shade of the tattered awning. At one point, my father turned to look at me, as if seeing me for the first time. Finally, they shook hands and Mecunio walked out of The Stain without another glance at me. When it was time to pack away, the two of us worked side by side, lifting the wicker baskets and putting the leftover stock in crushed ice.
“So,” he said, “the man says you’re clever. Says you could learn another language.”
“The touch language?”
“That’s it. Spidertouch, they call it. The one the Crawlers use.” Nobody would risk calling the Keda “Crawlers” in public, but the market was nearly deserted, and we knew everyone who was in hearing distance.
We’d never talked about the Keda—I’d never heard of fingerspeak before Mecunio mentioned it—but I was beginning to realise my father knew more than he let on.
“Not sure I like the idea of you mixing with Crawlers,” he said. “But it’s a way out of your service in the mines. A way out of The Stain. What do you think?”
I had the arrogance of youth, the belief that I was destined for better things. “I like it,” I said. “I could do it.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
I nodded. I wish now I could remember his face, but all I can see are his clothes, frayed at the edges and covered in oily streaks.
– – –
I didn’t see Mecunio again for a few years. But a fingerspeak interpreter came to see me once a week, an old woman with knotted grey hair and a white armband on her right arm, and she began my training. Most families had to pay for private lessons like this, but I later learned that Mecunio had arranged it all—he took an interest in finding new interpreters.
The woman gave me three copper bands and we started by learning the different positions and signals—the taps, the squeezes, the finger trills. She didn’t say a lot—she wasn’t the mothering type, and we didn’t have much else to talk about—but she was a good teacher. We would sit on the rocks, facing each other, holding each other’s left arm. She loved the sun, and when we took breaks she would unravel her shawl and munch on dates, while I retreated to the shade. Once I had learned the positions and signals, she began teaching me the touches, and it started to get difficult. When I disappointed her or was too slow, she would show her displeasure with a tsk or a rap with a birch cane that she carried.
When I turned eleven, I left the black sands and The Stain for good. They moved me to a compound in the centre of Val Kedi?, to become an apprentice in the guild of interpreters. There were nearly thirty of us there, ages ranging from eleven to eighteen, and they expected more than half of us to fail.
On my first day, I realised how massive the city was. I saw Keda strolling up the broad avenues, and the alchemical plumes of silver smoke that hung high in the air. I met Borzu and all the other savvy apprentices, and for the first time I was ashamed of The Stain. I can draw a clear line between my life before that day, and my life after.
My father left the city a year later. The Stain never really forgave him, I think, for keeping his son from the mines, for avoiding what they had all endured. The guilt became too much, and they say he sailed across the Southern Sea. I never saw him again.
– – –
I walk back from the High Chamber with Ira, along Victory Avenue lined with palm trees. Until we reach the Bridge of Peace, we are on proper Keda territory—Val Firuz is an island-citadel at the heart of Val Kedi?, and the only place in the city where they outnumber us. Some elders and high-ranking citizens are permitted to live here, but I’m not sure why you would want to. Ordinary, blue-robed Keda are all around us, though it’s noticeable that they veer away from us as we cross paths, as though a bubble surrounds us.
“They seemed jumpy today,” says Ira in a low voice.
“Who?”
“Council, of course. These visitors that are coming. They’re nervous.”
“How could you tell? Double was just ordering food for a feast. Yours?”
“Same, but xe was quite stressed by it. Got me to repeat back to xer what xe had said. And they were going in and out all morning, all these hurried conversations—Crawlers everywhere.”
I glance at her in surprise. Most elders, interpreters and influential citizens don’t use that word, not if they want to get ahead. But she’s young, no children—she doesn’t have the fear yet.
“Well,” I say, “if it makes them jumpy, can’t be a bad thing.”
“Perhaps. It depends. An unhappy Crawler can be a dangerous one.”
We pass the statue of Kedira, an enormous stone monstrosity that celebrates the victories of their ancestor. Keda are milling around in groups here, and we walk in silence. Nearby is the alchemical institute, and we both keep our eyes on the silver smoke billowing into the sky. Round the corner, and we come to the Bridge of Peace. A pair of iron gates frame either end of the bridge, with a Justice barring entry. Even if some foolhardy citizens managed to rush the first gates, the second pair would be long closed and bolted by the time they had crossed the bridge. Underneath, you can see the Little Firu, a horseshoe-shaped moat that winds its way around the island of Val Firuz, until either end meets the Firu River. This bisects the city in the east and rushes down to the Southern Sea. Between them, they lock the Keda in. Or us, out.
We approach the gates and come to a halt in front of the green-robed Keda. If the councillors are the Keda’s brains, the Justices are the fists. Their job is to enforce discipline, exact punishments, and generally inspire fear in the populace. Like the councillors, I can’t distinguish many Justices by sight—they all look the same to me. I know Scorpion, of course. Xe is one of the Justices who manage my quarter. Supposedly, xer name comes from how xe administers punishment—whipping with a studded belt, leaving the victim covered in xer “stings”. But honestly, I wonder if they come up with these names themselves, and make sure it spreads to build up their reputation. Any of the Keda who are particularly brutish or sadistic get put in line to be a Justice, that’s for sure. The exemplar of this is Beast, a legendary Justice, known throughout Val Kedi? for xer viciousness and xer rhino-like build.
The one here, however, looks like a run-of-the-mill Justice—xe takes xer time, checking our pass, despite the fact xe must remember us from earlier in the day when we entered Val Firuz. Eventually, xe lowers xer poleaxe, and allows us to pass through to the bridge.
The Little Firu is twenty paces wide here. We stop and watch the surface of the water, looking for the eels that swim there. I exhale noisily, and Ira smiles.
“How long you been doing this?” she says.
“Twenty-two years now.”
“It get any easier?”
“Nope,” I reply. A pause. I look at her curiously. “They say you quit, after you finished your apprenticeship. And travelled, before you came back here.”
“They’re right. I thought there had to be a better world than this out there. I went out to find it.”
“And?”
“Turned out I was wrong.”
I snort. “Didn’t have you down as a cynic.”
“Ah, I’m no cynic. Just a good old-fashioned disillusioned optimist.”
“Right. What’s the difference?”
“Don’t know. Put it into fingerspeak, that’ll get rid of the nuance for you.”
“Was that a… joke about fingerspeak?”
“Don’t sound so disgusted.” She smiles. “I remember you, you know. When I was fifteen, you gave us classes for a year. We had you every few days.”
“Really? I haven’t had to teach for a while now. How was I? Was I terrible?”
“Not bad. Better than some, who were deathly boring. Mind you, you never looked like you enjoyed it much.”
“No, I don’t think I did. Imagine what it’s like telling a group of hormonal teenagers how to touch and squeeze each other in the right way, and keep them all focussed.”
She laughs, and we fall silent for a moment. I feel a wave of relief that working with Ira is going to be all right. She may play it prim and proper with the Council, but outside, she’s a real human being.
I could stand here watching the Little Firu until dusk—the thought of having to see the elders bores me beyond words. But Ira jabs me in the ribs, nods at the Justice on the other gate, who is glaring at us for daring to dilly-dally on xer bridge.
“Come on,” Ira says. “We’d better go before xe comes over for a frank exchange of views. Even your fingerspeaking skills won’t get us out of that one.”
Spidertouch is due out in December of this year from Angry Robot! You can learn more about it and Alex Thomson’s other works by following him on Twitter!
Jennie Ivins
Richard Marpole