| “ | A Spider with a bark, indeed. Far mightier than any sword! | ” |
The Spider is an eight-armed printing machine owned by the Committee for Union and Progress. Lilit Zaven and Nene use it to print revolutionary and feminist materials.
In the series[]
Lilit and Zaven show the machine to Alek and Deryn during Deryn's first visit to the warehouse. Deryn thinks that it is a walking machine when she first sees it. Zaven tells her that it is more powerful than a war machine.
Zaven explains the machine's name by describing how the word "text" comes from the Latin word for weaving. Zaven then shows Deryn and Alek the article about womens' voting rights, which he printed as a demonstration. Unfortunatly, neither of them can read Armenian, in which the article is written. The article contains a row of symbols on the bottom of the page, which is a secret code used by the Committee.
Lilit requests Deryn's help when she works with the Spider, and Deryn prefers working with this machine because she feels that it is the most like a living creature. Alek later tells Deryn that Lilit has Deryn working on the Spider with her because she has a crush on Deryn.