Serpents and Stairways

Chapter II - Part 1

They were going in circles and there was no way that the old man hadn't noticed that.

On improvised stages, decorated with colossal paper flowers, parade officers were spinning in dances with beauties wrapped in vibrant dresses. Again and again feathers, hats, shrapnel of hairpins, and identical, as if factory-made, pomaded moustaches flashed. Again and again the wagon passed the same streets, endlessly stumbling into the loitering crowds and barricades of army backpacks.

March gave way to waltzing.

"Well, I don't know how to get outta here. Everywhere is blocked!" The coachman-in-denial grumbled, "But so you know, it's just twenty minutes to the lift, that broken thing, by foot from outta here."

"Point taken." Georg nodded and jumped off. A small puddle under his shoes was broadcasting an image of the Lower city, flipped upside down.

"When the old man was bringing the girl and her automaton to the workshop, there wasn't even a hint of this topographical illiteracy," he thought, listening in to scraps of conversations—mostly on improbability of war. "What could that mean?"

And that broken thing? Why pretend not knowing about the aerial lift to the Upper city? Georg noticed the old man's first look at Servantes—without fear or confusion, just subtle curiosity and vague recognition.

The young man walked under an arch, descended a set of stone stairs with ornate metal railings into the web of narrow streets of Gebal. The sounds of the celebrations got quieter, enough for him to hear echoes of his own footsteps.

Although not just his own. Someone else was also following him.

Georg sighed and walked faster; whoever was following him did the same. Fine. He sped up and turned to a sideway street, making a loop that'd bring him back to the crowds.

He was now walking towards a light—an exit to a wider street (the one he was on right now was barely wide enough for two people to pass each other). But straight in front of him, under a round shoemaker's signboard, appeared a dishevelled boy wearing a boater hat, breathing heavily as if after running, and looked at someone over Georg's head. Uh-huh. So that's how it is.

Georg made a sharp turn to another sidestreet and bolted, grabbing a handful of pebbles from someone's flower pot.

"Wait! You!" The one who the boy looked at shouted and also rushed ahead, although, obeying the laws of inertia, two of his pursuers collided at the tight unexpected turn, and Georg wondered if they stood on their feet.

He didn't stop to check. He turned again, and then one more time, running past the once-beautiful medallions with stucco female heads and laurel wreaths, the dusty windows behind black iron bars, and the dented stone doorsteps.

Another turn. Two of them. It was just those two. No more. Good.

At some point he looked back and, putting all of him into it, threw the pebbles.

"Argh, You... !"

Hit.

The light was already so close! Just a little bit more, and he'd escape into the crowd. A couple more minutes and he'd be lost in the usual city traffic.

To his misfortune there, on the steps that led up to the busy street, sat a drunk man with a milky face in raspberry spots and a hat over his eyes. Georg didn't even notice him at first, but the man stood up with a heavy sigh and, in clumsy steps, blocked the passage with the entire mass of his body.

"Wheredyathink ya goin', ya thief?" The man snorted, barely supporting his soft body with rubbery legs. There was no other explanation, in his world view, why an adult man could be escaping two others.