Serpents and Stairways

Chapter I - Part 1

The maiden was walking through a mist-filled forest, accompanied by the headless figure of her mechanical knight. Leaning on his right arm—the one remaining after the dirigible crash—she was making short and careful steps, hopeful that each was taking her in the direction of the town.

"Oh, how would Thomas Reid have laughed," she said, adjusting her cracked dark glasses with a tap, and explained, "The author of the Headless Horseman. I know you'd call the novel belles-lettres however..."

The automaton shrugged the shoulder joint of his torn-off arm. Dinah (which was the maiden's name) rolled her eyes. She knew her companion well enough to guess the thought behind that subtle gesture. And that without even seeing it—only by the click-clacking rustling of the cogs.

"Stop being a snob, Servantes! It's about to be added to the curriculum back in the Commonwealth of Steel." She licked her split lip and added, as if that could lend any more weight to her words, "We were told so at the Stylistics class."

Servantes didn't respond and Dinah made an effort to look at his broken neck. She could imagine it well—the shards of fortified porcelain casing sticking out like broken teeth of a monster's wide-open maw, the ongoing churning of gears, levers and springs inside, and in the very depth, in the secluded darkness of the automaton's body—the warmth of the faint aetherial crystal glow. Yes... Or something along those lines.

With scraped fingers, she reached for and picked a large dark blur from the ruffled collar of her companion. Last year's leaf crackled in her hand.

"It's funny that your ruff isn't charred," she mumbled, remembering the first thing she saw after regaining consciousness—the headless automaton against the backdrop of a blazing airship with that thing he put on top of his broken neck—a vision made even more surreal when performed by a few blots of color and accompanied by ringing in ears.

Sure. Funny.

Their two-seated dirigible airship crashed straight into a lake spiked with predatory sharp rocks. Dinah couldn't remember the fall itself, but only the moment when the air suddenly became thin, and everything got unexpectedly amusing. And, just a few moments before that, a silhouette blocking out the sun.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself lying on the grass, covered with a blanket. Servantes's head and arm, several swollen-wet study books, a bottle of water and her tortoiseshell comb were arranged next to her—like burial gifts, brought for her travel into the valley of the shadow of death. That appeared to be everything that Servantes was able to salvage from the wreckage.

"Say, the question is surely stupid, but I have to ask." She said then, just after he, headless, leaned over her in a careful bow. "That was the dragon who attacked us, wasn't it?"

His neck joint twitched. Servantes nodded.

How long ago was that? At the moment it didn't feel important to know. They've walked far enough that it stopped smelling of smoke, so they didn't have to fear a forest fire. Neither they had to fear wild animals—even with just one arm Servantes could protect her. And his head was for looks rather than for looking anyway, so sooner or later, but eventually they should come upon a road. At least Dinah was hoping for that.

"I once read my father's newspaper... Not sure which one, probably New-Hamilton Times... There was an article commemorating the Great Fire of 1845."

Dinah squinted, remembering that distant morning. Her imagination recovered a map of the article, sketched in the voice of her father—back when reading aloud for her could be a token of parental affection, and not a relentless necessity. In between the chronology, the saltpeter warehouse, and the explosion nested a brief paragraph about a fireman, who died of a heart attack when everything had already settled down. Her father then stopped reading and explained that even three weeks after breathing in hydrogen cyanide one could find himself in a sudden coma.