The Golem's Eye

cycled to a vantage point near the middle of the square. Here, he had set his coals alight, and was busily toasting spiced sausages for the hungry citizens of Prague. A small queue had formed, and to this my master attached himself, glancing casually around for the appearance of Harlequin.
    I positioned myself nonchalantly by one of the perimeter walls and surveyed the square. I didn't like it: too many windows ablaze with the light of the dying sun; it was impossible to tell who might be looking down from them.
    Six o'clock came and went. Harlequin did not appear.
    The sausage queue shortened. Nathaniel was last in line. He shuffled forward, fumbling in his pocket for some change.
    I checked out the passersby in all the distant fringes of the square. A small knot stood gossiping below the town hall, but most people were still hurrying homeward, entering and departing down the roads that fed into the square.
    If Harlequin was anywhere close, he gave no sign.
    My feeling of unease grew. There was no magic visible, but still that tingling sensation on every plane.
    Out of habit, I checked each exit road. There were seven.... That at least was good: plenty of avenues of escape, should the need arise.
    Nathaniel was now second in the queue. A small girl was ahead of him, demanding extra ketchup on her sausage.
    A tall man strode out across the square. He wore a suit and hat; he carried a battered satchel. I eyed him up. He seemed about the right height for Harlequin, though it was difficult to be sure.
    Nathaniel had not yet noticed him. He was watching the small girl stagger off under the weight of her vast hot dog.
     
    The man made for Nathaniel, walking fast. Too fast, perhaps—almost as if he had some unseen purpose...
    I started forward.
    The man passed close behind Nathaniel without giving him a glance. He marched away smartly over the cobbles.
    I relaxed again. Perhaps the boy was right. I was a little jittery.
    Now Nathaniel was purchasing his sausage. He appeared to be haggling with the vendor about the amount of extra sauerkraut.
    Where was Harlequin? The clock on the tower of the Old Town Hall showed twelve minutes past six. He was very late.
    I heard a distant jingling, somewhere amid the pedestrians on the edges of the square—faint, rhythmic, like the bells on Lapland sleighs, heard far off across the snow. It seemed to come from all sides at once. It was familiar to me, yet somehow different from anything I had heard before.... I could not place it.
    Then I saw the specks of blue weaving their way through the bystanders at the entrance to every one of the seven streets, and understood. Boots slapped on cobblestones, sunlight glinted on rifles, metal paraphernalia jangled on the chests of half of Prague's armed forces as they shouldered their way into view. The crowd melted backward, voices rising in alarm. The soldiers stopped suddenly; solid lines blocked each street.
    I was already running out across the square.
    "Mandrake!" I shouted. "Forget Harlequin. We have to go."
    The boy turned, holding his hot dog. He noticed the soldiers for the first time. "Ah," he said. "Tiresome."
    "Too right it is. And we can't go over the roofs, either. We're badly outnumbered there, too."
    Nathaniel looked up, treating himself to a grandstand view of several dozen foliots, which had evidently scrabbled up the roofs on the far side, and were now crouching on the uppermost tiles and chimneys of every house in the square, leering down at us and making offensive gestures with their tails.
    The hot-dog seller had seen the army cordons; with a yelp of fright, he leaped onto the saddle of his bicycle and veered furiously away across the cobblestones, leaving a trail of sausages, sauerkraut, and hissing red-hot coals behind him.
    "They're only human," Nathaniel said. "This isn't London, is it? Let's break our way through them."
    We were running now, toward the nearest street—Karlova.
    "I thought you didn't want me to use any violence or obvious magic," I said.
    "Those niceties are past. If our Czech friends want to start something, we can—oh."
    We still had the cyclist in view when it happened. As if crazed with fear, uncertain what to do, he had made two random sorties back and forth across the square; suddenly, head down, feet pumping, he changed tack, charging straight at one of the army lines. One soldier raised a rifle; a shot rang out. The cyclist gave a twitch, his head slumped to one side, his feet slipped from the