Behemoth (9 page)

“Don’t be absurd,” Alek said. “You’re honoring your father. Of course you’d want to be on this ship. If I weren’t …” He paused. “I mean, if things were different, I’d want to stay here too.”

“You would?”

“Well, maybe it’s silly. But the last few days, it’s like something’s changing inside me. Everything I ever knew is upside down. Sometimes it’s almost as if I’m … in love …”

Dylan’s body tightened beside Alek.

“I know it sounds silly,” Alek said quickly. “It’s quite obviously ridiculous.”

“But are you saying that … ? I mean, what if things
were
different than you thought? If I were … or have you guessed already?” Dylan let out a groan. “Just what are you
saying
?”

Alek shook his head. “Perhaps I’m putting this stupidly. But it’s almost as though … I’m in love with your ship.”

“You’re in love,” Dylan said slowly, “with the
Leviathan
?”

“It feels
right
here.” Alek shrugged. “As if this is where I’m meant to be.”

Dylan let out a strange, choked laugh as he put the medal back into his pocket.

“You Clankers,” he muttered. “You’re all cracked in the head.”

Alek pulled his arm from the boy’s shoulders, frowning. Dylan was always explaining how the airship’s interwoven species sustained one another, how every beast was part of the whole. Surely he could understand.

“Dylan, you know I’ve always been alone. I never had schoolmates, just tutors.”

“Aye, because you’re a barking prince.”

“But I’m hardly even that, because of my mother’s blood. I never mixed with commoners, and the rest of my family has always wanted me to disappear. But here on this ship …” Alek laced his fingers together, searching for the right words.

“This is one place where you fit,” Dylan said flatly. “Where you feel real.”

Alek smiled. “Yes. I knew you’d understand.”

“Aye, of course.” Dylan shrugged. “I just thought you might be saying something else, that’s all. I feel the same way as you … about the ship.”

“But you’re not an enemy here, or hiding what you are,” Alek said, sighing. “It’s much simpler for you.”

The boy gave a sad laugh. “Not quite as simple as you’d think.”

“I didn’t say
you
were simple, Dylan. It’s just that you’ve got no secrets hanging over you. No one’s trying to throw you off this ship and put you in chains!”

Dylan shook his head. “Tell that to my ma.”

“Oh, right.” Alek recalled that Dylan’s mother hadn’t wanted him to join the military. “Women can be quite mad sometimes.”

“In my family they’re a squick madder than most.” Dylan pulled Alek’s jacket from the wormlamp. “Full of stupid ideas. Mad like you wouldn’t believe.”

In the sudden wash of green light, Dylan’s face was no longer sad. His eyes had their usual spark, but there was an angry gleam in them. He tossed the jacket to Alek.

“We both know you can’t stay aboard this ship,” Dylan said quietly.

Alek held his gaze a moment, then nodded. He would never be allowed to serve on the
Leviathan
, not once the Darwinists understood their new engines. They would take him and the others back to Britain for safekeeping, whether or not they learned exactly who he was.

He had to escape.

“I should get back to my skulking, I suppose.”

“Aye, you should,” Dylan said. “I’ll go up and watch the eggs for you. Come back before dawn, though, or the lady boffin will have both our heads.”

“Thank you,” Alek said.

“We can only stay in Constantinople twenty-four hours. You’ll have to find whatever you’re looking for tonight.”

Alek nodded, his heart beating a little faster. He reached
out a hand. “In case we don’t talk again, I hope we’ll stay friends, whatever happens. Wars don’t last forever.”

Dylan stared at the offered hand, then nodded.

“Aye, friends.” He stood up. “Keep that lamp. I can find my way in the dark.”

He turned and climbed up into the blackness without another word.

Alek looked down at his hand, wondering for a moment what had happened, why Dylan had turned suddenly cold. Perhaps the boy had let more of his feelings show than he’d meant to. Or maybe Alek had said the wrong thing somehow.

He sighed. There wasn’t time to think about it—he had skulking to do. Once the
Leviathan
started back for Britain, there wouldn’t be another chance to escape. He had to be off this ship in less than two days.

Alek picked up the wormlamp and started for the hatch.

Deryn had never seen a Clanker city before.

Constantinople rolled past below, the hills filled to bursting with humanity. Pale stone palaces and domed mosques squashed against modern buildings, some rising up six stories tall. Two narrow arms of sparkling water carved the city into three parts, and a placid sea stretched away to the south, peppered with countless merchant ships under steam and sail, flying a dozen different flags.

A pall of smoke hung over everything, coughed up from countless engines and factories, veiling the walkers striding the narrow streets. The muddled air was empty of messenger birds; only a few biplanes and gyrothopters skimmed the rooftops, skirting stone spires and bristling wireless aerials.

It was odd to imagine Alek being from a place just like this, full of machines and metal, hardly alive except
for human beings and their bedbugs. Of course, it was strange to think of Alek at all right now. She’d made such a
Dummkopf
of herself last night, blethering on about Da’s accident, then mistaking Alek’s confidences for something more than they were.

How completely daft, imagining for a moment that a barking prince would think of her
that
way. Alek didn’t even know her real first name. And if he learned somehow that she was a girl in boy’s clothes? He’d run a mile.

Thankfully, Alek was planning to run in any case. Sometime tonight he and his Clanker friends would slip away into that smoky mass of city, and be gone for good. Then she’d be done with acting like some village girl,
her fists twisting in her skirts whenever a certain boy walked by.

Not that pathetic unsoldierly fate for Deryn Sharp.

The
Leviathan
swept in low over the water, and Newkirk leaned closer to the big window of the middies’ mess, staring down, wide eyed. No doubt he was searching the forest of masts and smokestacks below for the deadly spindle of the
Goeben
’s Tesla cannon.

“See any German ships?” he asked nervously.

Deryn shook her head. “Just a few merchants and a coaler. I told you those ironclads would be long gone.”

But Newkirk, his dress uniform cap pulled down tight over his singed hair, didn’t look entirely reassured. The sea below them stretched all the way back to the Dardanelles, with plenty of nooks and crannies to hide a dreadnought in. The
Leviathan
had come to Constantinople over land, after all, not wanting to risk the ironclads’ Clanker lightning again.

“Midshipmen Sharp and Newkirk!” came a voice from the doorway. “I must say you’re both looking handsome.”

Deryn turned and bowed a squick to the lady boffin, feeling awkward in her full-dress uniform. She’d worn it only once before, at her swearing-in ceremony. The tailor who’d made it for her in Paris had probably wondered why some daft girl was going to so much fuss for a costume ball.

Now, a month later, the fancy jacket stretched tight over the new muscles in her shoulders, and the shirt felt as stiff as a vicar’s collar.

“Frankly, ma’am, I feel a bit like a penguin,” Newkirk said, adjusting his silk bow tie.

“That may be,” Dr. Barlow said, “but we must look respectable for Ambassador Mallet.”

Deryn turned back to the window with a sigh. The storerooms were empty, and they had only twenty-four hours to resupply the whole ship. It seemed daft to bring diplomats along to the Grand Bazaar, especially if it meant dressing up. Dr. Barlow was all in riding clothes, like a duchess on a fox hunt.

“Do you reckon we’ll find corned beef in Constantinople?” Newkirk asked hopefully.

“Is-tan-bul,” Dr. Barlow said, tapping her riding crop against her boot once for each syllable. “That’s what we must remember to call this city. Otherwise we shall annoy the locals.”

“Istanbul?” Newkirk frowned. “But it’s ‘Constantinople’ on all the maps.”

“On
our
maps it is,” the lady boffin said. “We use that name to honor Constantine, the Christian emperor who founded the city. But the residents have called it Istanbul since 1453.”

“They changed the name four hundred-odd
years
ago?”
Deryn turned back to the window. “Maybe it’s time to fix our barking maps.”

“Wise words, Mr. Sharp,” Dr. Barlow said, then added quietly, “I wonder if the Germans have already fixed theirs.”

The
Leviathan
came down on a dusty, mile-wide airfield on the western edge of the city.

A mooring mast stood at the center of the field, like a lighthouse in a sea of grass. It looked no different from the mast back at Wormwood Scrubs. Deryn supposed that whether Darwinist or Clanker, an airship had to be secured from the fancies of the wind in pretty much the same way. The dozens of ground men certainly looked sharp as they corralled the landing ropes, their fezzes bright red against the grass.

“Mr. Rigby says they get plenty of practice on German airships,” Newkirk said. “Says we should study their technique.”

“We could, if we were closer,” Deryn said. She itched to be down there helping, or at least working with the riggers topside. But Dr. Barlow had warned the two middies not to muss their dress uniforms.

The engines were pulsing overhead, turning the ship into the wind. Even Alek and his Clanker friends had honest work to do.

Ten minutes later the
Leviathan
was secured by a dozen
ropes, each held by ten men, and the airbeast’s nose was pressed against the mooring mast, its great eyes covered with blinders.

Deryn frowned. “They’ve lashed us a bit high. We’re still fifty feet off the ground!”

“All according to plan, Mr. Sharp,” said Dr. Barlow, pointing her riding crop into the distance.

Deryn looked up and saw what was coming out of the trees—her jaw dropped open.

“I didn’t know Clanker countries had elephantines!” Newkirk cried.

“That’s no beastie,” Deryn said. “It’s a barking
walker
.”

The machine lumbered forward on huge legs, its tusks swaying back and forth as it moved. Four pilots in blue uniforms sat on saddles that stuck out from its haunches, one pilot working the controls for each leg. A mechanical trunk, divided into a dozen metal segments, swept slowly back and forth, like a sleeping cat’s tail.

“It must be fifty feet tall,” Newkirk said. “Even bigger than a real elephantine!”

Sunlight struck the walker as it left the trees, and its polished steel skin glittered like mirrors. The platform on its back was covered by a parasol shaped like a strafing hawk’s cowl. A handful of men in dress uniform stood on the platform, while a fifth pilot perched in the front, working the trunk. The elephant’s large metal ears
flapped slowly, stirring the brilliant tapestries that hung down its sides.

“As you can see,” Dr. Barlow said, “the ambassador travels in style.”

“I know we can’t use beasties here in Clanker-land,” Deryn said, “but why make a walker look like an animal?”

“Diplomacy is all about symbols,” Dr. Barlow said. “Elephants signify royalty and power; according to legend an elephant divined the prophet Mohammed’s birth. The sultan’s own war machines are made in this same shape.”

“Do all the walkers here look like beasties?” Newkirk asked.

“Most of them, yes,” the lady boffin said. “Our Ottoman friends may be Clankers, but they haven’t forgotten the web of life around us. That is why I have hope for them.”

Deryn frowned, thinking for a moment of the mysterious eggs in the machine room. What did the creatures inside them signify?

But there wasn’t much time to wonder. Soon the metal elephant was beside the airship’s gondola, with a gangway level between them.

“Look smart, gentlemen,” Dr. Barlow said. “We have an elephant to catch.”