Behemoth

FIVE

“This is entirely unacceptable!” Dr. Barlow cried.

“I’m s-sorry, ma’am,” the guard sputtered. “But the captain said the Clanker boy wasn’t to have visitors.”

Deryn shook her head—the man’s resistance was already faltering. He was backed up against Alek’s stateroom door, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“I am not a visitor, you imbecile,” Dr. Barlow said. “I’m a doctor here to see an injured patient!”

Tazza’s ears perked up at the lady boffin’s sharp tone, and he let out a low growl. Deryn held his leash a squick tighter. “Shush now, Tazza. No biting.”

“But the surgeon was already here,” the guard squeaked, staring wide eyed at the thylacine. “Said the boy only bruised a rib.”

“On top of suffering from shock, no doubt,” Dr. Barlow said. “Or did you fail to notice our recent encounter with a prodigious amount of electricity?”

“Of course not, ma’am.” The guard swallowed, still eyeing Tazza nervously. “But the captain was quite specific—”

“Did he specifically forbid doctors from seeing the patient?”

“Er, no.”

Just give up, thought Deryn. It didn’t matter that Dr. Barlow was a boffin—a fabricator of beasties—and not a pulse-taking stick-out-your-tongue doctor. She’d be seeing this particular patient one way or another.

Deryn hoped that Alek really was all right. The Clanker lightning had danced across the whole ship, but it must have been worst in the engine pods, with all that metal about … Well, second to worst, anyway. Newkirk’s hair was half burnt off, and he had a knot on his head the size of a cricket ball.

But how had Alek bruised a rib? That didn’t sound like something an electric shock would do.

Finally the guard surrendered his post, slinking off to check with the watch officer and trusting Dr. Barlow to wait till he got back. She didn’t, of course, just pushed the door straight open.

Alek lay in bed, his ribs wrapped in bandages. His skin was ashen, his dark green eyes glistening in the dawn light streaming through the portholes.

“Barking spiders!” Deryn said. “You’re as pale as a mealyworm.”

A wan smile spread across the boy’s face. “It’s good to see you, too, Dylan. And you, Dr. Barlow.”

“Good morning, Alek,” the lady boffin said. “You are pale, aren’t you? As if you’ve lost some blood. An odd symptom for electrocution.”

Alek grimaced as he struggled to sit up higher. “I’m afraid you’re right, ma’am. Mr. Hirst shot me.”

“Shot you?” Deryn cried.

Alek nodded. “Luckily it was one of your feeble compressed air guns. Dr. Busk said the bullet hit a rib and bounced off, but nothing’s broken, thanks partly to my fencing armor. I should be walking about soon enough.”

Deryn stared at the bandages. “But what in blazes did he shoot you for?”

“He was aiming for Klopp. They had a … disagreement. Klopp realized what was about to happen—what the Tesla cannon was—and decided to turn us around.”

“A Tesla cannon?” Dr. Barlow repeated. “As in that awful Mr. Tesla?”

“That’s what Klopp says,” Alek said.

“But you Clankers didn’t turn us around,” Deryn said. “Everyone says that the beastie itself turned, because it got scared.”

Alek shook his head. “Klopp reversed the port engine first, then the airbeast followed suit. It seems the Leviathan has more sense than its own officers.”

“You said they had a disagreement?” Dr. Barlow asked. “You mean you changed course without orders?”

“There wasn’t time to wait for orders,” he said.

Deryn let out a low groan. No wonder Alek was under guard.

“That’s barking mutiny,” she said softly.

“But we saved the ship.”

“Aye, but you can’t disobey orders just because the officers are being daft. Especially not in battle—that’s a hanging offense!”

Alek’s eyes widened, and the room was silent for a moment.

Dr. Barlow cleared her throat. “Please don’t say alarming things to my patient, Mr. Sharp. He’s no more a member of this crew than I am, and is therefore not subject to your brutish military authority.”

Deryn bit down a reply. She doubted Captain Hobbes would see it that way. This had probably been his worry since the Clankers had come aboard, that they’d ignore the bridge and pilot the ship whichever way they wanted.

Changing course wasn’t like skylarking or learning to fence on duty. It was mutiny, pure and simple.

The lady boffin sat primly on the stateroom’s only chair, snapping her fingers for Tazza to come to her.

“Now, Alek,” she said, stroking the thylacine’s striped flank. “You say that Klopp was operating the engine. So this ‘mutiny’ wasn’t your idea?”

The boy thought for a moment. “I suppose not.”

“Then, pray tell, why are you under guard?”

“When Mr. Hirst pulled the pistol, I tried to take it from him.”

Deryn shut her eyes. Striking an officer—another hanging offense.

“Very sensible of you,” Dr. Barlow said. “This ship won’t get very far without its master of mechaniks, will it?”

“Where is Klopp now?” Alek asked.

“I reckon he’s in the brig,” Deryn said.

“And not at work on the engines, thus further delaying my mission.” Dr. Barlow stood up, straightening her skirts. “Don’t you worry about Master Klopp, Alek. Now that I have all the facts, I’m sure the captain will see reason.”

She handed the leash to Deryn.

“Please walk Tazza and then check on the eggs, Mr. Sharp. I don’t trust that Mr. Newkirk, especially with his head swelling up like a melon.” She turned. “In fact, I’d much rather that you were watching them, Alek. Please do get better soon.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll try,” the boy said. “But if you don’t mind, could Dylan stay a moment?”

The lady boffin’s eyes measured them both, and then she smiled. “Of course. Perhaps you could amuse Mr. Sharp with whatever you know about this … Tesla cannon? I have some familiarity with the inventor, and it seemed a most intriguing device.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much—,” Alek began, but Dr. Barlow was already out the door and gone.

Deryn stood silently a moment, wondering where to start. With the Clankers’ lightning contraption? Or how Newkirk had almost burnt to a crisp? Or the possibility that Alek would be court-martialed and hanged?

Then her eyes fell on his bandages, and an awful feeling went through her. If the gun had been pointed a few inches higher, Alek might be dead.

“Does getting shot hurt much?” she asked.

“Like a mule kicked me.”

“Hmm. I’ve never been daft enough to let that happen.”

“Nor have I.” Alek smiled weakly. “But it feels about right.”

The two were silent again, Deryn wondering how things had gone pear-shaped so fast. Before Newkirk had spotted the ironclads, she’d been hoping that Alek would wind up staying on the Leviathan somehow. But she hadn’t meant lying wounded in bed, or clapped in irons for mutiny, or both.

“This is the second time someone’s shot at me,” Alek said. “Remember those gunners on the zeppelin?”

Deryn nodded slowly. Back in the Alps, the daft prince had stepped out into the middle of a battle, right in front of a machine gun. Only a hydrogen leak had saved him, the German gunners setting their own airship aflame.

“Perhaps I wasn’t meant to die that day,” he said. “Or last night, either.”

“Aye, or perhaps you were just barking lucky.”

“I suppose,” Alek said. “Do you really think they’ll hang us?”

Deryn thought a moment, then shrugged. “There aren’t any rules for something like this, I reckon. We’ve never had Clankers aboard before. But they’ll listen to the lady boffin, because of her grandfather’s name.”

Alek grimaced again. Deryn wondered if it was his wound, or being reminded that Dr. Barlow was related to old Charles Darwin himself. Even after serving on a living airship, the Clankers were still superstitious about life threads and fabrication.

“I wish we had mutinied,” Alek said. “And ended that pointless battle before it started. Klopp and I thought about stopping the engines and making it look like a malfunction.”

“Well, thinking isn’t the same as doing,” Deryn said, slumping onto the chair. She’d entertained madder ideas than mutiny. Like telling Alek that she was a girl, or giving Dr. Barlow a smack—the latter more than once. The trick was never to let what you were thinking slip out into the world.

“And anyway,” she continued, “I haven’t heard about this mutiny business, so the officers must be keeping dead quiet. Maybe the captain wants to let you off without looking soft. Everyone thinks it was the airbeast who turned us around, for fear of that Clanker cannon.”

“The beast did turn us around. It must have smelled the lightning—it knew we’d all burn.”

Deryn shuddered again, as she did every time she thought of how close they’d come. She could still see the Huxley, blazing in midair just like Da’s balloon.

“But Newkirk isn’t dead,” she told herself softly.

“Pardon me?”

Deryn cleared her throat. She didn’t want to wind up with her voice squeaking like a girl’s. “I said, the engines are dead. And the airbeast has gone bonkers, and thinks it’s still running away from that Tesla thingie. We’re halfway to Africa!”

Alek swore. “I suppose those ironclads are already there.”

“What, in Africa?”

“No, Dummkopf—Constantinople.” He pointed at the desk in the room. “There’s a map in that drawer. Kindly fetch it for me.”

“Aye, your princeliness,” Deryn said, hauling herself up to get the map. It was just like Alek, to be thinking of maps and schemes while lying wounded, guilty of a hanging offense.

She sat on the bed beside him, smoothing out the roll of paper. It was labeled in Clanker writing, but she could see it was the Mediterranean.

“The ironclads were headed north into the Aegean,” Alek said. “See?”

Deryn traced the Leviathan’s course from southern Italy with one finger, until she found the spot where they’d fought the Goeben and Breslau—almost due south of Constantinople.

“Aye, they were headed that way.” She pointed at the Dardanelles, the narrow stretch of water that led to the ancient city. “But if they head north, they’ll be trapped in the strait, like a fly in a bottle.”

“What if they plan to stay there?”

Deryn shook her head. “The Ottoman Empire is still neutral, and ships at war can’t hang about in a neutral port. Dr. Barlow says we’re only allowed to stay in Constantinople for twenty-four hours. It must be the same for the Germans.”

“But didn’t she also say that the Ottomans were angry with the British? For stealing their warship?”

“Well, aye,” Deryn said, then muttered, “but that’s just borrowing, really.”

To be truthful, though, it had been a bit like stealing. Britain had just completed a new dreadnought for the Ottoman navy, along with a huge companion creature, some new sort of kraken. Both the warship and the creature had already been paid for, but when the war had begun, the First Lord of the Admiralty had decided to keep the ship and its beastie, at least until the conflict ended.

Borrowing or stealing, it had caused the diplomatic ruckus that Dr. Barlow and the Leviathan had been sent to sort out. Somehow the mysterious eggs in the engine room were meant to help.

“So the Ottomans might decide to let the ironclads stay,” Alek said. “Just to get back at your Lord Churchill.”

“Well, that would make everything trickier, wouldn’t it?”

Alek nodded. “It would mean even more Germans in Constantinople. It might even bring the Ottomans over to the Clanker side! The Goeben’s Tesla cannon is pretty convincing.”

“Aye, it convinced me,” Deryn said. She wouldn’t fancy sharing the same city with that contraption.

“And what happens if the Ottomans close the Dardanelles to British shipping?”

Deryn swallowed. The fighting bears of the Russian army needed lots of food, most of which was brought in by ship. If they were cut off from their Darwinist allies, the Russians would have a long, hungry winter.

“But are you sure that’s where the ironclads were headed?”

“No. Not yet.” He raised his dark gaze from the map. “Dylan, can you do me a favor? A secret favor?”

She swallowed. “That depends on what it is.”

“I need you to deliver a message.”