Behemoth

TWENTY-FIVE

The minarets of the Blue Mosque rose up behind the trees, six tall spires like thin freshly sharpened pencils standing on end. The graceful arc of the mosque’s dome stood out dark gray against the hazy sky, and sunlight shimmered from the spinning blades of gyrothopters and aeroplanes overhead.

Alek sat outside the small coffeehouse where Eddie Malone had taken him the day before. It was on a quiet side street, and Alek was sipping black tea and studying his collection of Ottoman coins. He had begun to learn their names in Turkish, and which ones to hide from shopkeepers if he wanted a fair price.

With the Germans handing out photographs of Bauer and Klopp, it was up to Alek to buy supplies. He’d learned a lot, though, wandering the streets of Istanbul on his own. How to bargain with merchants, how to slip through the German parts of town unnoticed, even how to tell time by the prayers drifting down from the city’s minarets.

Most important of all, he’d realized something about this city—he was meant to be here. This was where the war would turn, either for or against the Clanker side. A slender strip of water glittered in the distance, the fog sirens of cargo ships wailing softly as they crept along it. This passage from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea was the Russian army’s lifeline, the thread that held the Darwinist powers together. That was why providence had brought him halfway across Europe.

Alek was here to stop the war.

In the meantime he’d also taught himself a little Turkish.

“Nasilsiniz?” he practiced.

“Iyiyim,” came an answer from the covered birdcage on his table.

“Shush!” Alek looked about. Fabricated beasts might not be strictly illegal here, but there was no point in drawing attention to himself. Besides, it was insufferable that the creature’s accent was better than his own.

He adjusted the cage’s cover, closing the gap the creature had been peeking through. But it was already sulking in a corner. It was uncannily good at reading Alek’s mood, which at the moment was one of annoyance.

Where was Eddie Malone, anyway? He’d promised to be here half an hour ago, and Alek had another appointment soon.

He was just about to leave when Malone’s voice called from behind him.

Alek turned and nodded curtly. “Ah, here you are at last.”

“At last?” Malone raised an eyebrow. “You in a hurry to get somewhere?”

Alek didn’t answer that. “Did you see Count Volger?”

“I did indeed.” Malone waved for a waiter and ordered lunch, consulting the menu and taking his time about it. “A fascinating ship, the Leviathan. The sultan’s joyride turned out to be more interesting than I expected.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. But I’m more interested in what Count Volger said.”

“He said a lot of things … most of which I didn’t understand.” Malone pulled out his notebook and readied his pen. “I’m curious if you know the fellow who helped me get in to see Volger. Name of Dylan Sharp?”

“Dylan?” Alek asked, frowning. “Of course I know him. He’s a midshipman aboard the Leviathan.”

“Did you ever notice anything odd about him?”

Alek shook his head. “What do you mean by odd?”

“Well, when Count Volger heard your message, he decided that joining you might be a good idea, and said so. I thought it was downright rash of him to talk about escaping right in front of a crewman.” Malone leaned closer. “But then he ordered Mr. Sharp to help him.”

“He ordered him?”

Malone nodded. “Almost as if he were threatening the boy. Looked like a case of blackmail to me. Does that make any sense?”

“I … I’m not sure,” Alek said. Certainly Dylan had done a few things he wouldn’t want the ship’s officers to hear about—like keeping Alek’s secrets. But Volger could hardly blackmail Dylan on that subject without revealing to the Darwinists who Alek really was. “It doesn’t sound right, Mr. Malone. Perhaps you misheard.”

“Well, maybe you’d like to hear for yourself.” The man took the frog from his shoulder, set it on the table, and scratched it under the chin. “Okay, Rusty. Repeat.”

A moment later Count Volger’s voice emerged from the bullfrog’s mouth.

“Mr. Sharp, I hope you understand that this complicates things,” it said, then switched to Dylan’s voice. “What are you blethering about?”

Alek looked around, but the handful of other patrons didn’t seem to notice. They looked off into the distance, as if talking frogs came to dine at this establishment every day. No wonder Malone had insisted on meeting here.

The frog started up a whooping noise, like the Leviathan’s Klaxon sounding an alert. Then it continued in a tangle of voices, with the wail of the Klaxon breaking in at odd times, most of the words flying by too fast for the frog to render clearly.

But then Count Volger’s voice came out of the muddle. “Perhaps, but if you don’t help us, I shall be forced to reveal your little secret.”

Alek frowned, wondering what was going on. Volger was talking cryptically about fencing lessons. At first Dylan sputtered that he didn’t understand, but his voice was shaky, almost as if he were about to cry. Finally he agreed to help the count and Hoffman escape, and with one last shriek of the Klaxon, the bullfrog went silent.

Eddie Malone lifted it from the table and placed it gently back on his shoulder. “Care to shed any light on the matter?”

“I don’t know,” Alek said slowly, which was the truth. He’d never heard such panic in Dylan’s voice before. The boy had risked being hanged for Alek. What threat of Volger’s could frighten him so much?

But it was no good thinking aloud in front of this reporter. The man knew too much already.

“Let me ask you a question, Mr. Malone.” Alek pointed at the frog. “Did they know this abomination was memorizing their words?”

The man shrugged. “I never told them otherwise.”

“How honest of you.”

“I never lied,” Malone said. “And I can promise you that Rusty isn’t memorizing now. He won’t unless I ask him to.”

“Well, whether he’s listening or not, there’s nothing I can add.” Alek stared at the frog, still hearing Dylan’s voice. He’d almost sounded like a different person.

With Dylan’s help, of course, Volger and Hoffman stood a better chance of escaping.

“Did Volger say when they would try?”

“It has to be tonight,” Malone said. “The four days is almost up. Unless the British really do plan on giving the Leviathan to the sultan, it has to leave Istanbul tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” Alek said, standing up and offering his hand. “Thank you for carrying our messages, Mr. Malone. I’m sorry that I must beg your leave.”

“An appointment with your new friends, perhaps?”

“I leave that to your imagination,” Alek said. “And by the way, I hope you won’t write about any of this too soon. Volger and I might decide to stay in Istanbul a bit longer.”

Malone leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Oh, don’t worry about me making a mess of your plans. As far as I can see, this story is just getting interesting.”

Alek left the man scribbling in his notebook, no doubt writing down everything they’d said. Or perhaps he’d been lying and the bullfrog had memorized it all. It was mad to trust a reporter with his secrets, Alek supposed, but being reunited with Volger was worth the risk.

He wished the wildcount could be here for his next appointment. Zaven was introducing him to more members of the Committee for Union and Progress. Zaven himself was a friendly sort, and an educated gentleman, but his fellow revolutionaries might not be so welcoming. It wouldn’t be easy for a Clanker aristocrat to earn their trust.

“You were very good at staying quiet,” Alek whispered to the birdcage as he walked away. “If you keep behaving, I shall buy you strawberries.”

“Mr. Sharp,” the creature answered, then made a giggling sound.

Alek frowned. The words were a snatch of the conversation the bullfrog had repeated. The creature didn’t imitate voices, but Count Volger’s sarcastic tone was quite recognizable.

Alek wondered why the beast had chosen those two words from everything it had heard.

“Mr. Sharp,” it said again, sounding abundantly pleased with itself.

Alek shushed it and pulled a hand-drawn map from his pocket. The route, labeled in Zaven’s flowery handwriting, took him north and west from the Blue Mosque, toward the neighborhood he’d stumbled into two nights before.

The buildings grew taller as he walked, and the Clanker influences stronger. Tram tracks braided through the paving stones, and the walls were stained by exhaust, almost as black as the steel spires of Berlin and Prague. German-made machines huffed down the streets, their spare, functional designs strange to Alek after days of seeing walkers shaped like animals. The signs of rebellion also grew—the mix of alphabets and religious symbols filled the walls again, marks of the host of smaller nations that made up the Ottoman Empire.

Zaven’s map led Alek deep into a tangle of warehouses, where mechanikal arms stood beside loading docks. The stone walls loomed high above the narrow streets, so tall they almost seemed to touch each other overhead. Sunlight filtered grayly through the fumes.

There were few pedestrians here, and Alek began to feel wary. Before yesterday he’d never walked alone in a city, and he didn’t know which sorts of neighborhoods were safe and which were not.

He came to a halt, setting down the birdcage to check Zaven’s map once more. As he squinted at the flamboyant handwriting, Alek noticed a figure out of the corner of his eye.

The woman was dressed in long black robes, her face covered by a veil. She was hunched with age, and a few silver coins were sewn into her headdress. He’d seen plenty of desert tribesmen like her on the streets of Istanbul, but never a woman walking alone before. She stood, motionless, beside a warehouse wall, staring down at the cobblestones.

When Alek had passed that building a moment ago, she hadn’t been there.

He quickly folded the map, then picked up the cage and started walking again. A moment later he glanced backward.

The old woman was following him.

Alek frowned. How long had she been there?

He chewed his lip as he walked. He was close to the address Zaven had given him, but he could hardly lead this stranger straight to his new allies. Istanbul was full of spies and revolutionaries, and of secret police as well.

But surely he could outrun an old woman. Hoisting the heavy birdcage higher, Alek quickened his pace. He let himself take longer and longer steps, ignoring the complaints from beneath the birdcage cover.

And yet when he looked back, his pursuer was still there, gliding gracefully across the paving stones, her robes rippling like waves of black water.

This was no old woman, perhaps no woman at all.

Alek’s hand went to his belt, and he softly swore. He was armed only with a long knife he’d bought at the Grand Bazaar that morning. Its curved steel blade had looked exotically lethal laid out on red velvet. But its edge hadn’t been sharpened yet, and Alek had never trained to use a weapon of its kind.

He rounded the last corner, almost at the address on Zaven’s map. With his pursuer out of sight for a moment, he dashed ahead, ducking into the entrance of an alley.

“Shush,” he breathed through the birdcage’s cover. The creature made an unhappy noise at being bounced about again, but fell silent.

Alek placed the cage carefully on the ground and peeked out.

The dark figure appeared, moving slowly now, and came to a halt in front of a loading dock on the other side of the street. Alek saw the symbol painted on the dock, and frowned.

It was the same symbol Zaven had drawn extravagantly on his map.

Was this a coincidence? Or had this pursuer already known where Alek was headed?

The black-robed figure jumped up onto the loading dock in a single bound, confirming that this was no woman. The man backed into the shadows, but his robes were just visible, billowing softly in the breeze.

Alek stood there in the alley, his back pressed hard against cold stone. Thanks to Eddie Malone, he was already half an hour late. If he waited for his pursuer to give up and go away, it might take ages more. What would his new allies think if he arrived at their secret meeting hours behind schedule?

Of course, if he brought them this spy as his prisoner, they might be somewhat more impressed.…

A six-legged German walker was headed up the street, dragging a heavy cargo train behind it—the perfect cover. Alek knelt and spoke softly to the birdcage. “I’ll be right back. Just stay quiet.”

“Quiet,” the creature muttered in reply.

Alek waited until the cargo train was lumbering past, between him and the other man. He stole out of the alley and scampered along behind the train, then slipped between two cars and across the street.

His back to the stone warehouse wall, Alek inched his way toward the loading dock. The long, curved knife felt unfamiliar in his hand, and he wondered for a moment if the man had spotted him.

But it was too late for doubts. Alek crept closer.…

Suddenly a maniacal peel of laughter came from across the street, echoing from the alley where he’d left the beast!

Alek froze. Was it in trouble?

A moment later the black-robed figure jumped down onto the street. It crept toward the maniacal laughter, crossing the street to peer into the alleyway.

Alek saw his chance, stealing up behind to press his knife against the man’s throat. “Surrender, sir! I have the advantage.”

The man was smaller than he’d thought—and quicker. He whipped around within Alek’s grip, and suddenly they faced each other.

Alek found himself staring into deep brown eyes framed with ringlets of black hair. This wasn’t a man at all!

“Not quite an advantage, boy,” the girl said in perfect German. “Unless you want to join me in death.”

Alek felt a nudge, and looked down.

The tip of her knife was pressed against his stomach.

Alek swallowed, wondering what to do. But then the door to the loading dock began to rise, rattling with the clatter of chains and pulleys.

Both of them looked up, still locked in their lethal embrace.

Zaven stood there in the doorway, beaming down at them.

“Ah, Alek! You’re finally here. And I see you’ve met my daughter!”