Behemoth

FORTY-ONE

The iron golem lay in a heap of train cars and scattered cargo, its legs twisted and torn. Only its upper half remained intact, the huge head leaning back against the wreckage of two freight cars, a sleeping giant with a crumpled metal pillow.

Deryn and Alek made their way closer, through electrical parts and shattered glass. The railroad tracks had been torn from the ground, and lay among the other debris like tangled ribbons of steel.

“Blisters,” Deryn said as they passed an overturned dining car, its red velvet curtains spilling through broken windows. “Lucky there were no passengers aboard.”

“We can get up to the golem’s head that way,” Alek said, pointing at the huge hand lying splayed in the dirt. They climbed onto it and up the walker’s arm, and soon saw two motionless forms strapped into the pilots’ chairs.

“Master Klopp!” Alek cried out. “Hans!”

One of the men stirred.

Deryn saw that it was Bauer, his eyes glazed, his hands reaching feebly for the seat straps. She followed Alek up and helped him get the man out.

“Was uns getroffen?” he asked.

“Der Orient-Express,” Alek explained.

Bauer gave him a befuddled look, then saw the wreckage around them, belief dawning slowly in his face.

The three of them unstrapped Klopp and laid him on the golem’s broad shoulder. The master of mechaniks still wasn’t moving. Blood caked his face, and when Deryn put her hand to Klopp’s neck, his pulse was weak.

“We have to get him to a doctor.”

“Yes, but how?” Alek asked.

Deryn’s eyes swept the battlefield. Not a single walker remained standing. But in the sky the Leviathan’s silhouette had swung into profile. It was just as she’d expected—now that it had dispatched the Goeben, the airship was coming about for a closer look at the wrecked Tesla cannon.

She opened her mouth to explain, but suddenly the beastie on her shoulder was imitating a soft thumping sound.

Alek heard it too. “Walkers.”

Deryn turned toward the city. A dozen columns of smoke rose from the horizon.

“Could they be from the Committee?”

Alek shook his head. “They don’t even know we’re here.”

“Aye, it was meant to be that way. But that anarchist lassie told her uncle, didn’t she?”

Bauer rose unsteadily to his feet, lifting a pair of field glasses. One lens was shattered, so he held the other to his eye like a telescope.

“Elefanten,” he said a moment later.

Alek swore. “At least those things are slow.”

“But we’ll never carry Klopp out of here,” Deryn said. “Not without help.”

“And where do you suppose we’ll get that?”

She pointed up at the dark shape over the water, still turning, its searchlights angling toward the cliffs now. “The Leviathan is on its way to take a closer look. We can signal them, and get Klopp to the ship’s surgeon.”

“A, B, C …,” Bovril said happily.

“They’ll take us prisoner again!” Alek said.

“Aye, and what do you think the barking Ottomans will do, after all this?” Deryn swept her arm across the wreckage. “At least with us you’ll be alive!”

“Ich kann bleiben mit Meister Klopp, Herr,” Bauer said.

Deryn’s eyes narrowed. After a month working with Clankers, her German was much better. “What does he mean, he’ll stay with Klopp?”

Alek turned to Deryn. “Your ship can pick Bauer and Klopp up, while you and I make a run for it.”

Deryn’s jaw dropped. “Have you gone barking mad?”

“The Ottomans will never spot us in all this mess.” Alek clenched his fists. “And just think, if the Committee wins tonight, they’ll throw the Germans out. And they owe both of us a debt, Dylan. We can stay here, among allies.”

“Not me, you daft prince! I have to go home!”

“But I can’t do this alone … not without you.” His eyes softened. “Please come with me.”

Deryn turned from him, for a moment wishing that Alek were asking this same question but in a different way. Not as some Dummkopf of a prince who expected everyone to serve his purposes, but as a man.

It wasn’t his fault, of course. She’d never told Alek why she’d really come to Istanbul—not for the mission but for him. She hadn’t told him anything, and it was too late now. They’d been together a whole month, working and fighting side by side, and still she hadn’t convinced herself that a common girl could matter to him.

So what was the point of staying?

“There’s more to do here, Dylan,” he said. “You’re the best soldier the revolution has.”

“Aye, but that’s my home up there. I can’t live with … your machines.”

Alek spread his hands. “It doesn’t matter. Your crew will never see us.”

“They have to.” Deryn stared out across the battlefield, looking for something to signal with. But Alek was right; even if she had ten-foot semaphore flags, no one would ever see her among the wreckage of the train.

Then she saw them—the golem’s arms stretched out in both directions. The right one was straight out, the left one at an angle, almost making the sign for the letter S.

“Can this contraption still move?”

“What, the walker?”

“A, B, C,” Bovril said again.

“Aye. A giant sending signals would be barking hard to miss.”

“The boilers are cold,” Alek said. “But I suppose the pneumatics might still have some pressure in them.”

“Then take a look!”

Alek gritted his teeth, but climbed back up to the head and knelt by the controls. He rapped at two of the gauges, then turned back, an uncertain look on his face.

“Can it work?” she called. “Don’t lie to me!”

“I would never lie to you, Dylan. We can signal perhaps a dozen letters.”

“Then do it! Follow my lead.” Deryn held her right arm out straight, her left angled down.

Alek didn’t move. “If I give myself up to your captain, he’ll never let me escape again.”

“But if you don’t signal the Leviathan for help, Klopp is a dead man. We all are, once those walkers get here!”

Alek stared at her another moment, then sighed and turned to the controls, placing his hands in the saunters. The hiss of pneumatics filled the air, and then the great arms scraped slowly along the ground, exactly matching Deryn’s stance.

“S …,” the perspicacious loris said.

Deryn swung her left arm across herself. This letter was harder for the iron golem, half lying in the dirt as it was, but Alek managed to bend its elbow just enough.

“H!” Bovril announced, and kept up as Deryn continued. “A … R … P …”

By the fifth letter the Leviathan’s huge kraken spotlight had found them, and together they repeated the sequence twice more before the giant arms’ last squick of pressure hissed away into the night.

Alek turned from the saunters. “Wie lange haben wir, Hans?”

Bauer shielded his eyes from the spotlight’s glare. “Zehn minuten?”

“We still have time to get away, Dylan.”

“Not with only ten minutes, and there’s no need to run.” Deryn put a hand on Alek’s shoulder. “After what we’ve done tonight, I can tell the captain how you introduced me to the Committee. And how if you hadn’t, the ship would’ve been shot down!” She said it all fast. Breaking her silent promise to leave him behind was as easy as breathing.

“I expect they’ll give me a medal,” Alek said drily.

“Aye, you never know about that.”

The spotlight began to flicker then, long and short flashes. Deryn was out of practice with Morse code, but as she watched, the familiar patterns came back into her mind.

“Message received,” she said. “And the captain sends me greetings!”

“How very polite.”

Deryn kept her eyes on the flickering spotlight. “They’re getting ready to pick us up. We’ll have Master Klopp to a surgeon in half a squick!”

“Then you don’t need me and Hans anymore.” Alek held out his hand. “I have to say good-bye.”

“Don’t,” Deryn pleaded. “You’ll never make it past all those walkers. And I swear I won’t let the captain chain you up. If he does, I’ll break the locks myself!”

Alek stared down at his offered hand, but then his dark green eyes caught hers. They gazed at each other for a long moment, the rumble of the airship’s engines trembling on Deryn’s skin.

“Come with me,” she said, finally grasping his hand. “It’s like you said the night before you ran away, how all the parts of the Leviathan fit. You belong there.”

He looked up at the airship, his eyes glistening. He was still in love with it, Deryn could see.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t run off without my men,” he said.

“Mein Herr,” Bauer said. “Graf Volger befahl mir—”

“Volger!” Alek spat. “If it weren’t for his scheming, we’d all have kept together in the first place.”

Deryn squeezed his hand harder. “It’ll be all right. I swear.”

As the airship drew closer, a whisper of wings came from overhead, steel talons glinting in the searchlights. Deryn let go of Alek’s hand, and breathed deep the bitter almond of spilled hydrogen—the dangerous, beautiful smell of a hasty descent. Ropes tumbled from the gondola’s cargo door, and seconds later men were sliding down them.

“Isn’t that a barking brilliant sight?”

“Beautiful,” Alek said. “If one isn’t chained up inside.”

“Nonsense.” Deryn banged his shoulder. “That blether about chains, that was just an expression. They only locked Count Volger in his stateroom, and I had to bring him breakfast every day!”

“How luxurious.”

She smiled, though the thought of Volger sent a squick of nerves through her—he knew her secret. The man could still betray her to the officers, or to Alek, anytime he wanted.

But she couldn’t keep hiding from his countship forever. It wasn’t soldierly. And besides, she could always toss him out a window if it came to that.

As the airship came to a rumbling halt, Bovril clung tighter to her shoulder. “Breakfast every day?” it asked.

“Aye, beastie,” Deryn said, stroking its fur. “You’re going home.”