Goliath

THIRTY

The cut on Deryn’s arm wasn’t much in the end, just eleven neat stitches that hardly itched at all. But she was going to feel her injured knee for a long time.

Most often the ache was simple and honest, as if she’d bashed it on the corner of an iron bed frame. Other times the whole leg throbbed, like her growing pains back when she’d been only twelve and already taller than half the boys in Glasgow. But the worst agony came at night, when her kneecap buzzed and thrummed like a bottle full of bees.

The buzzing was probably thanks to Dr. Busk’s compress. It wasn’t mustard seed and oats like her aunties favored, but a wee fabricated beastie of some kind. It had attached itself to her skin like a barnacle, its tendrils creeping inside to heal the ligaments torn in the crash. The surgeon hadn’t said what life threads the compress was fabricated from, but it lived on sugar water and a bit of sunlight every day—half plant and half animal, most likely.

Whatever the beastie was, it got annoyed when Deryn moved. Even a squick of weight on the leg was punished with an hour of angry bees. Walking was a nightmare and dressing was tricky, and of course she could hardly ask for help with that.

If it hadn’t been for Alek, the whole crew would’ve learned her secret that first day. It was Alek who’d persuaded General Villa to stay silent, and had convinced the officers that Deryn could stay in her own cabin, not the sick bay, even though it meant Alek had to fetch meals from the galley himself. It was Alek who half carried her to the heads in the dark gastric channel several times a day, standing guard at a gentlemanly distance while she went. And it was Alek who kept her company so she didn’t go stark raving mad.

He’d done so much, just to make sure that her last few days aboard the Leviathan were spent as a proper airman and not as some mad girl shunned by the officers and crew.

That bum-rag Eddie Malone hadn’t told anyone, not yet. After Mr. Hearst’s treachery, the reporters weren’t allowed near Tesla’s radio or the messenger birds, and Malone was too worried that Adela Rogers would steal his story. But New York was only two days away. Two more days in uniform, and then her secret would be revealed to the world. There was no escaping the fact that this was Deryn Sharp’s last journey aboard the Leviathan.

It was like awaiting execution, every second slow and sharp-edged, but sometimes at night she was grateful to the bees for keeping her awake. At least she could spend a few more hours feeling the vibrations of the ship and listening to the whispers of airflow around the gondola.

Most of the time, though, Deryn wondered what she would do next. She’d have to make up some new lies, of course, to keep her brother Jaspert out of trouble for sneaking her into the Service. But her notoriety would eventually fade, and she’d have to find proper work.

Deryn still knew her aeronautics, even if the Service took away her uniform. And whether or not her knee healed completely, she’d grown strong enough to work alongside most men. Alek said she should stay in America, where, according to him, women who could handle hydrogen balloons were all the rage.

He’d explained about Pauline and her perils. The girl was nothing but a moving-picture character, a flicker of shadows on a screen, but she’d crawled inside Alek’s daft attic somehow.

“She stands to inherit a lot of money,” he was explaining the second day out of General Villa’s airfield. “Millions of American dollars, I suppose. But here’s the twist: She doesn’t get a penny till she marries.”

Deryn leaned back into her pillows and stared up. The Gulf of Mexico lay sparkling beneath the Leviathan, casting shimmers on the ceiling. Alek sat at the foot of Deryn’s bed while Bovril perched on the head, waving its wee arms as if practicing semaphore signals.

“Poor girl,” Deryn said. “Except for the millions of dollars part.”

Alek laughed. “It’s a melodrama, not a tragedy.”

“Melodrama,” Bovril said in the slow, clear way the lorises did when they learned new words.

“But instead of getting married,” Alek went on, “she goes off to have adventures. And no one stops her, even though she’s a girl!”

Deryn frowned. It didn’t sound likely, though if you had a few millions in the bank, perhaps people treated you a bit more like a man. “Besides that palaver with the hydrogen balloon, what sort of adventures?”

“Well, I saw only the first episode. It didn’t have a proper ending, just what they call a cliff-hanger.” Alek thought a moment. “Though I think Mr. Hearst mentioned something about runaway walkers and being tied to train tracks.”

“Tied to train tracks? Sounds like a brilliant career for me.”

“Listen, Deryn. It doesn’t matter if The Perils of Pauline is rubbish. The point is that it’s terribly popular. So even if American women aren’t piloting balloons yet, at least they want to. You could show them how it’s done.”

“Sometimes wanting isn’t enough, Alek. You know that.”

“I suppose I do.” He leaned back against the cabin wall. “For example, you don’t want to be cheered up, do you?”

Deryn shrugged. At the moment she knew exactly what she wanted: for Eddie Malone not to have eavesdropped on their conversation with General Villa. Or for her not to have crashed the gliding wings. Or better yet, for barking Hearst not to have gummed up the Leviathan’s engines in the first place!

If any of it had gone differently, no one would ever have found out she was a girl. Except Alek and that bumrag Volger, of course.

“Will you be staying in America?” she asked. “When the Leviathan heads on?”

Alek frowned at her. “Would the captain let me?”

“You’re doing what the Admiralty wants, helping Mr. Tesla talk up his weapon. Why should they drag you back to England?”

“I suppose you’re right.” He stood and went to the window, his green eyes bright as he stared at the sky.

It was obvious that he hadn’t thought much about life after the Leviathan. Deep inside, Alek probably still hoped he could stay aboard. But even if he didn’t disembark in New York, he and his men would be passengers only as far as London.

“You might be in love with the Leviathan, Alek. But the ship doesn’t love you back.”

A sad smile played on his lips. “It was a doomed relationship from the start. For you and me both, I suppose.”

Deryn stared at the ceiling. A Clanker prince and a girl dressed as a boy—neither could last forever on this ship. Only dumb luck had kept them together this long.

“Did I ever tell you how I knew your real name?” Alek asked.

“You had plenty of clues,” she said, then frowned. “But you tricked me by saying ‘Deryn,’ didn’t you? Where did you hear that?”

“It was all Eddie Malone’s fault,” Alek said.

“That bum-rag!” Bovril exclaimed.

“He’d run out of my secrets,” Alek went on, “so he wrote an article about you saving the Dauntless. I always meant to show you the photograph. You looked quite dashing in it.”

“Wait, are you saying Malone knew my name back then?”

“Of course not. But he’d done some research on your family, your father’s accident. He wrote about how you—that is, a daughter named Deryn—had survived.”

“Oh, aye.” She sighed. “That’s why I never told that story to anyone but you. And that was enough for you to guess that Deryn was me?”

Alek glanced sidelong at the perspicacious loris. “Well, I had a bit of help.”

“Barking traitor,” Deryn said, and gave the head of the bed a thump.

Bovril teetered for a moment, its tiny hands out like a tightrope walker. Then it fell into her lap.

“Ooph,” they both said together.

Alek took the beast from her. “You never told me, how did Volger figure you out?”

“Fencing lessons. All that touching and moving me about.” Deryn scowled. “And I shouted at him too much.”

“You shouted at him?”

“When you escaped in Istanbul and Volger was left behind, he was being a bit smug. As if he were glad to be rid of you!”

“I can imagine,” Alek said. “But what’s that got to do with you being a girl?”

“I was…” She stared at the wall. This was just embarrassing. “Maybe I got a bit screechy about you.”

“Screechy,” Bovril said with a chuckle.

Deryn forced herself to look at Alek. He was smiling.

“You didn’t want me getting hurt?”

“Of course not, you daft prince.” She found herself smiling back at him. For all her sadness about leaving the Leviathan, it was a relief being able to talk to him like this. What would it be like, once her secret was revealed to the whole world?

“We could both stay in New York, I suppose,” she offered softly.

“That sounds perfect.”

The simple words made Deryn’s pulse quicken just a bit, enough to make the bees behind her kneecap stir.

“Really? You want to be immigrants together?”

Alek laughed, placing Bovril on the windowsill. “Not quite immigrants. Americans aren’t allowed to become emperors, I seem to recall.”

“But with Mr. Tesla’s weapon, you don’t need to be emperor to stop the war!”

He frowned. “Someone has to lead my people after all this.”

“Aye, of course,” Deryn said, feeling foolish.

Alek might pretend to be an airman now and then, but the pope’s letter was always in his pocket, and he’d wanted his whole life to be his father’s heir. Anything more than friendship with her would destroy his chances of taking the throne.

But every time one of them had fallen—in the snows of the Alps, in Istanbul, on the stormy topside, in that dusty canyon—the other had been there to pick them up. She couldn’t imagine Alek leaving her for some daft crown and scepter.

“You’re right, Deryn. We’re both stuck in New York for the rest of the war.” He turned from the window, his smile growing. “You should join me and Volger!”

“Aye, his countship would love that.”

“Volger doesn’t decide who my allies are.” Alek stroked the loris’s head. “If it were up to him, we would have strangled Bovril the night it was born.”

“That bum-rag!” the beastie said.

Deryn frowned. Had Alek just likened her to Bovril?

“We don’t even know where we’ll live,” he continued. “I’ve got hardly any gold left, and Mr. Tesla spent every penny he had building Goliath. But it’ll be easy to raise more, now that he’s proven what it can do.”

“No doubt. But do you want to depend on that mad boffin’s charity?”

“Charity? Nonsense. It’ll be like Istanbul, all of us working together to put things right!”

Deryn nodded, though it was clear Alek barely knew what charity was. His whole life had been spent in a bubble of wealth. He no more understood money than a fish understood water.

But a much worse notion had entered her mind.

“They might not kick me off the ship, Alek. They might take me back to London for trial.”

“Have you broken any laws?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “About a dozen, you daft prince. The Admiralty might not want to make a fuss of it, but there’s a chance they’ll toss me into the brig. And if they do, we’ll never see each other again.”

Alek was silent for a moment, his eyes locked with hers. It was like one of his daft spells coming on, except his expression stayed dead serious.

She had to look away. “You should take Bovril with you. You were there when it hatched, and they won’t let me keep a beastie in prison.”

“You can escape,” Alek said. “If I could manage to get off this ship, you certainly can!”

“Alek.” She pointed at her knee. “It’ll be days before I can walk properly, and weeks before I can climb.”

“Oh.” He sat down on the bed again carefully, staring at her injured leg. “I’m an idiot for forgetting.”

“No.” She smiled. “Well, aye. But not in a bad way. You’re just…”

“A useless prince.”

Deryn shook her head. Alek was a lot of things, but never useless.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ll tell the captain that Mr. Tesla needs your help. He’ll have to let you join me!”

“He’ll ask for orders from London. It’s not as though the Manual of Aeronautics has any chapters on girls dressed in trousers.”

“But what if I…,” he began, then sighed.

She let out a dry laugh. “Barking prince Alek, always thinking you can fix everything.”

“What’s wrong with trying to fix things?”

“You always…” She shook her head. There was no point in dredging all this up. It would only make the boy angry—or worse, sad. “Nothing.”

“Mr. Sharp,” Alek said with a raised eyebrow. “Are you keeping secrets from me?”

“No secrets,” Bovril said with a giggle.

“Barking stupid promises,” Deryn groaned. Lying here in her cabin the last two days, countless mad notions had gone through her head. Was she meant to tell Alek all of them?

“Mr. Sharp?” Bovril prompted her.

Deryn gave the beastie a silencing glare, then turned to Alek.

“It’s like this, Your Highness. The world fell apart after your parents died, and it’s still falling apart. It must be awful for you, thinking about that every day. But I think you’ve got the two things muddled.”

“What two things?”

“Your world, and everyone else’s.” Deryn reached out and took his hand. “You lost everything that night—your home, your family. You’re not even a proper Clanker anymore. But stopping the war won’t fix all that, Alek. Even if you and that boffin save the whole barking planet, you’ll still need… something more.”

“I have you,” he said.

She swallowed, hoping he really meant that. “Even if they stuff me back into skirts?”

“Of course.” He looked her up and down. “Though somehow I can’t imagine that.”

“Don’t try, then.”

They both glanced at Bovril, expecting it to weigh in. But the beastie only stared back at them, its large eyes glistening.

After a moment Alek said, “I have to stop this war, Deryn. It’s all that’s kept me going. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“But I’ll do anything in my power to keep them from taking you away.”

She took a shuddering breath, then let her eyes fall closed. “Promise?”

“Anything. As you said in Tokyo, we’re meant to be together.”

Deryn wanted to agree, but she’d promised him she wouldn’t lie, and she wasn’t certain whether that was true. If they were meant to really be together, why had they been born a prince and a commoner? And if they weren’t, why did she feel this way inside?

But finally she nodded. Perhaps the daft prince’s luck would hold and she wouldn’t be hauled off to jail in London. And maybe it would be enough to stay by his side, an ally and a friend.