Behemoth (35 page)

The pieces finally fell into place.

“With its own power station?” Alek asked.

Eddie Malone nodded, his eyes flicking between the two of them.

Alek felt a cold finger sliding down his spine. No mere wireless tower would need that much power. The
Leviathan
was flying straight into disaster.

“Can you give us a month?” he asked Malone.

“A whole month?” The reporter let out a snort. “My editors would have me brought home in a brown bag. You have to give me
something
to write about.”

Dylan sat up straighter. “All right, then, I’ve got a story for you. And the sooner you publish it, the better. That wireless tower—”

“Wait!” Alek said. “I have something better. How about an interview with the missing prince of Hohenberg? I’ll tell you about the night I left my home, how I escaped
Austria and made it to the Alps. Who I think killed my parents, and why. Will that keep you busy enough, Mr. Malone?”

The man’s pen was scribbling, his head nodding furiously. Dylan was staring at Alek, wide eyed.

“But there’s one condition: You can’t mention either of my friends,” Alek said. “Just say I’m hiding in the hills somewhere, alone.”

The man paused a moment, then shrugged. “Whatever you want, as long as I can take some photographs too.”

Alek shuddered—of
course
Malone’s newspaper was the sort that published photographs. How perfectly vulgar.

But he could only nod.

“Mr. Malone,” Dylan said, “there’s still one other thing—”

“Not tonight,” Alek said. “I’m afraid we’re all quite tired, Mr. Malone. I’m sure you understand.”

“You’re not the only ones.” The reporter stood up, stretching his arms. “I’ve been in that lobby all night. Meet me tomorrow in the usual café?”

Alek nodded, and Malone gathered his things and left, not even offering to pay for his coffee.

“This is all my fault,” Lilit said when the man was gone. “I saw him when I followed you. I should have recognized him on my way up.”

Alek shook his head. “No. I was the one foolish enough to involve a reporter in my affairs.”

“No matter whose fault it is,” Dylan said, “we should have told him about the …” He hesitated, looking at Lilit.

She waved a hand dismissively. “The Committee knows all about that tower. We’d been watching the Germans build it for months, wondering what it might be. Until Alek came along and explained everything.”

“I did?” Alek asked, then remembered his first day at the warehouse. Nene hadn’t believed a word he’d said … until he’d mentioned the Tesla cannon. Then suddenly she’d become quite interested, peppering him with questions—what it was called, how it worked, and whether it could be used against walkers. “But I thought we were talking about the
Goeben
. Why didn’t you tell me the sultan had
another
Tesla cannon?”

“It hardly mattered—you said it couldn’t affect our walkers.” She frowned, looking at Dylan. “But it
can
shoot down airships, can’t it?”

The boy cleared his throat, but only shrugged.

“And you both just turned green at the thought of that,” Lilit said.

“Aye, well, you know,” Dylan said. “Those contraptions are a professional hazard, when you’re an airman.”

Lilit crossed her arms. “And you were about to tell that reporter what this ‘wireless tower’ really was, to warn your
Darwinist friends!” She turned to Alek. “And you’re willing to spill your family secrets just to keep Dylan out of the papers! There’s something you two aren’t telling me.”

Alek sighed. Lilit could be annoyingly perceptive sometimes.

“Shall I ask my grandmother to help me sort this all out? She’s very good at puzzles.”

Alek turned to Dylan. “We should tell her everything.”

The boy threw up his hand in surrender. “Aye, it hardly matters anymore. We have to put a stop to the whole plan! Just tell Malone about the Tesla cannon tomorrow. Once that’s in the papers, the Admiralty will know the plan is too dangerous.”

“We can’t,” Alek said. “The revolution will fail without the
Leviathan
’s help!”

“But they’ll never make it. If that cannon’s got its own power plant, it’s got to be barking
huge
.”

Alek opened his mouth, but couldn’t find words to argue with. There was no way to fly an airship over Istanbul now, not with a giant Tesla cannon overlooking the city.

Lilit let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, since neither of you boys can be bothered to explain, allow me.”

She held up one hand, ticking off points on her fingers.

“One, the
Leviathan
is clearly on its way back to Istanbul, or you wouldn’t care about this Tesla cannon. Two, whatever it’s up to can help the revolution, as Alek just said.
And three, this all has to do with your secret mission.” She hesitated a moment, staring at Dylan. “Your men were captured near the kraken nets, weren’t they?”

Alek opened his mouth again, wanting to interrupt before she figured out the truth. But Lilit silenced him with a wave of her hand.

“Everyone thinks your mission failed, but they don’t know that
you
weren’t captured.” Her eyes widened. “You plan to bring a kraken down the strait!”

Dylan looked miserable, but only nodded. “Not really a kraken, but close enough. And a fine plan it was too. But it’s all ruined now! We have to tell Malone about the cannon, or get a warning to the Admiralty some other way.”

“But this is perfect!” Lilit said.

“Perfect in what way, exactly?” Dylan cried. “That cannon is a death trap, and the
Leviathan
is headed right toward it! That’s my ship we’re talking about!”

“We’re talking about the liberation of my people as well,” Lilit said softly, her eyes locked on his. “The Committee will deal with this problem, I swear.”

“But my mission was meant to be top secret.” Dylan shook his head. “I can’t let it go forward if a daft bunch of anarchists know about it!”

“Then we won’t tell anyone else,” Lilit said. “Only we three have to know.”

Alek frowned. “The three of us can’t destroy a Tesla cannon.”

“No, we can’t. But …” Lilit held one hand up, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment. “My father plans to lead the assault on the
Goeben
himself, with four walkers. But if the
Leviathan
and its sea monster can deal with the ironclads, we have those walkers to spare. So on the night of the revolution, we explain everything to my father, then head to the cliffs and tear this Tesla cannon to the ground!”

“Someone might find out,” Dylan said.

“What if we only use pilots we trust?” Alek asked. “Lilit’s walker, mine, Klopp’s, and Zaven’s. No one else has to know what’s going on.”

Lilit shrugged. “No one else is volunteering to fight the
Goeben
, after all.”

Dylan stared at them both, a look of terror in his eyes.

“But what if we fail?” he said softly. “They’ll all burn.”

Lilit reached across the table and took his hands in her own.

“We won’t fail,” she said. “Our revolution depends on your ship.”

Dylan stared at her hands for a moment, then looked helplessly at Alek.

“It’s the only way they can win,” Alek said simply. “And the only way to complete your mission. Your men sacrificed themselves for this, right?”

“Oh, you
had
to say that,” Dylan said with a groan, pulling his hands from Lilit’s grasp. “Aye, all right, then. But you barking anarchists had better not make a mess of this!”

“We won’t,” Lilit said, beaming at the boy. “You’ve saved the revolution again!”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “No need to get all moony, lassie.”

Alek smiled. They really were the most amusing couple.

Deryn spread her arms out straight, and waited.

“R …”

She dipped her left arm forty-five degrees.

“S …”

She let her right arm drop, the screwdriver in her hand pointing straight down.

“G!” said Bovril, and ate another strawberry. Then it tossed the stem over the edge of the balcony, leaning its head through the rails to watch it fall.

“How do you like
that
?” Deryn cried. “It’s learnt the whole barking alphabet!”

Lilit and Alek stared at the beastie, then at her.

“You taught it this?” Lilit asked.

“No! I was just practicing my signals. I was saying the letters out loud, I suppose, and after a couple times
through …” Deryn pointed at Bovril. “The beastie joined in, as quick as a bosun’s mate.”

“And that’s why you want to bring it along tonight?” Alek asked. “In case we need to send semaphore signals?”

Deryn rolled her eyes. “No, you daft bum-rag. It’s because …”

She sighed, unsure exactly how to say it. The loris had a knack for noticing important details, just as Dr. Barlow had claimed. And tonight was the most important mission that Deryn had ever been a part of. She didn’t dare leave the beastie behind.

“Perspicacious,” the creature said.

“Aye, that’s the word,” Deryn cried. “Because it’s barking perspicacious.”

Two weeks before, Zaven had put his posh education to use and explained the loris’s species name to Deryn. It turned out that “perspicacious” meant the same as “shrewd,” or even “farsighted.” And though that didn’t sound like the sort of thing a beastie could be, it certainly fit.

Alek sighed, and turned toward the family’s apartments, where Nene’s tortoise bed was emerging, covered with maps fluttering in the breeze. The old woman called to Lilit and Alek.

As they walked away, Alek said over his shoulder, “All right, Dylan. But I have a walker to pilot. So you’ll be looking after it.”

“More than happy to,” Deryn said softly, scratching the loris’s wee head.

Only having the beastie about had made it bearable, working with Clankers and their lifeless machines, smelling of exhaust and engine grease. The bustling splendor of Istanbul was still so alien, its foreign tongues too many to learn in a lifetime, much less a month. Deryn spent her days printing newspapers she couldn’t read, and wondering what the prayers gliding over the rooftops might mean. The intricate geometries of Zaven’s carpets and tiled ceilings dazzled her eyes, and even the wondrous food often proved to be—like the rest of the capital—too sumptuous.

But hardest of all was being so close to Alek, while still hiding from him. He’d shared his last secret with her, and Deryn realized now that she could have told him that same night, in that dark hotel room with no one about to hear.

But every time she’d tried, Deryn had imagined the look of horror on his face. Not that she was a girl in boy’s clothes, or that she’d lied to him for so long. All that yackum Alek would soon get past, she knew. And then he would love her, she
knew
.

But that was the problem, because there was one thing that would never change.… Deryn was a commoner. She was a thousand times more common than Alek’s mother, who’d been born a countess, or even Lilit, an anarchist who spoke six languages and always knew which fork to use. Deryn
Sharp was as common as barking
dirt
, and the only reason that didn’t matter to His Serene Highness, Aleksandar of Hohenberg, was that she was also, in his mind, a boy.

The moment she could be anything more than a friend, she
would
be, and then he’d have to run a mile.

The pope did not write letters to transform orphan daughters of balloonists, or girls in boy’s britches, or unrepentant Darwinists, into royalty. She was dead certain of that.

Deryn watched Alek kneel by Nene’s bed like a good grandson, the three of them going over the details of the attack one last time. This battle tonight was something they had helped make together, she and Alek, and this was the closest they would ever be.

“A, B, C … ?” Bovril asked, and Deryn nodded.

She prayed that her signal practice really would come in handy. If all went well tonight, the
Leviathan
’s crew would be taking a long hard look at the Tesla cannon after it had been destroyed. That could be her only chance to let them know that she was alive.

It might even be a chance to go home, and leave her prince behind at last.

The great outer gates of the courtyard swung slowly open, revealing a clear and moonless sky.

“Lucky it didn’t rain tonight,” Alek said, checking the controls.

“Right enough,” Deryn answered. A midnight downpour would have turned the spice bombs into a useless, soupy mess, ruining the Committee’s only weapons. That was the thing about battles, Mr. Rigby always said, one squick of bad luck could make all your plans go pear-shaped.

Much like the rest of life, she supposed.

The courtyard filled with the rumble of engines from four walkers.
Ş
ahmeran, with Zaven at its controls, raised a giant hand and waved them forward as it slithered out the gates.

Lilit went next, piloting a Minotaur. The half bull, half man bowed low to get its horns through, giant hands out for balance. Spice bombs rattled in the magazine that Master Klopp had welded to its forearm.

Alek placed his feet on the djinn’s pedals. Klopp had insisted that Alek pilot an Arab machine tonight; their steam cannon made them the safest of the Committee’s walkers. Behind the djinn, Klopp and Bauer sat at the controls of an iron golem.