ONE
Alek raised his sword. “On guard,
sir!”
Deryn hefted her own weapon, studying Alek’s
pose. His feet were splayed at right angles, his left arm
sticking out behind like the handle of a teacup. His fencing
armor made him look like a walking quilt. Even with his
sword pointed straight at her, he looked barking
silly.
“Do I have to stand like that?” she
asked.
“If you want to be a proper fencer,
yes.”
“A proper idiot, more like,” Deryn muttered,
wishing again that her first lesson were someplace less
public. A dozen crewmen were watching, along with a pair of
curious hydrogen sniffers. But Mr. Rigby, the bosun, had
forbidden swordplay inside the airship.
She sighed,
raised her saber, and tried to imitate Alek’s pose.
It
was a fine day on the Leviathan’s topside, at least.
The airship had left the Italian peninsula behind last
night, and the flat sea stretched in all directions, the
afternoon sun scattering diamonds across its surface.
Seagulls wheeled overhead, carried by the cool ocean
breeze.
Best of all, there were no officers up here to
remind Deryn that she was on duty. Two German ironclad
warships were rumored to be skulking nearby, and Deryn was
meant to be watching for signals from Midshipman Newkirk,
who was dangling from a Huxley ascender two thousand feet
above them.
But she wasn’t really dawdling. Only two
days before, Captain Hobbes had ordered her to keep an eye
on Alek, to learn what she could. Surely a secret mission
from the captain himself outweighed her normal
duties.
Maybe it was daft that the officers still
thought of Alek and his men as enemies, but at least it gave
Deryn an excuse to spend time with him.
“Do I look
like a ninny?” she asked Alek.
“You do indeed, Mr.
Sharp.”
“Well, you do too, then! Whatever they call
ninnies in Clanker-talk.”
“The word is
‘Dummkopf’” he said. “But I don’t look like
one, because my stance isn’t dreadful.”
He lowered his
saber and came closer, adjusting Deryn’s limbs as if she
were a dummy in a shop window.
“More weight on your
back foot,” he said, nudging her boots farther apart. “So
you can push off when you attack.”
Alek was right
behind her now, his body pressing close as he adjusted her
sword arm. She hadn’t realized this fencing business would
be so touchy.
He grasped her waist, sending a crackle
across her skin.
If Alek moved his hands any higher,
he might notice what was hidden beneath her careful
tailoring.
“Always keep sideways to your opponent,” he
said, gently turning her. “That way, your chest presents the
smallest possible target.”
“Aye, the smallest possible
target,” Deryn sighed. Her secret was safe, it
seemed.
Alek stepped away and resumed his own pose, so
that the tips of their swords almost touched. Deryn took a
deep breath, ready to fight at last.
But Alek didn’t
move. Long seconds passed, the airship’s new engines
thrumming beneath their feet, the clouds slipping slowly
past overhead.
“Are we going to fight?” Deryn finally
asked. “Or just stare each other to
death?”
“Before a fencer crosses swords, he has to
learn this basic stance. But don’t worry”—Alek smiled
cruelly—“we won’t be here more than an hour. It’s only your
first lesson, after all.”
“What? A whole barking hour
… without moving?” Deryn’s muscles were already complaining,
and she could see the crewmen stifling their laughter. One
of the hydrogen sniffers crept forward to snuffle her
boot.
“This is nothing,” Alek said. “When I first
started training with Count Volger, he wouldn’t even let me
hold a sword!”
“Well, that sounds like a daft way to
teach someone sword fighting.”
“Your body has to learn
the proper stance. Otherwise you’ll fall into bad
habits.”
Deryn snorted. “You’d think that in a fight
not moving might be a bad habit! And if we’re just
standing here, why are you wearing armor?”
Alek didn’t
answer, just narrowed his eyes, his saber motionless in the
air. Deryn could see her own point wavering. She set her
teeth.
Of course, barking Prince Alek would
have been taught how to fight in the proper way. From what
she could tell, his whole life had been a procession of
tutors. Count Volger, his fencing master, and Otto Klopp,
his master of mechaniks, might be the only teachers with him
now that he was on the run. But back when he’d lived in the
Hapsburg family castle, there must have been a dozen more,
all of them cramming Alek’s attic with yackum: ancient
languages, parlor manners, and Clanker superstitions. No
wonder he thought that standing about like a pair of
coatracks was educational.
But Deryn wasn’t about to
let some stuck-up prince outlast her.
So she stood
there glaring at him, perfectly still. As the minutes
stretched out, her body stiffened, her muscles beginning to
throb. And it was worse inside her brain, boredom twisting
into anger and frustration, the rumble of the airship’s
Clanker engines turning her head into a beehive.
The
trickiest part was holding Alek’s stare. His dark green eyes
stayed locked on hers, as unwavering as his sword point. Now
that she knew Alek’s secrets—the murder of his parents, the
pain of leaving home behind, the cold weight of his family
squabbles starting this awful war—Deryn could see the
sadness behind that gaze.
At odd moments she could see
tears brightening Alek’s eyes, only a fierce, relentless
pride holding them back. And sometimes when they competed
over stupid things, like who could climb the ratlines
fastest, Deryn almost wanted to let him win.
But she
could never say these things aloud, not as a boy, and Alek
would never meet her eyes like this again, if he ever
learned she was a girl.
“Alek …,” she
began.
“Need a rest?” His smirk wiped her charitable
thoughts away.
“Get stuffed,” she said. “I was just
wondering, what’ll you Clankers do when we get to
Constantinople?”
The point of Alek’s sword wavered for
a moment. “Count Volger will think of something. We’ll leave
the city as soon as possible, I expect. The Germans will
never look for me in the wilds of the Ottoman
Empire.”
Deryn glanced at the empty horizon ahead. The
Leviathan might reach Constantinople by dawn
tomorrow, and she’d met Alek only six days ago. Would he
really be gone so quickly?
“Not that it’s so bad
here,” Alek said. “The war feels farther away than it ever
did in Switzerland. But I can’t stay up in the air
forever.”
“No, I reckon you can’t,” Deryn said,
focusing her gaze on their sword points. The captain might
not know who Alek’s father had been, but it was obvious the
boy was Austrian. It was only a matter of time before
Austria-Hungary was officially at war with Britain, and then
the captain would never let the Clankers leave.
It
hardly seemed fair, thinking of Alek as an enemy after he’d
saved the airship—two times now. Once from an icy death, by
giving them food, and the second time from the Germans, by
handing over the engines that had allowed them all to
escape.
The Germans were still hunting Alek, trying to
finish the job they’d started on his parents. Someone
had to be on his side.…
And, as Deryn had gradually
admitted to herself these last few days, she didn’t mind if
that someone wound up being her.
A fluttering in the
sky caught her attention, and Deryn let her aching sword arm
drop.
“Hah!” Alek said. “Had enough?”
“It’s
Newkirk,” she said, trying to work out the boy’s frantic
signals.
The semaphore flags whipped through the
letters once more, and slowly the message formed in her
brain.
“Two sets of smokestacks, forty miles away,”
she said, reaching for her command whistle. “It’s the German
ironclads!”
She found herself smiling a little as she
blew—Constantinople might have to wait a squick.
The
alarm howl spread swiftly, passing from one hydrogen sniffer
to the next. Soon the whole airship rang with the beasties’
cries.
Crewmen crowded the spine, setting up air guns
and taking feed bags to the flÉchette bats. Sniffers
scampered across the ratlines, checking for leaks in the
Leviathan’s skin.
Deryn and Alek cranked the
Huxley’s winch, drawing Newkirk down closer to the
ship.
“We’ll leave him at a thousand feet,” Deryn
said, watching the altitude markings on the rope. “The lucky
sod. You can see the whole battle from up there!”
“But
it won’t be much of a battle, will it?” Alek asked. “What
can an airship do to a pair of ironclads?”
“My guess
is, we’ll stay absolutely still for an hour. Just so we
don’t fall into any bad habits.”
Alek rolled his eyes.
“I’m serious, Dylan. The Leviathan has no heavy guns.
How do we fight them?”
“A big hydrogen breather can do
plenty. We’ve got a few aerial bombs left, and flÉchette
bats …” Deryn’s words faded. “Did you just say
‘we’?”
“Pardon me?”
“You just said, ‘How do
we fight them?’ Like you were one of us!”
“I
suppose I might have.” Alek looked down at his boots. “My
men and I are serving on this ship, after all, even
if you are a bunch of godless Darwinists.”
Deryn
smiled again as she secured the Huxley’s cable. “I’ll make
sure to mention that to the captain, next time he asks if
you’re a Clanker spy.”
“How kind of you,” Alek said,
then raised his eyes to meet hers. “But that’s a good
point—will the officers trust us in battle?”
“Why
wouldn’t they? You saved the ship—gave us engines from your
Stormwalker!”
“Yes, but if I hadn’t been so generous,
we’d still be stuck on that glacier with you. Or in a German
prison, more likely. It wasn’t exactly out of
friendship.”
Deryn frowned. Maybe things were a
squick more complicated now, what with a battle coming up.
Alek’s men and the Leviathan’s crew had become allies
almost by accident, and only a few days ago.
“You only
promised to help us get to the Ottoman Empire, I suppose,”
she said softly. “Not to fight other Clankers.”
Alek
nodded. “That’s what your officers will be
thinking.”
“Aye, but what are you
thinking?”
“We’ll follow orders.” He pointed toward
the bow. “See that? Klopp and Hoffman are already at
work.”
It was true. The engine pods on either side of
the great beastie’s head were roaring louder, sending two
thick columns of exhaust into the air. But to see the
Clanker engines on a Darwinist airship was just another
reminder of the strange alliance the Leviathan had
entered into. Compared to the tiny British-made engines the
ship was designed to carry, they sounded and smoked like
freight trains.
“Maybe this is a chance to prove
yourself,” Deryn said. “You should go lend your men a hand.
We’ll need good speed to catch those ironclads by
nightfall.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “But don’t get
yourself killed.”
“I’ll try not to.” Alek smiled and
gave her a salute. “Good luck, Mr. Sharp.”
He turned
and ran forward along the spine.
Watching him go,
Deryn wondered what officers down on the bridge were
thinking. Here was the Leviathan, entering battle
with new and barely tested engines, run by men who should by
all rights be fighting on the other side.
But the
captain didn’t have much choice, did he? He could either
trust the Clankers or drift helplessly in the breeze. And
Alek and his men had to join the fight or they’d lose their
only allies. Nobody seemed to have much choice, come to
think of it.
Deryn sighed, wondering how this war had
got so muddled.