Behemoth (20 page)

“Not much farther, sir,” Bauer said. “There’s a rain gutter just above me.”

“I hope there’s some rain in it,” Alek muttered, still waving his hand. “I’d kill for a bucket of cold water.”

His right boot skidded a few centimeters, and Alek grabbed the pipes with both hands again. Better a little agony than a long fall onto paving stones.

Soon Bauer had hauled himself over the edge and out of sight. But as Alek reached up for the gutter, shouts came from below.

He pulled himself closer to the wall, and froze.

A group of soldiers was running down the alley, wearing German gray. One called out, and they came to a ragged halt directly beneath Alek. The man who’d shouted knelt, lifting something from the ground.

Alek softly swore. Bauer’s knife had fallen from his belt.

It was Hapsburg Guard issue, the hilt marked with Alek’s family crest. If the Germans had been wondering whether he was here in Istanbul or not, this would remove all doubt.

The men stood there talking, but none of them paid any notice to the steam pipes climbing the wall beside them. The officer was pointing in all directions, splitting up his men.

Go away!
Alek pleaded silently. Hanging there motionless was a hundred times harder than climbing. His burned hand was cramping, and the week-old injury in his ribs was pulsing with his heartbeat.

Finally the last man had passed out of sight, and Alek reached out and grabbed the rain gutter. But as he hauled himself up, metal groaned, and the gutter pulled itself from the stone with a series of
pop
s.

Alek felt a sickening lurch downward, the rusted bolts spitting out into his face. The gutter held for another moment, but he could feel it twisting in his hands.

“Sir!” Bauer reached out from the rooftop, trying to grab Alek’s wrists, but the gutter had pulled too far away from the wall.

Alek kicked out, trying to swing himself closer, but the movement only tore more bolts from the wall.

“The walker!” Bauer cried.

Alek realized that a huge shadow was moving beneath him, steam huffing from its joints into the cool night air. One of the great claws was reaching out.…

He fell, dropping into the giant metal hand. The impact knocked the breath from him, sending pain shooting through his sore ribs. He skidded for a moment, the buttons of his tunic snapping against steel, but the claw closed into a huge bowl around him.

He looked up—the arm was still moving, carrying him closer to the walker. Its face was splitting open, like a viewport cranking wider and wider. A moment later the pilot’s cabin was exposed.

There were three men inside. Two stood leaning over
the edge, peering down at the alley, pistols gripped tightly in their hands. The third sat at the walker’s controls, a curious look on his face.

Clouds of steam swirled around them, puffing from the joints of the machine. Alek realized that its engines were still silent; it had used stored pneumatic pressure to spring to life.

“You speak German,” the man at the controls said. “And yet the Germans are chasing you. How interesting.”

“We’re not Germans,” Alek answered. “We’re Austrian.”

The man frowned. “But still Clankers. Are you deserters?”

Alek shook his head. His allegiances might have been tangled lately, but he was no deserter. “May I ask who
you
are, sir?”

The man smiled and worked at the controls. “I’m the fellow who just saved you from falling to your death.”

“Sir, should I …,” came Bauer’s voice from the rooftop, but Alek waved him silent.

The giant hand drew closer to the walker’s head, and opened flat. As Alek rose to his feet, one of the other two men said something in a language he didn’t recognize. It sounded more like Italian than the Turkish he’d heard on the streets today. It also sounded unfriendly.

The first man laughed. “My friend wants to throw you back, because he thinks you’re Germans. Perhaps we should pick another language.”

Alek raised an eyebrow. “By all means. Do you speak English?”

“Exceedingly well.” The man switched effortlessly. “I studied at Oxford, you know.”

“Well, then. My name is Aleksandar.” Alek bowed a little, then pointed up at the rooftop, where Bauer was staring down, wide eyed. “And this is Hans, but I’m afraid he has no English.”

“I am Zaven.” The man waved a hand dismissively at the others. “These two barbarians speak nothing by Romanian and Turkish. Ignore them. But I can see you are an educated gentleman.”

“Thank you for saving me, sir. And for not … throwing me back.”

“Well, you can’t be all bad, if the Germans are chasing you.” Zaven’s eyes twinkled. “Did you do something to annoy them?”

“I suppose so.” Alek took a slow breath, choosing his words carefully. “They’ve been hunting me since before the war started. They had issues with my father.”

“Aha! A second-generation rebel, as am I!”

Alek looked at the others. “So that’s what you three are? Revolutionaries?”

“We are more than three, sir. There are thousands of us!” Zaven snapped upright in his piloting chair and saluted. “We are the Committee for Union and Progress.”

Alek nodded. He remembered the name from six years before, when the rebellion had demanded a return to elected government. But the Germans had stepped in to crush them, keeping the sultan in charge.

“So you were part of the Young Turks’ rebellion?”

“Young Turks? Fah!” Zaven spat into the alley below. “We split off from those cretins years ago. They think that only Turks are true Ottomans. But as you can see, the Committee takes in all kinds.” He gestured at the other two men. “My friends are Vlachs, I am Armenian, and we have Kurds, Arabs, and Jews among us. And plenty of Turks, of course!” He laughed.

Alek nodded slowly, remembering the chalk scratchings in the passageways below, some sort of code assembled from the empire’s jumble of tongues.

And all of them fighting the Germans—together.

For a moment Alek felt unsteady on the giant metal hand. Perhaps it was just an echo of his near fall, but his heart was racing again.

These men were allies. At last, here was a chance to do more than simply run and hide, a way to strike back at the powers that had murdered his parents.

“Mr. Zaven,” Alek said, “I think you and I are going to be friends.”

“Get out, you barking horrible spice!” Deryn yelled, then sneezed for the hundredth time that day. The sultan and his entourage would be aboard in an hour, and the whole crew was due in full-dress uniform in half that time. But no matter how hard she scrubbed, the red stain in her shirt wouldn’t budge.

She was well and truly stuffed.

A yip came from the door of her cabin, and Deryn turned to see Tazza bouncing happily on his hind legs, a fresh bone in his mouth. That was one benefit of Dr. Barlow’s mad scheme of pretending to give the
Leviathan
away—the beasties were eating better. Over the last two days the crew had made more trips to the markets and smithies of Istanbul, trading the airship’s ambergris for food and parts. Except for Deryn’s uniform, the ship was fit to receive a foreign emperor, which it shortly would.

The lady boffin appeared, right behind her thylacine. She’d managed to dig another dazzling dress out of her luggage, and a hat with abundant ostrich feathers that matched her long white gloves. Even Tazza was wearing a fancy collar, a band of diamonds glittering around his neck.

“Mr. Sharp,” she said, and tutted. “Once more I find you in a state of disrepair.”

Deryn held up her dress shirt. “Sorry, ma’am. But this is ruined, and I haven’t got another!”

“Well, it’s lucky you won’t be serving the sultan this evening. Mr. Newkirk will be stepping in for you.”

“But the whole crew is meant to be in full dress!”

“Not those with more important matters to contend with.” Dr. Barlow handed over the thylacine’s leash. “After you walk Tazza, please join me and the captain in the navigation room. I think you’ll find our conversation interesting.”

Tazza tried to pull her out the door, but Deryn stood firm. “Pardon me, ma’am. The barking
captain
wants to see me? Is this about your alternate plan for the Ottomans?”

The lady boffin smiled coolly. “Partly. But it also concerns your recent behavior. If I were you, I wouldn’t dawdle on your way there.”

The navigation room was at the bow of the ship, just below the bridge. It was a small, quiet cabin where the captain
sometimes retreated to think, or to have an awkward conversation with a wayward crewman.

Deryn felt her stomach tighten as she drew near. What if the officers had noticed her fencing lessons with Count Volger? Whenever Deryn brought him a meal, she stayed for twenty minutes or so, practicing swordplay with mop handles.

But the captain himself wouldn’t issue a reprimand for mere dawdling, would he? Unless he also knew that she’d been supplying Volger with newspapers, and had even told him about Admiral Souchon and the
Goeben
. Or how she’d looked the other way while the Clankers had been planning to escape!

But when the lady boffin had announced this meeting, she’d been
smiling
.…

The late afternoon sun was slanting in through the windows that curved around the navigation room. Dr. Barlow and the captain were already there, along with the bosun and Dr. Busk, the officers all in resplendent dress uniforms for the sultan’s visit.

Deryn frowned. If she was about to receive a reprimand, why in blazes was the ship’s head boffin here?

When she clicked her heels, the four of them clammed up quickly, like children caught telling secrets.

“Ah, Mr. Sharp, glad you could join us,” Captain Hobbes said. “We need to discuss your recent exploits.”

“Um … my exploits, sir?”

The captain raised a dispatch. “I have communicated with the Admiralty about the matter, and they concur with my recommendations.”

“The Admiralty, sir?” Deryn managed. If the Admiralty was involved, this had to be a hanging offense! She looked at Dr. Barlow, racking her brain for what had given her treason away.

“Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Sharp,” the bosun said. “Even in all the recent ruckus, your rescue of Mr. Newkirk has not been forgotten.”

The rest of them broke into broad smiles, but Deryn’s brain ground to a halt.

“Pardon me, sir?”

“I wish we had time to do this properly,” Captain Hobbes said, “but other duties await.”

He lifted a velvet jewelry case from the map table, opened it, and produced a rounded silver cross that dangled from a sky blue ribbon. The face of Charles Darwin was engraved upon its center, the Air Service wings at its top.

Deryn stared at it, wondering what the captain was doing with her father’s medal, and how it had got so shiny and new.…

“Midshipman Dylan Sharp,” the captain began, “I hereby award you the Air Gallantry Cross for your brave and selfless actions of August 10, wherein you saved the life of a fellow
crewman at great risk to your own. Congratulations.”

As he pinned the medal to Deryn’s chest, Dr. Barlow applauded softly with gloved hands. The captain stepped back, and the officers saluted as one.

A realization meandered its slow way through Deryn’s brain—this wasn’t her father’s medal …

It was hers.

“Thank you, sir,” she said at last, barely remembering to return the officers’ salutes. Instead of charging her with treason, they’d gone and
decorated
her?

“Now, then,” Captain Hobbes said, turning back to the map table. “We have other matters to discuss.”

“Well done, Mr. Sharp,” the lady boffin whispered, patting Deryn on the shoulder. “If only you were properly dressed!”

Deryn nodded dumbly, trying to gather her thoughts. She was a decorated officer now, pinned with the same medal her father had won. And unlike him, she was still alive. She could still hear her own heart beating, sure enough, like a drummer marching her off to war.

Part of her wanted to weep, to let all the nightmares of the last week spill out of her. And another part wanted to shout aloud that this was madness. She was a traitor, a spy—a
girl
, for heaven’s sake. But somehow she managed to hold the jumble of feelings inside by staring down at the table as hard as she could.

On it was a map of the Dardanelles, with mines and fortifications drawn by hand in red. As Deryn took slow breaths, her brain gradually focused on the matter at hand.

The Dardanelles strait was the heart of the Ottoman defenses. It squeezed all ships headed for Istanbul into a channel less than a mile wide, which was stuffed with sea mines and lined with forts and cannon on high cliffs.

Whatever the lady boffin’s alternate plan was, Deryn had a feeling it didn’t involve more diplomacy.

“We’re forbidden to fly down the strait,” Captain Hobbes was saying. “The Ottomans don’t want us spying on their fortifications during the sultan’s joyride. But they’ve given us permission to travel down the ocean side—so the sultan can watch the sunset, we’ve told them.”

The bosun chuckled as the captain’s finger traveled down the western edge of Gallipoli, the rocky peninsula that separated the strait from the Aegean Sea.