Goliath

The mysterious object was still jabbing into her back, and its size still bothered her. How had that contraption detected something so small from the other end of the ship?

Magnetic fields, Klopp had said.

Deryn reached into a pocket and pulled out her compass. She inched it out from beneath the bed until its face caught a squick of moonlight. . . .

Her eyes widened. The needle was pointing straight at the object, toward the bow of the ship. But they were headed south-by-southeast, not due north.

The mysterious object was magnetized. It had to be what Tesla had been looking for.

Deryn counted a thousand slow heartbeats before daring to turn over. She felt the canvas sack in the darkness, and when her fingers slipped inside, they touched a cool metal surface. Not smooth, like cast metal, but as knobbly as a piece of old cheese.

She tried to test the object’s weight, but it wouldn’t budge from the floor. Solid metal was barking heavy, of course. Even hollow aerial bombs took two men to lift.

What in blazes was this thing?

Dr. Barlow might know, if Deryn could get a sample somehow.

She remembered the chapter from the Manual of Aeronautics on compasses. Iron was the only magnetic element, and a great spinning blob of it at the earth’s core was what made compasses work. She rubbed the metal and sniffed her fingers, and caught a tang almost like fresh blood. There was iron in blood, too. . . .

And iron was much softer than steel.

She pulled out her rigging knife and slipped it into the sack. Her fingers searched until she found a wee sliver jutting up from the object’s rough surface. Tesla was snoring by now, so Deryn began to saw away at the sliver, the canvas sack muffling the rasp of her knife.

As she worked, her mind spun with questions. Had Tesla’s weapon used a projectile of some kind and this was all that was left? Or had the electrical explosion somehow fused all the iron in the frozen Siberian ground?

One thing was certain—Mr. Tesla’s claim of having caused all that destruction suddenly seemed more credible.

At last the sliver broke free, and Deryn slipped it into a pocket. She stretched her muscles carefully one by one. It wouldn’t do for her legs to cramp as she as sneaking out of the room.

She crawled from beneath the bed and slowly stood, watching the rise and fall of Tesla’s chest as she pulled her keys out. The door unlocked with a soft click, and a moment later Deryn was in the corridor.

Alek stood there looking pale, a drawn knife in his hand. Bovril still perched on his shoulder, wide-eyed and tense.

Deryn put her fingers to her lips, then turned and relocked the door. With a beckoning wave of her hand, she led Alek to the middies’ mess. He followed, his expression still anxious, his eyes darting down every corridor.

“You can put that away,” Deryn said when she’d closed the door to the mess.

Alek stared at his knife a moment, then slipped it back into his boot.

“It was maddening,” he said, “standing out there. When that other man stayed so long, I almost burst in to make sure you were all right.”

“Good thing you didn’t,” she said, wondering why Alek was so twitchy tonight. “You’d have started a ruckus for no reason. And look, while I was hiding under the bed from that Russian, I found something!”

She pulled the shard of metal from her pocket and placed it on the mess table. It didn’t look like much here in the light, just a shiny black blob the size of Bovril’s little finger.

“That can’t be what Tesla came here for,” Alek said. “It’s too small.”

“That’s just a wee piece of it, Dummkopf. The rest is as big as your daft head.”

Alek pulled out a chair and sat at the mess table, looking exhausted. “That still seems awfully small. How did that device detect it?”

“Watch this.” She pulled out her compass and set it close to the sliver of metal, which set the needle shivering. “It’s magnetized iron!”

Bovril crawled down from Alek’s shoulder, getting close enough for a sniff.

“Magnetized,” the beastie said.

“I don’t understand,” Alek said. “What has magnetism to do with an explosion?”

“I reckon that’s one for the boffins to ponder.”

“I’ll ask Klopp as well. We have to know if Tesla’s telling the truth before he gets off this ship.”

Deryn frowned. “Why’s that, exactly?”

Alek drummed his fingers on the table a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

Deryn’s nerves twitched a bit. There was something odd about the way Alek was looking at her, not just exhaustion and nerves. He’d been tense all night, but now there was something stormy in his eyes.

“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” she asked. “What’s wrong, Alek?”

“I need to ask you a simple question,” he said slowly. “Will you listen to every word? And answer me truthfully?”

She nodded. “Just ask.”

“All right, then.” He took a slow breath. “Can I trust you, Deryn? Really trust you?”

“Aye. Of course you can.”

Alek breathed out a sigh as he stood up. He turned without another word and walked from the room.

Deryn frowned. What in blazes was he . . . ?

“Can I trust you, Deryn?” repeated Bovril, then it sprawled across the table, chuckling to itself.

Something coiled, tight and hard, in her chest. Alek had called her Deryn.

He knew.

She was a girl. Her name was Deryn Sharp, and she was a girl disguised as a boy.

Alek walked toward his stateroom with steady, determined steps, but the floor was shifting beneath his feet. The soft green wormlight of the corridors looked all wrong, as sickly as when he’d first come aboard the Leviathan.

He raised a hand to guide himself, his fingers sliding along the wall like a blind man’s. The fabricated wood trembled against them, the whole ghastly airship pulsing with life. He was trapped inside an abomination.

His best friend had been lying to him since the moment they’d met.

“Alek!” came a frantic whisper from behind.

Part of him was pleased that Deryn had followed. Not because he wanted to talk to her, but so he could walk away again.

He kept walking.

“Alek!” she repeated, breaking into a full-voiced cry, loud enough to wake the sleeping men around them. Alek had almost reached the officers’ cabins. Let the girl keep yelling where they could hear.

She’d lied to all of them, hadn’t she? Her captain, her officers and shipmates. She’d sworn a solemn oath of duty to King George, all lies.

Her hand grabbed his shoulder. “You daft prince! Stop!”

Alek spun about, and they glared at each other in silence. It stung him to finally see her sharp, fine features for what they really were. To see how completely he’d been fooled.

“You lied to me,” he whispered at last.

“Well, that’s pretty barking obvious. Anything else obvious to say?”

Alek’s eyes widened. This . . . girl had the nerve to be impertinent?

“All your talk of dutywhen you’re not even a soldier.”

“I am a barking soldier!” she growled.