Goliath

you tempt me with this gold toothpick?”

“Then, what do you wanp>

The man’s eyes narrowed on Alek. “Senor Hearst says you are a nephew of the old emperor, Maximilian.”

“A grandnephew, but yes.”

“Emperors are vain and useless things. We did not need one, so we shot him.”

“Yes, I know the story.” Alek swallowed. “Perhaps it was a bit presumptuous, putting an Austrian on the throne of Mexico.”

“It was an insult to the people. But your uncle was brave at the end. In front of the firing squad, he wished that his blood should be the last to flow for freedom.” General Villa looked at the red-stained rag in Dr. Azuela’s hand. “Sadly, it was not.”

“Indeed,” Alek said. “That was fifty years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Si. Too much blood since then.” Villa tossed the bag back to Alek and turned to Deryn. “Keep your secret, little sister. But be more careful the next time you jump off your ship.”

“Aye, I’ll try.”

“And be careful of young princes. The first man I ever shot was as rich as a prince, and it was for my sister’s honor.” General Villa laughed again. “But you are a soldier, Senorita Sharp—you can shoot men for yourself, can’t you?”

Deryn gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s crossed my mind, once or twice. But pardon me, sir. If you don’t like emperors, where did you get those German walkers?”

“The kaiser sells us arms.” General Villa patted the Mauser pistol on his belt. “Sometimes he gives us arms, so we are his friends when the Yankees join the war, I think. But we will never bow to him.”

“Aye, emperors are a bit pointless, aren’t they?” Deryn sat up straighter and held out her right hand. “Thank you for not telling.”

“Your secret is safe, hermanita.” General Villa shook her hand, then rose to his feet, but suddenly his eyes narrowed and his hand went to his gun. A shadow loomed against the tarp.

Villa reached up and flung the canvas aside, pointing his pistol into the beaming unshaven face of Eddie Malone.

“Dylan Sharp, Deryn Sharp . . . of course! Well, I can’t say I had a clue, but it sure explains a lot.” The man rubbed his hands together and then thrust one at Pancho Villa. “Eddie Malone, reporter for the New York World.”

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 in out of t 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!