Behemoth

right; even if she had ten-foot semaphore flags, no one would ever see her among the wreckage of the train.

Then she saw them—the golem’s arms stretched out in both directions. The right one was straight out, the left one at an angle, almost making the sign for the letter S.

“Can this contraption still move?”

“What, the walker?”

“A, B, C,” Bovril said again.

“Aye. A giant sending signals would be barking hard to miss.”

“The boilers are cold,” Alek said. “But I suppose the pneumatics might still have some pressure in them.”

“Then take a look!”

Alek gritted his teeth, but climbed back up to the head and knelt by the controls. He rapped at two of the gauges, then turned back, an uncertain look on his face.

“Can it work?” she called. “Don’t lie to me!”

“I would never lie to you, Dylan. We can signal perhaps a dozen letters.”

“Then do it! Follow my lead.” Deryn held her right arm out straight, her left angled down.

Alek didn’t move. “If I give myself up to your captain, he’ll never let me escape again.”

“But if you don’t signal the Leviathan for help, Klopp is a dead man. We all are, once those walkers get here!”

Alek stared at her another moment, then sighed and turned to the controls, placing his hands in the saunters. The hiss of pneumatics filled the air, and then the great arms scraped slowly along the ground, exactly matching Deryn’s stance.

“S …,” the perspicacious loris said.

Deryn swung her left arm across herself. This letter was harder for the iron golem, half lying in the dirt as it was, but Alek managed to bend its elbow just enough.

“H!” Bovril announced, and kept up as Deryn continued. “A … R … P …”

By the fifth letter the Leviathan’s huge kraken spotlight had found them, and together they repeated the sequence twice more before the giant arms’ last squick of pressure hissed away into the night.

Alek turned from the saunters. “Wie lange haben wir, Hans?”

Bauer shielded his eyes from the spotlight’s glare. “Zehn minuten?”

“We still have time to get away, Dylan.”

“Not with only ten minutes, and there’s no need to run.” Deryn put a hand on Alek’s shoulder. “After what we’ve done tonight, I can tell the captain how you introduced me to the Committee. And how if you hadn’t, the ship would’ve been shot down!” She said it all fast. Breaking her silent promise to leave him behind was as easy as breathing.

“I expect they’ll give me a medal,” Alek said drily.

“Aye, you never know about that.”

The spotlight began to flicker then, long and short flashes. Deryn was out of practice with Morse code, but as she watched, the familiar patterns came back into her mind.

“Message received,” she said. “And the captain sends me greetings!”

“How very polite.”

Deryn kept her eyes on the flickering spotlight. “They’re getting ready to pick us up. We’ll have Master Klopp to a surgeon in half a squick!”

“Then you don’t need me and Hans anymore.” Alek held out his hand. “I have to say good-bye.”

“Don’t,” Deryn pleaded. “You’ll never make it past all those walkers. And I swear I won’t let the captain chain you up. If he does, I’ll break the locks myself!”

Alek stared down at his offered hand, but then his dark green eyes caught hers. They gazed at each other for a long moment, the rumble of the airship’s engines trembling on Deryn’s skin.

“Come with me,” she said, finally grasping his hand. “It’s like you said the night before you ran away, how all the parts of the Leviathan fit. You belong there.”

He looked up at the airship, his eyes glistening. He was still in love with it, Deryn could see.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t run off without my men,” he said.

“Mein Herr,” Bauer said. “Graf Volger befahl mir—”

“Volger!” Alek spat. “If it weren’t for his scheming, we’d all have kept together in the first place.”

Deryn squeezed his hand harder. “It’ll be all right. I swear.”

As the airship drew closer, a whisper of wings came from overhead, steel talons glinting in the searchlights. Deryn let go of Alek’s hand, and breathed deep the bitter almond of spilled hydrogen—the dangerous, beautiful smell of a hasty descent. Ropes tumbled from the gondola’s cargo door, and seconds later men were sliding down them.

“Isn’t that a barking brilliant sight?”

“Beautiful,” Alek said. “If one isn’t chained up inside.”

“Nonsense.” Deryn banged his shoulder. “That blether about chains, that was just an expression. They only locked Count Volger in his stateroom, and I had to bring him breakfast every day!”

“How luxurious.”

She smiled, though the thought of Volger sent a squick of nerves through her—he knew her secret. The man could still betray her to the officers, or to Alek, anytime he wanted.

But she couldn’t keep hiding from his countship forever. It wasn’t soldierly. And besides, she could always toss him out a window if it came to that.

As the airship came to a rumbling halt, Bovril clung tighter to her shoulder. “Breakfast every day?” it asked.

“Aye, beastie,” Deryn said, stroking its fur. “You’re going home.”

FORTY-TWO

“S-H-A-R-P!” said Newkirk from the mouth of the cargo bay. “Blisters, Dylan, it’s really you!”

“Who else?” Deryn replied, grinning as she took the boy’s offered hand. She pulled herself up in a single heave.

“And you found the missing beastie?”

“Aye.” Deryn hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the wreckage-strewn battlefield. “One of my many accomplishments.”

Newkirk looked down. “You have been busy, Mr. Sharp. But save your bragging. There are German walkers coming, and the bosun says you’re wanted in the navigation room.”

“Now?” Deryn glanced back at the rescue operation. Klopp was rising through the air, trussed to a stretcher, while Alek and Bauer waited on the iron golem’s shoulder.

“The bosun says right away.”

“All right, Mr. Newkirk. But make sure you get those Clankers up safely.”

“Aye, don’t worry. We’ll not let the bum-rags slip away again!”

Deryn didn’t argue with the boy. It didn’t matter what Newkirk thought, as long as the officers knew that Alek had come back of his own free will.

Clanker or not, he belonged here.

On her way to the navigation room, the airship hummed and rumbled beneath Deryn’s feet, the corridors full of scrambling men and beasts. Bovril took in everything with eyes the size of florins, awed into a rare silence. The beastie belonged here too, it seemed.