Leviathan

“How convenient.” Dr. Barlow unhooked Tazza’s leash from his collar, and the beast trotted deeper into the gloom, sniffing every box and barrel along the way. “But you couldn’t have brought all this in your machine.”

“We didn’t,” Alek said simply. “It was waiting here, just in case.”

The woman tutted sadly. “Long-standing family squabbles can be most tiresome.”

Alek didn’t answer, gritting his teeth. Every word out of his mouth only betrayed more information.

He wondered if the Darwinists had already guessed who he was. The assassination was still front-page news, and the rift between his father and the emperor was no secret. Luckily, the Austrian papers had never revealed that Alek was missing. The government seemed to want his disappearance kept quiet, at least until it could be made permanent.

Dylan appeared at the stable door and gave a low whistle.

“Is this your pantry?” The boy laughed. “It’s a wonder you’re not fatter.”

“Let us not question good fortune, Mr. Sharp,” Dr. Barlow said, as if she hadn’t been full of questions herself a moment ago. She handed Dylan a notepad and safety pen, then began to move among the crates and sacks, reading the labels and calling out her results to be written down.

After a moment of watching her effortlessly translate the labels, Alek cleared his throat. “Your German is quite good, Dr. Barlow.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t have a chat with Volger,” he said.

She turned to him and smiled innocently. “German is such an important language in the sciences, so I’ve learned to read it. But conversation is another matter.”

Alek wondered if that were true, or whether she’d understood them perfectly. “Well, I’m glad you think our science is worth reading.”

She shrugged. “We borrow as much from your engineering as you do from ours.”

“Us, borrow from Darwinists?” Alek snorted. “How absurd.”

“Aye, it’s true,” Dylan spoke up from across the room. “Mr. Rigby says you Clankers wouldn’t have invented walking machines without our example to follow.”

“Of course we would have!” Alek said, though the connection had never occurred to him. How else would a war machine get around? On treads, like an old-fashioned farm tractor?

What a preposterous idea.

As the two Darwinists returned to their work, Alek’s fuming turned to annoyance with himself. If he hadn’t let slip his discovery that Dr. Barlow understood German, perhaps Volger could have concocted some way to mislead her.

But then he sighed, depressed at how often his thoughts turned to deception now. After all, Dr. Barlow had only done what Volger was doing with the Darwinists, pretending not to speak their language to spy on them.

It was odd, really, how alike those two were.

Alek shuddered at the thought, then went to help Klopp and the others prepare the Stormwalker. The sooner the Darwinists were gone, the sooner all this skullduggery could end.

“Can your contraption really pull all that?” Dylan asked.

Alek looked at the sledge, which was piled high with barrels, crates, and sacks—eight thousand kilograms in all. Plus the weight of Tazza, who sat atop the mountain of food, catching the sun’s last rays. There was no chance of starting before dark, but they’d be ready at dawn tomorrow.

“Master Klopp says it should slide easily on the snow. The trick is not breaking the chains.”

“Well, it’s not a bad job,” Dylan said. The boy was sketching the Stormwalker and its load, capturing the walker’s lines with swift, sure strokes. “I’ll have to admit you Clankers are clever-boots with machines.”

“Thank you,” Alek said, though making the sledge had been simple enough. They’d taken one door off the castle gate and laid it flat, adding two iron bars for runners. The tricky part was securing the sledge to the Stormwalker. At the moment Klopp was halfway up a ladder, reinforcing the walker’s anchor ring with the sputtering flame of a welding torch.

“But isn’t it a bother?” Dylan asked. “Making a machine to do something that animals are better at?”

“Better?” Alek said. “I doubt one of your fabricated creatures could pull this load.”

“I reckon an elephantine could drag that, easy.” Dylan pointed up at Klopp. “And you wouldn’t have to oil its gears every few minutes.”

“Master Klopp’s only being careful,” Alek said. “Metal can be brittle in this cold.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Mammothines love the cold!”

Alek recalled seeing photos of a mammothine—a huge, shaggy sort of Siberian elephant, the first extinct creature that the Darwinists had brought back. “But don’t they fall over and die in the heat?”

“That’s a Clanker lie!” Dylan exclaimed, then shrugged. “They’re fine, unless you take them south of Glasgow.”

Alek laughed, though he was never quite sure when Dylan was joking. The boy had sharp wits, despite his rough manner of talking. He’d been very clever about tying cargo onto the sledge, and had hit it off with Bauer and Hoffman in an easy way that Alek had never managed— without speaking a word of German.

Alek might have trained in combat and tactics his whole life, but Dylan was a real soldier. He swore with an effortless extravagance, and during lunch had thrown a knife three meters and hit an apple square in its heart. He was skinnier than most boys his age, but could work alongside men and be treated as their equal. Even his lingering black eye from the crash had a piratical swagger to it.

In a way Dylan was the sort of boy Alek would have wanted to be, if he hadn’t been born the son of an archduke.

“Well, don’t worry,” Alek said, clapping a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “The Stormwalker can carry all the food your airbeast needs. Though I can’t see how one creature could eat all this.”

“Don’t be daft. The Leviathan isn’t one creature,” Dylan said. “It’s a whole tangle of beasties—what they call an ecosystem.”

Alek nodded slowly. “Did I hear Dr. Barlow say something about bats?”

“Aye, the flechette bats. You should see those wee beasties at work.”

“Flechette? Like ‘dart’ in French?”

“That sounds right,” Dylan said. “The bats gobble up these metal spikes, then release them over the enemy.”

“They eat spikes,” Alek said slowly. “And then … release them?”

Dylan stifled a laugh. “Aye, in the usual way.”

Alek blinked. The boy couldn’t possibly be saying what Alek thought he was. Perhaps it was another of his peculiar jokes.

“Well, I’m glad we’re at peace, so your bats won’t be, um … releasing their flechettes on us.”

Dylan nodded, a serious look on his face. “I’m glad too, Alek. Everyone says that Clankers only care about their machines. But you’re not like that.”

“Well, of course not.”

“It was dead brave, coming across that ice alone.”

Alek cleared his throat. “Anyone would have done the same.”