Goliath

Alek nodded, feeling blindly for his safety clip. He snapped it onto the grid of ropes beneath him, then sat up, his head spinning. Every second the engines roared louder, and as their power built, so did the driving power of the rain. His goggles were blurred, and his head still reeled from the impact of his fall.

“Sorry I fell.” Talking hurt his head.

“No worries. We’re far enough aft. Just wanted to stay out of that.”

Alek pulled his goggles off, following Dylan’s gaze. Pushed along by the airship’s passage, a channel of water was spilling down the backside of the hump, like a waterfall forming after a downpour.

“The flooding channel?”

Dylan laughed madly. “Aye, I’ve never seen it like that. And this is only three-quarter speed!”

Alek squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly uncertain how he’d gotten out here in this storm. It felt as if he’d just woken up to find himself magically transported from his bed out onto the topside.

“Blisters, Alek, you’re bleeding!”

“I’m what?” He blinked. Dylan was staring at his forehead. Alek reached up to touch the painful spot, then looked at his fingers. They were stained by a thin, watery hint of blood.

“It’s nothing.”

“Are you dizzy?”

“Why would I be dizzy?” Alek reached up to pull his goggles off, but found them already in his hand. His vision stayed blurry, though, as if a layer of glass hovered between him and the world.

“Because you just cracked your head, you dafty!”

“I did what?” It was hard to think with the engines roaring like this.

“Barking spiders, Alek.” Dylan grasped both his hands, staring straight into his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I’m cold.” All the heat in his body was trickling out into the storm, the strength in his limbs carried away by the cold water rushing past. Alek wanted to stand up, but the wind was too strong.

A vast boom rang out, the whole ship shuddering beneath them.

“Blisters!” Dylan swore. “A wave just smacked our underside! The officers left the engines too late.”

Alek stared at Dylan, the shock wave echoing in his head. He wanted to ask a question about the engines and the storm, but all at once the blurry layer across his vision seemed to clear away.

“You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

“What in blazes?” Deryn’s eyes grew wide. “Did your brain get cracked that bad? You’ve known that for a barking week!”

“Yes, but I can… see it now!” Even after he’d known the truth, the lie had remained stuck in his mind, like a mask over Deryn’s face. But suddenly the mask had shaken free.

He touched his forehead. “Did you always look like this?”

Deryn’s answer was drowned out by the engines. Alek knew the sound from his long hours in the pods, the distinctive roar of full speed ahead. The wind drove even harder, the rain suddenly like hailstones. He pulled his goggles on again.

“You fell and cracked your head!” Deryn shouted. “The ship’s heavy with rain, remember? So they’re throwing every engine to full speed.” She turned into the gale, her arm thrown across her face, and stared up at the hump rising over them. “And that’s not all!”

Alek squinted into the wind and saw it—a white sheet rippling toward them down the slope of the spine.

“What on earth is that?”

“The water from the bowhead—all being blown back at once!” She wrapped her arms around him. “Take hold of the ratlines before it hits, in case your safety line snaps!”

As Alek dug his fingers into the ropes beneath them, another boom shook the airship. A vast ripple passed through the membrane, bucking Deryn and Alek half a meter into the air, but her arms held tight around him. Her body was a shadow of warmth in the freezing wind.

“We’re still too low!” she cried. “A tall enough wave could hit the—”

The surge of rainwater struck at that moment, hardly knee height but moving fast. It swept across them where they lay, filling Alek’s nose and mouth. He clutched the ratlines with all his strength, and felt Deryn’s arms around him tighten. His safety line pulled taut as the torrent tried to carry them both down the sloping flank of the airbeast.

After a few long seconds the flood passed by, the water spilling away in both directions from the spine. Deryn let him go, and Alek sat up sputtering and coughing.

“We’re gaining altitude,” she said, looking down the flank. “Our speed has pushed a bit of water off.”

Alek huddled in his soaking flight suit, wondering if the world had gone mad. The wind was roaring with the fury of a hundred engines, a rain like cold gravel was tumbling from the sky, freezing rivers were pouring down the Leviathan’s length…

^{“SPINE SPOUT.”}

And his friend Dylan was a girl.

“What’s wrong with everything?” he said, curling up against the cold and shutting his eyes. The world had broken the night his parents had died, and it just seemed to keep breaking.

Deryn shook him. “You’ve got a head wound, Alek. Don’t fall asleep!”

He opened one eye. “It’s a bit cold for a nap.”

“Aye, but don’t pass out!” She leaned closer, their heads almost touching. “Keep talking to me.”

Alek lay there shuddering, trying to think of what to say. The rumble of the engines seemed to be inside his head, tangling his thoughts.

“I forgot you were a girl, just for a moment.”

“Aye. That fall scrambled your attic, didn’t it?”

He nodded, her strange way with words setting off an old memory. “‘My attic’s been scrambled.’ You said that the first time we met. After you crashed in the Alps.”

“Aye, I was a bit loopy that night. But you sounded mad yourself, pretending to be a Swiss smuggler.”

“I didn’t know what I was pretending to be. That was the problem.”

She smiled. “You’re a hopeless liar, your princeliness. I’ll give you that.”

“Lack of practice.” Alek shivered, and they huddled closer, her face only centimeters from his. The hood of her flight suit was pulled up, her wet hair pasted to her forehead, baring the angles of her face.

She frowned. “Are you going daft again?”

Alek shook his head, but his eyelids were heavy. He felt his body stop shivering, giving up its struggle against the cold. His thoughts began to fade into the roar of the world around him.

“Stay awake!” Deryn cried. “Talk to me!”

He searched for words, but the rain seemed to strip away his thoughts before they could form. Staring at Deryn, Alek felt his mind switch back and forth, seeing her as a girl, then as a boy.

And he realized what he had to say.

“Promise you won’t ever lie to me again.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I mean it!” he shouted above the wind. “You have to swear it, or we can’t be friends.”

Deryn stared hard at him another moment, then nodded. “Aleksandar of Hohenberg, I promise never to lie to you again.”

“And you won’t keep any secrets from me either?”

“Are you sure you want that?”

“Yes!”

“All right. I won’t hide anything from you again, for as long as I live.”

Alek smiled, and let his eyes finally drift closed. That was all he’d wanted, really, for his allies to trust him with the truth. Was it so much to ask?

Then a warmth pressed against his mouth, lips touching his. Soft at first, then harder, trembling with an intensity that lofted above the storm. A quiver went through him, like the shudder of a dream-fall pulling him from the edge of sleep. He opened his eyes and was staring into Deryn’s face.