Goliath

It was all a great barking mess.

She turned from Lilit’s gaze and stared up as the next newsreel began….

And there it was before her, the Leviathan soaring over a hilly expanse of desert, the image muddy and colorless on the screen, but vibrant in her memory. The point of view banked into a turn, and Deryn realized that there’d been cameras aboard General Villa’s manta ships.

Then she was seeing the Leviathan from above, the camera peeking over a steep cliff as the airship descended into Pancho Villa’s canyon. Crewmen and beasties scurried across the topside like bugs, the steel talons of the ship’s ring of strafing hawks glittering in the sun.

Suddenly a winged figure rose into view, an airman staring wide-eyed into the camera. Deryn blinked, not quite believing—it was her own face up there on the screen.

The image was replaced by a sign… THE BRAVE AIRMAN TESTS HIS WINGS!

“Tests his wings?” she said aloud. As if she’d been larking about instead of preventing disaster! Giggles came from the pair of girls nearby as the sign disappeared. They were pointing up at her on the screen.

“They seem to think you make a dashing boy,” Lilit said. “Quite right too. When do you leave?”

“Our twenty-four hours will be up tonight.”

“Too bad. And Alek’s staying, isn’t he?”

“Aye. He works for Tesla now.”

“Oh, poor Dylan.” The flickering screen showed Alek now, standing face-to-face with Pancho Villa’s massive fighting bulls. “But Dylan isn’t your real name, is it?”

Deryn shook her head but supplied nothing more. Lilit seemed to have guessed everything else about her; she might as well figure out the rest on her own.

“Do you want to stay a man forever?”

“It doesn’t seem possible. Too many people know already.” Deryn looked at the schoolgirls, who were unescorted and didn’t seem ashamed about it. “Though maybe I don’t have to. Women can ride in balloons here, and they can pilot walkers. Dr. Barlow says that British women will get the vote, once the war is over.”

“Fah. The Committee promised the same thing, back when we were rebels.” Lilit shook her head. “But now that we’re in power, there seems to be no rush. And when I complained, I was sent five thousand miles away.”

“Aye, but I’m glad you’re here,” Deryn said softly.

She’d never talked about Alek aloud before, not to anyone. That was the problem with leading a secret life. The whole unsoldierly business of wanting him had all taken place between her own ears, except for that one brief moment on the topside.

“I kissed him once,” she whispered.

“Well done. What did he do?”

“Um…” Deryn sighed. “He woke up.”

“Woke up? Had you snuck into his cabin, Mr. Sharp?”

“No! He’d fallen and knocked his daft head. It was a medical emergency!”

Lilit snorted out a laugh, and Deryn turned from her to stare glumly at the screen. Maybe she should just confess to the world what she was. Then she could stop having secrets forever.

But the reason why she couldn’t was right in front of her, written in flickering light. The air was the air, and every minute aboard the Leviathan was worth a lifetime of lies.

“Do you love him?”

Deryn swallowed, then pointed at the screen. “He makes me feel like that. Like flying.”

“Then, you have to tell him.”

“I told you, I kissed him!”

“It’s hardly the same. I kissed you, after all. That wasn’t love, Mr. Sharp.”

“Aye, and what exactly was it?”

“Curiosity.” Lilit smiled. “And as I said, you’re quite a dashing boy.”

“But I’m pretty sure Alek doesn’t want a dashing boy!”

“You can’t be sure until you ask.”

Deryn shook her head. “You were raised to throw bombs. I wasn’t.”

“Were you raised to wear trousers and be a soldier?”

“Maybe not. But those are both dead easy compared to this!” One of the schoolgirls glared back at them, and Deryn lowered her voice. “At any rate it doesn’t matter what he wants. He’s the heir to the Austrian throne, and I’m a commoner.”

“That throne may not exist once this war is over.”

“Well, that’s cheery.”

“That’s war.” Lilit pulled out a pocket watch and read it in the jittering light from the screen. “We should get back.”

Deryn nodded, but as she followed Lilit up the aisle, she took one last glance over her shoulder. The Leviathan was soaring again across the desert, its engines repaired.

She promised herself then to make everything clear, the very next time she was alone with Alek. After all, she’d made a solemn vow never to keep secrets from him.

Of course that moment might not come until the war was over, years from now, when the world would be a very different place.

THIRTY-SIX

Alek’s next two weeks were a whirl of cocktail parties, press conferences, and scientific demonstrations. Money had to be raised, reporters entertained, and diplomats introduced to the young prince with a shaky claim to the throne of Austria-Hungary. It was all so different from the rhythms of the Leviathan, the patterns of watches and bells and mealtimes. Alek missed the steady thrum of engines and the gentle sway of the deck beneath his feet.

He missed Deryn as well, even more than he had in those awful days after learning her secret. At least then the two of them had been walking the same corridors, but now the Leviathan was missing as well, all connections with his best friend and ally severed.

Instead of Deryn he had Nikola Tesla, a draining man to spend long days with. Tesla wrestled with the secrets of the universe, but he also spent hours selecting the right wines for dinner. He lamented the war’s daily toll of lives, but wasted time flattering reporters, wringing every drop of fame from these moments in the spotlight.

He lived in the grip of odd passions, none stranger than his love of pigeons. A dozen of the gray, warbling creatures inhabited Tesla’s rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. He was overjoyed to see them again after his months in Siberia, during which the hotel staff had looked after them dutifully, and at great cost.

And yet Tesla knew how to turn his eccentricities into charm, especially when investors were present. He put on electrikal shows in his Manhattan laboratory and presided over lavish dinners at the Waldorf-Astoria, swiftly raising enough money to make the necessary improvements to his weapon.

But it felt like ages before Tesla and Alek completed their journey to Long Island. In a Pinkerton armored walker paid for by Hearst-Pathe Newsreels, the inventor finally brought Alek and his men to a huge tower looming over the small seaside town of Shoreham.

Goliath stood as tall as a skyscraper, a giant cousin to the sultan’s Tesla cannon in Istanbul. Four smaller towers surrounded the central structure, which was crowned with a copper-sheathed hemisphere that shone brilliantly in the sun. Workmen scrambled over it, making the final adjustments before tonight’s test. Beneath the towers was the brick powerhouse of the complex, its chimneys huffing.