Goliath (47 page)

“No one even knows if that contraption—,” Deryn began, but halted herself. That was too close to Dr. Barlow’s new secret to say aloud.

Why couldn’t everyone see that Alek had done more to end the war than anyone else? He’d given his gold to the Ottoman Revolution and his engines to the
Leviathan
, which had rescued Tesla from being eaten in the wilderness. That had all made a difference, hadn’t it?

“You know something secret, don’t you, bell captain?” the woman said. “You always have.”

Deryn shrugged. “All I know is that His Serene Highness Aleksandar wants peace, just like he says. You can quote me on that.”

After the ceremony, once all the photographs had been
taken and the diplomats and notables had offered their congratulations, Alek went in search of Deryn. But before he could take two steps into the crowd, he found himself trapped between Captain Hobbes and the lady boffin.

“Your Serene Highness, congratulations again!” the captain said, and he offered a salute instead of bowing. As Alek returned the gesture, he imagined himself for a fleeting moment as a member of the crew. But that dream was over.

“Thank you, sir. For this and . . .” He shrugged. “For never throwing us into the brig.”

Captain Hobbes smiled. “It was tricky for you in those first days, wasn’t it? And a bit strange for us, having Clankers on the ship.”

“But I always knew we’d make a proper Darwinist of you in the end,” Dr. Barlow said, staring pointedly at Alek’s medal.

He had been awarded the Air Gallantry Cross, the highest honor the British armed services could give a civilian, and right there on its face was a portrait of old Charles Darwin himself.

“A proper Darwinist,” the lady boffin’s loris said, and Bovril chuckled.

“I’m not sure what I am, these days,” Alek admitted. “But I shall try to live up to this honor.”

“A fine watchword in these strange times, Your Highness,” the captain said. “If you’ll excuse me, I must attend to our American guests. Their Clanker airships will be joining us on our way back to Europe. Most extraordinary.”

“It certainly is.” Alek bowed as the man strode away toward a clump of officers in dark American blue.

“How quickly things have turned,” Dr. Barlow said. “The Ottomans remain neutral, Austria-Hungary is looking for a way out, and now the United States has joined the fray. Tesla may not have ended the war, but his death seems to have shortened it considerably.”

“Let us hope so,” Alek managed to say, and he looked about for a way to change the subject.

“Klopp!” said Bovril.

“Ah, yes.” Alek waved his men over. “Master Klopp, Bauer, and Hoffman have left my service. They’ll be staying here in America.”

“The land of opportunity,” the lady boffin said in excellent German.

Klopp nodded. “And the only place in the Clanker world that won’t call us traitors and plotters, madam.”

“That’s only for the moment, Master Klopp,” Alek said. “We’ll all get home someday, I’m sure.” The three men still looked odd to him in their civilian suits and ties, but they would be back in coveralls soon enough. “They’re starting work Monday for a manufacturer of passenger walkers.”

“Mightn’t that be a bit boring?” the lady boffin asked. “After months of gallivanting about with your young prince?”

“Not at all boring, madam,” Bauer said. “Mr. Ford pays five dollars a day!”

Dr. Barlow’s eyes widened. “How extraordinary.”

Alek smiled. He’d tried to give Klopp the rest of his father’s gold, but the man hadn’t taken it. In any case, the toothpick weighed less than twenty grams, no more than fifteen dollars’ worth. Working for Ford Walkers, the three of them together would make that every day.

“Land of opportunity,” the lady boffin’s loris said with a sniff. The creature’s German accent was also excellent.

“Where is your Count Volger?” Dr. Barlow said. “I’ve saved a number of periodicals for him.”

“He’s here somewhere.” Alek looked about, and saw Volger skulking in a dark corner of the cargo bay. His eyebrows had been burnt off when Tesla’s bolt of lightning had struck their swords, making his expression resemble a madman’s in a motion picture show.

Or perhaps he was simply in one of his moods. When Alek had told his men to make new lives here in America, only Volger had resisted. The man had vowed to work for Alek’s elevation to the throne of Austria-Hungary, whether Alek wanted him to or not.

But when Dr. Barlow went to the wildcount, his expression softened, and soon they were talking intently together in the privacy of the corner.

“Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, sir,” Hoffman said, looking at them. “But they are an odd pair, aren’t they?”

Klopp snorted a laugh. “Quite suited to each other.”

“You know what I’ve always thought, sir?” Bauer said. “That this war’s been as good as over since they wound up on the same side!”

“Plotters,” Bovril whispered into Alek’s ear.

It took another hour for Alek to extract himself from all the well-wishers and interview-seekers, and to maneuver out of the cargo bay and into a smaller storeroom he’d seen Deryn
make a quiet exit toward. She was still there waiting, sitting on a barrel of honey from the
Leviathan
’s fabricated bees.

It was the first time Alek and Bovril had seen her since they’d said good-bye at the Serbian consulate, and the beastie practically threw itself into her arms. Alek wished he could as well, but the crowded cargo bay was on the other side of an unlocked hatch. Instead he only nodded, wondering how to start.

He had expected it to be years before they met again, but even three weeks had seemed so long. He couldn’t say any of that, though, not yet.

She was staring at his medal as she stroked Bovril’s head. It was, of course, the same decoration that Deryn wore on her own dress uniform, and that her father had earned for saving her life.

“A bit daft,” she finally said. “Getting a medal for falling down.”

He swallowed. “I don’t really deserve it, do I?”

“You deserve a
stack
of medals, Alek! For saving the ship back in the Alps, and in Istanbul, and again when you shut down Tesla’s machine!” She paused a moment. “Not that the Admiralty would ever give you that last one, seeing as how you saved Berlin.”

“You were there for all of those, Deryn, and I don’t see medals filling up your . . .” He cleared his throat and glanced away.

“Chest!” Bovril said.

Deryn laughed aloud at that, but Alek didn’t join her.

“I’m happy with just the one, thanks,” she said. “And I wasn’t beside you when you stopped Goliath.”

“In a way you were,” he said softly, staring at the floor. Only the fact that he’d been saving her had made pulling that trigger possible.

Deryn smiled and shook her head. “You never did recover from that knock to your head, did you?”

“A bit daft!” said Bovril.

“Maybe not. A lot of things have been a bit fuzzy since then.” Alek looked up at her. “Of course, other things have gotten clearer.”

Bovril chuckled at this, but Deryn looked away. A silence stretched out, and Alek wondered if it would always be like this between them now, halting and uncertain.

“There’s something I should tell you,” he said. “A secret about Tesla.”

Deryn’s eyes widened. “Blisters.”

“Somewhere more private,” Alek said, then wondered if he were only stalling. But suddenly he knew where he wanted to go. “I know I’m not serving on this ship, Mr. Sharp, but do you suppose they’d let me go topside one last time?”

“If you’re escorted by a decorated officer, maybe.” A grin spread across Deryn’s face. “And I suppose it’s time for me to try the ratlines.”

“Your knee’s still hurt? But your cane . . .” The first time he’d spotted her in the crowd, Alek had noticed she wasn’t carrying it.

“It’s much better, thank you. I’m still resting it, is all, and I’m forgetting all my knots!” She shrugged. “But if you don’t mind climbing in your fancy clothes, I’m game to give it a try.”

The
Leviathan
was keeping station over the East River,
making a show of patrolling for any German water-walkers that might attack Manhattan, unlikely as that seemed. The ocean breeze blew from the south, keeping the view of the city spires steady. Deryn wondered what the airbeast thought of the huge, uncanny skyscrapers—almost its own size, but planted in the ground sideways and pointing straight into the air.

Her knee hurt as they climbed the ratlines together, of course, but the burning was an old friend now. The feel of rope in her hands and the tremble of the airbeast beneath her weight overwhelmed everything else. And by the time they reached the spine, the muscles in her arms hurt worse than her injury.

“Barking spiders, I’ve gotten soft!”

“Hardly,” Alek said, loosening the buttons on his formal jacket.

The U-boat spotters worked from the gondola, and half the crew had been to Alek’s ceremony, so there was hardly anyone topside now. Deryn led Alek forward, away from the few riggers at work amidships. As they passed through the colony of fléchette bats, Bovril twitched on her shoulder, imitating the beasties’ soft clicking sounds.

The bowhead was empty, but Deryn hesitated a moment before speaking. It was enough, just standing here with Alek in the salt breeze. And she suspected that his secret about Tesla concerned a certain bit of meteor, and talking about that would only make things sour.

But they couldn’t stand here forever, however much she wished for it.

“All right, your princeliness. What’s this secret?”

Alek turned away to face the darkening sky, in the direction of Tesla’s ruined machine fifty miles away.

“The Germans didn’t kill him,” he said simply. “I did.”

It took a moment for Deryn’s mind to grasp the words.

“That’s not what I . . . ,” she began. “Oh.”

“There was no other way to stop him.” Alek looked down at his hands. “I killed him with his own walking stick.”

Deryn stepped closer and took Alek’s arm. He looked as sad as when he’d first come aboard the
Leviathan
, back when his parents’ deaths still haunted him.

“I’m sorry, Alek.”

“When I was helping Tesla, I never faced the truth of what Goliath was.” He stared into her eyes. “But with the Germans storming up the beach, it all became real too fast. Suddenly he was standing there, ready to destroy a city, and I couldn’t let him.”

“You did the right thing, Alek.”

“I killed an unarmed man!” he cried; then he shook his head. “But Volger keeps pointing out that Tesla wasn’t exactly unarmed. Goliath was a weapon, after all.”

“Quite,” Bovril said.

Deryn swallowed, realizing that Dr. Barlow had been right. They couldn’t tell Alek about the meteor now. He could never learn he’d killed a man to stop a weapon that didn’t work.

But she’d promised not to keep secrets from him anymore. . . .

“It was Volger’s idea to lie,” Alek went on. “We told the truth about shutting down Goliath, because saving Berlin will make me a hero in the Clanker nations. But we can never say exactly
how
I did it.”

“Aye, and he’s right!” Deryn took both his hands,
remembering the suspicions that Adela Rogers had voiced. “Don’t tell anyone you killed him, Alek. They’ll think you were in league with the Germans, and they’ll blame the rest of the war on you!”

He nodded. “But I had to tell you, Deryn. Because we promised not to keep secrets anymore.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, you daft prince.”

There was no way out of it now.

“You’re right enough about that.” Alek was staring down at his formal boots, which were a little scuffed from climbing. “I thought it was my destiny to stop this war, and in the end all I had to do was step aside and it would’ve all been over. But instead I kept it going. So it really is my fault from now on.”

“No, it isn’t!” Deryn cried. “It never was. And you couldn’t have stopped it anyway, because Tesla’s machine
didn’t work
!”