It spoke with a posh accent, the deep voice uncanny from such a wee body.
“Mr. Sharp, I presume?” The lizard let out a throaty chuckle.
Gobsmacked as she was, Deryn almost answered. Of course, the message lizard was only repeating what one of the officers overhead had said to it.
“Greetings from the Leviathan,” it continued. “Our apologies for the delay. Bad weather and all that.” It made a noise like a man clearing his throat, and Deryn half expected the lizard to raise a tiny fist to its mouth. “But here we are at last. We’ll be taking you in on the dorsal side, of course—standard procedure.”
The lizard paused, and Deryn pondered what “dorsal” might mean.
“Ah, yes. I’m told you’re just a sprog. Well done, getting lost on your first flight.”
Deryn rolled her eyes. First a bag of gas and insect guts had carted her halfway across England, and now she was getting cheek from a barking lizard!
“I expect you don’t know standard procedure. Well, it’s quite simple, really. We’ll drop below you, then come up under and bring you in with the dorsal winch. Any questions?”
The message lizard stared up at her expectantly, blinking its wee black eyes.
“No questions, sir. I’m ready,” Deryn said, remembering to use her boy’s voice. She wasn’t about to admit she didn’t know what “dorsal” meant.
The message lizard didn’t move, just blinked again.
“So … standard procedure it is?” she added.
The lizard waited another moment, but when Deryn said nothing more, it scampered back up the rope to repeat her words to whoever was at the other end.
A minute later the other ropes were all hoisted away, but the line attached to her pilot’s rig was given more slack. It looped down almost out of sight, a quarter mile of rope, it looked like. Then the airship’s idling engines sprang to life again.
The huge shadow pulled back against the wind, so that the sun broke out from behind its nose, half blinding Deryn. The airship dropped then, venting hydrogen with a sound like rushing water, steadily descending till the officers in the bridge windows were dead even with her, only twenty yards away.
One smiled and gave a crisp salute, and Deryn returned it.
The Leviathan dropped still farther, and the Huxley whined a bit when one huge eye drew level with them.
“Don’t you give me any more bother,” Deryn murmured. She was watching keenly, noting how the airship’s huge harness wrapped around its body, holding the gondolas in place. The straps were connected by a network of ropes, like the rigging of a sailing ship. Strange six-legged beasties climbed alongside the crewmen in the ropes, snuffling the airbeast’s skin.
Those had to be the hydrogen sniffers she’d read about, searching the membrane for leaks.
When the Leviathan’s vast silver expanse slipped beneath her, Deryn saw that the other end of her rope was now attached to a winch on the creature’s spine.
So “dorsal” was just Service-speak for “backside.”
The winch was small and aluminum, made as light as possible, like everything on an airship. Two men cranked it, drawing up the slack quickly enough. Soon Deryn and her nervous Huxley were descending toward the Leviathan’s silver back.
A few minutes later a half dozen crewmen grabbed the tentacles of the medusa and hauled it down. Deryn found herself released from the pilot’s rig, stumbling with numbed legs onto the squishy surface of the Leviathan’s inflated skin.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Sharp,” said the young officer in charge.
Deryn tried to stand up straight, but pain shot down her spine. She wriggled her toes inside Jaspert’s boots, trying to erase the pins and needles in her feet.
“Thank you, sir,” she managed.
“You all right there?” the officer asked.
“Aye, sir. Just a bit numb in my, um, dorsal areas.”
The officer laughed. “Long flight, eh?”
“Aye, sir. A bit.” She sheepishly returned his salute.
He was smiling, at least. All the crewmen looked rather jolly as they checked over the medusa. Deryn supposed it wasn’t often they were called upon to rescue recruits from the sky.
A man in a coxswain’s uniform clapped her on the back. “Your Huxley’s in good shape after a storm like that. You must have a way with the beasties, Mr. Sharp.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said. The men at the winch were running the Huxley back up, towing it in the Leviathan’s wake.
“Not many middies spend half their first day aloft,” the officer said.
“I’m not a middy exactly, sir. Haven’t taken the tests yet.” Deryn glanced longingly around the topside, praying they would let her explore the ship while they took her back to the Scrubs. She’d be ready to walk again in just a few more minutes… .
The coxswain laughed. “Solving a few aeronautics problems shouldn’t be too hard after free-ballooning in a Huxley. And with this trouble brewing, I expect the Service will be looking for a few more lads.”
Deryn frowned. “Trouble, sir?”
The officer nodded. “Ah, yes. I suppose you haven’t heard. Some Austrian duke and duchess got themselves killed last night. There may be a bit of a ruckus on the Continent.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”
The officer shrugged. “Not sure what it’s got to do with Britain myself, but we’ve been put on alert. Now that we’ve got you sorted, we’re headed straight over to France, in case the Clankers try to start something.” He smiled. “I expect you’ll be with us a few days. Hope that isn’t a bother.”
Deryn’s eyes widened. As sensation returned to her legs, she could feel the rumble of the engines in the air-beast’s skin. From the spine of the Leviathan, its silver flanks sloping away into oblivion, the sky was huge in all directions.
A few days, the man had said—a hundred more hours in this perfect sky. Deryn saluted again, trying to hide her grin.
“No, sir. No bother at all.”
NINE
Alek awoke to the chatter of Morse code.
Wood creaked as he stirred, and a damp smell filled his nose. Dust swirled in shafts of sunlight streaming through the half-rotten walls. He sat up and blinked, staring at the hay covering his clothes.
Prince Aleksandar had never slept in a barn before. Of course, he’d done a lot of new things in the last two weeks.
Klopp, Bauer, and Master Engineer Hoffman were snoring nearby. The Stormwalker crouched in the halflit barn, its head almost level with the hayloft. Alek had maneuvered the machine inside late last night, shuffling at half height in the darkness to squeeze it in. A tricky bit of piloting.
Morse code crackled again through the walker’s open viewport.
Count Volger, of course. The man was allergic to sleep.
The gap between the hayloft and the walker’s head was barely the length of a sword, an easy jump.
Alek landed softly, his bare feet silent on the metal armor. He eased himself over the edge to peek in through the viewport. Volger sat facing away in the commander’s chair, a wireless earphone pressed against his head.
Slowly, silently, Alek lowered one foot to the edge of the viewport… .
“Careful not to fall, Your Highness.”
Alek sighed, wondering if he would ever manage to sneak up on his fencing master. He slid through the viewport and dropped into the pilot’s chair.
“Don’t you ever sleep, Count?”
“Not with that racket.” Volger glared out at the hayloft.
“You mean the snoring?” Alek frowned. He’d grown used to sleeping through the noises of men and machines, but somehow the tiny crackle of dots and dashes from the wireless had woken him. Two weeks of being hunted had altered his senses. “Anything about us?”