As they neared the engine pod, the floor of the passageway grew wet and sticky, and Alek smelled a foul, briny odor. Through an open hatchway ahead came the clang of tools.
"Hello?" Alek called.
A figure in a grimy flight su it was lpeared, sodden and smelly. As she snapped a salute, Alek realized with a start who it was beneath the muck.
"Mr. Sharp!" exclaimed Bovril, leaning forward on Alek's shoulder, reaching out for her.
Of course. Deryn Sharp could always be counted on to be in the thick of any mayhem aboard the Leviathan.
Alek stiffly returned her salute. "Mr. Tesla, I believe you've met Middy Sharp?"
"He was kind enough to drop in on me in Siberia," the inventor said. "Are those feathers?"
Deryn looked down at herself. Trapped in the engine grime on her flight suit were, indeed, a few feathers.
Deryn flicked one off and snapped her heels, as if she were at a formal dance instead of in an engine room covered with bilge. "I was tending to the strafing hawks. Very kind of you to visit, Mr. Tesla."
Tesla waved his walking stick. "I'm not visiting; I'm here to help. This engine is based on my design, you know."
"What exactly happened here?" Alek asked.
"The propellers sucked in a bit of rocket," Deryn said, avoiding Alek's eyes. "Started a fire, so the engineers called for a Herculean inundation. Watch your step, please."
Inside, the engine pod smelled like the gut of the ship. The floor was covered in gunk, the machinery blackened by fire. The engineers stopped their work and stared at Mr. Tesla, their eyes wide.
"A Herculean inundation?" the inventor asked. "As in the seven labors?"
Deryn looked puzzled, so Alek jumped in. "They must have flushed the rear ballast through the pod. Hence that sudden dive that sent us all sliding across the bridge."
Tesla lifted one shoe to peer at its grimy sole. "Both ingenious and unhygienic, like so much Darwinist technology."
Deryn stiffened a bit, but her voice stayed level. "You say you invented this particular engine, sir?"
"I created the principles of alternating current." Tesla poked at the machine with his walking stick. "Much safer on an airship."
Alek nodded. Visiting the pods a few days ago, he'd noticed how the electrikal engines didn't spit smoke or sparks, and ran almost silently.
"Alternating current," Bovril repeated happily.
"But you don't have a boiler room aboard," Tesla said. "Where does the power come from?"
"These fuel cells here." Deryn looked down at a pile of small metal kegs. "Hydrogen made by wee beasties in the whale's gut."
"A biological battery!" Mr. Tesla exclaimed. "But they can't have much power."
"They don't have to, sir." Deryn gestured out the pod's high window. "Darwinist airships get most of their push from cilia - those wee hairs along the flanks. The engines just give it a nudge in the right direction, and the airbeast does the rest."
"But the Leviathan is special. It has two Clanker engines as well," Alek added. "It will get you to New York faster than anything else in the sky."
"Excellent." Mr. Tesla pulled off his jacket. "Well, let's get to work, then. The more engines the better!"
As Mr. Tesla worked, he held forth on a variety of topics - from world peace to his fascination with the number three - but Alek found it all a bit hard to follow. Master Klopp had never taught him much about electrikal engines, which weren't powerful enough to use in walkers.
At first Alek tried to help by handing Tesla his tools, but the engineers soon crowded him out for the honor. Just like Bovril, they hung on the great man's words. Alek found himself reduced to a waste of hydrogen, as usual.
Then he noticed that Deryn had stepped out onto the stabilizing boom. Of course, Alek had been avoiding her the last few days. But it was childish, pretending not to know each other. Their sudden falling out might start Dr. Barlow asking questions, and the last thing Alek wanted was for Deryn to be found out thanks to him.
He took a deep breath and stepped out through the hatchway.
"Hello, Dylan."
"Afternoon, your princeliness." Deryn didn't look up. She was staring down at the passing ocean, the wind barely ruffling her muck-matted hair.
For a moment Alek wondered if she were upset about him seeing her like this, covered in grime. But that was nonsense. Ordinary girls worried about that sort of thing, not Deryn.
"Mr. Tesla should get your engine working soon," he said.
"Aye, he's a barking genius. You should hear the engineers go on about it." She looked aft. "And it seems he's got the captain's head spinning too."
"What do you mean?"
Deryn pointed at the glare of sunlight in the airship's wake. "We're headed due east. We'll be in Tokyo tomorrow."
"Of course," Alek said. "Now that we've lent the Japanese navy a hand, we can depart with Britain's honor intact."
"The lady boffin said the same thing, but I thought she was blethering!"
"Dr. Barlow doesn't blether. Your Admiralty couldn't let Tsingtao fall without British aid, because the Japanese aren't properly . . ." He spread his hands, looking for the right word. "European. It wouldn't do for them to beat the Germans without our help."
For the first time Deryn looked straight at him. "You mean we came halfway round the world just for show? That's the biggest load of yackum I've ever heard!"
"Yackum," Bovril said, and leapt down onto the handrail.
Alek shrugged. "More or less. But there was a higher purpose, it seems. Now we can help Mr. Tesla stop the war."
Deryn gave him the same exasperated look she did whenever he mentioned his destiny.
"DRAINING."
"Are you going to punch me again?" Alek asked. "Because I'd like to get a good grip. It's a long fall."
A smirk flashed across her face, but her eyes didn't soften.
"You are rather strong," Alek said.
"Aye, and I'm taller than you too."
Alek rolled his eyes. "Listen, Deryn - "
"It's not a good habit, you calling me that."
"Perhaps not. But I've been calling you the wrong name for so long, I feel I should make up for it."
"It's not your fault I've got two names."
Alek looked down at the water slipping past. "So whose fault is it? I mean, even Volger thinks you're a fine soldier, and yet you have to hide who you are."
"It's just the way things are." She shrugged. "It's no one's fault."
"Or everyone's," Alek said. "Deryn."
"Deryn Sharp," said Bovril quietly.
Both of them stared at the perspicacious loris in horror.
"Brilliant," Deryn said. "Just barking brilliant. Now you've got the beastie saying it!"
"I'm sorry." Alek shook his head. "I didn't realize - "
Suddenly her hand was across his mouth. He smelled engine grease and brine on her palm, then saw the message lizard making its way along the underbelly of the ship. Deryn let her hand fall, gesturing for silence.
The lizard spoke with Dr. Barlow's voice. "Mr. Sharp, tomorrow afternoon you shall accompany me to Mr. Tesla's meeting with the ambassador. I seem to recall, however, that you have no formal uniform. We shall have to remedy that when we arrive in Tokyo."
Deryn swore, and Alek recalled that her only dress uniform had been destroyed in the battle of the Dauntless. Going to a tailor to replace it would be tricky enough, even without the lady boffin along.
"Um, but - but, ma'am," Deryn sputtered. "I'll have to - "
"Dr. Barlow," Alek broke in, "this is Prince Aleksandar. I know you want young Dylan to look his best, but gentlemeshall hav tailoring is hardly your area of expertise. It would be my pleasure to go with him. End message."
The beastie waited a moment, then blinked and scuttled away.
Deryn gave him a long stare, then shook her head. "You're both daft. I can see to my own clothes, right?"
"Of course." Alek pulled at his own threadbare sleeve. "But I could use a bit of tailoring myself."
"True. You're looking a bit less than princely." Deryn straightened with a sigh. "Well, I have duties to attend to. See you when we get to Tokyo, I suppose."
"I suppose so." He smiled at her.
Deryn turned and strode back into the engine pod, shouting at the engineers to give Mr. Tesla some peace. Alek stayed out on the boom, staring down at the water a little longer and wondering at what he felt inside.
Whatever her name was, he had missed his good friend these last few days, rather a lot.
"A bit of tailoring," Bovril said thoughtfully. "End message."
Chapter Seventeen
Alek pulled on another jacket, then scowled at the mirror. His Hapsburg Armor Corp uniform was just as threadbare as the others, shiny at the elbows and missing two buttons. Had he really spent the last weeks walking about in such a disreputable state?
"This seems unwise," Count Volger said.
Alek fingered the jacket's frayed epaulettes. "I have an ambassador to impress, and I doubt the tailors in Tokyo are expensive."
"I'm not talking about the cost, Alek. You're practically penniless, in any case." The wildcount glanced out the window - one of the spires of Tokyo was sliding by, alarmingly close to the gondola. "I'm talking about that girl."
Alek picked up the silk piloting jacket he'd worn the night of the Ottoman Revolution. "Her name is Deryn."
"Whatever she calls herself, you've managed to escape her influence at last. Why risk another entanglement?"
"Deryn isn't an entanglement." Alek pulled the jacket on and considered the effect. "She's a friend, and a useful ally."
"Useful? Only in that she's taken that beast away."
Alek didn't answer. Deryn had dropped by his stateroom the night before to "borrow" Bovril. Alek found that he missed the creature's weight on his shoulder and its murmurs in his ear. The perspicacious loris had offered comfort when everyone else had betrayed him.
"You can't trust her," Volger said.
"Nor can I trust you, Count. And Deryn, at least, can tell me what the Leviathan's officers are thinking."
"Tesla does their thinking for them these days. Imagine, trying to requisition this whole ship to take him to America! It's madness to believe that the Admiralty will allow it."
Alek raised an eyebrow. "That was my idea, you know."
"Ah, of course." With a sigh Volger stood up from the desk and went to his traveling trunk. "This is a diplomatic affair, not a costume party."
Alek pulled off his Ottoman piloting jacket. "Perhaps it is a bit too colorful for a British ambassador."
"You're taking a risk, believing in Tesla."
"He wants peace, and has the power to make it happen."
"Let's hope so, Your Serene Highness. Because if you support him publicly and he turns out to be mad, the whole world will think you're a fool. Do you think the people of Austria-Hungary will want a young fool for an emperor?"
Alek's glare was wasted on Volger, who was rummaging in his trunk. He pulled out a deep blue tunic with a red collar.
"My Hapsburg House Cavalry uniform."
Alek said, "Do you think I'm being a fool?"
"I think you're trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war." Count Volger handed over the cavalry tunic. "But who knows. Perhaps the great inventor has changed all that."