Alek sighed. He'd said too much about the water-walker in front of Volger. The man wouldn't stop digging now until he knew.
"I was thinking about visitors," Alek said in a low voice. "Germans."
"I wasn't aware any had been invited."
"They have invited themselves."
Volger glanced at the other end of the table, where Tesla was amusing the handful of reporters by ordering that the cutlery be rearranged. He always insisted that the forks, spoons, and knives be laid out in multiples of three. The staff at the Waldorf-Astoria had grown used to his eccentricities, but the servants here in Shoreham were still learning.
"Who told you about these water-walkers?" Volger asked quietly.
"Deryn. And I can't say from whom. In any case there's not much we can do except wait."
"Have I taught you nothing?" Volger said. "There are always ways to prepare."
"The Leviathan is stationed nearby, ready to protect us. And preparations are overrated. The fact that we're here in America instead of the Alps is proof of that."
"The fact that you're alive at all is proof of quite the opposite," Volger said. Then he leaned away to murmur to Bauer, Hoffman, and Klopp.
Alek let himself relax and enjoy his food, relieved that he'd confessed the secret to Volger. The man might be a schemer at heart, a tight-lipped plotter who could never quite be trustedorf-Asto there was one oath he would never break - the one he'd made to Alek's father. Every infuriating thing Volger had ever done, from his grueling fencing lessons to his blackmail of Deryn, had been to protect Alek and see him one day on the throne.
When the wildcount turned back to Alek, leaving the other men still muttering, he said, "We'll be ready, Your Highness."
"I should have known you'd have something up your sleeve."
"I have no other choice," Volger said. "No matter how far from the war we run, it always catches up with us."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Deryn stood at attention against the wall of her cabin, taking deep, unhurried breaths. Finally she bent her knees, sliding her back down the wall until she was sitting on her heels. Her muscles quivered and her injury burned. But now came the hard part - pushing herself back up.
It was slow and agonizing, but Deryn managed it without crying out or toppling over. She stood there panting, her eyes shut against the pain.
"Exercising, Mr. Sharp?"
She opened her eyes to find Dr. Barlow framed in the doorway, Tazza at her side. The boffin's loris sat on its usual perch, looking imperiously about the middy's tiny cabin.
But Deryn was in no mood for the three of them. "It's traditional to knock, ma'am, even when the door's open."
"I stand corrected." Dr. Barlow rapped twice on the wooden frame. "Though you are hardly a slave to tradition yourself, Mr. Sharp."
The loris chuckled, but didn't repeat the words. It had grown quieter these last two weeks, almost thoughtful. Maybe it was missing Bovril.
"It's good to see you getting that knee into shape, Mr. Sharp."
"I've got to climb the ratlines again," Deryn said. "I'm going mad, stuck down here in the gondola."
"I see," Dr. Barlow said, then frowned. "You'll be wanting to muck about on the topside of every airship we travel on, won't you?"
"Aye, ma'am." Deryn took a breath and bent her knees again. "I do love tying those knots."
"In love," the loris said softly.
Deryn froze halfway down and stared at it.
Dr. Barlow smiled. "Aha. You are in love, aren't you, Mr. Sharp?"
"Ma'am?"
"With flying. You're in love with the air."
Deryn slid down the rest of the way, then pushed herself back up without a pause, letting pain hide her expression. Nosy boffins and their clever lorises.
Of course, it hardly mattered what Dr. Barlow was really thinking. Alek was gone, swept up in a distant world of power, influence, and peacemaking, maybe forever. How could someone who was in the newspapers every day have anything more to do with Deryn Sharp?
"Don't worry, young man. My duties with the Zoological Society involve a great deal of travel. You'll see plenty of airships."
"I'm sure, ma'am." Deryn sullenly reminded herself how lucky she was for the lady boffin's offer of employment.
Her close call with Malone had taught her one thing - if she were found out, it would humiliate her officers and shipmates. Deryn couldn't risk that, and it was clear that the lady boffin's shadowy Society was an easier place to keep secrets than the Air Service. In the Society, she reckoned, having more than one identity wouldn't be a problem at all. Dr. Barlow had even joked that Deryn might need to disguise herself as a girl, every now and then.
But it meant that Deryn hadn't just lost Alek; she'd lost her home as well.
She slid down the wall once more, ignoring the growing pain in her knee. She was desperate for one last climb in the ratlines before they headed back to London, Dr. Busk and his timid advice be damned. Nothing else in the sky measured up to the Leviathan.
"Disconsolate," the loris said softly.
Dr. Barlow shushed it. "You should join us on the bridge, Mr. Sharp. The view may be interesting tonight."
"That's right. They're testing Goliath, aren't they?" Alek's latest letter had been full of excitement. "But I thought you said it wouldn't work, ma'am."
The lady boffin shrugged. "I merely said that Goliath cannot call down fire from the sky. I would never suggest that Mr. Tesla is incapable of putting on a show."
When they were halfway to the bridge, the Klaxon began to ring.
"Is that battle stations?" Dr. Barlow asked. "How interesting."
"Aye, ma'am, it is." Deryn winced as she walked faster, wishing now that she hadn't worked her knee so hard. "But it's probably a drill. Sitting still for two weeks hasn't done much for morale."
"You could be right, Mr. Sharp." They both stepped aside as a squad of riggers thundered past. "But mightn't the Germans think this a fine evening to strike?"
"How do you mean, ma'am?"
They started walking again, and the lady boffin said, "Mr. Tesla has warned the world to expect alarms and eruptions in the sky. Any mishap might be written off as his machine going wrong, especially if there are no survivors to tell the tale."
"No survivors," the lady boffin's loris said, and Deryn redoubled her pace.
The Klaxon choked off in midring just as she and Dr. Barlow reached the bridge. The officers had gathered at the starboard windows, field glasses raised.A dozen message lizards were scampering across the ceiling.
This was no drill.
Dr. Busk turned from the windows and gave Deryn a nod. "I must admit, Mr. Sharp, I was beginning to doubt your story. But this is quite extraordinary."
Deryn stepped up beside him, following the stares of the officers. Below the Leviathan three trails of bubbles stretched across the water.
She shook her head, trying to imagine giant machines beneath the surface, their legs thrashing in the cold and dark.
"I'm a bit surprised myself, sir."
"The two escorts are no bigger than land corvettes, Captain," the first officer was saying. "But the one in the middle must be the size of a frigate."
Deryn leaned out over the handrail, wondering how the man could tell so much from mere bubbles. The water was as black as pitch, and the trails looked like scattered diamonds in the light of the rising half-moon, too delicate to be exhaust from huge Clanker engines.
The ruckus of battle stations filled the air, shouts and squawks and the roar of engines, and Deryn clenched the rail. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, her whole body outraged to be here on the bridge instead of topside.
"Our faith in you has been rewarded, Mr. Sharp," the lady boffin said from just behind her. "But do stop jittering."
"Like a barking monkey," her loris said.
"Sorry, ma'am." Deryn settled herself. If they sent her back to her cabin, she might well explode.
"Less than a hundred feet deep here," the navigator spoke up. Charts were spread out before him on the decoding table. "This is the shallowest water for miles, sir."
The captain nodded. "Then, let us begin our attack. Slow to one quarter, Pilot. Let the wind carry us over."
The thrum of the engines softened, and the airship began to drift to starboard. The trails of bubbles were just reaching a narrow channel among the islands at the entrance to Long Island Sound.
"Those bubbles must be drifting as they rise," the captain said. "How fast is that current?"
The pilot lowered his field glasses. "About five knots, sir."
"And how long does it take for bubbles to rise a hundred feet?"
No answer came, and everyone looked at the lady boffin.
"That depends on their size," she explained. "Champagne-size bubbles, as we've all seen, can take several seconds to travel an inch."
A moment of bemused silence stretched out, until Deryn spoke up. "These aren't champagne bubbles, ma'am. They're exhaust from barking great diesel engines. The size of cricket balls at least!"
"Ah, of course." Dr. Barlow stared down a Let thlack water. "Perhaps ten feet a second, then."
"Thank you, Doctor," the captain said. "Bombs away on my mark. Three . . . two . . ."
The deck shuddered a bit as the weight of the aerial bomb fell away, sending a twinge through Deryn's knee. She leaned out over the tilted windows, trying to see directly beneath the ship.
For a moment there was nothing but the dark, flat ocean, but then a column of water shot into the air as the bomb went in. The detonation followed seconds later, a silvery flower opening in the moonlight. Finally the gasses released by the explosion reached the surface, rising up in a frothing white dome. Ripples tumbled out across the water, full-blown waves cresting and storming as they rolled across the shallows.
"Bring us about," the captain ordered.
The Leviathan spun slowly in place until the bridge windows faced the channel again. The surface had stilled, and Deryn peered down, searching for exhaust trails.
One of the machines was in trouble - its stream of bubbles was swelling, filled with pops and splashes. And then another giant dome of water rose up, white and boiling.
"Secondary explosion," the first officer announced. "That's one of the escorts crushed by the shock wave."
"Fish in a barrel," said the captain.
Deryn tried to imagine the men inside the water-walker, fighting their hopeless battle to keep the ocean from gushing in. Now the other escort was failing, its exhaust stream sputtering in fits and starts. This one died with a whimper, though, its scattering of bubbles fading out to nothing.
"That's both the little ones, sir," the first officer said.
Deryn shuddered. It would be dark down there as lights and engines failed, and the water would be icy cold.
She'd never seen combat from the serene vantage of the Leviathan's bridge before. Running about topside, the horror of battle was lost in a swirl of excitement and danger. This felt inhuman, watching men die when she felt no fear herself.
Not that her squeamishness made any difference to the sailors below.
"The frigate's made of sterner stuff, Captain." The first officer turned from the windows. "Shall we make another run?"
Captain Hobbes shook his head. "Stand by, but stay at battle stations."
Deryn turned to Dr. Barlow and asked softly, "Why aren't we finishing them off, ma'am?"
"BOMBS AWAY."
"Because they're underwater, Mr. Sharp. A German warship that can't be seen is of no use to us."