A/N: Another week, another chapter. This one is shorter (again) and not all that action-packed (again). Please do bear with it; I promise that Chapter 5 will make up for it ;)
This week's featured guest review (just kidding, there was only the one. Actually, it was a review of Chapter 2, but it got posted after Chapter 3, so... uh... I'm replying now,):
Guest (again): I'm glad you think there's some action; personally I thought the beginning rather slow, and the main plot point doesn't show up until more than halfway through, but if it's satisfying, it's satisfying ;) Showing promise is good, as far as characters go, and I certainly HOPE Volger being his godfather isn't too much of a stretch. And yes, you definitely should get an account; even if you're not going to write anything, it's worth it. Thanks for reviewing and for being so complimentary! :)
DISCLAIMER: Do I seem like a middle-aged man good enough at writing to earn a living? Because, I assure you, I'm not.
"Right, then. Enough of that." Deryn cleared her throat, wondering if Arty felt suddenly closer to her as well. Of course, she didn't know how similar they were—all she saw of Deryn was a young midshipman who had lost his father. And compared to Arty's gush of confessions, her choked replies must have seemed barking pitiful and closed-off. "Up this way we keep the Huxleys and the bees. Also, the heads are over here. Of course, you won't want a tour of those, but it's nice to know, aye?"
"What're—oh. Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go!" Arty joked, and then sobered up a squick. "Wait, what are Huxleys? And bees—like honeybees?"
"Aye. Honeybees. Here we are, then—have a look for yourself." Deryn fearlessly snagged a bee with both hands and held it there, its wings tickling her palms. "They don't have any stingers—when I first saw them, I thought they were weapons, like the fléchette bats and strafing hawks, but they just make honey to feed the airbeast." The bees went out as the airship flew over flowers, collecting nectar that they turned into honey, which would eventually become hydrogen—that which wasn't used in the galley, anyway, since it was perfectly normal and sweet. Right now, since the Leviathan was over the ocean, all the bees were inside the warm gut, and most were already in hibernation. Even the straggler Deryn had caught was sluggish.
"Exactly. Why waste time building your own feeding system when there's a perfectly efficient one already made by Mother Nature herself?" Arty peered at Deryn's cupped hands, and she opened them to reveal the fuzzy yellow-and-black bee perched calmly on her thumb. After permitting a few moments of close scrutiny, the bee buzzed off. Deryn remembered, with a sudden clarity, the last time she had shown someone the bees. That someone had been Dr. Barlow, and it was here that she had almost guessed Deryn's secret, noticing how smooth her cheeks were for a sixteen-year-old boy. Luckily, she had instead guessed that Deryn was underage—also true, since she was fifteen.
"All right, then," Arty continued briskly. "Show me the Huxleys, whatever they are."
"Well, their proper name is 'Huxley ascender.' Named after the boffin who fabricated them, of course. One of the first hydrogen breathers. They're a mix of jellyfish, medusae, and other primitive sea beasties. But I reckon it'd help if I just showed you."
"Um, yes. Jellyfish?"
"Well, they certainly don't look like the Leviathan. We use them as scouts—hang a hapless middy off of one until his bum freezes dead off and make him watch for something," Deryn continued, walking to the shadow-cloaked edge of the catwalk. Tweeting her whistle again to light up some more glowworms, Deryn reached up and grabbed a fistful of Huxley tentacles, which resembled ropes dangling from the ceiling, hanging from them and letting her weight pull the Huxley down. As it descended, she let go and then quickly snatched another handful of tentacles closer to the Huxley's gasbag. "They use the tentacles to gather insects, pollen, and such," she grunted, her boots dangling off the ground as she continued to climb hand over hand, slowly jerking the Huxley into the light as she had been taught.
Arty gaped as the Huxley emerged from the shadows, light shining off of the bulging, irregular surface of its gasbag. It did bear a resemblance to a jellyfish, albeit a huge floating one wrapped in toad's skin. She recovered her voice as Deryn reached the pilot's rig. "How much weight can they lift? How high?"
"Well, this one's a juvenile still, which is why I can pull it down like this. But a full-grown one can take a skinny wee lad like me up a mile or so. Thing is, they're easily spooked, and when they spook, they do this. Oi!" she shouted at the Huxley, which shivered once, like a poor wee rabbit confronted by a fox, and vented a rush of hydrogen through its gills, plummeting towards the ground. Deryn jumped free at the last second, retaining a grip on the steel ring where an anchoring rope was meant to be tied and easily holding the deflated Huxley near the ground. "They'll take a dive for the ground, and although they're not bothered by an impact at any velocity, their riders aren't always so lucky. But there're ballast tanks full of water so you can slow your fall. See, the pilot's meant to sit here," she swung herself easily up onto the curved leather seat, "and you buckle yourself in like this. Your bum gets sore after a while, though. On my first day in the Service, there was the biggest storm London's ever seen. Fair near ripped up buildings, it did, and sent hippoesques tumbling head over heels! Anyway, my Huxley's anchor rope broke, and I was set loose, free-ballooning for barking six hours until the Leviathan came and got me. My bum was sore as anything! Normally you're tied to a cable here," she kicked the anchor ring, "or you have gliding wings attached to your rig. You signal the ground with semaphore signals," she moved her arms in an example, "or you send a lizard down. I remember once, a walker was closing in and about to blow the ship to blazes, and I was the only one who could warn the captain. Thing was, my lizard wasn't nippy enough down the rope, so I had to make a sliding escape—made a sort of handle out of my harness and slid down the cable."
Arty's eyes were as wide as saucers. "Quite a life you lead," she muttered as Deryn swung herself down and the Huxley sulkily returned to the upper reaches of the gut.
After a quick swing down to the gondola to drop off Tazza, Deryn and Arty headed for the spine. Deciding that it would be a wee bit cruel to make her climb the ratlines all the way up, Deryn led the way to the starboard engine pod via the gastric channel. She paused to deliver a lecture on the ladder up. "Normally, an airbeast like this would have four electrical motivator engines," she began. "They provide fine control and keep the beastie from getting lazy and drifting. Most of its push comes from cilia—wee grassy bits on the flanks that push the air like oars and propel it along."
Arty nodded, not appearing bothered by the strain of hanging from the ladder. "That makes sense. Bacteria and such use cilia to locomote—it's not such a stretch to macroscopic movement, too. But… when I saw the Leviathan from the outside… it looked like two of the engines were smoking."
"Aye, that they were. That's how Alek ended up on this ship." Arty opened her mouth, clearly puzzled, and Deryn let go of the ladder quickly to hold up a restraining hand. "Let me explain. We crashed in the Alps—got shot down by Clanker planes—and he just happened to be in the same valley, hiding from his mates, the Germans. Maddest thing I ever saw—he came up pretending to be a Swiss smuggler out for a romp on the glacier. Anyway, we took him prisoner, and since the Germans shot our starboard and port engine pods to blazes, he gave us the engines from his Cyklop Stormwalker."
Arty nodded. "We've got those in the States. Clever bit of two-legged war machinery. And the engines work?"
"Aye. Their bits are all mixed up, but they, along with the cilia, make the Leviathan the nippiest thing in European skies. We go sixty miles an hour at full-ahead. Put on your hood—the engine pods are open."
Arty nodded, dipping her goggles and tugging up her hood. Deryn did the same, then climbed up and out of the hatch into the bitter air. By the sound of them and the feel of the wind against her cheeks, the engines were going at quarter speed again, and the sun was dipping towards the horizon in an early winter sunset. She deftly ran across a support strut, then swung herself easily down into the starboard engine pod, its windscreen providing much-appreciated shelter from the wind.
She was surprised to find Alek there, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, manning the saunter alone. He smiled when he saw her and took a step forward, but she gave him a warning glance just as Arty's boots thudded to the floor. His smile wavered just a bit, but he recovered with the remarkable speed bestowed by years of posh princely tutoring. "Hello," he said, pushing up his goggles, his fingertips leaving a smear of black engine grease on his face.
Deryn nodded and smiled quickly. "Hello. Feeling like a waste of hydrogen again, are we?" The crew called anything useless a waste of hydrogen, referring to the extra hydrogen needed to lift it. Alek got that way sometimes, daft as it was. He felt… out of place as a Clanker prince on a Darwinist airbeast, and sometimes only tinkering with mechanical contraptions could make him pick up again.
Of course, he hadn't been up here much since his mechanic mates had stayed behind in America, and he didn't have much political blether to worry about, since he wasn't a prince anymore. Something else was bothering him.
He looked down, unwilling to hold her gaze. "I suppose so," he said after a moment.
She settled herself on a protruding tangle of gears, gesturing for Arty, who was examining the plundered guts of the Stormwalker with avid interest, to continue what she was doing. "What did Dr. Barlow want?"
Alek lowered his voice. "She called Volger in and forced me to tell him about the letter."
Deryn sucked in a breath. "How does she know? Did she… see us?" Of course, it wouldn't be so bad if Dr. Barlow had seen Alek chucking the letter over the side and them kissing. She knew Deryn's secret, after all. But still…
Alek shrugged. "That woman has ways and means we don't want to know about. But anyway, Volger got spitting mad and yelled at me. Apparently he's my godfather. He's coming with us to Russia, by the way."
Deryn frowned. "That's brilliant. Another meddler." She sighed. "Godfather? He barking hates your guts!"
Wrinkling his nose and opening his mouth, Alek was about to speak when Arty strode over. "Hey," she said breathlessly to no one in particular and turned to Alek. "Ingenious improvisation you have there. The pistons especially. How did you adapt it so that it drove the propeller at specific speeds?"
Alek launched into an explanation, and Deryn half turned away, gazing down at the sparkling waves below. The wind was picking up, blowing the tops of the waves into trails of spray. She felt a weight land on her shoulder and reached up to scratch Bovril's wee head. The beastie always seemed to know when she was down.
And down she was. What had seemed like a clear path stretching away into the future was now murky and gray. She had no guarantee from Alek, no promise that he loved her as much as she did him. She thought he did, of course, but they couldn't stay together like this forever. The war was still raging in Europe, and they were about to return to the center of the hornets' nest. They would be leaving the Leviathan and striking out with no clear plan. What if Alek suddenly decided he'd rather be a Clanker? Where would that leave her?
And besides, even if they did stay together, they'd have to hide themselves for an indeterminate length of time. Deryn was dressed in trousers, after all, and she didn't plan on returning to skirts and corsets any time soon. There was so much freedom in being a boy; freedom to act how she wanted, freedom to wander, freedom to do what she loved.
It wasn't her barking fault, being a girl. She'd had no say in it.
Of course, maybe it was everyone's fault, as Alek had once said—everyone's fault that the world was like it was, that Deryn had had to pretend to be someone she wasn't just to act like she wanted.
Briefly Deryn remembered Lilit, her adventurous spirit and her outspoken ways. She had managed the same trick Deryn had—acting like a boy—without going around in trousers. Of course, she had been a revolutionary, and once the revolution in Istanbul was over, they'd had no more use for her and her talk of women's rights and had shipped her off to America.
Deryn turned and cleared her throat, interrupting Arty's and Alek's conversation. She felt an irrational pang of jealousy seeing them talking and Alek gesturing animatedly, explaining some mechanical concept to Arty, who was nodding along knowledgeably. She was relating to Alek on a level Deryn never could—the level of gears and pistons, oil and saunters. Perhaps Arty was lucky, being trapped between the two ways of life, Darwinist and Clanker. Deryn had never felt quite comfortable in Istanbul, out of her element among steam pipes and walkers, and Arty probably loved both Clanker contraptions and fabricated beasties.
Besides, Arty was quite pretty. Perhaps prettier than—Deryn cut the thought off. Alek would never look at another girl. He was hers.
"'Scuse me," she said, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes and trying to sound unconcerned. "Sorry to interrupt your wee Clanker-fest, but the sun's setting." It was now, actually, in a range of brilliant red and orange hues. "We ought to be eating dinner sometime soon. In the middies' mess," she added to Arty, who nodded and stepped across the strut, through the hatch, and into the airship with the grace of either a born airman or an acrobat.
Deryn must've not pulled off unconcerned convincingly enough, however, because Alek lingered on the way in. "Meet me in my cabin, tonight at ten," he breathed in her ear.
She nodded and exited the engine pod, her heart pounding. Apparently they had something else to talk about. Something that Arty shouldn't hear.
Oooooh, a secret rendezvous! ;D Y'all know what's coming... and now you shall have to wait a week :) It's so FUN being evil.
On a similar topic, depressing spiels are surprisingly fun to write. Seriously, they're minorly addicting. As is, when writing Deryn, sticking "barking" in at every opportunity, including the bits that aren't dialogue :D So I indulge myself like a three-year-old and slap it on excessively. Besides, it's utterly canon. Deryn wouldn't be Deryn without "barking"! (Or "bloody," or "bum-rag," or the ever-popular "blisters"... why do they all start with "b"?)
We're up to ten reviews now! TEN! That's over three per chapter! Help build the stockpile, and maybe I'll take pity on you and release Chapter 5 a day or two early ;) REVIEW!
