Deryn is as heartily sick of watery coffee and rock-hard ship's biscuit as anyone – the only food the wise beasties of the Leviathan won't touch – but she knows better than to cheer when Mr. Rigby shares the news that they're to be resupplied by the French navy.

"And," Newkirk adds later, somewhere around hauling aboard the millionth crate of foodstuffs, "I heard this lot's out of Algiers."

"Barking spiders," she swears, heaving with far less enthusiasm, if that's possible.

But only a fourth of the supplies have gone off in the North African heat, and there's quite a lot of bacteria in the Leviathan's guts more than happy to dispose of that for them.

In the meantime, everyone onboard has their first real meal since crashing on that sodding glacier. Deryn eats with Newkirk and Alek during one of the dog watches, torn between shoveling her dinner into her mouth as fast as possible, and taking small wary bites. Food poisoning won't help her disguise at all.

"What is this?" Newkirk asks, poking at the thing in question.

Alek guesses: "A potato?"

Newkirk wrinkles his nose.

"Aye," Deryn agrees, although she's not sure to what. "Hasn't got anything on the tatties my mother makes."

Alek looks confused. Newkirk says, sly, "How is she at haggis?"

Deryn leans across the table and steals a piece of his food so she can throw it at him. "My aunt does all the haggis, I'll have you know."

Too late she remembers that her mother is supposedly her aunt, and vice versa. Well. She doubts Newkirk is taking notes.

Alek is still confused. He looks between the two of them like a spectator at a tennis match. "What are you talking about?"

"Haggis," Deryn and Newkirk say in unison. "It's a pudding," Deryn adds. "A sausage, like."

Newkirk shudders dramatically and drops his voice to a confidential tone. "It's the most disgusting – here, now, quit that, that's my dinner!" he suddenly exclaims, interrupting himself.

Undeterred, Deryn flicks a third bit of Newkirk's food at him. To Alek, she says, "You have to be a Scot – a proper Scot – to enjoy it."

"What's there to enjoy?" Newkirk says, brushing at the food on his shoulder. He also turns to Alek. "It's sheep's pluck."

Now Alek looks positively mystified. "I'm sorry. My English isn't up to this."

"Heart, liver, and lungs," Deryn clarifies. "You chop it all up with oatmeal and spices and such, then cook it in the beastie's stomach."

Newkirk makes a rude noise. "See? Barking disgusting."

"Oh, sod off," she says, although she's enjoying this more than not. "Monkey Luddite - what do you know?"

Newkirk sits up straighter, offended. "I know enough to stay away from any meal with sheep's pluck as the main ingredient!"

Deryn turns to the third member of their party, hoping for reinforcement. "Alek, tell him he's full of clart."

Alek has been acting like a tennis spectator again, head swiveling between the two of them as they argue, but now he manages to look very superior. Is that taught to all Clankers, or just their princes? Something to ask later.

"You airmen choose to live," Alek says precisely, decidedly, "inside a whale."

Deryn looks at him, wondering where the point is.

Alek delivers it: "Food is food, but that's disgusting."

It isn't a ringing declaration in favor of Deryn's viewpoint, but she chooses to count it as such. Alek's her friend, after all.

"Ha!" she says, and steals Newkirk's potato so she can eat it.