Note: OMG, 30 chapters! Thank you, all you readers, for leaving so many reviews and just generally being awesome. :)

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"Careful, Hephaestion."

Deryn's gaze had followed Alek out of the cabin, as he and Bovril went off to find food suitable for a loris, but now her attention snaps back front and center. Count Volger is smirking at her over the tip of her saber, and she wonders crossly why he bothers insulting her with words she doesn't understand. "What?"

"You don't know who that is," he says, circling around her with slow, measured steps.

Like a shark, scenting prey and closing in. She refuses to move out of her stance, even when he crosses behind her. "Of course you don't. I forget, sometimes, that you haven't the advantage of the education of a boy in His Highness' position."

Her eyes narrow in indignation. What a pretentious bum-rag! Of course, as he's just reminded her, he's the pretentious bum-rag that knows her secret, so she'll have to watch her tongue.

But not too much. "We're not all so lucky to have tutors in our barking palaces, your countship."

Volger comes back into view, arms clasped casually behind his back, clever-boots smirk still very much in place. "You have heard of Alexander the Great?"

She's strongly tempted to say that the only great Alexander she knows is this minute raiding the galley for loris snacks, but Volger doesn't need the ammunition. Instead she settles for, "Aye, maybe once or twice."

"Alexander began as a prince of Macedon," Volger says, and she realizes she's going to have to stand here, arms and shoulders aching, while he lectures her about ancient history. That may be well and good for Alek, with his posh princely ways, but she's an airman. Everything she needs to know is in the Manual of Aeronautics, and that she has mostly by heart.

Not for the first time, she entertains the fancy of whacking Count Volger over the head with her fencing saber.

"He became king after his father was assassinated, and he ended as the ruler of an empire stretching from northern Greece to India. And all of that before he was quite thirty-three." Volger pauses in his pacing long enough to say sharply, "Don't drop your point."

She grits her teeth and raises the sword's point. Why is she still subjecting herself to fencing lessons? It can't be for Alek. Only the daftest of creatures would put themselves through this sort of torture to please a boy who won't ever be more than a friend.

Volger eyes her critically for a moment, then resumes pacing and lecturing. "Hephaestion was his best friend, eventually becoming his second-in-command. Their friendship was... close. Uncommonly so. They were sometimes described as 'one soul in two bodies'. When Hephaestion died, Alexander could not be consoled. He himself died just eight months later."

Deryn stiffens. Something that feels an awful lot like anger boils beneath her skin. Is he teasing her? Barking spiders, he'd better not.

She demands, "What are you saying?"

He draws his own saber with a smooth, practiced motion and takes up his stance with an effortless precision that makes her feel six sorts of gawky. The tip of his sword is a hair away from hers; the point never wavers. "I'm saying, Mr. Sharp, that His Highness gives his absolute trust to a very few people, and somehow you have managed to place yourself at the top of that list."

Defiant, she meets his eyes across the swords, and holds his unblinking stare. A shark indeed, he is. He looks like he'd prefer to see her gutted and filleted.

Softly, deadly, he adds, "So be careful, Hephaestion."

Her mind races, trying to decipher everything. Volger – and Dr. Barlow, at that – never come right out and tell you what they sodding mean. A dead perfect matched set, the two of them, always thinking sideways and talking over your head.

Is Volger warning her to watch her step – that she's rivals with a barking count now, over who Alek trusts more? Or is he hinting that maybe her cause isn't complete madness after all? Or is he -

Volger smacks the flat of his saber against hers, knocking it clean out of her hand. She yelps; the sword clatters noisily to the cabin floor.

The count makes a noise of disdain as she rubs at her wrist. "Concentrate. And for God's sake, keep your grip. It's a saber, not a sewing needle."

She waits until he's not looking to stick out her tongue. Pretentious bum-rag.