Alek pulled the creature from his shoulder and placed it on the floor. He stepped closer to the stateroom window. “Mr. Tesla says he did all this from America, with some kind of machine. Six years go.”
“In 1908?” Volger asked, his eyes still fixed on the beast. “And he’s waited until
now
to tell the world?”
“The Russians wouldn’t allow a Clanker scientist into their country,” Alek said. “Not until he switched sides. So
he couldn’t study the effects firsthand. But now that he’s seen what his weapon can do, he says he’s going to make the invention public.”
Volger finally tore his eyes from Bovril. “Why would he test this weapon on a place he couldn’t visit?”
“He says this was an accident, a misfire. He only wanted to ‘create some fireworks’ and didn’t realize how powerful Goliath was.” Alek frowned. “But surely you don’t believe any of this.”
Volger turned to stare out the window. The
Leviathan
was nearing the edge of the devastation, where only the youngest trees had fallen. But the massive extent of the explosion was still apparent.
“Do you have another explanation for what happened here?”
Alek sighed slowly, then pulled out a chair and sat down. “Of course I don’t.”
“Goliath,” Bovril said softly.
Count Volger gave the beast an unfriendly look. “What do the Darwinists think?”
“They don’t question Mr. Tesla’s claims.” Alek shrugged. “Not to his face, at any rate. They seem quite pleased that he’s joined their side.”
“Of course they are. Even if the man’s lost his mind, he can still show them a trick or two. And if he’s telling the truth, he could end the war with the flick of a switch.”
Alek looked out the window again. The magnitude of the fallen forest, and the fact that Volger wasn’t laughing outright at Tesla’s absurd claim, made him feel queasy. “I suppose that’s true enough. Imagine Berlin after such an explosion.”
“Not Berlin,” Volger said.
“What do you mean?”
“Tesla is a Serb,” Volger explained slowly. “
Our
country attacked his homeland, not Germany.”
Alek felt the weight of the war settling on his shoulders again. “My family is to blame, you mean.”
“Tesla might well think so. If this weapon of his really works, and he uses it again, it will be Vienna that lies in splinters.”
Alek felt something dreadful rising up inside him, like the hollow feeling he’d carried inside since his parents’ murder, but greater. “Surely no one would ever use such a weapon against
a city
.”
“There are no limits in war,” Volger said, still staring out the window.
Then Alek recalled the dead airbeast, sacrificed to the fighting bears so that Tesla could complete his mission. The man was determined, it seemed.
Bovril shifted on the floor, saying, “Splinters.”
Volger gave the beast another withering look, then turned to Alek. “This may be an opportunity for you to
serve your people, Prince, in a way few sovereigns can.”
“Of course.” Alek sat up straighter. “We’ll convince him that Austria is not his enemy. He’s read about me in those newspapers. He understands that I want peace too.”
“That would be the best solution,” Volger said. “But we must be certain of his intentions before we let him leave this ship.”
“
Let
him leave? I hardly think we can convince the captain to arrest him.”
“I wasn’t thinking of an arrest.” Count Volger leaned closer, his hands splayed across the map of Siberia on the desk. “How close were you standing to him in that meeting? How close might any of us find ourselves to this man over the next days?”
Alek blinked. “Surely you’re not suggesting violence, Count.”
“I am suggesting, young prince, that this man is a danger to your people. What if he wants revenge for what Austria has done to his homeland?”
“Ah. Revenge again,” Alek muttered.
“Two
million
of your subjects live in Vienna. Would you not lift a hand to save them?”
Alek sat there, uncertain of what to say. It was true—half an hour ago he’d been standing next to the famous inventor, close enough to put a knife into him. But the whole idea was barbaric.
“He thinks Goliath can end the war,” Alek managed at last. “The man wants peace!”
“As do we all,” Count Volger said. “But there are many ways to end a war. Some more peaceful than others.”
There was a knock on the door.
“
Mr.
Sharp,” Bovril said, then gave a giggle.
“Come in, Dylan,” Alek called. The lorises had very keen hearing and could tell people apart by their footsteps or door knocks, even the particular rasp of how they drew a sword.
The door swung open, and Dylan took a step inside. He and Volger exchanged a cold glance.
“I thought I’d find you here, Alek. How was the meeting?”
“Quite illuminating.” Alek glanced from Dylan to Volger. “I’ll tell you all about it, but . . .”
“I need to get some sleep first,” Dylan said. “Up all night, and out with the bears while you were napping.”
Alek nodded. “I’ll keep Bovril, then.”
“Aye, but get a squick more sleep yourself,” Dylan said. “The lady boffin wants us to do some skulking tonight, to find out what Mr. Tesla’s been up to.”
“Skulking,” Bovril said, quite happy with the word.
“An excellent idea,” Alek said.
“There’s no telling what he’s brought aboard.”
“Then, I’ll see you after nightfall.” Dylan made an
infinitesimal bow at Volger. “Your countship.”
Volger nodded in return. Once the door was closed again, a tiny shiver went through Bovril.
“Have you two had some sort of a falling-out?” Alek asked.
“A falling-out?” Volger snorted. “We were hardly friends in the first place.”
“In the first place? So you
are
on the outs with each other.” Alek let out a dry laugh. “What happened? Did Dylan talk back during his fencing lessons?”
The wildcount didn’t answer, but rose from his desk and began to pace about the room. Alek felt his smile fade, remembering what they’d been discussing.
But when the wildcount finally spoke, he said, “How important is that boy to you?”
“A moment ago, Count, you were suggesting cold-blooded murder. And now you’re asking about Dylan?”
“Are you trying to avoid the question?”
“No.” Alek shrugged. “I think Dylan’s an excellent soldier and a good friend. A good
ally
, I might add. He helped me get into that meeting today. Without him we’d be sitting here without a clue as to what’s happening on this ship.”
“An ally.” Volger sat back down, dropping his gaze to the map on his desk. “Fair enough. Does Tesla say he can fire this weapon at any spot on earth?”
“I’m having trouble following your leaps in conversation today, Volger. But yes, he says he can aim it now.”
“But how can he be certain, if this first event was an accident?”
Alek sighed, trying to cast his mind back to the meeting. Tesla had gone on at length about the matter. Despite claiming to be keeping secrets, the inventor had a gift for disquisition.
“He’s been working on that problem for six years, ever since the accidental firing. He knew from newspaper accounts that something had happened in Siberia, something extraordinary. And now that he’s measured the explosion’s exact center, he can adjust his weapon accordingly.”
Volger nodded. “So that device you and Klopp put together, it was meant to find the center of the explosion?”
“Well . . . that doesn’t make sense. Klopp says it’s a metal detector.”
“When a shell lands, aren’t there traces of metal left?”
“But it isn’t that
kind
of weapon.” Alek cast his mind back, trying to remember how the great inventor had described it. “Goliath is a Tesla cannon of sorts, one that becomes part of the Earth’s magnetic field. It casts the planet’s energy up through the atmosphere and around the world. Like the northern lights, he said, but a million
times more powerful. The way he described it, the air itself caught fire here!”
“I see.” Volger let out a slow sigh. “Or rather, I don’t see at all. This may all be a case of madness, of course.”
“Surely,” Alek said, feeling himself relax. The notion of murdering Tesla to stop some imaginary event was too absurd to contemplate. “I’ll ask Klopp what he thinks. And Dr. Barlow will also venture an opinion, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” Bovril said thoughtfully.
Count Volger waved his hand at the beast. “Is that
all
this abomination does? Repeat words at random?”
“Random,” Bovril said, then chuckled a bit.
Alek reached down to stroke the creature’s fur. “That’s what I thought, at first. But Dr. Barlow claims that the beast is quite”—he used the English word—“
perspicacious
. And it does make a good suggestion every now and then.”
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” Volger muttered. “Clearly those creatures were nothing but an excuse to have a snoop around Istanbul. Bringing the behemoth down the strait was always the Darwinists’ plan.”
Alek lifted the beast back up to his shoulder. He’d thought the same thing himself, back in Istanbul. But just that morning in the cargo hold, the creature had borrowed Dr. Barlow’s necklace to show how the mysterious device worked.
Surely
that
couldn’t have been random.
But Alek didn’t mention it. No point in making the wildcount even more uneasy around the beast.
“I may not understand Goliath,” he said simply. “But I understand Darwinist fabrications even less.”
“Keep it that way,” Volger said. “You’re the heir to the Austrian throne, not some zookeeper. I’ll talk to Klopp about all this. In the meantime you should follow Dylan’s advice and get some sleep before tonight.”
Alek raised an eyebrow. “You don’t mind me skulking with a commoner?”
“If what Tesla says is true, your empire faces grave danger. It’s your duty to learn everything you can.” Count Volger stared at him a moment, a look of resignation coming over his face. “Besides, Your Serene Highness, sometimes skulking in the dark can prove most enlightening.”
Making his way back to his stateroom, Alek felt his missed night of sleep again. The perspicacious loris sat heavily on his shoulder, and too many thoughts buzzed in his mind—images of the ruined forest beneath the ship, the notion that a madman could destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the awful possibility that Alek himself might have to prevent it with the blade of a knife.
But when he slumped onto his bed, Alek found Volger’s newspaper still there, opened to the story about Dylan.
Volger had been so strange today, his questions zigzagging between Tesla’s weapon and Dylan. They
must
have had a fight, but about what?
Alek picked up the newspaper, staring at the photograph of Dylan swinging from the
Dauntless
’s trunk. The wildcount had seen the story too, of course. He read every newspaper Barlow gave him from cover to cover.
“You know something you shouldn’t, don’t you, Volger?” Alek said quietly. “That’s why you and Dylan are fighting.”
“Fighting,” Bovril repeated thoughtfully. Then it crawled from Alek’s shoulder onto the bed.
Alek stared at the beast, recalling what had happened in the cargo bay. The creature had sat on Klopp’s shoulder all night, listening to everything, rolling words like “magnetism” and “electrikals” around in its mouth. And then it had plucked Dr. Barlow’s necklace from her and demonstrated the purpose of the strange device.
That was how the beast’s perspicaciousness worked. It listened, then somehow drew everything together into a neat bundle.
Alek flipped the newspaper back to the first page,
and began to read aloud. Bovril spoke up now and then, repeating new words happily, digesting it all.
. . . He surely has bravery running in his veins, being the nephew of an intrepid airman, one Artemis Sharp, who perished in a calamitous ballooning fire only a few years ago. The elder Sharp was posthumously awarded the Air Gallantry Cross for saving his daughter, Deryn, from the hungry flames of the conflagration.
Alek sat back up. He blinked away sleep, still staring at the words.
His daughter, Deryn?
“Reporters.” Alek took a deep breath. It was amazing how they could get the simplest facts wrong. He’d explained to Malone several times that Ferdinand was his father’s middle name. And yet the man had referred to Alek as “Aleksandar Ferdinand” in several places, as if it were a family name!
“His daughter, Deryn,” Bovril repeated.
But why would anyone change a boy into a girl? And where had the unlikely name Deryn come from? Perhaps Malone had been misled by someone in Dylan’s family, to hide the fact that two brothers had entered the Air Service together.
But Dylan had said that was all a lie, hadn’t he?
So this Deryn had to do with the real family secret, the one Dylan refused to talk about.
For a moment Alek felt dizzy, and wondered if he should put down the paper and forget all about this, out of respect for Dylan’s wishes. He needed sleep.
But instead he read a little further. . . .
At the time of the tragic incident, the Daily Telegraph of London wrote, “And as the flames exploded overhead, the father cast his daughter from the tiny gondola, and in saving her life sealed his own fate.” Surely our brothers across the Atlantic are lucky to count brave men such as the Sharps among their airmen during this terrible war.
“Sealed his own fate,” Bovril said gravely.
Alek nodded slowly. So the mistake had been made two years ago, by a British paper, and had been merely copied by Malone. That had to be it. But why had the
Telegraph
made such an odd error?
A cold feeling went through Alek then. What if there really was a Deryn, and Dylan was lying about it all? What if the boy had only watched the accident, and had inserted himself into the story in his sister’s place?