Goliath Read Free

course, there were other fates she hadn’t escaped, like falling for a daft prince in a way that filled her head with unsoldierly nonsense. Like being his best friend, his ally, while a steady, hopeless longing pulled at her heart.
    It was just lucky that Alek was too wrapped up in his own troubles, and the troubles of the whole barking world, to notice. Of course, hiding her feelings was made a bit easier by the fact that he didn’t know she was a girl. No one aboard did except Count Volger, who, despite being a bumrag, at least had a knack for keeping secrets.
    They arrived at the hatch to the rookery, and Deryn reached for the pressure lock. But with only one free hand, the mechanism was a fiddle in the darkness.
    “Give us some light, your divine princeliness?”
    “Certainly, Mr. Sharp,” Alek said, pulling out his command whistle. He gave it a studious look, then played the tune.
    The glowworms behind the airship’s skin began to flicker, and a soft green light suffused the corridor. Then Bovril joined in with the whistle, its voice as shimmery as a box of silver bells. The light grew sharp and bright.
    “Good job, beastie,” Deryn said. “We’ll make a middy of you yet.”
    Alek sighed. “Which is more than you can say for me.”
    Deryn ignored his moping and opened the rookery door. As the ruckus of squawks and shrieks spilled out, the imperial clutched her arm tighter, its talons sharp even through the leather of the falconer’s glove.
    She led Alek along the raised walkway, looking for an empty space below. There were nine cages altogether, three underneath her and three on either side, each twice as tall as a man. The smaller raptors and messengers were a blur of fluttering wings, while the strafing hawks sat regally on their perches, ignoring the lesser birds around them.
    “God’s wounds!” Alek said from behind her. “It’s a madhouse in here.”
    “Madhouse,” Bovril said, and leapt from Alek’s shoulder to the handrail.
    Deryn shook her head. Alek and his men often found the airship too messy for their liking. Life was a tumultuous and muddled thing, compared with the tidy clockwork of Clanker contraptions. The ecosystem of the
Leviathan
, with its hundred interlocking species, was far more complex than any lifeless machine, and thus a bit less orderly. But that was what kept the world interesting, Deryn reckoned; reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.

“SECRETS IN THE ROOKERY.”
     

She’d certainly never expected to help lead a Clanker revolution one day, or be kissed by a girl, or fall for a prince. But that had all happened in the last month, and the war was just getting started.
    Deryn spotted the cage that the rook tenders had emptied, and pulled the loading chute into place above it. It wouldn’t do to put the imperial in with other birds—not while it was hungry.
    In one swift motion she snatched the hoods off and pushed the beastie into the chute. It fluttered down into the cage, spinning in the air like a windblown leaf for a moment. Then it came to rest on the largest perch.
    From there the imperial eyed its fellow creatures through the bars, shifting from foot to foot unhappily. Deryn wondered what sort of cage it lived in back at the czar’s palace. Probably one with gleaming bars, with fat mice served up on silver platters, and no smell of other birds’ clart thickening the air.
    “Dylan,” Alek said. “While we have a moment alone . . .”
    She turned to face him. He was standing close, his green eyes glinting in the darkness. It was always hardest meeting Alek’s gaze when he was dead serious like this, but she managed.
    “I’m sorry about bringing up your father earlier,” he said. “I know how that still haunts you.”
    Deryn sighed, wondering if she should simply tell him not to worry. But it had been a bit tricky, what with Newkirk mentioning her uncle. It might be safer to tell Alek the truth—at