Behemoth Read online

  “I didn’t know Clanker countries had elephantines!” Newkirk cried.

  “That’s no beastie,” Deryn said. “It’s a barking walker.”

  The machine lumbered forward on huge legs, its tusks swaying back and forth as it moved. Four pilots in blue uniforms sat on saddles that stuck out from its haunches, one pilot working the controls for each leg. A mechanical trunk, divided into a dozen metal segments, swept slowly back and forth, like a sleeping cat’s tail.

  “It must be fifty feet tall,” Newkirk said. “Even bigger than a real elephantine!”

  Sunlight struck the walker as it left the trees, and its polished steel skin glittered like mirrors. The platform on its back was covered by a parasol shaped like a strafing hawk’s cowl. A handful of men in dress uniform stood on the platform, while a fifth pilot perched in the front, working the trunk. The elephant’s large metal ears flapped slowly, stirring the brilliant tapestries that hung down its sides.

  “As you can see,” Dr. Barlow said, “the ambassador travels in style.”

  “I know we can’t use beasties here in Clanker-land,” Deryn said, “but why make a walker look like an animal?”

  “Diplomacy is all about symbols,” Dr. Barlow said. “Elephants signify royalty and power; according to legend an elephant divined the prophet Mohammed’s birth. The sultan’s own war machines are made in this same shape.”

  “Do all the walkers here look like beasties?” Newkirk asked.

  “Most of them, yes,” the lady boffin said. “Our Ottoman friends may be Clankers, but they haven’t forgotten the web of life around us. That is why I have hope for them.”

  Deryn frowned, thinking for a moment of the mysterious eggs in the machine room. What did the creatures inside them signify?

  But there wasn’t much time to wonder. Soon the metal elephant was beside the airship’s gondola, with a gangway level between them.

  “Look smart, gentlemen,” Dr. Barlow said. “We have an elephant to catch.”

  The howdah, as the ambassador had called the Dauntless’s platform, felt a bit like a small boat at sea. It rocked from side to side with the elephant’s gait, but the motion was steady and predictable. Not enough to make Deryn seasick.

  Newkirk, of course, was another matter.

  “I can’t see why we should have to ride in this contraption,” he said, his face growing paler with every step. “We joined the Air Service, not the barking Elephant Service!”

  “And not the diplomatic corps either,” Deryn muttered.

  Since being introduced the ambassador and his assistants had ignored the two middies. They were prattling away to Dr. Barlow in French, which was daft, as they were all English, but that was diplomacy for you. And, as far as Deryn could tell, no one was saying anything about transporting supplies.

  She wondered how the Dauntless would carry all the provisions the airship needed. There wasn’t much room in the howdah, which was all silk and tassels in any case, too fancy for stacks of crates. The machine could pull a sledge or wagon like a real elephantine, she supposed, but there was none in sight. Maybe when they got to the Grand Bazaar …

  “Mind if I ask you boys some questions?”

  Deryn turned. The man who’d interrupted her thoughts wasn’t dressed like the diplomats. In fact, his slops were a dog’s breakfast. His jacket was patched at the elbows, his hat a shapeless mass on his head. An unwieldy camera hung around his neck, and some sort of frog perched on his shoulder.

  The ambassador had introduced him as a reporter for a newspaper in New York, so Deryn supposed that his strange accent must be American.

  “You’d best ask the lady boffin, sir,” Newkirk said. “Midshipmen aren’t allowed to have opinions.”

  The man laughed, then leaned forward and said quietly, “Off the record, then. Any particular reason why your airship is here in Istanbul?”

  “Just a friendly visit.” Deryn nodded at the ambassador. “Diplomacy and all that.”

  “Oh,” the man said, and shrugged. “And here I was thinking it might be because of all the Germans pouring in.”

  Deryn raised an eyebrow, then glanced at the bullfrog. It had the big-brained look of a memory frog, the sort of beast that recorded court proceedings and sessions of parliament. She decided to watch her words carefully.

  “Engineers, mostly,” the reporter continued. “They’re building all sorts of things. Just finished a new palace for the sultan.”

  “Aye, the lady boffin’s headed there tomorrow,” Newkirk said.

  Deryn silenced him with an elbow between the ribs, then turned to the reporter. “What’s your name again, sir?”

  “Eddie Malone, of the New York World. And please don’t call me ‘sir.’” He offered his hand, smiling again. “I won’t ask your name, of course, since this is all off the record.”

  Deryn shook the man’s hand, wondering if he was full of yackum. When the ambassador had introduced them, she’d seen the reporter scribbling all their names into his battered notebook. He’d taken pictures, too, the battered old camera blazing with light from a fabricated firefly living in its flash apparatus.

  Americans were an odd bunch—neither Clanker nor Darwinist. They dabbled with both ways, mixing technologies as they saw fit. Everyone reckoned they would stay out of the war, unless somebody was daft enough to drag them in.

  “There are German officers here too.” Malone pointed at the guards standing at attention beside the approaching airfield gates. Instead of red fezzes they wore pointy helmets that looked a bit like Alek’s piloting hat.

  “Those are Germans?” Newkirk said with alarm.

  “No, Ottoman soldiers,” the reporter said. “But just look at them. They used to have more colorful uniforms, until the field marshal dressed them up in gray, like proper Clankers.”

  “Who’s that?” Deryn asked.

  “Field Marshal Liman von Sanders. German fellow—a good friend of the kaiser’s. The Ottomans made him head of the army here in Istanbul. Your diplomat friends kicked up a fuss, of course, and he bowed out.” Malone strutted across the howdah with a comically high step. “But not before he got them marching like Germans!”

  Deryn glanced at Newkirk. The man was clearly cracked. “The Ottomans put a German in charge of their own barking army?”

  Malone shrugged. “Maybe they’re getting tired of being pushed around. The French and the British used to run things here, but not anymore. I suppose you’ve heard about the Osman?”

  Deryn nodded slowly. “Aye, the ship that Lord Churchill borrowed.”

  “‘Borrowed’?” Malone chuckled, scribbling in his notebook. “Now, that I can use.”

  Deryn muttered under her breath, cursing herself for a Dummkopf. “So that must be news here.”

  “News? It’s the biggest story in Istanbul! The sultan is half broke, you see, so that dreadnought was bought with money raised by the people. Grannies sold their jewelry and handed over the money. Kids coughed up pennies, and bought shadow puppets of its companion creature. Everyone in the empire owns a piece of that ship! Or at least they did, till your Lord Churchill went and pinched it.” The man’s smile was maniacal, the bullfrog on his shoulder poised to memorize whatever she said.

  Deryn cleared her throat. “I suppose they’re a wee bit angry now?”

  Malone nodded at the airfield gates parting before them, then licked the tip of his pen. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Through the gates a broad avenue stretched toward the city. As the walker plodded ahead, the streets grew busier, the buildings rising up as tall as the howdah. People and pushcarts bustled past windows full of carpets and dishes, everything decorated with mad checkerboard patterns that dazzled Deryn’s eyes. The footpaths were crowded with stalls selling stacks of nuts and dried fruit, or meat roasting on rotating skewers. Powdered spices lay in rust red and dusty yellow piles, or spilled bright green from sacks as large as feed bags. Rich and unfamiliar scents cut through the smell of engines, so heavy she
could taste them in her mouth, like the air inside a fabrication greenhouse.

  Deryn saw now what the walker’s trunk was for. As the machine lumbered through the crowd, its trunk swept gracefully from side to side, nudging pedestrians out of the way. The howdah pilot’s fingers moved nimbly on the controls; he pushed carts aside, and even rescued a child’s fallen toy from being crushed by the walker’s giant feet.

  Other walkers pulled wagons through the streets. Most looked like camels or donkeys, and one took the form of a horned creature that Eddie Malone explained was a water buffalo. A metal scarab beetle as big as an omnibus carried passengers through the crowds.

  Down a narrow side street Deryn saw a pair of walkers constructed almost in the shape of men. They stood almost as tall as the Dauntless, with squat legs, long arms, and featureless faces. They were decorated with striped cloths and strange symbols, and carried no weapons in their giant clawed hands.

  “Army walkers of some kind?” Deryn asked the reporter.

  “No, they’re iron golems. They guard the Jewish neighborhoods.” Malone waved his hand across the crowd. “Most of the Ottomans are Turks, but Istanbul is a melting pot. Not only Jews, but Greeks, Armenians, Venetians, Arabs, Kurds, and Vlachs all live here.”

  “Blisters,” Newkirk said. “I never heard of half of those.”

  The man smiled and scribbled in his notebook. “And all of them have their own combat walkers, just to keep the peace.”

  “Sounds like a flimsy sort of peace,” Deryn muttered, watching the streets below. The people were dressed in a dozen different ways—in tasseled fezzes, desert robes, women under veils, and men wearing jackets like any in London. Everyone seemed to be getting along, though, at least under the impassive stares of the iron golems.

  “What’s that?” Newkirk asked, and pointed ahead.

  A quarter mile in front of the elephant, the street seemed to be churning, a mass of crimson trickling through the crowd—moving closer.

  Eddie Malone licked his pen. “That would be your welcoming committee.”

  Deryn stepped to the front of the howdah and shielded her eyes against the sun. She made out a group of men wearing red fezzes, their fists waving in the air. Behind her the diplomat’s French prattle faded suddenly away.

  “Oh, dear,” Ambassador Mallet said. “Those chaps again.”

  Deryn turned to the howdah pilot. “Who are they?”

  “A bunch called the Young Turks, sir, I think,” the man said. “This town is full of secret societies and revolutionaries. Can hardly keep track of them all, myself.”

  There was a burst of light as Eddie Malone took a photograph.

  The ambassador began to clean his eyeglasses. “The Young Turks tried to depose the sultan six years ago, but the Germans put them down. Now they hate all foreigners. I suppose this was to be expected. From what my sources tell me, the newspapers have been riling them up about the Osman.”

  “Your sources tell you?” Dr. Barlow asked.

  “Well, I don’t speak Turkish, of course, and none of my staff does either. But I have excellent sources, I assure you.”

  The lady boffin raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me, Ambassador, that none of you can read the local newspapers?”

  The ambassador cleared his throat, and his assistants stared off into space.

  “Not much point,” Eddie Malone said, feeding the firefly in his camera’s flashbulb a sugar cube. “From what I’ve heard, the Germans own half of them anyway.”

  Dr. Barlow stared at the ambassador with fresh alarm.

  “The Germans only own one of the newspapers,” he protested, still cleaning his glasses. “Though it seems quite influential. Very clever of them, spreading their lies here in Constantinople.”

  “It’s called Istanbul,” Dr. Barlow said quietly, her fingers clenched around her riding crop.

  Deryn shook her head and turned back toward the crowd.

  The men were surging closer, chanting, their fists pumping in unison. They rushed through the bustle of people and carts, their fezzes like crimson water flowing past pebbles in a stream. They soon surrounded the walker, yelling up at the pilots on their saddles, waving newspapers. Deryn squinted—every front page showed a picture of a ship under a huge headline.

  The crowd was chanting “Osman! Osman!” But there was another word in all the hubbub—“behemoth”—that Deryn didn’t recognize at all.

  “Well,” Dr. Barlow said, “this is a discouraging start.”

  The ambassador drew himself up, patting the railing at the howdah’s edge. “There is no reason to worry, madam. We’ve ridden out far worse on the Dauntless.”

  Deryn had to admit that they were safe enough up here, fifty feet above the mob. No one was throwing anything, or trying to climb the elephant’s huge legs. The howdah pilot was deftly nudging the protesters aside with the trunk, so the walker’s progress was hardly slowed.

  But Dr. Barlow wore an icy expression. “It’s not a question of ‘riding it out,’ Ambassador. My objective is to keep this country friendly.”

  “Well, talk to Lord Churchill, then!” the man cried. “It’s hardly the Foreign Office’s fault when he goes and snatches a …”

  His words faded as a metal groan filled the air, the world tilting beneath them. Deryn’s dress boots skidded sideways on the silk carpet, and everyone went stumbling toward the howdah’s starboard side. The railing caught Deryn at stomach level, and her body pitched halfway over before she righted herself.

  She stared down—the foreleg pilot below had toppled from his perch, and lay sprawled in a circle of protesters. They looked as surprised as the pilot did, and were bending down to offer help.

  Why had the man fallen from his saddle?

  As the machine stumbled to a halt, something flickered in the corner of Deryn’s vision. A lasso flew up from the crowd and landed around the shoulders of the rear-leg pilot, then he, too, was yanked from his seat. A man in a blue uniform was scrambling up the front leg.

  “We’re being boarded!” Deryn cried, running to the port side of the howdah. The Dauntless was under attack there too. The man driving the rear leg had already been yanked from his perch, and the foreleg pilot was pulling against a rope around his waist.

  Deryn watched as another man in blue uniform—a British uniform—took the place of the rear-leg pilot and grasped the controls.

  Suddenly the machine lurched back into motion, taking a massive stride into the crowd. Someone screamed as a huge foot bore down to shatter cobblestones into dust, and the protesters in red fezzes began to scatter.

  “Do something, Mr. Sharp,” cried Dr. Barlow above the din. “We appear to have been captured!”

  “Aye, ma’am, I noticed!” Deryn reached for her rigging knife, but of course her full-dress uniform had no pockets to speak of. She’d have to use bare fists.

  “How do I get down to the saddles?” she asked the howdah pilot.

  “You can’t from here, sir,” he said, his knuckles white on the trunk’s controls. He was pushing people to safety as the machine stumbled through the panicking crowd. “The leg pilots climb on from the ground, while the elephant’s kneeling.”

  “Blisters! Do you have any rope aboard?”

  “Afraid not, sir,” the man said. “This isn’t a sailing ship.”

  Deryn groaned in frustration—how could any ship not have rope? The machine stumbled again, and she grabbed the railing to keep her footing.

  Making her way around the edge of the howdah, Deryn saw that three of the pilots had been replaced by impostors in blue uniforms. Only the foreleg pilot on the port side remained in his seat. But the rope was still around him, stretching down into the crowd. He’d be pulled off soon enough.

  In the meantime three of the walker’s legs were scraping and stamping, trying to get the contraption moving again. As she watched, the huge right forefoot stamped down on a vendor’s cart, scattering peeled chestnuts like hailstones across the street.

 
; “Barking stupid machines!” Deryn muttered. A real beastie would know who its proper masters were.

  Suddenly the trunk swung to the port side. It reached among the protesters and found the man trying to drag the foreleg pilot off his seat. The man shrieked, letting go of the rope as he was flicked aside.

  “Good work!” Deryn said to the howdah pilot. “Can you yank the impostors off?”

  The man shook his head. “Can’t reach the rear saddles at all. But maybe …”

  He twisted at the controls, and the trunk whipped about to the starboard side. It curled back, reaching for the pilot on the foreleg, but stopped a yard short, metal segments grinding.

  “It’s no use, sir,” the man said. “She’s not as flexible as a real beastie.”

  However inflexible, the machine was barking powerful. It was lurching down the street now, scattering people and vehicles in all directions. One of its huge feet stamped down on a wagon and smashed it into splinters. The remaining British pilot struggled to bring the machine to a halt, but there was only so much that one leg could do against three.

  “Can you grab something to use as a weapon?” Deryn asked the howdah pilot. “You only need another few feet of length!”

  “This is a Clanker contraption, sir! It’s hardly as nimble as that.”

  “Blisters,” Deryn swore. “Then I suppose it’ll have to be me!”

  The man took his eyes from the controls for a second. “Pardon me, sir?”

  “Bend that trunk up this way. And make it fast, man!” she ordered, pulling off her fancy jacket. She turned to toss it back at Newkirk, then climbed out of the howdah and onto the elephant’s head.

  “What in blazes are you doing?” Newkirk cried.

  “Something barking daft!” she called as the tip of the metal-jointed trunk reared up before her. She readied herself on the rocking surface of the elephant’s head.

  And jumped …

  Her arms wrapped around the shining steel. The segments rasped and clanked as the trunk flexed, carrying her high above the crowd. Her feet swung out from the centrifugal force, as if she were riding the end of a huge whip whistling through the air.