Regent's Park spread out beneath Deryn, its grass thick from the August rains.
Squads of ground men ran across it, shepherding the last few civilians out of the landing area. A thin line of policemen clung to the edges, holding back hundreds of gawkers. The Leviathan's shadow lay across the trees, and the air trembled with the engines' hum.
Deryn was descending fast, aiming for the intersection of two footpaths, where a local chief constable was awaiting orders. A message lizard rode on her shoulder, its sucker-feet tugging at her uniform like the claws of a nervous cat.
"We're almost there, beastie," she said soothingly. She didn't fancy arriving on the ground with a panicked lizard, the captain's landing orders garbled beyond understanding.
Deryn was a bit nervous herself. She'd ridden ascenders a half dozen times since joining the Leviathan's crew - she weighed the least of all the middies, and could always coax her beasts the highest. But that had been on U-boat spotting duty, with the Huxley cabled to the airship. This was the first time she'd free-ballooned since her wild ride as a recruit.
So far, at least, it had been a textbook descent. The airbeast's extra ballast was bringing it down fast, guided by a pair of gliding wings attached to her rig.
Deryn wondered who was so important, to warrant all this trouble. They were ruining a hundred picnics and risking disaster by landing here in the park, and probably scaring the clart out of every Monkey Luddite in London. And all just to get some scientist to Constantinople a bit quicker?
This fellow must be some kind of clever-boots, even for a boffin.
The ground was rushing closer, and Deryn let out a slosh of ballast. Her descent slowed a squick, the spilled water sparkling in the sun as it cascaded down. The message lizard squeezed a little tighter.
"Don't you worry, beastie," Deryn murmured. "It's all under control."
Mr. Rigby had told her to get down fast, with no nonsense. She imagined him watching from above, timing the descent with his stopwatch, pondering who should be cut from the crew.
It didn't seem fair to lose this feeling, not after those two long years of missing Da's balloons. Surely Rigby could see that she'd been born to fly.
A crosswind ruffled the Huxley, and as Deryn pulled it back on course, a horrible notion struck her. If she were the unlucky middy, would this be her last time in the air? With war coming, surely they'd stick her on another airship. Maybe even the Minotaur, where Jaspert was serving.
But the Leviathan felt like part of Deryn now, her first real home since Da's accident. The first place where no one had ever seen her in a skirt, or expected her to mince and curtsy. She couldn't lose her position here just because some boffin needed transportation!
The ground men were running along in the Huxley's shadow, ready to reach up and grab its tentacles. She tipped the gliding wings back to slow the descent, easing the air-beast down into their grasp. There was a jolt as they pulled her to a halt, and the message lizard made a squawk.
"Constable Winthrop?" it babbled.
"Hang on another minute!" she pleaded. The lizard made a tut-tut noise, sounding just like Mr. Rigby when the middies were squabbling. She hoped it wouldn't start jabbering. Message lizards could babble old snatches of conversation when they were nervous. You never knew what embarrassments they'd repeat.
The ground men pulled the Huxley steady and drew it quickly down.
She unstrapped herself from the pilot's rig and saluted the chief constable. "Midshipman Sharp reporting with the captain's lizard, sir."
"That was a smart landing, young man."
"Thank you, sir," Deryn said, wondering how to ask the constable to pass this sentiment on to Mr. Rigby. But the man was already tugging the lizard from her shoulder. The beastie started to babble about landing ropes and wind speeds, rattling off instructions faster than a dozen signalmen.
The constable didn't look as though he understood half of what the lizard was saying, but Fitzroy would be here soon to help. She spotted his ascender landing not far away, and was pleased that she'd beaten him down.
The airship's shadow fell across them then, and men began to scramble in all directions. This was no time to dally. Fitzroy was in charge here; it was Deryn's job to prepare the boffin's cargo for loading.
She saluted the chief constable again, glanced up at the airship looming overhead, and took off for the zoo at a run.
SIXTEEN
His Majesty's London Zoo was squawking like a bag of budgies on fire. Deryn skidded to a halt at the entry gate, stunned by the tumult of hoots and roars and shrieks.
To her right a troop of monkeys clung to the bars of their cage, howling into the air. Past them a netted enclosure was full of agitated birds, a blizzard of plumage and noise. Across a wide moat a giant elephantine stamped the ground nervously, sending tremors through Deryn's boots.
"Barking spiders," she swore softly.
She'd made Jaspert take her to the London Zoo five weeks ago, fresh off the train from Glasgow. But on that visit she'd heard nothing like this ruckus.
Obviously the Leviathan had put the beasties in a state.
Deryn wondered how the airship must smell to the natural animals. Like a giant predator coming to gobble them up? Or some long-lost evolutionary cousin? Or did its tangle of fabricated species make them think a whole island was floating past overhead?
"Are you my airman?" a voice called.
Deryn turned to see a woman wearing a long traveling coat, a valise in one hand.
"Pardon me, ma'am?"
"I was promised an airman," the woman said. "And you appear to be in uniform. Or are you simply here to throw peanuts at the monkeys?"
Deryn blinked, then realized that the woman was wearing a black bowler.
"Oh ... you're the boffin?"
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Guilty as charged. But my acquaintances call me Dr. Barlow."
Deryn blushed, bowing a little. "Midshipman Dylan Sharp, at your service."
"So you are my airman. Excellent." The woman held out the valise. "If you would be a dear, I'll just fetch my traveling companion."
Deryn took the bag and bowed again. "Of course, ma'am. Sorry to be so thick. It's just that ... no one told me you were a lady."
Dr. Barlow laughed. "Not to worry, young man. The subject has occasionally been debated."
With that she turned away and disappeared through the gatehouse door, leaving Deryn holding the heavy valise and wondering if she was seeing things. She'd never heard of a lady boffin before - or a female diplomat, for that matter. The only women who tangled with foreign affairs were spies, she'd always reckoned.