Alek tried to laugh at this absurd statement, but the world twisted sideways under him, darkness and silence crashing down.
THREE
"Wake up, you ninny!"
Deryn Sharp opened one eye ... and found herself staring at etched lines streaming past an airbeast's body, like a river's course around an island - an airflow diagram. Lifting her head from the aeronautics manual, she discovered that the open page was stuck to her face.
"You stayed up all night!" The voice of her brother, Jaspert, battered her ears again. "I told you to get some sleep!"
Deryn gently peeled the page from her cheek and frowned - a smudge of drool had disfigured the diagram. She wondered if sleeping with her head in the manual had stuffed still more aeronautics into her brain.
"Obviously I did get some sleep, Jaspert, seeing as you found me snoring."
"Aye, but not properly in bed." He was moving around the small rented room in the darkness, piecing together a clean airman's uniform. "One more hour of studying, you said, and you've burnt our last candle down to a squick!"
Deryn rubbed at her eyes, looking around the small, depressing room. It was always damp and smelled of horse clart from the stables below. Hopefully last night would be the last time she slept here, in bed or not. "Doesn't matter. The Service has its own candles."
"Aye, if you pass the test."
Deryn snorted. She'd studied only because she hadn't been able to sleep, half excited about finally taking the airman middy's test, half terrified that someone would see through her disguise. "No need to worry about that, Jaspert. I'll pass."
Her brother nodded slowly, a mischievous expression crossing his face. "Aye, maybe you're a crack hand with sextants and aerology. And maybe you can draw any airbeast in the fleet. But there's one test I haven't mentioned. It's not about book learning - more what they call 'air sense.'"
"Air sense?" Deryn said. "Are you winding me up?"
"It's a dark secret of the Service." Jaspert leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I've risked expulsion for daring to mention it to a civilian."
"You are full of clart, Jaspert Sharp!"
"I can say no more." He pulled his still-buttoned shirt over his head, and when his face emerged, it had broken into a smile.
Deryn scowled, still not sure if he was kidding. As if she weren't nervous enough.
Jaspert tied his airman's neckerchief. "Get your slops on and we'll see what you look like. All that studying's going to waste if your tailoring don't persuade them."
Deryn stared sullenly down at the pile of borrowed clothes. After all her studying and everything she'd learned when her father was alive, the middy's test would be easy. But what was in her head wouldn't matter unless she could fool the Air Service boffins into believing her name was Dylan, not Deryn.
She'd resewn Jaspert's old clothes to alter their shape, and she was plenty tall - taller than most boys of midshipman's age. But height and shape weren't everything. A month of practicing on the streets of London and in front of the mirror had convinced her of that.
Boys had something else ... a sort of swagger about them.
When she was dressed, Deryn gazed at her reflection in a darkened window. Her usual self stared back: female and fifteen. The careful tailoring only made her look queerly skinny, not so much a boy as some tattie bogle set out in old clothes to scare the crows.
"Well?" she said finally. "Do I pass as a Dylan?"
Jaspert's eyes drifted up and down, but he said nothing.
"I'm plenty tall for sixteen, right?" she pleaded.
Finally he nodded. "Aye, I suppose you'll pass. It's just lucky you've no diddies to speak of."
Deryn's jaw dropped open, her arms crossing over her chest. "And you're a bum-rag covered in clart!"
Jaspert laughed, slapping her hard on the back. "That's the spirit. I'll have you swearing like a navy lad yet."
The London omnibuses were much fancier than those back in Scotland - faster, too. The one that took them to the airship field at Wormwood Scrubs was drawn by a hippoesque the breadth of two oxen across the shoulders. The huge, powerful beast had them nearing the Scrubs before dawn had broken.
Deryn stared out the window, watching the movements of treetops and windblown trash for hints about the day's weather. The horizon was red, and the Manual of Aerology claimed, Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. But Da had always said that was just an old wives' tale. It was when you saw a dog eating grass that you knew the heavens were about to split.
Not that a drop of rain mattered - the tests today would be indoors. It was book learning the Air Service demanded from their young midshipmen: navigation and aerodynamics. But staring at the sky was safer than reading the glances of the other passengers.
Since getting on the bus with Jaspert, Deryn's skin had itched with wondering what she looked like to strangers. Could they see through her boy's slops and shorn hair? Did they really think she was a young recruit on his way to the Air Proving Ground? Or did she look like some lassie with a few screws loose, playing dress-up in her brother's old clothes?
The omnibus's next to last stop was at the Scrubs' famous prison. Most of the passengers disembarked there, women carrying lunch pails and gifts for their men inside. The sight of barred windows made Deryn's stomach churn. How much trouble would Jaspert be in if this ruse went wrong? Enough to lose his position in the Service? To send him to jail, even?
It just wasn't fair, her being born a girl! She knew more about aeronautics than Da had ever crammed into Jaspert's attic. On top of which, she had a better head for heights than her brother.
The worst thing was, if the boffins didn't let her into the Service, she'd be spending tonight in that horrible rented room again, and headed back to Scotland by tomorrow.
Her mother and the aunties were waiting there, certain that this mad scheme wouldn't work and ready to stuff Deryn back into skirts and corsets. No more dreams of flying, no more studying, no more swearing! And the last of her inheritance wasted on this trip to London.
She glared at the three boys riding in the front of the bus, jostling each other and giggling nervously as the proving ground drew closer, happy as a box of birds. The tallest hardly came up to Deryn's shoulder. They couldn't be so much stronger, and she didn't credit that they were as smart or as brave. So why should they be allowed into the king's service and not her?