Goliath

TWENTY-NINE

When Alek slipped between the swaying tarps, he found only Deryn and Dr. Azuela inside. The ground men had swiftly thrown up a cot for Deryn and a case for the doctor’s instruments. But now they had gone back to their ropes, and the growl of the winches drawing the ship down had started up again. Bovril was wrapped around Deryn’s neck, purring softly.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ve had worse,” Deryn said, but her eyes stayed fixed on the doctor’s fingers as they probed her arm.

“It isn’t broken,” the man said. “But this cut is bad. I need to sew it up. Take off your shirt.”

“I can’t,” Deryn said softly. “My arm won’t move.”

The doctor frowned, feeling carefully along her forearm again. “But a moment ago you made a fist.”

“Just cut the sleeve off,” Alek said, kneeling beside them. “I’ll help you.”

Dr. Azuela’s wary gaze traveled from Deryn to Alek as he reached into his bag. He pulled out a pair of scissors and snipped through the cuff of the middy’s uniform, then up her arm. Her pale skin was slick with blood.

Deryn drew in a sharp breath—the doctor’s free hand had brushed her chest. Azuela frowned, hesitating a moment. Then, with a flash, the scissors had reversed in his hand. The points quivered at her throat.

“What’s under your shirt?” he demanded.

“Nothing!” Deryn said.

“There’s something strapped there. You’re wearing a bomb! ¡Asesino!”

“You’re wrong,” Bovril said quite clearly.

Azuela stared at the beast, dumbfounded and frozen.

“It’s all right, Doctor.” Alek raised his hands in surrender. “Deryn, just take off your shirt.”

She stared dumbly at him, shaking her head.

Dr. Azuela tore his eyes from the loris. “You’re here to kill Pancho! You meant to fly down onto him with a bomb!”

“She isn’t an assassin,” Alek said.

The doctor stared up at him.

“She,” Bovril said.

“Deryn is a girl. That’s why she’s bound like that.” Alek ignored the look of despair on her face. “See for yourself.”

With the scissors still at her throat, Dr. Azuela felt her again. Deryn flinched, and his eyes widened as he yanked his hand away.

“¡Lo siento, señorita!”

Deryn opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her fists clenched, and she began to shake. Alek knelt beside her, gently opening one of her hands to hold it.

“Please don’t tell anyone, sir,” he said.

The doctor shook his head. “But why?”

“She wants to serve—to fly.” Alek reached into his inner pocket, the one the pope’s letter always occupied. Beside the scroll case his fingers found a small cloth bag and pulled it free.

“Here.” Alek handed it to the man. “For your silence.”

Dr. Azuela opened the bag, and found the sliver of gold—all that remained of the quarter ton that Alek’s father had left him. He stared at it a moment, then shook his head. “I have to tell Pancho.”

“Please,” Deryn said softly.

“He is our commander.” He turned to Deryn. “But only him, I promise.”

Dr. Azuela called in one of the rebels from outside and gave an order in rapid-fire Spanish. Then he set to work, cleaning the wound with a rag and liquid from a small silver flask, sterilizing a needle and thread, then handing the flask to Deryn. As she drank, he drew the needle through the skin of her arm, pulling the wound closed stitch by stitch.

Alek watched, keeping his hand in Deryn’s. She squeezed hard, her nails cutting half moons into his flesh.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

After all, why should a great rebel leader care if a girl had hidden herself in the British Air Service?

Before Azuela had finished, a gust of air from outside sent the canvas around them swaying. It was one of the great bulls snorting, like an exhalation of steam from a freight train.

The tarps parted, and General Villa stepped inside. “¿Está muriendo?”

“No, he will mend.” The doctor’s eyes didn’t leave his work. “But he has an interesting secret to tell you. You may wish to sit down.”

Villa sighed, settling cross-legged next to Alek. On horseback he had seemed quite graceful, but now he looked a bit thick about the middle. He moved deliberately, perhaps with a touch of rheumatism.

“Tell him,” Dr. Azuela said.

Deryn looked exhausted, but her voice was firm. “I’m Deryn Sharp, decorated officer in His Majesty’s Air Service. But I’m not a man.”

“Ah.” Villa’s eyebrows rose a little as he looked her up and down. “Forgive me, Señorita Sharp. I didn’t know the British use women for their glider troops. Because you are small, yes?”

“That’s not it, sir,” Deryn said. “This is a secret.”

“Deryn’s father was an airman,” Alek explained. “Her brother is too. She dresses as a boy because it’s the only way she can fly.”

General Villa stared at Deryn for a moment, then a snort of laughter rippled through his body. “¡Qué engaño!”

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Alek said. “At least not for a few hours, until we’ve gone. It’s nothing to you, whether you turn her in. But to her it’s everything.”

The man shook his head in wonder, then raised an eyebrow at Alek. “And what is your part in this joke, little prince?”

“He’s my friend,” Deryn said. Her face was still pale, but her voice sounded stronger now. She offered Villa the flask.

He waved it away. “Only a friend?”

Deryn didn’t answer, staring down at the fresh stitches in her arm. Alek opened his mouth, but Bovril spoke first: “Ally.”

General Villa gave the loris a curious look. “What is this beast?”

“A perspicacious loris.” Deryn reached up and stroked its head. “It repeats things, a bit like a message lizard.”

“It does not only repeat,” Dr. Azuela said. “It told me I was wrong.”

Alek frowned—he’d noticed that as well. As the weeks had passed, the lorises’ memories had grown longer. They sometimes parroted things from days before, or that they’d heard only from each other. It wasn’t always clear now where a word or phrase had come from.

“That’s because it’s perspicacious,” Deryn said. “In other words, it’s clever.”

“Dead clever,” Bovril said, and Villa stared at it again, his brown eyes marveling.

“Tienen oro,” Dr. Azuela said into the silence.

Alek’s Italian was sufficient for him to understand the word for “gold.” He pulled out the small bag again. “It’s not much, but we can pay for your silence.”

General Villa took the bag and opened it, then laughed. “The richest man in California sends me guns! And you tempt me with this gold toothpick?”

“Then, what do you want?”

The man’s eyes narrowed on Alek. “Señor Hearst says you are a nephew of the old emperor, Maximilian.”

“A grandnephew, but yes.”

“Emperors are vain and useless things. We did not need one, so we shot him.”

“Yes, I know the story.” Alek swallowed. “Perhaps it was a bit presumptuous, putting an Austrian on the throne of Mexico.”

“It was an insult to the people. But your uncle was brave at the end. In front of the firing squad, he wished that his blood should be the last to flow for freedom.” General Villa looked at the red-stained rag in Dr. Azuela’s hand. “Sadly, it was not.”

“Indeed,” Alek said. “That was fifty years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Sí. Too much blood since then.” Villa tossed the bag back to Alek and turned to Deryn. “Keep your secret, little sister. But be more careful the next time you jump off your ship.”

“Aye, I’ll try.”

“And be careful of young princes. The first man I ever shot was as rich as a prince, and it was for my sister’s honor.” General Villa laughed again. “But you are a soldier, Señorita Sharp—you can shoot men for yourself, can’t you?”

Deryn gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s crossed my mind, once or twice. But pardon me, sir. If you don’t like emperors, where did you get those German walkers?”

“The kaiser sells us arms.” General Villa patted the Mauser pistol on his belt. “Sometimes he gives us arms, so we are his friends when the Yankees join the war, I think. But we will never bow to him.”

“Aye, emperors are a bit pointless, aren’t they?” Deryn sat up straighter and held out her right hand. “Thank you for not telling.”

“Your secret is safe, hermanita.” General Villa shook her hand, then rose to his feet, but suddenly his eyes narrowed and his hand went to his gun. A shadow loomed against the tarp.

Villa reached up and flung the canvas aside, pointing his pistol into the beaming unshaven face of Eddie Malone.

“Dylan Sharp, Deryn Sharp… of course! Well, I can’t say I had a clue, but it sure explains a lot.” The man rubbed his hands together and then thrust one at Pancho Villa. “Eddie Malone, reporter for the New York World.”