Leviathan

When Alek reaches the stables, there is a massive Cyklop Stormwalker instead of the training machine. Alek is almost 16 but has never been allowed this close to one of the war machines before. Klopp tells Alek that his father created a challenge to prepare him for war. Seeing Alek’s fear, Count Volger goads him by saying they can tell his father that he was too afraid. Alek enters the machine, which has two men inside, and Volger and Klopp join him to complete the crew.

Alek begins operating the machine via levers and pedals that control the limbs. At Klopp’s command, Alek guides the walker into the forest, and he learns quickly. He hesitates before guiding the machine onto one of his mother’s riding paths, knowing how angry she gets when her horses stumble into a walker’s footprint. Klopp agrees that it is unfortunate, but they must make good time tonight.

Alek looks at Klopp and Volger, demanding to know where they’re going. The two reveal that they’ve been ordered by Alek’s father to take him as far away from Prague as possible. Alek believes they are traitors trying to kill him because he is only half royal. He reaches for the distress signal, but Klopp restrains him while Volger drugs him. Before Alek passes out, he tells the men that his father will kill them; Volger reveals that Alek’s parents were murdered in Sarajevo.

The narrative shifts to Deryn Sharp’s story. Her brother, Jaspert, has just woken her after she fell asleep studying aeronautics. He looks for his airman’s uniform while Deryn tells him that she is confident she will pass the day’s Air Service test. Jaspert says she may have all the formulas memorized, but there is a secret test to gauge candidates’ “air sense.”

She puts on Jaspert’s hand-me-downs, afraid that their plan to disguise her as Jaspert’s male cousin Dylan won’t work. She’s tall and thin for 15 and has cut her hair short, but she isn’t sure she can replicate a boy’s attitude. The two travel by omnibus to Wormwood Scrubs. Deryn reflects on how much nicer the London omnibuses are than the ones in her home, Scotland, and she worries about the weather, though the test is indoors. Most of the passengers disembark at Scrubs’ famous prison, and she worries that Jaspert could end up there because of their plan.

Deryn learned aeronautics from her ballooner father and knows more than Jaspert, so she thinks it’s unfair to be a girl. She knows that if the boffins (scientists) don’t let her into the Air Service, she will be sent home to Scotland, where she will have to give up flying and conform to her mother’s idea of a traditional girl.

When the two disembark, they meet Lieutenant Cook, and the ruse seems to work: Deryn is allowed to join the recruits.

As the sun rises, more military men arrive in a carriage pulled by fabricated beasts meant to scare the recruits and weed out the “Monkey Luddites,” those who view fabrications as unnatural and blasphemous.

After the scared boys are dismissed, the flight captain reveals an airbeast called a Huxley Ascender, also known as a Medusa. The Huxley is a hydrogen breather made from crossbreeding jellyfish with other venomous sea creatures, and it is known for being skittish.

The flight captain tells the recruits that they will be sent 10,000 feet above London with the Huxley to test their “air sense,” and over half the volunteers are too afraid to ride the airbeast.

Deryn volunteers to go first and gets strapped into the pilot’s seat. The Huxley is secured to the ground by a long length of rope, and the man strapping Deryn in gives her a yellow flag to drop in case she panics or something goes wrong. As the men let go of the Huxley’s tentacles and Deryn begins to fly, she sees the rest of the recruits watching with awe and resists the temptation to tell them that she’s actually a girl.

Hydrogen breathers, like the Huxley, don’t actually breathe hydrogen but burp it into their gasbags. The beasts break food down into pure elements like oxygen, carbon, and, most importantly, lighter-than-air hydrogen, which keeps the beast aloft.

After a few minutes, the beast begins to quiver, and Deryn sees a storm ahead. She doesn’t want to release the yellow flag and fail the air-sense test, but she doesn’t want to get caught in the storm either.

The story returns to Prince Aleksander, who groggily wakes up in the belly of the stormwalker, guarded by Corporal Bauer. Alek tries to persuade Bauer to let him go, but the young corporal alerts Klopp and Volger that Alek is awake.

On the command deck, Volger tells Alek that his parents were poisoned after multiple assassination attempts and that the assassins will come for Alek next. Alek is confused, wondering why anyone would care about him now that his father is dead. Because of his mother’s common blood, Alek cannot inherit his father’s lands or titles. Volger says that the emperor of Austria-Hungary, Alek’s great uncle Franz Joseph, is 83 years old. If the emperor dies, people may turn to Alek for guidance.

In the middle of their conversation, Volger shuts off the engines and peeks out the top hatch, where a massive German dreadnaught walker is searching the forest. Volger tells Alek that those are the enemies searching for him, but Alek believes they are actually part of a rescue mission organized by his father. Alek shouts and waves, drawing the dreadnaughts fire. In the ensuing battle, Alek realizes that his parents are truly dead, and he is now a fugitive. Volger tells Alek to take the German attack as proof that Alek is still considered a threat to the throne.

During the battle, Alek closes the machine’s viewport so no bullets or debris can get into the cabin. Klopp navigates the machine into a crouch so it disappears below the tree line, and Volger closes the hatch above the command seat. Alek is excited by his first real battle but quickly realizes his training is inconsequential compared to what is required in an actual battle. In addition to the German walker, scouts on horseback begin firing at the stormwalker, and as the battle intensifies, Alek feels the emptiness within him lifting. Above the noise, Volger asks Alek if he knows how to reload the machine guns. Alek does not but begins unbuckling his seatbelt anyway, eager to help.

Meanwhile, in London, Deryn is still high above the city, strapped to the Huxley. The groundmen begin to reel her in as the storm starts. The rain falls diagonally in the strong wind, soaking Deryn even from beneath the airbeast, and the Huxley gets increasingly nervous. Deryn does her best to calm it and wishes she had thrown the yellow flag sooner, now worrying she may have failed the air-sense test.

As the wind forces the airbeast toward the ground, Deryn has to avoid the chimneys of Wormwood Scrubs prison. She releases the ballast, bags of water meant to stabilize the flying beast, and this allows her to float above the prison, but the winds are too powerful. Eventually, she cuts the rope tying her to the ground, which saves her from being smashed against the prison walls. However, since she released the cable connecting the Huxley to the airfield, she is free-ballooning with a nervous Huxley with no idea how to land.

High above London, Deryn and the airbeast float along with the winds, and Deryn watches the city far below. She sees fabricated beasts everywhere, doing manual labor that used to be done by people. Deryn wishes she had her sketch pad to capture the beauty of flight like she used to in her Da’s hot air balloon. The storm eventually dissipates, and the Huxley flies higher. For two years, all Deryn has wanted is to fly again, like when her Da was alive. Now she is marooned in the sky with no way to land. She wonders if this is punishment for acting like a boy like her mother always warned.

Many hours later, the Huxley begins twitching, waking Deryn from a nap. Deryn sees a massive airbeast, called the Leviathan, emerge from the clouds. The Leviathan is the famous first airbeast, fabricated from the DNA of whales and thousands of other species. It halts in the air above her and drops a rope, which Deryn secures to her harness. The crew of the Leviathan drags Deryn and the Huxley to the dorsal (top) side of the airbeast.

The young officer in charge of Deryn’s rescue tells her that an Austro-Hungarian Duke and Duchess were assassinated last night, and the Leviathan has been put on high alert and is flying toward France, meaning that Deryn is stuck with them for a few days. She tries to hide her excitement and says that it isn’t a problem.