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"It washer rope-burned fingers

Of course, she was still in the middle of a stor across a stretch of London with precious few spots to land

And hoas Deryn en, no more ballast in case the creature spooked, and no clue if anyone had ever free-ballooned with a Huxley before and lived to tell the tale

Stillat least she was flying If she ever came down alive, the boffins would have to admit as how she’d passed this test

Boy or not, Deryn Sharp had shown a squick of air sense after all

EIGHT

The storely still

She remembered the sensation from Da’s hot-air balloons Cut free from its tether, the medusa had exactly matched the speed of the wind The air felt iant lathe

Dark clouds still boiled around her, giving the Huxley an occasional spin But worse were the flickers in the distance One sure way to set a hydrogen breather afla Deryn distracted herself by watching London pass beneath, allstreets, the factories with their sealed smokestacks

She remembered how Da had said London looked in the days before old Darwin had worked hiswith a fog so thick that streetlae so much soot and ash had decorated the nearby countryside that butterflies had evolved black splotches on their wings for careat coal-fired engines had been overtaken by fabricated beasties, ears These days the only chie factories, and the storm had cleared even that murk from the air

Deryn could see fabs wherever she looked Over Buckingha hawks patrolled in spirals, carrying nets that would slice the wings off any aeroplane that ventured too close Messenger terns crisscrossed the Square Mile, undeterred by the weather The streets were full of draft ani a sledge full of bricks through the rain The storm that had almost snuffed out her Huxley had barely slowed the city down

Deryn wished she had her sketch pad, to capture the tangle of streets and beasts and buildings below She’d first started drawing up in one of Da’s balloons, trying to capture the wonders of flight

As the clouds gradually broke apart, the Huxley slid across a shaft of light Deryn stretched in the war water out of her cold, da s into the wet streets As it dried, the Huxley was cli

Deryn frowned To descend in a balloon, you vented hot air froned to be tethered at all times

What was she supposed to do, talk the beastie down?

"Oi!" she shouted "You there!"

The nearest tentacle curled a bit, but that was all

"Beastie! I’ to you!"

No reaction

Deryn scowled An hour ago the Huxley had been so easy to spook! Perhaps one annoyed lassie’s cries didn’t amount to , bloated bu her feet to rock the pilot’s rig "And I’ bored of your company! Let! Me! Down!"

The tentacles uncurled, like a cat stretching in the sun

"That’s just brilliant," she grumbled "I’ll add rudeness to your defects"

Passing through another patch of sun, theto dry itself

Deryn felt herself drifting higher

She groaned, looking at the blue skies ahead She could see all the way to the farlish Channel

For two long years Deryn had wanted nothing ain, like when Da had been alive - and here she was,like a boy, just like herthe beast toward France

It was going to be a long day

The Huxley noticed it first

The pilot’s rig jolted under Deryn, like a carriage going over a pothole Shaken fro bored?"

The airbeast seeh iridescent skin It was noon, so she’d been aloft lish Channel sparkled not far ahead, set against a perfect sky They’d left London’s gray clouds far behind

Deryn scowled and stretched

"Barking lovely weather," she croaked Her lips were parched and her bum was very, very sore

Then she saw the tentacles coiling around her

"What now?" she h she’d have welcoht the beastie down A bu here till she died of thirst

Deryn scanned the horizon and saw nothing But she felt a tre and heard the thruines in the air

Her eyes widened

A huge airbeast was eray clouds behind her, its reflective silver topside glistening in the sunlight

The thing was gigantic - larger than St Paul’s Cathedral, longer than the oceangoing dreadnought Orion that she’d seen in the Tha cylinder was shaped like a zeppelin, but the flanks pulsed with the motion of its cilia, and the air around it swarmed with symbiotic bats and birds