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dishwater was being flung from the galley windows. A barrel emerged from the cargo bay door and came tumbling down at them.
    Deryn tightened her grip in case the barrel hit and sent them spinning—or would the whole pallet simply break apart?
    But the barrel flashed past a few yards away, exploding into a white cloud of flour against the hard-packed tundra.
    “Over here, Mr. Sharp!” Newkirk called. He had scrambled to the far side of the pallet, one foot dangling off the edge.
    “What’ve you found?”
    “Nothing!” he shouted. When Deryn hesitated, he added, “Just
come here
, you blithering idiot!”
    As she headed toward Newkirk, the pallet began to tip beneath her weight. Her grasp on the netting slipped for a moment, and she skidded toward the edge.
    Newkirk’s hand shot out and stopped her.
    “Grab hold!” he shouted as the pallet tipped farther.
    Finally Deryn understood his plan—their weight was pulling the carefully balanced pallet sideways, turning it into a knife blade skimming through the trees. It was a much smaller target for the debris raining down, and the bulk of the cargo was above the two middies, protecting them from any direct hits.
    Another barrel went by, barely missing, shattering in the airship’s wake. A few ice-laden treetops shot past, but the
Leviathan
was finally climbing, lightened enough to pull them a few crucial yards higher.
    Newkirk grinned. “Don’t mind being saved, do you, Mr. Sharp?”
    “No, that’s quite all right, Mr. Newkirk,” she said, shifting her hands for a better grip. “You owed me one, after all.”

“RETURNING WITH THE GOODS.”
     

As the treetops slowly dropped away, Deryn climbed back up, leveling the pallet again. As they were winched higher, she took a closer look at what was beneath the cargo netting. It appeared to be nothing but dried beef, slabs and slabs of it all crushed together.
    “What does this smell like to you?” she asked Newkirk.
    He took a sniff. “Breakfast.”
    She nodded. It did smell just like bacon waiting to be tossed into a pan.
    “Aye,” she said softly. “But breakfast for
what
?”

 
    “We’re still traveling west-northwest.” Alek looked at his notes. “On a heading of fifty-five degrees, if my readings can be trusted.”
    Volger scowled at the map on his desk. “You must be mistaken, Alek. There’s nothing along that course. No cities or ports, just wilderness.”
    “Well . . .” Alek tried to remember how Newkirk had put it. “It might have to do with the earth being round, and this map being flat.”
    “Yes, yes. I’ve already plotted a great circle route.” Volger’s index finger swept along a line that curved from the Black Sea to Tokyo. “But we left that behind when we veered north over Omsk.”
    Alek sighed. Did
everyone
but him understand this “great circle” business? Before the Great War had changed everything, Wildcount Volger had been a cavalry officer inthe service of Alek’s father. How did he know so much about navigation?
    Through the window of Volger’s stateroom, the shadows were stretching out ahead of the
Leviathan
. The setting sun, at least, agreed that the airship was still angling northward.
    “If anything,” Volger said, “we should be headed southwest by now, toward Tsingtao.”
    Alek frowned. “The German port in China?”
    “Indeed. There are half a dozen Clanker ironclads based there. They threaten Darwinist shipping all across the Pacific, from Australia to the Kingdom of Hawaii. According to the newspapers that Dr. Barlow has so kindly provided me, the Japanese are preparing to lay siege to the city.”
    “And they need the
Leviathan
’s help?”
    “Hardly. But Lord Churchill won’t let the Japanese be victorious without British assistance. It wouldn’t be seemly for Asians to defeat a European power all alone.”
    Alek groaned. “What a colossal exercise in idiocy. You mean we’ve come all this way just to wave the Union Jack?”
    “That was the