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A few yards fro herself rise and fall with the swell of the waves Her eyes swept the shadows behind the shelf of sand, but she saw no one hidden there She crawled closer, as slow as so its first steps on land

The scorpion’s spotlight shifted closer to the tree line, revealing another figure in a flight suit lying on the ground Two Otto the downed man with their rifles pointed at him

Deryn swore silently - both herto the darkness behind the shelf of sand, wondering what to do The walker wasthe sand treiant scorpion and a score of soldiers with nothing but a rigger’s knife?

She poked her head up The two Otto hiht foot

Deryn frowned That was Matthews, the man she’d left at the Sphinx The Ottomans must have captured hiuessed that the kraken nets were their objective?

And where was her third un fire erupted fro the beach The branches thrashed madly in the hail of bullets, and sand sprayed into the air

Finally the ed into the brush Aout It was a body, motionless and as white as a sheet except for the red stains on the flight suit

Deryn sed Her first command had been killed and captured down to the last ears, the scorpion moved closer to the dead body One of itsthe lifeless for her ate the survivors and take a closer look at their unifor party had come from the Leviathan, even if they hadn’t forced it out of Matthews already But herabout the vitriolic barnacles, and even if the Ottomans inspected the nets, they wouldn’t notice a fewthe miles of cable

Hopefully they would think this had been a simple reconnaissance mission, and an utter failure The Ottoe a protest with the Leviathan’s captain, but as far as they knew, this mission had not been an act of war Deryn was the only one who could explain otherwise

She had to get away fro There could be no heroic atte back to the Sphinx now either The Otto the whole peninsula for weeks to coo

Deryn stared back out across the black water, to where the cargo ship she’d seen earlier waited to transit the strait Once the sun rose, it would head for Istanbul

"Alek," she said softly, and slipped back into the sea

Chapter Twenty-Five

The minarets of the Blue Mosque rose up behind the trees, six tall spires like thin freshly sharpened pencils standing on end The graceful arc of the ainst the hazy sky, and sunlight shiyrothopters and aeroplanes overhead

Alek sat outside the small coffeehouse where Eddie Malone had taken him the day before It was on a quiet side street, and Alek was sipping black tea and studying his collection of Ottoun to learn their names in Turkish, and which ones to hide from shopkeepers if he wanted a fair price

With the Gerraphs of Bauer and Klopp, it was up to Alek to buy supplies He’d learned a lot, though, wandering the streets of Istanbul on his own How to bargain with h the German parts of town unnoticed, even how to tell ti down from the city’sabout this city - he was meant to be here This here the ould turn, either for or against the Clanker side A slender strip of water glittered in the distance, the fog sirens of cargo ships wailing softly as they crept along it This passage from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea was the Russian army’s lifeline, the thread that held the Darwinist powers together That hy providence had brought him halfway across Europe

Alek was here to stop the war

In the ht himself a little Turkish

"Nasilsiniz?" he practiced

"Iyiyie on his table

"Shush!" Alek looked about Fabricated beasts al here, but there was no point in drawing attention to himself Besides, it was insufferable that the creature’s accent was better than his own

He adjusted the cage’s cover, closing the gap the creature had been peeking through But it was already sulking in a corner It was uncannily good at reading Alek’s mood, which at the moment was one of annoyance

Where was Eddie Malone, anyway? He’d proo, and Alek had another appointment soon

He was just about to leave when Malone’s voice called from behind him

Alek turned and nodded curtly "Ah, here you are at last"

"At last?" Malone raised an eyebrow "You in a hurry to get somewhere?"

Alek didn’t answer that "Did you see Count Volger?"

"I did indeed" Malone waved for a waiter and ordered lunch, consulting theship, the Leviathan The sultan’s joyride turned out to bethan I expected"

"I’m pleased to hear it But I’er said"