Page 29 (1/2)

When men in seamen’s slops called out to Deryn, she answered thes from Bauer and Hoffman, and a few choice curses as well It never hurt to practice

She found a shopfilled with fancy liquor bottles, dusted off her brandy, and went inside At first the proprietor looked askance at her disheveled slops, and almost tossed her out when he discovered that she was there to sell, not buy But when he glied He offered her a pile of coins, which grew by half when she gave him a hard look

Most of the restaurants were closed, but Deryn soon found a hotel A fewdown to a breakfast of cheese, olives, cuculoppy substance called yogurt, which was halfway between cheese and milk

As she ate, Deryn wondered how she would find Alek In his er he’d said that his hotel had a nah, except that Alek had never told Deryn his randuncle the emperor, of course - Franz Joseph - and re-or-other But wives were seldoroup of sailors walk past, and wondered if any of them were Austrian Surely they would know the murdered archduchess’s name, if Deryn could only make her question understood

But then she ree, that the Geritive prince fro sailor in a Clanker uniform would only attract suspicion

She had to find the answer herself Luckily, Alek’s family was famous Wouldn’t they be in history books?

All she needed was so on a broad marble stair, a brand-new sketchbook in her hand Before her stood, according to her half dozen conversations in sign language and halting Clanker, the newest and largest library in Istanbul

Its huge brass colu doors gathered and disgorged people without pausing As she passed through them, Deryn had the same jitters she’d felt in the saloon car of the Orient-Express She didn’t belong in any place so fancy, and the bustle of so lass tubes, full of sh theers of calculation engines covered the walls, fluttering like the cilia of the great airbeast when it was nervous Clockalkers the size of hatboxes scrabbled along thethem down

A small army of clerks waited behind a row of desks, but Deryn h the vast lobby, headed toward the towering stacks of books There looked to be lish

But she found herself halted by a fancy iron fence that stretched all the way across the roon that repeated the saes:

CLOSED STACKS - ASK AT INFORMATION DESK

Deryn returned to the desks, screwed up her courage, and went to the one with the nicest-looking clerk behind it He wore a long gray beard, a fez, and pince-nez glasses, and gave her a slightly puzzled suessed that most sailors didn’t spend their shore leave in the library

She bowed to hies from her sketch pad and set the crest that had decorated the breastplate of Alek’s Stor tree, like the genealogies of the great airbeasts that Mr Rigby was alwaysthem memorize No doubt the Clankers drew their family trees in a different manner, but surely a librarian would understand the concept

The lasses, stared at the sketches for a ave Deryn a quizzical look

"You are Austrian?" he asked in careful Clanker

"No, sir America" She spoke in German as well, but tried to mimic Eddie Malone’s accent "But I want " - her brain raced - "to understand the war"

Theman A moment, please"

He turned to face what looked like a piano set into the desk, and clacked away at its keys No ed from a slot in the desk He handed it to her and pointed

"Good luck"

Deryn bowed and thanked hiesture to a kiosk in the center of the room She watched another patron use it first The woman fed her punch card into what looked like a miniature loom The card slid beneath a fine-tooth comb, whose tinythe holes in the card

After a , the card was spat back out From the top of the kiosk, a clockworkaway into the stacks of books

Deryn felt queasy froic of it all, but stepped forward to repeat the process with her own card When the card popped back out, she discovered that it was sta about the lobby, Deryn found a row of small tables labeled with numbers of their own She sat down at the one that matched her card and pulled out her sketchbook

As she drew, the whirr and clatter of thelike the crash of distant waves Deryn wondered how the Clankers s of holes in paper Did every wee sliver of knowledge have its own nuh the ceiling-high shelves, but what other booksit herself?

She looked up at the calculating engines that covered the walls, and wondered what they were up to Did they record every question that the librarians had been asked? And if so, who looked at the results? Deryn reh the slats of the throne rooers

Surely in all this tumult of inforedy that had started this whole barking war

Finally her clockworkwith a fetched bone It eighted doith half a dozen books, all of them heavy and bound with cracked old leather