Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (3 page)

Gamine had never thought that she'd end up back on the street. In the long, cold, sleepless hours of the night, she had begun to wonder if the last eight years had been a dream, and if she was now merely waking up to horrible reality.

Madam Chauviteau-Zong had always called her Gamine, though whether that had been her name, surname, or a term of endearment, she had never known. Even so, for most of her life she had been Gamine, and Gamine she would remain. In her more optimistic moments, she liked to think that her mistress had said
Gao Ming
—meaning “clever,” or “a good strategist”—but considering what came later, the old woman had likely been drawing upon her own Gallic heritage and meant exactly what she said. Gamine was a gamine: a child of the streets, alone and unloved, with no family, clan, or station.

Gamine was of mixed descent, her hair the straight black of the Han race, but her narrow nose and jade-colored eyes suggesting a strain of Briton, Francais, or Deutsch. The line of her jaw was a touch too strong—at least that's what her mistress had often said, too masculine a frame for an otherwise appropriately feminine face.

Until the age of five years old, Gamine had been a nameless child of the streets. She remembered nothing of her parents, or any relations, her earliest memories those of surviving hand-to-mouth in the back alleys of the city. Then everything changed. Men in the fine livery of household servants plucked her off the streets, bathed and clothed her, and presented her to a fine lady in a well-appointed room. The woman, dressed expensively, had alabaster skin, eyes the color of sapphires, and a Francais surname. She was a high-born lady, with family ties to the imperial court and an inherited fortune from a merchant forbearer.

The lady had looked over the little, well-scrubbed urchin girl, and said, “Gamine. She'll do.” In the eight years that followed, Gamine had lived in the grand lady's house, trained by the finest tutors money could buy. She learned to read, write, and speak a half dozen languages, how to paint calligraphy with perfect brushstrokes, how to dress and present herself, how to ride, shoot a bow, and fight barehanded. She learned the history of the Imperial Throne all the way back to the Yellow Emperor and the Three Sovereigns of legend, and she learned the science that had brought man to the red planet they called Fire Star, turned its deserts into arable lands, and built cities in its low, warm places. And then, at the end of the eighth year, she was taken to a grand ballroom in the capital, to a formal reception honoring the governor-general. And her world came crashing to an end.

 

Gamine's first thought was to return to the only place of warmth and comfort that she knew. It was the work of hours to walk across the breadth of Fanchuan, from the Sun-Facing District in the east to the Green Stone District in the west. Her feet were crimped into formal slippers of elegant silk, with soles so thin that she could feel every stone and pebble in the street; by the time she reached the Chauviteau-Zong estate, her toes were swollen and her heels were bruised and numb with pain.

At the front gate, the grounds of the estate visible behind the bars, she was stopped by the house guards, who barred her way with crossed staves, refusing to let her pass. Gamine thought she could see something like sympathy flickering behind their cold eyes, but their expressions were set and hard. Plead as she might, they refused to budge, and she was forced away.

Her stomach grumbled audibly as she slunk away from the gate, hugging herself against the chill.

 

Gamine came to a restaurant, where she had once eaten with her tutors and the other household servants while the mistress was abroad in the city conducting business. Madam Chauviteau-Zong had dined in a private room, conferring with a high-ranking city official behind closed screens, and when the company returned home that afternoon, Gamine found that many of her personal possessions had been moved from one corner of her little room to another. Later she would overhear some of the staff talking behind their hands, complaining about their things being misplaced in their absence, and whispering their theories that the mistress had taken them all out of the house that day to give some mysterious party an opportunity to break into the estate and search the rooms. Who would want to search the household, and what they might be looking for, no one knew for certain, but many on the mistress's retainer were happy to voice their opinions, though never when the mistress was within earshot.

Episodes like that had been common throughout Gamine's years living at the Chauviteau-Zong estate, and many times dramas were acted out in shadows, of which Gamine only saw fleeting glimpses, and the meaning of which she could never hope to understand. It was a place of secrets and hidden mysteries, and none but the mistress herself knew the depths of all of them.

All of which, though, bore no interest for Gamine at the moment. She could think now only of that day when the whole household had gathered in this restaurant, and of the fish-head stew she had eaten. It was the best she'd ever tasted, though her tutors had scolded her for the noise she made in slurping from the bowl, lashing her knuckles with a metal rod that left them bleeding. The bruises on her fingers had faded, while the memory of the fish-head stew had stayed with her to this day.

Gamine, with dust all in her clothes, and her hair matted and dirty, walked in the front door of the restaurant. Her mouth would have already been watering, had her throat not been so parched and dry.

“What do you want?” came a shout from within the darkened interior, and a man in a plain white vest and gown came rushing from the rear of the restaurant, drying his hands on a cloth. “You cannot come in here! You must go back outside; this place is for paying customers only!”

Gamine forced a smile, and gave a gracious little bow.

“O honored sir, I am sorry to say that I cannot pay, but if I could have just a bowl of your delicious fish-head stew, I would be most grateful.” Her manner was courteous and courtly, her elocution and diction precise and perfect enough to dazzle the courtiers at the Imperial Palace on faraway Earth.

The waiter seemed not to be impressed.

“Ha!” His laughter was a hard, grating sound. “We are not a charity, and serve no one without the coin to pay for the meal. If you have no money, you get no food.” He leaned forward, towering over her. “Do you have money?”

Gamine shook her head, eyes wide.

“Then get out!” The waiter shooed her out and closed the ornately-carved door behind her.

Gamine stood in the street, as foot traffic and coaches passed hurriedly around her. She realized with a faint shock that she had not held a single coin in her hands since she'd been five years old and had begged a single disc of copper stamped with a square hole in the middle from a passerby to pay for a few grains of rice and a lump of near-rancid meat from a street vendor's stall.

She needed money. Perhaps she could find a job or turn her hand to begging again. The grumbling in her belly told her that however she managed it, she would need to eat, and soon.

 

Gamine gnawed on a discarded rib bone, trying to get the last bits of meat off it, and thought about how best to break it open to suck out the marrow. In the two days since she'd been thrown out in the streets by the guards, she had eaten only a handful of stale rice and the bits of rotten meat and moldy pastries she could find in trash bins behind the city's restaurants. She had to fight the rats for the few scraps she could lay hands on, and she'd narrowly avoided nasty bites that might have been deadly, considering the diseases the rats no doubt carried. It was an unwelcome irony that her education had covered information on a full gamut of infectious diseases and plagues but had not touched at all on emergency medicine or first aid. Were she bitten, she'd know precisely the progressive stages of the disease that would no doubt kill her, but would have no notion how to stop it.

She'd tried to find work, but it was the same wherever she went: what she could do, no one was hiring for, and what people were hiring for, she could not do. Though she was a child prodigy in the pleasant pursuits of the ruling class, she was completely unaware of how to make her way in the world. Able to speak a half dozen languages and explicate the intricacies of nuclear fusion, she didn't have a single practical skill with which to earn a crumb to eat. She could not clean, could not build, could not wash, could not sew.

She had tried several times to return to her mistress's home—hungry, tired, and exhausted—but each time the guards had turned her away, and on the last attempt they threatened her bodily harm if she tried again.

Gamine finished her exertions with the bone and decided to beg.

She'd done so every free moment of the last two days, when not busy going through trash bins or pleading with restaurateurs and waiters for scraps of food. But whatever skill she had at begging as a child of five years old she'd lost as a girl of thirteen. Perhaps as a little orphaned waif she brought out feelings of sympathy in passersby that a girl of teenage years did not engender.

She stood in the street, calling to drivers of coaches and vans as they sped past, shouting out that she just needed only a little help to make her way in the world.

“Ha ha ha!”

For the second time in as many days, Gamine was brought up short by the sound of cruel, mocking laughter. She looked from side to side, searching for the source of the noise. Finally she spied him, leaning against the side of a nearby building. His laughing eyes were fixed on her, a cruel smile on his thin lips.

“L-leave me alone!” Gamine shouted, and turned back to the passing vehicles. She tried to call out to the drivers again, begging for any spare coins.

“You're doing it all wrong,” the man said, calling over the sound of the traffic, a bemused tone in his voice.

Gamine turned and glared at the interloper.

He looked like he was in his sixth decade of life, with teeth missing in his smile and wisps of hair around the sides and back of his balding head. He had a scraggly mustache that drooped down past his chin on either side of his mouth. He was wearing rough-made and well-traveled clothing, looking like a merchant who had seen better days, and the soles of his sandals were worn as thin as parchment. He had a walking staff in one hand, a bundle wrapped in leather straps in the other.

“What do you mean?” Gamine asked defensively.

The man moved forward, quicker than Gamine would have thought possible, and took hold of her elbow.

“Come with me and I'll show you,” he said in a low voice, and dragged her off the street.

He took Gamine to the rear of a nearby manse, palatial home of some local notable. There was a cistern near the back wall, where the owner's servants would water his animals. From beyond the wall, Gamine could hear the strange calls of exotic creatures brought in from Earth. Through the wrought iron bars of the gate, she could see a zebra, giraffe, and horse, even a pygmy elephant.

The old man dipped a cloth in the water and used it to clean the grime from Gamine's face. His movements were rough, but not mean-spirited. He just didn't regard her any more than he would an object that he'd found in the streets. Which, really, was what she was.

“That's a little better,” he said, tucking the cloth back into his robes.

With her face and hands more or less clean, he did what he could about arranging her hair and clothes.

“Stand up straighter,” the man said, taking a step back and giving her an appraising look. “Now, look haughty but afraid. Like you're scared but think yourself above everything you see.”

Gamine did her best to follow his instructions, contorting her expression as he described.

“Eyes open a little more,” the man said, “but bring your brows down in the middle. Mouth straight, but purse your lips together a little more, to suggest controlled anger. Perfect. Now, come with me.”

The man turned and walked away, trusting that Gamine would follow along. Numbly, her stomach roaring, she followed behind.

“Where are we going?” Gamine asked, when they had gone several blocks in silence.

“None of your prittle-prattle,” the man called back over his shoulder, his pace not slacking. “There's work to do and an important lesson for you to learn.”

They came at last to a street in the Southern Gate District, at a busy commercial intersection, with shops and businesses crammed close together.

“There!” The man pointed to a bureaucrat hurrying down the street. “See that old puff guts? He's an easy mark, or my old eyes betray me.”

Gamine glanced without interest at the heavyset man walking toward them.

“But what are we doing here?” she asked, a whine creeping into her voice. “I was doing just fine where I was, and . . .”

“You were doing nothing, hop-o'-my-thumb, but wearing out your larynx!” the man snapped. “Now, shut your bone box and listen to me, or you'll be hungry and stay hungry, for all I care.”

Gamine wasn't sure what her bone box was but shut her mouth and nodded silently.

“Now,” the man said, “let's hope you've a memory on you. What I want you to do is go to that pompous toad and say exactly what I'm about to tell you. Tell him that you are the daughter of an imperial bureaucrat in Penglai province, a child of privilege, desperate for airship fare back home. Point to me, and say that I am a family retainer who has gambled away the money your parents gave you for a journey to visit the holy shrines of Fanchuan, in honor of your maternal grandfather, who was born in this city. If he will only provide airship fare, you can return home and report on the generosity of the kind people of Fanchuan, and not have to admit how your family retainer brought you so near to ruin.”