Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (4 page)

Gamine listened intently, falling back on the habits of many years of concentrated study.

“Do you think you can remember all that, my little sprite?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod.

“So go to, little one, go to.” The man waved her on, and went to stand in the shade of a nearby shop building.

Gamine walked on sore feet to the thoroughfare and angled directly toward the heavyset man. In his haste, he nearly collided with her, and was brought up short by the near miss, annoyance spread across his ruddy face.

“Watch yourself, guttersnipe!” the heavyset man barked.

“Your pardon, but I . . .” Gamine paused, swallowing hard, trying to remember what to say next. “O honored sir,” she went on, with increasing confidence, “I come from Penglai province, where my father is an official in the emperor's service. My . . . family retainer”—she pointed to the man standing in the shop's shadow, a short distance away—“accompanied me to your . . . to your fine city . . . so that I might visit the holy shrines of Fanchuan. To honor the memory of my departed maternal grandfather, who was born here. Sadly, though, um, that is, my chaperone has gambled away all of the money my parents provided for my journey, and I am left without a means of returning home. If you could see your way clear to loaning me a small sum . . . to cover airship fare . . . I can return home and report on the generosity of your fair city, and not be forced to admit how near I was brought to ruin by my family retainer.”

The well-fed bureaucrat, who at the beginning of Gamine's speech had looked ready to take to his heels, seemed genuinely moved by her deception, and pulling a purse from his belt, filled her palm with coins.

“You should report the man to your parents on your return home,” he said officiously, “and have him severely flogged.”

With that, he reached out, patted Gamine on the top of her head, and then puffed on down the street, glaring at Gamine's newfound friend as he passed by.

Gamine returned to where her new tutor stood, who took her arm and led her down a side street. When they were safely out of sight, the man took the coins from her hand, and it didn't once occur to Gamine to object.

“Well, now,” he said, counting out the coins, “it's not enough for airship fare, damn his cheap hide, but it's easily the price of a meal and a night's lodging for both of us at an inn I know. It's in the shadows of the city wall, not far from here, and they do marvelous things with a chicken.”

Whistling through the gaps in his smile, the man started off down the street, the coins rattling in his fist. Gamine, licking dry lips at the thought of anything done with a chicken, followed close behind.

 

They were on their second course, her belly full of rice and chicken broth and with dumplings in each hand, before Gamine paused to collect her thoughts. She washed down her last bite with green tea and sat back, a feeling of warm contentment washing over her.

“What's your name, my little sprite?” the man asked, dropping a gnawed chicken bone into his bowl.

“Gamine.”

“Well now, that's an unusual name, and one I've not heard before.” He smiled, took a sip of hot wine. “And what does it mean, this Gamine?”

She diverted her eyes, uncomfortable.

“I—I don't know.”

“Fair enough,” the man said, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a cloth. “Well, if we've moved on to the stage of the evening where we make formal introductions, allow me to present myself. I am Temujin, master of fakements, grifts, dodges, and cons.”

When, after a long silence, Gamine didn't answer, the man went on.

“That means, in short, that I am a confidence man, a trickster, one who plies his trade by parting other men from their hard-won coins. I was born poor, to a mother who never had two coins to string together. She worked as a cook in a roadside inn and, from the travelers who stopped by there, I picked up enough of the patter of merchants and bureaucrats that as an adult I could pass myself off as belonging to one of the wealthier classes. When I was a young man, I used to pull a con where I'd claim to be the only surviving child of a horrible accident, the last son of a merchant family, and work the Grand Trunk from one end of the Tianfei Valley to the other with that dodge. As I got older, though, I couldn't pull off the gaff, and had to fall to other, meaner pursuits. Now I pull short cons on merchants on the road, posing as a trader in exotic goods who needs just a few coins to get my goods out of hock, promising that I'll share the haul with the hapless mark. Things like that. Carrying greater risk than the more charitable ‘donations' I got as a younger man, since I'm now forced to promise goods and riches I can't deliver, but I do what I must to survive.” He paused and took a sip of wine. “Which is not to say that I'd be forced to fall so low as to be a cutpurse, foyst, cracksman, or footpad. I'll not earn my day's wages by violence or destruction of property, no sir. What I take from my fellow man, I get by the power of my own voice. I
talk
their wealth out of their purse and into mine. And I know of no nobler pursuit.”

Gamine could only nod, trying to take it all in.

“And you, my dear?” Temujin said. “What profession do you call your own?”

Gamine chewed on a bite of chicken and swallowed it before answering.

“I was once a beggar, and then was a student, and now it would seem that I am a beggar once more.”

“Not a very good one, mind you. Meaning no disrespect, of course.” Temujin smiled and refilled his cup of wine. “Well, bung your eye!” He drained the cup in one swallow and poured himself another.

 

Gamine and Temujin shared a room that night, bought with the coins she'd gotten from the bureaucrat. She was happy to be well fed and out of the elements, with a blanket across her and a roof over her head, but it seemed that Temujin was after something more, besides.

Once the lights were dimmed, Gamine lay on her sleeping mat, staring up at the darkness, listening to the sounds of Temujin settling on the other side of the floor. Her blanket was threadbare and thin, but the inn was warm and dry, at least compared with the cold cobblestones of the city streets.

Gamine heard Temujin rustling on the far side of the room. He coughed, an unpleasant rattling noise at the back of his throat, and then spat his mucus onto the floorboards.

“Excuse you,” Gamine said absently, and closed her eyes, drifting gradually off to sleep.

She was awoken suddenly by the feel of rough hands on her arms and shoulders, and a weight across her legs and stomach.

“What are you doing?”
Gamine sputtered.

“Don't fight it, little one. It'll be over soon.” Temujin's breath was hot in her ear and smelled heavily of wine.

Gamine fell back on years of self-defense instructions. She reached out and grabbed Temujin's hand, bending his pinky finger back at a vicious ninety-degree angle. Then, as Temujin started to howl, she slid to one side, and keeping hold of his hand, she wrenched his arm up behind his back until the tips of his fingers nearly touched his head, and heard a satisfying popping noise from his shoulder joint.

Temujin rolled off across the floor, his arm flopping painfully at his side, sobbing. In the dim light, Gamine could see tears flowing down his hollow cheeks, his face twisted into a mask of agony. He crab-walked across the floor to his own sleeping mat and collapsed in a heap.

“Excuse you,” Gamine said, only slightly annoyed, and promptly went back to sleep.

 

The next morning, they breakfasted down in the main room, Temujin eating in stony silence. Gamine thought nothing of his attempt at intimacy of the night before; while she found it in poor taste, it didn't bother her any more than his belching, or farting, or any of the other antisocial things he'd done since they met. She simply didn't understand his actions. What she knew of human sexuality was relegated only to biology and courtly dance steps, and she had no concept of the dealings of men and women.

Temujin, still without full range of motion in his left arm, set down his bowl and looked at Gamine across the table.

“Well, my little sprite, you must think me a right nick-ninny for my crude antics of the night, but you must understand it was all a lark. It was just . . . tickling, like. And I certainly won't do anything of that sort again, no sir.” With his right hand, he drew his robe aside slightly and prodded at his left shoulder, which was swollen and discolored. “You can take care of yourself, and no question. But that engenders in me a concern, I must admit. If you stay here in the city, on your own, you'll as likely as not be starving again in days. You're a dab hand at the martial arts, but your skills at the maunding arts are lackluster at best.”

Gamine blinked at him, solemnly, making it clear she'd no idea what Temujin was saying.

“Maunding, as in ‘to beg,' my dear,” Temujin explained. “You're no beggar, I say, but you've got the makings of a great trickster within you. If you come with me on the open road, I could teach you a trick or two, and we'd be able to turn a tidy profit in a short amount of time. You told me yesternight about all your schooling and tutoring and such. Well, with your ability to speak in a half dozen languages, quote scientific fact and formula, and discourse at a high level on matters of politics and economics, you'd make a gem of a confidence man . . . er, um, confidence
woman
.”

Gamine set down her teacup. “Do you really think so?”

“Why, undoubtedly. We could even retool the con I used as a young man, making you the lost daughter of a bureaucrat's family, perhaps even one with blood ties to the Dragon Throne, and me in the role of the faithful family retainer. With you as part of the spiel, we can cadge rides and handouts from bureaucrats and noble families on the road, and from poorer merchants of sufficient means and greed, reeling them in with the hope for a grand reward in exchange.”

Gamine had no real reason to stay in the city. She couldn't get back into the household of her mistress, and she had nowhere to live and no means by which to support herself. The only sort of kindness she'd had since she was tossed out of the governor's hall into the dirt had come from Temujin, and apart from his horrible manners and his untoward advances of the night before, he seemed a decent enough sort.

“Very well,” Gamine said, bowing from the waist. “I will go with you.”

 

Gamine and Temujin left the city, heading east on the Grand Trunk, the road that traveled from the northwest to the southeast along the bottom of the Tianfei Valley, through the provinces of Fangzhang, Penglai, and Yingzhou. As the story went, when man first came to Fire Star, his initial residence had been down in the Tianfei Valley, sheltered by the high cliff walls, down in the deepest reaches of a canyon larger than any found on Earth. The first settlements had been little more than collections of pressurized huts, but infinite patience and near unlimited manpower carved the foundations of the first great cities on the valley floor—Fanchuan, Shachuan, and Fuchuan. The higher atmospheric pressure at that depth meant that the valley was the first spot to enjoy the benefits of the atmosphere mines of the northern plains, the first place where men were able to go abroad without breathing masks and constrictive suits. Some said that one day, when Fire Star had been transformed completely into a world like distant Earth, when the northern plains became a great ocean, that the whole valley would be flooded with water, the cities lost forever beneath the waves of an immense system of rivers; but that day was dozens of generations away, if it was to come at all.

The Grand Trunk had been carved at the floor of the valley when the first cities were still being built, straight and level and true, to ensure that imperial shipments from one city to another would never go astray. In those days, the war with the Mexica Aztecs was still a recent memory, not the dimly recalled bit of folklore—a legend almost become myth—that it was now. The builders of the great valley cities, architects of the Grand Trunk, designed the massive road with an eye toward protecting shipments at all costs, with no convenient hiding places along the road for raiding parties to wait in ambush; the road was miles from the valley walls on either side and ran straight northwest and southeast to the horizon in either direction. Any approaching force would be seen for hours, even days, as the dust cloud of its movements came closer and closer. On the Grand Trunk there could be no surprises.

In their first days on the Grand Trunk, Temujin worked out their patter, and Gamine learned the art of the trickster.

 

Gamine and Temujin sat in the dim light of a fire, a short distance from the road. Had they traveled by coach, van, crawler, or wagon like most other travelers on the Grand Trunk, they'd have already reached the first way station, but traveling as they did by foot, their first two days' journey had brought them only a fraction of the way. Gamine had complained at first, but Temujin had insisted that the slower path was the proper speed for a trickster, and that even if they could travel more quickly and with more ease, they needed the extra time so that she could learn the basic skills.

Gamine was only glad that Temujin had purchased new clothing and walking shoes for her when he spent the last of their coins on provisions for the road. Liters of water, compacted foodstuffs, and a fire kit for each of them depleted the rest of their meager savings.

She had never seen a fire kit before or, she realized, even seen a fire except those penned safely in a hearth or fire pit. With so few trees on Fire Star—outside of city parks and private arbors like those of the Chauviteau-Zong estate—and those few held so dear, early settlers had been forced to find other ways to stoke fires for warmth and cooking. Fortunately for them, during the early days of the atmosphere mines, an unexpected answer was found.