Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (27 page)

Huang reached over and brushed a hand against her bare shoulder, his expression caring. “I've heard of your mistress and the games she played. My parents once spoke of Chauviteau-Zong and the others, when I was young. I don't think they imagined I could overhear, as I doubt they'd have spoken so freely if they had.”

“What . . . What did they say?” Gamine's voice cracked a little, despite herself. She felt unaccountably unnerved. Part of her didn't want to hear any more on the subject, while another part wanted to hear nothing else. “About Chauviteau-Zong?” Gamine felt that she knew precisely what he'd meant by
games
but was almost afraid to ask.

“You've probably worked most of it out on your own, I'd imagine,” Huang said, somewhat reluctantly. “Your mistress and those of her class, well-connected aristocrats with too much money and not enough to occupy their time, would find various things on which to wager. Who could purchase the fiercest animal? Who could fund the construction of the fastest-flying airship? Who could commission the most brilliant sculpture? And on and on. Eventually, they ran out of things with which to compete and had to find fresh ground. They started . . .” He paused and, with brows knit, regarded Gamine. Then he had to look away before continuing. “They decided to start wagering on people. But it wasn't enough to find the strongest man, or the fastest runner, or such like. Instead, they had to wager on the essential
qualities
of a person. As I understand it, the idea came of complaining at the quality of bureaucratic officeholders, and the statement by your mistress or one of her equals that . . . that a monkey could be trained to do just as good a job.” He swallowed hard but still refused to meet Gamine's gaze. “The agreement was that whoever could take a stray child from the street and train them well enough to pass the highest level of bureaucratic examinations would win the wager.”

“So the questions we were asked . . . ?”

Huang nodded. “The equivalent of a
juren-
level imperial examination.” At last he turned and met her eyes. “At the age of thirteen, you could have walked out of that room in the governor-general's palace and gone to get a job in the imperial bureaucracy and had employment for life.”

“And instead I was tossed into the street to fend for myself.”

Huang reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing. “I don't imagine it's any help to hear it, but when my parents discussed the practice, they did so with disapproval. My mother in particular was horrified at the thought of children turned out into the wild like that. My father . . .”

When he trailed off, averting his eyes, Gamine pressed him to continue.

“My father,” he finally went on, “said that the children had come from the streets, and been returned to the streets, so while he thought the game was unseemly, he didn't think it did any real harm to them.”

To her surprise as much as his, Gamine smiled and nodded. “He was right, I suppose.” She chuckled, and seeing Huang's confused expression, explained. “I used to harbor a mighty thirst for revenge, and at night would plot all the ways I would make the old woman pay for mistreating me. But now I wonder whether I shouldn't thank her, instead.”

“Thank her?” Huang repeated, disbelieving.

“Certainly. Had Madam Chauviteau-Zong not taken me in when she did, I'd likely have died while still a child. Instead, at her expense the tutors equipped me with all manner of useful skills and knowledge, however much I didn't recognize it at the time.”

“But in throwing you out in the street again, wasn't she just putting you back in harm's way? After all, you said that if you hadn't met Temujin, you'd have died then, instead.”

Gamine offered a smile. “Well, then I suppose I need to thank
him
, too.”

 

The night wore on, but neither Huang or Gamine seemed much in a mood for sleeping. Gamine's mention of revenge had sparked thoughts of vengeance in Huang's mind, and he smoldered with it, even some time later.

“What's bothering you, Fei?” Gamine said, laying a hand on his chest, with her head pillowed on his arm. No one but Gamine called him by that name, these days. To everyone else, he was only and always Hummingbird.

“It's just . . .” he started, then broke off. “I don't know, Gamine.” He knew that he was the only one to call her by
that
name, which seemed only fitting. Even Temujin had taken to calling her Iron Jaw like everyone else, but not without an undercurrent of derision. “I just keep thinking about what you said about your mistress, and plotting revenge against her.”

“Mmm?” Gamine smiled. “Why, do you have any suggestions?”

Huang chuckled and shook his head. “No, it's just . . .” He took a heavy breath. “I've vowed vengeance myself, and I don't think I could shake it off as easily as you seem to be doing.”

Gamine leaned in closer. “You're not planning on thanking this person, I take it?”

Huang's eyes flashed darkly, and his mouth drew into a tight line. “No,” he said, managing to keep his tone level, but barely.

After a pause, Gamine said, “So who is this person, then, to have angered you so?”

Huang shook his head in frustration. “I don't know his name. Or even what he looks like, come to that. Only that he has a scar over his right eye in the shape of a small sideways cross, and fair-colored hair. He was the Bannerman who killed my friend, the bandit chief Zhao. I . . .”

Huang left off, his eyes stinging.

“What is it?”

“It . . . it was my fault,” he finally admitted. “I was facing another Bannerman and had the opportunity to defeat him and go to Zhao's aid, but I was squeamish at the thought of killing and let the opportunity pass by, waiting for the chance of a nonfatal wound. If I'd taken the earlier opportunity, I wouldn't have been too late to save Zhao, and he'd still be alive today.”

Gamine pushed back from him and rose up on her elbows to look him in the eye.

“In which case you might not have fled your mountain, but remained there and continued in the life of the bandit?”

Huang, wiping his eyes, could only shrug. “Perhaps,” he allowed.

“And if you had continued in that life, who is to say that the
next
time you encountered the military he wouldn't have fallen, or you, or both? And then you'd never have met me and the rest of the Society on the road, and this revolution of ours would never have begun, and none of these people who have flocked to our side would have anyone to fight for their interests. Is that preferable?”

Huang gave her a hard look, silent but unconvinced.

“It's a hard thing to lose someone close to you, I know,” Gamine went on. “For all that he was a crazy old man, I find that I still miss Master Wei from time to time, and not just because when he was still alive I could take a break from the homilies from time to time. But that doesn't mean that you can just wallow in self-pity over the loss. Nor lose yourself to thoughts of revenge. It's like Master Wei always said, ‘However difficult the road, there is a plan, and the powers always have a purpose for us.'”

Huang's eyes narrowed, and he bared his teeth in a sneer. “Save your ‘powers' nonsense for the audience,
Iron Jaw
. I don't need it, any more than I need your talk of ‘purpose' and ‘plans.' ”

Tugging his arm from under her shoulder, Huang rolled over, and lay on his side facing away from her.

A moment passed, and then he felt Gamine's hand on his shoulder. A slight gesture, a brief attempt at contact. “I don't know if it means anything to you, but I think I met your Bannerman once myself. Just around the time that Wei died. He was the one to drive us off from Yinglong. Light hair and a cross-shaped scar over his eye. Said his name was . . . Kingston, perhaps? Something Briton-sounding like that, I believe. I'd probably recognize it if I heard it again.”

Huang tensed and pursed his lips. He mouthed a name, not speaking it out loud, as if afraid to have his suspicions confirmed.

He remained silent, and still, and after a few long moments he felt Gamine pull her hand away. Then, much later, he eventually found slumber waiting for him in the quiet darkness.

 

The next day, an airship was spotted not far from the camp. Huang, having some experience with aircraft, had carefully selected the camp's current location at the base of a ravine, where the updrafts made it difficult for any airships to pass directly overhead. As a consequence, they were mostly protected against attacks from above. And given that the land rose sharply on either side, they were more or less hidden from the view of anyone approaching on the ground. But they were still visible to craft flying far enough from the ravine to avoid the updraft but high enough to see clearly over the edge of the rise, and it was in this narrow band that the airship appeared to have passed.

The ravine was far enough from any military garrisons that it would take some time for a detachment to reach them, and the intelligence network of the Harmonious Fists had received no word of any battalions on maneuvers in the region. So they had a small amount of leeway before word from the airship reached the military authorities and troops were dispatched. But that leeway was not overly generous and would not last forever, so it was time for the camp to be on the move.

Since the uprising had begun in earnest, the year before, the Fists had been playing a game of cat and mouse with the forces of the governor-general. Thankfully, the Fists seemed to take turns—sometimes as cat, sometimes as mouse—so that they were not constantly on the defensive. But the times when they played the role of the pursuer were limited to those occasions when the military forces were outnumbered or out-gunned, or could be outmaneuvered. Even with their numbers swelled to some thousands, there simply weren't enough of the Fists to make a stand against the combined might of the Green Standard Army and the Bannermen alike, with their airships, crawlers, and heavy artillery in tow. And so the Fists had to select their fights carefully, and know when it was time to play the mouse and go scurrying for cover.

Now was a time for mice, not cats.

There were five crawlers in all in the camp—the red-painted crawler that had given Mama Noh's opera company its name; the two crawlers in which Huang and the others had escaped the Bannermen who had ambushed them atop Mount Shennong; and two more captured in the course of their skirmishes with the military this last year. These newer, captured crawlers were in fact piecemeal assemblages from more than a half dozen different vehicles, since in each encounter the Fists had inflicted considerable damage on the military crawlers before the enemies abandoned them and fled. But while they were somewhat unsightly monsters, which in motion sounded even worse than they looked, they were perfectly functional and offered much-needed help in hauling the Fists' stores of provisions and arms, with some small amount of room left over for those Fists who were too injured from recent encounters to move under their own power, mothers with newborn children, and so on.

The Fists in motion made for a motley caravan: Five crawlers traveling in a line, with thousands of men, women, and children following beside and behind on foot. Along with them came the livestock they had captured, bought, or stolen over the seasons—goats that provided the milk the Fists drank, pigs that were fattened until they were ready for the table, even crates of chickens prized for their eggs while they still laid and for their flesh when they didn't. In addition to the crawlers there were innumerous handcarts and wheel-barrows, rickshaws and wagons, all of them pulled and pushed by nothing more sophisticated than human muscle. On the move, the caravan kicked up an incredible amount of red dust, which was the main reason that Huang preferred to travel at night whenever possible, ideally under cloudy conditions or high winds.

Unfortunately, the military airship had been sighted in the early morning, and to wait until nightfall would put the Fists at an unnecessarily large risk, when the chances of pursuit and attack were already so high. And although the winds were high, the skies were cloudless and clear. Hardly the most auspicious of beginnings.

There was no choice. Huang convened the inner circle in the command center, but not to invite debate, only to relay his orders. The Fists were to strike the camp immediately and prepare to head out before midday.

With any luck, they'd been well on their way and difficult to track by the time the military arrived. If not? Well, it was best not to dwell too closely on the alternatives.

 

The ravine in which the camp nestled was north of the western extremity of Tianfei Valley. While the others loaded the crawlers and carts, broke down tents and scaffolding, Gamine and Huang pored over maps of the surrounding terrain.

“The airship retreated to the north, toward White Plains Station,” Gamine said, indicating the place marked at the top of the map.

“No.” Huang shook his head. “That size airship isn't rated to fly so far afield. It must be operating out of somewhere closer by.” He studied the map, then pointed to a hill much nearer their present location, marked with the ideograms for
airfield
. “There. Red Sands Basin. It's small, with only a single company of Green Standard soldiers on site. I doubt the airship's radio is powerful enough to reach any farther than that, so for the time being we can assume that they're the only ones who know our position.”

“Won't the operators at Red Sands just relay it on to White Plains Station, or even Far Sight Outpost?”

Huang grimaced, then gave a curt nod. “Yes. But they're far enough away, even by airship, that I'm not too worried about their response just yet. It's the troops at the airfield that worry me.”