Iron Jaw and Hummingbird

Iron Jaw and Hummingbird Read Online Free PDF

Book: Iron Jaw and Hummingbird Read Online Free PDF
Author: Chris Roberson
diverted her eyes, uncomfortable.
    â€œI—I don’t know.”
    â€œFair 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.
    â€œThat 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.
    â€œAnd you, my dear?” Temujin said. “What profession do you call your own?”
    Gamine chewed on a bite of chicken and swallowed it before answering.
    â€œI was once a beggar, and then was a student, and now it would seem that I am a beggar once more.”
    â€œNot 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.
    Â 
    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.
    â€œExcuse 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.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Gamine sputtered.
    â€œDon’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
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