Free Iron Jaw and Hummingbird by Chris Roberson Page A

man’s attention was momentarily on the guardsman, Gamine saw a slender thread of opportunity and seized it.
    Grabbing the pinky finger of the hand that gripped her arm, she bent it nearly all the way back. The droop-eyed man howled in pain and released his hold on Gamine, tears welling in his eyes.
    Gamine turned and ran away into the crowd. The first guardsman and the two lingering at the corner didn’t delay, but took to their heels, chasing after her, hands on their sabers and ready for action. The droop-eyed man followed just a moment behind, shouting obscenities.
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    Gamine reached the inn, unsure whether she’d lost her pursuers or not. She’d last seen them a few blocks back but had ducked down a side alley and doubled back. The trick might have worked, but if it hadn’t, they wouldn’t be too far behind.
    â€œOld man, we’ve got to go!” she shouted, bursting into Temujin’s room.
    The room was a chaotic, crowded mess. Temujin was pinned against the wall by a pair of enormous men with pale skin and light brown hair, while two other pale-skinned men stood just a few feet away. Standing in the middle of the room, a wicked stiletto knife in one hand and Temujin’s money purse in the other, was the Briton woman they had encountered in the restaurant three days before, Mistress Marlowe Constance. But gone was the wide-eyed expression of the foreign traveler. Her eyes were hard and narrowed, and when she spoke, it was without a trace of an accent.
    â€œAh, I was waiting for you to show,” she said with a sneer. “No sudden moves, kid. I wouldn’t want my friends here to hurt you unnecessarily.”
    Gamine looked from the woman to Temujin. She could tell that he was mostly unharmed, though a reddening on his left cheek, already shading into a bruise, suggested some recent violence.
    â€œGamine, you remember our friend Constance?” Temujin said, trying for a convivial tone and failing.
    â€œQuiet, Temujin ,” the woman barked. That she used his real name, and not the alias that he’d provided at the restaurant, suggested these people knew more about who he and Gamine were than she’d have liked.
    â€œWho are you?” Gamine asked, trying to act casual while working out the best possible route out of the room and away from the woman and her four large friends. She didn’t want to run out on Temujin, but it was his fault he was in this mess, whatever it was. And Gamine didn’t want to linger too long, for fear that the guardsmen might be following close behind.
    â€œWe’re with the Diggers, kid, if you must know,” the woman said venomously, “but more importantly, we’re the people your pal here owes a fair pile of coin.”
    Gamine had heard of the Diggers, even back in Fanchuan. They were one of the most notorious of the Parley gangs. Named after an ancient Briton form of governance, the Parleys were originally instituted by Britons who’d been brought to work on the atmosphere mines centuries before. Surrounded by Han who were not always as kind to foreign subjects as they might have been, the Parley gangs had banded together for self-protection. In later generations, though, imperial reforms meant better living and working conditions for non-Han on Fire Star and back on Earth; the gangs found themselves with less to protect themselves against and eventually turned their attention to more illicit goals. A significant percentage of all crime and vice in the city of Fuchuan involved the Parley gangs, and much of that was due to the Diggers.
    â€œNow,” the woman said, “we wasted a full day tracking you two down, when the ‘wealthy merchant’ here missed our appointed meeting yesterday. When he didn’t show, it didn’t take long to figure that we’d been had. And, considering that the coins we’d given him were just seeds for a long con, we were more than a little annoyed by