The Wind City (18 page)

He gripped his useless numb arm through his coat and wished that he could step back, because the goblins were advancing on him, the feather-haired one still chanting softly under its breath and making motions with its webbed hands like it was weaving something, the other two watching Saint with greedy eyes as pale and slimy as fish.

“Kill you,” one said. “You’re all burny but we’ll kill you all the same, you’re mad and talking to air but we’ll kill you, all the same, eat your flesh once we’ve soaked it good and salty, soaked all the foul fire from it, kill you, kill you.” Its voice was repetitive, almost like it was saying the words without knowing what they even meant.

“Good plan,” Saint said, wobbling back a bit. “Excellent plan. One problem, though. See, I know something you don’t know.”

“Oh?” said the unfeathered one, and it bared its teeth, which were thin and sharp and serrated.

“Unlike my incorporeal friend here,” said Saint, grinning like a maniac, “
I
– am not left-handed!”

He flung his right hand forward and sent fire screaming from his fingers. Not neatly like he had the maero, but messy, messy and hot and joyous, fierce fire licking and crackling and scorching. The goblin in front of him died more or less instantly, blasted off its feet to fall in a pile of peeling skin and blackened bones. It smelled foul – rotten, dank. The one beside it jerked its head back and ran, but it didn’t get far before the fire caught it.

The last one, the one with feathers in its hair, made a complicated motion with its hands, but Saint dived forward and punched it in the face with fire burning in his fist, bright streamers of heat and light trailing along his arm. The goblin staggered. Saint didn’t try the punch again, because he didn’t much want to slice up his hand on those nasty teeth. Instead he thought of something he’d seen a while ago, when he’d been wandering the city at night. People juggling fire, swishing torches in bright-blazed circles and passing them back and forth and painting fierce crimson and gold lines into the night.

He gathered the fire in his palm, and rolled it, and danced it between his fingers like you’d dance a coin, and then he flicked it with his thumb. The little bead of fire hit the witch-goblin in one eye, and the goblin slithered to the ground, dead just like that.

“Lovably fearless!” said Saint, breathless, “And like a pyrotechnician but infinitely more badass,” and then he laughed. Then he shook out his left arm, checking. Yes, feeling was returning to it in a pins-and-needles rush now that the ponaturi who’d been doing magic or whatever was dead. That was good.

“Showy,” Noah said, grinning delightedly. “
Showy
. I liked it.”

“Thought you might.” Saint ran a hand through his hair, then jerked his hand away, thinking of high temperatures and heat and how unpleasant and utterly un-badass it would be if his hair happened to catch fire, but it didn’t. He couldn’t seem to stop grinning. “Oh, this is
fun
, have I mentioned that? I’m enjoying this roughly three thousand times more than a night at the opera, you don’t even know.”

“Thought you might,” Noah said, smiling. He was learning banter, then. Saint was very proud.

“Despite initial differences, our partnership’s proving to be a rich and mutually rewarding experience,” Saint said, striding through the broad open area in a townwards sort of direction. He could use a drink, provided there was any bar that would actually let him in. He hadn’t been paying as much attention to looking respectable as he generally did. He reckoned he looked pretty roguish, actually. A right scalawag. “Mowing down all in our path like an advertisement for perfect green lawns. Basically the perfect buddy cop setup, so – hey. Heyyyy. What tropes haven’t we covered yet? I think we need to bicker companionably while on stakeout, skirting our latent sexual attraction.” There was a McDonald’s; he’d definitely be allowed in there, which would be okay, the light and the warmth of it, but a bar would be nicer. “How do you stake out
monsters
, though…?”

“Mowing down
all
in our path?” Noah said. “Really?”

Oh, gods. Saint had started to hope they just wouldn’t have to talk about that. He winced and turned down Cable Street and went on talking, rapid patter, waving his hands to illustrate his points. “It’d work with European monsters – just tie up a damsel outside a likely-looking cave and hang around chewing at generic doughnuts until a dragon shows. But atua customs aren’t really as ingrained into our heads as Western fantasy ones. Maybe I should use Western fantasy ones, though. There’s an appeal to that. I could have a
sword
.”

“All in our path?” Noah said again. “You let that patupaiarehe get away, earlier.”

Saint’s normal approach was useless here. Of course, his normal approach was just talking until problems went away, which was arguably pretty useless anyway. He gave up. “Let him, sure – that’s one way of putting it,” he said irritably. “Noah, he had a spear. He had a whopping great
spear
.”

“It was a taiaha, actually.”

“That’s not any help. Those are like spears but worse. They are spears on steroids. They are the spears your spear wishes it could be. Nice going, by the way – phallic imagery will add a lot to all this homoerotic subtext we’ve got going on in our banter.”

“I – what?” said Noah, thankfully derailed. “I’m not sure what that is, but I’m fairly sure we don’t.”

“All that will-they-won’t-they tension,” Saint said. “Audiences will be on the edge of their
seats
. Staring at the screen, wringing their hands. Silently begging us to just kiss already.”

“
What
?”

“Your constant denials will only add fuel to the magnificent fire that is our tragic relationship,” Saint said cheerfully. “There’s no going back now! We fist-bumped – according to the internet fangirl community that practically makes us engaged.”

Noah laughed. “You’re evading,” he said. “Stop it. You should have killed him. You need to get
better
. You can’t let any get away, Saint. They’ll hurt people. Kill people.”

“I’m doing my best, okay? Jeez, stop riding me so hard! That line was just for the fangirls, by the way.”

“You’re so very compassionate,” Noah said. “Except for when you let people die! That’s not compassionate at all.”

Saint growled. “Noah, shut
up
already! It probably won’t kill anyone –”

“It’ll kill. Once it gets over the surprise of a mere human standing up to it, it will kill even more, because of its injured pride, because of not being paid the respect it thinks it is due. It’ll break humans so much and so mightily that they can never stand up to anything ever, ever again. You could have
saved them
.”

“Wow! Shut up!” Saint started walking faster, trying to stop him talking, maybe even lose him altogether. There was some public art sculpture on the turnoff ahead that reminded him of Noah, which at the moment just pissed him off even more. He snapped, “What the hell would you even know? You haven’t been human for a
very
long time, if you ever were!”

Noah said nothing. Saint winced. He didn’t slow down, but he did turn his head to look back at his ghost friend. “I –”

He fell.

Just fell to the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Fell inelegantly, with a thump, head lolling over to lie nearly on the road. Just fell, and didn’t move.

The wairua looked at him. Crouched, to look at him better. “Saint?” he said. “Saint, get up. You’re not going to get out of this that easily.”

Saint didn’t move. Just lay there, still and unmoving like the dead.

“Saint? Get up.”

Didn’t move.

“… Saint?” said Noah, and the uncertainty in his voice was a terrible thing. He stood back up and prowled around the prone figure, his form flickering at the edges as his concentration wavered with panic. “Saint please, get up. Saint? Don’t be dead, Saint, please don’t be dead,
please don’t please don’t please don’t be
– hm –”

He leaned closer again, examining, and then huffed out an exaggerated breath of relief, because Saint was always amused when he played with the powers he’d stolen from Tāwhirimātea. The wind stirred the hair that fell across Saint’s forehead. Otherwise, he didn’t move.

“There’s a net you’re caught in,” Noah said aloud, even though he knew Saint couldn’t hear him. He gestured at the space surrounding the fallen man. There were glimmering strands of blueish light there, for those who could see them, which wasn’t many. “That ponaturi tohunga that you killed, the one that numbed your arm. He must’ve been stronger than we thought. Wove a trap around the area, so it’d ensnare you when you tried to leave. Clever.”

Saint did nothing.

“Wake up?” Noah said, but without much hope this time.

Saint did nothing.

“Fuck,” Noah said tonelessly, and then he frowned down at his hands, shimmering and indistinct. A thought, and they firmed again. “I really shouldn’t panic,” he said, to no one in particular, “that won’t help,” but it was so hard not to. So hard to do anything, nowadays, with his thoughts cast free to the wind, his spirit torn a thousand ways every second.

It was harder to keep himself together now, keep himself himself, but it helped when he had something to focus on, and Saint, maddening and inexplicable and alive, was certainly that. But not right now. Right now it was all Noah could do not to fall apart.

Time passed.

“I
hope
you don’t die from this,” Noah said. “You could, couldn’t you? If you sleep long enough without waking up, you die. Humans die so
easily
. Most spells are weakened by sunrise, so I suppose we’ll see then.”

He reached out a hand, carefully, and touched his palm very lightly to Saint’s face. A sliver of a frown curled the sleeping man’s forehead, and he shifted away just a little. That was something.

“You were right, you know,” Noah said. Had to keep talking. Had to keep himself here somehow. Couldn’t just leave the human alone, either. “Even when I was alive I wasn’t exactly a normal human. Not at all. I was very nearly a god.” He grinned at the memory. “I used to play the most amazing tricks! Wonders and marvels such as you could hardly believe. They told
legends
of me. I was he who was drowned and breathed in the smoke of fire and lived again! I was he who aided from the shadows! I was – I was the trickster, the shapeshifter. I knew my way around the rules backwards and forwards and so I could bend them ever-so-gentle until they
broke
and every time but one it worked. And always it was for you! Always! You humans, you
people
, he tangata he tangata he tangata. I stole
fire
for you …But it wasn’t me, was it? I’m an echo, a footprint. I’m nothing.”

He hunched back.

“I just want to help people,” he said, after a while. “You. Everyone.
Humans
. God knows you need helping,” he added sourly.

A car turned nearby, headlights sweeping gold over the scene, then passing. It seemed darker afterwards. Not that far away came the sounds of people laughing, shouting, the clink of bottles: a party. No one came down this street.

“I’ll stop complaining about how you do things. Stop, uh, ‘riding on you’, ha.”

The party-noises stopped, after a while. Everything turned quiet.

“Please wake up,” he said, and then he said nothing more. There wasn’t much more to say.

What was left of Māui knelt beside his fallen friend, and waited for the sun.

7

Tony went home and put on her oldest jacket, the shabby greenish duffel coat with missing buttons and cat hairs on it, and she cuddled it around her for a second; it was important for moral support. She was about to have a Confrontation, and she tried to avoid those, generally. She needed all the emotional support she could get.

She steeled herself for a moment or two, then went into the hall and knocked firmly on Hinewai’s door.

Hinewai opened it, all long flowing hair and huge dark eyes. “Tony,” she said, brightening. “My friend! What is it?”

“Get out,” Tony said, “of my
fucking head
.”

The faint smile on Hinewai’s face vanished. She was stern and silent and maybe just a little hurt, and really, what was Tony doing? Hinewai was marvellous Hinewai was so so beautiful she could never hurt –
no
. “I’m not in your head,” Hinewai said slowly, like Tony was being stupid.

“Stop it,” Tony said, flat. “Stop it now. I’ve just been to the Hikurangi, okay? I talked to some people. I know what you’ve been doing. You are going to take this enchantment or whatever off me. Right. The hell. Now.”

Hinewai took a step forward, and one hand was reaching up to the flute around her neck. “It does you no harm,” she said. “What are you complaining of?”

Tony resisted the urge to roll over and show her throat, to agree, to do everything she asked for – “Here’s a little lesson,” she said, stepping forward, and Hinewai actually flinched back, just a little but
enough
. “You can’t fuck around with people’s heads and then expect them to just do whatever you want them to.”