The Wind City Read online

  Maybe he was the only clever one; none of the others had spoken, anyway. Maybe the others would sort of fall apart once he was gone. Saint lifted his hand menacingly as though about to burn the one who’d fallen. As he thought, the leader snarled and lunged at him before he could.

  “And some self-respect wouldn’t go amiss either,” Saint said, “you could seriously use a manicure,” and he sent out fire, thick and fierce and bright, a wave of fire rolling out from his hand and setting the goblin alight. It shrieked and danced back, slapping at itself with its spiny webbed hands, screaming. By the light of the merrily blazing goblin Saint could better see its fellows, which was regrettable, as they were all hideously ugly. They had tangled, ratty red hair, pale and washed-out, like bloodied water; they were lean and sharp and hungry, like the wrong sort of dog, the dogs with chains around their scabby necks and madness in their eyes. There was a kind of beauty to their features, almost, but it was like they’d been pushed too far, like they’d strained the edges too much. This was beauty broken, beauty drowned. Pathetic wretched creatures hunkering away from the light.

  “Okay, forget the manicure,” he said, “you need a lot more than just your claws trimmed. In fact I think this particular group of goblins could be improved by a bit of… filleting!” He feinted at one of the ponaturi which had been trying to sneak up on him, and it hissed and scuttled back. The leader had stopped screaming but was still beating at the flames it was covered with – a futile effort, as the past few days had given Saint plenty of time to experiment and control his new power, and he’d made that particular burst of flame slow-burning and sticky. Magic napalm.

  “I told you,” Noah said. “They’re not ‘goblins’ – they’re ponaturi.”

  “That sounds like potpourri, and that’s ridiculous. I don’t want to fight potpourri. Slaying grandmotherly air-freshener is not remotely heroic. And I’d sneeze.” He had his head tilted towards Noah so he could talk to him, but he kept a wary eye on the three ponaturi who still posed a threat. Their faces were all flickering shadows dancing over sharp angles, and it was unnerving, the jagged skin-over-bones of them; Saint was almost glad when the burning one gave up on trying to beat the flames out and made a break for it, running crabbed-over and pained towards the water.

  The waterfront had a closed-in little area with a platform sunk into it, short flights of steps leading down to it. For if people wanted to get all close and personal with the ocean or something, Saint didn’t know – it wasn’t like there weren’t diving platforms elsewhere, too.

  He frowned at the flaming ponaturi as it dived over the edge and the fire went out. “Are you sure we should’ve just let him scarper like that?” Saint said. “I mean, he’ll die pretty soon, but before that he might fetch more potpourri people and, you know, it’s not like it’s International Setting Goblins On Fire Day; if they make enough noise people will notice something weird –”

  He broke off and shuddered convulsively. Noah was standing next to him, partly in him, really, his not-real shoulder fusing into Saint’s. He hissed, “Behind you, idiot –”

  Saint turned too late, and the goblin that had gotten behind him clapped its hands together sharply, and the hand Saint had raised fell numb and useless. His whole left arm was frozen, actually, right up to his elbow. He prodded it with his other hand and felt nothing.

  “Oh,” he said. “I should really stop with the running commentary, huh… ” He took a step back. This goblin had a clump of feathers knotted into its hair, albatross and seagull and petrel. They were greasy and unkempt, and bloodstained at the tips. It was chanting something, under its breath, chanting something in a language that made Saint think of salt and shells and sharp edges.

  “I think trying to make you stop talking is like trying to make anyone else stop breathing,” Noah said directly in Saint’s ear, making him jump. “But you could at least try. Do you want to end up dead?”

  “It’s not exactly Plan A,” Saint said, taking another step back, and another. The goblins followed, with an odd shuffling walk, ungraceful on land but probably sharp and sleek as a knife in the water. He shuddered at the thought, and then his foot whacked against a piece of timber and oh shit there was nothing but emptiness after that, and he swayed for a second before he found his balance. He glanced over his shoulder and saw water below him, blank and black. He imagined those things hunting him in the water, fast and sharp and deadly, like sharks, tearing into him, tearing him apart. His blood staining the water. And it wasn’t like his fire would help much, if that happened.

  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 w
ith 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.”

  Hinewai frowned. “How else was I supposed to do it?” she said, almost whining it, petulant. “I needed your help!”

  Tony wondered what Hinewai needed her help for, what could possibly be important enough to justify this – but nothing was, nothing was. “That’s not how friendships work,” Tony said firmly. “That’s not how people work. I won’t let you do that, not to me, not to anyone.”

  “Oh yes?” said Hinewai, and sung. Sung soft and steady, high words and rolling syllables, and Tony was terrified, suddenly, the most terrified she had ever been. Irrational, and she was gasping, gasping for breath because her lungs felt like they were seizing and her heart was pounding so hard it felt like her rib cage would splinter and she could’ve sworn there were things, crawling, crawling all over her skin, and she fought back a whimper because she was held helpless and there was nothing she could do and things were crawling on her skin crawling crawling and her skin was shuddering beneath it and she had to fight so damn hard to not just let her skin burst and the scaly hide to come out from beneath it and still there were the terrible hungry little mouths biting at her biting deep itching clawing scarring so she clawed at them clawed at them first with stubby stupid fingers and then with her real claws and she dug deep into her skin and it still wasn’t enough it was never enough and her rib cage was crumpling now, her heart was bursting, she could feel the tear of the muscles and her blood was thick and black and there was nothing she could do nothing she could do nothing she could do –