Hinewai grinned like it was a challenge. “Not now,” she said, and she gave what was almost a mocking bow: “And the little I did is nothing compared to what Māui is doing to his fool of a pawn, in any case.”
“Māui?” Saint said blankly, but just then Tony called to the both of them from inside, and the terror of that moment – standing with his fire scorching the air and the stars shining cold and Hinewai meeting his gaze mocking and fearless – was broken.
Next thing he knew he and Tony were sitting at the bar, drinking, chatting about some nonsense or other, Noah smiling long-sufferingly at his side and Hinewai, for the moment, in time-out outside. Saint couldn’t get her out of his head, even so.
“– so I mean,” Tony said conversationally, “I guess you could say she’s a strong female character, and she is, really, I just wish that more strong female characters wore pants. Or at least skirts that you can kick butt in, y’know?”
Saint said, “Stop hanging out with Hinewai. All the iwi atua. They’ll break you.”
He hadn’t meant to say it without some kind of comforting build-up, and indeed that had been a mistake. The smile slipped from Tony’s face like it had never been there, leaving her looking fretful and sad. He felt horrible. It was like yelling at a puppy. It was like yelling at a puppy and then promising it tickets to a concert that it really really wanted to go to, before declaring ‘haha, nope’ and putting the tickets through a shredder.
“Uhh,” Tony said. “That’s – kind of impossible, Saint. I’m… ” She looked sad for a moment. “I’m kind of entwined with all of that now. It’s way too late to go back, if I ever could. And there are things I need to do.”
“There’s always options – isn’t that what people say?” he said, trying to cheer her up. “A door closes and Seizing The Day knocks at another one, or whatever.”
Tony just frowned and said nothing.
Saint sighed and gave up on that as well. “Hey, uh, let’s have more liquor! Liquor always works.”
“Whai liked liquor,” Tony said, biting her lip.
“So did my mum on a bad day, you don’t hear me complaining about it,” Saint said. “Come on, moping while you’re out on the town is utterly counter-productive. It is the worst. It leaves a foul taste in the mouth, not unlike this cheap beer.” Tony was laughing at him now, so that was something. “This beer,” he went on, “may actually be the foulest thing ever invented, seriously. If you took a vulture, drowned it in crude petroleum, resurrected it with unholy arts and then –”
“Do I want to hear the end of that metaphor?” said Tony.
“No,” Noah told her, “his metaphors never make sense.”
“– and then,” Saint said, ignoring both of them, easier in Noah’s case since of course Tony didn’t notice him in the slightest, “made it prepare you, er. What’s something unpleasant?”
“Your metaphors?”
“Something unpleasant that’s edible. Also, if my metaphors were edible they would be the equivalent of fluffy, delicious cupcakes. Cupcakes with sprinkles. And jam in the middle. And little hearts drawn on them with pink icing.”
“Oh, God, he’s making meta-metaphors now. We’re doomed,” Tony remarked to the world at large.
“I did warn you,” Noah said.
“Um,” said Tony, “um, gross foody thing.” She clicked her fingers. “Avocado!”
“Really?” said Saint, delighted and diverted. It was fun to find out small details about a person; then you could piece those little things together into a rough picture of who they really were. It wouldn’t work for him, of course, because you couldn’t piece together an idea of someone from small details like ‘rolls cans down hills’ or ‘is rubbish at impersonating Jack Sparrow’. “You don’t like avocado?”
“It’s healthy and all,” Tony said, sourly, “but urghh. Slimy gunky hell-fruit.” She gestured. “It gets all over your hands. And knives are too big to eat it with! And teaspoons aren’t big enough!”
“Bobby pins can fill in for cutlery in a pinch, if you don’t mind being stared at,” said Saint, who didn’t mind being stared at. “Also, bonus, they’re good for picking locks. I’m pretty good at picking locks,” he added. Not as a boast or anything. Okay, yes, as a boast.
“Oh no!” Tony said. She clapped her hands to her face and widened her eyes. “Does that mean you’ve got criminal inclinations? The world is doomed. You would be the most fiendish burglar ever.”
“I know, right?”
She continued, her grin bubbling up to the surface. “Pausing to take a selfie and post it on Instagram as you break in –”
“Oi!” Saint said indignantly. He let a beat pass. “A responsible burglar uses Pinterest.”
Noah said, “Listening to you two talk is making me mourn all that time wasted learning your language.”
Saint stuck his tongue out at him. “That jukebox was annoying me,” he explained to Tony very seriously, with a wave at the jukebox which was, indeed, in that same sort of area as Noah, “I hate people having jukeboxes that don’t work, it’s like a broken promise or something. Tragic, it really is. Makes one weep.”
“You don’t look like you’re weeping – you’re just smirking charmingly,” Tony said. He shook his fist at the jukebox, just sitting there all complacent and mocking, the bastard, and Tony laughed and rolled her eyes. “Dude, if it bothers you that much don’t just sit there, do something about it.”
He knew that she probably meant he should go ask the bartender to play some music or something, but that was the boring man’s way. Instead Saint grinned at her.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey Tony. Hey. Wanna go commit karaoke?”
She brightened at once. “Okay! That sounds pretty great.”
Hinewai was a hunter, first and foremost.
Which wasn’t entirely rare for her people; they were weavers, true, they were singers, but both those things tied into hunting, in the end. Weaving nets and singing wary prey off the trails and into eager arms. Hinewai was a hunter, and right now she was tugging at her bonds because oh did she want to kill.
It was storming, a little, rain falling hard and winds swirling. Tāwhiri. He was her father, on some level, as she was the light rains, but she couldn’t feel his presence in this storm, hadn’t been able to for years and years, generations. Not since the Pākehā came and burned the forests to the ground and built ugly things of metal and concrete in their place.
Hinewai could end it.
It would be so painfully simple. To find true love, she’d told Tony, and that was true, to an extent, but she had a greater purpose in coming here – or claimed to herself that she did, lied to herself that it was her true purpose so she could come commit her folly, but that mattered little. It wasn’t the reason she was here, but it was a reason, certainly. To see what these cities were like. To see if patupaiarehe could live within them, live within this new world that was all straight lines and strict corners, no grey mist for them to hide in – well, there were mists, still, and that was something. To see if they could manage some sort of life here, anyway, live with the humans and their machines and scrape together soul enough to do so without dying, because safe in their mountains the patupaiarehe were dying a slow death as the world moved on without them. So she’d come down from the mountains to the wind city to see if they could live in it.
They couldn’t, of course, she saw that now. But if they couldn’t then the humans shouldn’t, either, those stupid prideful creatures that ruined everything without even thinking twice. She could call down her people, she could summon them; if they came en masse they could slaughter the more foolish and unsuspecting of the humans and conquer the rest, it’d be so easy –
Hinewai ground her teeth and paced, restless and ill at ease, and then Tony was beside her, looking guilty, her hair curling with wet.
“Oh man, I’m sorry, I so completely neglected you,” she said. “Did you have any luck? Finding your true love?”
Hinewai
shook her head. “I fear not,” she said. “Not today.” He’d been right there, the one that Tony was hunting, the foolish laughing man that smelled of fire and had blood on his hands. He’d been right there and it would be so easy – but Tony didn’t want Hinewai to hurt anyone again, and Hinewai didn’t know right from wrong like Tony did. She could barely even understand the concept.
Tony rested a hand on her arm. “That must be really rough,” she said, and then frowned severely. “But seriously! No mindcontrolly music antics, okay? It’s a super bad thing to do!”
Hinewai twitched her shoulders in a shrug. “If you say so.”
Tony bit her lip and gave her the big anxious eyes again. “C’mon, you could at least sound a little more enthusiastic. I know your mind doesn’t work the same way as humans’ minds do, and you don’t value the same things or see the world in the same way, and that’s totally fine! But not when it hurts other people. So could you just take this on faith for me? Even if you don’t understand. Just – don’t hurt people, for my sake, maybe?” Even as she said it she looked a little dubious. “Wait, that’s really pretentious. But. Still?”
It’d be so easy to play a summoning-song and call her people here, call them to war, flood these streets with mist so she could stalk the streets as a hunter. Hinewai thought, a little wistfully, of how it’d feel to have warm blood on her cold hands again. Paint the town red.
She restrained herself, like she always did. “I’m already doing that,” she said, helplessly, because Tony just didn’t seem to understand sometimes.
“Yeah, wow. Attacking some random dude you just met, in the middle of a crowded bar, for no actual reason – you are the model of restraint!” Tony said, and clapped a bit.
Hinewai blinked in surprise at this, then bowed deep, pleased at the acknowledgement. Considering their differences, it was uncanny how well they’d come to understand each other.
She should probably mention something.
“Tony,” Hinewai said slowly. “Saint is… ”
Tony groaned. “Not even remotely compatible with you, I know,” she said. “Ugh, I’m sorry, I’m doing such a terrible job of this. We’re gonna go do karaoke? You can come if you want – I mean, I don’t think either of you want to be in the same room as each other, but you can hang out outside. There’s bound to be someone who’ll interest you.”
Hinewai regarded her. “This is what you want?”
“Yes!”
“Very well then,” Hinewai said, and followed where she led. She didn’t understand at all, but for whatever reason, Tony seemed to like the man. And if she liked him, she wouldn’t want to know how wretched he was truly. So. Hinewai kept her silence. It was worth it for Tony to still be smiling.
Saint stood outside the Hikurangi, wondering how exactly he was supposed to burn it down without burning down the library with it. He was pretty sure burning down the library would be bad.
At least he knew Tony was safe; she’d gone off somewhere to do something after they’d done karaoke. Exactly what she was doing he was kind of vague about, but so long as it involved not being in the Hikurangi, he supported it. He could hardly have burned down the café if there was a human still inside.
“Saint?” Noah said. There was a wariness about him. “What are you doing here, exactly?”
“Mm?” he said absentmindedly, kicking at one palm-shaped pillar and then grimacing. It hurt. Obviously. Actually, he should probably have seen that coming. Foot + solid surface = mild to medium amounts of pain. Good to know. “Oh. Just, y’know, dithering… ” He’d thought that the days of Noah sternly disapproving of him wasting time were done, but it seemed not. “With purpose,” Saint assured him hastily. “Dithering with purpose and forethought. I’m downright malicious.”
Noah blinked at him. “Good to know?”
“C’mon, partner, wouldn’t kill you to have a little faith in me,” Saint said. “… I mean for more than just the obvious reason.”
Noah laughed. Noah had a belly laugh, a deep real rumble of a laugh, and Saint liked it. “There’s this thing I’ve heard of that I don’t think you have,” he said. “‘Tact’?”
“It’s something that ships do, right?” Saint said, widening his eyes all guileless-like.
Noah chuckled. “You’ll have to be a good deal more charming than that if you want to make any friends amongst the atua aside from that Tony girl.”
“Not exactly in this to make friends, handsome present company excepted,” Saint said. No, he was in this to save people, he reminded himself. He had to focus.
“I mean, they’ll probably still try to kill you,” Noah continued.
“Well yeah, we knew that.” Saint tilted his head to one side. Squinted. He could see the Hikurangi there, spells woven into realness, tree and green and coffee brewing, and he could see the library as well, closed right now, books resting quiet on the shelves. Library and monsterplace both at once, because it was both things at once, of course. Maybe he could separate them somehow? Get the Hikurangi into a layer all on its lonesome? “But they won’t be very strong or coordinated once we’ve done this – I know, I know, it’s all terribly important.” He brushed off his cuffs, completely unnecessarily, and flipped his sleeves and held out his hands in readiness. If he closed one eye… yeah, there, easy – two realities smushed together and they bled into each other a lot but he could burn one with minimal harm to the other, he was pretty sure. Ninety percent sure. Okay, maybe eighty. “Okay! Gonna set the world on fire, shine brighter than the sun, et cetera, oooooon three. Three, two –”
A shiver of ice in his shoulder. “No, don’t,” Noah said urgently, and Saint stopped and looked at him instead of the Hikurangi. It was strange, for a second, jarring; he’d never looked at Noah the way he looked at other things, trying to see the whole of him, and Noah was just a confusing blur of images and ideas too big for Saint’s brain to fit. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them and shook his head to clear it, and Noah was himself again, staring at Saint in concern.
Saint frowned. “What’s got your bees all in a bonnet, pet?”
“I’m sorry, I thought I’d told you before,” Noah said, cocking his head. “We have to stop.”
Saint gaped at him, uncomprehending. “What?” he managed to say. “… Seriously. What?” He struggled for words that’d describe his confusion and the way it felt like the earth had given way under his feet. He was meant to be good at words, but that was still all he could come up with. “… What?”
Noah bit his lip. “I knew you were taking this too well,” he muttered. “I, I don’t understand you, sometimes, not entirely, I thought – when we were talking outside the bar, I thought you understood. We need to stop, Saint.”
Saint made himself grin. It was a bright, false thing, and it felt wrong on his face. “Why?”
Noah moved to stand in front of him, arms spread out, emphatic. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, and then heaved a sigh, obviously frustrated. His body language had gotten so much better, Saint noted distantly.
Saint held up one hand and made talking motions with it. “Explain,” he said.
“I wanted to kill the atua for the threat they pose to humanity, because – because it was my… because I needed to, because, I… But that city spirit – it was weak and unimportant but, Saint, if there can be new spirits that means we can’t stop, we can’t ever stop; there’s no end to this until you’ve burned the whole world down! I thought, I thought atua would be small and isolated in the city, easy to fight, but – the city’s growing. If there’s a Cuba Street spirit there’ll be one for every landmark and street this place has and there’ll be building spirits, hakuturi shaped like pigeons and rats… ” He’d been growing increasingly frantic, so impassioned that he could almost be properly seen: a tall man with his handsome face flushed with vigour and his strong arms spread wide as he spoke, chest bare beneath his pendants and cloak, strands of hair falling loose from his topknot to frame his face, betraying
his agitation. “City atua, fae of concrete and cars and streetlights and – there’s no end to it, do you see? There’s nothing we can do!”
Saint looked at him.
Not him, too? First Steff and now –
He tried to cut himself off before he could finish that line of thought, because he didn’t like anywhere it was likely to lead. Betrayal iced through his veins all the same, desertion, gut-wrenching in its familiarity.
Because it wasn’t just Steff, was it? It was everyone, his whole damn life, it was – he’d never had any trouble making friends, but keeping them, yeah, that was hard, being close to anyone. For the better part of his childhood and teenage years he hadn’t seen the point. Then he’d tried to make himself set his doubts aside and trust people, really truly trust them, ignore the nagging voice that whispered theydon’tcarethey’renotsafegetawaygetawaygetaway, and what, exactly, had that brought him lately?
Weeks of willingly cohabitating with a carnivorous psychopath because Saint told himself his doubts were ridiculous, and a best friend who cared more about books than he did people, and now –
Now –
“Yeah, no,” Saint said, and his voice was sharp and mocking and sounded like a stranger’s. “Think I might have to disregard your oh-so-wise counsel just this once, ghost boy. Unlike you I’m not actually petrified of me dying – I mean it’s not a delightful notion, but it doesn’t paralyse me with dread, either, and I’m not going to let it stop me from helping people. Because I am in this to help people! Unlike some people I could name.” He smiled, sparkly and charming. “Māui.”
Noah faded in his shock, was almost completely gone for a moment; when he came back he looked shuddery and startled, still. “That’s – that’s not –” he said, and Saint just smirked at him as infuriatingly as he knew how to, and Noah didn’t bother protesting any more.
Instead he said, “How did you know?” He sounded emptier than he had a moment before. Hollow. Saint knew how that felt.
Saint laughed. It sounded more bitter than he’d meant it to. “Well, Hinewai mentioned you,” he said. “And before that I heard people talking in the Hikurangi. I’d always had suspicions, really, but I told myself they were ridiculous. Very sad to look back on. ‘Come now, self,’ I scoffed, ‘surely you don’t distrust this marvellous new friend of yours. Do you seriously think he’s manipulating you? Come now, that’s paranoia at its finest… ’” He shook his head with exaggerated sadness. “Eating those words now, gotta say. Now that I’ve connected a few dots. You’re infamous, you are. Māui.”
The Wind City Page 22
