The Wind City

by Summer Wigmore

  “I’m not Māui,” Noah said. “Not really. Not any more. I’m not even what’s left of him, not even that – I’m, I’m an echo, I’m a footprint.” He kneaded his forehead with his palm, grimacing. “I don’t, I barely remember –”

  There was something pathetic about him, fragmented. “You’re much more articulate than most footprints I’ve met,” Saint said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “They tend to just sit there and look sorta earthy and disrupted, in my experience.”

  Noah gave him a pleading look. “Saint, please – that’s not who I am any more. I wish it was, but it’s not.”

  Saint looked at him. Really looked at him, properly.

  It hurt his head a little, trying to fit in his head all that Noah was and all he once had been; the had-beens were much more terrifying, swirled conflicting memories of breathing in salt water and then breathing in smoke and living again, of tricks and mischief, stealing faces, breaking rules, standing firm against the tug of a fish the size of an island on the other end of the line. And then last of all – and a humiliated memory, this, on Noah’s part at least, if not the man he’d once been – a memory of light glinting on obsidian, of dying, dying in shame and failure on his greatest, grandest trick, stopping death itself. Failing, of course, but failing just because of a friend laughing at the wrong time, and how horrible that must’ve been, knowing how close he’d come to success as the obsidian teeth crushed him. And instead of ensuring the immortality of all mankind, being the first man to die.

  That was what was driving Noah at the moment – all that guilt. Saint wondered if he even knew.

  Saint shook his head to clear it – it was harder to look at the trueness of Noah than most things. He kept on swirling, changing, a voice on the wind. Saint just looked at him, instead – normal-looked. Stood there and regarded him and didn’t smile.

  Noah looked back at him, wary and guarded. A wall had risen behind his eyes, and he looked cold, distant. Saint wondered whether this was the mask or whether the old Noah had been a mask or whether there was anything but masks, really. Was there anything underneath? “All right,” Noah said slowly, half-raising his hands. “All right. So you know who I was. What of it? Why are you looking at me like that? It wasn’t exactly a secret, Saint. I would’ve told you, if you asked.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Saint agreed. “I can’t refute that. It’s not like I ever asked who you were and you lied… ” He clicked his fingers, grinned bright and phony. “Except wait! You did!”

  “When we first met! I needed you to trust me! I didn’t even know you yet. I would’ve told you, later, I can tell you now –”

  “I know everything about you I need to know,” Saint said, holding out his hands in front of him, fire flickering at his fingertips. “I saw right to the heart of you. Stand aside and let me burn this place down, already, I wanna see that new Avengers movie. Jaffas wait for no man.”

  Noah looked down at himself, as if he hadn’t realised he was standing in Saint’s way. He didn’t move, though. “Saint,” he said, urgent. “Listen to me. That really isn’t a good idea any more. Didn’t you hear me? There’s no end to this, our plans aren’t worth this –”

  “Coward!” Saint said, and Noah blinked at him. “Let me repeat my previous, delightfully dramatic statement again, for your listening pleasure: I. Saw right. To the heart of you. Gods alone know why you dragged me into all of this –” He was terrified of that, when he let himself think about it. Fool of a pawn, the girl had said. “But I’m starting to think that you’re in this for rather less than selfless reasons. No wonder you’re so easily stopped – you’re doing this out of some kind of weird misplaced guilt, or whatever the fuck. But me? I’m actually in this to save the fucking human race, thanks very much, so if you’ll kindly stand aside so I can do that –”

  “That’s your problem, isn’t it?” Noah said abruptly. “You see the truth, you see straight past all the lies and conventions to how things really are but you don’t know what to do with it.”

  Saint lowered his hands, not entirely voluntarily, because … Yeah, he couldn’t really deny that. There was entirely too much truth in that. He was always so loud and scornful about how utterly rubbish the world was, sticking people in boxes, school and then uni and then nine-to-five jobs and then retirement homes and then death and never once did they ever get to live – but he didn’t do a damn thing about it, he just drifted along and –

  He was doing something now, wasn’t he? This, this right here, this was worth something.

  “Saint,” Noah said, and he flickered closer – in his agitation he was a little more formless than usual, blurred at the edges. “There’s nothing wrong with that, not exactly, it’s why I chose you – well, also because there’s just… There’s something about you, an energy, I could tell that from the first moment I saw you.”

  He looked earnest, but Saint frowned, thinking. “When was the first time you saw me, anyway?” he said. “I never asked. Can’t have been when I first saw you, because you already had your plans by that point. So when?”

  Noah frowned as well. “On the bus,” he said. “You had your window open, so I was there. I saw the patupaiarehe girl, and that was a shock. I didn’t know any of them were in my city, I – I don’t know much of… And you were there, an innocent, and she hurt you. Easily. It was pathetic.” He nodded to himself. “That’s when I knew they all had to die. So humans wouldn’t. It is important.”

  Saint blinked. That made less than no sense. “Eh?” he said. “That was one incident and you just decided…? And then why would you choose me to help with your little vendetta, if you’d seen me being so ‘pathetic’ –”

  “You needed my help!” Noah roared. It was like the roar of thunder, deep and furious.

  “Like hell!” Saint yelled back. He ran his hand over his face and laughed, incredulous. “The atua, I heard them talking about Māui and his pawn – well, they didn’t know much, not many met us and lived to tell tales about it.” He could be proud of that, at least. “Some people thought it was Māui in the flesh, some people thought the spirit of Māui – that’s you, chum – was possessing a human, but most people figured he was… You chose me because you thought I could be a pawn?” His voice was louder than he’d meant it to be. “So you saw me and decided I was pathetic, basically. Wow! Okay then, good to know! I –”

  “Saint, this is bigger than either of us,” Noah said. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper, it’s just… this is important. Saint. Please?”

  Noah was a prouder man even than Saint, and here he was pleading. Saint’s thoughts twitched in restless repetition, back and forth, back and forth, like a clock caught in one position with its hands shuddering, back and forth, back and forth and nothing made sense.

  “Why ‘Noah’, anyway?” he said, to make time. “I mean, out of all the names you could’ve chosen… ”

  “I told you, it’s the nearest thing to my old name I could think of, my old self,” he said. “Noa. It’s… it’s a complicated concept, but it’s. Well. It’s an absence of sacredness, sort of? But that can be a good thing sometimes, that’s a thing you need sometimes. It’s what we do, you and I – it’s breaking the rules.”

  Trying to seem all chummy, reminding Saint of what great friends they were and what they had in common, manipulating him like he’d been manipulating him this whole fucking time. Saint couldn’t remember a time he’d been more angry. “Hate to break this to you, pet,” he drawled, “but you’re not a rule-breaker, not any more. Let’s be honest here – you can’t do anything much except flap curtains at people menacingly. Isn’t that what you needed me for? You’re useless on your own!”

  Noah met his eyes, as best he could. “Oh yes?” he said, evenly, and a sudden wind rose up around them, tugged annoyingly at Saint’s coat, stirred his hair. Then stronger, stinging his face, flinging small bits of stone and such so he had to half-raise his arm to shield his eyes. Then stronger, pushing him back a step no
matter how he braced himself.

  Saint didn’t do anything. He wasn’t particularly eager to fight a friend, even one who’d stabbed him in the – no, he wouldn’t go down that road, Noah was a friend, he was a friend still, they’d fought monsters together, they’d sniped and laughed and they were friends so why was Noah doing this…

  But Saint couldn’t back down, not now.

  “Yup,” Saint said, raw and uneven. The wind dropped down then faded. Rain fell, quietly.

  “Stop this,” Noah said, anguished. “Stop this, you idiot. You might still have time to get out of this alive with no more blood on your hands than you can stand!” And – okay that was actually sort of an odd line of argument to take, given that monster-blood wasn’t terribly troubling to the conscience.

  Still. Noah’s emotion was real, that much was obvious. He … Yeah. Maybe he should let Noah explain this all a bit better, see what he meant by that, get things sorted out.

  On the other hand –

  Saint’s thoughts raced.

  He drummed his fingers restless against one thigh. His wrist throbbed still from where Hinewai had gripped it; he’d looked, later, seen ugly bruises blossoming there.

  Right back at the start of all this, Hinewai had carved her way carelessly into his mind just to make it more to her liking. The taste of blood and terror rose sickening in the back of his throat just from thinking about it. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

  Well. Saint thought of other bruises, of earlier years, hunger and anxiety his constant companions, never going away, not really. Not the worst thing, maybe.

  But this –

  Noah lying to him, using him. Was that any different from what Hinewai had done? Twisting his mind around without thinking twice about it.

  His instincts were jangling with unease, and this time he wasn’t going to ignore them.

  Noah was still standing there waiting, and Saint waved at him impatiently. “I said move aside. Jeez, are you deaf or something?” and Noah made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat and snapped, “Fine!” and walked into the wind, the outline of him dispersing in wind flurries that swirled leaves and rubbish around and then settled, showing no sign of which way he’d gone.

  Saint stared after him for a second, because he couldn’t help it. Only a second, though. Surely. Not more than a few.

  Then he squinted, and sighted, and with precision he was rather proud of burned the Hikurangi clean away, burnt it to the ground. There was a trick to it; he had to sort of channel the flame through a sideways gap between two pillars, which, if you were looking at it in the real world, just made it look like the flames vanished into nothing when actually they flared straight into the rich green falseness that was the monsters’ stronghold. He burnt it until there was nothing left except the thick smell of burnt vegetation, and fainter, but still present, the smell of burnt meat. There hadn’t even been time for anyone to scream.

  Saint dusted off his hands and grinned.

  “You,” someone said, and he whipped around and lifted his hands again, defensively, because it was the patupaiarehe man, the one he’d met before, the one with long golden-red hair tied back in a ponytail, the one with blank blue eyes and a spear in his hand.

  Not this time, though. This time he wasn’t carrying any kind of weapon at all; he seemed to be trying to pass as human, which was stupid. He was stupid. Saint was stupid to ever have been scared of him or any of his stupid proud race.

  “Me,” he said, with a half-bow and a flourish, and then, generously, “No, no, I quite understand you being struck speechless. Better men than you have tried and failed to muster words in my presence.”

  “You,” Ariki hissed again. “So it is you. I knew something was wrong in you! You’re Māui’s puppet, you’re the human who’s been killing everyone. You – you destroyed the Hikurangi… ” He stared at it for a second, pale eyes wide with sickened shock, and then his head jerked back to focus on Saint, too fast, inhuman. “You’re the one who killed Whai,” he said, as if this was a lot more important. “Whai and the last of his kin. He was mine.”

  “Bet he didn’t give a damn about you,” Saint said, just to be a dick, but Ariki screamed at him, all anguish and defiance. Apparently it was true.

  “I’ll kill you,” he snarled, his lilting voice making it sound like a song, “I’ll drown you – he would’ve liked that,” and he ran at Saint, but Saint wasn’t going to cower in terror any more.

  He stood his ground, stood square, because this was his city too and he had a right to be here and he could stand strong on his own – that, at least, he had always been pretty good at. He stood his ground and Ariki lashed out at his face too quickly for him to stop it, dug scratches into his cheek, but Saint knocked his hand aside and punched him in the stomach, hard, then lashed out with a kick which connected quite satisfyingly with a bony shin. Ariki yelped, undignified, and fell forward; Saint smirked a bit and then Ariki’s hands were around his neck, squeezing tight.

  Saint gagged, scrabbling desperately at those slender rain-slicked fingers, trying to pry them free, but the fae man’s grip was firm and unyielding as stone and he was far too close for Saint to burn him without injuring himself. He gasped for breath and didn’t find it. Breath, hau, it’s the life of me leaving, he thought, a little nonsensically. Black spots were swarming at the corners of his vision.

  Well, playing with fire hadn’t burnt him yet. Worth a shot.

  Saint curled his hands around Ariki’s and sent out fire as hot and scorching as he could make it. He flinched at the heat of it against his face but it was worth it because Ariki didn’t just flinch, he screamed, high and shrill like wind wailing, and he staggered back holding his arms close to his chest and keening in pain like an animal. The sleeves of his suit jacket had been burnt away and there were ugly burns nearly to his shoulders, raw and red against his otherwise perfectly smooth skin. And he was bleeding, too – maybe that was what fire did to these things, made them bleed like they’d been cut. Pale red blood streamed down his arms and formed pools on the pavement, and was further watered down by the rain, and when Saint had stopped looking at it in mild interest – they had thinner blood? Maybe there was less iron in it or something? – Ariki himself was long gone.

  Well. He’d be pretty useless now, with his hands like that, and of course with the blow to his morale that had come of losing first a frenemy (or something?) and then the only safe place the atua had in the city.

  “Because it was the only safe place left,” Saint said softly, into the rain; it seemed the dramatic thing to do. “Nowhere’s safe now, not for any of you. I will hunt you down like the animals you god my throat hurts, ow.”

  He coughed and massaged it; it was badly bruised, from the feel of it, but unburnt. The miracles of magic.

  He wasn’t particularly keen on dashing off to do more fighting right this second, though. That was enough heroics for now. At the very least, he’d earned a drink. Maaan could he use a drink.

  He didn’t have enough cash for more than a pint or two, but what did that matter? If worst came to worst, he could always steal, but – he was better than that, he could have so much more fun than that. He could just swagger into the nearest bar and captivate them from his first word, spin stories that had the whole bar laughing so they’d be lining up to buy him a drink. Lovably fearless. He could do just about everything, and he had never felt so… swell? Excellent? Grand?

  Something superlative, anyway, some word that meant being on top of the world. Because right now ‘great’ and ‘Saint’ were very nearly synonyms. He was on the right track at last.

  11

  They had about given up on finding her true love that day, and Hinewai was back in her normal clothes. She couldn’t see much difference between these and the ones Tony had picked out. Modern human fashions baffled her. Without feathers or other markers to tell of one’s place in the world what was the point of it all? Now she was trailing behind Tony throug
h the dusk as she dealt with taniwha business.

  “We need to find the city atua,” Tony explained. “The ones that come from here, I mean. The Hikurangi’s protection is for everyone, not just those who had to flee because the forests are gone.” She frowned.

  “Where do you intend to start?” Hinewai said. She knew little of these city atua and cared even less; they could all die in flames and she would care not at all, but Tony cared.

  “That scholar guy who very definitely didn’t want to date you, he said something about someone called Cuba. So Cuba Street’s where I’ll start.” She looked thoughtful. “I would’ve checked by the waterfront, otherwise, maybe there’d be dock atua. Or on buses.”

  “Buses are very dull,” Hinewai said, thinking of the man Saint as she’d first seen him, foolish and weak and detestable, and thinking of how she’d seen him last, spitting with fury; he was strong now – there was fire in him, and it made her deeply uneasy, and it made her want to quench him out. Strong he was, certainly, but he was still foolish, still detestable. That much hadn’t changed. But Tony cared, Tony cared and cared and cared. Damn her caring.

  “Cuba Street’s nice, though – I went there to get those clothes that… made absolutely no difference to your quest at all I’m really sorry,” Tony said, all in a rush.

  “I appreciate the effort, all the same,” Hinewai said, and Tony looked pleased.

  They walked up a street that Hinewai found dull as she found all of this place dull, the street’s centre section paved over with stones and busy with night crowds instead of cars. Tony was frowning again.