The Wind City

by Summer Wigmore

  Steffan reached up and pulled on the trailing end of a bandage, hard. Ariki screamed, high and piercing, and fell to his knees. Steffan was dragged backward by the weight of him, but it was easy enough to shrug off his hand and stagger to where Tony could catch him and pull him upright, stronger than anyone had a right to be.

  Ariki was keening with pain, clutching his arm, tears rolling down his face though his eyes were fixed, hateful, on Steffan. The other atua were formed in ranks, almost, rows of them, with Tony and Hinewai slightly in front, and then Steff, and then Ariki alone on his knees.

  The ragged ranks of atua seemed none too pleased with him. Tony didn’t seem all that pleased, either.

  “He wasn’t going to hurt you, probably,” she said in an undertone. “Not while I’m here; he wouldn’t dare. Besides, he’s not the killing kind.”

  Steffan swallowed. Not the killing kind? Hardly. But his best friend was the killing kind, too. There had been so much killing. What was the point in taking a side when everyone just ended up dead?

  What was the point in observing, when everyone just ended up dead? His observations and hypotheses wouldn’t give him much comfort when everyone he’d met, all the new friends and the old friend and the new enemies, were dead. It’d be too late. He had to do something, if Tony wasn’t going to – and it looked like she wasn’t, like she didn’t know.

  “There’s something I need to know,” Steffan said, and was surprised by how steady his voice was. “Saint. Did he kill those others, too? I found the atua world by researching. There were drownings, people drained of blood… ”

  Tony shook her head. “When Saint fought with me he just used fire.”

  Steffan was rather surprised that Saint was even still alive, if Tony had fought him. And… glad. He was glad Saint was alive.

  He guessed he’d chosen a side after all.

  “In that case,” Steffan said, and he turned and pointed at Ariki, “he’s a murderer, too. Just so you know. He’s killed people, at least three that I know of, probably more.”

  Tony’s eyes went wide and she took a step forward, but before she could even say anything Ariki gave a derisive laugh, still kneeling there.

  “Three? Is that all you think me capable of? I’m better at this than that,” Ariki said, and Steffan turned his head so he didn’t have to look directly at him.

  Tony was silent for a moment. Steffan watched as the fae girl leaned a little so her shoulder pressed against Tony’s.

  Tony crossed her arms. “You,” she said, all forbidding. Ariki stood, pained but determined, chin tilted up. “You’ve killed people?”

  Ariki nodded. Tony must’ve glared, because he flinched a little. “It’s fine, taniwha,” he said, holding up his hands. “I assure you I left very few tracks, by and large. I gave the tangata no reason to rally against us.”

  “That is not the point,” Tony hissed. “Who the hell do you think you are, gathering a… ” She gestured at the silent ranks of atua. “… a fucking lynch mob to kill Saint, when you’re just as bad?”

  “Well, I didn’t drown anyone, whatever the pawn’s scholar says,” Ariki said. He looked a little confused, like he didn’t understand why she was angry. “There is little beauty in that. That would have been the ponaturi, I suspect; Whai was never very good at controlling them after they were betrayed and poisoned and became mad. Don’t worry, though!” he added, a little desperately. “They are all dead now.”

  “What… ” Tony whispered. “They’re all dead?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, impatient. “Don’t you see? This isn’t about individuals. Yes, I owe Māui’s pawn a blood debt, but more to the point so do you, so do all atua. He wiped out the last of Whai’s iwi. There are other ponaturi, yes, but not from this area; Whai’s people’s traditions, their knowledge and skills and history – all of these things are gone and dead. We cannot let that insult stand.”

  Tony stood silent.

  “Those ponaturi died, one by one, alone and broken by this world,” Ariki said. “I will not allow my people to know the same fate.”

  “And I won’t allow you to kill anyone else, do you hear me? No one is killing anyone while I’m around.”

  Ariki gave some answer or other about how that was unavoidable. Steffan didn’t stay to hear it. He turned, he turned and walked away, sick to the stomach, sick to death of it all.

  The atua parted before him as he walked. He didn’t go far, just down the street a little. He sat down, and leaned his back against the grey wall, and sighed.

  He was sitting by the police station. Ha. He’d intended to contact the police with his information, he recalled; early on, when he’d thought that people had been being killed in imitation of atua. Somehow he doubted the police could do much good if Ariki succeeded in convincing all these patupaiarehe to kill. He doubted anyone could. He was meant to be good at imagining possibilities, but at the moment he couldn’t think of any way for things to end that didn’t include more people dead.

  Steff’s head drooped, and he pressed it to his knees.

  He’d liked Cuba. He hadn’t known him that well, but he’d liked what he’d known of him: Cuba loved his Bucket Fountain girl, and his street and the people on it, and he was open and welcoming, indulging Steff in his questions – and now he was dead, and it was Saint who had killed him.

  Saint, Steffan knew well. He was capable of bad things, Steff was under no delusions about that, but murder? In cold blood? No. Either Cuba had done something that Saint thought was worth murdering him over, which Steffan found extremely unlikely, or Saint… didn’t know that it was murder. Ah.

  The atua seemed to think Saint was just a pawn, and maybe he was. Perhaps Māui had been lying to him, or messing with his head, even – he’d seemed pretty wrecked the last time Steffan had called him. And tired when he’d met Steff at the café, but himself, still, so maybe not.

  That was before the Hikurangi had been burnt. Maybe if Steff had done something differently, said something differently – Saint had said he’d rather run into one of the patupaiarehe than talk to him even for one moment longer, and that stung, to remember it, but even then, maybe, maybe. If he’d just said I believe you, let me help, maybe Saint would’ve stopped and all these terrible things would never have happened.

  “It’ll take more than that if you want to make a difference,” someone said from beside him.

  Steffan flinched. Glanced up. A wind had risen, wafting a hole in the mist, and now there was a man standing beside him. Aside from the lack of any moko, he was the very image of a traditional Māori warrior. Too much so, almost, like he was an image, a fabrication, an ideal.

  “Māui?” Steff said, keeping his voice soft this time. Tony was still arguing with Ariki, not more than thirty metres away. No one looked over at him.

  The shade’s eyes were sad. “Not now,” he said. “Not for a long while now.”

  Steffan looked away. “You should leave. They want to kill you.”

  Not-quite-Māui laughed at that. “I intend to die soon in any case, if someone already dead can die. Toss myself to the winds until there is nothing left of who I was. It’s what I deserve. Already it is hard to focus. With him gone it’s hard to do much of anything.”

  “Oh.” Steffan frowned into the distance. “And – I know it’ll take more than that, but there’s nothing I can do, even if I wanted to. At least there’s a chance that Tony’ll stop them from killing him, or stop him from killing them, now that she knows it’s not just black and white.”

  “I’m glad you know that,” the ghost said. “Instead of condemning him blindly. Look at me.” Steffan looked, unwillingly. The ghost looked urgent, though he was… wispy, at the edges, trailing off into curls of wind that shifted the mist like whispers. “I’ve been waiting here for someone who would understand. Someone needs to help him, and I cannot.”

  Steffan shifted, uncomfortable. “I can’t, either. These people are out for his blood. There’s nothing I can do.�
�� If he even wanted to, and he wasn’t at all sure he did.

  The ghost laughed. “Really? How strange. He seemed to think you were clever.”

  Steffan glared at him.

  The mockery faded from Māui’s face, like how everything else about him was fading. Steffan was glad, savagely glad. “Please at least think about it?” the ghost said. “He doesn’t deserve this. It was my fault.”

  Steffan paused. Then slowly, laboriously, he stood up once more. “Was it?” he said. “Swear that it was. Swear that he didn’t know that he was killing.”

  “He knew that he was killing,” Māui said, “but he didn’t know that they had thoughts or memories or any range of emotion. He thought they were brute animals at best, monsters at worst. I convinced him of that and kept him from thinking about it.” There was just the vague shape of him sketched out now, and Steffan could see his eyes, earnest and pleading, but the mist was creeping in on the rest of him, obscuring his outline. “He didn’t know what he was doing. I swear this.”

  Steffan looked away. By the time he turned back, the mists had closed, and the ghost, or whatever he’d been, was gone.

  “Time for some thrilling heroics,” he told himself, but he had difficulty believing it.

  He crossed the road, and he had to push the atua aside to get through them, which made him immensely nervous, but they were all just standing there, waiting, some talking amongst themselves, others weighing in to the debate every now and again. They made no move to stop him as he walked forward.

  “No one dies on my watch, do you hear?” Tony was saying, almost a yell. “When Saint gets here no one makes a move, do you understand? Even if he fights you first! Don’t!” Steffan wondered how she intended to stop them.

  He cleared his throat, nervously. “I have a plan,” he said.

  There was outrage, there was uproar. The atua shouted and jeered. “That’s not your place,” the umbrella one yelled, voice high and shrill like the wind at its worst, and others shouted agreement.

  Tony turned taniwha, she was a house, she was an avalanche. Steffan gulped, staring up at her. Tony swung her tail in warning, and the assembled atua fell into uneasy silence.

  The taniwha waved a claw at him. “Go on,” she said, with a brave attempt at cheerfulness.

  Steffan sighed. Then he said, very fast, “Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work. If you confront him outright he’ll never admit he’s wrong; he’ll fight till the end, and this will all just end in more people dead for no bloody reason.”

  Tony lowered her massive head down to him, and he tried not to wince away. She was – alarming, the shape of her head not unlike a tuatara but massive in size, her hide scaly and her eyes huge bulbous lamps of gold. She opened her mouth, and her teeth were very sharp. “Strange,” she said, in her human voice, “that you’re telling us how to best fight a friend of yours.”

  Steffan hung his head. “Him being my friend doesn’t excuse what he’s done,” he said, quiet, too quiet, probably, but it was hard to speak loud enough for them all to hear when his throat was knotted with fear. “I don’t want him dead, and I don’t want any of you dead either. I’ll help you if I can.”

  “Speak up, little messenger,” Ariki drawled, and Steffan flinched away a bit and cleared his throat and spoke more clearly, almost firm, almost confident.

  “If you can hold back on attacking him unless he strikes first, then I can stop him,” Steffan said. “If there’s anyone who can stop him, it’s me. Like you said, I know him. He came to me for help earlier, I think, so I at least have a chance at it. Give me a chance to talk him down so he’s not… on a murderous rampage, and maybe he’ll listen to reason later, you can get your revenge later, I don’t know, just – just give me a chance to do that, please.”

  Ariki stepped forward. “And if you can’t, little one?” he said softly. “If you fail?”

  Steffan swallowed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Then you can kill the both of us,” he said.

  “And every other damn human in this town,” Ariki breathed, and Tony said, “No,” but the weight of her glare did nothing to settle the atua war party this time. They cheered, and yelled out approval, and some started chanting something that might have been a haka. She was outnumbered.

  Tony swung her head back to him. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said, more quietly.

  “I do,” Steffan lied. “I can do this, I know I can.”

  And the atua screamed and sang for blood.

  13

  Saint decided to go to the Hikurangi again, or where it had been. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do, and he wasn’t quite sure how else to start hunting what was left of the atua; it seemed pretty likely a few would still be hanging around there. Easy to kill! Ha! Or easy for them to kill him. Either was fine, so to the Hikurangi he went.

  There was Tony all taniwha, and Hinewai, and Ariki-who-he’d-burnt, and others, more than he’d been expecting, a whole crowd of patupaiarehe and one of those shadow beasts and a few bird things and others, ranks and ranks of them. He was a little taken aback by how many people were there, actually. Surely they knew it wasn’t a good idea. There was a murderer around, after all.

  He looked at Tony. Properly, like he should have when he first met her. There was the cheerful girl he’d seen without bothering to really see, and there was the monster that had chased him and swept him into the sea, both at once. She was both of those things. He looked at what was left of the Hikurangi, unwillingly, looked at all that it was. He could feel the death on it, still, he could taste death on his tongue. But there was nothing where it had once been, just empty space, a walkway, nothing.

  He grinned at the atua gathered there. “Run!” he suggested.

  They didn’t run. Brave of them, he guessed. They didn’t run, and he didn’t run, couldn’t run, now, far too late for running. He held out his hands with fire sparking from the tips, and the patupaiarehe – they just stood there. Strange. He’d been expecting them to attack him. Tension was thick in the air, like mist, like ashes.

  “Now would be good,” Tony said, and Saint glanced at her, confused. None of the warriors seemed to pay it any mind, so after a moment he didn’t either.

  There were other things in the crowd, true, but mainly it was made up of patupaiarehe. So many sharp beautiful people. It was strange how he wasn’t scared of them any more.

  They started to chant dark and menacing, stamping at the ground. He rolled his shoulders. Breathed in, shakily.

  Started forward, and then Tony stepped between the main body of the patupaiarehe and Saint, formed a barricade with her body. She was immense, but none of the patupaiarehe even tried to get past.

  Why weren’t they attacking him? Tony had stepped in between him and them, but not to stop them, they were still just standing there, what…

  It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. Saint rolled fire in his hands in readiness and laughed at them all, at them and mainly at him, reeled back and laughed and laughed and laughed, laughed until his ribs ached.

  Tony said something, but he couldn’t hear it over the laughter and over the pounding in his head, and then – then she fell silent. Everything went silent.

  Someone was stepping forwards, past the barrier of Tony’s body, out into the open space. There was no noise, no nothing. Just the patupaiarehe gathered watching, and Saint standing alone, and this man walking slowly towards him through the mists.

  It was Steff.

  The laughter froze in Saint’s throat. Everything froze. It was Steff. Strange he hadn’t recognised him instantly considering that he knew Steff off by heart, the lines and the likeness, the shape of his smile, his scowl, his face, his everything, the curl of his hair and the way he shuffled a bit when he walked and everything. When they’d talked at the café Steff had looked at him like he was a stranger for most of the conversation, and Saint had half thought he’d never see him again, but that was Steff, Steff standing there looking a little startl
ed and wearing glasses again and, and, and an utterly ghastly waistcoat thing, and that was just Steff all over, wasn’t it? Saint should be thankful it wasn’t made out of tweed.

  Tony was talking now, some nonsense about atua, but Saint couldn’t hear her if he tried. He took a step forward. Stopped. There was something about Steff’s face that –

  “Saint,” Steff said.

  And he wasn’t greeting him like an old friend. He was distant and – oh, gods, oh Christ, what had they been telling Steff about him? Or maybe Steff had figured it out; he’d always been a clever one but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Steff knew.

  The flames died out. It felt like everything died out.

  Ariki shoved his way past Tony; she held out a claw, stopping him, so he stood there and yelled out a challenge. “They are all in league with each other, you see? We must kill them, all of them!”

  “No. Wait,” Tony said.

  “Kill him at least,” Ariki said. “At the very least, give me that.”

  And Steff said, “No. You don’t need to. I told you, you don’t need to.” He was scared. Saint had never seen him look that scared before. “I can stop him.”

  Saint staggered back under the weight of those words. Because Steff was scared, but he said that anyway, and what if – what if he could? What if he could fix things somehow? It was damn unlikely but Steff was clever, maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe he could be saved –

  Then common sense took over, bitter and real. He jutted his chin and spread his arms and laughed. “Can you?” he said. “You’ve gotten confident all of a sudden.” He grinned. “I’m going to kill every damn one of these things and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “No,” Steff agreed. In the background, Ariki grinned.

  Saint grinned broader, stretched his face broad and rigid enough to hurt. “What are you going to do?” he said, more of a yell really, and he laughed again. “Sweetheart, Steffan, you precious stupid man – what could you possibly do to me that’s worse than what I’ve done?”

  “Nothing,” Steff said.