Justice and Utu (19 page)

A call rang down from the crow's-nest, high on the mainmast.

‘Ship ahoy, Cap'n! It's the
Rona!
She's level with us, three miles to landward!'

The crew rushed to view their quarry, hollering and waving their hats.

Hobson bowed, and kissed Evie's hand. ‘Well done, my girl. You've brought us right up on them.'

Evie gave a dazed smile, but her eyes sought Mat's. He threw his arms around her. ‘You're wonderful,' he told her, while all about them the sailors cheered.

B
AY OF
P
LENTY
, S
UNDAY MORNING

E
ight knots, Captain!'

The shout was desultory. All eyes that were not occupied with sailing the frigate were facing forwards, watching the slowly receding sails of the
Rona
.

‘Well, they're doing what I'd have done,' Will Hobson muttered to Wiri.

Wiri nodded in agreement. ‘They've played it well. They've got a smaller keel, so can go closer into shore than us. They sail better in lighter airs, and the wind is broken close to shore. If we get too far away, they can set their passengers ashore, so we have to shadow them.'

‘Meaning they're sailing away,' Mat finished glumly. He peered over the side of the ship, at the water breaking about the prow. There had been dolphins in the bow wave an hour ago, but even they had lost interest. Now there was only the shadowy shore, and the stern of the
Rona
, to look at. Their quarry had been pulling away over the past few hours. It was
mid-morning, and they were losing the race. Perhaps Evie could have helped, but she was exhausted, sleeping below.

Damien touched Mat's shoulder. He still looked ill, but he was on his feet. ‘Hey, check it out!' He pointed to where a silvery shape burst from the waters and spread wings like a giant dragonfly. It skimmed the waves for several seconds, then swung across their bow and dived. ‘A flying-fish! Did you see it?'

Mat forced a grin. ‘Yeah. That's the third I've seen. You've been too busy chundering to notice.'

Damien was still staring after the flying-fish. ‘Cool! I didn't know we had those in New Zealand. Is it just an Aotearoa thing?'

‘Nah. You get them in our world. Dad took me fishing once and we saw plenty. If you go night-fishing with a light, sometimes they actually fly into the lamp. It's hilarious.'

‘Awesome.' Damien peered forward. A large keel-shaped island was looming ahead, and further out to sea, a distant shape from which a thin plume of smoke was rising. ‘Islands coming up,' he noted.

‘The big one is Whale Island, and that one further out is White Island,' Mat replied. ‘It's a volcano.' He frowned. Hadn't Ngatoro been associated with that, too? He wondered if he should try to contact his mentor magically. He didn't want to waste the energy, though, on what was likely a trivial question. ‘Hey, Wiri,' he asked instead. ‘What's the deal with White Island?'

Wiri joined them at the gunwale. ‘Whakaari? I'd have thought you'd know your own boss's story, chief! Anyway, long ago, Ngatoro was climbing in the mountains around
Taupo, only they weren't volcanoes then. He and his missus were both there, and they were freezing to death, so he called to the fire spirits of Hawaiiki. They answered the summons, travelling underground. They popped up in the middle of the Bay of Plenty to get orientated, and in doing so formed the island of Whakaari — White Island. Then they went down again and ploughed on, popping up here and there right through the Bay of Plenty, leaving a trail of volcanoes and thermal areas, before bursting out of Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. Ngatoro and his missus were saved, and Aotearoa hasn't been the same since.'

‘Does anyone live there?' Damien asked.

‘Not in our time. They used to mine sulphur there, but that got closed down. It's too dangerous. There's a crater lake that emits poisonous gases, and sometimes erupts. The last mining operation was wiped out by a landslide. People have died and not been found. There are tourist operations, but they have to be careful.'

There was a stir among the crew as a tall, thin figure emerged from below. It was Lena, clad only in a white shift and a blanket about her shoulders. Her long blonde hair looked flat and greasy, and her face pinched and drawn. But her expression was so fixed that no-one tried to stop her. She came straight towards Mat.

‘What's happening?' she asked in a throaty voice. Mat remembered her hideously altered face in the waters off Kororareka. That visage still lurked behind Lena's eyes.

‘They're getting away is what's happening,' Damien replied morosely.

Lena's hackles rose as she stared at the
Rona
. Her eyes
were like the moon, silvery and desolate, as she measured the distances, her mouth twisting as if she were fighting the urge to snarl. ‘Can they see us from there?'

‘They've had a telescope trained on us all morning,' Wiri replied. ‘Why?'

‘No reason.' Lena turned to Mat, and said in a flat voice, ‘I guess I owe you again.'

‘No. Friends don't owe each other,' he replied automatically.

The ghost of a smile crossed her face. ‘Still, like I said … I owe you.'

Meaning you're not my friend.

She turned and crossed to the other side of the ship. They all followed her with their eyes, as did the whole crew. Especially when she dropped the blanket on the deck. Someone wolf-whistled.

‘Lena!' Wiri called, his voice anxious.

She pulled the shift over her head and leapt smoothly from the deck to the lip of the rail, naked, golden and beautiful, hair billowing free.

‘LENA!' Mat shouted, starting after her.

She dived, a graceful arc, barely a splash, and was gone.

 

The lookout reported seeing a big, dark shape in the waters, crossing their bow from the seaward side, gliding twenty feet beneath the surface. ‘Goin' thrice our rate, Cap'n!' But that was all he'd seen, and that was half an hour ago. It was almost midday. They were cruising in shallow waters between Whale Island and the coast, nearing Whakatane. The
Rona
was still scurrying along almost a mile ahead, and had tacked onto a
southeast heading, clearly feeling they were far enough ahead to chance the open waters again. After Lena's unexpected departure, Wiri had gone to talk with Hobson up on the command deck. He came back to the bow, looking pensive.

‘Any sign of Lena?' Mat asked, increasingly worried. The pounamu tear at his throat was burning to the touch.

Wiri shook his head. He looked tired, suddenly, as if the physical youth that was the legacy of his centuries of immortality was wearing off by the minute. ‘We've got to get to the
Rona
before Lena does something stupid.'

‘Can we call a stronger wind?' Damien asked Mat.

‘“We” meaning me, I presume?' Mat asked tersely.

‘Well, yeah.'

‘I don't know how, yet. Jones got me to do little gusts, but nothing like that.' His eyes strayed to Donna. Perhaps she knew …

‘Donna wants her magical constraints removed,' Wiri said. ‘She says she can slow the
Rona
if we trust her enough to free her. Hobson is nervous, but tempted. I'm against it.'

Mat agreed with Wiri. Donna was scary enough without her powers. ‘Only Ngatoro can free her,' he replied. ‘Right?'

‘Actually, as I understand it, any competent tohunga or Adept could,' Wiri replied. ‘Meaning you, of course.'

‘Wow,' said Damien drily, ‘Are you actually
competent
, Mat?'

Mat punched him on the shoulder. ‘If we overtake them, will we need her in the fight?' he asked Wiri.

‘Perhaps.' Wiri sighed. ‘But if we free her powers, she'll find a way to escape us once it's all over. And there's another thing: she's got that patupaiarehe blood inside her. If she
drinks blood, she changes: think vampires and the like. It'll make her less human, less rational, and possibly give her the strength to free herself regardless.'

‘Why hasn't she done it already, then?' Damien asked, eyeing the witch uneasily.

‘Because the transformation will strip her of everything but blood lust. She knows what they're like, and she's mortally afraid of becoming one. Patupaiarehe aren't fashionable TV-show vamps. They're monsters.'

Mat remembered the blood-fairies he'd battled in Taupo and Rotorua the year before, and nodded. The step from Donna Kyle, witch, to Donna Kyle, patupaiarehe, was not a hard one to imagine. ‘You think she'd do it?' he asked.

‘If it was that or the noose, yes. Grey took great pains to keep her away from the blood of others while in gaol. He knew the threat it posed. If she'd ever lost hope that her father would hang, she'd have tried to take justice into her own hands, even if it destroyed all she was.'

‘Captain!' someone shouted. ‘The
Rona!'

Mat slammed his spyglass to his eye, and gasped. The low-slung barque had suddenly veered, tilting in an alarming way as her bow swung due east. The cause was a huge black shape that had erupted from the waves behind it, and was mauling the rudder and steerage like a giant crocodile. He saw the thing shake and tear away a whole portion of the back of the ship with its jaws, thrashing and ripping the stern of the stricken ship apart. Wreckage tumbled about the beast with a massive splash. Men dropped from the rigging as the boat slewed about. They all heard a triumphant bellow from an inhuman throat, a sound that rolled across the waves
chillingly. Some of the crew of the
Rattlesnake
began to cheer, almost masking the sudden rattle of gunfire from aboard the
Rona
.

‘Lena!'
Mat sucked in his breath then yelled:
‘Get out now! You've done enough!'

But the taniwha erupted from the water again, slamming down once more upon the broken stern of the
Rona
. The ship bucked, as if it would break in two. Shouts of fear carried across the waves, along with a furious, squealing roar. Then more gunfire, muzzle-flashes at point-blank range, as the taniwha jack-knifed, its tail bringing the rearmost mast down.

‘Get out, Lena!'
Mat shouted, with voice and mind.

A sheet of flame roiled down the
Rona's
deck from the foredecks and washed over the taniwha. It screamed, a sound that carried too much of Lena's voice for Mat to bear.
‘Get out!'
He felt hands on him, and realized that Damien was restraining him from jumping into the water.
‘Get out!'

The rear of the
Rona
vanished in a cloud of smoke, and then something splashed off the stern in a tumultuous spray. The
Rona
lurched on, drifting about to almost face the
Rattlesnake
. Mat could no longer see the aft section, but he saw men firing into the water. Something huge writhed amidst the splashes, and he saw fountains of blood erupt from dark flesh with each hit. Then the dark shape vanished beneath the waters, and was gone.

The pounamu tear at his neck went cold.

 

Evie awoke groggily to splashing on her face. Donna Kyle was leaning over her, tipping a glass of water over her head. ‘Wake
up!' She pulled the blanket off her. ‘Hurry!' She was dressed in her modern-world clothing again, the cheap market-stall clothes she had bought, what seemed like years ago, at Victoria Park Market. Had it only been Friday afternoon?

‘What's … what's happening?'

‘We're closing in. The
Rona
is disabled. We'll be in range of each other's guns in ten minutes. Hurry!' The witch stood, banging her head on the top bunk, swore, and stalked out.

Evie stared after her, as fear replaced tiredness. She threw on clothes, modern clothes that wouldn't snag on everything if this got messy. Jeans and a T-shirt, and her many-pocketed leather jacket. She hoped she wouldn't have to swim.

Her mind was whirling with a mental checklist of the runes that she might be able to use.
Kaunaz
: fire, of course.
Thurisa:
the thorn, for protection.
Feoh
: for luck. And
Isa:
for intensifying any of these. The rest she'd call to mind as situations demanded. Then she pulled out her deck of playing cards and let a few cards leap to her hands as she thought of them. Cards to represent the major players: Hobson (King of Diamonds), Donna (Queen of Spades), Wiri (King of Clubs), Mat (Jack of Hearts), Damien (Jack of Diamonds), herself (Joker) … and on the other side, Grieve (King of Spades) and Venn (Jack of Spades). A few spares for the unexpected. Then she put the tarot in the other hand, Major Arcana on top. She felt like a knight, arming for the fray. Behind her patch, her blind eye throbbed. She was learning to like that feeling of impending explosion. It was almost sexual.

She kissed the Jack of Hearts. ‘Live through this, Mat,' she whispered, and placed it inside her blouse, above her heart. Then she hurried to the deck.

 

The whole deck vibrated as Hobson shouted, ‘Run out the guns!', and hatches were thrown open with clatter and crash, and twenty-eight cannon rolled forward. Evie peered down at the long black muzzles jutting out below. The rush the act gave her was incredible. From being a chase, this was now a battle, and the
Rattlesnake
had bared her teeth.

Mat appeared beside her, his face grim. Damien was with him, flushed with excitement. ‘This is living, brother!' he shouted, smacking Mat on the shoulders.

Boys!
Evie squeezed Mat's hand. His face was pained. ‘What's wrong?' she asked.

‘Lena went after them alone, in taniwha shape. She's wounded or dead. She crippled their ship, but they shot her, over and over!' His voice was agonized, as if this was all his fault.

Oh my heavens
. She'd forgotten Lena when picking her cards, thought her too bedridden to be a factor.
Or maybe I just hadn't wanted to think about her at all
. She pulled a tarot card from her pocket, the lonely, intense Queen of Swords. She pressed a rune stone —
Sigel
: the Sun, rune of healing — to the card. A bright light flashed behind her eyepatch, and she almost stumbled.
Be safe
, she wished. There was the hint of a connection, then nothing. She wanted to reassure Mat that the girl was alive, but she honestly didn't know if that was so.