Diana Pho - Steampunk World

“If Henderson didn’t kill himself,” Childs asked, holding back some horoeka saplings from her path, “and he didn’t accidentally walk off the road, then what do you think happened to him, Agent Murphy?”

Holding her kahu around her tightly, Aroha considered how much to tell him. It looked like the local constable had nothing better to do than follow her around, and she couldn’t really order him away; these were his locals that had died.

“I am not sure,” she said finally, “but I am determined that we find out.”

They were nearing the top when Childs finally asked the question she had been waiting for. “So…Murphy isn’t much of a native name? Was your mother Maori?”

Half-caste girl they had called her when she was a child, and other less kindly words.

Aroha answered as reasonably as she could manage. “My father is Ngati Toa, an airship captain, but he and mother were never married. He went on his way when I was small, and she married an Irishman.” She locked eyes with Childs. “I just found it easier to use my stepfather’s name, but that is all I took from him.”

The constable looked away, his face flushing red. He probably wouldn’t have been so probing if she’d been a pakeha girl, but Aroha had nothing to be ashamed of, and she’d always found lies more trouble than they were worth.

They reached the roadway, which wasn’t much more than the track they had just left, except it wound its way parallel with the river down below.

Aroha wordlessly set up the tracker on the edge of the roadway and cranked it to life while Childs watched. The tiny device began to spit out the long white tape, and this time the pattern of dots indicated a stronger reading.

“This is definitely where the event occurred,” Aroha muttered, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. “There is a disturbance in the…”

The tracker resting just under her fingertips exploded. For a moment she wondered if she had done something terribly wrong, but then she realized that her ears were ringing from the retort of a very close gunshot.

She spun about, pulling the two-foot staff from under her cloak, and Childs had his pistol out, but neither of them could see where the attack had come from. Before she could say anything, Childs had grabbed her under the arm and dragged her back so that they had the cover of the downhill slope away from the road.

The constable’s breath sounded very loud in her ear, but then her own heart was racing in time with his breathing.

“That,” she whispered to Childs, “was either a very good shot, or a very poor one.”

“Whichever,” he replied, “they are prowling on the Queen’s road, killing people. We have to stop them, but…” he paused. “Your device is all broken, how are we going to find them now?”

With a slight tap on his arm, Aroha grinned. “You pakeha, so married to your technology. We will do this the old fashioned way. Now, how do we get to the other side of the road?”

He jerked his head to the right. “There are drainage pipes running under the road, otherwise it would get swept away every winter.”

Together they slipped and slid sideways until they found one. Luckily it was a rather large size, and agent and constable were able to navigate it hunched over. They emerged on the other side, and Aroha led them back towards where they had been shot at. For a pakeha, Childs was actually rather quiet.

As they drew near he did whisper in her ear, however, “Do you have a gun by any chance, Agent Murphy?”

She smiled at him and shook her head. “But I am armed, never fear.”

Working their way up the hillside, Aroha easily found the place where their attacker had shot at them. “Maori,” she said after examining the spot. When Childs frowned, she pointed to the impression in the mud. “Do you know many pakeha that wander through the bush barefoot?”

She led the way, following the trail of partial footprints, and broken undergrowth further up the hill. They were nearing the edge of the bush trail when Aroha heard the sound of something she had never imagined hearing in such a place.

It was a flute, or rather the kōauau , the Maori instrument that she still recalled her father playing to her as a child. Yet this was something more than mere music.

Aroha did not need an aether tracker to feel the pull of it. Suddenly, the music was all that mattered. Nothing else was of any consequence. Constable Childs turned to her, his face split with a huge, ridiculous grin. “You are a true Aphrodite of the South Pacific, Agent Murphy.” His voice was slurred as he reached out to grab her, and for a moment Aroha leaned into his embrace. She wanted it. She needed him. Then the ghost of her mother’s experience reached her and gave her a much needed dose of reality.

Henderson had captured her mother, drawn her into a web, and then killed her with it. Aroha had sworn never to allow that to happen to her.

She evaded the constable’s clumsy attempt at a clinch, grabbed his arm, dragged it behind him, and then used it to push him away. In the slippery, wet conditions of the hillside, it didn’t take much. With a surprised yelp, Childs slid down the hill into the embrace of the bush itself. Within a few feet he was lost to her sight, but she could hear his yelps of sorrow. Perhaps some time in the mud and rain would cool the unnatural ardour the music was pushing on him.

Aroha didn’t pause to see how far he slid; she was already climbing up the rest of the hill as quickly as possible. Luckily, she still had some Ministry technology at her disposal.

It wasn’t the first time that the paranormal had tried to overcome the agents of the Ministry, and one of the standard issues were a tiny pair of plugs for her ears. She paused to wind the exquisite clockwork before jamming one in each ear. The random tickings were louder than the music that filtered through the bush, and as she climbed higher, Aroha was relieved to find that the compulsion to lie down was less.

When she crested the hill and saw the open sky, it was very welcome. Off in the distance she could see an airship with the Ngati Toa colors. It seemed strange that her iwi was so close, and yet perhaps not.

She turned and looked across the ridge and saw the musician standing against the horizon. He was only fifty feet away from where she stood, but the ticking of the clockwork in her ears could not take away from the beauty of him.

He was only about her own age, with a kiwi feather cloak over one shoulder, and a piupiu around his lean hips. The flax skirt was seldom worn by itself anymore. In this day and age most Maori had adopted some type of pakeha clothing, but this tall, dark skinned young man wore none of that. As he stood there, with the flute raised to his nose, playing the most haunting music she knew, it was like he had stepped out of another age.

For a long moment she quite forgot why she was there. She glanced over her shoulder and realized she was not imagining it; the Ngati Toa airship was getting closer, and she finally had confirmation that her iwi had something to do with this.

The player swayed slightly on the spot, but then his eyes locked on Aroha, and eventually he saw that she was not moved by the power of the flute. He lowered it from his lips.

“Aroha,” the man called to her over the wind, “I hope you know this was for you.”

Under her cloak, her hand closed on the shaft of her weapon. “Do I know you?” she asked, Maori feeling strange on her tongue after so long in the world of the Ministry.

“No,” came the mild reply, “but I know you. I am Ruru.”

It was the name of the owl in the dark, the one heard but seldom seen. It was very clever.

“And that,” she said, inching her way closer, “is the instrument of Tutanekai.” She had heard the stories, even though they were not ones of her tribe. Tutanekai had fallen in love with a beautiful maiden of another tribe, but they had been separated by a lake. When he had played the flute, the maiden Hinemoa had been so moved that she had dared the frigid waters of the lake to reach him.