The sun was dazzling, shining into Makani’s eyes. The warjunk eclipsed the little bay, but her attention went beyond it. A flash of movement in the massive vessel’s wake. Lalani were known to trail warjunks, feasting on the garbage—human and otherwise—thrown over the side. Seemed too big for a lalani, like one of those open water predators that couldn’t get too close to shore. She put a broad hand over the eye slits in her mask, squinting to catch sight of whatever it was.
She saw nothing on the blue horizon, but the thought burrowed into her mind like a crab in the sand. A tribal might call it an ill omen, but Makani was no tribal, not anymore. She called it a potential sign of danger. Eyes where she didn’t want them. Another sign they should take their plunder back to the nations.
Since Anhchoi took the Kwailoon on his likely futile mission, Makani had been placed in charge of the village of savages. She worried the other sailors didn’t understand how treacherous the tribals could be. She would be the one to watch them, make certain they didn’t unite behind any of the remaining ma’hanu and attempt to slaughter the freebooters. The nationals might have no respect for the tribals, but Makani understood the threat they represented.
So Makani would watch them.
On the first day, she supervised the digging of a slave pit and the construction of the heavy wooden gate to lay over the top. She posted guards—only the best, most alert of her men—and cycled them off every few hours. She wouldn’t have them growing tired, staring at nothing. The tribals would be waiting for mistakes like that. And they would capitalize.
On the day the Kwailoon returned, she awoke before dawn. She refused to sleep inside any of the tribal huts. They had been taken by the other members of the crew, willing to humble themselves to be out of the wind and dark. Makani wouldn’t go back. The men and women of the nation lived in proper buildings, with proper walls and proper ceilings. Not these rude huts made of hardened mud and palm fronds.
It was also vital her men not see her sleep. Sleep was vulnerability and she knew well the value of cultivating her aura, her reputation. Learned it first as a mere house slave, then in the fighting pits, then again on the waves. When the other mariners looked at her and saw a flesh and blood woman, an upjumped slave, they would flout her authority. But against a typhoon, they could do nothing.
And she would remain the typhoon.
She slept out in the woods, her hammock between two palms, the small clearing choked with brush. She only needed a few hours a night; the rest provided by her cloak and mask. She wore them as she slept, bundling herself in the cloak of streamers, and slumbering behind the mask. Another element of the typhoon: never allow them to see her face. A human had a face. A portal that betrayed thought and feeling. A storm did not.
As she rose, the cloak rose with her. The light cold on the inside, like the surface of a pond inside an underground grotto, danced against what she still thought of as her skin. There was a time it bothered her. A time when the fact that she would never truly be warm made her feel like she had sacrificed something precious. Now, she knew what she had gained. There were no regrets. Every choice was between death and power, and she would pick the latter until her choices inevitably ran out.
The foliage parted for her as she emerged on the footpath down to the village. Overnight, the fires had gone out. The only blazing flames were the torches, the tips jellied with sea fire, hungry for more destruction. The pit was quiet, save for a few isolated sobs from the captured tribals. If Makani had her way, she would have put the lot of them to the blade. But no. They were valuable in the markets of any number of nations. Who else would manufacture the warjunks? Who else would carry the cargo? Who else would work the fields and fight in the arenas? The nations believed they needed the tribals, and they were right. It spoke to a weakness in both, a weakness only someone like Makani could recognize.
Anhchoi took it a step farther. He wanted to civilize the tribals. He saw them living in savagery, slaves to superstition, and wanted to make them into something better. Makani regretted that she was at least part of the source for these beliefs. Because she had shed the darkness of her upbringing for the light of civilization meant that the others could as well. But she had been taken very young, and not everyone would have the luck to be owned by a man like the warchief.
He wanted to take as many of these tribals home as he could. Yes, to fill the Kwailoon’s coffers, but also to help the savage people he was selling. So she wasn’t allowed to do what would have been easiest. What she wanted to do. What the gods would have demanded.
Kill the lot of them.
She despised the way they looked. Their bare skin, their silly tattoos. Their use of rock and bone in place of bronze and leather. Their foolish superstitions and their stupid gazes. They were not worth the time and effort involved in keeping them alive, and yet here they were, cowering in a slave pit and waiting for the warjunk to return.
As Makani stalked through the village, she noted with some pride that the sentries from her crew straightened as she passed. Fear, respect; both were the same to her. The men would fear her, but they also knew their enemies would always have to fear her more.
The ship’s bosun, Fuandai, emerged from a hut, stretching. He was a thick-bodied man, with hands scarred from working his life on the warjunks. He was a good crewman, and though he might have initially protested at being away from his beloved ship, he likely didn’t mind being onshore for a time. Makani needed a second, and Fuandai was one she could trust.
As he yawned, he showed off a mouth with only a few good teeth left. The rest were replaced with whale ivory, wood, and in some cases, nothing at all. When he saw Makani he straightened as well, though he also scratched his rear end.
“Victory, ma’am,” he said with a respectful nod.
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She returned the nod and continued on her path, checking the village over as she went. She ordered some fruit be given to the people in the pits, then had them let up to work on their wall. If they were to remain here much longer, she’d have to get a proper slave soup on the perpetual boil, but for now, it was fruit. The wall was nothing too elaborate, just enough that if they were attacked by another of the tribes, they could repel them with ease.
Makani was on edge. As primitive as the savages were, they had an effective way of mustering support against raids. With the warjunk and half the crew gone, victory over a tribal war party was hardly assured.
She let her shoulders drop with relief when she glimpsed the warjunk on the horizon after several days. Her lookout, sitting at the crown of a palm tree, shouted and pointed. Makani went to the shore, careful not to run lest her excitement be interpreted as fear. The warjunk was a black dot so far away, and could have been mistaken for the fin of one of the various large creatures in the sea. It steadily enlarged, and soon details could be made out. The red sails, the flapping white pennons. Something swayed on the end of the cargo crane.
It glittered like sunlight on water, but it was as solid as bronze. She could see the way it strained against the ropes, the colossal weight of it tipping the warjunk lower on her port side. Makani’s mind couldn’t give the sunlight-shape a name. It brought images of the bizarre and disturbing sculptures of the tribal gods. While the other freebooters might deny the gods as mere superstition, Makani could not. She communed with them as effectively as any ma’hanu, but she did so without the foolish superstitions benighting the tribals. This thing on the crane, was it a depiction of yet another god?
She didn’t think so. It didn’t look like something from beneath the waves. She couldn’t put the feeling into words, as she’d never seen anything quite like it. The graceful geometry of it, the way it shimmered like the sun itself, even the way it swayed gently in the ropes, made it look at home in the sky. On the face of it, the thought seemed insane, as this object was heavy enough to pull even a mighty warjunk off balance.
That is where Makani’s thinking stopped. Nothing made sense about the object.
The warjunk came to a rest in the bay off the Mele coast. Anchors splashed into the clear blue water to be followed by the landing skiffs, lowered from the ship’s crane. The warchief himself was on the first one off the boat, standing proudly while his men rowed him to shore. Makani and Fuandai walked to the edge of the water, the gentle waves lapping at their bare toes.
“Quartermaster! Bosun!” Anhchoi called, using their ranks. His face was alight. She hadn’t seen him like this since before Warlord Chuichan’s ship had slipped below the waves.
“Victory, warchief,” Fuandai said cautiously. “Don’t mind my asking, but there’s a great...thing...on my ship.”
“Indeed there is, bosun!”
The skiff made it to the shallows, and Anhchoi hopped off it into the knee-deep water. He splashed through the salt to join Makani and Fuandai.
The bosun cleared his throat, scratching absently at the back of his shaven head. “Well, sir...uh...what is it?”
“We should discuss it on the way back to the nations,” Makani said. “Have you chosen a destination, warchief? I believe the people of Song-Lao would be grateful to have our crew.”
Anhchoi shook his head, the grin never vanishing. “No. We go nowhere.” He squinted up the beach. “Where are the tribals? Why aren’t they working?”
“The heat, sir,” Fuandai said, gesturing at the sky. It was brutal: milky dots of sweat beaded on the bosun’s brows. Makani could feel very little in the benthic cool of her cloak. “Work the tribals in the light of the sun, could get sick. Could die, and we’ve still a long voyage ahead to Song-Lao, or wherever you point us.”
“Get them up. Get all of them up. Reinforce the walls. The palisades. Is there anything to eat?”
"Stew for the men. Slaughtered a pua’a last night.”
Anhchoi made his way up the beach to where the clay cauldron bubbled over the campfire. The brown stew belched up sluggish bubbles as the warchief approached. He picked up a clay pot, still wet from when whichever of the men had passed it through the seawater, and ladled himself a full helping.
“Food aboardships is good, but sometimes I miss this stuff. Lifeblood of the sailing man.” He lifted the bowl to his lips and slurped down a gulp, then sucked the savory brown off his mustache.
“Warchief, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Makani said. “You found your prize. Let us take it to Song-Lao. Your rank will be preserved.”
“No,” barked Anhchoi. He turned to Fuandai. “Bosun, you got seawater in your ears? I told you to get the slaves working! Finish the palisades! Circle the village! Now!”
Fuandai was momentarily stunned, and his eyes flickered to Makani for a fraction of a second as though asking for confirmation. Makani would give him none. He quickly realized his mistake and rushed off to fulfill the warchief’s orders. Anhchoi apparently didn’t notice, his head still in the clouds with his prize.
Makani waited for Fuandai to be out of earshot before she spoke. While the quartermaster could question the warchief—indeed that was part of the job —she was legitimately worried about Anhchoi. She wouldn’t expose his weakness even if he were unaware it existed.
“What are we doing, warchief?” she asked softly.
The bowl now empty, Anhchoi dropped it into the sand by the others. Just out of range of hearing, a crewman waited to skitter in and take it and the others down to the water. He wouldn’t come close with warchief and quartermaster talking. Anhchoi smiled and brushed his hands off, then turned, and nodded to the ship.
“You see it?”
Makani turned her attention back to the sunlight-god. “No one could miss it.”
“That was what fell from the sky.”
“You’re certain.”
“Makani. Where else could such a thing come from? It was right where I thought it would be. At the bottom of the sea, but nothin’ grew on it. Nothin’ had time.”
“What is it?” Makani asked. She didn’t like the helplessness in her tone. It had been a long time since she’d heard anything like it there.
“Ask the wind,” Anhchoi said. “But it’s something. Something big. Something powerful. Something from the sky.”
Makani frowned. “Nothing comes from the sky.”
“Still a tribal at heart. The skyborn, Makani. This is from the skyborn.”
Makani wouldn’t gainsay her warchief, but the skyborn were a superstition. The nations were, on the whole, lands of law, of reason. This was the one place where they were as backwards and credulous as any tribal. The skyborn were a silly myth. Some ruins in isolated places in the nations had birthed the idea of human beings coming down from the sky to settle Waiola. Rather than some nations being older than others, they had foisted the whole thing off on this mad idea of the skyborn.
“Warchief...”
He held up a hand. “If this isn’t skyborn, what is it? Human hands made it; it fell from the sky.”
Makani wanted to disagree, but she couldn’t find a way in. “Then what are we doing?”
Anhchoi smiled wider, showing off the bronze-banded teeth that were evidence of his wealth and power. “Why should we be raiding when we can build a nation?”
“Here?” Makani asked, not believing what she was hearing.
“Where else? Weather the first storm with fortifications, then take more slaves. And more. Build a city. When the others come, they have to contend with us. Civilized enemies. Powerful ones.”
“And what of the idol?”
“The center of it all. Secrets of the skyborn. Something is in that...totem. I will find it. And with its power, we will forge what even Warlord Chuichan could not.”
