PoraBora

Chapter Eleven

"He was floating," said Pe. "On a piece of bone. Covered in oil. I wasn't going to leave him to die. I cleaned him and gave him some food and water."

There were three of them.

The first she knew. Not personally, but she had seen him before.

He was Chief U'ekeo, six feet tall and adorned by a necklace of jungle fowl skulls. He had a tattoo from his chest to his thighs that mixed lines of forest trees with jungle fowl and, where they all swirled together, the face of Maye, god of the jungle fowl. The man wore the usual ceremonial cloths, a cape of orange, red, and dark green feathers, and a headdress that was a conservative sixty feathers circling dry grasses. Lighter, Pe'd been told, than what most of the other chiefs wore.

She had seen Chief U'ekeo three times before. The first had been at his ceremonial crowning, timed conveniently for when Pe's family had been home. It had been a lavish affair, complete with a feast of fowls and pigs, fruits and fish, plus fire-breathing, dancing (Pe and her mother had abstained, while her father and her aunt had disappeared into enormous costumes that approximated their blessed bird), and a procession of corals offered by Kahule and Li'ili and island chiefs who couldn't be expected to attend from a thousand leagues away, but could be expected to send a six-foot-wide cut of purple rice coral.

The second time had been when her father had seen a boat from Kehoa fish over its permitted due, and he had requested the ear of the new chief. Pe had been eight. The chief had been nineteen. Pe's father was of the mind that his family, and crew by law, ought to attend so that they could be familiar with the proceedings.

Pe saw the chief the third time when her parents had died. He had been in attendance when her mother's body was covered in coral and floated off the north coast of Ila'i in a cocowood casket, painted like the manta she had motored across Taipala. He had earned the trust of the Li'ili community, and she had got to keep her boat.

Chief U'ekeo was now twenty-five and as cold as dark waters. Light from the sun peered past the surface but didn't make it to his eyes.

The second was the Navigator of Commerce, because he knew Pe from when she had used to deliver him gifts on behalf of her parents. She couldn't have been bothered after their deaths, which she regretted now, because the man, whose hair had gone grey and whose face had been twisted with wrinkles, was expected to offer her defense.

Instead, he seemed to have fallen asleep.

The third was the Navigator of Foreign Affairs, who she had decided instantly she disliked, before feeling a bit bad because that was how people thought about Hui.

"The boy didn't mention oil," he said. He was resting most of his weight on the table.

She didn't feel bad anymore. "You wouldn't know," Pe grunted.

The Navigator of Commerce, who was said to have more shells than even Chief U'ekeo, might have coughed, or laughed, or snored. It was hard to tell. The Navigator of Foreign Affairs glared in his direction either way.

They were all of them situated in the center of Kahule, at the great hall where everything happened. It had been the center of the chief's coronation ceremony. It was where everybody gathered from around the island for performances that gave voice to the waves. It was where Chief U'ekeo met with chiefs visiting from other islands, where captains called for his ear and shared their grievances, and where Chief U'ekeo declared that Pe was a traitor.

Its roof dwarfed them, leaving the hall to feel as spacious as the outdoors. It made Pe feel cold. The walls hung tapestry spun or painted by the greatest artists in Ila'i's history. Some dated back a thousand years but kept their color thanks to generations of chiefs seeing to their preservation personally. It remained to be seen if U'ekeo was as patient.