“Our gods rowed off to fight your sponsors in the Wars,” Kai said. “The greatest warriors and priests of the Archipelago went with them. They never came back. But people stayed, and kept faith. The priests of Kavekana took that faith and made new images, idols to watch over us with the gods gone. They weren’t alive, these idols, not like the gods were—they couldn’t speak, or guide, or love, or correct. Didn’t have the history, the complexity. But they helped, and later we learned that mainlanders found them useful.”
