Kai Pohala’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Priestess-slash-offshore-investment-banker, Kai Pohala is a freight train in human form, determined to build a better world whether the world wants her to or not. She becomes a priestess of the Blue Lady, is the first person (it seems) in the Domain to go to space, and battles an ancient ghost for control of her own mind.
As we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Kai’s story so far.
Kai before the series
Kai is Kavekanese born and bred, raised by a fisherman father and boat building mother. She has a younger sister Ley, whose mind worked quite differently than Kai’s. Both powerhouses, both stubborn, both determined to succeed, but Ley is more showy and Kai more practical. Their dad died at sea when they were fairly young. Kai, a practical sort, began to take over responsibilities “because someone had to,” while Ley wept and raged over the loss and injustice, and left the island to try to fix the wider broken world. Kai did what needed to be done at home, and on their island. In many ways they want the same thing but have different ways of going about it.
When we see Ley in Ruin of Angels she describes Kai as a freight train. Her friends say she desperately wanted to live up to Kai’s example and impress her sister, but never quite could. Kai always knew who she was and the impact she wanted to make on the world, which must be quite intimidating to a younger sibling, even one as singular as Ley.
Kai says she wanted to join the Sacerdotal Order of Kavekana as a child. Her parents worked with ships, but she knew that wasn’t likely to be a sustainable future for islanders. She didn’t want to leave like her sister, and wanted to help her home. Joining the Order seemed like the best way to go about that. And if we know anything about Kai Pohala, we know that when she sets her mind to something she is single-minded until she reaches her goal.
Kai is also the first (known) trans character we meet, and appears to have socially transitioned young and without much difficulty. Kavekana has a theological way to rebuild one’s body in a way that best suits, and it seems a relatively common thing to undergo; we have no reason to believe Kai faced much resistance or transphobia in her community.
We get a couple of references to Kai’s adolescence in Full Fathom Five. She talks about sneaking out at night to go to poetry slams (poetry is a highly respected art form on Kavekana), and that’s when she befriended Mako, an ancient-seeming blind God Wars veteran who lives at Makawe’s Rest, a bar on the beach.
We know that as well as training in the religious Order on Kavekana, she has an undergraduate degree from ‘Seven Islands’, about which we know very little, other than it exists and has a broad non-shamanic curriculum. Not sure if it’s based on Kavekana or another island in the Skeld Archipelago; as we don’t hear about students on Kavekana, I’m inclined to think it’s based on a different, maybe larger island.
And then she joined the Order, as was always her plan.
Kai took to idol building like a duck to water. Natural talent appears to have mixed with drive and dedication, but Kai had what was, in some ways, an extra advantage. At the top of Kavekana’ai, there is a bottomless pool that is an entrance to something of another world. Before the God Wars, priests entered the pool to meet the gods. Now, without gods, the pool houses thousands of idols. Kai has a particular ability in the pool, related to her transition. As she explains to Elayne Kevarian:
“Inside [the pool], spirit and matter flow more easily from shape to shape. The first time priests dive, we change—we fix the broken bodies we inhabit. These days most changes are small: one priest I know corrected her eyesight; another cleaned up a port wine stain on her cheek. In the past more priests went further, like I did. That’s where the tradition came from, after all. These days full initiates aren’t as common, but there are a few of us.”
“How did you remake yourself?”
“I was born in a body that didn’t fit.”
“Didn’t fit in what way?”
“It was a man’s.”
Back in the old days, it seems that perhaps most priests of Kavekana were trans and used the initiation ceremony to transition their bodies. Perhaps this is me reading too much into it; perhaps they changed their bodies in other ways, representing facets of gods that didn’t take human form. We don’t know.
(Note - Gladstone is not, I feel, implying that medical transition is required for trans folks. We meet other trans folks throughout the series who are living happily in their gender without such transition. I’ve seen some discussion on this point, so wanted to clarify my understanding of it!)
Kai remade her body to match who she always was. And through using the pool’s power in this way, she has more of an affinity to its power than many of her fellow priests. We hear that during the Kos situation she spent hours in the pool, presumably working with her idols. This is pointed out as an unusual thing to be able to do.
At the time we meet her in the story, her job is her life - but this doesn’t seem to have always been the case. She visited her sister at uni in Chartegnon, and spent a lot of time at Makawe’s Rest with Mako and the poets. She lived with her now-ex Claude, and mentions “her first years with Claude” at one point, so it was a pretty long term relationship. Her boss points out that she’s “been on a hard road for a while, and it’s grown worse since you and Claude broke up,” but it’s not clear exactly how long ago that was. I don’t think it can be that long ago, because she tells Mako they broke up like he wouldn’t know. I’m thinking months rather than years.
These days she isn’t that close to her family, having avoided seeing her mother for months and only communicating with Ley through postcards. She’s first up the mountain and last down, living only to work.
And then Full Fathom Five begins.
Full Fathom Five
On the tropical island of Kavekana, theologian investment bankers build idols for the world’s richest to store their soulstuff off shore. Kai Pohala is one such priest, responsible for building and worshipping a portfolio of idols. The idols live - for a given value of ‘living’ - in a deep otherworldly pool in the caldera of a volcano; Kai remade her body in the same pool, and has unusual control over its unreality. When her colleague Mara has a failed idol that must be terminated, Kai makes the rash decision to dive into the pool and attempt to save it. She almost succeeds, before her boss Jace tears her back up into the world. The idol, nicknamed Seven Alpha, dies as scheduled, and Kai winds up in hospital.
From her hospital bed, deep in nightmares, Kai is interrogated by Elayne Kevarian (hi Elayne!), the Craftswoman hired by Seven Alpha’s account holders. Because Kai tried to save Seven Alpha, Kevarian is investigating whether Mara and the Order as a whole were negligent in their duties towards her client. When Kai tries to go back to work, she’s reassigned to work directly with pilgrims rather than build idols. She’s not happy, to put it lightly.
Kai goes back to her old haunt, Makawe’s Rest and hangs out with Mako. They watch an Iskari poet, Edmond Margot, fail his way through a set despite being almost divinely inspired mere weeks ago. He’s lost his muse. But Kai recognises a line from his poem - and later realises she heard it from Seven Alpha as the idol died. How did Mako have that line?
In her new role, Kai is reluctantly trying to work with pilgrims in the sales wing of her Order. It’s not the best fit.
“How’s the work?”
“I feel like I’m going crazy without something to believe in. I miss my idols; I miss my prayers. I miss building things.”
“You’ve been stuck in training for weeks. Once you’re out, the work will get interesting.”
“Let’s face it. I’m great in the pool, or behind an altar. I’m no good at interpersonal stuff.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
“You’re fine at interpersonal whatever. You just happen to be a bit of a jerk.”
Kai wadded up a napkin and threw it at her.”
She’s assigned to work with Teo Batan, a potential client from the Two Serpents Group trying to see if Kavekana would be a good fit for her Concern. She’s a sceptic, and Kai doesn’t try that hard to convince her - yet for some reason Teo keeps coming back. Secretly, Kai investigates what happened with Seven Alpha. She comes across Elayne Kevarian and Mara in a nightmare, going through the evidence; when she comes to, she find Mara has slipped a notebook into her bag. It helps her investigation, and she sees that there’s a list of people who received grace from Seven Alpha - people who shouldn’t have had access to the pool or its idols. One is Edmond Margot.
Kai asks Claude, a police officer, to keep an eye on Margot while she investigates further, particularly as Mara has now gone missing after a surprise promotion. It’s no good, though - a Penitent murders Margot. Kai wakes up to find a knife at her throat - street kid refugee Izza Jalai saw Margot killed, and is convinced Kai was behind it.
Kai manages to convince Izza she’s innocent. The two discuss what they know - Izza seems to have another half to the puzzle Kai is trying to solve, having worshipped a goddess that died the same day as Seven Alpha. Izza shows Kai the temple to her gods. Kai realises that Izza, somehow, has replicated the caldera of Kavekana’ai, including the pool of idols. Kai begins putting things together - somehow, the Blue Lady and Seven Alpha were the same. Somehow, the street kids (and Margot) unintentionally broke into the pool with their prayers, and an idol somehow answered, dispensing grace.
Kai needs to get back up the mountain, but her access has been revoked. Easy solution: use Teo. With a client, she’s able to go up the mountain. In the pool, Kai finds example idols based on Teo’s interests and begins her own investigation into what’s going on in the pool.
She makes a horrifying discovery. Seven Alpha, and a dozen idols before her, flared into life and were snuffed out. Murdered. And then Kai sees beyond the idols and discovers a goddess behind them all, trying idols on as faces to reach out from the darkness. Kai asks who She is, when everything goes wrong. Teo drops a bracelet into the pool. The sky turns red. The volcano shudders.
Kai and Teo are arrested. Kai finds out that Jace knew about the idols coming to life all along, and that he was behind their deaths. Now that she knows, and isn’t willing to go quietly along with an NDA, he locks her inside a Penitent to be re-educated. He’s done the same to Mara, and locks Teo in one for good measure.
Izza realises what’s happened, and goes to Mako for help. Somehow, the old man is able to open Kai’s Penitent and save her. He’s about to do the same to Teo’s, when Teo smashes out of it herself. Kai, Teo, and Izza run. Teo leads them out into the sea, to a warded boat - where Cat Elle waits. Cat was sent here by Seril to retrieve a moon shard that had been locked in the pool; Teo dropped in a bracelet as a sort of homing beacon.
Together, they break in, retrieve the shard, rescue the Blue Lady, and bring down Jace by calling Elayne Kevarian in - the best deus ex machina one could hope for. All is, sort of, well. Kai confronts Mako - he wasn’t just a God Wars veteran who sailed off with the island’s gods. He was the island’s god - Makawe. He returned as a ghost trapped in flesh. He was able to open the Penitents because he made them back before the Wars.
And now Kai has to try to rebuild her Order and her island, without letting the outside world realise what the hells happened with the idols and the fact they accidentally built a real god.
Ruin of Angels
A couple of years later, Kai is travelling around seeking new investment opportunities so that Order can divest from ethically and environmentally dubious Concerns. At the last minute she’s diverted to Agdel Lex, an Iskari colony, the place from which her friend and fellow priestess of the Blue Lady, Izza Jalai, ran several years ago, and coincidentally where her sister Ley has lived for a while. They’re not in touch much - yet somehow Ley found out Kai was visiting, and managed to get a letter to her inviting her to dinner. When they meet, Ley tries to pitch her start-up to Kai, asking her sister for 16 million thaums. Kai turns her down, which in the long run turns out to not have been the best idea. Note to everyone: actually communicate to your siblings when asking for a huge favour.
Agdel Lex is a particularly weird, broken place in a world of weird, broken places. When Kai steps out of the airport, the city swims before her vision - three cities, somehow layered on top of one another. That’s why the Iskari are here, her contact Gavvi Fontaine tells her. Maestre Gerhardt broke the city 150 years ago, and the Iskari came in to shore it up. There are indeed three cities: the modern Iskari city of Agdel Lex, the dead city beneath it, full of monsters and ice and dying angels, and a secret - illegal - in-between city of Alikand made by locals in defiance of the Iskari.
After Kai turns down Ley’s request, Ley does the completely normal, understandable thing and stabs her business partner Alethea Vane, running off with Vane’s consciousness stored in a magical knife while Kai calls the police. Kai calls Izza via long distance prayer and Izza tells her to gtfo, do not speak to the police, this is dangerous, gods Kai. Alas, it is too late, and Kai is too used to being in a position of power and privilege.
Kai meets Lieutenant Bescond, and Iskari investigator, and Tara Abernathy, a Craftswoman currently working with the Wreckers on an undisclosed project. There is some tension between the two. Bescond is about to arrest Kai when Fontaine appears with a contract giving Kai special status (it turns out Izza called Kai’s boss and got him to sort it out). Kai needs to stay longer to fulfil the contract, and to try to get Ley out of the trouble she’s in. With Fontaine’s help, she speaks to some of Ley’s colleagues, insofar as their Craftwork NDAs allow. She meets artist demon R’ok, who tells her about Ley’s ex Zeddig Hala. She also meets billionaire entrepreneur Eberhardt Jax.
Kai goes to try to speak to Zeddig in the secret city of Alikand, meets Zeddig’s grandma instead and has a lovely chat until Zeddig comes by and kicks her out. Kai is then attacked on the street - this is a very unfun time for Kai - and saved by Izza, who has shown up despite the danger the city represents to her. Because they’re FRIENDS. Power of friendship. What a thing. Izza goes off to get in on Ley and Zeddig’s illegal plan through her undercity contacts, while Kai meets Tara at the Temple of All Gods. Kai realises that Tara, though bound by a contract to the Iskari, isn’t happy with them and isn’t necessarily on their side.
The two of them get on the same train as the Izza et al, only to be confronted by Bescond. Kai manages to pray to Izza that it’s a set up, but it’s too late and the Wreckers arrive. The delver crew, using Ley’s knife, walk through the desert to a facility holding the item Ley needs. Bescond, Tara, and Kai make their own way there, with Kai getting a promise from Bescond to let Ley go in return for her knife. Bescond does hold up to her end of the bargain (mostly because Tara, being a Craftswoman, highlights the consequences of breaking contract), letting Ley go in return for the knife; Ley and Zeddig limp off into the Wastes, while Bescond arrests everyone else (Izza subtly tells Kai not to reveal they know each other). Ley is pissed off at Kai, but what’s new?
Meanwhile, Kai watches Tara bring Alethea Vane back to life. Her consciousness had been stored in Ley’s life, which makes resurrection easy for a necromancer. Vane explains the project - she’s going to send the knife into orbit, and get everyone to see the same city at the same time. This will destroy both the dead city and Alikand, allowing the God Wastes to flood in, and kill everyone in those cities. Ley hadn’t been aware of this part of the plan, or the fact that the Iskari funded it; when she found out, she tried to buy Vane out but was thwarted at every turn. Asking Kai for 16 million thaums was her last ditch effort, and when that failed she tried to remove Vane from the equation and keep the knife out of Iskari hands.
Tara isn’t happy with the project either. She tells Kai that she needs data from the orbit; she needs to listen to what’s out there. She’s bound by too many Craft contracts to actively fight against the Iskari, but she’ll do what she can. Zeddig has been captured by Bescond and is being tortured; Kai manages to convince her that she’s working in Ley’s best interest, and Zeddig reveals Ley is going for the Altus facility - run by Eberhardt Jax. Kai calls on Jax to help her get into the launch facility and disrupt the project without ruining it. She (rightly) suspects Ley is going to try to break in and go up into space to stop the destruction of Alikand. Kai takes Ley’s place, they have a lovely sisterly moment, and Ley goes off to rescue Zeddig. True love and all.
“Let me do this for you.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“It’s not yours either. It’s not even Bescond’s. It’s just a bunch of people doing things history told them to.” She drew back. “Besides. If I let you go up in that thing, Mom would kill me. … Do you trust me?”
Ley looked into her eyes. “Yes.”
“Then go save your girlfriend. Let me save the world.”
“You never let me do anything fun.”
“Older sister’s prerogative.”
All of the various factions are fighting in the streets, while Kai goes into orbit and the world gets weird(er).
Up in the sky, Kai changes the vision funneled through the knife and brings all versions of the city to the surface at once. They’re going to build a new city with a place for everyone - Iskari, High Families, and everyone else. A new city with a place for everyone.
The moon rises, and Seril of all people helps Kai back to the ground. Kai meets Tara and shares the recording of what she heard in the skies.
Legs, skittering closer.
Skazzerai.
Wicked Problems
It’s been a few years since Alikand, but Kai is thinking about Tara and how unbelievably attractive she is. Wonderful way to start Kai’s part of Wicked Problems, I approve. She’s on a terrible date (not with Tara, alas) when she’s served notice that she and her clients are being sued. She flies to the spirecliff disaster zone in Southern Kath, and maneouvres past security measures (including Abelard, bless his innocence) to confront Caleb Altemoc, who she hired to avoid shit like this. She finds him literally holding together the spirecliffs, while Tara attempts to free him without dooming them all. Kai, extra aware of her massive crush on Tara, offers to loan her some soul in order to pull Caleb free; Tara then gives herself wings using bones (this book is the most necromancy in terms of bones), and flies away with Caleb, Kai and Abelard dangling beneath her.
The next day, on Jax’s yacht, Tara ties Caleb to a chair to go through his memories and see what the hell happened. Tara is getting flustered by Kai - perhaps there is some romantic reciprocation going on - and together they all delve into Caleb’s memories.
Tara convenes a council of war and everyone gets up to speed with the situation. They decide to split up: Tara and Kai will go to meet Kai’s client, while Abelard and Caleb chase Dawn. Jax will do billionaire stuff behind the scenes. That night, Kai sneaks around Jax’s ship and discovers a room with stars and the skazzerai recording she took from orbit at the end of Ruin of Angels. This is extremely Suspicious With A Capital S. Kai seems to realise there’s something not quite right with Jax.
Tara and Kai head off to Chartegnon to meet Kai’s client. To sneak into the city (the Iskari hate both of them because of the Alikand thing) so they have to go undercover, which involves cosplaying the French, and Tara crossdressing. It’s a great concept. They check into a hotel and Kai has the time of her life cosplaying an Iskari woman out on the town, with jaunty beret and striped top. At a cheese stall in the market, however, she runs into the goddess Seril, in the body of a startlingly attractive man that we know is Shale, but she doesn’t. Seril is searching for Dawn and hiding from Tara. She gives Kai a silver lily, so Kai can call upon her in case of an emergency, and calls Kai ‘rabbit’.
Back at the hotel, the pair are dressing for the opera. Kai is drop dead gorgeous, and Tara is speechless. It turns out Kai has always dreamed of seeing opera here, but unfortunately they won’t be able to take their seats for Kirst’s Godsgloaming as they need to meet Kai’s contact. Tara fashions a Crafty listening device out of bone so Kai can hear at least the first part of the act. While staring at Kai, she absently notices a woman with a large gold pendant go up the stairs to boxes. When Tara and Kai go up to the boxes themselves to meet Kai’s client - who turns out to be Grimwald - they find him deceased, with his throat ripped out. Cops immediately appear: they’ve been framed.
Kai freezes and Tara acts, as she is wont to do. She gives Kai Grimwald’s severed head, and her Mary Poppins-esque clutch bag, then temporarily kills Kai and leaps from the balcony onto the stage, beginning a sword fight with actors who become possessed by the squiddy lords of Iskar. She is, naturally, caught. The temporary death lifts from Kai, who calls on Seril for help. Seril directs Kai through the Opera House in a madcap scene from the best action film, culminating in Seril magically yanking Kai into an open elevator shaft, seemingly to her death.
She is saved by Shale, acting on Seril’s authority, and being being particularly attractive and spy-like in a tuxedo. They are making their way through creepy catacombs, when Kai recalls her earpiece link to Tara, and they follow it to her prison - where they find a metal hatch torn off the wall, with human sized handprints with claws denting the metal, and a dead Iskari Wrecker. This is not good news.
With some help from Seril, they rescue Tara from an extremely creepy vampire called Clarity, and perform CPR on her. This means her tuxedo is ripped open, and Kai is most flustered once again. Chartegnon is aflame but they need to get Grimwald’s information. Tara uses bones from the catacombs to make a flying skullbeast, and the three of them fly to the broken and cracked skyspire, using Grimwald’s severed head to enter.
They realise the entire spire (essentially a floating skyscraper) is empty other than a prism of bone hidden in the spire’s heart, with one metal chair and twelve crystal columns holding ancient artifacts. Tara attempts to interrogate dead Grimwald with Craft, and some of the artifacts explode. Kai realises she, with her Kavekanese priestess experience, may have a better shot at this than Tara; she kisses Tara, and dives over a ward circle that ought to kill her.
Instead, she is immersed in Grimwald’s memories. He is unspeakably ancient, a survivor of the last time the skazzerai came to the Domain and ate the world. He explains what the skazzerai are and what they do: they are hungry for desire. An entire world wakes at once, becoming a skazzerai, playing the passions of those around them. They then rise into the black of space and are eaten by older skazzerai. Grimwald lost everything. He learned sorceries beyond miracle, and it wasn’t enough. The skazzerai were kicked out by the Hero Twins of Quechal myth, giving their hearts to the Serpents. Skazzerai can’t afford a war of attrition, and left. Grimwald taught the remaining people fire, sowing seeds, helped the beginnings of rebuilding. He hid pieces of the old war and tried to slow and shape history to stop another skazzerai being born. It worked for millennia, until now.
Grimwald tries to take over Kai, but she is able to kick him out - or at least push him back.
“Time to wake, she thought. Time to walk. I’ve got a world to save.
No.
She refused that thought. She cast it out. The ghost was no master, no lord, no saviour. It was a guest. She was a priestess of Kavekana. Her flesh, her frame, her body was no accident. She had found it as a ship found harbour.
And now, from the shattering depth of memory—it brought her home.
She was awake. She was Kai again, maybe. Her mind felt too large for her skull.”
Kai opens her eyes to Tara giving her the kiss of life, and explains what she learned. Clarity and the grey men are taking pieces off the board that might be able to stop the skazzerai. They realise that the next target will be the Serpents. Clarity, now flying, attacks. Shale prays to Seril, who makes the three of them and the skullbeast vanish just in time.
That’s pretty much the end of this story for Kai. Seril transports them all via the moon, and they land in Dresediel Lex after the Big Battle, just in time for Tara to help save Abelard from burning to a crisp. Dawn has escaped. The Serpents are badly injured.
With her memories from Grimwald, Kai holds information about the skazzerai that nobody else has. Without a doubt, this will play a role in the next book.
But for now, that’s Kai’s story so far.
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