The Last Hawk

by Catherine Asaro

  When he had told Avtac he wanted Roca to live with him in the Calanya, the Manager hadn't even responded, she had simply stared as if he were demented. The next day when he and Avtac sat in a private Quis session, he introduced patterns of Roca into his dice, trying to make Avtac see what his daughter meant to him. She said nothing then either, but the next day Qahotra brought Roca up from Miesa for her first visit. Since then he had seen her every one or two days.

  The hour went by far too fast. Kelric wasn't sure how he looked when Qahotra returned, but she gave him another hour. When she finally took the baby, she spoke gently. "She'll be back for another visit soon. I'll see to it myself."

  After the captain left, Kelric went to his suite and sat in his living room, struggling to make his mind blank. If he let his thoughts surface, they would turn to Savina, to a grief that went too deep and too far. If he let it pull him under now, he would drown. For Roca, he had to stay on top of his life. He would make the Varz Quis soar as it never had before, turn this Estate and its dependents into the gilded land, give Roca the best world it was within his power to create.

  Several hours later a tap came at his screen. He found Qahotra outside again, this time with both the Taks and his Calanya escort.

  They took him through the Estate, along ancient halls made empty by their isolated location and the late hour. and lit only by lamps shaped like clawcats. Eventually they ascended a tower, climbing its spiral staircase. This journey he recognized. He had taken it three times before, once in a drugged daze at Dahl, once in incomprehension at Haka, and once in joy at Miesa.

  They left him locked in a suite that gave reality to the age and wealth of Varz. Chandeliers made from diamonds hung above rugs so thick his toes disappeared in the pile. The antique furniture looked priceless. Gold, ivory, ebony, silk; it was an Akasi suite unparalleled by any he had seen.

  The living room had no windows. He wandered through the other windowless rooms, glad to discover none of them contained Avtac either. In the bathing room, he went for a swim in the pool. When he finished, he dried off with a towel someone had laid on a stone bench and he dressed in the robe he found there. Then he sat by a fountain, watching rainbows flicker in the cascade of water. When his eyes refused to stay open any longer he went to the bedroom and was relieved to find it still empty. Apparently unexpected business had kept Avtac away.

  He folded his robe on a chair and went to bed. Within moments he was asleep.

  A tiring job, this merger of two Estates, Avtac thought as she lit a lamp in the living room of the Akasi suite. But well worth the trouble; since absorbing Miesa, the power of Varz had surged. Perhaps she had judged too harshly Savina's decision to acquire Sevtar. The man was a remarkable Quis player. More than remarkable. Truly gifted. But neurotic. What bizarre notion had prompted him to dress in black for so long? It was hard to believe he mourned Savina. He hadn't shed a tear since her death.

  At least he had finally changed into normal clothes. Whatever his capricious logic, it wouldn't have done for her to violate what looked like mourning. But the wait had made her impatient.

  She found him in the main bedroom. Asleep, he was even more provocative than awake. Light crept in from the living room and curled glowing fingers around his body. He lay on his back with one arm thrown across the pillows behind his head and the other stretched out on the bare sheets, the fist clenched in the silk. The quilts had ended up on the floor and the sheet was bunched around his waist, leaving his bare chest in view.

  She sat next to him and explored his chest, satisfying the curiosity that had tugged at her since he came to Varz. His skin felt like a metal alloy, warm and flexible.

  His eyes opened and he grasped her hand. "Avtac. It's late."

  "So it is."

  "I'm tired."

  His reluctance whetted her desire. When she tweaked away the sheet uncovering his body, he avoided her gaze Given his past, she doubted his modesty was real. But it was far more fitting behavior for an Akasi than that of the youth she kept in the city, who made no secret of how much he enjoyed her company.

  She spoke gently. "Sevtar, turn over. I will help you relax."

  He glanced at her, his face guarded. But he did roll onto his stomach, laying his head on a pillow and his arms by his sides.

  Still fully dressed, Avtac straddled his hips and massaged his back, working deep into the stiff muscles. After a while, his eyes closed and he sighed, murmuring a sleepy thanks. She ran her hands along his arms, then lifted his wrists and brought

  them together.

  With a click, she locked his Calanya guards behind his back.

  Sevtar looked back at her, blinking sleep out of his eyes. "Why did you do that?"

  "Shhh, sweet dawn god," she murmured. Sweet submission He excited her even more than she had expected. She stretched out on top of him, caressing his sides with long strokes as she rubbed her pelvis against his buttocks. While she moved on him, he stared at the wall across the room, his expression numb. He was hers to own and enjoy.

  Her pent-up desire and the friction of her motion made her rise happen so fast she could barely control it. When the release came, it was with a shuddering intensity.

  After a while, when her breathing had calmed, she rolled off him and lay on her back with her eyes closed, one leg stretched out and the other bent.

  "Are you done?" he asked.

  Avtac looked at him, his perfect face, his long lashes, his gold curls. She traced her finger along his cheek. "You are a great beauty, Sevtar."

  "I can't sleep with my arms like this."

  In her youth, she might have spent the rest of the night with him, but she was too drowsy now. Come morning, all would be new again, a time for full lovemaking. She wanted him well rested.

  As soon as she unlocked his wrists, he turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Avtac stretched her arms, then removed her clothes and set them in a neat pile on the nightstand.

  Then she rolled over and went to sleep.

  33

  King's Sprectrum

  Kastora Karn, Senior Aide to the Minister, studied the metal dice on the table. They had an odd shape: cylindrical at one end, pointed at the other. She glanced at Ixpar. "These are for Quis?"

  "It would seem not." The Minister put a packet of dark powder next to the dice.

  Kastora poked at the packet. "What is it?"

  "A mixture," Ixpar said. "Charcoal, sulphur, nitrate."

  "What does it do?"

  "Explode."

  Kastora quickly withdrew her hand. "Is it for the quarries?"

  Ixpar shook her head. "Jevrin, the agent I have at Varz, smuggled it to me. The powder goes in the dice."

  "Rather odd dice. What does one do with them?"

  "Apparently," Ixpar said, "One puts them in a rifle."

  "A rifle?"

  "A gun."

  "Why put dice in a stunner?"

  "A rifle is different than a stunner," Ixpar said. "It propels the dice out again."

  "Whatever for?"

  "To damage the target, I assume."

  Kastora stared at her. "Why?"

  "That," Ixpar said, "is what I would like to know."

  * * *

  "So you see," Bahr finished. "By putting the dice structure in a high level and controlling how it evolves to a low level, the pattern models a chemical that glows with a single color of light. Like red light."

  Ixpar relaxed at the table where she and Bahr had been dining. Bahr's outrageous ideas never ceased to fascinate her. "What would one do with this red light?"

  "You could use it in the Calanya fountains." Bahr took a spice muffin. "Thing is, I wouldn't know bread from cheese how to make a real device that does what my Quis pattern predicts."

  "I can have the labs look into it." Ixpar sipped her wine. "What do you call this light—making pattern of yours?"

  "I haven't decided." Bahr washed a bite of her muffin down with wine. "You see, what actually gives off the light are motes
I call atoms. When a mote is in a high level, it wants to emit light by going to a low level. For the patterns I'm working on now, you have to kick the mote to make it relax to the lower level. So I was thinking of calling it a kicked-mote emitter."

  Ixpar could imagine the reaction Bahr would get to a Quis structure called kicked-mote emitters. "What you're doing is modeling a system that amplifies light by stimulating the emission of radiance. Why don't you abbreviate that?"

  "Albsteor?" Bahr grimaced "It sounds like a rock."

  "Maybe if you just used letters from the main words Alser. Laser. Saler."

  "Sailor? Sailing light." Bahr beamed. "Yes, that sounds better."

  Ixpar laughed. "Sailing light? It doesn't make sense."

  "Sure it does. The light sails out of the device."

  "All right." Ixpar smiled. "I will see if the labs can make you a light-sailor."

  "Come on," Hayl said. "Wake up. You said you would run with me this morning."

  Kelric opened one eye. Through a window in his suite, he saw dawn tinging the sky. He closed his eye and pulled a pillow over his head.

  "Sevtar." Hayl tugged away the pillow. "You promised."

  Kelric grimaced. Most Cobans found the concept of jogging as strange as eating Quis dice, but in Miesa he had talked Hayl into running with him in the mornings. Now he wished the boy hadn't taken to it with such enthusiasm.

  Waking up to run, though, was better than waking up to Avtac. Mercifully, she had been at Council the past few days. Otherwise she sent for him almost every night, for "love" making that left him feeling emotionally bruised.

  The one facet of Avtac he missed was her Quis. No other person he had played on Coba could match her brilliance. If a man's love were measured by a desire for a Woman's dice rather than for the woman, then instead of abhorring Avtac he would have loved her with a passion like none other.

  Right now, his only passion was to sleep. But he had promised Hayl. He rolled out of bed and limped to the bureau where he kept his running clothes. After he dressed, they went into his living room and found the Taks were already there, lounging in chairs. The "valets" followed Hayl and Kellie out to the ice-covered parks and stood out of earshot, watching them warm up, their breath making clouds under a sky of leaden clouds.

  "I know they're your servants and all," Hayl said. "But I wish they would go away."

  "At least they quit trying to run with us."

  Hayl smirked. "They're too lazy." He leaned forward and pulled a hair off Kelric's head.

  "Why did you do that?" Kelric asked.

  Hayl gave him the hair. "Your first gray one."

  Kelric rolled it between his fingers, then let it float away on the wind.

  "Don't look so depressed," Hayl said good-naturedly. "Everyone gets gray hair."

  "Come on." Kelric stood up "Let's go."

  As they ran, taking a path down to the lakes, Kelric made a listless attempt to reach Bolt. The node remained silent, as it had since Savina's death. It didn't matter; he knew what was happening. His meds were no longer performing the cellular repairs needed to retard his aging. The trauma of Savina's death had sent his only partially healed biomech web into shock, and his grief, combined with his life at Varz, only sewed to exacerbate his condition. That the primitive state of Coban medicine left him with a limp—that he could live with. But having Varz take a century off his life was another matter altogether.

  When they returned to the Calanya, the common rooms were filling up, as Calani trickled out from their suites looking for food, conversation, or Quis. While the Taks sat down at a table to eat, Kelric continued across the room with Hayl.

  A Second Level named Jev intercepted them. "Some of us are having Tanghi in Orttal's suite," he said. "We wondered if the two of you would like to join us."

  Kelric almost declined. Then he saw the anticipation on Hayl's face. So instead he said, "Thanks. We'll be over as soon as we clean up."

  As he and Hayl continued on to their suites, Hayl smiled. "Maybe we won't be so much like Outsiders here anymore."

  "Maybe not," Kelric said.

  "Sevtar—"

  "Yes?"

  "It might help if—well—they might like us better if you were friendlier."

  Kelric squinted at him. "Sorry. I'll try."

  Inside his suite, he ,bathed and dressed. As he pulled on his shirt, his wrist guard twisted and he winced. Neither of his guards fit properly and both irritated his skin, but to get them fixed meant going to Avtac. And he had no intention of being put in the humiliating position of having to ask her for anything.

  Rummaging through his bureau, he found an old cloth. He ripped off a strip and worked it under his guard to protect his skin from the metal. Then he left his suite.

  Orttal answered when Kelric tapped at his screen. He was the higher ranked of the two Third Levels at Varz, yet he bowed as if he were an Outsider compared to his Fifth Level guest. In the living room, Kelric saw Hayl sitting on a divan talking to Mox, a First Level who moved with an agility that made him look ready to burst into somersaults.

  "It's a matter of timing," Mox was saying. He juggled three Quis dice, then handed them to Hayl. "Go ahead. Try it."

  When Kelric entered, all conversation stopped. Orttal ushered him to a Quis table, giving him the position of honor by the window, across from the Second Level Jev. Everyone was watching him except Hayl, who kept trying to juggle Mox's dice.

  The gems clattered to the floor. "Pah," Hayl muttered.

  Mox laughed and scooped up the dice. "Try with two first."

  Conversation begin to flow again. The others tossed sentences back and forth with an ease that fascinated Kelric, who had never mastered the art of talking to people he didn't know well. Mox's energy and Jev's quiet confidence impressed him, but it was Orttal who commanded attention. A husky man with gray-streaked hair, the Third Level reminded Kelric of the contained power in a starship engine.

  Jev was speaking. "You have to admit, Orttal, refusing to play Quis in order to make a point about Modernism is extreme."

  Hayl stared at Orttal. "You're a Modernist?"

  "Don't get him started," Mox warned.

  Jev smiled. "He doesn't foam at the mouth, Mox."

  "I just don't see why he joined a Calanya, that's all." Mox frowned at Orttal. "If you thought it was all so repressive you should have stayed Outside."

  "People change," Orttal said. "The Oath, however, is for life."

  "Why would you want to leave?" Hayl asked. "What more could you want than what we have here?"

  "Just the freedom to control my life, that's all," Orttal said. "Look at the price we pay to use our intellects; submission to an Oath that binds us like chains."

  "You don't need to read or write," Mox said. "You have Quis."

  Orttal leaned toward him. "As usual, you miss my entire point."

  "I thought Modernism was illegal," Hayl said.

  "Why would it be illegal?" Jev asked.

  "Because," Hayl said. "It isn't—I don't know. It's immoral."

  "What's immoral about parity?" Orttal demanded.

  "Modernists tear down people's values," Hayl said. "Like trying to convince kasi not to wear bands or Calani not to take Oaths Modernists are frustrated because they can't be Calani and no woman wants them as her kasi."

  Orttal raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

  Hayl looked at the kasi inscriptions on Orttal's Calanya guards and reddened. "Well, I guess not all of them. But it's still wrong. Women and men are different. There's a natural way of things. You can't change it."

  "Brainwashed," Orttal said.

  "I am not," Hayl said.

  Mox grinned at the boy. "How'd you like to have a Calanya? Ten female Akasi all to yourself."

  "You don't have to be rude," Hayl said.

  Mox laughed. "Avtac must love him."

  "What Avtac loves," Orttal said, "is controlling people."

  Mox smiled. "You ought to hear what she says about Modernists.
"

  Orttal scowled. "I have."

  Jev spoke. "She can't be that hostile toward you, Orttal considering how much she paid for your contract."

  The Third Level made a frustrated noise. "I'm a human being. Not a commodity."

  "You're just talking into the wind," Mox said. "You've been a Calani all your life. How could you live on the Outside? It's easy to complain when you don't have to give this up."

  "You haven't a clue what I'm talking about," Orttal said. "Tell me, what would you do if you were an Estate Manager?"

  Mox grinned. "I'd get me a slew of gorgeous women Akasi and spend the rest of my days juggling."

  "Seriously, Mox."

  "Why would I want to manage an Estate? It would give me a headache."

  Orttal glanced at Jev. "What about you?"

  "I don't know," Jev said. "A Calani is all I've ever wanted to be."

  "I think I could do a good job," Orttal said. "But that doesn't matter, does it? None of us will ever get the chance to manage anything."

  "You wouldn't be happy if you did," Hayl said. "It's a woman's job. You can't change biology."

  Orttal threw up his hands. "You are impossible"

  Hayl turned red. "Why? Because I'm happy being what I am? I don't hate women."

  "Neither do I," Orttal said. "What I hate is being told I'm inferior because I'm a man."

  "If men were like women," Hayl said, "there would be men Managers. But there aren't. Because of biology."

  Orttal scowled. "I'll tell you how biology comes into it. Patterns of reproductive dominance permeate our social structure."

  Hayl blinked. "What?"

  "He said women control sex," Mox said.

  Hayl reddened. "Is that all you think about?"

  "Why shouldn't he?" Orttal demanded. "I'll tell you why. Because we have something women want, something they can only get from us, and they don't like that. The more control we have over our own sexuality the more it threatens the Avtacs of Coba."