The Last Hawk

by Catherine Asaro

  "Basically this." Chankah swirled her rum. "If a time ever came when Rashiva deemed it safe, she could take Sevtar into her Calanya. If he's ever pardoned, his Oath to Haka becomes void and he returns to Dahl."

  Jahlt scowled. "Deha actually signed that?"

  "I have an original of the document."

  It made no sense to Jahlt. Deha knew the Ministry would deny such a pardon Yet even so she gave her own Akasi to Haka. Why?

  Since Kelric's entry into the Calanya, Haka's power in the Quis had surged more than could be accounted for by the usual fluctuations among Estates. Even more serious, an unpredictable factor had entered the Haka Quis, an influence like none Jahlt had seen before, as if it evolved independent of known constraints—which made it all the more dangerous. Kelric? He had been in the Haka Calanya only a short time. If he had already made such a marked difference, who knew what heights his dice might reach?

  It was unacceptable, totally unacceptable that Haka should gain such an advantage.

  Jahlt silently swore. Oh yes, Deha had known exactly what she was doing. The late Dahl Manager had outplayed them all.

  "So." The Minister set down her rum. "It is time, Chankah, that we consider how to solve this problem Deha left us."

  Columns pressed in on him. Gray columns. He would never escape, never find his way our, never be free, never touch another human being . . .

  Kelric opened his eyes to see the exotic furnishings of an unfamiliar room. As his nightmare—driven surge of adrenaline calmed, he realized he was on a sofa with a plush blanket laid over his body. Across the room, Rashiva stood looking out a window, her body silhouetted against the dawn. She was wearing day clothes, trousers and a jacket, both made with soft brocade in amber hues.

  Confused, Kelric rubbed his eyes. The last he remembered, his escort had brought him to Rashiva's personal suite the previous night. They hadn't told him why. He must have fallen asleep while waiting for her. As he sat up, rustling the blanket, Rashiva turned.

  "Sevtar." She spoke awkwardly. "My greetings."

  Kelric pushed his hand through his tousled curls. "My greetings." After an uncomfortable silence, he said, "Did I sleep here all night?"

  "Yes. You seemed so tired last night. I didn't want to disturb you."

  "Why did you want to see me?"

  "I had thought we might dine together." She came over and sat stiffly on the other end of the sofa. "So that we might start over. A Manager and a Calani should not—have antagonism. It doesn't do well for the Estate."

  This didn't fit his negative picture of her. He wasn't sure about any of his impressions anymore, though. Since he had come to the Calanya, living a normal life, interacting with others, eating well and getting fresh air, he had begun to feel as if he were recovering from a long illness. And she was right; their stilted relationship was affecting their Quis.

  He spoke carefully. "Perhaps we could start over."

  A shy smile dawned on her face. "Well. Good." She stood up. "When I get back, shall we try with dinner again?"

  "All right." He paused. "Where are you going?"

  She fastened her jacket, winding the silk ties around hooks. "To see Zecha Haka. Then to Viasa for a few days."

  Zecha. The name hit like ice water. Kelric stood up, rolling his stiff shoulders. "Would you call my escort?"

  She stopped tying her jacket. "Is something wrong?"

  "No." He went to the door. "I would like to return to the Calanya."

  "Is it the prison? Zecha told me it would bother you to be reminded of it."

  Kelric wondered how he could have conceived, even for a moment, that he might want to become closer to this woman. "How can you live with yourself?"

  "Live with myself? I don't understand."

  He just looked at her If she felt what they had done with him was justified, he had nothing to say.

  But something was wrong. He had an odd sense about Rashiva, like the shifting of an optical illusion. Suddenly she wasn't the hardened seductress playing with him after subjecting him to a year of painful solitude. Instead, she just seemed young and puzzled, a good Manager but inexperienced compared to someone like Deha Dahl.

  "Sevtar?" She was still watching him. "Your face changes so fast sometimes, it's hard to follow."

  He spoke quietly. "You don't have any idea what Zecha does down there, do you?"

  "It is natural you resent her Hate her even She was your jailor, after all."

  "You see only what she wants you to see."

  Rashiva stiffened. "Do you suggest that you, my Akasi,know more about what goes on in Haka than I?"

  Kelric wanted to block out his memories of the prison. Nor did he think it likely Rashiva would listen to a convicted killer with a supposed history of mental instability over a high-ranking figure like Zecha, particularly if believing him meant Rashiva had to admit she had been duped.

  But he had opened a dam and it refused to close. Although he spoke calmly, the words flooded out. "We worked double, even triple shifts in the quarry. No breaks, no helmets, no goggles, no scarves, no nothing. We weren't even allowed a drink of water. Guards had free rein to beat prisoners. Big convicts abused smaller ones, physically and sexually. Anyone who complained was punished."

  "I've been to the compounds. I know what you describe doesn't happen."

  He wondered if he would ever be able to speak of his time in solitary. "You live in a world where Quis dice are made from diamonds. It blinds you to Zecha's world."

  She just looked at him. As the moment stretched out, he began to regret even mentioning the prison.

  When she finally spoke, all she said was, "I'll use the smelter's door."

  Kelric walked alone through the Calanya parks. The late-afternoon sky made a wash of blue and shadows dappled under the trees, but the day's tranquility was lost on him. In the three days since his talk with Rashiva, memories of the prison had plagued his thoughts and dreams.

  Sand rustled behind him and he turned to see Captain Khaaj. Her presence jarred. Technically he was still an inmate, which meant he had guards assigned to him at all times. But usually they were so discreet he barely noticed them.

  "I'm sorry to disturb you," Khaaj said. "But it's important."

  Kelric waited. His year in solitary had reinforced his tendency toward reticence, and his Calanya Oath made his silences acceptable and expected.

  "Have you seen Manager Haka since you dined at her suite?" Khaaj asked.

  He shook his head no.

  "I brought the Speaker with me" Khaaj said "Will you talk to her?"

  He considered. then nodded yes.

  Ekoe Haka, Speaker for the Haka Calanya, was waiting in the main common room. Khaaj escorted Ekoe and Kelric to the Alcove of Words a small room set apart from the common rooms. She stopped outside leaving them in privacy as they sat opposite each other at the alcove's Quis table.

  Ekoe spoke the formal words. "Manager Haka permits me to be your voice in times of crisis, when-it is vital your words be known to Outsiders. Will you Speak to me?"

  "Yes," Kelric said.

  "You were the last person to see Manager Haka " Ekoe said. "Do you know where she is?"

  Last person? "She said she was going to Viasa."

  Ekoe shook her head. "A windrider came in from Viasa today. They wanted to know what happened. She never showed up. She also had a meeting with Warden Haka and she never showed up for that. No one has seen her for three days."

  Kelric thought back to his conversation with Rashiva. "Just before she left for her meeting, she said something about a smelter's door."

  "Smelter? What do you mean?"

  "The back door," Khaaj blurted out.

  Ekoe turned to the captain, who was supposed to be out of earshot, and raised her eyebrows.

  Khaaj reddened. "Forgive my interruption. But Manager Haka says she's going in the smelter s door when she plans to use a back entrance. It's because smelters deliver their ingots to the back of an ore shop."

 
; Suddenly it became clear for Kelric. He didn't want to believe it, but the pattern refused denial.

  "The back entrance of what?" Ekoe asked.

  "Compound Four," Kelric said.

  Ekoe stared at him. "The prison?"

  "Yes." He swallowed. "She's sent herself to prison."

  The only sound in the common room came from the click of dice. Kelric paced past the table where Saje and the others sat playing Quis. He wished someone would laugh. Or yell. Anything to break the evening's tension.

  The fourth time he crossed the room, Saje came over to him. "Why don't you sit with us for a while?"

  "No."

  "Rashiva will be fine." .

  Kelric scowled. "I'm not worried about Rashiva."

  "Of course not." Saje drew him over to the table. "Play Quis. It will calm you."

  "I am calm."

  "Of course." Saje nudged him down into the cushions.

  Kelric tried to concentrate on the session. Somber dice predominated: ebony octagons, purple balls, cobalt blocks. It looked like a study of relations between Varz and Karn. When his turn came, he pushed his Ixpar die against a dome Raaj used to denote the Varz Successor.

  Raaj glanced at him with an expression close to hatred. Then he played a black onyx die on top of Kelric's piece. As the game progressed the patterns became more and more muddled, disintegrating into a morass of hostility. Had it been an actual battle, deaths would have littered the field.

  Finally Saje rose stiffly to his feet. "I'm afraid I tire more easily than you young people." He turned to Kelric. "Will you assist me?"

  Kelric stood up, relieved to escape the session, and put out his arm. Saje leaned on him, limping as they crossed the common room. The moment they were within Saje's suite, he herded Kelric to an alcove. "Please be seated," he said, easing himself down among several cushions.

  Kelric dropped down to sit against the wall with his legs stretched in front of him. "I thought you were tired."

  Saje scowled at him. "You must learn better control over your dice. Jumbled schemes, conflict between you and Raaj, patterns of Rashiva everywhere—it was a mess."

  "My mind wasn't in it."

  "You should never have Spoken to Ekoe this afternoon. It disrupted the Quis."

  "I had to talk to her. As for Raaj.—" Kelric shrugged. "The conflict is always there. He just plain doesn't like me."

  Sage sighed. "I must admit, it is hard to believe you and he are so close in age. You seem much more mature."

  At thirty-six, Kelric knew he had sixteen years on Raaj. But rather than trying to explain molecular cell repair, all he said was, "I am older. My people age more slowly than yours."

  "You are fortunate." Saje rubbed his legs. "I age more every day. I should take myself to bed."

  After helping Saje to his room, Kelric returned to his own suite. But he couldn't sleep. At Night's Midhour, he went back into the common room and sat at a table playing solitaire. When he heard footsteps, he turned, looking for Khaaj—but it was only Raaj, coming through an archway across the room. The youth saw him and stopped, standing like the statue of an ancient prince, tall and unsmiling Then he left.

  The doors of the common room suddenly swung open and Khaaj strode into the room. "She's here," the captain said.

  Kelric jumped to his feet. As soon as he stepped outside, his guards closed around him and they headed for Rashiva's suite. He found her seated on a sofa in her living room, wincing while a doctor treated a bruise on her face. She wore a ripped gray uniform with the Compound Four label stitched into the arm.

  Kelric crossed to her, started to speak, then remembered the others in the room and scowled.

  "Doctor," Rashiva said.

  The doctor straightened up. "I'll check on you later, ma' am " Then she and the others left.

  When she and Kelric were alone, Rashiva drew him down on the sofa "Don't frown so."

  He wanted to shake her. "Are you insane? What were you doing down there?"

  "You sound like my CityGuard chief." Rashiva rubbed her temple. "She almost had heart failure when I told her to give me a fake name and send me to prison."

  "She should have told someone where you were."

  "I ordered her not to. I didn't want to risk warning the prison authorities."

  He looked at the bruise on her face. "Who hit you?"

  Rashiva winced. "That one is from the Compound Four women's warden."

  "Didn't she recognize you?"

  "Only a few of the prison staff know me in person." Dryly she added, "One guard did tell me I looked like Rashiva Haka." She pushed back her disarrayed hair, which was unbraided and tangled. "Torv Haka knows me by sight. I had intended to find him when I left the quarry in the evening, so I could get out."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "He was gone. A prisoner knifed him and he's in the Med House."

  So someone had finally gotten Torv. Kelric felt little sympathy for the brutal warden. "Couldn't you tell anyone else?"

  "I did." She spread her hands. "Apparently I'm not the first prisoner to claim she's me. So after my two shifts in the quarry I got to see Compound Four firsthand."

  He remembered the women's crew, could imagine all too well how they responded to Rashiva. Beautiful and vulnerable, with no street knowledge at all, she would have been in an even worse position than Ched in the men's Compound. He discovered that the thought dismayed him.

  Kelric lifted a tangle of her hair, wondering who had undone her braid. He saw more bruises on her neck and the part of her shoulder visible through the tear in her uniform.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  She stared down at her hands. "I am—fine."

  He felt her emotions roiling: anger, shame, pain. He also felt the lock she put on them and knew she would never speak of the experience.

  Rashiva looked up at him. "It didn't take me long to find out no one had seen you for a long time. After my people got me out of the compound, I demanded to see where you had been. Khaaj finally found a guard who knew." Her voice caught. "Sevtar—so long—in that tomb—"

  Don't ask me to remember, he thought. Don't ask.

  She reached forward and switched on a corn in the table. A sleepy voice floated into the air. "Nida here."

  "Nida, this is Manager Haka. I want you to begin preparations for an Estate Tribunal."

  The voice snapped into alertness. "A Tribunal, ma'am?"

  "Yes. Notify Warden Haka." In a quiet voice, Rashiva said, "She stands accused."

  Although it was almost dawn when Kelric returned to the Calanya, he found Raaj waiting. The First Level looked as if he hadn't slept the entire night. He strode over to Kelric. "Captain Khaaj said Rashiva is back."

  As Kelric nodded, a few pieces of a puzzle fell into place. No wonder Raaj resented him. The Hakaborn prince loved Rashiva.

  "Is she hurt?" Raaj asked.

  "Some bruises." As fast as it had coalesced, the puzzle fragmented. Hadn't Saje told him Raaj was someone's kasi? That wouldn't necessarily stop him from loving the Manager, particularly considering how much attention she paid to him, but it was odd he would be this blatant about it.

  His sister Of course. Rashiva was his sister. He should have seen it before. They looked so natural together.

  But then, why did Raaj's wife never visit him?

  The puzzle suddenly snapped together. Kelric looked at Raaj's armbands and saw the symbols which, had he ever let himself notice before, he would have recognized as identical to his own. Not a kasi. Akasi.

  "Sevtar," Raaj said. "Why do you stare at me this way?"

  Kelric just kept looking at him. Then he walked past the Haka born prince and kept going, out into the parks and the predawn darkness. When a gazebo appeared in front of him, he went in and sat on a bench.

  Sometime later Saje came to sit with him "Raaj is in my suite He thinks you only realized this morning that he is also Rashiva's husband."

  "He's right." Kelric stared out at the darkness. So mu
ch made sense now. "This shouldn't have happened."

  Saje sighed. "So goes the problem of all ages."

  Kelric glanced at him. "What problem?"

  "Man has always yielded to woman's nature." Saje nodded. "Woman is strength and man is passion. He sees with his heart and she with her mind. Woman leads, protects, innovates, builds, creates life. Man fathers children. So a powerful woman will gather her mates around her. And so the men she chooses must learn to deal with it."

  Kelric snorted. "You actually believe all that?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "It is what I have seen all my life." Saje paused. "The young now, they talk of a new way for woman and man. Perhaps they will find it. But I think they try to change a fundamental nature of that which cannot be altered." He watched Kelric's face. "In time you will come to terms with your life here."

  "That isn't the problem, Saje. I can accept the Calanya. Hell, I like it, living like a king and playing Quis all day."

  But sharing Rashiva was a different story. Each time he began to think he might want to know her better, something happened that made it impossible.

  All he said was, "Raaj loves her. Having me here is killing him."

  Saje exhaled. "Yes. It is."

  Kelric looked out at the line of dawn on the horizon. The barriers between him and Rashiva were wider than he knew how to cross.

  In the Haka Tribunal Hall, the Elder Judge stood behind the high bench. "The accused shall rise."

  Zecha stood up within the Square of Decision. Tall and unflinching, she faced her accusers. She would show no weakness, never, no matter how many betrayals they committed against her. And the betrayals had been many. Witnesses from her staff had come forward, their words halting at first, full of fear, then condemning with more force. But more damning than a thousand traitors had been the Calanya Speaker as she gave Sevtar's statement, first of the compound, then of his time in solitude. Zecha could still see the horror on the judges' faces, still see Rashiva sitting with her head in her hands.

  Her rage flared. Did they expect a prison to be pretty? For years she had faced what the rest of Coba wanted to forget. For years she had dealt with the ugliness the world dredged up from its sewers. The constant influx of thoughts from the basest element of the Twelve Estates had forced her to barrier her mind, condemning her to loneliness. Why? So the rest of them could live in blissful ignorance. This was her reward.