The Last Hawk

by Catherine Asaro

  Ixpar picked up the picture. It was a drawing of herself as a child, done years ago by an artist from Shazorla. An inscription on the back read. In honor of my Successor, Ixpar Karn. Signed Jahlt Karn, Fifty-third Year of the Tenth Century of the Modern Age.

  Ixpar swallowed, struggling against a hotness in her eyes. She set the picture down by the model of a recording machine. Then she realized the recorder wasn't a model. She pressed its switch—and Jahlt's voice floated into the air:

  "If you are listening to this, Ixpar, you must now be Minister. Yours is a unique destiny: to lead our people during the era when we must learn to coexist with those who came to us from the stars."

  "In these two halls you will find an aid to that destiny: the Memory of Karn. Beyond the Memory is a chamber with no apparent exit. It is actually the end of an entry designed by an ancient Chieftain to test her successor, Karn Teotec. Ministers in the Old Age used the entry to challenge the worthiness of a successor. In the drawer of this stand, you will find diagrams that describe its various rooms. I advise against trying the actual entry; the machinery is ancient and may fail."

  So, Ixpar thought. Jahlt had indeed never meant for her to try the entry. These halls must have another entrance, one Jahlt had apparently not yet shown Solan. Or perhaps she had feared to reveal too much, lest Solan guess the existence of the Memory. How long had it been since anyone used the secret entry? Decades? Centuries?

  Jahlt's voice continued. "Most people think of the Minister as she who makes laws. But two parts exist to our office, Ixpar, and the setting down of law is, to my mind, only our secondary function. We are first the primary builders of the Quis. The wealth of the Memory looks staggering, but its true value lies in its distillation of all that has formed our world. Learn it well. It will give you an understanding of the Quis shared by no other Manager."

  Jahlt's voice softened. "If my Akasi Mentar outlives me, please give him the letter I have left in the drawer. When his time comes, I ask you to place his armbands and guards here with a plaque to honor his name."

  And then: "You mean as much to me as a daughter, Ixpar. If the pattern of our lives continues after death, my love is with you even now."

  Ixpar bent her head as it that gesture could fend off the upwelling in her eyes. A drop of water fell on the recorder, then another, and another. The tears flowed with gathering force, her long pent—up grief finally given outlet.

  After a time she straightened up and wiped her face. Softly she said, "Good—bye, Jahlt. Rest well."

  She found the letter for Mentar next to a scroll with diagrams of the secret entry, along with interpretations of the Quis rooms by various Ministers, some similar to her own thoughts on the puzzle. As she replaced the scroll, a sparkle in the drawer caught her attention. She reached for it and pulled out a medallion. When she held it up, it dangled in the torchlight by its gold chain, a platinum triangle with an exploding star inscribed on it. She had seen it once before, the day the Imperialate delegation presented it to Jahlt as a gift.

  Ixpar set down the medallion and looked around. At the end of the room she found a door that opened onto a spiral staircase. She climbed the stairs up and around, level after level, until she reached a landing with engravings on its wall. When she pressed in the sequence given by the ancient rhyme, a door opened in the stone.

  Ixpar walked out into the private suite of her predecessor.

  29

  Toppled Queen's Spectrum

  Starlight shone through the windows, pouring across Sevtar. Savina lay next to him, tracing a finger along his biceps.

  "Hmmm." He stirred. "Thought you were asleep . . ."

  "I'm thinking. About our baby. We need a name for her."

  He opened his eyes. "How about Roca? It's my mother's name."

  "Rohka Miesa." She tilted her head. "It has a good sound."

  His eyes closed. "That it does."

  "Sevtar?"

  "Hmmm?"

  "What was she like? Your mother, I mean."

  "You look like her. Except she's much taller." He opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at her. "Actually, you look more like the native Lyshrioli girls on my father's world."

  "Lyshriol." She rolled the word on her tongue. "A pretty name."

  "For a pretty world." Rolling onto his side, he pushed up on his elbow, wide awake now. "I want to take you there."

  That threw her like a tossed dice cube. "Take me off Coba?"

  "Don't you ever wonder what's beyond your world?"

  "It is forbidden to us."

  "Not to me. And you are my Wife."

  She tried to imagine him as a Jagernaut, but the image was too foreign. He was Calani. Akasi.

  Yet he had the mark of a warrior. When she touched the faint scar that cut across his shoulder, he said, "It's from a laser carbine."

  "Lai Zher? Is that a place?"

  "A gun." He paused. "I could have had the scar removed, but doing that seemed false somehow. As if I were hiding the scars inside."

  She wished she knew how to soothe away whatever nightmares haunted him. A Calani shouldn't have such memories to darken his life.

  Sevtar sat up, pressing his palms against his temples, as he did when his Kyle headaches came. Then he got up and left the room, pulling on his robe as he went. Puzzled, Savina threw on her own robe and followed. She found him standing by a window in her den.

  "Sevtar." She went over to him. "What is it?"

  "I'm not what you think I am."

  "You are the Miesa Fourth." Her voice gentled. "My Akasi."

  "You only see what you understand, Savina. The darker side won't go away just because I play Quis now instead of killing."

  "That doesn't negate the side I see." Silently she thought, I wish I knew how to ease your memories.

  He touched her cheek. "You ease them more than you know."

  Anthoni Karn strode across the courtyard with Tal Karn, his hair tossing in the autumn wind. It was hard to believe a full season had already passed since the two of them won the coveted apprenticeships to the Ministry staff.

  "I've never seen Elder Solan this worried," Tal continued. "Minister Karn missed all of her appointments yesterday. No one can find her." She hurried with Anthoni up the wide steps of the Estate. "I'm sure the Elder knows something. She keeps going down to the catacombs."

  Anthoni slowed down as they entered the building. "I hope Minister Karn is all right."

  Tal snorted. "I'll bet you do."

  "Why do you say it like that?"

  "It's the way you fawn all over her, displaying yourself. Just look at the way you dress."

  Anthoni had given up discussing this with her. He acted and dressed like all the other aides. If Tal had a problem with the way he filled out his clothes, she could learn to deal with it. He had no intention of hiding himself in robes and Talha, like a Haka man.

  When they reached the junction of a hall that led to the suite of the late Jahlt Karn, Tal suddenly froze, staring down the cross hall. A ghostly figure was coalescing out of its shadows, as if the dead Minister had returned to possess the Estate. The "ghost" came nearer, resolving into Ixpar Karn. Gashes caked with blood covered her arms and dirt smudged her face.

  Anthoni bowed, followed by Tal. "Greetings, Minister Karn," he said.

  Ixpar pushed a straggle of hair from her eyes. "Have either of you seen Elder Solan?"

  "Yhee, ma'am," Tal said. "She's looking for you."

  "Go tell her I will meet her in my office." The Minister turned to Anthoni. "I'd like you to have a crew prepare the Minister's suite. I want to move in as soon as possible."

  "Right away," he said.

  As Anthoni and Tal strode off, they exchanged glances. So. There had been those who said Ixpar Karn would never truly be Minister until she could bring herself to live in the Ministry suite, which had previously belonged to her predecessor.

  Far out on the Miesa Plateau, the mineral flats baked under the sun. Hot springs released fumes into the late-af
ternoon haze and vapors blew across the ground in gritty streamers of yellow and purple. As the rider skimmed low over the flats, Avtac Varz stared out the window.

  In the seat next to her, Zecha sat watching the flats unroll beneath them "Ugly place," she commented.

  Avtac scowled. "That ugly place is making Bahvla rich" Her expression became more thoughtful. "However, the sulphur down there is cheap."

  Bones and bugs, Zecha thought. Why Avtac's sudden interest in chemicals? First it was potassium, then carbon, now sulphur. What was it about these substances that so fascinated Varz's formidible Manager?

  The cluster of Miesa aides stood in the sitting room outside Savina's bedroom, talking in whispers and trying not to stare at the Fourth Level pacing on the other side of the room. Kelric ignored them, too worried to care if they gawked His guards waited at their posts.

  The inner door of the room opened, framing Behz, the Miesa Senior Physician, in its archway. The elderly doctor regarded them all with her faded blue eyes, then beckoned to Kelric.

  Inside the darkened bedroom, he found Savina dozing under a mound of quilts. He sat on the bed and took her hand.

  "Sevtar?" she murmured.

  "How do you feel?"

  "Better." She opened her eyes. "Avtac will despise me."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "She will think me weak to be so sick from carrying a child."

  "What Avtac Varz thinks doesn't matter." He stroked her hair. "That you can have my child at all is a miracle."

  "Rashiva did."

  Kelric stiffened. How did. she know Rashiva's son was his?

  Savina curled her fingers around his hand. "She brought him to Council. Few people have ever seen you, so most don't realize the resemblance. And he has to stay on a special diet. Like yours." She closed her eyes. "Rashiva had trouble, but not like this."

  Kelric thought of the primitive state of Coban medicine and the room seemed to darken around him. "I want to get you a better doctor."

  "Behz is the best."

  "For Coba. yes, Behz is good. There are better elsewhere."

  Her eyes snapped open. "Go offworld?" She stiffened. "Your Rhon would take away my baby. They would say I am not good enough to be the mother of their grandchild."

  "Savina, no. My parents would love you." He lifted her into his arms. "Come home with me."

  She watched him with her large eyes "If you left Coba you would no longer be Sevtar."

  "I would love you no matter .what my name."

  "I couldn't bear it if you rejected your Oath." She touched the outline of his armbands under his shirt. "The highest love is that of a Manager for her Akasi."

  "I don't have to be Calani to love you."

  Softly she said, "I'm not sure I can say the reverse."

  He didn't want to believe it. "I could make you happy."

  "Your ISC would punish my people for making you stay here. They would occupy Coba. Take away our Restriction. Use our world. Disrupt the Quis."

  After living on Coba for twelve years, Kelric had found much about its culture he valued, just as he loved Savina and Quis. He no more wished to see Coba's unique civilization disrupted by ISC occupation than did her own people. He wasn't sure he wanted his old life back, with its vicious political intrigue and harsh realities.

  But these were extenuating circumstances. "I'm worried about the baby. And you"

  "I can't risk my world for the lives of two people." Tears glistened in her eyes. "Not even for my own child and myself."

  Rain drummed against Dahl Estate. The clock in Chankah's office chimed Morning's Second Hour, but still she sat at her desk absorbed in work. When a tap sounded at the door, she looked up with a start. She went to the door and found the doctor Dabbiv waiting outside, his face flushed from running. "What's wrong?" Chankah asked.

  "You've got to see—" He tugged her arm. "Come see."

  He hurried her to his lab, where a solitary lamp burned in one corner An odd device sat on a table there, a brass tube clamped to a mount that let the tube incline at an angle. When they reached the table, she saw a platform fastened below the tube, with a concave mirror under that. The setup reminded her of the lens toys hobbyists used to magnify insects and leaves. The toys were notoriously faulty, though with lens aberrations that gave blurred or false images.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "I'll show you." Dabbiv took a flask off the table. "This is a sample of the contaminated water you asked me to analyze."

  "The plant engineers say it's not contaminated. They couldn't find anything in it."

  Dabbiv waved the flask at her. "Nothing they could see." He dabbed water from the flask onto a square Quis die made from glass and set it from of her. "I've been working with an optician, minimizing lens aberrations." He handed-her a magnifying glass. "Try this one."

  Chankah peered through the glass at the water. A pink speck darted across her field of vision. "It moves too fast."

  Dabbiv took a vial of slow-syrup and let a drop fall into the water. "Now try."

  This time the speck drifted in a circle while a second one floated lazily into view. "There's something. It's hard to see."

  "That's because a single lens doesn't magnify enough." Dabbiv tapped his brass tube. "So I put Several lenses together, like in the toys skywatchers use to look at stars." He gestured with his hands. "You see, if you get the distances between lenses just right, the image from One forms an object for the next. It gives much better magnification."

  "But aren't the images terrible?"

  Dabbiv gave a wave of dismissal. "Lens toys make blurry images because glass bends the different colors in light by different amounts. But if your 'lens' is achromatic, that is, if it's really a series of lenses, you can compensate for the bending. It took me a long time to find the right shapes and the right glass. But I think I have it now. I call it a microscope." He set the Quis square on the platform below the tube and switched on a light in the mount. "Just look at it, Chankah."

  She squinted into the eyepiece. "I see a black cord."

  "A cord?" Dabbiv looked like a windrider that had just smacked into a cliff. "There shouldn't be a cord." Leaning over, he peered into the eyepiece. "Ah. So." He whisked a hair off the tube. "Now try."

  Chankah squinted into the eyepiece and saw a clump of pink blobs. "It's blurry."

  He touched the screw on the mount. "Use the fine-focus."

  She turned the screw—and the blobs resolved into a cluster of translucent oval bags with hairs waving about their edges. Little rods darted through the cluster.

  "Well, I'll be a Quis cube." Chankah looked up at him. "What are they?"

  Dabbiv grinned. "Some kind of animal. I think there's a whole universe of small animals to see." His success gratified Chankah. Once again he had proved wrong the many critics who insisted his ideas would never work.

  Kastora Karn was a tall woman with a wealth of mahogany hair she wore swept into a roll on her head. Ixpar had known her since they were children in the Cooperative. Although Kastora was older, in their childhood she had followed Ixpar's lead in everything, from sports to boys to school. Ixpar valued her loyalty, her hard work, her keen intellect, and her good sense. So when she became Minister, she appointed Kastora as her Senior Aide.

  Today they considered funding requests from Karn scholars. Kastora handed her a file. "These are from the science labs."

  Ixpar recognized most of the proposals. But at the back of the folder she found a surprise. "Bahr Karn wants research funds? I thought she was a professional gambler."

  Kastora chuckled. "With Bahr you never know. A few years ago she wanted to apply to the Calanya."

  "I remember. To say it offended Jahlt is an understatement." Ixpar scanned the proposal. " 'Quis Models of Elemental Structure.' What do you suppose she's doing?"

  Kastora shrugged. "Playing pattern games."

  "This idea she describes, a Quis chart for chemical elements I've heard something like it before. I can't
remember where."

  "Maybe she suggested it to Jahlt."

  "No . . ." Ixpar finally caught the memory, recalling it from a time when she had been half her current age.

  Periodic chart, Kelric had said. Atomic structure.

  Quis Wizard Bahr sat on the cobblestones in the market, her low table set up on the flagstones, her dice out and ready for challengers. She leaned against the wall of the building behind her, soaking up sunshine. Stalls stood everywhere in the plaza and lengths of metal balls clinked and clanked on their roofs. People thronged the square, come to trade or watch the street artists.

  A lyderharpist set up his stool by a nearby sausage stand and soon people were gathering to listen as he charmed lively notes from his handheld harp. Some of the listeners came to sit at Bahr's table and try their luck with a Quis Wizard. They were challengers in name only, but she let a few of them win anyway just to keep people coming back.

  Not such a bad day after all, Bahr decided. She hadn't felt like setting up at market this morning, but she couldn't spend every day working on pattern games in her suite. After a while she started talking to the dice. Besides, she had to eat. Quis was her living and as Wizard of the Karn Quis she lived as good as the living came. It was no coincidence the former Minister (the goddess rest Jahlt's cast-iron soul) often asked her to the Estate for Quis. Bahr grinned at the memory. Those had been some games.

  Her good mood dimmed. Too bad she threw it all to the wind, asking to apply to the Calanya. The look on Jahlt Karn's face had said, plain as dice, that a certain Bahr Karn overstepped the bounds of decency. After that, the Minister no longer sent her invitations for Quis.

  Pah. She had just wanted to play dice. Good dice. Outsider Quis was too easy, as boring as filling out census forms. Still, she couldn't help but smile as a daydream formed; Bahr wakes up with half-dressed Calani all around her: tall ones, small ones, dark ones, sunny ones, big muscled ones and lithe supple ones—