The Winds of Dune Read Free Page A

situation. The man knew that the twins had been born, that Chani had died in childbirth, that Paul had surrendered to his blindness and vanished into the sandy wastelands. But he was unaware of the many dire decisions Alia had made since then. He did not know that the Steersman Edric and Reverend Mother Mohiam had both been executed, along with Korba the Panegyrist. The envoy did not know that Shaddam’s daughter Irulan was being held in a death cell, her fate undecided.
    Alia chose to receive the man in an interior chamber with walls of thick plasmeld. Bright glowglobes flooded the room with garish yellow illumination, not unlike the lighting in an interrogation chamber. She had asked Duncan and Stilgar to sit on either side of her; the long table’s veneer of blue obsidian made its polished surface look like a window into the depths of a distant ocean.
    Stilgar growled, “We have not even announced formal plans forMuad’Dib’s funeral, and this lackey comes like a vulture drawn to fresh meat. Official Landsraad representatives haven’t arrived from Kaitain yet.”
    “It’s been a month.” Alia adjusted the sheathed crysknife that she always kept hanging on a thong around her neck. “And the Landsraad has never moved quickly.”
    “I don’t know why Muad’Dib bothered to keep them in the first place. We don’t need their meetings and memoranda.”
    “They are a vestige of the old government, Stilgar. The forms must be obeyed.” She herself hadn’t decided how much of a role, if any, she would let the Landsraad nobles have in her Regency. Paul had not actually tried to eliminate them, but he had paid them little attention. “The main question is—considering the travel times, and the fact that we did not dispatch any notice whatsoever to Salusa Secundus—how did their emissary get here so swiftly? Some spy must have rushed off within the first few days. How could Shaddam have already put a plan in place . . . if it is a plan?”
    Brow furrowed with thought, Duncan Idaho sat upright in his chair as if he had forgotten how to relax. The man’s dark curly hair and wide face had become so familiar to Alia, who remembered him with a double vision—the old Duncan from the memories she’d obtained from her mother, superimposed over Alia’s own experiences with the ghola named Hayt. His metal, artificial eyes—a jangling, discordant note on his otherwise human features—served to remind her of the new Duncan’s dual origin.
    The Tleilaxu had made their ghola into a Mentat, and now Duncan drew upon those cerebral abilities to offer a summation. “The conclusion is obvious: Someone in the exiled Corrino court—perhaps Count Hasimir Fenring—was
already prepared to act
on the assumption that the original assassination plot would succeed. Although the conspiracy failed, Paul Atreides is still gone. The Corrinos acted swiftly to fill the perceived power vacuum.”
    “Shaddam will try to snatch back his throne. We should have killed him here when we had him prisoner after the Battle of Arrakeen,” Stilgar said. “We must be ready when he makes his move.”
    Alia sniffed. “Maybe I’ll have the envoy take Irulan’s head back toher father.
That
message would never be misconstrued.” Even so, she knew that Paul would never have sanctioned Irulan’s execution, despite her clear, if peripheral, role in the conspiracy.
    “Such an act would have grave, far-reaching consequences,” Duncan warned.
    “You disagree?”
    Duncan raised his eyebrows, exposing more of the eerie eyes. “I did not say that.”
    “I would take satisfaction in throttling that fine Imperial neck,” Stilgar admitted. “Irulan has never been our friend, though she now insists she truly loved Muad’Dib. She may be saying that just to save her body’s water.”
    Alia shook her head. “In that she speaks the truth—Irulan reeks of it. She did love my brother. The question is whether to keep her as a tool whose worth has not yet