Brian Herbert - Paul of Dune

After greeting her guests, Irulan escorted them past a writing desk piled with notes. Fenring glanced curiously at one of the pages, but Irulan quickly directed him toward a dining table where a sumptuous luncheon had been set out. “Won’t you join me for a light repast? I have already summoned Marie, but as you can see this royal fortress is very large.”

“We are, hmm, quite anxious to see our dear daughter.” Fenring leaned forward to sniff at a sealed tureen, but no odors escaped. He glanced back at the desk, still interested in what Irulan had been doing. Was she writing another one of those damnable propaganda tracts?

Margot continued, “We were most disturbed to hear about the Sisterhood’s attempt to take over her training. We chose to send Marie here because we did not want her to be entirely indoctrinated in Bene Gesserit ways. But it seems even in the Imperial Court she could not entirely escape them. Is she safe here on Arrakis?”

The Princess slipped gracefully into a chair at the head of a long table covered in white linen and laid out with silver. “Although you and I are Bene Gesserits, Lady Margot, even we can admit that occasionally the Sisterhood oversteps its bounds. There is no longer a problem as far as your daughter’s schooling is concerned, because Muad’Dib has spoken.” At the memory, her lips quirked in a tight smile. “The Mother School made a grave error in offending him, and he is not likely to forget anytime soon.”

A servant unsealed the tureen to reveal a thick, dark potage. “Caladanian boar soup,” the Princess said. “My husband’s favorite.”

Though the visitors tasted their soup and made appropriate sounds of appreciation, Irulan did not sample hers. She said, “Even without Bene Gesserit supervision, questions remain about your daughter and the instruction she has already received. The child is showing certain unusual signs. How has she been trained?”

Fenring exchanged a quick glance with his wife and said, “Only… ahh, as required, as we saw fit. Her upbringing in Thalidei has not been especially pampered. She has received a broad foundation in numerous disciplines.” The Count ran a finger around the lip of an empty glass. “In our zeal to protect the child, I taught her what I know, as did my wife. And the Tleilaxu had some interesting… ahhh, seasoning for us to consider.”

Worried that some detail might have slipped, Margot looked at Irulan and asked, “What sort of unusual signs have you seen? Has Marie done anything wrong?”

“Not at all. She and Alia have become quite close in only a few short months. And Alia, as you are well aware, was born under extremely strange circumstances.”

“An Abomination,” Margot said, then quirked her lips in a smile. “Another overzealous Bene Gesserit label. Do you suggest Marie is also pre-born?”

Irulan shook her head. “No, but she seems every bit Alia’s match and equally as cunning. You have not been entirely candid with us from the beginning.”

“Our daughter is a special child,” Margot said.

The Count smiled. “Ah, um-m-m. It sounds to me like the two girls are quite suited to each other as playmates. We couldn’t have asked for better.”

Moments later, little Marie came running into Irulan’s private apartments. She wore a pink-and-white party dress with a lacy frill on the hem and white shoes that clicked on the floor as she ran. Her parents rose to their feet, and she went to the Count first and hugged him.

“Thank you for sending me to Arrakeen. I love it here,” Marie said to him. “Everyone treats me well, and I’ve been a good girl.”

“We’re pleased to hear that, darling.”

Your daughter is an interesting child, Count Fenring,” Paul said, as he led his visitor down an underground stairway. “She has remarkable genes,” Fenring answered, without elaborating further. “I am pleased you find the girl as exceptional as we do.”

Workers had found this old passage when they were excavating the citadel, deeper than the original foundation of the Arrakeen Residency, so well hidden that it had not been detected during the initial scan for Harkonnen traps long ago. Paul doubted Fenring knew of its existence, though the tunnel was incomparably older than the building above, and its existence led him to believe there might be other passages tangled beneath the ancient structure. The air here was clean and cool, the steps heavily worn from the passage of many feet in ancient times. Thousands and thousands of years ago.

Fenring followed several steps back, descending carefully in the dim light, looking around with his overlarge eyes. In the low yellow illumination from glowstrips recently applied to the sides of the steps, the narrow-faced man looked nocturnal, ever alert and wary.

On short notice that morning, Paul had summoned the Count, taking him beneath the eastern wing of the citadel — away from guards and eavesdroppers. “Do you doubt my ability to defend myself — even from someone like him?” Paul had asked the anxious Fedaykin, and they had withdrawn their objections. Nevertheless, where this man was concerned, Paul’s prescience was hopelessly unreliable.

Count Hasimir Fenring. Such a notorious, dangerous reputation he had, but Paul had always felt a faint echo of compassion for this person who had served Shaddam IV, sensing that perhaps he had more in common with Fenring than either of them realized.

“I know what you are, Count — what the Bene Gesserit wanted you to be. I sensed things about you from the moment I laid eyes on you in the Padishah Emperor’s presence. You are much like me.”

“Hm-m-m-m. And how is that?”

“Each of us is a failed Kwisatz Haderach — failed in the eyes of the Sisterhood, at least. They didn’t get what they wanted from you, and they cannot control me. I am not surprised they would be so fascinated with your daughter.”

“Ahh, who can understand the myriad breeding schemes of witches?”

“Who can understand the many things we must do?” Paul added.

After ending the Thorvald rebellion with emphatic violence, Paul had been forced to sterilize two more planets, completely eradicating their populations. Sterilization… worse even than what had happened on Salusa Secundus, worse than what Viscount Moritani had threatened to do on Grumman. Paul realized that he barely felt any guilt over what he had done.

Have I become so accustomed to causing death and destruction? At the thought, a cold wave passed through his chest.

He remembered killing Jamis in combat, the first life he had ever taken. He had been shaken but proud of his accomplishment, until his mother brought down a hammer of guilt on him. Well, now — how does it feel to be a killer?

He had grown too comfortable with the feeling. Muad’Dib could order the annihilation of worlds without a second thought, and no one would question him. Paul, the human, could never allow himself to forget that.

Because Count Fenring had also been groomed as a Kwisatz Haderach, also intended to be a pawn… maybe the two of them had a common basis for understanding that Paul could not experience with anyone else, not even with Chani.

Reaching the bottom of the stairway, Paul stood at the opening of a rock-lined tunnel. “I am not a god, Count Fenring, despite the mythology that has arisen around me.” He motioned to the left, where a side passageway was illuminated by glowglobes that bobbed with the slight disturbance in the air.