Scytale took the young woman's arm, urged her gently to her feet, shifted his own appearance before she looked at him. She came erect, focused on him.
'What is it, Farok?' she asked.
'My son is tired and must rest,' Scytale said. 'Come. We'll go out the back way.'
'We had such a nice talk,' she said. 'I think I've convinced him to get Tleilaxu eyes. It'd make a man of him again.'
'Haven't I said it many times?' Scytale asked, urging her into a rear chamber.
His voice, he noted with pride, matched his features precisely. It unmistakably was the voice of the old Fremen, who certainly was dead by this time.
Scytale sighed. It had been done with sympathy, he told himself, and the victims certainly had known their peril. Now, the young woman would have to be given her chance.
= = = = = =
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.
It was going to be a bad session, this meeting of the Imperial Council, Alia realized. She sensed contention gathering force, storing up energy - the way Irulan refused to look at Chani, Stilgar's nervous shuffling of papers, the scowls Paul directed at Korba the Qizara.
She seated herself at the end of the golden council table so she could look out the balcony windows at the dusty light of the afternoon.
Korba, interrupted by her entrance, went on with something he'd been saying to Paul. 'What I mean, m'Lord, is that there aren't as many gods as once there were.'
Alia laughed, throwing her head back. The movement dropped the black hood of her aba robe. Her features lay exposed - blue-in-blue 'spice eyes,' her mother's oval face beneath a cap of bronze hair, small nose, mouth wide and generous.
Korba's cheeks went almost the color of his orange robe. He glared at Alia, an angry gnome, bald and fuming.
'Do you know what's being said about your brother?' he demanded.
'I know what's being said about your Qizarate,' Alia countered. 'You're not divines, you're god's spies.'
Korba glanced at Paul for support, said: 'We are sent by the writ of Muad'dib, that He shall know the truth of His people and they shall know the truth of Him.'
'Spies,' Alia said.
Korba pursed his lips in injured silence.
Paul looked at his sister, wondering why she provoked Korba. Abruptly, he saw that Alia had passed into womanhood, beautiful with the first blazing innocence of youth. He found himself surprised that he hadn't noticed it until this moment. She was fifteen - almost sixteen, a Reverend Mother without motherhood, virgin priestess, object of fearful veneration for the superstitious masses - Alia of the Knife.
'This is not the time or place for your sister's levity,' Irulan said.
Paul ignored her, nodded to Korba. 'The square's full of pilgrims. Go out and lead their prayer.'
'But they expect you, m'Lord,' Korba said.
'Put on your turban,' Paul said. 'They'll never know at this distance.'
Irulan smothered irritation at being ignored, watched Korba arise to obey. She'd had the sudden disquieting thought that Edric might not hide her actions from Alia. What do we really know of the sister? she wondered.
Chani, hands tightly clasped in her lap, glanced across the table at Stilgar, her uncle, Paul's Minister of State. Did the old Fremen Naib ever long for the simpler life of his desert sietch? she wondered. Stilgar's black hair, she noted, had begun to gray at the edges, but his eyes beneath heavy brows remained far-seeing. It was the eagle stare of the wild, and his beard still carried the catchtube indentation of life in a stillsuit.
Made nervous by Chani's attention, Stilgar looked around the Council Chamber. His gaze fell on the balcony window and Korba standing outside. Korba raised outstretched arms for the benediction and a trick of the afternoon sun cast a red halo onto the window behind him. For a moment, Stilgar saw the Court Qizara as a figure crucified on a fiery wheel. Korba lowered his arms, destroyed the illusion, but Stilgar remained shaken by it. His thoughts went in angry frustration to the fawning supplicants waiting in the Audience Hall, and to the hateful pomp which surrounded Muad'dib's throne.
Convening with the Emperor, one hoped for a fault in him, to find mistakes, Stilgar thought. He felt this might be sacrilege, but wanted it anyway.
Distant crowd murmuring entered the chamber as Korba returned. The balcony door thumped into its seals behind him, shutting off the sound.
Paul's gaze followed the Qizara. Korba took his seat at Paul's left, dark features composed, eyes glazed by fanaticism. He'd enjoyed that moment of religious power.
'The spirit presence has been invoked,' he said.
'Thank the lord for that,' Alia said.
Korba's lips went white.
Again, Paul studied his sister, wondered at her motives. Her innocence masked deception, he told himself. She'd come out of the same Bene Gesserit breeding program as he had. What had the kwisatz haderach genetics produced in her? There was always that mysterious difference: she'd been an embryo in the womb when her mother had survived the raw melange poison. Mother and unborn daughter had become Reverend Mothers simultaneously. But simultaneity didn't carry identity.
Of the experience, Alia said that in one terrifying instant she had awakened to consciousness, her memory absorbing the uncounted other-lives which her mother was assimilating.
'I became my mother and all the others,' she said. 'I was unformed, unborn, but I became an old woman then and there.'
Sensing his thoughts on her, Alia smiled at Paul. His expression softened. How could anyone react to Korba with other than cynical humor? he asked himself. What is more ridiculous than a Death Commando transformed into a priest?
Stilgar tapped his papers, 'if my liege permits,' he said. 'These are matters urgent and dire.'
'The Tupile Treaty?' Paul asked.
'The Guild maintains that we must sign this treaty without knowing the precise location of the Tupile Entente,' Stilgar said. 'They've some support from Landsraad delegates.'
'What pressures have you brought to bear?' Irulan asked.
'Those pressures which my Emperor has designated for this enterprise,' Stilgar said. The stiff formality of his reply contained all his disapproval of the Princess Consort.
'My Lord and husband,' Irulan said, turning to Paul, forcing him to acknowledge her.
Emphasizing the titular difference in front of Chani, Paul thought, is a weakness. In such moments, he shared Stiliar's dislike for Irulan, but sympathy tempered his emotions. What was Irulan but a Bene Gesserit pawn?
'Yes?' Paul said.
Irulan stared at him. 'If you withheld their melange...'
Chani shook her head in dissent.
'We tread with caution,' Paul said. 'Tupile remains the place of sanctuary for defeated Great Houses. It symbolizes a last resort, a final place of safety for all our subjects. Exposing the sanctuary makes it vulnerable.'
'If they can hide people they can hide other things,' Stilgar rumbled. 'An army, perhaps, or the beginnings of melange culture which -'
'You don't back people into a corner,' Alia said. 'Not if you want them to remain peaceful.' Ruefully, she saw that she'd been drawn into the contention which she'd foreseen.
'So we've spent ten years of negotiation for nothing,' Irulan said.
