Alia took another step across the tabletop and kicked a plate with a half-eaten fish carcass at Marie. The girl ducked to one side, her hard gaze never wavering. Alia spotted the Emperor’s ornate knife near her brother’s plate. In a blur of motion, she grabbed the blade and jumped toward her opponent, slashing beneath the needlewhip, catching the girl on the wrist, severing tendons. “I can sting, too.”
Marie’s hand instantly became useless, and the deadly weapon dangled from the loops wrapped about her knuckles. With no more than a hiss of pain, Marie jumped off the table and pounced on the half-paralyzed Irulan, choosing any victim she could find.
But Alia was unleashed now. The voices in Other Memory howled at her like a bloodthirsty mob. She raised the jewel-handled knife and slammed it into the back of the little girl. The blow was true, and the Emperor’s sharp blade pierced Marie’s heart.
“Marie!” Fenring cried, turning away from his exit tunnel and bounding forward. “No, not my daughter!”
Alia stood up, leaving the Emperor’s blade firmly planted within the twitching body of the treacherous girl. “You were never my friend.”
Korba looked on in awe, still seated where he had slumped helplessly back into his chair, and just starting to recover from the paralytic gas. As far as Alia could tell, the Fremen had not lifted a finger during the brief but intense battle. “The knife,” he said in a slurred voice, his lips moving slightly. “St. Alia of the Knife.”
Caught in the swirl of events around her, Alia realized that she stood at the threshold of her own legend.
13
Who can love a monster? It is an easy thing when one allows love to interfere with reason.
Paul switched off his shield and strode over to the fallen body of Marie Fenring. Alia stared at the jewel-hiked knife protruding from her former playmate’s back, as if she could not believe what she had just done.
Chani stood with crysknife in hand, coiled for further violence and ready to protect Paul. “Stilgar, do you live?” she called.
Though he moved like a man half asleep, the naib said, “I live… The poison was temporary.”
Count Fenring had fallen to the floor on his knees and looked absolutely shattered. “Marie! Marie, my sweet little girl!” His shoulders hunched and shuddered as he lifted the dead child and cradled her. Behind him, an opening in the wall led down a sloped ramp and worn stairs into the dark tunnels of a secret labyrinth underground. His wife knelt next to him, also stricken. Both of them seemed to have abandoned their dream of escape.
A backwash of danger clamored in Paul’s mind, but in his prescient blind spot he could sense no details. Though he had always known the Count was devious, he had wanted to believe that he shared a bond with the other potential Kwisatz Haderach.
All along, though, Fenring’s deadly plot had been ticking like clockwork. He must have known it was a risky attempt, yet he had been willing to send his own daughter behind enemy lines and unleash her as a weapon, seeking to destroy not only Paul, but the Jihad. Had this man raised Marie from infancy with that sole purpose in mind? What kind of father could do that? He realized how Duke Leto might have reacted if the Harkonnens had actually killed Paul.
Lady Margot was white and rigid, as if she had discarded any attempt to maintain Bene Gesserit control over her emotions. Paul saw the agonized sorrow of a mother, but most of all he felt the sheer misery of Count Fenring. Raw, authentic emotion boiled up from him like a hot cloud.
Paul said, “You used a child as a pawn in an assassination plot. Your own child!”
“Oh, Hasimir is not her father, Paul Atreides.” Lady Margot’s voice dripped with scorn. “You knew her father.
In that instant, Count Fenring moved like a coiled viper, his muscles trained and retrained with years of practice as the Emperor’s most reliable assassin. Fenring yanked the Emperor’s dagger out of Marie’s body and drove the blade deep into Paul’s chest.
“One of my backup plans,” he said.
Reeling backward, Paul experienced every moment splintered into a million shards of nanoseconds. Each event had been as carefully laid out as the puzzle pieces in a Chusuk mosaic. Either the plan had originally been designed in extravagant and impossible detail, or Fenring had enhanced the scheme with so many branch points and alternatives that all possibilities had intersected in this single crux point.
The knife wound created a yawning gulf of pain in Paul’s chest. He heard a shrill wail from Chani. “Uuuussssuuuullll!”
She cried out again, but this time it was barely audible, a galaxy away.
Bleeding, Paul-Muad’Dib fell, as if tumbling into a vast chasm.
14
My Sihaya is the water of my life and the reason my heart beats. My love for her anchors me against the storms of history.
In the uproar that ensued, the room reverberated with shouts and barked orders. Count Fenring sprang away from Paul even as he fell. Still holding the Emperor’s knife, the assassin activated his shield and retreated to a corner, trying to reach the open passageway, but Fedaykin had already blocked it. Thwarted, he stood with his back to the stone blocks, prepared to defend himself. Margot Fenring joined her husband, also ready to die. Though she had no obvious weapon, she was a Bene Gesserit, and skilled in killing as well.
The horrified and enraged guards pressed close, a barely recovered Stilgar beside them, while Korba still struggled to pick himself up.
“Take him alive!” Irulan cried, her voice quavering as she tried to assert authority. She inhaled deeply, forcing control on her stunned muscles. “If you kill him, we will never know what other schemes he may have put in place! Do not make the mistake of believing this is the only plan afoot.”
Stilgar did not need to be given orders by the Princess. “We will not kill him — at least not now, and not swiftly.” Then his voice became a growl. “After the execution of Whitmore Bludd, the mob has a taste for it. I would not deprive them of their satisfaction.”
“I look forward to your interrogation games, hmmm?” Fenring mocked. “Perhaps we shall share advice on techniques?” Inside his body shield, he passed the bloody dagger from hand to hand.
Chani felt numb. Noisome smoke still drifted through the room, and Paul lay on the floor, bleeding to death. Desperate to save him, she pressed her hands against the wound; blood seeped through her fingers, red and slick.
Paul Atreides may have been Fremen in many ways, but he did not have the genetic desert adaptations that thickened blood for rapid coagulation. “Send for medics! A battlefield surgeon! A Suk doctor! Quickly!”
Two guards rushed out into the hall. Stilgar and the other Fedaykin would not let the Count escape. With a sneer, Fenring said, “Perhaps you should tend to your Muad’Dib, hmmm? He may have final words for you.”
Chani needed to stop the hemorrhage. “Usul, Beloved, how can I help you? How can I give you strength?”
She clasped his hands and felt a faint flicker, a twitch of the fingers, as if he were trying to signal her. Maybe the doctors could heal him, if only they arrived in time. But if Paul died before they could get him into surgery…
He was fighting, struggling within himself. Chani knew he had learned many things about his body after
