gathering information about the remaining rebel Honored Matre strongholds, preparing her long-term plan. Soon, she would be ready to move against the main enclaves in earnest.
Recapturing Buzzell and seizing all soostone production had cut off the rest of the Honored Matres from a primary source of wealth. It had both provoked and weakened the strongest remaining bastions of rebellious women.
So far, the New Sisterhood had subsumed five rebel strongholds in addition to Buzzell. For every hundred thousand that her female soldiers killed, they captured only a thousand. For every thousand captured, maybe a hundred were successfully converted to the New Sisterhood. Murbella had declared to her advisors, 'Rehabilitation is never guaranteed, but death is certain. No one needs to remind us how Honored Matres think. Would they respect our pleas for unification? No! They need to be broken first.'
The last strongholds of the violent women would be tough nuts to crack, but Murbella convinced herself that the Valkyries were up to the task. Not every conquest could be as clean and simple as the recapture of Buzzell.
Over the past several months, Corysta had made many changes to the operations on the ocean planet, and the Mother Commander approved. From the beginning, Corysta—'the woman who had lost two babies'—had been willing to help. Even before Sharing with Murbella, she seemed to remember a good deal about being a Bene Gesserit.
The Buzzell settlements consisted of only a few buildings and defensive towers on the patchy outcroppings of rock and hardscrabble islands, along with large boats, processing barges, and anchored rafts. Under Corysta's supervision, many of the resentful Bene Gesserit exiles had initially demanded to be transferred away from the rough soostone labor. Some had been petulant and wanted revenge on the vicious whores. Pointedly leaving the most strident exiles in their old assignments, Corysta—thinking much like Murbella—had promoted others to be special local advisors.
She had commandeered the reasonably comfortable quarters that Matre Skira and her whores had taken from the Bene Gesserit exiles and ordered the remaining handful of Honored Matres to erect their own thin tents on the rocky ground.
Murbella understood that this was a means of control, rather than revenge.
Skira and her group, as well as the Bene Gesserit exiles, had been isolated from outside politics for a long time. Clearly, uniting these particular women was another difficult task, and a significant challenge to Corysta's leadership abilities, but gradually the women were learning the benefits of working together. It was like a microcosm of what had happened at Chapterhouse.
Now, on the afternoon of the second day of her follow-up inspection, the Mother Commander toured the revamped soostone operations, accompanied by Corysta and the Honored Matre Skira. Nearby, a dozen workers—all Honored Matre survivors—continued washing and sorting stones according to their size and color, the work they had once forced the Bene Gesserit exiles to do. Phibian guards no longer stood over the workers; Murbella wondered if the aquatic people had noticed, or cared, that their female masters had changed.
Beneath the surface of the water, Phibian divers trapped and corralled the large slow-moving shellfish. Cholisters had a fleshy, probing body covered by a thick and lumpy carapace; persistent abrasions of that casing produced hard milky scars that could be chipped off like gems embedded in rock. The slow growth of the nodules, the scarcity of the sea creatures themselves, and the difficulty of harvesting deep underwater all contributed to the rarity and value of the gems.
When the Honored Matres brought in the hybrid Phibians, production increased dramatically. The amphibious people lived in the sea, swam deep without any special equipment, and ranged far from the island outcroppings as they hunted for the slowly wandering cholisters.
Standing on the dock with her new advisors, Murbella turned toward a large Phibian male who stood at the reef's edge; apparently he had once been a guard, for he still carried his barbed whip. Four other Phibian deep divers crouched together on the rocky beach, where they had just delivered a load of soostones.
The Honored Matres did not know exactly where the Phibians had come from, just 'somewhere out in the Scattering, a long time ago.' Skira said that the amphibious half-breeds were an insular species with only limited vocabularies, but Murbella's Bene Gesserit instincts told her otherwise. The memories she had Shared with Corysta added evidence to this; the Phibians were more than they appeared to be.
Ordering her two escorts to accompany her, Murbella descended a spray-slick rock stairway to the shingle beach.
'This is not safe.' Skira ran to catch up with the Mother Commander. 'Phibians can be violent. Last week, one of them drowned an Honored Matre. Took her out and pulled her underwater.'
'She probably deserved it. Do you doubt that the three of us can defend ourselves?' Nearby, a squad of Murbella's Valkyries also watched over their commander, weapons at the ready. Corysta pointed to the group. 'The tallest one is our best producer. See the scar on his forehead? He dives the deepest and brings back the most soostones.'
From a flash of Corysta's memory, Murbella recalled the abandoned Phibian baby she had rescued from a tide pool. He'd had a scar on his forehead, a claw mark. Could this be the same one, from so many years ago? The one she called 'Sea Child?' She recalled other instances, other encounters. Yes, this aquatic male definitely knew who Corysta was.
The scarred Phibian was the first to notice the women approaching. All of the creatures turned warily, blinking their slitted eyes. Three smaller Phibians retreated into the foaming water, where they hovered out of reach. The scarred one, though, held his ground.
Murbella regarded him carefully, trying to read his alien body language for some clue as to what he was thinking. Though shorter than the creature, she assumed a confident fighting posture.
For a long moment, the Phibian regarded her with his membranous eyes. Then he spoke in a throaty voice that sounded like a dripping rag drawn through a pipe. 'Boss boss.'
'What do you mean?'
'You. Boss boss.'
Corysta interpreted. 'He knows you are the boss of all the bosses.'
'Yes. I am your boss now.'
He bowed his head deferentially.
'I think you're a good deal smarter than you let on. Are you a good Phibian?'
'Not good. Best.'
Boldly, Murbella took a step closer. Other than what she knew from Corysta, she had no idea about the Phibians' social inclinations or taboos. 'You and I are both leaders in our own way. And as one leader to another, I promise that we will no longer treat you the way the Honored Matres did. You have already seen the changes. We won't use the lash on you, or let you use it on anyone else. Work for all. Benefit for all.'
'No more lash.' He lifted his chin, proud and stern. 'No more soostones for smugglers.'
Murbella tried to process what he was implying. Was it a promise, or a threat?
Surely, after a year the Phibians must have noticed a significant difference in their lives.
'Smugglers are always a problem,' Corysta explained to her. 'We can't stop them from taking soostones out in the open water.'
The nostrils flared in Skira's beaklike nose. 'We have long suspected the Phibians also traded with smugglers, stealing our soostone harvests and providing for themselves.'
'Not your soostones,' the Phibian said with a long bubbling rumble.
Murbella felt she was on the verge of an interesting breakthrough. 'You promise not to deal with smugglers if we treat you fairly? Is that what you mean?'
Skira sounded mortally offended. 'Phibians are slaves! Subhuman creatures.
They do what they are created to do—'
Murbella regarded her with a murderous glare. 'Provoke me if you dare. I am perfectly willing to kill another arrogant whore to make my point.'
Skira met her eyes like a mouse facing a rattlesnake. At last she bowed, and then took a small step back. 'Yes, Great Honored Matre. I did not mean to offend.'
The Phibian seemed amused. 'No more smugglers.'
Corysta explained, 'The smugglers have always been smart enough to leave us most of the haul. They were
