Rulla writhed, arched her back as if to intentionally emphasize her swollen belly. “No! I am carrying a child!” She flashed a glance at the stoic Staban, then said to Esmar, “Your … your grandson!”
“The product of your seduction, and your schemes.” Tuek turned away, gestured for his crew to drag her away.
“But the child is innocent!” Rulla wailed.
“Many innocents die in the desert,” Esmar said. “But you are not innocent.”
Fenring was impressed by the surprise. He had told Tuek to produce a scapegoat, a sacrifice of sufficient magnitude to convince Shaddam that the gesture was painful and real. His seductress wife and his unborn grandchild? The Emperor would be more impressed than he ever expected. He would have no doubts at all.
Fenring extended the cloth band that had been his blindfold while he was brought out to the hidden base. “If I might suggest … this can also be used as a gag?”
* * *
AT NIGHT, FROM a ridge high enough to provide a superb view, Count Fenring and Esmar Tuek each watched through oil-lens viewers as Rulla was brought onto the open sand. An imaging unit also captured high-resolution video of the event, because Shaddam would want to see every detail. He would know Fenring was doing a good job.
The dunes were illuminated by pale light from both small moons. Fenring adjusted the lenses to see a contingent of Tuek’s smugglers pulling the pregnant woman’s arms and legs, extending them so that she was spread-eagled on the sand.
“A shame we cannot hear her last words, hmmm?” the Count said.
Tuek snorted. “She has already said enough. And done enough. She should have known better than to betray her husband.”
The men thrust a Fremen thumper into the sand not far from the woman, activated the syncopated device, and rushed away to a small escape ’thopter. With a flurry of articulated wings, the craft took off, flitting away.
Through the viewer, Fenring zoomed in. The imaging panel followed his view. “This should not take long.”
Esmar Tuek seemed to be carved from sandstone. “No, it will not.”
His son, Staban, stood next to him, unbound, but he looked as if he had been wrapped in strangling shigawire. His skin was as pale as bleached sand. Esmar turned to him, his voice filled with so much anger it was like an accelerant waiting for a spark. “But for my mercy, and my faith that you are not permanently corrupted, you could be out there beside her.”
Staban’s response was so quiet it seemed little more than a breath. “This is worse.”
The scarred smuggler looked at him with hardened blue-within-blue eyes. “As I intended it to be.”
Esmar Tuek had also offered two other smugglers to be surrendered as coconspirators, men he had wanted to get rid of, regardless. While they, like his wife, were not involved in the still-mysterious piracy efforts, Tuek had caught them stealing and used the opportunity to clean house. It would reinforce the story Fenring needed to weave for Shaddam. These other victims would meet a different end, though. Tuek had plans for them.
Though he heard no sound due to the distance, Fenring watched Rulla thrash and try to break free of her bonds. Staban stared, swallowed visibly, but made no sound.
The nearby thumper sent out the rhythmic percussion that would call a worm. Thump, thump, thump! When Fenring concentrated, he could hear the faint sound and felt the anticipation build. Few non-Fremen ever actually saw the enormous, territorial sandworms of the deep desert.
Esmar Tuek just stared ahead into the night. He had lowered his oil lenses. “Can you hear it?”
“The thumper? Yes, it is quite distinctive, even at such a distance—”
“Not that. Listen.”
When he concentrated, Fenring heard a distant rumbling noise, a hissing vibration like a rolling wave. With stark shadow edges from the moonlight, he could see the advancing front, a mound in the sand that traveled forward with amazing speed.
A huge, long shape moved toward the staked woman with the inevitability of a planetary collision. Screaming, Rulla managed to pull one arm free and rip the stake out of the sand. She spun, curled, and lashed with her free hand, trying to yank the other stake loose. Liberating both arms, she worked at her feet. She was amazingly nimble, considering her late pregnancy.
“She is a strong Fremen woman,” Esmar said in a dead voice. “She may even get the knots loose.”
Fenring wondered, “If she gets herself free, can she run far enough away?”
“No.”
Staban whispered, “She is also carrying your grandson.”
The older man’s face pinched. “She died for me at the moment of her betrayal with you. I have no grandson.”
Fenring could feel the tension crackling between the two men. Life, and decisions, were hard in the desert. He had left his nose plugs loose, and he drew in a deep breath of the arid air. He smelled dust and melange. He had never been this close to a sandworm before and found it exhilarating. Somewhere deep inside, he felt an uncharacteristic tinge of fear.
Rulla was still struggling to get free when the sands shifted and engulfed her. The monster went deep beneath the dunes and then erupted upward, devouring her and the thumper in a massive blast of sand.
Fenring stared in awe at the primal power of the scene, then lowered his oil-lens binoculars. No sign remained of her.
The imagers recorded everything for Emperor Shaddam. Fenring decided he would keep a copy for himself.
The smuggler leader stared for a long moment in silence. “I will make Staban watch her execution over and over again.” He heaved a hitching breath. “To reinforce the lesson I want to teach him.”
Trust, love, and honor are intertwined, yet too often they remain three separate strands.
—DUKE LETO ATREIDES, private journals (thought to be destroyed)
The smoke of burning barra fields smeared the sky like a stain on Leto’s reputation, yet the destruction all around felt gratifying—a cleansing of the insidious Caladan drug.
This scorched-earth attack was necessary, like a surgeon excising gangrenous flesh. No mercy for the murderous Chaen Marek. These ailar drug operations had harmed his people and had blackened his honor. As the Duke of Caladan, he considered himself inherently responsible for letting the deadly drug spread across the worlds of humanity.
He took no comfort in the knowledge that there were far worse drugs than ailar, many more euphoric chemicals and more destructive practices. Humans had a penchant for finding addictive and deadly vices. The use of such recreational substances had grown more widespread in response to the dramatically increased costs of melange, thanks to the Emperor’s spice surtax.
But this problem had struck here, in his home, not on some distant desert planet or in the jungles of Ecaz. Barra ferns grew only on Caladan. Chaen Marek had cultivated and processed the ailar right here, and that practice shamed House Atreides.
Recently, the grieving Lord Atikk had filed a formal complaint in the Landsraad, although the nobles were far too preoccupied with filling countless empty seats to give priority to a petty inter-House squabble.
Leto meant to eradicate every channel. Half measures would not be sufficient. His beloved Caladan would no longer be the source, and that was all he could do. His response would be swift and sure, and plain for the whole Imperium to see.