The Winds of Dune (13 page)

A flash of anger crossed Alia’s face. “They are liars, all liars. How can they prove any of their claims? They are a disgrace to my brother’s name.”

“Similar men did this on Caladan while Paul was alive, during the
worst years of his Jihad. When I could no longer tolerate it, Gurney and I evicted them.”

“Then I should do the same here. The Dune Tarot has always made me uneasy.” Wheels seemed to be turning in Alia’s mind, and she brooded for a moment. “Might you offer me your advice about how to accomplish it?”

The fact that her daughter would ask so openly for her help lightened Jessica’s mood. “Yes, but later. Right now, we are off to the desert to say farewell to my son and your brother. This isn’t a time for politics.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the landing pad, where Duncan waited beside an ornithopter, young and healthy in a crisp uniform that made him look as if he had leapfrogged across years from the past.

After they landed at the distant sietch, Jessica stood outside the entrance and gazed out upon the desert. “This is where my grandchildren were born. And where Chani died.”

Duncan had a strange, disturbed look about him, but not the far-off expression of a Mentat engrossed in calculations. “Sietch Tabr is also the place where I tried to kill Paul.”

“And where the ghola Hayt became Duncan Idaho again.” Alia turned, wrapped her arms around him.

Without asking them to accompany her, Jessica followed the winding path out of the rocks and picked her way down to the edge of the sweeping vista of open dunes, the undulating crests and slopes of golden sand. The wind had picked up, a breeze the Fremen named
pastaza
, strong enough to stir sand and dust but presaging no storm.

Jessica walked out onto the soft warm dunes, leaving prominent footprints as she crested the nearest rise. She gazed past the arid horizon and envisioned the unbroken landscape stretching on forever. She stared at the pristine sands until her eyes ached from the glare, searching for signs of Paul, as if a silhouetted figure might stride back out of the dunes, returning from his sacred journey, his own hajj to Shai-Hulud.

But the winds and the sands of time had erased his footprints, leaving no sign of his passing. The desert was empty without him.

I know what you are thinking. I know what you are doing. Most of all, I know what I am doing.

—
ST. ALIA OF THE KNIFE

Unpredictability.

Sitting in the nearly empty audience chamber, Alia smiled to herself as she let the word float through her mind. Unpredictability was far more than a word; it was a useful tool and a powerful weapon. It worked not only on her closest aides and advisers, and on the Qizarate, but also on the masses she ruled. No one knew how she thought or why she made her choices as Regent. And that kept others off guard and unsettled, making them wonder what she might do next, what she was capable of.

Her unpredictability would make the worst jackals hesitate, for now, and she hoped it gave her the time she needed to secure her hold and gather her strength, before any usurpers could try to rock the seat of government. But she had to be swift, and firm.

Dressed in a black aba with the red Atreides hawk on one shoulder, Alia waited impatiently. It was midmorning in the second week after Paul’s funeral, and a team of workers were shifting the position of the heavy Hagar emerald throne. “Turn it around. I want my back to the delegation from the Ixian Confederacy as they enter.”

The workers paused, confused. One man said, “But then you will not be able to see the delegation, my Lady.”

“No, they will not have the honor of seeing
me
. I’m not pleased with them.”

Though the technocrats insisted—as they had for years—that Ix had severed all ties with Bronso, she did not entirely believe them. Too many suspicions and questions, too many convenient explanations. While Paul had a certain affinity for Ix, thanks to his childhood memories, Alia did not suffer from such sentimentality. The technocrats would find that Muad’Dib’s sister was a different sort of ruler. Alia needed to keep the Ixian Confederacy unbalanced; it was easier to control power structures when they remained on unsteady ground.

She had considered this carefully.

Even when she was alone, Alia frequently chose to spend time pondering the consequences of her decisions. She knew that her mother had much wisdom to impart, but often Jessica’s advice seemed one-sided or limited. Today, at least, Alia would not ask her mother’s opinion. Caladan was known to make people soft and take away their edge.

Alia had additional advisers as well—Other Memories that unfolded like fractal patterns inside her consciousness in a cacophony of conflicting advice. Often in her private chambers she would consume great amounts of spice, inducing a trance so that she could journey into that Bene Gesserit archive of memories, and stir them up. She did not have the skill to pick and choose among them or locate any particular person as if she were querying a library. The memories came and went, with some presences shouting more loudly than others.

She let them assail her now, while she brooded about the Ixians’ arrival. Listening to the clamor, she heard one of those past lives rise above the others, a sharp-tongued voice in the archive. A wise old woman who was familiar with many of the challenges that Alia faced. She had, after all, been the Truthsayer to Emperor Shaddam IV . . . Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam.

Alia spoke to her in a taunting mental tone.
Do you still call me “Abomination,” Grandmother, even when you are one of the voices inside of me?

Mohiam sounded dry and tart.
By allowing me to advise you, child, you demonstrate wisdom, not weakness.

Why should I trust the voice of a woman who wanted to kill me?

Ah, but you were the one who ordered
my
death, child.

What of it? I also killed my grandfather, the Baron, because he needed killing. How could I do any less for you? Aren’t we taught to ignore or even despise emotional attachments?

Mohiam sounded pleased.
Perhaps with maturity you have learned from your mistakes. I am willing to help.

Have you learned from
your
mistakes, Grandmother?

Mistakes?
The dry rasp of a laugh echoed in Alia’s head.
If you believe me so fallible, why ask me for advice?

Asking
for advice is not the same as
heeding
it, Grandmother. What do you think I should do with these Ixians?

I think you should make them squirm.

Because they continue to secretly support Bronso?

I doubt very much if they’ve had any knowledge of that renegade for years now. However, they will be so eager to prove it that you can gain many concessions from them. The more fear and guilt you make them feel, the more they will want to appease you. I suggest you use this as a lever against them.

Alia made no further reply as she heard Mohiam’s presence fall back into the buzz of the background voices. Considering what Alia had done to the witch, could she trust her advice? Perhaps. Something about what she said, and the way she said it, rang of truth.

Meanwhile, the sweating workers threw themselves into the labor of turning the throne around. They could have attached suspensors to move the enormous blue-green seat with the nudge of a finger, but instead they grunted, strained, and pushed. It was their way of serving her.

Three black bees hummed over the heads of the workers, particularly irritating a swarthy offworld man who had a dark bristle of beard. The stinging insects darted around the sweat of his forehead. He released his hold to swat at them, while the other workers squared the heavy chair into position on the dais. The annoyed man knocked a bee out of the air and onto an arm of the throne, where he then crushed the insect with his fist and casually wiped it away.

Alia startled him. “Who gave you permission to smash a bee on the Imperial throne?”

Astonished at what he had done on impulse, the man turned, suddenly trembling, his face flushed, his eyes downcast and guilty. “N-no one, my Lady. I meant no affront.”

Alia drew her crysknife from its sheath at her neck and said in a measured tone, “With Muad’Dib gone, all the lives in his empire have been left to my stewardship. Including yours. And even a life as insignificant as that of an insect.”

The worker closed his eyes, resigned to his fate. “Yes, my Lady.”

“Extend the offending hand, palm up!”

Shaking, the worker did so. With a deft move, Alia slashed with the crysknife’s razor edge, neatly shaving a thin slice of flesh from the man’s palm, the portion that had killed the bee and touched the throne. He hissed in pain and surprise, but did not draw back, did not beg for mercy.

Good enough,
she thought. He had learned his lesson, as had the other workers. Alia wiped the milky blade on the man’s shirt and resheathed the weapon. “They called my father Leto the Just. Perhaps I have some of him in me.”

Unpredictability.

When the Ixian delegation arrived, Alia sat dwarfed on the great crystalline throne and stared at the orange hangings that covered the wall behind the dais. Her coppery hair was secured with golden water rings, pieces of tallying metal that announced to everyone that she, like her brother, considered herself Fremen. Though she heard the commotion as the technocrats entered, she did not turn to see the men. Duncan would have told her never to sit with her back to a door, but Alia considered it symbolic of her disdain for these men.

From behind her, the chamberlain announced the Ixians, and she heard the approaching footsteps. Their shoes made sharp sounds on the hard, polished floor, because by her orders the workers had not laid out a royal carpet. She heard an unevenness—uncertainty?—in their gait.

A standing audience in the huge hall murmured, then grew quiet, curious as to what Alia would do next. Her amazon guards were stationed as usual, and ever alert. She did not know the name of the delegation leader, nor did she care. All technocrats were the same. Since the fall of the ruling House Vernius seven years earlier—when
Bronso, the last heir, had gone into hiding to promote his sedition—the planet Ix had increased its research and industrial production, with little interest in the politics of the reconstituted Landsraad.