The Winds of Dune (36 page)

Alia pushed past the wall hanging, opened the door and saw her chief amazon guard standing next to Jessica. “Of course.”

Her mother entered, the first time she’d ever been inside these rooms. She said nothing about the crackdown, or Bronso’s writings, or any of their previous discussions as she walked around the chamber, sadly inspecting the extra stillsuits, the filmbooks that Paul or Chani had been reading, the holophotos. She wiped a finger across a tabletop, came away with a thin layer of dust; she took several deep, agitated breaths.

“This is not easy for you, is it, Mother?”

“No.”

In the sleeping quarters, Jessica paused to look at a detached wooden headboard that featured carvings of a leaping fish and thick brown waves . . . a piece that had been salvaged from the original Arrakeen Residence. That headboard had once concealed a hunter-seeker used in a Harkonnen attempt to kill Paul. Later, after becoming Emperor, Paul had kept it as a reminder never to let down his guard.

Moving on, Jessica paused to examine the contents of a table by a filterglass window, a pottery jar set all by itself as if in a place of special
reverence. Her gaze flickered over to her daughter, asking an unspoken question.

“It’s the jar Chani sent me to fetch after Count Fenring stabbed Paul. It held the Water of Life that stopped his heartbeat long enough for us to control the bleeding.”

Jessica stared at the pottery. “After what we observed in the bazaar the other day, it heartens me to see
authentic
objects here. I think I should collect a few keepsakes of my own.”

Alia felt a rush of enthusiasm. “Yes, Mother. After our conversation, I instituted a close watch on the black marketeers with their phony relics. The memory of Muad’Dib should not be cheapened by counterfeits.” She smiled, hoping her mother would approve. “I have decided that the only way to prevent the fraud is to create a seal of approval, an official mark that reassures buyers—the faithful—that a particular object has been authenticated as the original. All additional profits shall go into the government treasury.”

Jessica’s brow furrowed. “But the demand will be far higher than the amount of items available.”

“Yes, and since copies will be made anyway, we will manufacture our own replicas and sell them as such, blessed by the Qizarate. Official facsimiles, rather than fakes. I’ll be on a consulting board, and I’d like you to act in that capacity as well.”

“Remember, I’m going back to Caladan soon. I’ve seen enough . . . scraps of Paul’s life.” She took another long look around and then slowly left. “Yes, I’ve seen enough.”

Afterward, Alia lifted a seashell fragment from the table and held the broken piece up against the light from the window. It was an object from Mother Earth, if Whitmore Bludd’s story about it was true. He’d given it to Paul as a token of allegiance from Archduke Armand Ecaz. But the seashell, like Bludd’s promise, was broken.

She put the artifact back down in exactly the same position. Then on impulse, she spun the piece around so that it faced the other way. Making her own mark. These objects were not really sacred, though she would continue to act as if they were. They were just . . . things.

Is a ghola capable of love? This was one of my questions at first, but not any longer. Duncan Idaho and I have an understanding.

—
ALIA ATREIDES
, private notes

O
nly hours before Alia and Duncan’s wedding would begin, three stern amazon guards escorted Lady Jessica out to a place of honor at the edge of the desert beyond the Citadel walls.

Stilgar was her companion as they moved through the festive crowds, both dressed in formal robes for the joyous occasion. She had intentionally kept her distance from the Fremen leader since returning from the secret ceremony to honor Chani. Keeping their silence, Jessica and the Naib took seats in the viewing stands overlooking the perfect expanse of desert. Hundreds of diligent workers had combed the dunes with fine rakes and used gentle blowers to erase footprints and remove any appearance of clutter—an extravagant and unnecessary waste of effort, Jessica thought, for the swift winds would erase any mark soon enough.

As the crowds gathered, Stilgar mused, “I was the one who first told Usul that your daughter should be wedded. It was a thing any man could see, at the time.” He narrowed his eyes and gazed out at the dunes where the ceremony would take place.

Jessica was glad to share her thoughts. “In some cultures, my daughter would be considered too young for marriage, but Alia is unlike any other girl. In her memories, she can recall all the pleasures of the flesh,
all the joys and obligations of marriage. Even so, it’s always challenging for a mother to think of her daughter being married. It is a fundamental change in relationships, the crossing of a Rubicon.”

Stilgar raised his eyebrows. “Rubicon? The term is unfamiliar to me.”

“A river on ancient Terra. A famous military leader crossed it and forever changed the course of history.”

The Fremen Naib turned away, muttering, “I know nothing of rivers.”

Princess Irulan arrived with Harah and the two children, attended by another cluster of guards. Gurney moved along the stands, ever suspicious and alert. Jessica understood his reasons for concern. By removing Isbar and the traitorous priests, they had eliminated one plot against Alia . . . but that did not mean there weren’t others waiting to be sprung. Alia had mentioned her implementation of other unusual “security measures,” but Jessica did not know what her daughter had meant by that.

Grand spectacles seemed to invite tragedy: Rhombur’s death during the Jongleur performance in the Theater of Shards, the slaughter during Duke Leto’s wedding, the swarms of unleashed hunter-seekers during Muad’Dib’s Great Surrender ceremony, even Bronso’s recent disruption during Paul’s funeral. From the stands, she glanced at the twins, aware that Leto and Ghanima would spend their entire lives fearing an assassin’s blade, a conspirator’s explosion, a poisoner’s special ingredient, or some weapon no one had yet contemplated.

But a state wedding could not be held behind closed doors and drawn shutters. Duke Leto Atreides, and the Old Duke before him, had understood the power and necessity of diversions, of bravura. “Bread and circuses,” the ancient Romans had called it.

Her heart went out to Alia, wishing the young woman well on her wedding day. “She is
my
daughter,” she whispered fiercely to herself. Jessica prayed that this ceremony, unlike those others, would take place without disruption or disaster, and that Alia and Duncan could actually be happy together.

It was time for that in the Atreides family.

Out of view, Alia stood naked on the balcony of a palace annex at the far edge of the city. The sun was setting on the horizon, throwing long shadows across the rock escarpments. On the sands below, young Fremen women whirled and chanted, their hair flying loose and free. The traditional marriage dances were under way.

Behind her, Duncan Idaho lay on the bed they had recently begun to share. She and Duncan had just made love, a passionate release of their anxious energies as they waited, and waited, for the time of the ceremony. He was her first physical lover, though she remembered plenty of others in her deep layers of memories.

All day long, crowds of onlookers had gathered at the edge of the city and spilled out onto the sands. Weaving their way through the throngs, vendors hawked memorabilia bearing the faces of the bride and groom, and Alia’s government would receive its percentage of it all.

A number of viewing stands had been erected for the visiting dignitaries of various Houses, CHOAM, the Landsraad, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Qizarate. Each important personage would receive his own memorabilia, inscribed and authenticated.

As both the sister of Muad’Dib and Regent of the Imperium, Alia had designed her wedding to combine Fremen and Imperial elements in a hybrid ceremony. She and Duncan had gone over the details that would combine vows from both traditions. Far out on the dunes, the two of them would be wed under the double moonlight—at least, that was what the people would see, and hear. Their preparations would make the illusion perfect.

To the left of the bed stood a blackplaz cubicle with a sealed door—one of the new technologies that the Ixian Confederation had recently given her, hoping to buy their way back into her good graces. Because of the usual death threats that hovered around her, Alia was increasingly resorting to technological security measures.

Her mother and Gurney had thwarted Isbar’s plot to kill them during the wedding. Alia knew of the deadly conspiracies that had sprung up around Paul. And Irulan had once told her stories about the countless plots, conspiracies, and assassination attempts Shaddam IV had faced on Kaitain.
What is it about human beings that they invariably develop hatred toward their leaders?

Just yesterday, Qizara security had seized a lunatic in the streets shouting that the wedding was “an unholy alliance of Bene Gesserit Abomination and Tleilaxu ghola.” Under interrogation, the man had implicated others, and provided credible evidence that there were deeper plots afoot against Alia and Duncan. But the man himself had been an inept fool, and had never posed much of a threat.

She worried more about the
quiet
, well-concealed plots, conspirators who were not so foolish as to shout out their anger in the streets of Arrakeen. She would have liked to blame all the threats on Bronso of Ix, but she had never been his target, though many others had resentments against her. For her purposes, however, Bronso provided a convenient focal point, and she could use his reputation to turn the tables and incite a backlash against critics of the regime. She had already taken steps to exploit the situation, secretly writing her own counterfeit “manifesto” that would be released immediately after the wedding, under Bronso’s name.

Adaptation was a Bene Gesserit strength, one to which she had been born. Her brother had changed the human race forever, but Alia would take her place in history as well, since Paul had left her to pick up the pieces and arrange them as she saw fit.

If she could make the Imperium strong and enduring, historians might even elevate her above the stature of Muad’Dib. For her, it was a matter of diminishing Paul’s memory in calculated ways, while brightening her own accomplishments. She would stand on his shoulders and benefit from his victories.

In honor of her wedding day, Alia had ordered the temporary cessation of all torturings and executions. In addition, one fortunate prisoner would be exonerated each day, based upon a public drawing to be held outside the main prison, and Duncan had been giving away valuable gifts to hundreds of lucky citizens selected at random, to demonstrate Imperial largesse.

Stepping away from the slanted dusk light on the balcony, Alia turned to see Duncan dressing in front of a mirror, putting on green uniform trousers and a black jacket that bore the red hawk crest of House Atreides. He was always precise, the result of the original Duncan’s Swordmaster training and years of military service to House Atreides.

She closed the plaz doors behind her and activated the moisture
seals, shutting off noises from the crowd outside. With a tingly feeling of anticipation, Alia put on a black velvasilk dress that had the cut of a Fremen robe, but with the materials, fittings, and resplendent jewels of a noble lady. She braided her hair with water rings and wore a white pearline necklace—the perfect combination of Fremen and Imperial elements. She also put on a satisfied smile.