Princess of dune, p.29
Princess of Dune, page 29
Wearing housekeeper’s garb, Chani hurried past the stalls. One man offered oversize roast crickets on a skewer, insects he had caught in the alleys of Arrakeen; another sold honey and biscuits. A broad tent-covered area held low tables where groups drank spice coffee while discussing business or friendship. One man sold painted pots; another held strange-looking birds in a cage, said to have armored bodies that made them capable of carrying messages through storms. Two men sat together playing balisets and singing mournful songs.
Chani moved from vendor to vendor in search of a familiar face. Finally, she spotted a seller of sandpearls, where she was supposed to meet Khouro and his companions. She touched a pocket at her side, where she still heard the crackle of spice paper. Her detailed map.
She had taken the time to draw every door in the Residency, from which she could guess at some of the rooms she had not actually been in, the possible quarters of the Emperor, the Princess, and important members of their entourage. Another sheet held meticulous records of the Emperor’s appointments, noting the rare times when he might leave Count Fenring’s fortress and venture back to the spaceport, where his Imperial ships had landed.
It was precisely the data her brother wanted.
Four men conversed in low voices outside the sandpearl booth, ostensibly haggling over prices. A bearded old man stood behind a tray of his wares, glowering as if convinced everyone was trying to cheat him. Chani knew it was all an act. The vendor was also part of their plot.
Sandpearls were fused nuggets of silica created by lightning strikes out in the desert. Sometimes, Fremen found and treasured the oddities, and Khouro had a large one he had found as a boy. Often, sandpearls were recovered in the exhaust bins of spice factories, left in catchtraps after the centrifuges sifted out the melange. Factory operators and Harkonnen governors paid little attention to the debris, and the crew workers smuggled them out to sell to desert merchants like this.
Behind the table the bearded man held a greenish nugget between thumb and forefinger. “A fine and rare jewel. Use it to romance a desert princess.”
One of the hooded men scoffed. “Maybe I could sell it to a noble lady from Kaitain. Sandpearls are worth much more offworld.”
Chani knew the hooded man was Khouro playing his role.
The merchant said, “And how would you ever get offworld, friend? If you buy the pearl, make use of it here.”
She realized that the assistant was Jamis, dressed in a gray robe with green stripes. Eight others were gathered around the table, most of them familiar faces.
The water seller strolled past again, yelling out, “Soo-soo-soooook! Fresh water. Clean water. Cool water.” They all fell silent as the man passed by, afraid he might be eavesdropping.
Khouro noticed his half sister and gave a slight nod. When she pretended to be a potential customer and bent close to look at the sandpearls, Jamis whispered, “We are all here. It is time to make our plans.”
They slipped into a room behind the booth, leaving one person outside to deal with any customers. Chani followed them. Khouro looked at his sister. “Do you have more information for us?”
Chani removed the sketches, unfolding the spice paper and tracing her fingers across the detailed blueprint. “There may be ways you could infiltrate the household. Deliveries, couriers, workers who haul trash and sell it to businesses in the city.”
“The Emperor would never let such a lowly person get anywhere near him,” Khouro said. He pored over the blueprint sketch, noting the Imperial quarters.
Jamis said, “If Chani opened one of the side doors late at night, we could infiltrate. We have fifteen, maybe twenty fighters—good fighters who know Fremen ways.”
Chani felt a chill at the possibility. Or impossibility.
“We’d sweep in, quick and silent,” Khouro said in a hushed tone. It was obvious that he and Jamis had already discussed this plan. “Look here.” He touched the drawing. “We enter through this door, pass through these rooms and galleries, not making a sound.”
“There will be guards,” Chani warned. “Sardaukar.”
“So we kill them,” Jamis said, “and keep running.”
Chani rolled her eyes, while Khouro was breathing harder. “If we get to the restricted wing, we fight our way in, break down the doors. Kill Count Fenring if we see him, eliminate the fancy Princess. Most importantly, we find Shaddam and slit his throat!”
This was growing more absurd by the minute. Chani shook her head. “You would all be killed.”
“But the Emperor would also be dead,” Khouro said. “My blood is Fremen, and I am willing to pay a price in Fremen blood. Ten of us, even twenty of us lost in the fight—but if we succeed in killing Shaddam IV, we change the course of history and the future of Arrakis.”
Chani heard the water seller outside, calling, “Soo-soo-soooook! Soo-soo-soooook!” But then he raised his voice and whistled out. “Sekah! Sekah! Sekah!”
Chani knew it was the Chakobsa word for alarm. Jamis backed away from the table. Khouro and Chani spun. The rest put hands to their hidden crysknives. Jamis opened the door a little, and they saw troops flooding into the market square. Harkonnen troops! They did not march in formation, but rather lunged in like wolves. They bowled over the cricket vendor’s stall. They smashed the pottery maker’s wares.
The soldiers had long knives drawn, their faces twisted with anger. They weren’t searching, Chani saw. They already knew their target—and they were running toward the sandpearl stall.
“We’ve been discovered—run!” Khouro jammed the spice-paper drawings into his robes.
The conspirators bolted outside through a side exit, running through fabric sellers and ducking into a coffee tent to emerge from the opposite side. Chani grabbed her brother’s arm and dragged him with her. He looked furious, wanting to kill the Harkonnens, but she kept him moving. “We have a safe house,” he said with a hiss.
Jamis flung himself on the first soldier, stabbing him deep in the kidneys. The Harkonnen reacted with astonishment before he felt the pain and crashed to the ground. Jamis upended the metal table and smashed it into the soldiers, bowling them onto their backs before he sprinted away.
More Harkonnens rushed up to the bearded vendor, who flung a face-ful of sandpearls at them. The soldiers cut him to pieces with their swords.
A thick man in uniform with a flushed face and square shoulders charged along with his troops, waving a short sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. Both blades were already stained with blood. His face was tight with the intensity of the hunt. Chani recognized him from images she had seen, knowing him for all the torments he’d inflicted upon her people. Rabban—the man the Fremen called “Beast.”
The potter tried to protect the rest of his wares from being smashed, throwing curses at the marauding Harkonnens. As Rabban stomped past, he hacked the man’s head off. “They’re all conspirators! Capture them, so we can peel the truth out of them.”
Chani wore drab servant’s garb, but she did have her crysknife tucked into her bodice. She drew it now, but kept it hidden in the fabric, remembering what Shadout Mapes had said about staying invisible. Khouro yanked out a plasteel dagger, probably because he kept his crysknife secured when he worked among the spice silo crew.
One of the soldiers pointed at Chani and Khouro. “Those are the ringleaders! They are the ones to get.”
They darted between stalls, ducked under awnings, but the soldiers lumbered after them among the wares, coming from different directions. Her brother turned to face the Harkonnens, raising his blade, and the enemy closed in, fixed on him and ignoring Chani. She stabbed the first soldier in the side, deftly sliding her milky blade into his liver. She withdrew the knife and stung again like a serpent, this time severing his spinal cord. Like the one before, he was dead when she pulled the blade free.
Khouro killed another Harkonnen. “Do we have a rendezvous point?” Chani called out in Chakobsa. “Someplace the others will know to find us?”
“We have to get ourselves away,” Khouro said. “Each fighter for himself. All know the way.”
Yelling a mixture of laughter and rage, Rabban faced off with Jamis. The Beast was blustering and overconfident. Jamis fought like a dervish, and slashed a gash down Rabban’s left arm, which made his opponent bellow in astonishment. Jamis tried to close in for the kill, but three Harkonnen soldiers swept in to protect their commander. Jamis fought hard and killed two of them and injured the third, before bolting away, smashing through awnings, scattering the tools and fabrics of a stillsuit maker.
Making her own escape with her brother, Chani ducked between hanging dyed scarves that blew in the breeze.
They reached the other side of the bazaar as even more pandemonium erupted. The Harkonnen soldiers were smashing vendor stalls, attacking any desert person as a possible suspect. She watched one of her companions fight a pair of soldiers, who were obviously trying to capture him alive. The wound in the Fremen’s side bled heavily, and he realized he was losing. When he knew the Harkonnens had him, he plunged his dagger beneath his own chin, into his throat.
Seen through fractured glimpses, she counted at least seven Harkonnens dead and two of their own. But the conspirators had scattered, and now the rest of them had to get away.
She was panting hard. Khouro remained silent, his expression grim as he ran beside her. She saw blood spattered across his face. They ducked into an alley in the old town souks, and he led her through crossways and convoluted passages. Khouro knew his way, and Chani followed him, turning left, running straight, ducking under an arch, then right again.
Here, the shadows were deep and the dwellings close together, the doors low and unmarked. Khouro stopped before one door that looked no different from any other. He rapped hard against the smooth wall, and an access port opened. He inserted his finger to press a hidden latch. The door opened, but it was so low that Chani had to duck as he pushed her inside. “Our safe house.”
In the dusty shadows, she heard rustling, saw low hangings, cushions crowded together. Only a single dim glowglobe shed light.
“Ah, three of us are already here,” Khouro said. “We’ll stay until the soldiers go away.”
Chani slumped down onto one of the cushions, feeling a prickle of perspiration on her skin that was absorbed by the sandwich layers of her stillsuit. Adrenaline throbbed through her bloodstream. Her muscles were shaking.
All business, Khouro removed the spice-paper drawings he had retrieved and set them on the low table. “We’ll finish our planning here when the others arrive.”
“We lost Tokta,” said one of the men.
“I saw,” Khouro said. “It could not be helped.”
“We killed many of them,” said another rebel.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, and everyone grew tense, touching their weapons.
Jamis entered, his eyes dark. “How did they find us?” He sealed the hatch behind him.
“Rabban has spies in Arrakeen. Someone must have overheard or seen something,” Khouro said. “We knew it would be dangerous. We’ll have to be more careful from now on.” He spread out the blueprints as if this were the only way to quell his panic. “But we are almost ready, we know what we’re going to do.”
The hatch opened again, and they turned to see who else had made it to safety. A ruthless uniformed Sardaukar crashed through the low door, followed by several others, all with weapons extended. They boiled inside, shouting.
The Fremen rebels were in too confined a space. They pulled out their bloody weapons, but the Sardaukar were on them like a shockingly sudden sandstorm. They flooded the chamber, firing a blur of stunners at everyone crowded there. Struck by the projectiles, Jamis and Khouro dropped.
Chani dove behind a side table, hoping for just one more moment.
A rebel lunged at the Sardaukar, but the grim commander struck the man with the flat of his blade, rendering him senseless. The Sardaukar seized two other fighters who tried to defend themselves. There was no other escape. The attackers blocked the only door.
Behind them, one more man entered, slipping smoothly through the low entryway. “Ahhh, hmmm, we found a nest of vipers.” Chani’s skin crawled when she saw Count Fenring. “Rabban was an embarrassing interference, but we knew where to find you anyway.” He noticed the spice-paper drawings and picked them up. “Hmmm, interesting. I wanted the details of your plans. Hmmm-ahhh, you might have succeeded, but not any longer.”
Chani looked at her brother, who lay twitching on the floor, his eyes half-open but showing only the whites. Beside him, Jamis lay stunned. A Sardaukar grabbed her arm in a tight grip, as if he didn’t consider the girl worth stunning.
Fenring’s gaze skated over her, then returned. His brow furrowed as he tried to place her, but failed. He shrugged. “We will learn all about you, and I’ll convey the plot to the Padishah Emperor.” He nodded to himself as the Sardaukar mopped up the scene, binding the prisoners, preparing to move them out. “Ahhh, it is a good day for Arrakeen.”
A victory is often in one’s own mind, while a failure is for all to see.
—Political annals of EMPEROR FONDIL III, the Hunter
In the Residency, Princess Irulan sat off to the side of Shaddam’s satellite throne in a formal chair, while Reverend Mother Mohiam stood nearby.
Her father had never been pleased enough with any of his wives to have them hold court as a full Empress at his side, sharing power. Irulan had been young when her own mother died. Then for political reasons, her father had married again and again, always hoping for sons. She realized that he hadn’t been overly fond of Anirul either, but the later ones were even less to his liking.
Nearby, the old Truthsayer gave her a knowing look.
Irulan knew the Bene Gesserit wanted one thing from their precious and well-trained Princess Royal, while the Emperor saw his eldest daughter as a valuable tidbit to dangle as a marriage alliance, but he was as reluctant as a miser to spend his bargaining chip. Regardless, Irulan vowed to learn from every opportunity, to prepare for her own eventual role.
At the guarded doorway to the satellite throne room, the Sardaukar stepped aside as a bald crier entered in garish red-and-gold garments. The man lifted his chin haughtily and called in a thin, high voice, “The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, siridar-governor of Arrakis! And his nephew Glossu Rabban, the Count of Lankiveil.”
Shaddam feigned boredom as he raised his ringed hand and gestured for the visitors to enter. He said to his daughter, “They claim to have something important to say, but we shall see.”
Irulan had closely observed her father all morning. He seemed to be in a good mood, pleased about something. He glanced at Count Fenring, who stood next to a gold-embroidered hanging. Fenring seemed to share the secret, whatever it was, because he was actually grinning as he watched the Baron and his nephew.
The enormously fat Baron wore a purple cloak with fur-lined cuffs and collar. Gold chains and pseudo-military medals of rank adorned his chest. When he walked, his toes barely touched the floor, buoyed as he was by a humming belt. Next to him strode a man with similar features but a blockier appearance. The Baron’s second-in-command on Arrakis wore similar finery, but it looked like an awkward costume on him. When the Baron made a formal bow, Rabban clumsily copied him.
With her sharp observation skills, Irulan noted that the nephew’s arm was stiff and rigid, as if he had been injured.
Her father leaned forward on the throne, pursed his lips. “Baron, have you come to provide updated data on your spice operations? My Mentat accountants continue to scour the numbers. Is there something else you wish to tell me? Or explain?”
The Baron hesitated, as if his self-importance had been deflated. “This has nothing to do with spice operations, Sire. We have grave news regarding your personal safety, an impending threat against your life!”
The Sardaukar stiffened. The courtiers in the throne room began muttering. Irulan glanced at Reverend Mother Mohiam, both of them paying close attention.
Shaddam, though, lounged back and merely raised his eyebrows. “I feel quite safe here, Baron. The Residency is secure, and my Sardaukar are invincible, never defeated.”
“You are not quite safe, Your Imperial Majesty,” the Baron said. “Because House Harkonnen is in charge of planetary security, our own operatives constantly gather intelligence information. Our spies listen for whispered plots.” He paused, lowering his voice. “And we have just identified an insidious terrorist group of Fremen. They’ve been conspiring to assassinate you while you are here on Arrakis.”
“Interesting,” Shaddam said, not sounding frightened at all.
“My nephew Rabban has a report,” the Baron said.
Put off by the Emperor’s aloofness, Rabban stood shoulder to shoulder with his taller and more rotund uncle, as if they were equals. “Sire, my operatives tracked down a group of plotters in the Arrakeen market. I took my best troops, intending to surround and capture them inside the bazaar.”
He pressed his thick lips together. “When my troops moved in to seize them, they fought and scattered. They killed several of my soldiers, and we struck down two of them, though the rest remain fugitives.” Rabban’s voice became a deep growl. “We will find them. My men are now combing the streets, crashing through doors, conducting searches. We’ve already uncovered many sympathizers, who will be interrogated.” He stopped abruptly as if he had run out of things to say.
The Baron added, “You are not safe even here on Arrakis, Sire. Rest assured that our Harkonnen security net is rounding up the rabble in the streets. We will find these assassins and bring them to justice. For the time being, however, we recommend that you remain here under full guard. Do not leave the Residency to conduct further spice field inspections.”
The Emperor tapped his fingers on the arm of his portable throne. “Assassins, eh? A dire threat to my life? I appreciate your concern and diligence, Baron, but there’s really nothing to worry about.”
