The Winds of Dune (11 page)

But
this
, Stilgar thought, as he stood on a crowded Arrakeen street, wearing a well-fitted stillsuit (unlike most of these offworlders, who never learned or understood proper water discipline)—
this
was not the Dune he remembered.

Stilgar had never liked Arrakeen, nor any city for that matter: the shuffle and press of ill-prepared pilgrims, the dark-alley crime, the garbage, noise, and strange odors. Although life in the crowded sietches had changed, it was still more pure than the city. Out there, people
didn’t pretend to be something they were not, or they would not survive long. The desert sorted the faithful from imposters, but the city did not seem to know the difference, and actually rewarded the impure.

Hiding his disgust behind noseplugs and a filterscarf, Stilgar walked the streets, listening to atonal music that wafted from a small gathering area where a group of pilgrims from the same planet shared cultural memories. Gutters stank from piled rubbish: The crowds left so much refuse behind that there was no place to put it—even the open desert couldn’t swallow it all. Bad smells were an evil omen to the Fremen, because rotting odors implied wasted moisture. He fitted his noseplugs more tightly.

In busy Arrakeen, the only place a man could be alone was inside himself. No one paid any attention to the disguised Naib as he made his way toward the Citadel of Muad’Dib. Only when he reached the gates did he reveal his identity and give the countersign. The guards stepped back with a sudden snap of respect, as if they were clockwork mechanisms in tightly wound thumpers.

For what Stilgar intended, it would have been better if his presence had remained unnoticed, yet without the unwavering authority Muad’Dib had conferred on him, he could never achieve what Jessica had asked of him. Stilgar was breaking supposed rules, following the course of honor instead of someone else’s law. He had to do this quietly and secretly, even if it required several trips, several secret nighttime missions.

Muad’Dib was not the only one who had died. At least Stilgar and Jessica remembered that. . . .

He reached the oppressively silent quarters where Usul had lived with his beloved concubine. Sooner or later, members of the Qizarate would convert this wing of the palace into a shrine, but for now the people regarded the rooms with religious awe and left them untouched.

Atop a sand-etched stone slab, an ornate canopic jar held Chani’s water. Rendered down from her small body by a huanui deathstill after the difficult and bloody birth of the twins, only twenty-two liters of water had been recovered from her body.

She’d been the daughter of Liet-Kynes before becoming the woman of Muad’Dib. A true Fremen warrior on Dune, she had fought many battles as a member of Stilgar’s troop. With callused fingers, he traced
the intricate markings on the outside of the jar. A tremor of superstitious fear ran down his spine. Water was just water . . . but could it be that Chani’s ruh-spirit still lingered here?

Her father Liet, the Imperial planetologist murdered by Harkonnens, had been the son of Pardot Kynes, who had inspired the Fremen dream of climate change on Dune. Stilgar’s comrade against Harkonnen excesses, Liet had died because he’d dared to help Paul Atreides and his mother.

As Emperor, Muad’Dib had ensured that the dreams of Dr. Kynes endured. By his command, he had accelerated the terraforming process and established a new School of Planetology. If Muad’Dib was indeed the Lisan al-Gaib, the Shortening of the Way, then Liet-Kynes was the catalyst.

And Chani was his daughter.

The Regent and her amazon guards would curse him for what he was about to do, but Stilgar already had the blood of the Reverend Mother Mohiam on his hands, and the blood of others. He would do this.

Unstopping the heavy jar, he drained some of the liquid into liter-jon containers that were easier to handle and hide under his cloak. In order to take it all, he would need to do this at least two more times, but as captain of the guard, Stilgar had ways of avoiding detection. With his precious burden, he slipped out of Muad’Dib’s quarters.

“Why would anyone do such a thing?” Alia was at first genuinely baffled, but that swiftly changed. Jessica watched the emotions sweep across her daughter’s face, one after another—confusion, then outrage, then a hint of fear. “Who could have gotten into my brother’s quarters?”

Ziarenka Valefor, the amazon guard reporting to them now, was a head taller than Alia, but she was so rattled by her accidental discovery that she looked to the young Regent for strength. Alia snapped an order to her guard. “Send for Duncan.” With a quick bow, Ziarenka slipped away.

Shaking her head, Alia looked at her mother. “This must be another
outrage committed by Bronso of Ix. After what he did at Paul’s funeral, now he wants to ruin Chani’s water ceremony, too. I’ll denounce him! When the people learn—”

Jessica cut her off. “Better that you speak to no one of this, Alia.”

Alia blinked, eased herself back down. “Chani’s water has been stolen. How can we just ignore it? And what can they possibly want? When a question has no obvious answer, I suspect the worst.”

Jessica had already worked through the possibilities in her mind, choosing the best way to defuse an overreaction, and for Stilgar and the Fremen to get what they needed—what Chani needed—and what Alia needed.

“I didn’t say to ignore the matter, but you can completely defuse it. Whoever committed this crime—one of Bronso’s cronies or some other perpetrator—probably intends to cause panic and unrest. Do they want to ransom it? Threaten to profane the water in some way? Regardless, they’ll
expect
you to create an uproar over it, but don’t give them the satisfaction. Don’t call attention to what has happened.”

The suggestion did not sit well with Alia. “We’ve got to thwart their plans, whatever they are. Chani’s water is gone. How are we to hold her memorial service now?”

Jessica remained calm, unconcerned. “It was water. Refill the container, and no one will ever know. If Bronso claims to have Chani’s water, how can he prove it?” She didn’t consider the suggestion to be devious or dishonorable. It was a solution that even the Bene Gesserit would have considered acceptable.
We both get what we want.
“Water is water, and you can hold your memorial service as planned.”

And the Fremen would have their own ceremony to honor Chani in their own way. Stilgar would be satisfied, too. As would Paul, who would know even after his own death that the right thing was being done.

Alia considered, then nodded. “That is an acceptable solution. It renders any threat impotent.”

We have reports of arms merchants attempting to sell stone-burners, even after one blinded Muad’Dib and such weapons were declared illegal. The fires of a stone-burner shall be as nothing compared to the avenging spirit of Muad’Dib.

—
ZIARENKA VALEFOR
, chief of Alia’s guardian amazons

A
fter the funeral debacle, hapless detainees faced various forms of interrogation, guided by Alia’s most aggressive priests. The late (and unlamented) Korba had called the process “customized terror.” Large groups might unite in common cause, filled with grand dreams and righteous delusions, but alone and fearful in a shadowy chamber, individuals behaved quite differently. Each one had a key weakness that the inquisitors used expert methods to discover.

And Alia needed to find answers.

During Paul’s reign, he had not been innocent of such tactics himself, but had looked the other way as his surrogates conducted brutal interrogations. The criminal Bronso of Ix had been arrested and questioned then, and—against all odds—had escaped! Alia had never been able to shake her suspicion that Paul himself might have had a hand in the Ixian’s release, though she couldn’t understand why. Paul had not wanted to watch the interrogation of Bronso in his death cell, even though the Ixian spewed hateful rhetoric against him.

With all the billions who died in his far-reaching Jihad, why didn’t her brother have the stomach for smaller unpleasantries? Having learned from Paul’s mistakes, however, Alia routinely, and clandestinely,
watched during key interrogations. With her own powers of observation, she sometimes picked up things that others missed.

So far, despite the most rigorous questioning of the suspects, the sessions had yielded no valid information. Either Bronso and his allies had a superhuman level of cleverness and luck in concealing their tracks, or the Ixian was acting alone. She refused to accept either answer.

On a more positive note, Alia had used the funeral episode with Bronso as a catalyst to ferret out other affronts against Muad’Dib or House Atreides. In the dark of night, Qizara police forces spread through Arrakeen, Carthag, and countless villages, knocking down doors and arresting alleged arms merchants who had been trying to sell stone-burners like the one that had blinded Paul in a pillar of fire.

When the questionable merchants were brought in, they in turn provided customer lists, and the offending weapons were rounded up and delivered to Arrakeen—for Alia’s own stockpile. In these dangerous and delicate months of her fledgling Regency, Alia Atreides needed to consolidate her power and control the manufacture, distribution, and use of significant weaponry.

“Names provide names,” said Valefor.

At a session of her Regent’s Council, by unilateral decree, Alia amended the long-standing rules of the Great Convention that applied to atomics. Previously, Great Houses had been permitted to keep their warheads, which could be used only under strictly defined defensive circumstances. Henceforth, as a temporary emergency measure, no one except the Imperial Regent herself could possess such weaponry.

But how to pry the dangerous warheads from entrenched Landsraad families? To begin with, she set up an exchange program, under which noble houses could trade their family atomics for large rewards of spice, voting shares in CHOAM, or other perquisites. In the weeks following the Regent’s decree, many Great Houses dutifully surrendered their atomics, hungry for cash and spice after the hardships of the Jihad. Atomics hadn’t been openly used in warfare against rival families in millennia anyway.

But some Landsraad families held out, hoarding their ancient warheads . . . to no good purpose, she knew. As her priests and bureaucrats
carefully noted the arrival of the weapons and stored them for “appropriate use,” it soon became apparent that certain noble Houses were not quite so forthcoming.

Using that as a starting point, Alia asked Duncan to maintain a list of potentially troublesome Houses. She submitted their names to the reconstituted (and ineffective) Landsraad that had reconvened on Kaitain, and she demanded exhaustive investigations and complete disclosure of their activities during the Jihad. Alia would not be caught by surprise.

Armed with information, she would first try economic reprisals against the passively recalcitrant worlds, but she did not rule out any options, even the application of atomics in particularly stubborn cases. After all, Paul had sterilized ninety worlds over the course of the Jihad, so what was the loss of a few more planets?