I prefer bad news to no information whatsoever. Silence is like starvation.
—BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN
Even though the grimy air of Harko City made the Baron cough, he still felt invigorated. For all its flaws and odors, he much preferred his own planet to hot and dusty Arrakis, gaudy Kaitain, or bleak Grumman. This was home.
He and Piter de Vries rode a slidewalk from the Keep, heading for a luncheon engagement with his nephews Rabban and Feyd. Both young men continued to vie for his attention, waiting for him to choose one or the other as his official successor. He was in no hurry to make his selection known. So far, neither one had proved himself to the Baron’s satisfaction.
As the walkway crossed a park cluttered with imposing statues of Harkonnen leaders, de Vries pointed out, “The birds have been perching on your head again, my Lord.”
The Baron noted a recently commissioned sculpture of himself as a lean and handsome young man, striking a heroic pose and holding a broadsword. He thought wistfully of the muscular body that had once been a source of so much pride for him, before that witch Mohiam inflicted him with a chronic malady. To his dismay, white streaks of bird excrement ran down the statue’s forehead into the bronze eyes.
“Another park attendant shall die,” the Baron said matter-of-factly.
As they approached, a worker ran desperately toward the statue with a ladder and cleaning materials, but it was too late. Seeing his vigorous attention to duty, the Baron mused, “On second thought, this maintenance problem must go higher up. Let us have the supervisor put to death as well. Arrange for a bird motif of some sort at the execution, gouge out his eyes with a beak-shaped tool or something, or use a talon device to rip his face to shreds. It’s the sort of thing Rabban would enjoy. We shall mention it to him at lunch.”
His oldest nephew was powerful and without a conscience, an excellent enforcer, and useful in his own way. Rabban’s much younger brother Feyd, though only fourteen, showed a greater deviousness and wit. That made him a more worthy candidate to be the Baron’s successor… and more dangerous.
“Maybe you should have your nephew kill the entire park staff and start over,” de Vries suggested. “He’s bound to do it anyway, unless you forbid him.”
The Baron shook his head. “That would be wasteful. Better to strike fear into them, but leave enough of them alive so that the work gets done. I never want to see excrement on my statues again.”
When the slidewalk reached the terrace level, the Baron and his Mentat disembarked. The pair made their way between tables of diners to a roped-off area that had been reserved for them, with a view of a smoky stone-oil refinery. Rabban and Feyd were already there.
Feyd, in fluid-fabric knickers with a tie and jacket, was feeding bits of bread to pigeons that hopped around on the pavement under the tables. Just as one bird got close to the young man, the stocky Rabban lunged off his chair, startling the bird into flight. Feyd looked at his older brother with poisonous annoyance.
The Baron adjusted his suspensor belt and eased into his seat after checking for bird droppings there, too. “It seems we have a pigeon problem that we must deal with.”
After de Vries explained about the soiled statues, Rabban predictably suggested executing the entire maintenance staff. Feyd, though, offered another idea. “Perhaps, Uncle, we could eradicate the birds instead.”
The Baron nodded thoughtfully. “Approaching the problem from a different perspective. Very good, Feyd. Yes, let us try that solution first.”
As the meal was delivered on overladen platters, de Vries lowered his voice while grinning through sapho-stained lips. “We have received no word yet, but Duke Leto’s wedding ceremony should have occurred yesterday. How lovely it must be on Caladan, with the flowers, the music and festivities… the blood of loved ones spilled at the altar.”
“Delightful images. I await the news… and the confirmation.” The Baron smiled as he visualized what had probably happened. “Poor Duke Leto and his bride lying dead amidst the flowers, while bumbling guards run around in circles, looking for culprits.”
“They will blame House Moritani, and probably Prad Vidal, but not Harkonnen,” the Mentat said. “Our second-wave operatives remain in place to clean up any mistakes there, but even they will be seen as Grumman assassins if they make a move. No Harkonnen fingerprints are on the scene. As far as anyone can see, Viscount Moritani charged in like a Salusan bull to avenge himself against Ecaz for the death of his son… and an Atreides Duke just happened to be in the line of fire. How sad! Such a tragic loss for the people of Caladan!”
“Nicely put.” The Baron held up his thick hands, showed the puffy palms. “We must always keep our hands clean.”
“As spotless as your statue is going to be from now on.”
The Baron scowled at the mocking reminder, causing de Vries to move himself out of reach.
“I can’t wait to hear the news,” Rabban said.
“We must not be overly anxious,” the Baron cautioned. “Make no inquiries of any kind. Let the announcement arrive here through regular channels, as it spreads throughout the Imperium. There’s bound to be quite an uproar.”
3
I have studied the habits of creatures on many planets, and one constant is apparent on world after world: Predators usually come out at night.
—PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES, Zoological Report #7649
Castle Caladan was asleep, seemingly holding its breath. Even in daytime, the people rarely spoke above whispers. Though all windows were open and every skylight cleared, the castle was full of suspicious shadows. Security was tighter than at any other time in memory.
In happier times, Duke Leto kept a full staff of servants, cooks, cleaners, and maids; he welcomed aspiring artists to paint watercolors of the landscape as viewed from the high balconies. Not anymore. As Duncan Idaho stalked the halls carrying the Old Duke’s sword, it felt to him as if the castle had been wounded. Every person, even old familiar faces, underwent a thorough security scan prior to entering the fortress. Imposing such measures made Leto extraordinarily uncomfortable, but Thufir Hawat insisted.
When Duncan was a boy, he had escaped the Harkonnens and gone to work for House Atreides as a mere stable hand. There, he had observed the fury of the caged Salusan bulls, which would attack anything that moved. Viscount Moritani reminded him of those maddened bulls. Once the vile man set his sights on a particular enemy, he would strike and strike again, trampling anyone who got in his way.
Duncan did not make the mistake of assuming that the danger was past. Now, on his security rounds, he paced the halls, sword in hand, eyes alert. He opened Paul’s door to make sure that nothing threatened the Duke’s son. The boy slept soundly in his room, though his bed-sheets were a tangle — evidence that he had been tossing and turning, as he often did when he had one of his vivid nightmares. In an adjacent bed his guest, Bronso Vernius, snored softly. Prince Rhombur had insisted that the two boys room together and watch out for each other.
Duncan continued his rounds to the dimly lit kitchens. In a plaz case, large ambulatory crustaceans crawled over each other, their claws taped; they would be served for the following day’s meal. The pantries were locked, the gate to the wine cellar shut, the ovens still warm. All the kitchen staff had been dismissed for the day, but they would be back shortly before dawn, when Gurney took his shift. The troubadour warrior liked to be there at breakfast.
From one of the high windows Duncan looked down at the surf crashing against the black rocks. The ocean was dark and restless, occasionally glowing with a wash of phosphorescent plankton. The rocks, slick with spray and algae, blended in with the stone walls of Castle Caladan.
He thought he saw shapes out there, oily moving shadows that slithered up the stone walls, but the night was moonless, the stars obscured by clouds, and he could discern little. Peering into the darkness through a diamond-shaped window pane, he caught a flicker of movement again.
The ocean side of
the castle was impregnable. Still, that section of the structure contained the infirmary wing where Archduke Ecaz slept, monitored by medical instruments and regular visits by Dr. Yueh. If another group of stealthy assassins meant to kill him, this would be their last chance on Caladan. The Archduke was due to leave the following morning.
Duncan changed his rounds and headed toward the infirmary.
***
AS SOON AS the footsteps had disappeared down the corridor, Paul opened his eyes and turned over to regard the son of Prince Rhombur Vernius. For years now, Paul had been able to feign sleep well enough to fool even his guards and closest friends.
He could see Bronso’s bright eyes in the dimness as he lay on a cot beside the main sleeping pallet. Though the Ixian boy was generally quiet and reserved, Paul had quickly recognized how intelligent and adaptable Bronso was. “Now tell me more about Ix,” he whispered.
Sounding homesick, Bronso described the underground caverns, where he said subterranean industries produced valuable technological items, while leaving the planet’s surface a pristine, natural wilderness. Paul’s father had also told him stories about staying on Ix with House Vernius. Leto and Rhombur had barely escaped with their lives during the unexpected Tleilaxu takeover of that planet — a reminder that being “home” was not the same as being safe.
Now, as Bronso continued to whisper, Paul’s ears picked up a stealthy movement, so subtle it almost seemed to be a subset of the silence. The corridor should have been empty, but he heard the most delicate of whispery footsteps. He lowered his voice. “Someone’s coming.”
Despite years of training and preparation for the countless threats he would face as the son of a duke, Paul had never truly felt unsafe. But since the wedding-day slaughter, wherever he walked, whomever he met, Paul was aware of his surroundings with a razor clarity, looking for the tiniest fleck of detail out of place.
Bronso immediately fell silent and strained to listen. “Duncan Idaho coming back?”
“No, it’s not Duncan — I would know. Find a place to take shelter until we see what this is. We can’t be too cautious.”
“You want me to hide like a coward?”
“I want you to stay safe, like a guest of House Atreides.”
Paul slipped from his own sleeping pallet, while Bronso plumped up his blankets and pillows in a very crude deception, then crawled under his loose cot. Paul had no time to strap on his personal shield, so he crept to the assortment of keepsakes he kept on a low shelf and selected a sharp-edged lump of coral rock that he and his father had found on the beach. It was heavy enough to be an effective weapon.
The chamber door remained slightly ajar after Duncan’s cursory inspection. The hall outside, though dimly lit, was still much brighter than the bedchamber, and someone was out there. Paul would have to act swiftly. He remembered some tactical advice Thufir had given him: “Strike fast, and strike where they do not expect. If you are in a position of weakness, surprise your opponent with aggression. The entire scenario can change in a millisecond.”
A millisecond… Paul might not have much more time than that.
He held the heavy coral and crouched at floor level, just to the side of the door where no one would expect him, since the two boys were supposed to be on their sleeping pallets. Paul tensed and waited, mentally reminding himself of the most vulnerable points in a human body.
The door swung open, and hall light flooded into the room. In a mental snapshot, Paul saw a muscular stranger who seemed to be covered in tar, a skintight oily suit. Spotting a curved scimitar-like dagger in the stranger’s hand, he no longer had any doubts about what this man meant to do. The dark, slick-skinned man slipped into the room.
But Paul struck first.
***
INSIDE THE INFIRMARY, Archduke Armand was sleeping. Yueh had suggested several effective drugs and supplements to increase the man’s energy and improve his stamina, perhaps even a strong dose of melange, but Armand had refused it all. He seemed to prefer his restless sleep and nightmares. Duncan could imagine the ache and misery this nobleman endured, since he had lost his own family when he was just a boy on Giedi Prime, thanks to Rabban. But Duncan had recovered from those scars.
The room was illuminated by instrument panels and medical monitors, sensing that something wasn’t right, he absorbed all the details and waited.
Duncan tightened his grip on the Old Duke’s sword and, preparing for the glare, he slapped the wall controls to full illumination, firing up the room’s clustered glowglobes. Ducking instinctively in the dazzle, he saw three black shapes lunging at him. Each infiltrator was covered in a skin made of black oil that rippled with rainbow iridescence. The figures carried curved daggers halfway between a knife and sickle, tipped with an extra razor-sharp barb. These assassins clearly wanted to hack and slash. They meant to leave Archduke Armand not just dead, but in pieces — obviously, to send a message from House Moritani.
Facing the silhouetted infiltrators, Duncan brandished the sword. The assassins threw themselves toward him, moving in almost complete silence but with speed and coordination. He noted scars on their throats and wondered if they had been rendered speechless so that they might never cry out, never reveal information. The attackers’ eyes bulged, and the tendons on their necks were taut, as if they were pumped up on some type of drug.
They set upon him like a wolf pack, but Duncan was able to spin away and use his sword and shield defensively. He slammed the long blade hard against one of the curved daggers, a blow that should have been enough to snap the wrist and knock the dagger free, but the assassin retained his oily black grip. The other two men moved with a manic flurry of jittery gestures.
Duncan stabbed one man through the chest, and barely withdrew the Old Duke’s sword in time to knock aside another assassin’s sickle-dagger as it slid through the shield. With his free hand, Duncan grasped the wrist of its wielder, pushed it back, and then thrust his sword into the second assassin. The tip sank deep into the silent man’s abdomen.
Though both assassins were mortally wounded, they continued to fight him, heedless of their own injuries. The third was still uninjured. Duncan needed to end this quickly.
***
FROM HIS LOW position, Paul smashed with the heavy coral rock, shattering the intruder’s right kneecap. He heard the crunch of the patella, the snap of cartilage, and the man’s eerily quiet whuff of pain.
Although the oily-suited man could barely stand upright, he seemed to shrug off the injury. No words came from his throat, only a raspy sound like rustling paper. When the man swung the sickle-dagger, Paul ducked, still brandishing the sharp-edged coral rock, but it was a clumsy weapon for a nimble person. The assassin’s mangled knee made him walk with a dying insect’s gait, yet he lurched farther into the room, slashing with the knife again.
Seeing the cot where Bronso supposedly slept, the intruder turned back to Paul, thrusting the dagger toward him as Paul attacked again with the heavy rock. Suddenly Bronso’s cot burst upward, and the Ixian boy used it as a battering ram, yelling at the top of his lungs. The unexpected appearance of the lightweight rectangular bed startled the crippled assassin. The curved dagger slammed through the bedding, through the pillow, and into the thin mattress pad, but Bronso twisted the cot, snagging the blade.
Paul smashed the man’s shoulder with his coral rock, then shouted, “Guards! Duncan! We’re being attacked!”
With a great burst of strength the oil-skinned killer tore his knife free from the pallet. Paul and Bronso backed together into a defensive position.
Outside the door, Paul heard a sound like a stampeding bull — footfalls crashing down the corridor. Prince Rhombur Vernius smashed into the room in a fury of prosthetics, knocking the door off its hinges. The silent assassin whirled at the new arrival, and Rhombur grabbed him by the throat.
Refusing to surrender, the intruder drove the curved dagger down, slicing into Rhombur’s reinforced chest, chopping repeatedly into his shou
lder, trying to stab the cyborg’s spine. Rhombur’s synthetic grip tightened. With a final clench of his hand, he crushed the man’s throat and cast him like a limp doll to the floor.
The dead assassin’s arms and legs twitched and jittered, as from a heavy pulse of electricity, and the black, oily suit burst into flame, incinerating his entire body in an astonishing self-destruct process.
“Bronso, are you all right?” Rhombur demanded. “Paul, what happened here?”
“We are safe,” Paul said.
Bronso added, “Neither of us is as defenseless as that man believed.”
***
THE COMMOTION AND lights in the infirmary had awakened Armand Ecaz, who was still in a weakened state. The Archduke saw Duncan fighting the assassins and, knowing he could not fight alongside Duncan, he did his best to help nonetheless. He yanked the medical monitors from his body, cutting off his vital signs.
Instantly, shrill medical alarms echoed from the monitors.
The sound startled the third assassin for just a moment, and with a broad sweep of the sword Duncan decapitated him, cutting through the oily black hood that extended over the man’s hair. The other two men, though dying from their sword wounds, still struggled to come at him.
Duncan stood back, wondering how much information could be gleaned from them before they perished. He had no doubt that they were a second wave of Moritani killers sent to murder Archduke Ecaz. But what if a third wave of assassins was hidden on Caladan… or a fourth?
As the three attackers died, their black suits activated a final failsafe measure. The headless man burst into flames first. His incendiary suit created a pyre that filled the ward with a thick greasy smoke and the stench of roasting flesh. The white-hot flames grew brighter, cremating the remains to the bone — eliminating any evidence. The mortally wounded pair fell next and were also immolated as soon as they died.
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