Dune: House Atreides (11 page)

After the throbbing cheers had died down, many minutes later, the Duke raised his sword again and struck downward, hacking repeatedly until he had severed the head of the bull. Finally, he plunged the bloody sword into the soft ground of the plaza and used both hands to grasp the horns of the bull and lift its head high.

"Leto!" he shouted over his shoulder, his voice booming into the acoustics of the Plaza de Toros. "Leto, my son, come out here!"

Leto, still in the shadows of the archway, hesitated a moment, then marched forth. He held his head high as he crossed the hoof-trampled dirt to stand at his father's side. The crowd cheered with renewed enthusiasm.

Old Duke Paulus turned and presented his son with the bloodied head of his kill.

"I give you Leto Atreides!" he announced to the audience while pointing at his son. "Your future Duke!"

The crowd continued to applaud and shout hurrahs. Leto grasped one of the bull's horns; he and his father stood together holding the defeated beast's head high, the trophy oozing thick red drops onto the sand.

As Leto heard the people echo his name, he felt deep stirrings within, and wondered for the first time if this was truly what it felt like to be a leader of men.

N'kee: Slow-acting poison that builds up in the adrenal glands; one of the most insidious toxins permitted under the accords of Guild Peace and the restrictions of the Great Convention. (See War of Assassins.)

-The Assassins' Handbook

Mmmm, the Emperor will never die, you know, Shaddam." A small man with oversize dark eyes and a weasel face, Hasimir Fenring, sat opposite the shield-ball console from his visitor, Crown Prince Shaddam. "At least not while you're young enough to enjoy the throne."

With a sharp, darting gaze Fenring watched the black shield-ball come to rest on a low-scoring point. Completing his turn at the game, the heir to the Imperium clearly wasn't happy about the result. They had been close companions for most of their lives, and Fenring knew exactly how to distract him at the right moment.

From the game room of Fenring's luxurious penthouse, Shaddam could see the lights of his father's Imperial Palace glittering on the gentle hillside a kilometer away. With Fenring's aid he had disposed of his older brother Fafnir years and years ago, and still the Golden Lion Throne seemed no closer.

Shaddam went over to the balcony and drew a long, deep breath.

He was a strong-featured man in his mid-thirties, with a firm chin and aquiline nose; his reddish hair was cut short and oiled and styled into a perfect helmet.

In an odd way, he looked similar to the century-old busts of his father sculpted during the early decades of Elrood's reign.

It was early evening, and two of Kaitain's four moons hung low in the sky beyond the gigantic Imperial building. Illuminated gliders rode the calm skies of dusk, chased by flocks of songbirds. Sometimes, Shaddam just needed to get away from the sprawling Palace.

"A hundred and thirty-six years as Padishah Emperor," Fenring continued in his nasal voice. "And old Elrood's father ruled for more than a century himself.

Think about it, hmm-m-m-ah? Your father took the throne when he was only nineteen, and you're almost twice that age." The narrow-faced man looked with huge eyes at his friend. "Doesn't that bother you?"

Shaddam didn't respond, stared at the skyline, knowing he should return to the game . . . but he and his friend had bigger games to play.

After his long years of close association Fenring knew that the Imperial heir could not deal with complex problems when other amusements distracted him. Very well, then, I will end this diversion.

"My turn," he said. Fenring lifted a rod on his side of the shimmering shield globe and dipped it through the shield to engage a spinning interior disk. This in turn caused a black ball in the center of the globe to levitate into the air.

With expert timing, Fenring withdrew the rod, and the ball dropped into the center of an oval receptacle bearing the highest mark.

"Damn you, Hasimir, another perfect game for you," Shaddam said, returning from the balcony. "When I'm Emperor, though, will you be wise enough to lose to me?"

Fenring's oversize eyes were alert and feral. A genetic-eunuch, incapable of fathering children because of his congenital deformities, he was still one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium, so single-mindedly ferocious that he was more than a match for any Sardaukar.

"When you're Emperor?" Fenring and the Crown Prince held so many deadly secrets between them that neither could imagine keeping knowledge from the other.

"Shaddam, are you listening to what I'm telling you, hmmm?" He gave an annoyed sigh. "You're thirty-four years old, sitting on your hands and waiting for your life to begin -- your birthright. Elrood could last another three decades, at least. He's a tough old Burseg, and the way he gulps spice beer, he might outlive both of us."

"So why even talk about it?" Shaddam toyed with the shield-ball controls, clearly wanting to play another round. "I've got what I need here."

"You'd rather play games until you're an old man? I thought you had better things in store for you, hm-m-m-m-ah? The destiny of your Corrino blood."

"Ah, yes. And if I don't achieve my destiny," Shaddam said in a bitter tone,

"where does that leave you?"

"I'll do fine, thank you." Fenring's mother had been trained as a Bene Gesserit before entering Imperial service as lady-in-waiting to Elrood's fourth wife; she had raised him well, preparing him for great things.

But Hasimir Fenring was disgusted with his friend. At one time, in his late teens, Shaddam had been much more ambitious to claim the Imperial throne, even to the point of encouraging Fenring to poison the Emperor's eldest son, Fafnir, who had been forty-six and eagerly awaiting the crown himself.

Now Fafnir was dead for fifteen years, and still the old vulture showed no signs of ever dying. At the very least, Elrood should abdicate with good grace.

Meanwhile, Shaddam had lost his drive, and instead occupied his time enjoying the pleasures of his station. Being Crown Prince posed few hardships in life.

But Fenring wanted much more -- for his friend, and for himself.

Shaddam glowered at the other man. The Crown Prince's mother, Habla, had cast him aside as an infant -- her only child by Elrood -- and let her lady-in-waiting, Chaola Fenring, serve as wet nurse. From boyhood, Shaddam and Hasimir had talked about what they would do when he ascended to the Golden Lion Throne.

Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV.

But for Shaddam such conversations no longer held their childhood magic. Too many years of reality had settled in, too much waiting to no purpose. His grip on hope and his enthusiasm for the job had faded into apathy. Why not spend the days playing shield-ball?

"You're a bastard," Shaddam said. "Let's start another game."

Ignoring his friend's suggestion, Fenring shut down the console. "Maybe so, but the Imperium has too many critical matters that require attention, and you know as well as I do that your father is bungling the job. If a company head ran his business the way your father runs the Empire, he'd be sacked. Think of the CHOAM scandal, for example, the soostone skimming operation."

"Ah, yes. Can't argue with you on that, Hasimir." Shaddam heaved a deep sigh.

"Royal impersonators -- a Duke, a Duchess . . . a whole damned family of fakes, right under your father's nose. Who was watching? Now they've disappeared to a rogue planet somewhere beyond Imperial control. That should never have occurred, hmm-m-m-m? Just imagine the lost profits for Buzzell and the adjoining systems. What was Elrood thinking?"

Shaddam looked away. He didn't like to bother with serious Imperial matters.

They gave him headaches. Given his father's apparent vigor, such details seemed distant and, by and large, irrelevant to him.

But still Fenring persisted. "The way it looks now, you won't get a chance to do better. One hundred and fifty-five years, and still in remarkable health.

Fondil III before him lived to be one hundred seventy-five. What's the longest a Corrino Emperor has ever lived?"

Shaddam frowned and looked longingly at the gaming apparatus. "You know I don't pay attention to things like that, even when the tutor gets angry with me."

Fenring jabbed a finger at him. "Elrood will live to two hundred, mark my words. You have a serious problem, friend . . . unless you listen to me." He raised his thin eyebrows.

"Ah, yes, more ideas from the Assassins' Handbook, I suppose. Be careful with that information. You can get in a lot of trouble with it."

"Timid people are destined for nothing better than timid jobs. You and I, Shaddam, have much more in our futures. Think of the possibilities, hypothetically of course. Besides, what's wrong with poison? It works nicely and affects only the targeted person, as required by the Great Convention. No collateral deaths, no loss of revenue, no destruction of inheritable property.

Nice and neat."

"Poisons are for House-to-House assassinations, not for what you're talking about."

"You didn't complain when I took care of Fafnir, hm-m-m-m-ah? He'd be in his sixties now, still waiting to taste the throne. Do you want to wait that long?"

"Stop," Shaddam insisted, digging in his heels. "Don't even imagine such a course. This isn't right."

"And denying you your birthright is? How effective an Emperor would you be if you couldn't exercise power until you were old and senile -- like your father?

Look what's happened on Arrakis. By the time we replaced Abulurd Harkonnen, the damage to spice production was already done. Abulurd had no idea how to crack the whip, so the workers didn't respect him. Now the Baron cracks it too much, and so morale is way down, leading to rampant defections and sabotage. But you can't really blame the Harkonnens. It all traces back to your father, the Padishah Emperor, and the bad decisions he's made." He continued more quietly.

"You owe it to the stability of the Imperium."

Shaddam glanced up at the ceiling, as if searching for spy-eyes or other listening devices, though he knew that Fenring kept his private penthouse impeccably shielded and regularly scanned. "What kind of poison are you considering? Hypothetically speaking, only?" Again he stared across the lights of the city at the Imperial Palace. The shimmering structure seemed like a legendary grail, an unattainable prize.

"Perhaps something slow-acting, hm-m-m-m? So Elrood will appear to be aging.

No one will question what's happening, since he's so old already. Leave it to me. As our future Emperor, you shouldn't concern yourself with the details of such matters -- I have always been your expediter, remember?"

Shaddam chewed his lower lip. No one in the Imperium knew more about this man than he did. But could his friend ever turn on him? Possibly . . . though Fenring knew full well his best path to power lay through Shaddam. How to keep this ambitious friend under control, how to stay a step ahead of him -- that was the challenge.

Emperor Elrood IX, aware of Hasimir Fenring's deadly skills, had made use of him in a number of clandestine operations, all of which had been successful. Elrood even suspected Fenring's role in Crown Prince Fafnir's death, but accepted it as part of Imperial politics. Over the years, Fenring had murdered at least fifty men and a dozen women, some of whom had been his lovers, of either sex. He took a measure of pride in being a killer who could face the victim or strike behind his back, without compunction.

There were days Shaddam wished he and the pushy Fenring had never formed a boyhood relationship: Then he wouldn't be hemmed in with difficult choices that he didn't want to think about. Shaddam should have abandoned his crib-companion as soon as he could walk. It was risky to be around such an unrelenting assassin, and at times he felt tainted by the association.

Still, Fenring was his friend. There was an attraction between them, an undefinable something of which they'd spoken on occasion without fully understanding it. For the present Shaddam found it easier to accept the friendship -- and for his own sake, he hoped it was friendship -- instead of trying to sever it. That course of action could be extremely dangerous.

Close beside him, Shaddam heard a voice that broke his train of thought. "Your favorite brandy, my Prince." Looking to one side, Shaddam saw Fenring offering him a large snifter of smoky-dark kirana brandy.

He accepted the snifter but stared at the liquid suspiciously, swirling it around. Was there another color to it, something not quite mixed in? He put his nose over the lip, inhaling the aroma as if he were a connoisseur -- though he was actually trying to detect any foreign chemical. The brandy smelled normal. But then Fenring would have made sure of that. He was a subtle and devious man.

"I can drag out the snooper if you like, but you never need worry about poison from me, Shaddam," Fenring said with a maddening smile. "Your father, however, is in an entirely different position."

"Ah, yes. A slow-acting poison, you say? I suspect you already have a substance in mind. How long will my father live after you begin the process?

If we do this at all, I mean."

"Two years, maybe three. Long enough to make his decline appear natural."

Shaddam raised his chin, trying to look regal. His skin was perfumed, his reddish hair pomaded and slicked back. "You understand, I might only entertain such a treasonous idea for the sake of the Imperium -- to avoid continued calamities at the hands of my father."

A crafty smile worked at the edges of the weasel face. "Of course."

"Two or three years," Shaddam mused. "Time for me to prepare for the great responsibilities of leadership, I suppose . . . while you attend to some of the more unpleasant tasks of empire."

"Aren't you going to drink your brandy, Shaddam?"

Shaddam met the hard gaze of the oversize eyes, and felt fear course along his spine. He was in too deep not to trust Fenring now. He drew another shaky breath and sipped the rich liqueur.