Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [129]
“Permission to enter,” Dominic said, his voice tinny and granular across the speakers. “Open up, Rhombur. Zhaz! We need medical attention for Shando.” His eyes were shadowed, his teeth very white beneath the bushy mustache.
Rhombur Vernius rushed toward the controls, but the guard captain stopped him with an urgent tug at his arm. “By all the saints and sinners, remember the Face Dancers, young master!” Leto suddenly realized that Tleilaxu shape-shifters could assume familiar guises and walk into the most secure area. Leto held the Ixian Prince’s other arm while Zhaz interrogated and received a countersign. Finally, a message appeared from the shielded chamber’s biometric identity scanner. Confirmed: Earl Dominic Vernius.
“Permission granted,” Rhombur said into the voice pickup. “Come in—Mother, what happened?”
Kailea looked stricken, as if the floor had dropped out from beneath her plans for the future and she still couldn’t believe she was falling. All of the newcomers smelled of sweat and smoke and fear.
“Your sister was scolding the suboids and telling them to get back to work,” Shando said with a bit of mirth shining through her pain. “Very foolish.”
“And some of them were about to do it, too—” the young woman said as a flush of anger blossomed beneath the soot smudges on her cheeks.
“Until one pulled a maula pistol and opened fire. Good thing the man couldn’t aim.” Shando touched her arm and side, wincing at the open wound.
Dominic knocked the guards aside and tore open a medkit to tend his wife’s injuries himself. “Not serious, my love. I’ll be around to kiss the scars later. But you shouldn’t have taken such a risk.”
“Not even to save Kailea?” Shando coughed, and her eyes sparkled with tears. “You would have done the same to protect either of our children—or even Leto Atreides. And don’t you deny it.”
Averting his gaze, Dominic grudgingly nodded. “It still upsets me . . . how close you came to death. Then what would I have left to fight for?” He stroked her hair, and she clasped the palm of his hand against her cheek.
“Plenty, Dominic. You’d still have plenty to fight for.”
Watching the exchange, Leto could see what had driven a beautiful young concubine to leave her Emperor, and why a war hero had risked Elrood’s wrath to marry her.
Outside in the hidden corridor, half a dozen armed soldiers took up positions again, sealing the access door behind them. On the external-monitor screen, Leto saw the rest of them—shock troops in case of a violent rebel incursion—setting up lascannons, sensors, and sonic defensive equipment in the chamber’s access tube.
Relieved to see his family safe at last, Rhombur hugged his parents and sister. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”
Despite her wound, the Lady Shando appeared proud and brave, though salty tracks around her reddened eyes showed evidence of tears. Self-consciously, Kailea glanced over at Leto, then dropped her emerald gaze. She looked defeated now, and fragile, without her usual aloof demeanor. He wanted to comfort her, but hesitated. Everything seemed too unsettled now, too frightening.
“We don’t have much time, children,” Dominic said, wiping perspiration from his brow, then rubbing his sweaty biceps, “and this time calls for desperate measures.” His shaved scalp was smudged with someone else’s blood—ally or enemy? Leto wondered. The torn helix insignia dangled from his lapel.
“Then now is not the time to call us children,” Kailea said with surprising strength. “We’re a part of this fight.”
Rhombur stood tall, looking unusually regal beside his broad-shouldered father, rather than spoiled and stocky. “And we’re ready to help you retake Ix. Vernii is our city, and we have to get it back.”
“No, all three of you are going to stay