Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [202]
Another grim-faced Sardaukar grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away, but he pushed up the sleeve of her cloak and, in a flash, scratched her with a small curette. She gasped, thinking the soldier had poisoned her, but the Sardaukar stood back calmly to analyze the blood sample he had stolen.
“Identity confirmed, sir,” he said, looking over at his Burseg commander. “Lady Shando Vernius of Ix.”
The troops stepped back, but Shando did not move. She knew what was coming.
For over a year, the old Emperor had grown increasingly irrational, his mind failing, his body trembling. Elrood suffered under more delusions than usual, more hatred than one body should have contained. But he remained the Emperor, and his decrees were followed explicitly.
The only question in her mind was whether they would torture her first to acquire information she didn’t have about Dominic’s whereabouts. Or whether they would just finish the job.
Through a side door of the big house, Omer came running, shouting. His black hair was in disarray. He waved a crude hunting weapon he had found in a storage locker. Such a fool, she thought. Brave, dear, and loyal—but nonetheless a fool.
“My Lady!” Omer shouted. “Leave her alone!”
A few of the Sardaukar aimed at him and at the shaggy workers in the field, but most kept their weapons trained on her. She looked up to the sky and thought of her loving husband and children and hoped only that they wouldn’t meet similar ends. Even at this moment she had to admit that, given the choice, she would do it all again. She did not regret the loss in prestige or riches that leaving the royal Court had cost her. Shando had known a love that few members of the nobility had ever experienced.
Poor Roody, she thought with a flash of pity. You never understood that kind of love. As usual, Dominic had been right. In her mind, she saw him again as he was when she had first met the Earl of House Vernius: a handsome young soldier, returned victorious from battle.
Shando raised one hand to touch the vision of Dominic’s face one last time . . .
Then all the Sardaukar opened fire.
I must rule with eye and claw—as the hawk among lesser birds.
—DUKE PAULUS ATREIDES,
The Atreides Assertion
Duke Leto Atreides.
Ruler of the planet Caladan, member of the Landsraad, head of a Great House . . . These titles meant nothing to him. His father was dead.
Leto felt small. Defeated and confused, he was not ready for the burdens that had been thrust upon him so cruelly at the age of fifteen. As he sat in the uncomfortable, overlarge chair where the blustery Old Duke had so often held formal and informal court, Leto felt out of place, an imposter.
I am not ready to be Duke!
He had declared seven days of official mourning, during which he’d been able to sidestep most of the difficult business as head of House Atreides. Simply dealing with the condolences from other Great Houses proved almost too much for him . . . especially the formal letter from Emperor Elrood IX, written no doubt by his Chamberlain but signed with the old man’s palsied hand. “A great man of the people has fallen,” the Emperor’s note read. “You have my sincere condolences and prayers for your future.”
For some inexplicable reason, this had sounded to Leto like a threat—something sinister in the slant of the signature, perhaps, or in the selection of words. Leto had burned the message in the fireplace of his private quarters.
Most important of all to him, Leto received heartfelt gestures of grief from the people of Caladan: fresh flowers, baskets of fish, embroidered banners, poems and songs written by would-be bards, carvings, even drawings and paintings depicting the Old Duke in his glory, victorious in the bullring.
In private, where no one could see his weakness, Leto cried. He knew how much the people had loved Duke Paulus, and he remembered the feeling of power that had blanketed him the day he and his