Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [206]
Overly dramatic, Leto thought; Hawat saw it, too.
Yresk placed a finger to his lips, as if considering a possibility. “Now that you mention it, m’Lord, it could well be that the boy himself was poisoning the bull. I couldn’t watch him every moment.”
“That’s a lie!” Duncan shouted. “I wanted to tell the Duke, but you locked me in a stall. Why didn’t you try to stop the bullfight? I warned you and warned you—and now the Duke is dead.”
Hawat listened, his eyes distant, his lips moist and cranberry-stained from a fresh swallow of sapho juice. Leto saw he had entered Mentat mode again, racing through all the data he recalled of the events involving young Duncan and Yresk as well.
“Well?” Leto asked the stablemaster. He forced himself not to think of old times with the lanky man who had always smelled of sweat and manure.
“The stable-rat may have prattled some at me, m’Lord, but he was afraid of the bulls. I can’t simply cancel a bullfight because a child thinks the beasts are terrifying.” He snorted. “I took care of this pup, gave him every chance—”
“Yet you didn’t listen to him when he warned you about the bulls, and now my father is dead,” Leto said, noting that Yresk suddenly seemed afraid. “Why would you do that?”
“Possible projection,” Hawat said. “Through the Lady Helena, Yresk has worked for House Richese all his life. Richese has had ties to the Harkonnens in the past, as well as an adversarial relationship with Ix. He may not even be aware of his part in the overall scheme or—”
“What? This is absurd!” Yresk insisted. He scratched his white hair. “I have nothing to do with the Harkonnens.” He flashed a glance at the Lady Helena, but she refused to meet his gaze.
“Don’t interrupt my Mentat,” Leto warned.
Thufir Hawat studied Lady Helena, whose icy stare was leveled at him. Then his gaze slid to her son, where it remained as he continued to lay out his projection: “Summary: The marriage of Paulus Atreides to Helena of House Richese was dangerous, even at the time. The Landsraad saw it as a way to weaken Richese/Harkonnen ties, while Count Ilban Richese accepted the marriage as a last-ditch effort to salvage some of his family fortune at the time they were losing Arrakis. As for House Atreides, Duke Paulus received a formal CHOAM directorship and became a voting member of the Council—something this family might never otherwise have achieved.
“When the wedding party came here with Lady Helena, however, perhaps not all of her retainers granted their full loyalty to Atreides. Contact could have been made between Harkonnen agents and Stablemaster Yresk . . . without Lady Helena’s knowledge, of course.”
“That’s wild conjecture, especially for a Mentat,” Yresk said. He looked for support from anyone in the room, Leto noticed—with the exception of Helena, whose eyes he now seemed to avoid. On his thin throat, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
Leto stared at his mother sitting in silence beside him, at the set of her jaw. A sharp cold sliced unbidden down his spine. Through the carved wood of their closed bedroom door, Leto had heard her words concerning his father’s Vernius policy. You’re the one who’s made a choice here, Paulus. And you’ve made the wrong one. Now the words echoed in Leto’s head. That choice will cost you and our House dearly.
“Uh, nobody really watches a stablemaster, Leto,” Rhombur pointed out in a low voice.
But Leto continued to observe his mother. Stablemaster Yresk had come to Caladan as part of Helena’s wedding entourage from Richese. Could she have turned to him? What sort of hold did she have on the man?
His throat went dry as all the pieces interlocked in his mind with a sudden realization that must have been similar to what a Mentat experienced. She had done it! Lady Helena Atreides herself had set the wheels in motion. Oh, perhaps she’d had