Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [239]
“Oh, yes,” Margot said with a faint smile. Her gray-green eyes glittered. “This is my favorite place to be in the evenings. I have come twice since my arrival here . . . in anticipation of this private meeting with you, Sire.”
Though he tried to make casual conversation with this representative of the powerful Bene Gesserit, Shaddam felt ill at ease. Everyone wanted something, everyone had a private agenda—and every group thought it was owed favors or held sufficient blackmail material to sway his opinion. Fenring had already taken care of several of those parasites, but more would come.
His current uneasiness had less to do with Sister Margot than with his concerns over mounting mistrust and turmoil among the Great Houses. Even without an autopsy by the Suks, several important members of the Landsraad had raised uncomfortable questions over the Emperor’s mysterious, lingering death. Alliances were shifting and re-forming; important taxes and tithes from several wealthy worlds had been delayed, without adequate explanation.
And the Tleilaxu claimed to be years away from producing their promised synthetic spice.
Shaddam and his inner council would discuss the brewing crisis again this morning, a continuation of meetings that had gone on for a week. The length of Elrood’s reign had forced a stability (if not stagnation) across the Imperium. No one remembered how to implement an orderly transition of power.
All across the worlds, military forces were being increased in strength and placed on alert. Shaddam’s Sardaukar were no exception. Spies were busier than ever, in all quarters. At times he wondered if his reassignment of Elrood’s trusted Chamberlain Aken Hesban might have been a mistake. Hesban now sat in a tiny, rock-walled office deep in the gullet of an asteroid mine, ready to be recalled if things ever got too bad.
But it’ll be a cold day on Arrakis before that happens.
Shaddam’s unease made him jumpy, perhaps a little superstitious. His old vulture of a father was dead—sent to the deepest hell described in the Orange Catholic Bible—yet still he felt the invisible blood on his hands.
Before departing the Palace to meet with Sister Margot, Shaddam had, without much thought, grabbed a cloak to warm his shoulders against an imagined chill in the morning air. The gold mantle had hung in the wardrobe with many other garments he had never worn. Only now did he remember that this particular article had been a favorite of his father’s.
Realizing this, Shaddam’s skin crawled. He felt the fine material prickle him suddenly, making him shiver. The fine gold chain seemed to tighten at his throat like a noose.
Ridiculous, he told himself. Inanimate objects did not carry spirits of the dead, couldn’t possibly harm him. He tried to put such concerns out of his mind. A Bene Gesserit would certainly be able to read his discomfort, and he couldn’t allow this woman so much power over him.
“I love the artwork here,” Margot said. She pointed toward a scaffold fixed to the face of the Landsraad Hall of Oratory, where fresco painters worked on a mural depicting scenes of natural beauty and technological achievement from around the Imperium. “I believe your great-grandfather Vutier Corrino II was responsible for much of this?”
“Ah, yes—Vutier was a great patron of the arts,” Shaddam said with some difficulty. Resisting an urge to remove the haunted cloak and throw it to the ground, he vowed to wear only his own clothes henceforth. “He said that spectacle without warmth or creativity meant nothing.”
“I think you should make your point, please, Sister,” Fenring suggested, noting his friend’s discomfort, but guessing incorrectly as to its cause. “The Crown Prince’s time is valuable. There is much turmoil after the Emperor’s death.”
Shaddam and Fenring had murdered Elrood IX. That fact could never be erased, and they hadn’t escaped suspicion entirely, not according to rumors. War between the Landsraad and House Corrino might result unless the Crown Prince consolidated