Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [254]
His cell was warm, the food sufficient and palatable, the bed comfortable—though he had hardly slept at all while preparing for his ordeal. He had little hope of a swift and simple resolution to this matter. The Courier could only be bringing more problems.
The official, a Landsraad courtech with security clearance, wore a brown-and-teal Landsraad uniform with silver epaulets. He referred to Leto as “Monsieur Atreides,” without the customary ducal title, as if the forfeiture documents had already been processed.
Leto chose not to make a point of this faux pas, though officially he remained a Duke until the papers were signed and the sentence thumbprint-sealed by the magistrates of the court. In all the centuries of the Imperium, Trial by Forfeiture had been invoked previously only three times; in two of those cases, the defendant had lost, and the accused Houses were ruined.
Leto hoped to beat those odds. He could not allow House Atreides to crumble to dust less than a year after his father’s death. That would earn him a permanent place in the Landsraad annals as the most incompetent House leader in recorded history.
Wearing his black-and-red Atreides uniform, Leto took a seat at a blueplaz table. Thufir Hawat, acting as Mentat-advisor, lowered himself ponderously into a chair beside his Duke. Together, they examined the sheaf of legal documents. Like most formal matters of the Imperium, the evidence forms and trial documents were inscribed on microthin sheets of ridulian-crystal paper, permanent records that could last for thousands of years.
At their touch, each sheet illuminated so that Leto and Hawat could study the fine text. The old Mentat used his skills to imprint each page onto his memory; he would absorb and comprehend it all in greater detail later. The documents spelled out precisely what was to occur during the preparations and the actual trial. Each page bore the identification marks of various officers of the court, including Leto’s own attorneys.
As part of the unorthodox procedure, the crew of the Atreides frigate had been released and permitted to return to Caladan, though many loyal followers remained on Kaitain to offer their silent support. Any individual or collective culpability had been shouldered entirely by the commander, Duke Atreides. In addition, the guaranteed sanctuary of the Vernius children would continue, regardless of the status of the House. Even with the worst possible outcome of the trial, Leto could take comfort in that small victory. His friends would remain safe.
Under the forfeiture provision—which even his estranged mother could not countermand from her retreat with the Sisters in Isolation—Duke Leto surrendered all of his family assets (including the House atomics and stewardship of the planet Caladan itself) to the general supervision of the Landsraad Council, while he prepared for a trial before his peers.
A trial that might be rigged against him.
Win or lose, though, Leto knew he had averted a major war and saved billions of lives. His action had been the right one, regardless of the consequences to himself. Old Duke Paulus himself would have made no other choice, given the alternatives.
“Yes, Thufir, this is all correct,” Leto said, turning the last page of shimmering ridulian crystal. He removed his ducal signet ring, snipped the red armorial hawk from his uniform, and handed the items over to the courtech. He felt as if he had just cut away pieces of himself.
If he lost this desperate gambit, the holdings on Caladan would become the prize in a Landsraad free-for-all, the citizens on the watery world no more than helpless bystanders. He had been stripped, his future