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"Ahhhh, it speaks," the young woman said, laughing. Her laugh was as cold as
her eyes.
"I prefer that you do not refer to me as 'it,' " Burzmali said.
"I call Gammu scum anything I wish," the young woman said. "Don't speak to me
of your preferences!"
"What did you call me?" Burzmali was tired and his anger came boiling up at
this unexpected attack.
"I call you anything I choose, scum!"
Burzmali had suffered enough. Before Lucilla could stop him, he uttered a low
growl and aimed a heavy slap at the young woman.
The blow did not land.
Lucilla watched in fascination as the woman dropped under the attack, caught
Burzmali's sleeve as one might catch a bit of fabric blowing in the wind and, in
a blindingly fast pirouette whose speed almost hid its delicacy, sent Burzmali
skidding across the floor. The woman dropped to a half crouch on one foot, the
other prepared to kick.
"I shall kill him now," she said.
Lucilla, not knowing what might happen next, folded her body sideways, barely
avoiding the woman's suddenly outthrust foot, and countered with a standard Bene
Gesserit sabard that dumped the young woman on her back doubled up where the
blow had caught her in the abdomen.
"A suggestion that you kill my guide is uncalled for, whatever your name is,"
Lucilla said.
The young woman gasped for breath, then, panting between words: "I am called
Murbella, Great Honored Matre. You shame me by defeating me with such a slow
attack. Why do you do that?"
"You needed a lesson," Lucilla said.
"I am only newly robed, Great Honored Matre. Please forgive me. I thank you
for the splendid lesson and will thank you every time I employ your response,
which I now commit to memory." She bowed her head, then leaped lightly to her
feet, an impish grin on her face.
In her coldest voice, Lucilla asked: "Do you know who I am?" Out of the
corners of her eyes, she saw Burzmali regain his feet with painful slowness. He
remained at one side, watching the women, but anger burned his face.
"From your ability to teach me that lesson, I see that you are who you are,
Great Honored Matre. Am I forgiven?" The impish grin had vanished from
Murbella's face. She stood with head bowed.
"You are forgiven. Is there a no-ship coming?"
"So they say here. We are prepared for it." Murbella glanced at Burzmali.
"He is still useful to me and it is required that he accompany me," Lucilla
said.
"Very good, Great Honored Matre. Does your forgiveness include your name?"
"No!"
Murbella sighed. "We have captured the ghola," she said. "He came as a
Tleilaxu from the south. I was just about to bed him when you arrived."
Burzmali hobbled toward them. Lucilla saw that he had recognized the danger.
This "completely safe" place had been infested by enemies! But the enemies
still knew very little.
"The ghola was not injured?" Burzmali asked.
"It still speaks," Murbella said. "How odd."
"You will not bed the ghola," Lucilla said. "That one is my special charge!"
"Fair game, Great Honored Matre. And I marked him first. He is already partly
subdued."
She laughed once more, with a callous abandonment that shocked Lucilla. "This
way. There is a place where you can watch."
May you die on Caladan!
-Ancient Drinking Toast
Duncan tried to remember where he was. He knew Tormsa was dead. Blood had
spurted from Tormsa's eyes. Yes, he remembered that clearly. They had entered
a dark building and light had flared abruptly all around them. Duncan felt an
ache in the back of his head. A blow? He tried to move and his muscles refused
to obey.
He remembered sitting at the edge of a wide lawn. There was some kind of
bowling game in progress -- eccentric balls that bounced and darted with no
apparent design. The players were young men in a common costume of . . . Giedi
Prime!
"They are practicing to be old men," he said. He remembered saying that.
His companion, a young woman, looked at him blankly.
"Only old men should play these outdoor games," he said.
"Oh?"
It was an unanswerable question. She put him down with only the simplest of
verbal gestures.
And betrayed me the next instant to the Harkonnens!
So that was a pre-ghola memory.
Ghola!
He remembered the Bene Gesserit Keep on Gammu. The library: holophotos and
triphotos of the Atreides Duke, Leto I. Teg's resemblance was not an accident:
a bit taller but otherwise it was all there -- that long, thin face with its
high-bridged nose, the renowned Atreides charisma . . .
Teg!
He remembered the old Bashar's last gallant stand in the Gammu night.
Where am I?
Tormsa had brought him here. They had been moving along an overgrown track on
the outskirts of Ysai. Barony. It started to snow before they were two hundred
meters up the track. Wet snow that clung to them. Cold, miserable snow that
set their teeth chattering within a minute. They paused to bring up their hoods
and close the insulated jackets. That was better. But it would be night soon.
Much colder.
"There is a shelter of sorts up ahead," Tormsa said. "We will wait there for
the night."
When Duncan did not speak, Tormsa said: "It won't be warm but it will be dry."
Duncan saw the gray outline of the place in about three hundred paces. It stood
out against the dirty snow some two stories tall. He recognized it immediately:
a Harkonnen counting outpost. Observers here had counted (and sometimes killed)
the people who passed. It was built of native dirt turned into one giant brick
by the simple expedient of preforming it in mud bricks and then superheating it
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