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"Yes. Ampre is convinced that the Lord Leto permits threats to his person only up to certain limits."
"Ampre said that?"
"Ampre does not believe the future can be hidden from the Lord Leto."
"But my mission to Ix has about it the suggestion that ..." Anteac broke off and shook her head, then: "Why does Ix provide the Lord with machines and weapons?"
"Ampre believes that Ix has no choice. Overwhelming force destroys people who pose too great a threat."
"And if Ix refused, that would pass the Lord Leto's limits. No middle point. Have you thought about the consequences of wedding the Lord Leto?"
"You mean the doubts such an act will raise about his godhead?"
"Some will believe the Tleilaxu stories."
Hwi only smiled.
Damnation! Anteac thought. How did we lose this girl?
"He is changing the design of his religion," Anteac accused. "That's it, of course."
"Do not make the mistake of judging all others by yourselves," Hwi said. And, as Anteac started to bridle, Hwi added: "But I did not come here to argue with you about the Lord."
"No
. Of course not."
"The Lord Leto has commanded me," Hwi said, "to tell you every detail in my memory about the place where I was born and raised."
As she reflected on Hwi's words, Anteac stared down at the cryptic square of black in her lap. Hwi had proceeded to recount the details which her Lord (and now bridegroom!) had commanded, details which would have been boring at times were it not for Anteac's Mentat abilities at data absorption.
Anteac shook her head as she considered what must be reported to her Sisters at the Chapter House. They already would be studying the import of her previous message. A machine which could shield itself and contents from the penetrating prescience of even the God Emperor? Was that possible? Or was this a different kind of test, a test of Bene Gesserit candor with their Lord Leto? But now! If he did not already know the genesis of this enigmatic Hwi Noree ...
This new development reinforced Anteac's Mentat summation of why she had been chosen for the mission to Ix. The God Emperor did not trust this knowledge to his Fish Speakers. He did not want Fish Speakers suspecting a weakness in their Lord!
Or was that as obvious as it appeared? Wheels within wheels--that was the way of the Lord Leto.
Again, Anteac shook her head. She bent then and resumed her account for the Chapter House, leaving out the revelation that the God Emperor had chosen a bride.
They would learn it soon enough. Meanwhile, Anteac herself would consider the implications.
If you know all of your ancestors, you were a personal witness to the events which created the myths and religions of our past. Recognizing this, you must think of me as a myth-maker.
--THE STOLEN JOURNALS
The first explosion came just as darkness enfolded the City of Onn. The blast caught a few venturesome revelers outside the Ixian Embassy, passing on their way to a party where (it was promised) Face Dancers would perform an ancient drama about a king who slew his children. After the violent events of the first four Festival Days, it had taken some courage for the revelers to emerge from the relative safety of their quarters. Stories of death and injury to innocent bystanders circulated all through the City--and here it was again--more fuel for the cautious.
None of the victims and survivors would have appreciated Leto's observation that innocent bystanders were in relatively short supply.
Leto's acute senses detected the explosion and located it. With an instant fury which he was later to regret, he shouted for his Fish Speakers and commanded them to "wipe out the Face Dancers," even the ones he had spared earlier.
On immediate reflection, the sensation of fury itself fascinated Leto. It had been so long since he had felt even mild anger. Frustration, irritation--these had been his limits. But now, at a threat to Hwi Noree, fury!
Reflection caused him to modify his initial command, but not before some Fish Speakers had raced from the Royal Presence, their most violent desires released by what they had seen in their Lord.
"God is furious!" some of them shouted.
The second blast caught some of the Fish Speakers emerging into the plaza, limiting the spread of Leto's modified command and igniting more violence. The third explosion, located near the first one, sent Leto himself into action. He propelled his cart like a berserk juggernaut out of his resting chamber into the Ixian lift and surged to the surface.
Leto emerged at the edge of the plaza to find a scene of chaos lighted by thousands of free-floating glowglobes released by his Fish Speakers. The central stage of the plaza had been shattered, leaving only the plasteel base intact beneath the paved surface. Broken pieces of masonry lay all around, mixed with dead and wounded.
In the direction of the Ixian Embassy, directly across the plaza from him, there was a wild surging of combat.
"Where is my Duncan?" Leto bellowed.
A guard bashar came racing across the plaza to his side where she reported through panting breaths: "We have taken him to the Citadel, Lord!"
"What is happening over there?" Leto demanded, pointing at the battle outside the Ixian Embassy.
"The rebels and the Tleilaxu are attacking the Ixian Embassy, Lord. They have explosives."
Even as she spoke, another blast erupted in front of the Embassy's shattered facade. He saw bodies twisting in the air, arching outward and falling at the perimeter of a bright flash which left an orange afterimage, studded with black dots.
With no thought of consequences, Leto shifted his cart onto suspensors and sent it bulleting across the plaza--a hurtling behemoth which sucked glowglobes into its wake. At the battle's edge, he arched over his own defenders and plunged into the attackers' flank, aware only then of lasguns which sent livid blue arcs leaping toward him. He felt his cart thudding into flesh, scattering bodies all around.
The cart spilled him directly in front of the Embassy, rolling him off onto a hard surface as it struck the rubble there. He felt lasgun beams tickle his ribbed body, then the inner surge of heat followed by a venting belch of oxygen at his tail. Instinct tucked his face deep into its cowl and folded his arms into the protective depths of his front segment. The worm-body took over, arching and flailing, rolling like an insane wheel, lashing out on all sides.
Blood lubricated the street. Blood was buffered water to his body, but death released the water. His flailing body slipped and slithered in it, the water igniting blue smoke from every flexion place where it slipped through the sandtrout skin. This filled him with water-agony which ignited more violence in the great flailing body.
At Leto's first lashing out, the Fish Speaker perimeter fell back. An alert bashar saw the opportunity now presented. She shouted above the battle noise:
"Pick off the stragglers!"
The ranks of guardian women rushed forward.
It was bloody play among the Fish Speakers for a few minutes, blades thrusting in the merciless light of the glowglobes, the dancing of lasgun arcs, even hands chopping and toes digging into vulnerable flesh. The Fish Speakers left no survivors.
Leto rolled beyond the bloody mush in front of the Embassy, barely able to think through the waves of water-agony. The air was heavy with oxygen all around him and this helped his human senses. He summoned his cart and it drifted toward him, tipping perilously on damaged suspensors. Slowly, he wriggled onto the tipping cart and gave it the mental command to return to his quarters beneath the plaza.
Long ago, he had prepared himself against water-damage--a room where blasts of superheated dry air would cleanse and restore him. Sand would serve but there was no place in the confines of Onn for the necessary expanse of sand in which he might heat and rasp his surface to its normal purity.
In the lift, he thought of Hwi and sent a message to have her brought down to him immediately.
If she survived.
He had no time now to make a prescient search; he could only hope while his body, both pre-worm and human, longed for the cleansing heat.
Once into the cleansing room, he thought to reaffirm his modified command--"Save some of the Face Dancers!" But by then the maddened Fish Speakers were spreading out through the City and he had not the strength to make a prescient sweep which would send his messengers to the proper meeting points.
A Guard captain brought him word as he was emerging from the cleansing room that Hwi Noree, although slightly wounded, was safe and would be brought to him as soon as the local commander thought it prudent.
Leto promoted the Guard captain to sub-bashar on the spot. She was a heavyset Nayla-type but without Nayla's square face--features more rounded and closer to the older norms. She trembled in the warmth of her Lord's approval and, when he told her to return and "make doubly certain" no more harm came to Hwi, she whirled and dashed from his presence.
I didn't even ask her name, Leto thought, as he rolled himself onto the new cart in the depression of his small audience room. It took a few moments of reflection to recall the new sub-bashar's name--Kieuemo. The promotion would have to be reaffirmed. He lodged a mental reminder to do this personall
y. The Fish Speakers, all of them, would have to learn immediately how much he valued Hwi Noree. Not that there could be much doubt after tonight.
He made his prescient scan then and dispatched messengers to his rampaging Fish Speakers. By then the damage had been done--corpses all over Onn, some Face Dancers and some only-suspected Face Dancers.
And many have seen me kill, he thought.
While he waited for Hwi's arrival, he reviewed what had just happened. This had not been a typical Tleilaxu attack, but the previous attack on the road to Onn fitted into a new pattern, all of it pointing at a single mind with lethal purpose.
I could have died out there, he thought.
That began to explain why he had not anticipated this attack, but there was a deeper reason. Leto could see that reason rising into his awareness, a summation of all the clues. What human knew the God Emperor best? What human possessed a secret place from which to conspire?
