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"The Ixians are in this somewhere," Odrade said.
Tuek agreed. That much shigawire... "Where have you taken the child?" he asked.
"We are protecting her," Odrade said. "Be still." She tipped her head, listening.
A robed woman sped back around the curve of the hallway and whispered something in Odrade's ear. Odrade produced a tight smile.
"It is over," Odrade said. "We will go to Sheeana."
Sheeana occupied a softly cushioned blue chair in the main room of her quarters. Black-robed women stood in a protective arc behind her. The child appeared to Tuek quite recovered from the shock of the attack and escape but her eyes glittered with excitement and unasked questions. Sheeana's attention was directed at something off to Tuek's right. He stopped and looked there, gasping at what he saw.
A naked male body lay against the wall in an oddly crumpled position, the head twisted until the chin lay back over the left shoulder. Open eyes stared out with the emptiness of death.
Stiros!
The shredded rags of Stiros' robe, obviously torn from him violently, lay in an untidy heap near the body's feet.
Tuek looked at Odrade.
"He was in on it," she said. "There were Face Dancers with the Ixians."
Tuek tried to swallow in a dry throat.
Cania shuffled past him toward the body. Tuek could not see her face but Cania's presence reminded him that there had been something between Stiros and Cania in their younger days. Tuek moved instinctively to place himself between Cania and the seated child.
Cania stopped at the body and nudged it with a foot. She turned a gloating expression on Tuek. "I had to make sure he was really dead," she said.
Odrade glanced at a companion. "Get rid of the body." She looked at Sheeana. It was Odrade's first chance for a more careful study of the child since leading the assault force here to deal with the attack on the temple complex.
Tuek spoke behind Odrade. "Reverend Mother, could you explain please what--"
Odrade interrupted without turning. "Later."
Sheeana's expression quickened at Tuek's words. "I thought you were a Reverend Mother!"
Odrade merely nodded. What a fascinating child. Odrade experienced the sensations she felt while standing in front of the ancient painting in Taraza's quarters. Some of the fire that had gone into the work of art inspired Odrade now. Wild inspiration ! That was the message from the mad Van Gogh. Chaos brought into magnificent order. Was that not part of the Sisterhood's coda?
This child is my canvas, Odrade thought. She felt her hand tingle to the feeling of that ancient brush. Her nostrils flared to the smells of oils and pigments.
"Leave me alone with Sheeana," Odrade ordered. "Everybody out."
Tuek started to protest but stopped when one of Odrade's robed companions gripped his arm. Odrade glared at him.
"The Bene Gesserit have served you before," she said. "This time, we saved your life."
The woman holding Tuek's arm tugged at him.
"Answer his questions," Odrade said. "But do it somewhere else."
Cania took a step toward Sheeana. "That child is my--"
"Leave!" Odrade barked, all the powers of Voice in the command.
Cania froze.
"You almost lost her to a bumbling lot of conspirators!" Odrade said, glaring at Cania. "We will consider whether you get any further opportunity to associate with Sheeana."
Tears started in Cania's eyes but Odrade's condemnation could not be denied. Turning, Cania fled with the others.
Odrade returned her attention to the watchful child.
"We've been a long time waiting for you," Odrade said. "We will not give those fools another opportunity to lose you."
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?
--Bene Gesserit Council Proceedings: Archives #X0X232
Immediately after Taraza and her party left Gammu, Teg threw himself into his work. New in-Keep procedures had to be laid out, holding Schwangyu at arm's length from the ghola. Taraza's orders.
"She can observe all she wants. She can't touch."
In spite of the work pressures, Teg found himself staring into space at odd moments, prey to free-floating anxiety. The experience of rescuing Taraza's party from the Guildship and Odrade's odd revelations did not fit into any data classification he constructed.
Dependencies ... key logs ...
Teg found himself seated in his own workroom, an assignment schedule projected in front of him with shift changes to approve and, for a moment, he had no idea of the time or even the date. It took a moment to relocate himself.
Midmorning. Taraza and her party had been gone two days. He was alone. Yes, Patrin had taken over this day's training schedule with Duncan, freeing Teg for the command decisions.
The workroom around Teg felt alien. Yet, when he looked at each element in it, he found each thing familiar. Here was his own personal data console. His uniform jacket had been draped neatly across a chair-back beside him. He tried to fall into Mentat mode and found his own mind resisting. He had not encountered that phenomenon since training days.
Training days.
Taraza and Odrade between them had thrown him back into some form of training.
Self-training.
In a detached way, he felt his memory offering up a long-ago conversation with Taraza. How familiar it was. He was right there, caught in the moments of his own memory-snare.
Both he and Taraza had been quite tired after making the decisions and taking the actions to prevent a bloody confrontation--the Barandiko incident. Nothing but a hiccough in history now but at the time it had demanded all of their combined energies.
Taraza invited him into the small parlor of her quarters on her no-ship after the agreement was signed. She spoke casually, admiring his sagacity, the way he had seen through to the weaknesses that would force a compromise.
They had been awake and active for almost thirty hours and Teg was glad for the opportunity to sit while Taraza dialed her foodrink installation. It dutifully produced two tall glasses of creamy brown liquid.
Teg recognized the smell as she handed him his glass. It was a quick source of energy, a pick-me-up that the Bene Gesserit seldom shared with outsiders. But Taraza no longer considered him an outsider.
His head tipped back, Teg took a long swallow of the drink, his gaze on the ornate ceiling of Taraza's small parlor. This no-ship was an old-fashioned model, built in the days when more care had been taken with decoration--heavily incised cornices, baroque figures carved in every surface.
The taste of the drink pushed his memory back into childhood, the heavy infusion of melange ...
"My mother made this for me whenever I was overly strenuous," he said, looking at the glass in his hand. He already could feel the calming energy flow through his body.
Taraza took her own drink to a chairdog opposite him, a fluffy white bit of animate furniture that fitted itself to her with the ease of long familiarity. For Teg, she had provided a traditional green upholstered chair, but she saw his glance flick across the chairdog and grinned at him.
"Tastes differ, Miles." She sipped her drink and sighed. "My, that was strenuous but it was good work. There were moments when it was right on the edge of getting very nasty."
Teg found himself touched by her relaxation. No pose, no ready-made mask to set them apart and define their separate roles in the Bene Gesserit hierarchy. She was being obviously friendly and not even a hint of seductiveness. So this was just what it seemed to be--as much as that could be said about any encounter with a Reverend Mother.
With quick elation, Teg realized that he had become quite adept at reading Alma Mavis Taraza, even when she adopted one of her masks.
"Your mother taught you more than she was told to teach you," Taraza said. "A wise woman but another heretic. That's all we seem to be breeding nowadays."
"Heretic?"
He was caught by resentment.
"That's a private joke in the Sisterhood," Taraza said. "We're supposed to follow a Mother Superior's orders with absolute devotion. And we do, except when we disagree."
Teg smiled and took a deep draught of his drink.
"It's odd," Taraza said, "but while we were in that tight little confrontation I found myself reacting to you as I would to one of my Sisters."
Teg felt the drink warming his stomach. It left a tingling in his nostrils. He placed the empty glass on a side table and spoke while looking at it. "My eldest daughter ... "
"That would be Dimela. You should have let us have her, Miles."
"It was not my decision."
"But one word from you ... " Taraza shrugged. "Well, that's past. What about Dimela?"
"She thinks I'm often too much like one of you."
"Too much?"
"She is fiercely loyal to me, Mother Superior. She doesn't really understand our relationship and--"
"What is our relationship?"
"You command and I obey."
