can you stop me?”
With a smile of utmost kindness, he said: “I’d have you garroted, if it came to that.”
Shocked silence held her for a moment and Paul sensed Chani listening behind the heavy draperies into their private apartments.
“I am your wife,” Irulan whispered.
“Let us not play these silly games,” he said. “You play a part, no more. We both know who my wife is.”
“And I am a convenience, nothing more,” she said, voice heavy with bitterness.
“I have no wish to be cruel to you,” he said.
“You chose me for this position.”
“Not I,” he said. “Fate chose you. Your father chose you. The Bene Gesserit chose you. The Guild chose you. And they have chosen you once more. For what have they chosen you, Irulan?”
“Why can’t I have your child?”
“Because that’s a role for which you weren’t chosen.”
“It’s my right to bear the royal heir! My father was—”
“Your father was and is a beast. We both know he’d lost almost all touch with the humanity he was supposed to rule and protect.”
“Was he hated less than you’re hated?” she flared.
“A good question,” he agreed, a sardonic smile touching the edges of his mouth.
“You say you’ve no wish to be cruel to me, yet …”
“And that’s why I agree that you can take any lover you choose. But understand me well: take a lover, but bring no sour-fathered child into my household. I would deny such a child. I don’t begrudge you any male alliance as long as you are discreet … and childless. I’d be silly to feel otherwise under the circumstances. But don’t presume upon this license which I freely bestow. Where the throne is concerned, I control what blood is heir to it. The Bene Gesserit doesn’t control this, nor does the Guild. This is one of the privileges I won when I smashed your father’s Sardaukar legions out there on the Plain of Arrakeen.”
“It’s on your head, then,” Irulan said. She whirled and swept out of the chamber.
Remembering the encounter now, Paul brought his awareness out of it and focused on Chani seated beside him on their bed. He could understand his ambivalent feelings about Irulan, understand Chani’s Fremen decision. Under other circumstances Chani and Irulan might have been friends.
“What have you decided?” Chani asked.
“No child,” he said.
Chani made the Fremen crysknife sign with the index finger and thumb of her right hand.
“It could come to that,” he agreed.
“You don’t think a child would solve anything with Irulan?” she asked.
“Only a fool would think that.”
“I am not a fool, my love.”
Anger possessed him. “I’ve never said you were! But this isn’t some damned romantic novel we’re discussing. That’s a real princess down the hall. She was raised in all the nasty intrigues of an Imperial Court. Plotting is as natural to her as writing her stupid histories!”
“They are not stupid, love.”
“Probably not.” He brought his anger under control, took her hand in his. “Sorry. But that woman has many plots—plots within plots. Give in to one of her ambitions and you could advance another of them.”
Her voice mild, Chani said: “Haven’t I always said as much?”
“Yes, of course you have.” He stared at her. “Then what are you really trying to say to me?”
She lay down beside him, placed her head against his neck. “They have come to a decision on how to fight you,” she said. “Irulan reeks of secret decisions.”
Paul stroked her hair.
Chani had peeled away the dross.
Terrible purpose brushed him. It was a coriolis wind in his soul. It whistled through the framework of his being. His body knew things then never learned in consciousness.
“Chani, beloved,” he whispered, “do you know what I’d spend to end the Jihad—to separate myself from the damnable godhead the Qizarate forces onto me?”
She trembled, “You have but to command it,” she said.
“Oh, no. Even if I died now, my name