Chapter Text
#
The overabundance of silverware is still bewildering, but Chani is getting better. They sit in a small group spread out over a too long table, and Chani wishes she could taste the familiar spicy foods of her people more often because the blandness of these foreign meals are starting to vex her.
“You look lovely,” Jessica says to her, when Paul leaves briefly to hear more reports.
“I look the same as any other day,” Chani returns.
But she knows what Jessica is saying.
Everyone has noted the blue in her scarf.
Everyone knows what it means.
Across from her, Alia sits in Jessica’s lap, a smug smile on her lips. “I knew you’d take him back. It was just a matter of time.”
Chani gives her a lift of an eyebrow, challenging, but she cannot deny it either. “You think you know everything,” she returns, teasing.
“Then tell me something I don’t already know.”
“What the view is like from above anyone else’s head,” Chani says. “You can barely reach my knees.”
Alia’s eyes narrow, a twinkle in them. “I’ve ridden a Grandfather, sister. I know what the tallest of views look like.”
Chani never knows what to say to Alia. What response would be appropriate? There is none.
Paul eventually returns, this time with Gurney in tow, and both of them look concerned to the point of looking grave. “The reports are coming in,” Paul tells her, when she gives him an inquiring slant. “It was a Fremen that planted the Stone Burner.”
Chani stills, unnerved.
She had suspected the Count and his Great Houses, but no, it was her own people — and somehow that is worse.
“We will find the traitor,” Gurney promises, vehemently. “We’ll bring them to justice.”
“It will be handled,” Jessica says in the same way she decrees everything, with confidence that feels somehow final.
But Chani knows how complicated this can get. Dissidents among the Fremen is not a new concept, but it was always the fundamentalists that were the unpredictable ones. The rebels, the secular sects, had always seemed so much more rational to Chani, so much more reliable.
“Come,” Jessica says, to Paul. “Eat. The problems will be there after dinner. Gurney, you’re more than welcome to join us.”
“Thank you, My Lady, but I cannot stay,” Gurney replies, with a small tilt of his head. “We’ve only just received this report, and I need to act on it before the trail runs cold.” He turns to Paul. “I will not let you down again.”
“You have not let me down a first time,” Paul returns.
Gurney flinches, staring at the milky whiteness of Paul’s eyes. “That isn’t true, Your Grace, but I’ll be damned if I let it happen again.”
Paul sighs. “Go, Gurney. Do what you feel you must, but you have no lost honor you need to regain with me.”
Gurney seems to fortify himself in the words, for everyone knows Paul does not give out false flattery. He holds the loyalties of those closest to him not because of any religious fervor, but because he inspires this sense of fidelity that even Chani has fallen victim to. She cannot blame Gurney for glowing under the praise of Paul; she succumbs to the whims of his devotion more than any other.
When Paul sits, it is at her side. “You do look lovely,” he tells her, a soft whisper in her ear.
She doesn’t know how he overheard Jessica’s comment. He wasn’t even in the room when she’d made it, but Chani slants him a hushing look, meant to quell his teasing, but the tilt of his pleased expression only sharpens more. He is still so painfully earnest, so sincere, her Usul. He is still the most beautiful man she has ever known, scars and all.
Across from them, Alia snorts in laughter. “They are sickening, aren’t they?”
#
The days pass.
There are satellites that orbit Arrakis now. It was not always so, Chani knows. The Fremen used to bribe the Spice Guild to keep their skies clear. Fremen prized their isolation and secrecy enough to pay handsomely, but now Paul has put satellites in orbit and that is how they come to know the expected arrival of the enemy’s fleet days in advance. Only twenty days. An estimated twenty days for the full might of the Great Houses to stand against them.
On the thirteenth day, Chani is passing through the corridors when she overhears Irulan making an audio-log transcription in the library. “Imperial Diary. Year 10,193. Third comment. Reports of the Great Houses have only grown more disturbing as their approaching armada makes its way across the galaxy towards us. Initial estimations indicate it may be an armada three times larger than any other ever gathered around a single planet. Darkness descends upon Arrakis, and Paul Muad’dib must once again rely on the fervent ardor of his Fremen supporters if he wishes us all to survive beyond a single attack from this enemy fleet.”
Chani should not be listening to this. She knows this. Despite the clinical nature of this recording, she can tell this is a deeply personal thing for Irulan. She should not be listening, and yet—
“Of course,” Irulan continues, somberly, “Paul’s own call has been sent out for the Sarduakar fleet to return, now manned with his faithful Fedaykin. They left this homeworld only two years ago. Two years ago, when the fleet had first arrived on this desert planet answering to the rule of my father.”
A pause here, where Irulan takes a breath, as if to brace herself.
“In two years time, the Fremen have carried the name of their Lisan Al Gaib across the known galaxy. The Holy War has only grown in its momentum. In two years, they have done more to expand his empire’s hold than any other Imperial Army would have done in two decades. Their confidence and strength is still a thing that brings a strange sense of awe to me. They have such faith. It seems unshakable. But I cannot help but wonder if the Count and the Great Houses will arrive first and make quick work of a coup — well before the Sarduakar fleet with its Fedaykin soldiers have a chance to return and defend this planet. Will it be another massacre in the night? Much like the one that allowed the Harkonnens to prevail against Duke Leto Atreides? I fear the answer is more than unfavorable to us.”
On that grim determination, Chani shuffles back on her feet, unable to listen to more, and retreats silently through the hallway.
But the words haunt her nonetheless.
#
On the thirteenth day, Chani is restless.
She’s taken to long walks at random hours of the day, both inside and outside of the palace. She learns more of the palace life, the layout, the hidden depths, the hustle and bustle of the average Fremen in this city life (so different and yet not so dissimilar to the Fedeykin life out in the sands and sietches). The others acknowledge her with this growing reverence that is either inspired by her budding reputation as Sihaya or the fact that these last few days the whispers of her status beside Paul has become indisputably more pronounced. She wears blue daily. Even the foreign guards now answer to her with a deferential treatment that makes her think Paul had a talk with them about her status among the Court.
She does not ask him, because she knows neither wants to explicitly acknowledge the word concubine. It still feels like an illicit word, full of shame. The Fremen do not treat her like a concubine. They treat her like Paul’s woman.
Still, she cannot escape the word forever.
It is on her walks that she comes across Radiqa, the servant girl, handing out glassfuls of water. The beggars stand in a long line that stretches back at least a block from the palace walls, and Chani stares, astonished. “It happens every day,” Radiqa tells her. “Every meal. The old Duke implemented it when he first arrived. When the Atreides family dines, every person is welcome to two full glasses of water. It was a decree that the Emperor reinstituted when he took back the city from the Harkonnens.”
The old Duke, Chani thinks. Paul’s father, Leto Atreides. She’s always known he was a good man, an honorable man, just from the way Paul talks about him. Even Jessica, normally so poised and in control of herself, falters with emotion whenever the late Duke is brought up.
“When the Harkonnens ruled,” the servant girl tells her, in a hushed voice as if to convey a secret, “they would wash their hands in cloths and then let the beggars fight over the wet rags in the streets. The Duke was only a ruler for a short period of time here, but he inspired more trust in the people than the Harkonnens had inspired in the decades before. Cruelty is its own master, but the Duke did not let it rule his reign.”
Chani pauses. “And what do you think of the Duke’s son?”
Radiqa pauses, and Chani chides herself.
As if a servant would answer truthfully if it was a negative thought.
But Radiqa only says, smiling, “When it was the Duke, we gave out one glass of water. Under Lisan Al Gaib, we give out two.”
Chani can think of nothing to say to that, but a feeling blooms over her chest, full of solace and pride and this spark of heat. It may be a small thing to an Emperor, but two glasses of water is precious riches to a Fremen beggar. She takes to walking back into the palace then, avoiding her escorts, soldiers assigned to protect her who she manages to evade five times out of seven. When she makes it back to the isolated wing of the palace where Paul conducts his business, she finds him surrounded by his council. Paul seems to sense her immediately, lifting up his head to acknowledge her in the middle of scholared and collared men full of medals, older men who advise him on the daily concerns. They are all men the same age as Gurney or even older. Sometimes Jessica sits in on the council, sometimes even Irulan.
Chani has not attended, though — and she does not want to start today.
Paul seems to sense her discomfort at her disruption, for he dismisses the others immediately. Perhaps they were wrapping things up, perhaps not. She rather thinks Paul would have dismissed them either way.
“What is it?” Paul asks her, concerned. “You came in with a sense of urgency. You have a look on your face.”
“A look? And tell me, what look does a blind man see?”
“All of them, when it comes to you.”
She rewards him with a smile, then rewards him double when she pushes him back into a chair and mounts him. The shift in the air is immediate, frizzling with heat. She traces the scars around his eyes with her fingertips and feels his breath catch in his chest, feels the way his hands find the purchase of her hips and holds her steady as she straddles his waist.
When she kisses him, he melts underneath her touch like butter. The needy sound that escapes her throat as his tongue pushes into her mouth might have embarrassed her at one time or another, but the only thought running through her head is — he is a good man. When she tilts his chin up with her finger, the graceful lines of his elegant throat expose themselves and Chani licks a long line up that has him shuddering underneath her.
“Tell me what you want,” he says hoarsely. “I want to hear you say it.”
“I want you,” she tells him. “I want you inside me, Usul. Right here, right now.”
“Who am I to deny you anything?”
To be fair, the changes in them are none too drastic. They have always been passionate lovers from the start, entwined in each other in the cover of darkness every chance they got. It was just usually in places and times when such things could be expected in a budding growing romance between a man and a woman. But in the last few weeks, Chani has grown greedy. Paul’s recovery and the idle wait of an encroaching insidious threat has made him more available to her in terms of both time and proximity. They are constantly in each other’s spaces, and Paul does not like the company of any other for much long, save her. Everyone stares at him and his scars, his white eyes. Stilgar had wept the first time he saw Paul.
But Chani does not weep anymore. She will save her water for the dead, not the living.
She does not pity Paul Atriedes, and he does not want her pity either.
Instead, she takes delight in the groan drawn from his lips as she unties his trousers, her intent clear as she grasps him in a firm grip. Instead, she takes pleasure when his fingers similarly delve down beneath the layers of her clothing to find the apex of her thighs, sticky and growing wet, nimble fingers that move with tight circles over the heat of her. Instead, they move against each other as equals, a grinding delicious heat that builds slowly and then quickly explodes with frantic hands that move urgently to disrobe, to take hold, to take in. She pushes him inside her with an impatience she does not demonstrate in many other things, in many other areas, but the feel of Paul’s skin beneath hers always leaves her wanting more. She does not like the religious fervor that surrounds him, but she will never grow weary of the worship he bestows upon her and her alone.
“Chani, my Chani,” he groans. “Will you come for me? Will you fall apart while you ride me? Please, I’ve been a wreck all day thinking about it.”
“We had each other this morning,” she points out, which loses some of its teasing because it comes out on a moan when he shifts his hips beneath her and hits her at a new angle, a delicious angle.
“What do you think kept me so preoccupied? The memory of waking up from sleep with your lips already wrapped around my—” she kisses him before he can say the word cock, because she heats at the brazen memory before they leave his lips, she cannot help herself. She’d woken up with inspiration that morning, and had taken him in her mouth as the sun rose over them. Sucked and let him fuck her mouth until he came down her throat, and then she’d only laughed at him later when he had the most stupid, blissed out look upon his face.
Her hips move over him now, her arms bracketed over his shoulders as she takes him in and out, a steady rhythm that only falters when his thumb finds her clit. She groans, her lips at his throat, her head buried in the waves of his hair.
“Come for me,” he urges, his thumb pressing down harder on another devious circuit. “Relax, I’ve got you, I’ve got you. Just take it, take what you need — c’mon, just like that. I want to feel you, I want to feel you—”
She sucks a bruise into his throat, all blunt teeth and wet lips.
He groans. “You’re going to kill me.”
She can barely breathe if she’s honest, which is the only thing preventing her from laughing, so she bites him again, sharply between her lips; his thumb briefly falters and then both of his hands are on her ass and guiding her to ride her harder, swifter, with all the urgency they both feel is cardinal and necessary as breathing. The feeling grows, tight between her thighs, powerful muscles moving in tandem.
By the time she comes, it's only seconds before he does, groaning sweetly into her ear.
Afterwards, she is uncomfortably sticky between the thighs, and she thinks they may have been too loud. There is no helping it now, but she likes not to think about what others must think of her.
“Stay,” she prompts Paul, when he starts to move.
He stills underneath her.
Caliphs and mjeeds, rakahs, rajas and bashars, kings and emperors, primitos and presidents — Paul has told her about all of them, these rulers from different parts of his vast galaxy; he’s studied them all, but he follows only Chani’s command. He stays put and moves on her whims only.
She will not lie, it is an imbibing thing to have such power over a powerful man.
#
But Paul is not just her lover, and there are some things he does that even he does not want to do.
Two days later, he comes to her somber and silent, and she can sense a shift approaching.
“The south,” he tells her, quietly. “We must go south.”
Chani understands in a growing breaking dawn, but she does not like it. In the last battle of Arrakis, their enemies had only had it too easy to take the north in a series of brunt offenses that utilized rudimentary artillery. In the south, though, they have the cover of sandstorms that can span across a thousand miles beyond the equator. In the south, there are Paul’s fundamentalists. The last two years he’s been developing his own foothold there, his own southern palace, a stronghold built in secret. It would be a good place to hide when the Great Houses came with their armada, a good place to stage an offensive attack. The foreigners would not be as easily able to navigate the planet if they had to invade starting from the south.
But the south only brings bad memories to Chani.
Of war, of a pivotal shift in her relationship with Paul, of fundamentalist ardor, of Paul’s eyes staring at her full of molten remorse just before he proposed to another woman and then declared himself an Emperor.
She does not want to go south.
#
They make two groups. The larger group, composed of the majority of people including Fremen and the Royal family; they make their way directly towards the south under armed escort on the long journey across the Worm Rider’s Pass. Jessica, Alia, and even Irulan dispatch in the night to ride a palankin, sequestered among a group of trusted guards, and Paul sees them off with a murmur of caution.
The other group, made of only a handful of people, sets out on an alternative route. “We must make a stop at Makab Sietch,” Paul informs her, in private. “The Fremen behind the Stone Burner is from Makab Sietch.”
Chani sucks in a breath. It has only been a few weeks since she killed Taliq in the Tahaddi Challenge, the Naib of Makab Sietch. By rights, the sietch should welcome her in. She has full privileges to be the new Naib, in fact. Certainly her place among the Southern Tribal Council is secured, where she will now be permitted to speak if she so desires because she has taken the life of one of the tribal leaders. There has not been time or opportunity for Chani to do much of anything with the potential unfolding bounties of her prize fight. From what she gathers, in her absence the Makab Sietch had elected a new interim Naib, but she knows she could easily decree herself the new Naib with little recourse for the people of the Makab Sietch to dispute it. The Tahaddi Challenge rules are sacred; it needs to be, because the sacrifice and risks involved are always of the highest order.
“How many do you expect to be part of this conspiracy?” Chani asks.
Paul’s jaw clenches. “We know of only one person, Taliq’s younger brother. He planted the Stone Burner. But the rumors are — there are many in the sietch that are not a fan of me. Dissidents. Potential rebels.”
That makes sense. Under the leadership of a man like Taliq, only discontent could grow.
Stilgar guides them through the desert. Paul and Chani, Gurney, and a select few other trusted men. It is a significantly smaller group than the one that had been sent off with Jessica, but Chani prefers it this way.
When they arrive, it seems like the entire sietch gathers to greet them. Paul makes his way towards the entrance in long, strong strides. He does not hide his white eyes, not even behind a pair of dark goggles that would prevent stares. In his walk, in his very gait, she sees Lisan Al Gaib emerge. There is a swagger to his steps, an assertiveness that emanates from his very posture. He leads the group and pushes through the gathering masses with an authority of self-possessed confidence, and then turns back to Chani, holding out his hand for her to take.
She puts her hand in his, and he draws her to the front.
Sihaya, some murmur.
Muad’dib, others whisper.
They mix in such ways as to mingle in the same breath.
#
Dinner is anticipated. Even among the Fremen, there are formalities and expectations. Chani lets it all unfold. Lets the sietch treat her and Paul with the expected hospitality, but they do not break bread. She can see the others watching Paul, looking for the expected weakness in a blind man, but Paul makes it difficult for them to find such fault. He moves with assurance; he moves with a certainty that is hard to explain coming from a blind man.
And sure enough, before they gather for dinner, Taliq’s brother makes himself known to be as impatient as his elder brother. Paul is passing through the hallway when the man attacks with a knife from the back of the crowd. Paul only takes three moves to deflect, disarm, and defend himself, leaving the other Fremen without weapons and kissing the dirt floor.
“No,” Stilgar says, before others can move. “Stay your hands. Lisan Al Gaib needs no help.”
“There is no such thing,” another hisses in confusion, in awe, a faint whisper in the crowd, “as a blind man who can see.”
“Lisan Al Gaib,” another murmurs, as if an answer.
Paul pulls the attacker to his feet. “I know your name, Hassan. I know you grew up in the shadows of your brother, that you followed Taliq everywhere. I know you would have died for him, and it was a grief you previously never felt before when Sihaya slayed him. That night you stayed far out on the dunes alone so that no one but the wind would hear your screams — but I heard them.”
Hassan bares his teeth, feral. “Save your words of prophecy, little mouse. I do not believe your lies.”
Paul presses closer, a challenge. “I know you bribed a servant to plant that Stone Burner in my palace, in the hopes a blind man would make an easy target for your brother.”
A gasp, from the crowd. The interim Naib is a man with a thick beard, a hesitant shift in his gait. “Muad’dib, if this is true, he worked alone.”
“But his whispers reached many ears,” Paul counters. “You all have been whispering many things in the Makab Sietch.”
Hassan struggles in Paul’s grip, jaw clenching. “What do you expect? Doubts fester in the forgotten places. It festers in darkness, in disease. You took some of our best men from us two years ago, and we have never seen them again.”
“Some of those men will return shortly,” Paul replies, as he shoves the man back into Gurney’s arms. Gurney only looks more than happy to take over the capture of the man. “Some have been martyred,” Paul continues, “but you? Your death will be forgotten.”
“Let them forget,” Hassan hisses. “But the doubt will only grow. They will see the false prophet for what he is. Lisan Al Gaib must be one of our own, one of the Fremen. It will not be a foreigner with pale skin and paler eyes. He will have the Eyes of Ibad. He will be of our blood!”
Chani shifts, suddenly uncomfortable. She has never believed in any prophecy, in any coming of a savior, but in her deepest moments of fancy she has thought these thoughts more than once. Hoped for salvation from a person that would be born of this world, be raised in the ways of the Fremen; that such a man would move to lead this world out of the suffering it feels at the hands of so many foreigners.
Hassan looks up and stares at Chani, at the killer of his own brother, and there is fire in his eyes. “This prophecy is how they enslave us! This is how they dominate us—”
He is silenced when Gurney strikes him across the face.
But Chani remembers these words. She shouted them at the group of gathering Fremen in the south, inside that circle where she had no prior privilege to speak. She stands now in oppressive silence, feeling the chill of his words echo hers from so long ago, and she cannot find her voice. She cannot fully appreciate how far she has drifted from that woman so sure of her path, of how Paul had lost himself.
Now, others appear to have taken up the words of defiance, of her defiance.
If Paul senses the growing malcontent in the crowd, the stirrings from Hassan’s words, Paul only answers it with his own fervor. “I am the one pointing the way,” he hisses, to the gathered Fremen – challenging, voice rising. “I am the one your parent’s grandparents dreamt about, and their grandparents, and theirs before that. I have been a moment coming for ten thousand years. You still do not see? Are you so blind? I see.”
Shifting shuffling feet, others looking away.
“Shall I show you the way?” Paul challenges. “Shall I lead you out of darkness? Shall I hold back the fleet of the enemy, the rest of the entire universe?” He pauses, turns to Chani, affixes her with a stare and then turns away. “Shall I bring you salvation from certain defeat?”
“Yes!” a man from the crowd shouts, invigorated. “Yes, Muad’dib, bring us victory! Show us the way!”
Paul’s face shows no emotion except fury, except promised wrath. “I shall show you the way.”
“Muad’dib! Muad’dib! Muad’dib!”
#
Eventually, Stilgar moves to the other side, whispering into Paul’s ear, “There is a way we deal with vermin like Hassan, Muad’dib. How to deal with traitors. The Maker is the way.”
So, the man is tied to a poll fixed deep into the sands, immobile. A thumper set in the ground, the vibrations brought to summon the sandworm. Chani pretends there is no shake in her hands as she stares at the sacrifice, but there is a shake, and it is not because of the encroaching Shai-Hulud. There is only reverence and silence when a Grandfather approaches. There is only a hush as the man stands in the center before the sands beneath his feet shift, before the thumper gives way and the man falls with a rising scream into a growing cavern, into the widening mouth of a soaring Shai-Hulud.
The man is taken by the Maker, shown no mercy.
“It is the way,” Stilgar says.
And Chani says nothing.
#