Chapter Text
If Irulan wasn’t entirely exhausted, she wouldn’t have sat down at the table. If she and Paul had not had a fight the night before, perhaps Irulan would have ignored the woman at the table. Yet, here she was, sitting down next to Chani to eat her dinner.
Chani glanced up as Irulan entered the room and sat down with her guard, Ewald, hovering at the threshold. He seemed to be rather nervous about the situation, but Irulan couldn't bring herself to care.
The three of them, Irulan, Paul, and Chani, often took their meals at different times. Paul and Chani would eat together, and perhaps very rarely Paul would eat with Irulan, usually in silence. But never did Irulan eat with Chani. For five years they had managed to mostly avoid one another, exchanging maybe a hundred words and change. Irulan rolled through phases of grief, anger, solidarity, and annoyance with Chani, although that was mostly confined to her chambers and occasionally the rage exploded onto Paul, which he deserved.
“Empress,” Chani said curtly, dipping her head before returning to her food. Irulan just hummed non-committally, sliding into the seat at the head of the table for six, two seats away from Chani. A servant emerged from the kitchen and briskly brought her meal to her.
Another kindness Paul provided her was in her meals, allowing food to be shipped in from Kaitan once it had been conquered, a year into the Jihad. Irulan could not stand to eat many foods of the desert, and some even made her ill, particularly the charred bats eaten regularly by the Fremen.
Paul made her more ill than any food could. Their screaming match the night before was one of the worst they'd had in years. He had been more open in his love of Chani as of late and yet he still refused to lay even a single kind hand on Irulan. She didn't understand why he refused to provide her with a child. It was all she wanted nowadays. She was so lonely, she had argued. The only person who did not regard her with disdain on the whole of this planet was Ewald, her guard since childhood.
Paul had told her to take a lover. Irulan had been aghast at the suggestion and said she would never sully her honor like Chani, the old guilt of her value as a virgin bride rearing its head inside her. Paul had rounded on her then, commanding she not speak ill of Chani, stalking towards her and for a moment, a beautiful moment, Irulan had thought he might finally touch her, grab her, hit her, but he had merely hovered over her. Her rage had blossomed in her chest.
Irulan had said she would not refrain from speaking as she liked about the Desert Rat that had ruined her life. Why couldn’t Paul understand her misery? Why was she not enough for him? Irulan had sobbed and screamed about Paul letting her go, begging for a divorce, begging for love, begging for anything. He had responded by commanding her with the Voice to be silent and leave. Irulan had gone back to her chambers and drank until she passed out. She spent all day in her room until dinner, where she found the Desert Rat at the table with her.
They were quite the pair, the wife and the mistress, seated at the table. Irulan violently stabbed her greens, limp from age and heat. Chani coughed as she took a drink from her glass, and Irulan's head snapped up.
“How is my husband?” Irulan began conversationally, sipping her water as Chani coughed again.
“Paul is fine, Your Grace.” Chani said gruffly.
“Well, that's a relief to hear. He worked himself into quite a state last night, don't you think?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Irulan was frustrated with her answers. Irulan was on a short fuse, and she needed a spark. She was desperate to see why Paul believed this woman was better than her. Why she deserved the love Irulan had been assured she would never have.
“We haven't spoken enough, Chani. I have spent five long years on this arid planet without an equal in the world. It is such a shame.”
“An equal?” Chani asked suspiciously.
“Oh well, perhaps not. After all, you are more wife to my husband than I will ever be. Maybe I'm lesser to you.”
“I have no power, Your Grace, I am merely a consort.”
“But that is where you are wrong. You have far more power than me, as you have the emperor's heart. I only have his anger, his wrath, and his ignorance.”
Chani mumbled something under her breath but Irulan couldn't hear. She strained forward and asked Chani to repeat herself.
“I remember now why I don't talk to you, Princess.”
Irulan leaned back in her chair in a calculated movement, and Ewald tensed at the door. Then Irulan sighed, trying to release the tension building in her shoulders.
“The emperor must tell you terrible things about me. Or perhaps worse, maybe he doesn't speak of me at all.”
“It’s more of the latter.” Chani snapped.
“So I suspected. Why do you stay so often in this house, Chani? The emperor is often away, and some say he is spiraling into madness. Based on how he treats me, I would certainly be a proponent of that.”
“Paul has a lot on his plate, and while I may disagree with many of his methods, I will support him when he needs me. I have been readily assured he will never love anyone else but me.” Chani defended.
“Yes, yes,” Irulan said, dismissively. “And so you continued to torment my house.”
“It is Paul's house, Princess, not yours.”
“That is not my title anymore.”
“It’s what Paul calls you.”
“He calls me that to mock me, Chani, to remind me of my fallen family, and lost life. The one he destroyed without remorse.” Irulan sensed a rising apprehension and Chani. Irulan’s Bene Gesserit training took notice of each micromovement Chani made, the shift in her shoulders, and the almost imperceptible set of her jaw.
“I did not realize–”
“Why would you care? Why would you care about me when you have everything you want? Paul would give you the world while treading me underfoot. I've never wronged him, I have been the diplomatic weapon in his arsenal, and my husband,” she spat the word, “gives me not a thought saved for my utility.”
“You were an associate of your father, and therefore a threat to Paul and the Jihad. The threat needed to be eliminated.”
“My father was a cruel ruler,” Irulan conceded “But I was a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“So was I," Chani said quietly, and the two sat in silence for a moment, letting the words hang in the air. Irulan shifted in her seat as the realization of their shared youth washed over her. They were just past their twenty-first year. What choice did either of them really have, save for loyalty and love?
“Then maybe we aren't as different as we thought," Irulan said after a moment. Chani merely hummed and continued to pick at her food. Then it was quiet as Irulan wondered about this connection, about the ways that they had been formed as women.
“Chani?” Irulan asked suddenly. Chani raised her eyes from her plate in acknowledgment. “Tell me it was what it was like growing up here on Arrakis. It seems dreary to me, as I always loved the ocean, but perhaps I would have loved it here if this was my birthplace.”
“We Fremen are very communal people. We all come from and will return to the waters. Even though my parents were the leaders of the Northern Tribe, I was no better than any other children. We learn to respect and fight alongside one another from an early age. We learn to value our world and the resources it has, without losing sight of our dream for it to be more. Growing up on Arrakis is full of beautiful sunsets over the dunes, chasing kangaroo mice into the rocks, and watching Shai-Hulud roll through the desert. It is to know the world, and your place in it,”
“Thank you, Chani.”
It was quiet again as Irulan reflected on her own lonely childhood, the void between the two women opening once again. Even in the Bene Gesserit school, she was not allowed communion with the other girls. She was always alone, being reared for her sole purpose of continuing the Corrino empire.
Ewald cleared his throat at the door, and Irulan started.
“Irulan, Your Grace, you have a meeting with the Ecological Minister in fifteen minutes. He has already arrived and is in your parlor.”
“Thank you, Ewald,” Irulan said tiredly, raising herself from the table.
“Chani?”
Chani sighed deeply in annoyance. “Yes?”
Irulan plowed ahead, ignoring the sarcasm in Chani’s voice. “Please come to my chambers eventually. It is high time you and I got used to each other, don't you think? Perhaps you could tell me about this world. I've been neglectful in my duty of it.”
“Yes, you have.” Chani snapped, but it lacked true malice.
Irulan smiled thinly, amused. “I appreciate your honesty. Tell Paul I wish him well.”
“You don't wish that.”
“Then tell him I want to.”
“Okay. I will.”
Irulan wanted to mend this bridge. It would surely benefit the Imperium, and perhaps she could convince Chani to see her side of things. Maybe one day they could even be something akin to friends. They had to start somewhere, and it was past time for them to begin.