Chapter Text
Giedi Prime, 10191 A.G.
Nothing but bleakness.
No matter the season, no matter the weather, Giedi Prime was always ever bleak. There was no snow in winter; the air’s toxicity prevented ice crystals from forming. No landscape changed with the advent of spring or fall; nothing but trees planted for lumber grew on Giedi Prime. And around the year, the merciless sun cast the world in darkest shadows and white light so intense it hurt her eyes.
Even the mountains were filled with fire and covered in poison.
She rarely ventured outside the keep, much less outside Barony.
Barony. A Moloch, always hungry for more – more life, more light, more joy, the devourer of Giedi Prime’s children one generation after the other. The city, if one could even call it that, stretched for dozens of miles in each direction and easily pushed through the dense, discoloured clouds. Up here, sitting on the shoulders of this malevolent giant, hidden from the surface by shrouds of condensed vapours, it was easy to forget that the rest of the planet even existed.
Not that there was much to be found beyond Barony’s towering walls and deep pits but the misery of a ravaged people in a ravaged land. The few smaller cities were too crowded, too dirty, reeking of resignation and cynicism and littered with entertainment that served only to further erode in each person whatever remained of their human longing for dignity and integrity.
The only concerns of Giedi Prime’s lords had always been to uphold the steady stream of young men and women into their service, and the continuous industrial exploitation of the planet’s natural resources that funded their expansionary agenda and the dizzying cost of importing food they could not grow themselves.
Eating away at its own flesh, Harkonnen culture was cannibalistic at its core. As soon as one limb was gnawed down to the bone, it had to be replaced, usually by some new world beyond the Known Universe that lacked the means to ward off predators. At its seams, threads of boundless violence, fear and deprivation strained to hold this obscene construct together.
Tearing her gaze away from the vista of Barony behind one of the thick, transparent panels lining the long corridor, Arafa turned to leave. Years after Feyd-Rautha had pulled back the curtain of suavity to let her view the truth of his nature for the first time, right in this place, she had made it a habit of coming here. It helped her think.
There was little else to do for her, anyway. Just how much time she would have on her hands had blindsided her at first. So much time. Giedi Prime had not had a baroness in two generations, and thus did not know what to do with one. To dispel the leaden boredom that had threatened to take hold of her in the first few weeks, she had begun to take these long walks through the keep, and to fill her days with learning.
On first sight, there was not much to Giedi Prime’s culture other than fearful worship of terrible gods disguised as human sovereigns, and an endless struggle to avoid the deadly wrath of a superior. If one took but a second look, and delved just a bit deeper, however, one would find cultures of the people, new and old, low and high. Stories and histories, myths and beliefs, even arts had been thriving even in a world as parched as this one.
It seemed that all human existence, no matter how pathetic or miserable, produced something worth studying.
Her companion chittered.
“Oh, you need an invitation now? Come,” she said and paused until the creature was back at her side. The sound of its eight little hands moving along the keep’s sleek floors had long stopped making her skin crawl.
Outside the baron’s suite, it was always with her. She had tried to get rid of it, but Feyd-Rautha had not ordered the creature to stay away, and it would not listen to her. Every morning, it was waiting for her, its glistening, round eyes glued expectantly to the door it knew she would emerge from.
There was really no need to speak to the creature. It had no ability to answer. Yet by now, Arafa was pretty sure that it remembered everything it heard and saw, and that Feyd-Rautha had some way of extracting that information. What other reason could there be for the spider’s relentless pursuit of her company? A spider – that was what the creature most resembled, with its eight legs, shiny black skin, and flat face. There were parts of it, though, that had clearly been grown from human DNA, like the legs – human arms with hands.
She had never asked, but there was no doubt that it had been created by the perverted minds and machinery of the Bene Tleilax.
The corridor stretched for hundreds of yards with few intersections. It was wide enough to allow quick transfers of large numbers of soldiers from one part of the keep to the next and followed one thigh of the arena’s triangle. She hated it. She hated the enormous, empty spaces, the never-ending tunnels, the lack of colours and fabrics and anything warm, really.
Below, the arena lay quiet, its sand a bright white in the infrared light of the sun, its stands empty. The day Feyd-Rautha had returned to Giedi Prime, victorious, it had seethed with the rapturous joy of tens of thousands of souls, tricked into believing that they were partaking in his glory, when they were nothing but scenery.
Baron of Giedi Prime. Duke of Caladan.
Driven by habit alone, her left thumb moved over her right hand, catching the jewels heavy on her fingers.
He was different, here on Giedi Prime. More secure in his control of her, of his surroundings. She was a foreigner now, with no sway, stripped of nearly all means and unable to move against him even if she wanted to. And for now, she was at peace with that. The time for manoeuvres and resistance was later – after. After the emperor’s death. For as long as Shaddam was alive and in power, she and the remnants of her House would always be at the precipice of another catastrophe.
The spider scurried ahead with sudden haste, and for a moment, Arafa thought it might continue and leave her be for the very first time. A few steps ahead, though, the spider stopped and lowered its face to the ground. Wringing its last pair of hand-feet, it scuttled in place, restless, its many fingers tapping the floor with tiny steps.
“Go on then,” Arafa encouraged as she reached the creature. When it would not move, she made to sidestep it, only for the creature to follow and block her path.
“Well, what is it?”
The spider shook its round body and chittered softly.
“Let me pass, will you.” Another step, to the other side this time, and again the spider moved with her. It turned its face up to Arafa, then back to the dark, far-away bend of the corridor.
Extending one of its hands as if reaching for her skirt, it crept closer, but seemed to rethink its plan and stopped just short of touching her. With very small steps of its four pairs of arm-legs, it then pressed forward, only to stop again when she still would not budge.
Patience wearing thin and unsettled by the creature’s unusual behaviour, Arafa stayed right where she was and clicked her tongue at it, but the spider remained undeterred in its clumsy attempt to herd her back. It swayed back and forth, eyes darting between the other end of the corridor and its companion, and moved ever forward, inch after inch.
It did not need human eyes or words to make Arafa finally understand.
“You’re afraid of something,” she said. The words seemed strangely loud in the silence of the vast corridor. Once more she looked around, but could not see anything that might have put the creature on edge. Nonetheless, its upset was quickly spilling over to her.
Arafa lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Very well. Have it your way. Go ahead, I’ll come.”
As soon as she said it, the spider flit around her and down the corridor, back into the direction they had come from. So it truly understands exactly what I’m saying, Arafa mused as she hurried after the creature with long strides.
At the next intersection, the spider left the main corridor and darted into a narrow, unlit hallway. Once the darkness there had swallowed them both, it stopped and spun, dozens of fingers carrying it in a circle around its own middle with surprising agility. Moist, black eyes fixed on the hallway’s mouth.
She heard them not long before they passed by their hideout. Backlit by the glare of the sun over the arena, three pairs of soldiers entered the frame of the hallway’s entrance. Then, the bulky silhouette of Glossu Rabban came and went.
Arafa tilted her head at the spider. It seemed to be rooted to the spot, its whole body trembling with tension.
“You curious, curious creature,” she murmured when the sounds of the heavy boots had faded. “Why did we hide from him, hm?”
---
“She has taken another one of my favourites!”
The booming voice of his enraged older brother was the last thing Feyd-Rautha wanted to hear. At the end of another tedious day in a long row of such days, what he wanted to hear were either silence, clashing blades and pained grunts, or the gasps and moans of his wife and the sounds of his cock driving into her slick heat.
Yet here he was, spending his last ounces of restraint on not murdering Glossu Rabban the very instant he burst through the door of his study. Over a slave, at that. One of many Arafa had siphoned away into her own growing household, to replace those she had left behind on Caladan. After all, she had argued, if there was one thing Giedi Prime had a surplus of, it was slaves, and Feyd-Rautha had found that logic to be solid.
He had not anticipated that his wife would use this concession to pluck his brother’s feathers.
Wife.
Even as a thought, it still sounded as good as the very first time he had said it out loud.
“You don’t have favourites, Rabban. You can’t even tell them apart,” he drawled without taking his eyes off the document in front of him. The seal of House Ginaz graced the lower right corner.
“Of course I can! It was one of the young ones, the fresh ones!”
Rabban’s fist connected with the heavy table poured in one piece from a rare alloy.
“Answer me! Don’t just sit there!”
Tiny drops of spit landed on Feyd-Rautha’s face. He supressed the impulse to stand and meet Rabban’s aggressive posturing.
“You’re only interested in that because someone else has her now. There are still dozens to pick from.”
Smacking his massive hands onto the table right in front of his younger brother, the Beast leaned closer – lips wet, quick breaths shallow, bald head red with anger, only a hairsbreadth away from exploding.
“It doesn’t matter, Feyd! They’re mine! She doesn’t have a right to them!”
Feyd-Rautha shifted in his seat. He brushed his right hand over his face, then brought his eyes up to his brother and shot him a glare that would have warped any other man’s rage into fear and submission.
“They’re not yours, they’re mine,” he said. He had not raised his voice just yet, but his tone was laced with sharp warning. “I let you have them because I’m generous, and I let her take them for the very same reason.”
“Is that what happened to yours? Huh? Did you let her take them, too?”
Not exactly.
No, he had disposed of them himself, months prior. One day, he had thought to have caught his new wife jealous of the slaves that had been specifically selected and, some of them, created for him. Smug and a bit too confident, he had prompted her to admit her jealousy, but had gotten a very different reply. Jealous?, Arafa had snorted, so very amused by his assumption. Not at all, my lord. I wish you would use them more often.
For reasons he still could not quite articulate, the idea that she had seen in these slaves some kind of relief for herself had soured him on the women in an instant. The next morning, they had been gone. Arafa had asked him about their disappearance only once, and had received no answer, but he could have sworn he had seen the ghost of satisfaction dance across her face.
Feyd-Rautha’s lips pulled into a smile that lacked all warmth and carried the promise of violence instead.
“What happens to my property is none of your concern.”
“All of this concerns me! I’m your brother, Feyd!”
The Beast spun around and stomped away, only to spin on his heel for another approach. The rolled-up whip dangling on his belt was smacking against the side of his thick thigh with every move. He seemed to be pacing along an invisible wall, a chasm of power that separated the older, lesser brother from the younger one.
If Rabban was any less dangerous, Feyd-Rautha would have laughed at his brother’s dramatics.
“And what do I get from you other than trouble, brother? What makes you important to me, eh?”
“What do you get from me? What do you get from her, that you can’t get from any other warm body?” Rabban sputtered, voice cracking with fury.
Feyd-Rautha gave his shoulders a deceptively lazy roll.
“Legitimacy. A prospering world that adds to our wealth. Influence. Heirs.”
“Ha!” Rabban spread his arms and turned on his axis, eyes darting around the study in search of something that was nowhere to be found. “Heirs? What heirs? I don’t see any, and she isn’t growing round with one!”
A tick in Feyd-Rautha’s jaw gave away the moment Rabban landed a hit. If even Rabban had taken note of it, others would have, too. He knew, naturally, that these things could take a while. Especially, as the old quack had explained to him, since Arafa’s body still had to adapt to this very different environment, to the food she was unused to, to the filtered air, to radiation so different from that on Caladan.
The fucking light.
There were few things he wanted more than to put his child in her. Maybe none. If he was free from all other obligations, he would simply lay her bare under those artificial suns being constructed for her, and keep her on his cock from morning to evening, night to dawn, full of his seed, until it had taken root.
“I am your lord, and you’ll respect my decisions, brother.”
“Like you respected our uncle when you let her kill him, away from home? Open your eyes, Feyd! Look at what you’re doing! You’re preparing for a war! A war that we might not win, a war against our emperor, our benefactor! And for what? For a piece of meat? What’s so special about that cunt, huh?” He spat the last words at the ground and opened his mouth to continue, but Feyd-Rautha interrupted him briskly.
“Enough.”
The Beast’s pupils constricted with sudden alarm. His brother had never been one to raise his voice in anger. No, his voice dropped and sharpened, and usually only when it was almost too late to change course.
Feyd-Rautha rose slowly. Clasping his hands in the small of his back, he approached his older brother with measured steps and a biting sneer.
“Fall in line, Rabban,” he hissed at him. “Or I’ll put you on your back like the whiny little bitch you are.”
Fear he would never voice joined the resentment in Rabban’s stare. Shoulders suddenly tense, fingers clenching around a handle he wished was already there, he shifted his weight away from his lead foot, then relented when Feyd-Rautha stepped uncomfortably closer.
“We’re Harkonnen, brother. She’s not,” Rabban implored him, but Feyd-Rautha merely tilted his head and bared his blackened teeth at him.
“No, Rabban, we are not. I am.”
Under his heavy brow, the Beast’s eyes narrowed. He drew his massive shoulders as if he needed to protect his neck from the slice of a knife. As Feyd-Rautha turned his back to him again, unbothered, unafraid, not expecting another protest, Glossu Rabban took his losses and slunk away.
Just as the door closed behind his brother, Feyd-Rautha’s composure slipped.
He had returned without his uncle, had claimed the title of baron without any of the traditional rituals of succession, and had immediately begun preparing for a risky war against Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. All of this was true. He had been confident, though, that he would be able to squash or soothe any upset, any rumour, any restlessness, by his presence alone and a heavy hand when necessary.
Yet somehow, he had missed this. Right under his nose, Arafa had taken her sharp needles to his brother’s envy, and he had been blind to it.
Temper breaking free as concern and irritation bled together and transformed into rage, he reached for the nearest chair and flung it across the room with a furious snarl. Heavy, it impacted an open shelf and then a plinth, taking down an obscure piece of art his uncle had loved.
The shards hit the ground. Feyd-Rautha, already halfway through the door, laughed.
His little spitfire.