The Winds of Dune by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson Page A

years now. However, they will be so eager to prove it that you can gain many concessions from them. The more fear and guilt you make them feel, the more they will want to appease you. I suggest you use this as a lever against them.
    Alia made no further reply as she heard Mohiam’s presence fall back into the buzz of the background voices. Considering what Alia had done to the witch, could she trust her advice? Perhaps. Something about what she said, and the way she said it, rang of truth.
    Meanwhile, the sweating workers threw themselves into the labor of turning the throne around. They could have attached suspensors to move the enormous blue-green seat with the nudge of a finger, but instead they grunted, strained, and pushed. It was their way of serving her.
    Three black bees hummed over the heads of the workers, particularly irritating a swarthy offworld man who had a dark bristle of beard. The stinging insects darted around the sweat of his forehead. He released his hold to swat at them, while the other workers squared the heavy chair into position on the dais. The annoyed man knocked a bee out of the air and onto an arm of the throne, where he then crushed the insect with his fist and casually wiped it away.
    Alia startled him. “Who gave you permission to smash a bee on the Imperial throne?”
    Astonished at what he had done on impulse, the man turned, suddenly trembling, his face flushed, his eyes downcast and guilty. “N-no one, my Lady. I meant no affront.”
    Alia drew her crysknife from its sheath at her neck and said in a measured tone, “With Muad’Dib gone, all the lives in his empire have been left to my stewardship. Including yours. And even a life as insignificant as that of an insect.”
    The worker closed his eyes, resigned to his fate. “Yes, my Lady.”
    “Extend the offending hand, palm up!”
    Shaking, the worker did so. With a deft move, Alia slashed with the crysknife’s razor edge, neatly shaving a thin slice of flesh from the man’s palm, the portion that had killed the bee and touched the throne. He hissed in pain and surprise, but did not draw back, did not beg for mercy.
    Good enough,
she thought. He had learned his lesson, as had the other workers. Alia wiped the milky blade on the man’s shirt and resheathed the weapon. “They called my father Leto the Just. Perhaps I have some of him in me.”
    Unpredictability.
     

     
    When the Ixian delegation arrived, Alia sat dwarfed on the great crystalline throne and stared at the orange hangings that covered the wall behind the dais. Her coppery hair was secured with golden water rings, pieces of tallying metal that announced to everyone that she, like her brother, considered herself Fremen. Though she heard the commotion as the technocrats entered, she did not turn to see the men. Duncan would have told her never to sit with her back to a door, but Alia considered it symbolic of her disdain for these men.
    From behind her, the chamberlain announced the Ixians, and she heard the approaching footsteps. Their shoes made sharp sounds on the hard, polished floor, because by her orders the workers had not laid out a royal carpet. She heard an unevenness—uncertainty?—in their gait.
    A standing audience in the huge hall murmured, then grew quiet, curious as to what Alia would do next. Her amazon guards were stationed as usual, and ever alert. She did not know the name of the delegation leader, nor did she care. All technocrats were the same. Since the fall of the ruling House Vernius seven years earlier—whenBronso, the last heir, had gone into hiding to promote his sedition—the planet Ix had increased its research and industrial production, with little interest in the politics of the reconstituted Landsraad.
    She heard the men stop at the base of the dais and shuffle uncomfortably. A clearing throat, the rustle of clothing, and a hint of annoyance in a male voice. “Lady Alia, we have come as you requested.”
    Alia spoke straight ahead