Several weeks after the Baron Harkonnen departed from Grumman, where plans had been set in motion, the Viscount lost all reason for restraint.

Hiih Resser stood with a dozen members of the Moritani royal court, packed shoulder to shoulder in the sickroom of the dying boy. Viscount Moritani spoke to them all in a voice like ripping paper. “The Suk doctor says my son will soon breathe his last. It is only a matter of days, or less. If only we had the drug to cure him.” Moritani’s broken whisper drove a knife of sorrow into Resser’s heart. If only.

On his bed, reeking of melange and semuta smoke, accompanied by wailing atonal music, whether or not the melodic trance effects were necessary, Wolfram was beyond hearing his distraught father.

Some of the witnesses sobbed softly, but Resser had no way of judging if their tears were sincere. Looking on, he was convinced that this clumsy demonstration of support was largely an effort to gain favor with the Grumman lord.

Preoccupied with his work, Dr. Terbali made adjustments to Wolfram’s intravenous lines, while the wild-haired Viscount leaned over his son from the other side, kissed his sunken cheek, and spoke quietly.

The unfortunate boy did not respond, but stared vacantly, only occasionally twitching a muscle or blinking his red-veined eyes.

The sick boy slipped so quietly into death that even Moritani did not notice for several seconds, though he held the boy’s limp hand. Then, in delayed reaction, he let out a bestial sound that was half wail, half roar.

Dr. Terbali straightened from the bedside after checking vital signs. “I’m sorry, my Lord.”

Hundro Moritani swept an arm across a tray of medical instruments, sending them clanging to the floor. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

The Viscount was a hard, cruel man with easily inflamed passions, and quick to respond with violence. Resser had seen how his master skirted morality for his own purposes, while putting forth false issues to disguise his motivations. But this was no pretended grief. The anguish over his only son’s death was real.

The flames behind Moritani’s eyes burned as brightly as stars. Resser was terrified, wondering if the Viscount would use the death of Wolfram as a catalyst to unleash the storm he had been holding inside for so long. The Grumman leader would step across the grave of his own son to obtain what he wanted for his House. With Wolfram gone, he would drum up support to take the planet Ecaz for himself, and somehow he would get another male heir. Or did he have an even larger plan? And was it simply revenge?

That is not a question for me to answer, Resser thought. My role is to follow the orders of my master, to obey with my life, if necessary.

The Viscount, his emotions changing in a flash, turned on the Suk doctor. With tears streaming down his cheeks, Moritani stormed around the foot of the sickbed. “You knew the cure for Wolfram! I commanded you to obtain it for me.”

“Not possible, my Lord! The Ecazis —”

Moritani hurled the portly doctor across the room into the clustered and clucking observers, but he was not finished yet. Drawing a slender, curved kindjal from his fur-trimmed jerkin, he stalked toward the stunned doctor, while others scrambled away, doing nothing to help or hinder the intended victim.

“I am a Suk — I have immunity!”

Face twisted in disgust, Moritani plunged the knife into the doctor’s chest and withdrew it as swiftly as a serpent striking, then shoved the mortally wounded man aside as if he were no more than a distraction. “Then heal yourself.”

Trying to assuage his grief with violence, he charged out of his son’s death chamber with the bloody blade, reacting to this problem just as Resser had seen him react to so many problems before. “Where are the others? Bring the smugglers to me — every one of them!” He spun to Resser. “Swordmaster, you find them.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Within the hour, eleven Ecazi drug smugglers were brought before the enraged, distraught Viscount. Hundro Moritani had paid these men to slip through the Ecazi restrictions and obtain doses of esoit-poay regardless of cost. After a few unsuccessful attempts to obtain the curative through illegal channels, they had tried to steal a shipment. In all instances, they had returned empty handed.

One by one, the Viscount had the Ecazi smugglers bound by ropes around their ankles to wild Grumman stallions. In a grisly exhibition, the men were dragged across the dry, rocky seabed until they were dead. Afterward, looking at the shredded red bodies, he snapped at Resser, “I cannot stand the sight of the Ecazi race. Remove these corpses from my presence, and have them burned.”

Resser did as he was told, knowing that Moritani was probably just beginning.