Paul switched off his shield and strode over to the fallen body of Marie Fenring. Alia stared at the jewel-hiked knife protruding from her former playmate’s back, as if she could not believe what she had just done.

Chani stood with crysknife in hand, coiled for further violence and ready to protect Paul. “Stilgar, do you live?” she called.

Though he moved like a man half asleep, the naib said, “I live… The poison was temporary.”

Count Fenring had fallen to the floor on his knees and looked absolutely shattered. “Marie! Marie, my sweet little girl!” His shoulders hunched and shuddered as he lifted the dead child and cradled her. Behind him, an opening in the wall led down a sloped ramp and worn stairs into the dark tunnels of a secret labyrinth underground. His wife knelt next to him, also stricken. Both of them seemed to have abandoned their dream of escape.

A backwash of danger clamored in Paul’s mind, but in his prescient blind spot he could sense no details. Though he had always known the Count was devious, he had wanted to believe that he shared a bond with the other potential Kwisatz Haderach.

All along, though, Fenring’s deadly plot had been ticking like clockwork. He must have known it was a risky attempt, yet he had been willing to send his own daughter behind enemy lines and unleash her as a weapon, seeking to destroy not only Paul, but the Jihad. Had this man raised Marie from infancy with that sole purpose in mind? What kind of father could do that? He realized how Duke Leto might have reacted if the Harkonnens had actually killed Paul.

Lady Margot was white and rigid, as if she had discarded any attempt to maintain Bene Gesserit control over her emotions. Paul saw the agonized sorrow of a mother, but most of all he felt the sheer misery of Count Fenring. Raw, authentic emotion boiled up from him like a hot cloud.

Paul said, “You used a child as a pawn in an assassination plot. Your own child!”

“Oh, Hasimir is not her father, Paul Atreides.” Lady Margot’s voice dripped with scorn. “You knew her father. Feyd’Rautha Harkonnen.” Paul snapped his gaze to her in surprise.

In that instant, Count Fenring moved like a coiled viper, his muscles trained and retrained with years of practice as the Emperor’s most reliable assassin. Fenring yanked the Emperor’s dagger out of Marie’s body and drove the blade deep into Paul’s chest.

“One of my backup plans,” he said.

Reeling backward, Paul experienced every moment splintered into a million shards of nanoseconds. Each event had been as carefully laid out as the puzzle pieces in a Chusuk mosaic. Either the plan had originally been designed in extravagant and impossible detail, or Fenring had enhanced the scheme with so many branch points and alternatives that all possibilities had intersected in this single crux point.

The knife wound created a yawning gulf of pain in Paul’s chest. He heard a shrill wail from Chani. “Uuuussssuuuullll!”

She cried out again, but this time it was barely audible, a galaxy away.

Bleeding, Paul-Muad’Dib fell, as if tumbling into a vast chasm.