Grinning with pride, Court Chamberlain Beely Ridondo marched through the doorway. “Your Imperial Majesty, you have another new daughter. Your wife has just delivered a fine and healthy girl.”

Instead of rejoicing, Emperor Shaddam IV cursed under his breath and sent the man away. That makes three! What use is another daughter to me?

He was in a foul mood, worse than any since the struggles to remove his decrepit father from the Golden Lion Throne. At a brisk pace Shaddam entered his private study, passing beneath an ancient plaque that read, “Law is the ultimate science”— some nonsense from Crown Prince Raphael Corrino, a man who’d never even bothered to wear the Imperial crown. He sealed the door behind him and thumped his angular frame into the textured, high-backed suspensor chair at his desk.

A man of middle height, Shaddam had a loosely muscled body and an aquiline nose. His long nails were carefully manicured, his pomaded red hair combed straight back. He wore a gray Sardaukar-style uniform with epaulets and silver-and-gold trim, but the military trappings no longer comforted him as they once had.

In addition to the birth of yet another daughter, he had much on his mind. Recently, at a gala concert in one of the inverted-pyramid stadiums on Harmonthep, someone had released a giant inflated effigy of Shaddam IV. Obscenely insulting, the gaudy caricature made him look like a buffoon. The inflatable construction had drifted over the vast laughing crowds until the Harmonthep dragoon guards had shot it down in flaming tatters— and any fool could see the symbolism in that act! Despite the most rigorous crackdown and interrogation, even Sardaukar investigators were not able to determine who’d been responsible for creating or releasing the effigy.

In another incident, hundred-meter-high letters had been scrawled across the granite wall of Monument Canyon on Canidar II: “Shaddam, does your crown rest comfortably on your pointy head?” In scattered worlds across the Imperium, dozens of his new commemorative statues had been defaced. Nobody had ever seen the perpetrators.

Someone hated him enough to do this. Someone. The question kept gnawing at his Imperial heart, along with other worries . . . including an impending visit from Hasimir Fenring to report on the secret synthetic spice experiments being conducted by the Tleilaxu.

Project Amal.

Initiated during his father’s reign, this research was known to only a few. Perhaps the most closely guarded secret in the Imperium, Project Amal could, if successful, give House Corrino a reliable, artificial source of melange, the most precious substance in the universe. But the damned Tleilaxu experiments were taking years too long, and the situation upset him more and more with each passing month.

And now . . . a third cursed daughter! He didn’t know when— or if— he would bother to gaze upon this useless new girl-child.

Shaddam’s gaze moved along the paneled wall, to a bookcase that contained a stand-up holophoto of Anirul in her wedding gown, shelved next to a thick reference volume of great historical disasters. She had large doe eyes— hazel in some light, darker at other times— that concealed something. He should have noticed before.

It was the third time this Bene Gesserit “of Hidden Rank” had failed to produce the required male heir, and Shaddam had made no contingency plans for such an eventuality. His face grew hot. He could always impregnate a few concubines and hope for a son, but while legally married to Anirul, he would face tremendous political difficulties if he attempted to declare a bastard his heir for the Imperial throne.

He could also kill Anirul and take another wife— his father had done that enough times— but such a course of action would risk the wrath of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Everything could be solved if Anirul would just give him a son, a healthy male child he could call his heir.

All these months of waiting, and now this . . .

He’d heard that the witches could actually choose the gender of their children, through manipulations in body chemistry; these daughters could be no accident. He’d been deceived by the Bene Gesserit power brokers who had foisted Anirul on him. How dare they do that to the Emperor of a Million Worlds? What was Anirul’s true purpose in his royal household? Was she gathering blackmail information to use against him? Should he send her away?

He tapped a stylus on his blood-grained elacca wood desk, stared at an image of his paternal grandfather, Fondil III. Commonly known as “the Hunter” for his propensity to attack every vestige of rebellion, Fondil had been no less feared in his own household. Though the old man had died long before Shaddam’s birth, he knew something of the Hunter’s moods and methods. Had Fondil been faced with an arrogant wife, he would have found a way to rid himself of her. . . .

Shaddam pressed a button on his desk, and his personal Chamberlain reentered the study. Ridondo bowed, showing the gleaming top of his high forehead. “Sire?”

“I wish to see Anirul now. Here.”

“The Lady is in bed, Sire.”

“Don’t make me repeat my order.”

Without another word, Ridondo faded into the woodwork, disappearing through the side door with long, spidery movements.

Moments later a pale and overly perfumed lady-in-waiting arrived. In a shaky voice, she said, “My Emperor, the Lady Anirul wishes me to convey that she is weakened from the birth of your child. She begs your indulgence in permitting her to remain in bed. Might it be possible for you to consider coming to visit her and the baby?”

“I see. She begs my indulgence? I am not interested in seeing another useless daughter, or in hearing further excuses. This is a command from your Emperor: Anirul is to come here now. She is to do it alone, without the aid of any servant or mechanical device. Is that understood?”

With any luck, she would drop dead along the way.

Terrified, the lady-in-waiting bowed. “As you wish, Sire.”

Presently, a gray-skinned Anirul stood in the doorway of his private study, holding tight to the fluted support column. She wore a wrinkled scarlet-and-gold robe that did not entirely conceal the nightclothes underneath. Though swaying on her feet, she held her head high.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.

“I’ve just had a difficult childbirth, and I’m quite weak.”

“Excuses, excuses. You are intelligent enough to figure out what I mean. You’ve been clever enough to fool me all these years.”

“Fool you?” She blinked her doe eyes at him as if he were out of his mind. “Forgive me, Majesty, but I am tired. Why must you be so cruel, calling me here like this and refusing to see our daughter?”

His lips were colorless, as if the blood had drained from them. His eyes were flat pools. “Because you could give me a male heir, but refuse to do so.”

“There is no truth in that, Majesty, only rumors.” It required all of her Bene Gesserit training to remain standing.

“I listen to intelligence reports, not rumors.” The Emperor peered at her through one open eye, as if he could see her in more minute detail that way. “Do you wish to die, Anirul?”

It occurred to Anirul that he might kill her after all. There is certainly no love between us, but would he dare risk the Sisterhood’s ire by disposing of me? At the time of his ascension to the throne, Shaddam had agreed to marry her because he’d needed the strength of a Bene Gesserit alliance in the uneasy political climate. Now, after a dozen years, Shaddam felt too confident in his position. “Everyone dies,” she said.

“But not the way I could arrange for you.”

Anirul tried not to show emotion and reminded herself that she was not alone, that within her psyche were the collective memories of the multitudes of Bene Gesserit who had come before her and remained in Other Memory. Her voice was utterly calm. “We are not the complex, devious witches we’re made out to be.” This was not true, of course, though she knew Shaddam couldn’t possibly have more than suspicions to the contrary.

His demeanor didn’t soften. “What’s more important to you . . . your Sisters or me?”

She shook her head in dismay. “You have no right to ask me such a thing. I’ve never given you any reason to feel I’ve been less than faithful to the crown.”

Lifting her head proudly, Anirul reminded herself of her position in the long history of the Sisterhood. She would never admit to him that she had orders from the Bene Gesserit hierarchy never to give birth to a Corrino son. The wisdom of her Sisters echoed through her mind. Love weakens. It is dangerous, for it clouds reason and diverts us from our duties. It is an aberration, a disgrace, an unforgivable infraction. We cannot love.

Anirul tried to divert Shaddam’s anger. “Accept your daughter, Sire, for she can be used to cement important political alliances. We should discuss her name. What do you think of Wensicia?”

With sudden alarm she became aware of warm moisture on her inner thighs. Blood? Had the stitches broken? Red droplets were falling onto the carpet.

Anirul saw him peering down at her feet. New rage consumed the Emperor’s features. “That carpet has been in my family for centuries!”

Don’t show weakness. He’s an animal . . . will attack weakness and back down from strength. She turned slowly, allowing several more drops to fall, then staggered away. “Given the history of House Corrino, I am certain that blood has been spilled on it before.”