Once again, Abulurd enjoyed the peaceful nights on Lankiveil. He had no regrets about renouncing his powerful family connections. He was content.

Roaring fires in the hearths of the great rooms warmed the restored and redecorated main lodge in Tula Fjord. Lounging in the common area adjacent to the big kitchen, he and Emmi felt satisfied, their stomachs full from a large feast of grupper paella they had shared with the servants to celebrate being together again. Most of the original staff had been located and brought back. Finally, Abulurd looked forward to the future.

That very morning two Bjondax whales had been seen at the mouth of the fjord, testing the waters. Fishermen reported that recent catches were the best in over a year. The normally dismal weather had turned sharply cold and dusted the cliffs with a clean blanket of snow; even under the cloudy night skies, the whiteness added a pearly overtone to the shadows.

Baby Feyd-Rautha sat on a handwoven carpet beside Emmi. Good-natured, the boy was prone to giggles and a variety of facial expressions. Clinging to one of his mother’s fingers as she held him upright, Feyd began to take his first wobbly steps, testing his balance. The bright child already had a small vocabulary, which he employed often.

In celebration, Abulurd considered bringing out a few old instruments and calling for folk music, but before he could do so he heard a grating noise outside, the hum of engines. “Are those boats?” When the servants fell silent, he could indeed make out the sounds of aquatic motors.

The fishmistress, who was also their cook, had brought a large basin into the sitting room adjacent to the common area, where she used a flat knife to pry open stoneclams and shuck the meat into a pot of salted broth. Hearing the commotion outside, she wiped her hands on a towel and looked over her shoulder through the windowplaz. “Lights. Boats coming up the fjord. Movin’ too fast, if you ask me. Dark outside— they could hit somethin’.”

“Turn up the house glowglobes,” Abulurd commanded. “We need to welcome our visitors.” Outside, a wreath of illumination blazed around the wooden structure, shedding a warm glow onto the docks.

Three seacraft roared along the rocky waterline, arrowing straight for the main lodge. Emmi clutched baby Feyd. Her wide, normally calm face carried a ripple of uneasiness, and she looked at her husband for reassurance. Abulurd made a soft gesture to quell her fears, though he felt a knot forming in his own stomach.

He opened the big wooden doors just as the armored boats lashed up against the docks. Uniformed Harkonnen soldiers disembarked onto the quay, their heavy bootsteps like cannon fire. Abulurd took a step backward as the troops marched up the steep stairs toward him, weapons shouldered but ready for use.

Abulurd sensed that all of his peace was about to end.

Glossu Rabban strode onto the dockboards; with brisk stomping footsteps, he followed the vanguard of armed men.

“Emmi, it’s . . . it’s him.” Abulurd couldn’t utter his son’s name. More than four decades separated Glossu Rabban from his young sibling, in whom the parents now placed all their hopes. The baby seemed incredibly vulnerable— Abulurd’s household had no defenses.

On impulse, reacting foolishly, Abulurd swung shut the heavy door and barred it, which only served to provoke the oncoming soldiers. They opened fire and blasted the century-old barricade. Abulurd scrambled back to protect his wife and child. The aged wood smoked and splintered, falling to one side with a dreadful sound like a headsman’s ax.

“Is this how you welcome me, Father?” Rabban gave a gruff laugh as he stepped through the smoke and over the wreckage.

The servants began to move about in a flurry. Behind the basin of salted broth, the fishmistress held her little shellfish knife as a pathetic weapon. Two manservants emerged from the back rooms with spears and fishing knives, but Abulurd raised his hands to keep them calm. The Harkonnen soldiers would slaughter them all, just like at Bifrost Eyrie, if he didn’t handle this properly.

“Is this how you ask for a welcome, Son?” Abulurd gestured to the wreckage of the door. “With armed soldiers and military boats arriving in the middle of the night?”

“My uncle has been teaching me how to make an entrance.”

The men in blue Harkonnen livery stood motionless, weapons in plain view. Abulurd didn’t know what to do. He looked at his wife, but she sat by the roaring fire, clutching the baby close. By the hunted look in her eyes, Abulurd knew she was wishing she’d hidden the child somewhere in the main lodge.

“Is that my new little brother, Feyd-Rautha? A prissy-sounding name.” Rabban shrugged. “But if he’s my own flesh and blood . . . I suppose I have to love him.”

Holding the child even tighter, Emmi tossed her straight hair behind her shoulders, hair that was still black despite her advancing years. She met Rabban’s gaze with hard eyes, angry at what she saw and torn by a few scraps of love for her own son, whom she could not abandon. “Let us hope that blood is all you two share. You did not learn to be cruel in this house, Glossu. Not from me, and not from your father. We always loved you, even after you caused us so much pain.” Surprisingly, she stood and took a step toward him, and Rabban flushed with flustered anger as he inadvertently took a step back. “How could you have turned out the way you have?”

He glowered at her.

Emmi lowered her voice, as if she were asking herself the question, not him. “We are so disappointed in you. Where did we go wrong? I don’t understand it.”

Her wide, plain face softened with love and pity, but hardened again as Rabban burst out in cruel laughter to cover his own unease. “Oh? I’m disappointed in you two as well. My own parents, and you didn’t even invite me to the naming ceremony of my little brother.” He stepped forward. “Let me hold the brat.”

Emmi drew back, protecting her good son from the bad. Rabban feigned a look of sadness, then strode closer. The Harkonnen troops raised their weapons and advanced.

“Leave your mother alone!” Abulurd said. One of the soldiers put up a single hand and stopped him from rushing forward.

Rabban turned to him. “I can’t sit idly by and let my own brother be corrupted by an embarrassing weakling like you, Father. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, your half-brother and head of our Great House, has already filed documents and received full Landsraad approval to raise Feyd-Rautha in his own household on Giedi Prime.” One of the guards took out an ornate scroll of imprinted saarti parchment and tossed it on the floor at Abulurd’s feet. Abulurd could only stare at it. “He has adopted the boy formally and legally as his foster son.”

Smiling at his parents’ horrified expressions, Rabban said, “In the same manner that he has already adopted me. I am his heir-designate, the na-Baron. I’m a Harkonnen as pure and proper as the Baron himself.” He extended his thick arms. The troops kept their weapons steady, but Emmi backed closer to the fire. “See, you have nothing to worry about.”

Jerking his head to one side, Rabban signaled two of the nearest men, who opened fire on the fishmistress where she stood, still holding the little curved knife. During Rabban’s brief stay in the main lodge, the husky woman had cooked many meals for him. But now the lasgun beams cut her down before she could even scream; the fishmistress dropped her knife and tumbled forward into the basin. Clams turned over, and sour-smelling water spilled onto the wooden floor.

“How many more of them will you force me to kill, Mother?” he inquired, almost plaintively, still reaching out with his thick-fingered hands. “You know I’ll do it. Now give me my brother.”

Emmi’s gaze flicked from Rabban’s to all of the terrified household servants, to the baby boy, and then to Abulurd, who did not have the courage to meet her eyes. He could only make a strangled cry in his throat.

Though she gave him no sign of surrender, Rabban pulled the infant roughly from her numb arms, and she did not resist— out of fear that all the other people in the house would be slaughtered just the way the Harkonnen troops had slaughtered the innocent workers at Bifrost Eyrie.

Unable to bear the thought of her baby being taken away, Emmi gave a small gasp, as if the anchors that had always given her strength and stability had just been severed. The child began to cry upon seeing the broad, stony face of his much older brother.

“You can’t do this!” Abulurd said, still unwilling to push his way past the armed guards. “I am planetary governor here. I will contest this with the Landsraad.”

“You have no legal rights whatsoever. We didn’t contest your meaningless title as planetary governor, but when you renounced your Harkonnen name, you forfeited your position, all nice and tidy.” Rabban held the struggling baby at arm’s length as if he didn’t know what to do with a child. The parchment legal document still lay untouched on the floor. “You are effectively nothing, Father. Nothing at all.”

Taking the boy, he headed back toward the smoking ruins of the door. Abulurd and Emmi, both wild with grief, screamed after him, but the guards turned around, pointing their weapons.

“Oh, don’t kill anyone else,” Rabban said to them. “I’d rather hear a houseful of whimpering as we leave.”

The soldiers marched down the steps to the docks, where they boarded the armored boats. Abulurd held Emmi tightly, rocking her back and forth, and they supported each other like two trees fallen together. Both of their faces were streaked with tears, their eyes wide and glassy. The servants in the house wailed in anguish.

Rabban’s military boats cruised off across the black waters of Tula Fjord. Abulurd gasped, unable to breathe. Emmi shuddered in his arms and he tried to comfort her, but he felt utterly helpless, ineffective, and crushed. She stared at her open, callused hands, as if expecting to see her baby there.

Off in the distance, though he knew it was only his imagination, Abulurd thought he could hear the child crying even over the roar of the departing boats.