In the months after the kidnapping of his infant son, Abulurd Harkonnen drove himself nearly mad. A broken man, he cut himself off from his world once again. All the servants were dismissed. He and his wife loaded a single ornithopter with only their most important possessions.

Then they burned the main lodge to the ground, reducing all of its memories to embers and smoke. The walls, roof, and support beams blazed brightly. The framework roared and crackled like a funeral pyre into the murky skies of Lankiveil. The large wooden building had been Abulurd and Emmi’s home for decades, their place of happiness and warm recollections. But they left without once looking back.

He and Emmi flew across the mountains until they set down in one of the silent mountain cities, a place named Veritas, meaning “truth.” Resembling a fortress, the Buddislamic community had been built under a sheltering granite overhang, a shelf of rock that jutted out from the main mountain mass. Over the centuries, monks had deepened the hollow, digging a warren of tunnels and private cells where devoted followers could sit and think.

Abulurd Harkonnen had a good deal to ponder, and the monks accepted him without question.

While not devoutly religious, nor even following the forms of Buddislam, Abulurd and Emmi spent much time together in silence. They gave one another solace after all the pain and grief. They sought to understand why the universe insisted on striking out at them. But neither of them could find an answer.

Abulurd believed he had a good heart, that he was fundamentally a good person. He tried to do everything right. Yet somehow he found himself in a pit of demons.

One day, he sat in his stone-walled chamber, where the light was dim and flickering, shed by burning candlepots that sent perfumed smoke into the air. Auxiliary thermal heaters hidden in the rock niches warmed the air. He huddled in loose, plain garments, not in prayer but deep in contemplation.

Kneeling beside him, Emmi stroked the sleeve of his tunic. She had been writing poetry, the structured verse found in the Buddislamic sutras, but the words and metaphors were so sharp and painful that Abulurd could not read them without feeling the sting of tears. She set her parchment and calligraphy pens aside, leaving the stanza unfinished.

Now, both stared into the flickering candles. Somewhere in the halls of Veritas, monks were singing, and the vibrations of their chants traveled through the stone. The muffled sounds became hypnotic tones without distinction.

Abulurd thought of his father, a man who had looked much like him, with long hair, a muscular neck, and a lean body. Baron Dmitri Harkonnen had always worn loose-fitting clothes to make himself appear more imposing than he really was. He’d been a hard man, willing to face difficult decisions in order to advance his family fortunes. Each day was an effort to increase the wealth of House Harkonnen, to raise his family’s standing in the Landsraad. Receiving the siridar-fief of Arrakis had elevated the stature of the Harkonnen name among the noble families.

Over the millennia since the Battle of Corrin, the Harkonnen bloodline had earned a well-deserved reputation for cruelty— but Dmitri had been less harsh than most of his predecessors. His second wife Daphne had softened him a great deal. In later years, Dmitri became a changed man, laughing exuberantly, showing his love for his new wife and spending time with his youngest son, Abulurd. He even cared for severely retarded Marotin, when earlier generations of Harkonnens would have simply slain the infant under the guise of mercy.

Unfortunately, the more affectionate Dmitri became, the harsher his eldest son Vladimir grew, as if in reaction. Vladimir’s mother Victoria had done her best to instill a power lust in her son.

We are so different.

Meditating in the stone chamber, focused on the subtle, shifting colors of candle flames, Abulurd did not regret failing to follow in his half-brother’s footsteps. He had neither the heart nor the stomach for the deeds that so delighted the Baron.

As he listened to the distant vibrations of the monks’ music, Abulurd considered his family tree. He’d never understood why his father had christened him Abulurd, a name fraught with scorn and infamy since the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad. The original Abulurd Harkonnen had been banished for cowardice after the Battle of Corrin, forever disgraced.

It had been the final victory of humans against the thinking machines. At their last stand on the legend-shrouded Bridge of Hrethgir, Abulurd’s long-dead namesake had done something to bring down censure from all the victorious parties. It had created the original rift between Harkonnen and Atreides, a blood feud that had lasted for millennia. But details were sketchy, and proof nonexistent.

What did my father know? What did that other Abulurd really do at the Battle of Corrin? What decision did he make at the Bridge?

Perhaps Dmitri had not considered it a matter for shame. Perhaps the victorious Atreides had merely rewritten history, changed the story after so many centuries in order to blacken the Harkonnen reputation. Since the Great Revolt, myths had collected like barnacles on history, obscuring the truth.

With a shudder, Abulurd drew a deep breath, smelling the candlepot incense inside their tiny room.

Sensing her husband’s uneasiness, Emmi stroked the back of his neck. She gave him a bittersweet smile. “It will take some time,” she said, “but I think in this holy place we may find some small measure of peace.”

Abulurd nodded and swallowed hard.

He clasped Emmi’s hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the weathered skin of her knuckles. “I may have been stripped of my wealth and power, dearest. I may have lost both of my sons . . . but I still have you. And you are worth more than all the treasures in the Imperium.” He closed his pale blue eyes. “I just wish we could do something to make amends to Lankiveil, to all these people who have suffered so much simply because of who I am.”

In anguish he pressed his lips together, and his eyes shimmered with a thin sheen of tears that could not block the images: Glossu Rabban covered with whale blood and blinking in the spotlight at the end of the dock . . . Bifrost Eyrie devastated by Rabban’s troops . . . the disbelieving expression on Onir Rautha-Rabban’s face just before the guards flung him off the cliff . . . even the poor fishmistress— Abulurd remembered the smell of her burned flesh, the crash of the overturned bucket, water spilled on the hardwood floor, soaked up by the apron of the dead woman as she sprawled in it. The baby crying. . . .

Had it been so long ago that life had been good and peaceful? How many years had it been since he’d gone on a friendly whale hunt with the native fishermen, when they had hunted down an albino whale. . . .

With a start he recalled the artificial iceberg, the illicit and enormous spice stockpile hidden in the arctic waters. A Harkonnen treasure hoard greater than any wealth these people could imagine. That stockpile had been placed right under Abulurd’s nose, no doubt by his own half-brother.

Now, in the stone-walled room, he stood up quickly and smiled. Abulurd could not suppress his sheer delight. He looked over at his wife, who couldn’t comprehend his excitement.

“I know what we can do, Emmi!” He clapped his hands, thrilled at the prospect. At last he had found a way to make reparations to the hardworking people, whom his own family had so terribly wronged.

Aboard a cargo-carrying ice-cutter that had filed no trip plan and transmitted no locator signal, Abulurd led a group of Buddislamic monks, a whale fur crew, and his former household servants on an expedition. They cruised through the ice-clogged waters, listening to chunks grind against each other like mortar stones.

A night mist of suspended ice crystals drifted across the waters, diffusing the boat’s searchlights as the craft forged ahead, seeking the anchorage of the artificial iceberg. Using sounding apparatus and scanners, they searched the waters, mapping out the floating mounds. Once they knew what they were looking for, tracking down the impostor became simple enough.

In the hours before dawn, the craft tied up against the polymer sculpture that looked so much like crystalline ice. The awestruck workers, whalers, and monks crept like trespassers into the corridors that extended beneath the water. Inside, untouched for years, sat container after container of the precious spice melange, covertly removed from Arrakis and hidden here. An Emperor’s ransom.

Early in his long reign, Elrood IX had established severe restrictions against illegal stockpiles such as this. If the cache were ever discovered, the Baron would be punished, with an immense fine levied and perhaps the loss of his CHOAM directorship, or forfeiture of the quasi-fief of Arrakis itself.

For a few moments of desperate hope, Abulurd had considered blackmailing his half-brother, demanding the return of his baby boy under threat of revealing the illegal spice stockpile. No longer a Harkonnen, Abulurd had nothing to lose. But he knew that wouldn’t work in the long run. No, this was the only way to bring some sort of closure, to salvage some good from a nightmare.

Using suspensor pallets and a fire-brigade line, the furtive crew spent hours loading their cargo ship with melange, all the way to the top decks. Though disgraced, Abulurd still retained his title as subdistrict governor. He would send feelers out to his former contacts. He would find smugglers and merchants to help him dispose of this stockpile. It would take months, but Abulurd intended to liquidate it for hard solaris, which he would distribute as he saw fit. To benefit his people.

He and Emmi had considered, but discarded, the idea of spending heavily on a military defense system for Lankiveil. Even with all of this spice, they realized, they could not hope to build anything to oppose the combined might of House Harkonnen. No, they had a better idea in mind.

While sitting alone in the warm closeness of their monastic cell, he and Emmi had developed an elaborate plan. It would be a monumental task to distribute such enormous wealth, but Abulurd had his trusted assistants, and knew he would succeed.

The spice money would be sent through cities and villages, dispersed to hundreds of mountain strongholds and fishing towns. The people would rebuild their Buddislamic temples. They would upgrade old whale fur–processing equipment, widen streets and docks. Every native fisherman would receive a new boat.

The money would be doled out in thousands of small pieces, and it would be completely unrecoverable. The spice stockpile would increase the standard of living for the poor people of this planet—his citizens— giving them comforts they’d never imagined possible in their hard lives.

Even when the Baron discovered what his half-brother had done, he could never reclaim the ill-gotten fortune. It would be like trying to recapture the sea with an eyedropper. . . .

As the ice-cutter raced back to the rocky fjord villages, Abulurd stood at the bow, smiling into the frigid mist and shivering with anticipation. He knew how much good he would do with this night’s effort.

For the first time in years, Abulurd Harkonnen felt deeply proud.