Flushed with the Ajidamal pulsing through his thoughts, Hidar Fen Ajidica had a lizard’s-eye view of the corpses in the dining hall. Twenty-two of the most meddlesome Tleilaxu Masters lay slumped over the tables, poisoned. Dead.

Inspired by the revelations he had received from God, he was about to redraw the lines of power in the Imperium.

And among the bodies, a bonus: the pretentious Master Zaaf himself, who had arrived the day before on an unexpected inspection tour. With piquant slig stew spilled all over himself, Zaaf lay supine, his eyes bulging and mouth open, a most undistinguished state of death for the Master of Masters. The fast-acting toxin slipped into the food by Face Dancer cooks had sent Zaaf and his dinner companions into paroxysms within minutes, and their gray skin had turned a sickly scarlet, as if scalded from the inside out.

When the Master Researcher stood in the doorway, admiring his accomplishment, he had noticed a Draco volans in the rafters, one of the little lizards that seemed immune to pest-control measures. Only a few centimeters long, it had scaly appendages on either side of its body that permitted it to glide through the air like a Terran flying squirrel.

Seeing the lizard, Ajidica had decided to exercise the sparkling new powers that had come to him after consuming so much ajidamal. Now his mind’s eye seemed to be inside the diminutive dragon. From a perch in the rafters, he gazed down on the results of the slaughter through reptilian eyes. One of the bodies twitched, then fell as still as the rest.

Nearly two dozen dead Masters… it was a good start, as far as he was concerned. The Tleilaxu heretics must be removed before the Great Belief could resurface properly under Ajidica’s firm guidance.

He smiled as his thoughts raced through the myriad possibilities in his remarkable level of consciousness. Ajidica hardly slept at all anymore, and spent much of each day romping through his own marvelous mind as if it were an amusement park of new experiences and delights. He could hold ninety-seven simultaneous lines of thought in balance, ranging from mundane to complex subjects. He had the ability to study each mosaic of information as if it were a filmbook on a library shelf.

Ajidamal was even better than melange, even more intense. With it, Guild Navigators might be able to fold space into other universes, no longer restricted to one. One of his ninety-seven balanced lines of thought moved to the forefront. By now, Count Fenring and Zoal would have substituted ajidamal for melange in at least two Heighliners, and the Navigators should be about to use it. Fenring himself must be as dead as these victims here. The Face Dancer would have done his work well, and would return soon to report the details….

With his imagined lizard eyes, the Master Researcher surveyed the sprawled, blotchy corpses. There could be no turning back from his holy mission now. His other Face Dancers would replace the old-guard Masters, and everything would appear normal. Then he could send them to Kaitain….

From here, the Face Dancer replica of Master Zaaf would send word to Bandalong that he had decided to remain on Xuttuh for several months— which was the amount of time Ajidica needed to complete his plans. Any others who got in the way would also be consumed, like insects caught on the tongue of a flying lizard.

He imagined his tongue darting out, snapping up bugs and swallowing them. Darting and snapping, darting and snapping. He tasted their bitter, crunchy little bodies. The flying dragon hopped from the rafter and sailed slowly over the corpses, as if on an aerial inspection mission.

With a blink of his eyes, Ajidica dragged his consciousness away from the lizard and returned to his own body, which stood in the doorway. His mouth had a bitter taste, and his tongue felt raw and sore.

In an excited voice, he summoned his Face Dancers from the kitchen. They arrived promptly, ready for orders. “Dispose of the bodies. Then prepare for a journey.”

As the shape-shifters set about their task, Ajidica searched for the little lizard. The elusive creature, however, was nowhere to be seen.

With a thrill of amazement, a sunken-eyed C’tair Pilru found the gruesome bodies at the disposal site. The hated invaders were not covered with enough garbage to conceal them fully.

Slinking through shadows long after the strict curfew, C’tair had arrived just as a groundtruck departed, throwing rock dust into the air behind it. No one had seen him. He often frequented the subterranean dumping areas, searching for salvage items that he might adapt to his needs.

But this! Dead Tleilaxu Masters, more than twenty of them. High-ranking officials every one, and they had been murdered! Their normally pallid skins were a scalded-red color. He drew the only possible conclusion his weary mind could formulate. Here was proof that the resistance movement continued on Ix.

Someone else is killing the Tleilaxu.

C’tair scratched his head, disarranging his ragged hair. He looked around in the low starlight from the projected sky, not certain what to do next, wondering who his mysterious allies were.

Not long ago, a pair of Atreides men had promised that rescuers would arrive soon, like knights on white horses. In anticipation of this, other resistance groups must be mobilizing. He only hoped he lived long enough to see the glorious liberation of Ix.

Rhombur was coming! At last!

Not to be outdone, C’tair went into darkened subterranean chambers in search of lone Tleilaxu. He had become hardened over the long, desperate years. By the end of the night, seven more Tleilaxu joined the bodies at the disposal site.