lazarus. feyd rautha

chapter three: piter

GIEDI PRIME, HARKO, 10,191

It just before noon when she was escorted out of the Baron's wing of the palace and brought to the guest rooms. Gaius stayed behind, having other matters to discuss with him. She had no reason to believe she was the topic of conversation, but the possibility of it unnerved her anyways.

Despite the ambient lights washing the guest wing in bits of blue, nothing could erase the dullness of the palace. Harkonnen architecture was grand only in scale and horrid in style. Their ideals and apathetic attitudes impressed upon their buildings made of black and grey stone with not a single painting or decoration to brighten it. It resembled an empty museum completely void of artifacts, leaving the visitor to look for beauty in the cracks on the wall.

Once she reached the hall to the room she would be staying in, the servant accompanying her bowed quickly and took her leave.

Opening the doors, she saw it wasn't much better inside. The room was enormous, at least five times the size of her dormitory back at the school. She took a look around, going first to the secondary door leading to an ensuite with the largest bathtub she'd ever seen. It was a shame that with such money and luxury, the Harkonnen's couldn't adopt a better sense of interior design.

A king sized canopy bed was in the middle of the room, burgundy curtains falling around its perimeter, hiding whatever laid inside. She knew no one was inside the room but her, she would have felt it, heard it by now. And yet she still felt strange. Taking slow, cautious steps towards the bed, she prepared herself for whatever she might find. A hunter-seeker perhaps? But she was hardly significant enough to be the target of an assassination attempt, not yet.

With stilled breath she tore the curtain back, on top of the velvet duvet was a large silver box with a card attached with only two things printed: Anastacia on the front and on the back, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. She lifted the lid off the box to reveal a dress. A soft copper colour. It was quite beautiful. Off the shoulders and long sleeves, a silk skirt lined with what looked like citrines along the waistline.

A gift from a betrothed was hardly uncommon, and yet she was taken by surprise anyway.

There was much speculation about the Harkonnen spare amongst the Great Houses, most often accompanied by warnings to avoid him. Like all Harkonnen's, there were accounts of him killing his servants without reason, like swatting a fly away. The utter disregard for human life was bred in his genes, replaced with a hunger for violence and personal glory. While his brother the Beast Rabban was remarked as, well, unremarkable, Feyd-Rautha was said to possess both incredible mind and body and used it for nothing but torment. The Reverend Mother told her he was one of the top priority bloodlines the Sisterhood was maintaining. Surely he wasn't a contender for the Kwisatz Haderach.

Regardless, he was a monster, well over the line of psychopathy. She supposed her greatest task would be keeping him under control once they were familiar with one another.

All the different tales of her betrothed swam in her head as she ran her fingers against the dress. Every story of him that has constructed this image is one told by someone else, documents and medical records and whispers at events just like the one which brought her to Giedi Prime: a birthday.

She wondered how much was true, how much was exaggerated, or downplayed, or wiped from history all together, evidence buried. She remembered a proverb from Old Earth, Everything uttered is an echo. The truest verse is the one never spoken.

"What might your verse be?" she whispered.

—

Piter de Vries collected her from her room shortly after. She heard his footsteps half a minute before he knocked on the door, they were featherlight, inconspicuous.