Chapter 6

“You see, my climate demands a special attitude towards water. You are aware of water at all times. You waste nothing that contains moisture.” – Liet Kynes

They gathered beneath the low orange wash of Arrakis’s sky. The effigy of Manu lay like an accusation wrapped in moth-silk: hands, face, the shape of a man held in the careful geometry of ritual. Artificers had crafted a funeral cocoon—a chrysalis organ that drank the storm and protected its charge.

When the storm answered, it did so not as random violence but like an instrument called. The bastial fragment focused the sky into a single white tongue that flared, touched the cocoon, and the moth-silk lit and flamed, raising Manu’s soul to the thunderous heavens. Around the pyre, the minds of House Varmouth sparked in private contemplation.

Takshaka held two truths: ritual honour for his fallen comrade and the sick weight of having left one of his loyal house guards to die when the choice between saving a harvester saboteur and Manu had been made. His faith told him Manu’s death was noble; his body kept the residue of having chosen badly. In the silence after the flame, he tasted anger—at himself. Duty and disgust sat like coals in his mouth.

Count Lucar watched the ritual as one might examine a stripped mechanism: grief was folded quickly into purpose. News—House Vertas, whom he now knew to be paying saboteurs; House Alexin, skimming spice—exploitation of Varmoth’s resources. If the Imperium’s truth could be forged, he would forge it. Lucar’s plan was elegant cruelty: make Vertas and Alexin look culpable in the eyes of the Harkonnens; press the knife of reputation until they bled treachery.

Lady Kleya stood in the gray centre of observation, Bene Gesserit restraint shaping every small motion. Pride in Lucar’s assumption to the mantle of Head of House Varmoth, warmed her like an internal lamp; she watched not with indulgence but with the cold favour of one who cultivates seeds.

Lavro analysed everything—the last week’s harvest yields, worm strike reports, Coriolis storm logs—and concluded theft alone could not explain the decline; the harsh environment of the Cielago Depression held its own threat. His plan: use Varmoth lightning technology to lure sandworms away from harvesters—an engineered diversion rather than a brute response.

Dali catalogued the crowd’s expressions and the rhythm of gossip. He had been listening to union bosses at the mines, learning the pattern of unrest and where it might be spun to advantage.

Lundrak arrived from his interrogation of Jaris; the answers were forced from the girl before a quiet death was arranged and delivered into the dunes—necessary cruelty in a world where loose knowledge eats a house alive.

The Harkonnen demand for tribute had mutated into an instrument of power. Water—no longer just a commodity but political pressure—had tripled in price. House Varmoth’s Treasurer, Devin Yudin’s voice was papered with panic and policy: suspensor-buoyed litters, punctual delivery, byzantine rules. The Varmoth coffers could pay numerically, but water itself was scarce; you could not buy what was not to hand.

Lucar was minded to refuse the Harkonnen fare, but Takshaka invoked prudence. The compromise was theatre: pay, but make it a statement. Lucar planned to dishonour the Harkonnen demand: payment in the form of piss. It was petty justice and political messaging in one.

Takshaka sent out scouts by ornithopter. The report was a tinderbox about to light: an angry mob pressed the Arrakeen spaceport gates; Harkonnen stewards, ornithopter squadrons, and soldiers with lasguns tried to maintain an ugly order. Takshaka conferred with Arrakeen elders—warnings that stealing from the Harkonnens invited death did not melt desperation; still, he chose to send the water on two ornithopters and march guards on foot to help secure delivery.

Lucar’s masquerade relied on a Vertas uniform smuggled by Dali, who paid a local to play agitator. The timing: deliver their water just before Vertas, then set the awaiting furnace of the crowd alight.

They landed one hundred metres from the barricade and began the slow, exact work of moving a convoy of one hundred litrejohns. The crowd smelled of old fear and new hunger. A thrown rock hit Takshaka and released chaos. Varmoth guards formed like a human wall; soldiers held the line, but two children—small and desperate—snuck through behind and stole a litrejohn. Takshaka saw them too late. He maintained his position to defend the convoy; he would not abandon duty to chase mercy.

Count Lucar’s words knifed through the mob: he calmed them with a speech that borrowed their hatred of the Harkonnens and turned attention from the convoy’s vulnerability to shared grievance. It worked—briefly—until House Vertas’ ornithopters touched down.

Their stooge in the crowd, wearing the House Vertas uniform, acted with a nervous energy too soon, a declaration of death to House Harkonnen. He fired a maula pistol but missed and was gunned down by lasgun fire. A Harkonnen clerk—an officious man claimed in red tape—shouted for the Spaceport gate to be closed, but House Varmoth nagge managed to push their water convoy through the gate just in time. Harkonnen forces retreated to their ornithopters and carryalls, and fled towards Carthag.

Outside, the mob tore into the Vertas convoy; Vertas guards answered with gunfire. Takshaka, acting on instinct and faith, ordered his men to form lines to protect the fleeing Arrakeenians—some paid with their lives. Varmoth’s victory was small and bitter: House Vertas could not deliver their fai, their honour fractured. Revenge had been taken—publicly, cruelly, and in the way that could be carved into future narrative.

The next day, back in the Vamoth great hall, glowglobes softened clenched faces. Yudin revealed a new wound: a carryall, containing 10,000 litrejohns, had been hijacked before arriving at Carthag. Harkonnen propaganda blamed the Fremen; a convenient fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. The lost shipment fed scarcity and gave the Harkonnens leverage.

Farzan—the Harkonnen senior clerk, recognisable by his missing left arm— would be attending House Seraut’s feast. Yudin suggested that a direct conversation with Farzan offered a route to diplomacy. The members of House Varmoth had prepared their attire suitable for a grand event.

The Seraut mansion was a stage of obscene wealth. Hanging plants and glowglobes made the place a garden of contrivance. A crowd of resentful Arrakeenians gathered outside; the band inside turned up its volume to drown them. In the centre of the hall stood an ice sculpture in the Seraut crest—a droplet pierced with a sewing needle—an insult to the people of Arrakis.

Lady Behati—the Viscountess—paraded through the hall, laughing and spilling water with a performative toss. Servants swarmed to mop the splashes.

Lavro found Eques Farzan staring at the ice sculpture with a look of distaste. The clerk signalled the only quiet place for conversation: the parlor where Romesha Cotto conducted a water tasting.

Cotto’s thimbles contained water from exotic sources. Guests sipped, tasted, and spat into spittoons—ritual humiliation dressed as refinement. Farzan swallowed; as did House Varmoth. Lucar made the theatre personal: he dumped a litrejohn of piss at Farzan’s feet. The act was vulgar and deliberate. Farzan was displeased but practical: the debt remained, as the liquid delivered as Harkonnen fai was not of a quality for human consumption.

Farzan, bound by bureaucracy, provided an escape route: find the hijackers alive for interrogation and he would clear the debt and cut future fai. He insisted on discretion. Follow the water, he advised, phrased as advice and a clue.

Lavro asked whether House Seraut could have orchestrated the hijack. Farzan laughed the laugh of someone who had seen administrative theatre before: Seraut lacked the operational might or mind to seize a carryall. Dali queried potential perpetrators; Farzan imagined an organised, militarised group.

Dali moved through the room to find the underworld’s mirror—Selina Doran. She told him plainly: smugglers see no profit in water; spice is where value concentrates. If a carryall loaded with water was taken, it was likely by criminals. Selina agreed to an alliance with Dali, if either required the other’s services in future.

Dali then cornered Romesha Cotto. The merchant, shadowed by his scarred man who was out of place at the party. Cotto confessed indebtedness—to a black-market figure, Miran Rocha. Cotto offered a bargain: deliver his last shipment of water to Rocha in Carthag and he would reveal who he believed stole the carryall. It was a simple quid pro quo—dangerous but valuable.

As they moved back into the main hall, the outer gate of the Seraut residence fell under the crowd’s pressure. Guards fought; the band stopped playing; panic spread. Takshaka protected the party and Count Lucar called his giant moth to the hall—an image of Thundäruk lordship. The beast swept through the ceiling opening; Lucar mounted to fly them away; however, a rioter grabbed an antenna and the moth panicked, flinging the Count to the floor. Takshaka protected his charges, leading them with safe passage to their ornithopter, fleeing amid blood and confusion.

Back at their residence, the House assessed spoils: they had paid the fai but not the honour; they had humiliated Vertas and earned the notice of Harkonnen bureaucracy. Farzan’s condition to eradicate their debt gave them a tactical objective: find the water carryall and capture the hijackers alive.