Chapter 7

“My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ‘Something cannot emerge from nothing,’ he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable ‘the truth’ can be.” – Princess Irulan

Lady Kleya sat with her hands folded like a moth’s wings, listening to the small, uncompromising voice that was her certainty. She turned the meeting over in her mind as if one might turn a bone to see its marrow: Romesha Cotto had been nervous, yes — and yet nothing in him smelled of a lie. He needed the carryall taken to Carthag post haste. He had asked for protection in the idiom of merchants: urgency and plausible danger. Kleya, trained in the Bene Gesserit arts of tone and nuance, read the tremor in the merchant’s caution as truth.

Lavro’s mind whirred, coldly calculating the culprits of the water carryall hijacking. Could it be House Seraut? Did they have it in them to be cunning and guileful enough to carry off such a major attack?

Dali Tarek Nivahn smelled opportunity. A smuggler’s unwritten contract had been freshly inked with his new contact. He tasted a future where the Varmoth name carved itself deeper into Arrakeen’s underbelly, usurping control from House Harkonnen. If water could be used as currency, why not as a weapon?

Count Lucar carried his hatred like a ceremonial cloak. He had met Eques Farzan — an amenable clerk who tilled numbers rather than men — and yet the old images in Lucar’s mind remained: Nos Nosferatu, the bald spectre of a childhood fear. He would not be unsteady, the future of House Varmoth sat heavy on his shoulders.

Hassan Diago, obedient as a shadow to the Count, took his place in two offices at once: steward of the house’s bearing and spider in the merchant web. He believed his path lay in quiet service that would be rewarded with significance. He contrived the lure: move the carryall with little visible escort and make it an inviting target for bandits — let the predators believe the prize came naked.

A plan was born from a Varmoth chrysalis. Lucar and Hassan would sit within the carryall. Dali would fly the ornithopter — Kleya and Lavro in his wake — with seven house soldiers, their eyes watching for treachery.

Romesha Cotto met them at the Arrakeen Spaceport, a man whose sweat was an insult to the water shortages of Arrakeen. He showed them to the carryall: a great, throbbing belly of metal and sealant, smelling faintly of machine oil and spice residue. They pressed him to accompany them on the journey, but Cotto would not leave Arrakeen. Instead, he would send an envoy, Layle Nasim, whose posture reassured while his eyes told of caution, promising that Miran Rocha would be waiting for them at Carthag.

The two craft climbed the hot columns of Arrakis air. The ornithopter’s wings beat a living rhythm as the desert rose to meet them: a seething, heat-bent ocean of gold and the slow red light of the dying sun. Carthag unfolded ahead — black, industrial, bearing Harkonnen banners that sought to make the very sky theirs. On approach, the air traffic tower’s voice snapped — identify yourselves and the cargo you are carrying. The carryall was directed toward hangar D42, the thopter to a small pad near control. Protocols and paper made themselves teeth.

Lucar and Hassan disembarked and were received by Miran Rocha, sleek as a market serpent and as safe to trust as any Harkonnen coin. She signalled a man to inspect the water cargo. Lucar asked: why did Cotto not come? Rocha smirked and answered in one word: cowardliness. Hassan stepped aside, radio crackling, confirming the deal with Rocha. He then took Cotto’s voice away from Rocha’s ears. Cotto honoured their deal— he would tell them what he knew: a gang led by a man called Bodelli had offered him discounted water. His suspicion was that it was from the stolen carryall; and when he refused to buy the cargo, Bodelli’s men threatened him. He had not wanted to go to the Harkonnens; their retribution would not be merciful.

Rocha’s guards shifted; the air thickened with the odor of knives. Hassan judged the moment perilous and guided the party away.

In his local bar, Hassan found Calman, his grey-market dealer whose loyalty was measured in cold, hard Solaris. In a backroom hidden behind a hanging carpet, Calman told what he knew: the Boselli gang could be seen where Harkonnens go to enjoy themselves — the Eastern Wasteland. He suspected the Boselli base lay on the route to Arrakeen, and Boselli had only recently moved to the business of hijacking water carryalls.

While Hassan whispered with Calman, Dali observed those in the bar. He saw a man whose face refused to stay itself: a Cibus Hood — an Ixian malleable mask that erased features and left no energy reading — an altered face at each glance, making any man both many and no one. Dali’s eyes tracked the mask, his instincts tightening like a bowstring. The hooded figure bolted for the door; Lucar was faster. He tackled the man, tore the hood away, and revealed a scarred cheek identifying him as the man who had accompanied Cotto at the House Seraut party.

Lucar pressed his blade to the man’s throat and drew blood, a threat sharpened by ceremony. The man smiled, unshriven. Lucar took the Cibus Hood for himself and called Takshka to have House soldiers take the man back to Arrakeen by ornithopter for spymaster Lundrak Varmint to interrogate.

Lundrak’s methods were simple: Verite serum, a needle into conscienceness. The man immediately declared his name was Deimos and he unlatched his life in a rush: he owed his life to Romesha Cotto, who had bought him from a slaver at seven. Cotto raised him and made him useful — a water-seller, then a man who learned to protect Cotto’s interests. Cotto, Deimos confessed, had bought water from Boselli and was now trying to eradicate his treachery through Boselli’s death and ensure his secret was kept. Deimos had trailed the Varmoth party to learn where the Boselli gang was located. The confession fit like a stolen glove: Cotto feared Boselli would turn on him and expose Cotto’s supply chain and his manipulation of water prices due to shortages.

While this unspooling occurred, Lavro did what Mentats do: he infiltrated the spaceport administration like a knife enters slig meat and traced the missing carryalls to duty rosters. One name drew his attention — Adavir Toth — on duty when several carryalls vanished. Toth would be on duty the next day. The pattern suggested not random theft but a human pivot: a man in the wheelhouse of spaceport schedules.

Night brought the party to the Eastern Wasteland. Dali, ever the opportunist, bought information with coin: a guard watched them with the intense habit of those used to being paid. Dali loosened his purse and the guard’s mouth. Two members of the Boselli crew were at the bar. Lucar approached them and bought them spice beer, for their guard to drop. He then offered a proposition: he represented a Major House, had Solaris to offer for water at a reasonable cost, and could keep their burdens from Harkonnen notice if they sold to him. The men, small-time and hungry for leverage, promised to pass on the offer to Boselli.

The next day, the gang sent word: Boselli would meet, but the party must be blindfolded for transport to their base. Lucar refused such an obscuring ritual. A Count could not be blindfolded and led; he would not practice humility that simulated fear. Instead, they agreed on neutral ground in the desert — twenty-five kilometres from Carthag — a place of wind and open sight.

They flew. The ornithopter hunched through the hot, dusty air; the desert around them held no witness except the sun. Boselli and his men were waiting at the meeting place, lasguns propped like talismans. Hassan introduced the Count with much ceremony: “Count Lucar, Head of House Varmoth, first of his name and rider of lightning moths.” Boselli blinked, uncertain whether this introduction was in jest or a declaration of authority. Lucar’s speech was plain: Varmoth money and muscle to launder stolen water, to access legal markets, to protect Boselli from Harkonnen reprisals. House Varmoth would provide arms and supplies if Boselli would sell water at a steady price. It was the old bargain: the lure of legitimacy in exchange for contraband.

Boselli agreed. As hands shook, an ornithopter bearing Harkonnen insignia passed overhead like a vulture. Boselli’s finger twitched, and a lasgun spoke — a clean, terrible cut through metal — and the Harkonnen craft went crashing down. The sky took its own testimony: a falling machine, a plume, and silence. Whether the downed pilot had time to send a warning remained unknown. The desert keeps its secrets with the patient cruelty of sand.

Lucar’s mind, always moving, set its teeth to another plan. He would not merely ally with Boselli; he would bend the merchant Cotto to a new usefulness. Blackmail was a blunt tool but effective. He would tell the Harkonnens that Cotto had stolen their water — or make them believe it — unless Cotto hired another gang to steal a carryall that House Varmoth would then retrieve and deliver, evidence in hand, to Eques Farzan. In Farzan’s eyes, the culprits would be caught and Cotto’s guilt would remain hidden.

The immediate fruit of this dubious justice: House Varmoth now possessed a supply of water. They did what nobility are meant to do in a dry land and gave a little away. The people of Arrakeen drank and murmured: the Varmoth name wetted a few parched mouths. Charity, said Lucar inwardly, is often a soft blade. One gives a loaf and keeps the recipe for the oven.

In small theatres of power, the new alliances settled like a new skin. Boselli had an ally; Varmoth had an instrument; Cotto had only fear.

It was not a triumph of purity. Their justice had the stink of contrivance. Yet in the arithmetic of power, water is a necessity, and necessity breeds obedience. House Varmoth had bought itself leverage. They would use stolen water to pay the Harkonnen water fai — a perverse balance that returned Harkonnen water back to them.

As with all measures taken on Arrakis, the consequences would outlive the men who invented them. A gullible person might think this is justice, a careful person — a Count, a Bene Gesserit, a Mentat — knows that justice on Arrakis is dealt out by those who work the machine: he who controls the water, controls the people.