"My Lord is generous," she said.
She left him then, a new spring in her stride. He heard her voice in the anteroom: "Lady Hwi, our Lord will see you now."
Hwi entered, back-lighted and framed in the archway for a moment, hesitancy in her step until her eyes adjusted to the inner chamber. She came like a moth to the brightness around Leto's face, looking away only to seek along his shadowy length for signs of injury. He knew that no such sign was visible, but there were still aches and interior tremblings.
His eyes detected a slight limp, Hwi favoring her right leg, but a long gown of jade green concealed the injury. She stopped at the edge of the declivity which held his cart, looking directly into his eyes.
"They said you were wounded, Hwi. Are you in pain?"
"A cut on my leg below the knee, Lord. A small piece of masonry from the explosion. Your Fish Speakers treated it with a salve which removed the pain. Lord, I feared for you."
"And I feared for you, gentle Hwi."
"Except for that first explosion, I was not in danger, Lord. They rushed me into a room deep beneath the Embassy."
So she did not see my performance, he thought. I can be thankful for that.
"I sent for you to ask your forgiveness," he said.
She sank onto a golden cushion. "What is there to forgive, Lord? You are not the reason for..."
"I am being tested, Hwi."
"You?"
"There are those who wish to know the depths of my concern for the safety of Hwi Noree."
She pointed upward. "That... was because of me?"
"Because of us."
"Oh. But who..."
"You have agreed to wed me, Hwi, and I..." He raised a hand to silence her as she started to speak. "Anteac has told us what you revealed to her, but this did not originate with Anteac."
"Then who is.." - "The who is not important. It is important that you reconsider. I must give you this opportunity to change your mind."
She lowered her gaze.
How sweet her features are, he thought.
It was possible for him to create only in his imagination an entire human lifetime with Hwi. Enough examples lay in the welter of his memories upon which to build a fantasy of wedded life. It gathered nuances in his fancy-small details of mutual experience, a touch, a kiss, all of the sweet sharings upon which arose something of painful beauty. He ached with it, a pain far deeper than the physical reminders of his violence at the Embassy.
Hwi lifted her chin and looked into his eyes. He saw there a compassionate longing to help him.
"But how else may I serve you, Lord?"
He reminded himself that she was a primate, while he no longer was fully primate. The differences grew deeper by the minute.
The ache remained within him.
Hwi was an inescapable reality, something so basic that no word could ever fully express it. The ache within him was almost more than he could bear.
" love you, Hwi. I love you as a man loves a woman... but it cannot be. That will never be."
Tears flowed from her eyes. "Should I leave? Should I return to Ix?"
"They would only hurt you, trying to find out what went wrong with their plan."
She has seen my pain, he thought. She knows the futility and frustration. What will she do? She will not lie. She will not say she returns my love as a woman to a man. She recognizes the futility. And.she knows her own feelings for me compassion, awe, a questioning which ignores fear.
"Then I will stay," she said. "We will take such pleasure as we can from being together. I think it is best that we do this. If it means we should wed, so be it."
"Then I must share knowledge with you which I have shared with no other person," he said. "It will give you a power over me which..."
"Do not do this, Lord! What if someone forced me to...'"
"You will never again leave my household. My quarters here, the Citadel, the safe places of the Sareer-these will be your home."
"As you will."
How gentle and open her quiet acceptance, he thought.
The aching pulse within him had to be calmed. In itself, it was a danger to him and to the Golden Path.
Those clever Ixians!
Malky had seen how the all-powerful were forced to contend with a constant siren song-the will to self-delight.
Constant awareness of the power in your slightest whim.
Hwi took his silence to be uncertainty. "Will we wed, Lord?"
Chapter Twenty-One
"Yes.'"
"Should anything be done about the Tleilaxu stories which..."
"Nothing."
She stared at him, remembering their earlier conversation.
The seeds of dissolution were being planted.
"It is my fear, Lord, that I will weaken you," she said.
"Then you must find ways to strengthen me."
"Can it strengthen you if we diminish belief in the God' Leto?"
He heard a hint of Malky in her voice, that measured weighing which had made him so revoltingly charming. We never completely escape tine teachers of our childhood.
"Your question begs the answer," he said. "Many will continue to worship according to my design. Others will believe the lies."
"Lord... would you ask me to lie for you?"
"Of course not. But I will ask you to remain silent when you might wish to speak."
"But if they revile..."
"You will not protest."
Once more, tears flowed down her cheeks. Leto longed to touch them, but they were water... painful water.
"It must be done this way," he said.
"Will you explain it to me, Lord?"