“There is another change in me that you should know about,” Leto said. “I am not yet sandworm, not fully. Think of me as something closer to a colony creature with sensory alterations.”

Luyseyal’s left hand moved almost imperceptibly toward a fold in her gown. Moneo saw it and looked to Leto for instructions, but Leto only returned the hooded glare of Luyseyal’s eyes.

“There have been fads in smells,” Leto said.

Luyseyal’s hand hesitated.

“Perfumes and essences,” he said. “I remember them all, even the cults of the non-smells are mine. People have used underarm sprays and crotch sprays to mask their natural odours. Did you know that? Of course you knew it!”

Anteac’s gaze moved toward Luyseyal.

Neither woman dared speak.

“People knew instinctively that their pheromones betrayed them,” Leto said.

The women stood immobile. They heard him. Of all his people, Reverend Mothers were best equipped to understand his hidden message.

“You’d like to mine me for my riches of memory,” Leto said, his voice accusing.

“We are jealous, Lord,” Luyseyal confessed.

“You have misread the history of spice essence,” Leto said. “Sandtrout sense it only as water.”

“It was a test, Lord,” Anteac said. “That is all.”

“You would test me?”

“Blame our curiosity, Lord,” Anteac said.

“I, too, am curious. Put your spice essence on the ledge beside Moneo. I will keep it.”

Slowly, demonstrating by the steadiness of her movements that she intended no attack, Luyseyal reached beneath her gown and removed a small vial which glistened with an inner blue radiance. She placed the vial gently on the ledge. Not by any sign did she indicate that she might try something desperate.

“Truthsayer, indeed,” Leto said.

She favoured him with a faint grimace which might have been a smile, then withdrew to Anteac’s side.

“Where did you get the spice essence?” Leto asked.

“We bought it from smugglers,” Anteac said.

“There’ve been no smugglers for almost twenty-five hundred years.”

“Waste not, want not,” Anteac said.

“I see. And now you must re-evaluate what you think of as your own patience, is that not so?”

“We have been watching the evolution of your body, Lord,” Anteac said. “We thought…” She permitted herself a small shrug, the level of gesture warranted for use with a Sister and not given lightly.

Leto pursed his lips in response. “I cannot shrug,” he said.

“Will you punish us?” Luyseyal asked.

“For amusing me?”

Luyseyal glanced at the vial on the ledge.

“I swore to reward you,” Leto said. “I shall.”

“We would prefer to protect you in our community, Lord,” Anteac said.

“Do not seek too great a reward,” he said.

Anteac nodded. “You deal with the Ixians, Lord. We have reason to believe they may venture against you.”

“I fear them no more than I fear you.”

“Surely you’ve heard what the Ixians are doing,” Luyseyal said.

“Moneo brings me an occasional copy of a message between persons or groups in my Empire. I hear many stories.”