“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?”

“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 the 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?”

“When I am gone, they must call me Shaitan, the Emperor of Gehenna. The wheel must turn and turn and turn along the Golden Path.”

“Lord, could the anger not be directed at me alone. I would not…”

“No! The Ixians made you much more perfectly than they thought. I truly love you. I cannot help it.”

“I do not wish to cause you pain!” The words were wrenched from her.

“What’s done is done. Do not mourn it.”

“Help me to understand.”

“The hate which will blossom after I am gone, that, too, will fade into the inevitable past. A long time will pass. Then, on a far-distant day, my journals will be found.”

“Journals?” She was shaken by the seeming shift of subject.

“My chronicle of my time. My arguments, the apologia. Copies exist and scattered fragments will survive, some in distorted form, but the original journals will wait and wait and wait. I have hidden them well.”

“And when they are discovered?”

“People will learn that I was something quite different from what they supposed.”

Her voice came in a trembling hush: “I already know what they will learn.”

“Yes, my darling Hwi, I think you do.”

“You are neither devil nor god, but something never seen before and never to be seen again because your presence removes the need.”

She brushed tears from her cheeks.