She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on his eyes.

“You know I’m telling you the truth, don’t you?”

She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: “Why did you do it?”

“The alternative was far more horrible.”

“What alternative?”

“In time, you may understand it. Moneo did.”

“Your damned Golden Path!”

“Not damned at all. Quite holy.”

“You think I’m a fool who can’t…”

“I think you’re inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose potential you do not even suspect.”

She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: “If you can’t mate with the Ixian, what…”

“Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It’s not sex. Before Hwi I could not pair. I had no other like me. In all of the cosmic void, I was the only one.”

“She’s like… you?”

“Deliberately so. The Ixians made her that way.”

“Made her…”

“Don’t be a complete fool!” he snapped. “She is the essential god-trap. Even the victim cannot reject her.”

“Why do you tell me these things?” she whispered.

“You stole two copies of my journals,” he said. “You’ve read the Guild translations and you already know what could catch me.”

“You knew?”

He saw boldness return to her stance, a sense of her own power. “Of course you knew,” she said, answering her own question.

“It was my secret,” he said. “You cannot imagine how many times I have loved a companion and seen that companion slip away… as your father is slipping away now.”

“You love… him?”

“And I loved your mother. Sometimes they go quickly; sometimes with agonizing slowness. Each time I am racked. I can play at being callous and I can make the necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but I cannot escape the suffering. For a long, long time—those journals you stole tell it truly—that was the only emotion I knew.”

He saw the moistness in her eyes, but the line of her jaw still spoke of angry resolution.

“None of this gives you the right to govern,” she said.

Leto suppressed a smile. At least they were down to the root of Siona’s rebellion.

By what right? Where is justice in my rule? By imposing my rules upon them with the weight of Fish Speaker arms, am I being fair to the evolutionary thrust of humankind? I know all of the revolutionary cant, the catch-prattle and the resounding phrases.

“Nowhere do you see your own rebellious hand in the power I wield,” he said.

Her youth still demanded its moment.

“I never chose you to govern,” she said.

“But you strengthen me.”

“How?”

“By opposing me. I sharpen my claws on the likes of you.”

She shot a sudden glance at his hands.

“A figure of speech,” he said.

“So I’ve offended you at last,” she said, hearing only the cutting anger in his words and tone.

“You’ve not offended me. We’re related and can speak bluntly to each other within the family. The fact is, I have much more to fear from you than you from me.”