Once more in flawless Islamiyat, Odrade said: "You were betrayed by your own people, ones you sent into the Scattering. You have no more Malik brothers, only sisters."
Then where is your sagra chamber, powindah deceiver? Where is a deep and windowless place only brothers may enter?
"This is a new thing for me," he said. "Malik Sisters? Those two words have always been self-negating. Sisters cannot be Malik."
"Waff, your late Mahai and Abdl, had trouble with that. And he led your people almost to extinction."
"Almost? You know of survivors?" He could not keep excitement from his voice.
"No Masters... but we hear of a few Domel and all in Honored Matre hands."
She paused where the edge of a building would cut off their view of the setting sun in the next steps and, still in the secret language of the Tleilaxu, said: "The sun is not God."
The dawn and sunset cry of the Mahai!
Scytale felt faith wavering as he followed her into an arched passage between two squat buildings. Her words were proper but only the Mahai and Abdl should utter them. In the shadowy passage, footsteps of their escort close behind, Odrade confounded him by saying: "Why did you not say the proper words? Are you not the last Master? Does that not make you Mahai and Abdl?"
"I was not chosen so by Malik brothers." It sounded weak even to him.
Odrade summoned a liftfield and paused at the tubeslot. In Other Memory detail, she found kehl and its right of ghufran familiar - words whispered in the night by lovers of long-dead women. "And then we..." "And so if we speak these sacred words..." Ghufran! Acceptance and readmission of one who had ventured among powindah, the returned one begging pardon for contact with unimaginable sins of aliens. The Masheikh have met in kehl and felt the presence of their God!
The tubeslot opened. Odrade motioned Scytale and two guards ahead. As he passed, she thought: Something must give soon. We cannot play our little game to the end he desires.
Tamalane stood at the bow window, her back to the door, when Odrade and Scytale entered the workroom. Sunset light slanted sharply across rooftops. The brilliance vanished then and left behind it a sense of contrast, the night darker because of that last glow along the horizon.
In the milky gloom, Odrade waved the guards away, noting their reluctance. Bellonda had charged them to stay, obviously, but they would not disobey Mother Superior. She indicated a chairdog across from her and waited for him to sit. He looked back suspiciously at Tamalane before sinking into the 'dog but covered it by saying: "Why are there no lights?"
"This is a relaxing interlude," she said. And I know darkness worries you!
She stood a moment behind her table, identifying bright patches in the gloom, a luster of artifacts placed around her to make this her setting: the bust of long-dead Chenoeh in its niche beside the window, and there on the wall at her right, a pastoral landscape from the first human migrations into space, a stack of ridulian crystals on the table and a silvery reflection off her lightscribe concentrating faint illumination from the windows.
He has roasted long enough.
She touched a plate on her console. Glowglobes set strategically around walls and ceiling came to life. Tamalane turned on cue, her robe swishing deliberately. She stood two paces behind Scytale, the very picture of ominous Bene Gesserit mystery.
Scytale twitched slightly at Tamalane's movement but now he sat quietly. The chairdog was somewhat too large for him and he looked almost childlike there.
Odrade said, "Sisters who rescued you say you commanded a no-ship at Junction preparing for the first foldspace leap when Honored Matres attacked. You were coming to your ship in a one-man skitter, they said, and veered away just before the explosions. You detected the attackers?"
"Yes." Reluctance in his voice.
Chapter Twenty
"And knew they might locate the no-ship from your trajectory. So you fled, leaving your brothers to be destroyed."
He spoke with the utter bitterness of a tragic witness: "Earlier, when we were outbound from Tleilax, we saw that attack begin. Our explosions to destroy everything of value to attackers and the burners from space created the holocaust. We fled then, too."
"But not directly to Junction."
"Everywhere we searched, they had been before us. They had the ashes but I had our secrets." Remind her that I still have something of value to trade! He tapped a finger against his head.
"You sought Guild or CHOAM sanctuary at junction," she said. "How fortunate our spy ship was there to scoop you up before the enemy could react."
"Sister..." How difficult that word! "... if you truly are my sister in kehl, why will you not provide me with Face Dancer servants?"
"Still too many secrets between us, Scytale. Why, for instance, were you leaving Bandalong when attackers came?"
Bandalong!
Naming the great Tleilax city constricted his chest and he thought he felt the nullentropy capsule pulse, as though it sought release for its precious contents. Lost Bandalong. Never again to see the city of carnelian skies, never to feel the presence of brothers, of patient Domel and...
"Are you ill?" Odrade asked.
"I am sick with what I have lost!" He heard fabric slither behind him and sensed Tamalane closer. How oppressive it was in this place! "Why is she behind me?"
"I am the servant of my Sisters and she is here to observe us both."
"You've taken some of my cells, haven't you? You're growing a replacement Scytale in your tanks!"
"Of course we are. You don't think Sisters would let the last Master end here, do you?"