"The unexpected," Lucilla whispered.
"Teg?" It was Duncan, his voice little more than a breath.
Burzmali leaned close to Duncan's left ear: "I think they got him." Burzmali's whisper carried a deep tone of sadness.
One of their dark companions said: "Quickly now. Down here."
They were herded through the narrow cleft. Something emitted a creaking sound nearby. Hands hustled them into an enclosed passage. The creaking sounded from behind them.
"Get that door fixed," someone said.
Light flared around them.
Duncan and Lucilla stared around at a large, richly furnished room apparently cut into rock. Soft carpets covered the floor - dark reds and golds with a figured pattern like repetitive battlements worked in pale green. A bundle of clothing lay in a jumble on a table near Burzmali, who was in low-voiced conversation with one of their escort: a fair-haired man with high forehead and piercing green eyes.
Lucilla listened carefully. The words were understandable, relating how guards had been posted, but the green-eyed man's accent was one she had never before heard, a tumble of gutturals and consonants clicked off with surprising abruptness.
"Is this a no-chamber?" she asked.
"No." The answer was supplied by a man behind her speaking in that same accent. "The algae protect us."
She did not turn toward the speaker but looked up instead at the light yellow-green algae thick on the ceiling and walls. Only a few patches of dark rock were visible near the floors.
Burzmali broke off his conversation. "We are safe here. The algae is grown especially for this. Life scanners report only the presence of plant life and nothing else that the algae shields."
Lucilla pivoted on one heel, sorting the room's details: that Harkonnen griffin worked into a crystal table, the exotic fabrics on chairs and couches. A weapons rack against one wall held two rows of long field-style lasguns of a design she had never before seen. Each was bell-mouthed and with a curling gold guard over the trigger.
Burzmali had returned to his conversation with the green-eyed man. It was an argument over how they would be disguised. She listened with part of her mind while she studied the two members of their escort remaining in the room. The other three from the escort had filed out through a passage near the weapons cabinet, an opening covered by a thick hanging of shimmering silvery threads. Duncan, she saw, was watching her responses with care, his hand on the small lasgun in his belt.
People of the Scattering? Lucilla wondered. What are their loyalties?
Casually, she crossed to Duncan's side and, using the finger-touch language on his arm, relayed her suspicions. Both of them looked at Burzmali. Treachery?
Lucilla went back to her study of the room. Were they being watched by unseen eyes?
Nine glowglobes lighted the space, creating their own peculiar islands of intense illumination. It reached outward into a common concentration near where Burzmali still talked to the green-eyed man. Part of the light came directly from the drifting globes, all of them tuned into rich gold, and part of it was reflected more softly off the algae. The result was a lack of dark shadows, even under the furnishings.
The shimmering silver threads of the inner doorway parted. An old woman entered the room. Lucilla stared at her. The woman had a seamed face as dark as old rosewood. Her features were sharply defined in a narrow frame of straggling gray hair that fell almost to her shoulders. She wore a long black robe worked with golden threads in a pattern of mythological dragons. The woman stopped behind a settee and placed her deeply veined hands on the back.
Burzmali and his companion broke off their conversation.
Lucilla looked from the old woman down to her own robe. Except for the golden dragons, the garments were similar in design, the hoods draped back onto the shoulders. Only in the side cut and the way it opened down the front was the design of the dragon robe different.
When the woman did not speak, Lucilla looked to Burzmali for explanation. Burzmali stared back at her with a look of intense concentration. The old woman continued to study Lucilla silently.
The intensity of attention filled Lucilla with disquiet. Duncan felt it, too, she saw. He kept his hand on the small lasgun. The long silence while eyes examined her amplified her unease. There was something almost Bene Gesserit about the way the old woman just stood there looking.
Duncan broke the silence, demanding of Burzmali: "Who is she?"
"I'm the one who'll save your skins," the old woman said. She had a thin voice that crackled weakly, but that same strange accent.
Lucilla's Other Memories brought up a suggestive comparison for the old woman's garment: Similar to that worn by ancient playfems.
Lucilla almost shook her head. Surely this woman was too old for such a role. And the shape of the mythic dragons worked into the fabric differed from those supplied by memory. Lucilla returned her attention to the old face: eyes humid with the illnesses of age. A dry crust had settled into the creases where each eyelid touched the channels beside her nose. Far too old for a playfem.
The old woman spoke to Burzmali. "I think she can wear it well enough." She began divesting herself of her dragon robe. To Lucilla she said: "This is for you. Wear it with respect. We killed to get it for you."
"Who did you kill?" Lucilla demanded.
"A postulant of the Honored Matres!" There was pride in the old woman's husky tone.
"Why should I wear that robe?" Lucilla demanded.
"You will trade garments with me," the old woman said.
"Not without explanation." Lucilla refused to accept the robe being extended to her.