Free Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

orange robe. He glared at Alia, an angry gnome, bald and fuming.
    “Do you know what’s being said about your brother?” he demanded.
    “I know what’s being said about your Qizarate,” Alia countered. “You’re not divines, you’re god’s spies.”
    Korba glanced at Paul for support, said: “We are sent by the writ of Muad’dib, that He shall know the truth of His people and they shall know the truth of Him.”
    “Spies,” Alia said.
    Korba pursed his lips in injured silence.
    Paul looked at his sister, wondering why she provoked Korba. Abruptly, he saw that Alia had passed into womanhood, beautiful with the first blazing innocence of youth. He found himself surprised that he hadn’t noticed it until this moment. She was fifteen—almost sixteen, a Reverend Mother without motherhood, virgin priestess, object of fearful veneration for the superstitious masses—Alia of the Knife.
    “This is not the time or place for your sister’s levity,” Irulan said.
    Paul ignored her, nodded to Korba. “The square’s full of pilgrims. Go out and lead their prayer.”
    “But they expect you , m’Lord,” Korba said.
    “Put on your turban,” Paul said. “They’ll never know at this distance.”
    Irulan smothered irritation at being ignored, watched Korba arise to obey. She’d had the sudden disquieting thought that Edric might not hide her actions from Alia. What do we really know of the sister? she wondered.
    Chani, hands tightly clasped in her lap, glanced across the table at Stilgar, her uncle, Paul’s Minister of State. Did the old Fremen Naib ever long for the simpler life of his desert sietch? she wondered. Stilgar’s black hair, she noted, had begun to gray at the edges, but his eyes beneath heavy brows remained far-seeing. It was the eagle stare of the wild, and his beard still carried the catchtube indentation of life in a stillsuit.
    Made nervous by Chani’s attention, Stilgar looked around the Council Chamber. His gaze fell on the balcony window and Korba standing outside. Korba raised outstretched arms for the benediction and a trick of the afternoon sun cast a red halo onto the window behind him. For a moment, Stilgar saw the Court Qizara as a figure crucified on a fiery wheel. Korba lowered his arms, destroyed the illusion, but Stilgar remained shaken by it. His thoughts went in angry frustration to the fawning supplicants waiting in the Audience Hall, and to the hateful pomp which surrounded Muad’dib’s throne.
    Convening with the Emperor, one hoped for a fault in him, to find mistakes, Stilgar thought. He felt this might be sacrilege, but wanted it anyway.
    Distant crowd murmuring entered the chamber as Korba returned. The balcony door thumped into its seals behind him, shutting off the sound.
    Paul’s gaze followed the Qizara. Korba took his seat at Paul’s left, dark features composed, eyes glazed by fanaticism. He’d enjoyed that moment of religious power.
    “The spirit presence has been invoked,” he said.
    “Thank the lord for that,” Alia said.
    Korba’s lips went white.
    Again, Paul studied his sister, wondered at her motives. Her innocence masked deception, he told himself. She’d come out of the same Bene Gesserit breeding program as he had. What had the kwisatz haderach genetics produced in her? There was always that mysterious difference: she’d been an embryo in the womb when her mother had survived the raw melange poison. Mother and unborn daughter had become Reverend Mothers simultaneously. But simultaneity didn’t carry identity.
    Of the experience, Alia said that in one terrifying instant she had awakened to consciousness, her memory absorbing the uncounted other-lives which her mother was assimilating.
    “I became my mother and all the others,” she said. “I was unformed, unborn, but I became an old woman then and there.”
    Sensing his thoughts on her, Alia smiled at Paul. His expression softened. How could anyone react to Korba with other than cynical humor?