the wolf's nails

“Your uncle would have me skinned for this,” Piter says. His indignation makes his voice crack. Piter De Vries and the Baron in verbal counterpoint, sweet crystalline tenor against expansive bass. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen hears his uncle’s voice in his dreams.

Feyd slinks down against the mentat’s prone body. “He might. But then it is in both our interests to be very careful.”

In truth the Baron would never do something so wasteful to damage an asset of such value — though no doubt what he would do would be both brutal and unpleasant. If truly provoked, he might go so far as to maim, but it would not be Feyd-Rautha on whom his tortures fell. No doubt Piter thinks this way because he himself is such an enthusiast of violence. The little mentat would be happier to have Feyd-Rautha strung up by his ankles, or thrust needles through the joints of his legs, or to bend back each of his fingers until the ligaments tore. But the Baron would never ruin him by employing such overt cruelty, not after taking such pains to obtain him. He prefers subtler approaches.

The room in which Piter sleeps is as sterile as a storeroom; no doubt his only material indulgences are spent in poisons and vessels and other ugly things. A room should be pleasant to be in, if you’re supposed to be there willingly — there is nowhere to sprawl, to lean, or to stretch out one’s legs, nowhere but the narrow bed. Feyd shifts the position of his body on the mattress, angling himself to be his most becoming. Piter only frowns; his eyes, clouded blue-in-blue, seem to darken.

“You should find some other person to take your pleasure with.”

“Do you question my choice, Piter?”

“I should question your sanity, to carry on like this in your uncle’s own dwelling complex. You know perfectly well the risks you are running. Are there no playmates of yours who would better serve? No slaves?”

“I need not justify my choice to you. I will not.”

A minute look of horror creeps over the man’s face, like a spill of cold water. “Has the Baron sent you to me?”

“I don’t want to hear another word about your Baron,” Feyd says. He is not some docile cow-eyed boy, to be carried from place to place and disposed of as other men please. He has planned this intrusion from start to finish, and he has executed it without a lick of external assistance. The insinuation itself is outrageous — the Baron is too jealous of him to share.

There in the bed Piter’s expression is flat, the dull blue of his eyes unreadable. “This is highly presumptuous.”

“Pretend it’s only one of your drug-dreams, then. You do still dream, do you? Do mentats do such things, or do you dream in units and figures?”

Feyd-Rautha leans in, eyes intent. Piter’s mouth is pressed in a tight censorious line. What a hateful little person he is, and what a hateful little life he leads. Feyd seizes him in a kiss, satisfied at the way his spine stiffens and his head jerks back in abject disgust — his body tenses like whipcord and Feyd-Rautha tastes the cold rusty wetness of his stained mouth, the hard enamel of his teeth.

His weight shifts against Piter’s body, enveloping him. Already at fifteen he is taller than Piter De Vries will ever be, broadening and growing stronger every day. He could hurt him if he wanted, not through rarefied tortures but through simple force. There are other forms of power, but past the pretty traps and poisoned needles Feyd is strong and this man is weak.

Startled, Piter puts a hand out to his waist as if to push him away. His fingers make contact with the bare skin there and the cool touch is like an electric shock. Feyd cuffs him away sharply, jolted by disgust.

“Don’t touch me, mentat. Keep your hands off of me.”

Piter haughtily withdraws, gripping the bedframe in an ostentatious gesture of compliance. Feyd’s eyes, narrowed now, peer at the offenders. They are a bureaucrat’s hands — small and narrow with stark-standing knuckles and green veins faintly visible beneath their brown skins. How much pain has been dealt out by these unassuming hands on behalf of this House? Piter De Vries is only a small man — wasted by his drug, perhaps, but there could not have been a spare ounce of flesh or inch of height on him even before he surrendered to his appetites. His power lies not in physical strength but in his perverse abilities — in his vast array of poisons and the exquisite cruelties his mind contrives.

Unimpeded now, Feyd thrusts a hand into Piter’s lap and rummages. It seems impossible that a mentat be constructed like any other man between the legs, and his uncle’s mentat, so impossibly cold-blooded. Perhaps he is a sort of eunuch, and the Bene Tleilax have taken that from him as well. He is only a shadow of a man. Piter doesn’t rise up against him, or sigh, or make even the smallest sound — touching him is like fumbling with a corpse.

Feyd makes a noise of frustration. A thousand Imperial houris couldn’t rouse a response from this man — he’d fancy him even less than a eunuch if he didn’t know the hunger in his face at the sight of some atrocity, the way his fingertips tremble with excitement. Not only is Feyd denied but denied any sort of reaction, the slightest acknowledgment of what he knows to be true, that he is a thing made to be desired.

“Presumptuous,” Piter sneers, but there is something in his voice that Feyd cannot recognize.

Feyd rocks back, stung. “Do I not excite you? Don’t you like me?

“The Baron’s tastes do not govern mine,” Piter says tightly.

“You love pain, don’t you? Then make believe you’re hurting me, if it helps.”

A twisted mentat is broken and shaped again to a single purpose. Young Feyd has killed and felt nothing but the thrill of triumph, he has known the satisfaction of taking a life but the satisfaction is fleeting and the love of the crowd is never constant. What does an heir have without a title? What does an heir have without a death? This much is his — he is laying his claim.

Feyd bends low again and tugs at him with his lips and teeth, trying to stir up some response — fitting his tongue into Piter’s mouth only to find him inert, though yielding. Was that how it felt to coax compliance from resistant flesh — to torture a body into betraying itself, to bend and to break? He wants to rip something out of him this way, and to force some response after the fashion to which he is accustomed, simply to prove that his hated teacher is a man like any other. Feyd carries on like this until he can’t, until the point is beyond proven and he must break away – until he is out of breath with nothing but a cold metallic taste in his mouth to show for it.

“You kiss like you mean to devour,” Piter says, rubbing at his mouth. “Do you kiss your slave women this way?”

He must know he is needling him about something of significance — he must know every petty indignity the Baron has imposed on him, he must have devised half of them himself, and the other half the Baron does not need to be taught. Still, Feyd’s face grows hot.

“I’ve had women. I will soon have as many as I please, and I want to have many of them. You are like a woman, Piter — an old woman taxing me with questions. Take me to bed. I command it.”

“You are a very sick young man.” Piter’s tone is cold but devoid of judgment — well, he would know.

“What can I be except what I am?”

Beneath him, Piter crosses his arms in an unmistakable gesture of refusal. It’s like being rebuffed by a glacier. “Know when you are beaten, boy.”

“You will be my mentat, one day,” Feyd says sourly, and rolls off of him.” You would do well to remember that.” He is naked, sprawled with knees apart and the soles of his feet facing one another. This bed is not so bad, not the iron slab he’d pictured Piter defiling him on; it figures that a torturer knows the value of an uninterrupted night’s rest.

“My fees are too steep for you, young man. Go back to your own bed and be grateful.” Piter has turned his back on him, gazing instead on some diagrammed apparatus of punishment on the far wall. His ugly clothes stand out like a blot against the sheets — he is ashamed of his pitiful body, no doubt. It seems remarkable that he should have a body at all, and not something else. He should be made of blown glass, or crumble into dust.