Read Dune: House Atreides for Free Online

business enterprises. This was a family of wealth, but not to excess -- not at the expense of its citizens.

    In the play, when the returning general went to his bath, his treacherous wife tangled him in purple robes and stabbed both him and his oracular mistress to death. "My gods! A deadly blow has befallen me!" Agamemnon wailed from offstage, out of sight.

    Old Paulus smirked and bent over to his son. "I've killed many a man on the battlefield, and I have yet to hear one say that as he died!"

    Helena hushed him.

    "Gods protect me, another blow! I shall die!" cried the voice of Agamemnon.

    While the audience was engrossed in the tragedy, Leto tried to sort through his thoughts of the situation, how it related to his own life. This was supposedly his family's heritage, after all.

    Clytemnestra admitted the murder, claiming vengeance against her husband for his bloody sacrifice of their daughter, for his whoring in Troy, and for blatantly bringing his mistress Cassandra into her own home.

    "Glorious king," wailed the chorus, "our affection is boundless, our tears unending. The spider has ensnared you in its ghostly web of death."

    Leto's stomach churned. House Atreides had committed horrible deeds in the distant past. But the family had changed, perhaps driven by the ghosts of history. The Old Duke was an honorable man, well respected by the Landsraad and beloved by his people. Leto hoped he could do as well when it came his turn to rule House Atreides.

    The final lines of the play were spoken, and the company of actors marched across the stage, bowing to the assembled political and business leaders, all of whom were dressed in finery befitting their stations.

    "Well, I'm glad that's over," Paulus sighed as the main glowglobes went on in the performance hall. The Old Duke rose to his feet and kissed his wife's hand as they filed out of the royal box. "On your way now, my dear. I have something to say to Leto. Wait for us in the reception room."

    Helena glanced once at her son and went down the corridor of the ancient stone-and-wood theatre. Her look said she knew exactly what Paulus intended to say, but she bowed to his archaic tradition of having the men speak of "important matters" while the women busied themselves elsewhere.

    Merchants, important businessmen, and other well-respected locals began filling the corridor, sipping Caladanian wine and munching hors d'oeuvres. "This way, lad," the Old Duke said, taking a backstage passage. He and Leto strode past two Atreides guards, who saluted. Then they took a lift tube up four levels to a gilded dressing room. Balut crystal glowglobes floated in the air, flickering a warm orange. Formerly the living quarters of a legendary Caladanian actor, this chamber was now used exclusively by the Atreides and their closest advisors for times requiring privacy.

    Leto wondered why his father had taken him here.

    After closing the door behind him, Paulus slipped into a green-and-black suspensor chair and motioned for Leto to take one opposite him. The young man did so and adjusted the controls to lift the floating chair higher in the air, so that his eye level was equal to that of his father. Leto only did this in private, not even in the presence of his mother, who would consider such behavior unseemly and disrespectful. By contrast, the Old Duke found his son's brashness and high spirits to be an amusing reflection of the way he himself had been as a young man.

    "You are of age now, Leto," Paulus began, removing an ornate wooden pipe from a compartment in the arm of his chair. He did not waste time with chitchat. "And you must learn more than your own backyard. So I'm sending you to Ix to study."
    He examined the black-haired youth who looked so similar to his mother, but with lighter, more olive-toned skin than hers. He had a narrow face with sharp angles and deep gray eyes.

    Ix! Leto's pulse accelerated. The machine planet. A strange and alien place.
    Everyone in the