ASCENDANCY (Feyd-Rautha)

CHAPTER SEVEN

I awoke by my chambers being flooded by Harkonnen servants. Some bore trays laden with supplies, others carried in a long, black gown. A few disappeared into the bathing chamber, likely to prepare a bath. They did not look at me. They worked silently and efficiently.

Then Amma approached, kneeling by the side of my bed.

"Forgive me my Lady, but you must rise. We have little time." She said in her usual meek voice, though with a hint of urgency. The sun had not yet breached the horizon, there were still hours before the ceremony, but I did not argue. 

She led me to the bath where two servants stripped me of my nightclothes, their movements brisk and impersonal. I stepped into the steaming water and sank down. The same two women immediately set to work, scrubbing me with soap. Another servant placed a glass tray across the width of the tub, upon which sat a small plate of bread spread with an unfamiliar pâté, and a cup of bitter tea – meant to sustain me while they worked.

After they had patted me dry and wrapped me in a robe, I was seated in a chair. The servants brought out the same heat-pistol Amma had once used on me to burn away hair. Two women crouched down by my feet. One gripped my ankle, the other my calf, and they began their work at my toes, slowly moving upward, the pistol humming faintly as it glided across my skin. 

When one of them reached the nape of my neck and lifted the device too close to my hairline, I pulled away sharply.

"Not that hair," I said, my voice edged.

They hesitated, glancing at one another.

"It is custom," one murmured, her accent thick, her words careful. "Harkonnen brides take the Harkonnen look."

"I do not care," I replied coldly.

She bowed her head slightly. "Of course, my Lady."

They disapproved of me. I could sense it in the slight downturns of their mouths, the stiffness of their movements. Perhaps they resented that an outsider would marry their na-Baron. Perhaps they merely resented the exception I was allowed to be.

They moved on to my face, erasing every trace of vellus hair from my cheeks, my upper lip, even the edges of my jaw.

"And the eyebrows, my Lady?" the same servant asked.

I met her gaze. "Do not touch them."

Four servants dressed me. I almost felt claustrophobic beneath their hands. They bound me in a corset, lacing it quickly. My breath caught as they tightened it mercilessly. 

Most of the girls on Giedi Prime were sickly thin. I had once asked Mother Gaius why Harkonnen women, even the noble ones, were depriving themselves of food. Inhuman thinness, she had answered, is the currency of beauty on this planet.

I could feel them silently judging my figure as they tightened my corset, their eyes flicking over my body with disapproval thinly veiled. It made my skin crawl. It made me want to snap their fragile wrists like twigs.

They pulled the gown over my head. It was black silk, traditional on Giedi Prime. The sleeves were so long they reached the floor, merging with the short train. 

They brushed my hair in a clumsy manner, before handing me a headpiece. It was black, adorned with miniscule diamonds that caught the light like shards of ice. Two curved branches jutted from either side, each about twenty centimetres long. I placed it on my head, and the servants fastened it. The horns resembled those of a bull.

"Who decided on this?" I asked the servants, attempting to contain my temper. They went still.

"The Baron requested it," one of them eventually murmured.