Operation Arrakis: The Five-Sided Room

by Durandir

Llessur hadn't been in the five-sided room since before Thayer was born, and had never been in it thus subject to its intended purpose. Though she recognized it generally, as her minutes there passed in solitude and she took closer stock of her surroundings, she began to notice the details that had been irrelevant before. How decorous it was--and yet everything from the wallpaper to the furniture reflected the caution of decorators anticipating desperation on the part of the room's inhabitants. The heavy wooden table was bolted to the floor just beneath the highest point of the cone-peaked ceiling--leaving the light fixture well out of reach--as was the lone chair matched to it. The elaborate grillwork on the window and open doorway blended nicely with the rest of the décor, yet simultaneously ensured she wouldn't be going anywhere. A cozy room, really. Until one grew distracted and distraught with the confinement. That was the moment for which the table and chairs were bolted down.

Bored unto fury, she gazed unseeing out the window, ill-stomached when her glance fell out to sea. It was less unnerving to study the window itself, with its curving bars, the silhouette of the ship Beagle twisted in amidst the vines and lattices.

A clatter sounded from the doorway behind her. She turned to see Reth Nivag step into the room, locking the bars again behind him. She drew herself up and prepared to address him.

He didn't give her the chance. "Brought your supper, Highness," he announced cheerily, setting a tray down on the table.

"How very kind," she said with all the dignity she could muster, unwittingly disguising it as sarcasm. "You needn't have bothered. What's the point of eating?"

Reth shrugged. "Well, if you don't want it, I'll take it back. . . ." He grinned suddenly and settled into the bolted chair. "Or if you really don't want it, I could do with a bite myself. Haven't made it to the mess hall yet, and I know better than to turn down Chef Boyd's cooking."

"You don't mean to just sit here and eat it in my presence, do you?" Llessur stood aghast.

"Two birds with one stone," Reth shrugged, and pulled the tray over towards him. "Hm. Pheasant and Blue-foot, in fact, from the looks of it," he commented, picking up what appeared to be the leg of some sort of fowl. "Anyway, I also came to check up on you. Noted:" he gestured in the air as if making notes in an invisible logbook, "an uncharacteristic lack of appetite. Especially," he bit into the fowl, "for such exceptionally appetizing cuisine." He grinned at her and set the bird down again. "Other than that, how are you doing, Lady Atner?"

She stiffened. "What concern of yours is my welfare?"

"What citizen of Mendellia would not be concerned for the Queen mother's welfare?" He sketched a tiny bow over the dinner tray.

"You would be surprised," she muttered.

"Anyhow, I hope the accommodations are to your liking? It's the best we could do on short notice, and all, but I'm sure it will be to your taste." He rattled on without giving her a chance to respond. "Probably it will only be for a short while, of course; and truly it's regrettable that we have to do this. But, you know, until we're sure you can be trusted--"

"Trusted!" she bellowed. "What, I? How dare you--"

"Ay, m'lady," Reth said. "Frankly, walking out there on the cliff just didn't show such good judgment on your part. We can't take a chance on your doing that again. I'm sorry, Lady. Truly I am." He stood slowly, leaving most of the dinner untouched, after all-- Llessur felt an unexpected stirring of relief at that fact, linked to a stirring in her stomach. "But I'm sure everything will work out quickly enough."

"You have no right to do this," Llessur growled menacingly. "By what authority--"

"Until Thayer returns," he reminded her gently, "Kirret and I are the authority." Then the grin broke out again. "Well, sort of. Carte blanche is such fun, isn't it?"

With that, he unlocked the door and slipped back to the free side of it before she could react. She moved to the door and stood pressed against the bars despairingly as he locked it up again. Two steps down the hall, he turned back.

"Oh, before I go -- " Reth placed something in her hand, a small cylinder.

Llessur looked at it without recognition, but she refused to humor him by asking what it was for. Let him speak, if it was so important. Reth waited a moment, the grin still in place, then turned to go.

Fury rose in her -- she knew he was baiting her -- but he left her no choice but to ask. Her voice sharp with annoyance, she said, "I don't suppose you intend to tell me what it is."

"I thought you'd never ask," said Reth, turning back to her. "It's a comlink. So you can call me if you need anything. Turn it on -- like so -- and just speak into it, like a telephone. If you need anything, or if you'd care to talk. I may be your jailer, Highness, but I'm still your loyal servant."

Lonely hours passed. What remained of Chef Boyd's dinner was indeed delicious, as ever, but the Queen mother was unsatisfied.

Llessur turned at last to the bookcase. It hadn't been there, she knew, in the days when Enad was King -- in those days, too, they had used this five-sided tower room for a polite prison, a suitable place to detain prisoners of noble birth, or suspicious foreign dignitaries, things of that nature--those whom propriety forbade merely throwing into the dungeons. In fact, it had been used in that way ever since the Palace was built, for all she knew. But books, in Enad's opinion, had been too polite even for a polite prison. She wondered when the case had been added to this room.

What she found there came as a surprise: poetry! Not many books, but every one of them a volume of poems, and with great variety. Some of the names she did not recognize, but mostly --

And then she saw that the third shelf was stacked entirely with French poets. Apollinaire, Ronsard, Prévert, Breton, Hugo, Chateaubriand, Baudelaire, Villon --

Verlaine! She dove for the book. She hadn't read Verlaine since . . . oh, too long, however long. "Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été -- " ^[1] She blushed to read it, remembering how Enad had whispered those words to her at their wedding. It hadn't been a clear summer day, either. It had been summer, well enough -- it mostly was, in Mendellia -- but windy and rainy. Yet in the poem she could only think of the perfection of that day, so many years ago.

She thumbed through the slim volume, tasting the sweetness of words taken to heart in her youth. So lyrical, Verlaine!

Then came a poem that stopped her cold. She read, and then she had to reread:

<<Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit,
Si bleu, si calme !
Un arbre, par-dessus le toit,
Berce sa palme.

La cloche, dans le ciel qu'on voit,
Doucement tinte.
Un oiseau sur l'arbre qu'on voit
Chante sa plainte.

Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est là
Simple et tranquille.
Cette paisible rumeur-là
Vient de la ville.

Qu'as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà
Pleurant sans cesse,
Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilà,
De ta jeunesse ?>> ^[2]

Prison, echoed the sole word through her thoughts. The poet wrote this from prison. She raised her eyes from the page, fixed them on the cliffs visible through her barred window. If she had jumped then, if Reth had not been there . . .

Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse? What have you done with your youth? Oh, what have I done? La vie est là, simple et tranquille. . . .

She fell weeping on the narrow cot, and the book slipped from her fingers.

The dream came again, slipping into the void left when she had emptied herself of her tears. Enad frowned still, yet she saw something in his bright eyes now that she had not noted before, if it were there before, something that did not match the frown.

She orbited him as before, but with a difference. This time, she ceased trying to reach him and simply settled into the orbit. This time when he spoke, she did not wake--and then he spoke on.

"Thou know'st 'tis common. . . ."

She whispered in reply, "Passing through nature to eternity. . . ."

"Why seems it so particular with thee?" his words echoed in her memory. And then he was gone, and it was Thayer before her, bright- eyed like his father, gently smiling.

But his eyes were fixed on a point beyond her. In the dream world it was impossible for her to look back, to see what he saw, but there was no need, for she knew without looking, as one does in dream worlds.

"It's too late, my son," she whispered, half to him and half to herself. "You've grown up. You can't come back to me."

He answered her, still without looking at her. "What you keep, you will lose."

"Shall I have nothing left, then?" she moaned. "Not Enad nor you?"

"What you free," he said, "you will always have."

And she woke.

Reth was in the middle of a surprise inspection of one of the fighter squadrons stationed in Mendel City when the call came. When he recognized Llessur's voice over the comlink, he hastily excused himself to the Captain of the squad and set off running for the Palace.

"What can I do for you, Highness?" he asked as he ran.

"You said, General," she answered, her voice lacking its usual rancor, "I might contact you with this thing if I wanted to talk. I don't suppose you actually expect me to carry out the entire conversation over this device, however?"

"I'll be there before you can say Long John Silver," he promised.

"A likely story," she snorted pleasantly. "Just mind you get here before I forget all I want to say, that'll do well enough."

Relief flooded him as he reached the Palace and set off for the tower room. It looked like things were moving at last.

[1] http://www.toutelapoesie.com/poemes/verlaine/la_bonne_chanson/donc_ce_sera.htm is the French version. I'm having trouble finding an English version to link to. I'm not positive I can translate this one adequately myself…it's a sort of honeymoon poem, though, generally speaking.
[2] Gotta hunt down a decent translation of this one too, or else work up one of my own…For now, here's a rough translation:

The sky above the roof
Is so blue, so calm!
A tree above the roof
Rocks its branches

The bell, in the sky I see
Gently rings
A bird in the tree I see
Sorrowfully sings

My God, my God, life is there
Simple and quiet
That peaceful murmur
Comes from the town