The Discipline of SilenceRetra Cybrarchivist Interviews Valya Harkonnen (Midlife) on Wallach IX

Archivault Entry: Public Interview

Opening Scene

Wallach IX does not announce itself.

There are no banners, no heraldry, no music. The corridors are pale stone and mineral plaster, worn smooth by generations of disciplined movement. Women pass in measured intervals, their steps synchronized not by command but by memory. The air smells faintly of linen, dust, and something older — restraint practiced so long it has lost its edge.

Retra Cybrarchivist stands at the threshold of a training chamber. Her coat is layered, archival, unadorned. Light pools softly at her feet as the Archivault opens a listening aperture.

Valya Harkonnen waits inside.

She is seated, not enthroned. Her robes are functional, severe only in their economy. Her posture is upright but not rigid — a body trained to disappear into stillness when required. Her eyes track Retra with precision, not suspicion.

This is not a meeting of rivals.

This is a record.

The Oath (Abbreviated)

Retra:“I stand in the archive between what was and what will be.I witness without absolution.I preserve without praise.”

Valya inclines her head once.

The Interview

Retra:This place predates its name. Long before the Sisterhood had a future, it had discipline. When did you understand that blood loyalty would endanger what was forming here?

Valya:Early. Earlier than most would believe. Blood speaks loudly, but it speaks in impulses. Institutions cannot afford impulses.

Retra:Yet you did not sever yourself publicly from House Harkonnen. You maintained distance without denunciation.

Valya:Denunciation creates noise. Noise invites counter-noise. I chose quarantine.

Retra:You’re describing lineage as contamination.

Valya:I’m describing lineage as force. Force must be contained or redirected. Never indulged.

A pause. In the adjoining hall, footsteps pass in precise intervals.

Retra:Many would have used the Sisterhood as a vehicle for family power. You did not.

Valya:Because the Sisterhood was not built to serve houses. It was built to outlast them.

Retra:And yet your surname remains known.

Valya:Names persist longer than intentions. That is not the same as allegiance.

Retra:How does one govern without attachment — without becoming cruel?

Valya:Cruelty requires excess emotion. We train for economy.

Retra:Economy of feeling?

Valya:Of expression. Feeling remains. Expression is optional.

Retra:Is this what distinguishes the Sisterhood from the dynasties it will one day influence?

Valya:Yes. Dynasties dramatize power. We proceduralize it.

Retra:You held House Harkonnen at arm’s length for decades. Was that sacrifice?

Valya:No. Sacrifice implies loss. I lost nothing I required.

Retra:Did you lose anything you wanted?

(Valya considers this longer.)

Valya:Want is a negotiable condition.

Midpoint Shift — The Institution

Retra:You are shaping something that will not belong to you. Does that trouble you?

Valya:It reassures me.

Retra:Why?

Valya:Because ownership is how institutions decay.

Retra:Future generations will call this the beginning of something else.

Valya:They will be wrong.

Retra:Explain.

Valya:This is not a beginning. It is a refinement. Women have always trained memory, body, and perception. We are merely standardizing what history allowed to remain informal.

Retra:And what happens when the system surpasses its creators?

Valya:Then it is ready.

Lineage, Revisited

Retra:If a Harkonnen child were to arrive here today, how would she be received?

Valya:As a body to be trained. Nothing more.

Retra:No advantage?

Valya:Advantage is a myth used to excuse failure elsewhere.

Retra:Do you believe your blood made you suited for this role?

Valya:No. My discipline did.

Retra:And the blood?

Valya:It made discipline necessary.

Closing Exchange

Retra:When history attempts to summarize you, what will it miss?

Valya:That I was not building power. I was removing volatility.

Retra:What survives you?

Valya:A method.If I have done my work correctly, no one will remember my name — only the discipline.

Closing Ritual

Retra inclines her head. The Archivault seals the aperture.

Retra (quietly):“Recorded. Contained. Preserved.”

Valya does not rise. Outside, the footsteps continue.

Retra Addendum (Public)

Valya Harkonnen should not be read as a dynastic actor in institutional clothing. She is a regulator — a woman who understood early that lineage is force, not destiny, and treated it accordingly. The Sisterhood did not emerge from her ambition, but from her refusal to indulge it.

This record is preserved not to judge her restraint, but to document a moment when power chose silence over spectacle — and became durable because of it.

Valya Harkonnen stands at the center platform, posture precise, coat fastened to the throat. The sigil at her cuff is subdued—authority expressed through restraint rather than display. She does not scan the room. She already knows where everything is.

Retra arrives without spectacle. Middle-aged, composed, dressed in layered archival black with a thin indigo seam that catches the light only when she moves. She places a small moth-lantern on the table between them. Its glow is soft, deliberate.

“I am Retra,” she says. “I do not absolve. I do not unmake. I remember.”

Valya inclines her head. Not a bow. An acknowledgment of process.

Retra waits until the archive settles.

Retra: Tell me how the house wakes in the morning. What is the first task you perform for it?

Valya: The house wakes before the sun remembers to be polite. The first task is inventory—of supplies, of loyalty, of pending slights. A house is an organism. It eats information. I check the registers. I taste the spice residue. I listen to the watch reports. That is how survival begins.

Retra: When you say Harkonnen, what does that name ask of you in private?

Valya: It asks for appetite. For strategy sharpened to hunger. It asks me not to confuse kindness with weakness. In private, it asks that I ensure the name outlives me—whatever that requires.

Retra: Who were you before the house needed you?

Valya’s gaze shifts—not away, but inward.

Valya: I was a child who liked small, dangerous animals. I learned how long you could hold your hand still before they trusted you. Curiosity came before preservation. The house found me hungry. It offered purpose. I accepted.

Retra: Where does duty end and appetite begin?

Valya: Duty is the story we tell to justify appetite. They blur when survival is at stake. If refusal risks extinction, appetite becomes duty. If refusal risks only pride, then appetite is indulgence. I make that distinction daily.

Retra: Has the house ever asked you to sacrifice what you love for continuity?

A pause. Long enough to be intentional.

Valya: Yes. My younger sister whispered a name to the wrong guest. The resulting fracture required a sacrifice to seal it. I provided the narrative. I loved her. I chose the house.

Retra: What did you feel afterward?

Valya: Absence. Not grief as spectacle—absence as function. It made space for decisions. Regret is catalogued, not indulged.

Retra nods once and makes no note that can be seen.

Retra: Describe a time you chose strategy over mercy.

Valya: A supplier failed twice. Late shipments metastasize into sieges. I seized his stores. Relocated his family. Converted uncertainty into obedience.

Retra: And in your body—what did that feel like?

Valya: Precision. Like a fist closing around a necessary tool. Satisfaction, yes. Also awareness. Fear secures yield. Tenderness is stored elsewhere.

Retra: How do you measure success?

Valya: A day without surprise. A decade of stability. A century where the house functions without nostalgia.

Retra: What would happen if you refused the rituals that keep the house intact?

Valya: Chaos. Then replacement. Refusal is a luxury for those who can afford erasure.

Retra: How do you hide tenderness in a house that reads it as weakness?

Valya: By embedding it in unremarkable acts. Shade in a courtyard. An amended ration line. No witnesses. Tenderness survives only when it is untheatrical.

Retra: Who do you pity?

Valya: Those who believe the market is moral. Those who think harvest equals freedom. Pity is observation, not charity.

The moth-lantern flickers, steadying again.

Retra: If someone reads your private ledger a hundred years from now, what would you want them to understand?

Valya: That I preserved an organism under pressure. That cruelty, where present, was tactical. That tenderness existed, though rarely visible. Preservation is not joy.

Retra: What part of you predates the sigil?

Valya: My hands. I still mend things when alone. It reminds me that some tasks can be finished cleanly.

Retra: Have you been surprised by your own cruelty? Your mercy?

Valya: Cruelty, no. Mercy—yes. Once, I paid for a child’s medicine when the ledger said I should not. The relief surprised me. Like entering a sealed room and finding air.

Retra: Which myths about your house do you protect, and which would you burn?

Valya: I protect inevitability. It keeps enemies cautious. I would burn the myth that we are monsters by nature rather than by necessity. It limits strategic imagination.

Retra: What are you preserving that should be allowed to die?

Valya: Ritual humiliations. They once enforced order. Now they manufacture trauma. I mark them for review.

Retra: If you had to teach a child love—briefly—what would you say?

Valya: Learn when to give, and when to protect the giving. Love without strategy is wasted. Strategy without love is hollow.

Retra: How does midlife sound compared to youth?

Valya: Youth is noise—tests, displays, ambition. Midlife is silence with infrastructure. Decisions made where no one applauds, but everyone lives with the result.

Retra: Final question. If you could seal one ledger page forever, which would it be?

Valya rests her palm on the table.

Valya: The list of names sacrificed in the house’s worst hour. Not denial.

Preservation. Some truths undo what they saved when turned into spectacle.

Retra closes the ledger. The moth-lantern dims.

“I witness without absolution,” she says. “The record is complete.”

Valya inclines her head once more and steps back into the machinery’s hush. The Archivault exhales. The memory takes its place among others—kept, not judged.