An epigraph from Princess Irulan frames Jessica’s arrival on Arrakis as a decisive success of the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva: old protective prophecies have taken deep root among the Fremen, and Jessica’s abilities have been underestimated. In the Arrakeen great hall, Jessica stands amid the Atreides freight and feels the new residence’s coldness, age, and defensibility. She uncovers the portrait of Duke Leto’s father and the bull’s head that killed him, both of which sharpen Jessica’s homesickness and fear.

Duke Leto enters, dusty and overworked from managing the transfer of power. Leto insists that the Old Duke’s portrait and the bull’s head be hung in the dining hall despite Jessica’s objections, and he explains that Hawat has installed poison snoopers and screened local servants. Leto says the servants are Fremen, including a housekeeper called the Shadout Mapes, and that the Fremen know Jessica is Bene Gesserit because legends about the Sisterhood survive on Arrakis.

Leto reports that Duncan Idaho has not secured a full alliance with the Fremen, but the Fremen have agreed to stop raiding Atreides outlying villages during a truce. Leto must return to the landing field to handle incoming staff, retain trained spice workers who may leave under the Judge of the Change, and later summon Paul to a strategy conference. Jessica senses Leto’s exhaustion and the danger of his plans, but she does not try to manipulate him and turns instead to practical arrangements.

After Leto leaves, the Shadout Mapes appears and declares service to Jessica. Jessica recognizes Mapes as a Fremen woman with deep-blue spice eyes and begins probing her through Bene Gesserit observation, language, and prophecy. When Mapes reveals that she carries a weapon as both a test and a gift, Jessica identifies it as a crysknife and narrowly discovers that the crucial word Mapes expects is Maker, linking the blade to the sacred desert power.

Mapes accepts Jessica as the foretold one and gives her the crysknife, warning that it is an unfixed blade that must remain near flesh and that anyone who sees it must be cleansed or slain. Jessica also correctly observes that the blade has been sheathed unblooded, so Mapes offers her body’s water; Jessica makes only a small cut, learning again how central water is to Fremen thought. Mapes then resumes ordinary servant duties, while Jessica sends her to hang the Old Duke’s relics and begins rushing toward the south wing to find Paul, convinced that something is wrong with the house despite Hawat’s inspection.