>>24094171
I will quote the passage
>The Emperor turned, looked at Count Fenring. The Count met his stare—gray eyes against green. The thought lay there clearly between them, their association so long that understanding could be achieved with a glance.
>Kill this upstart for me, the Emperor was saying. The Atreides is young and resourceful, yes—but he is also tired from long effort and he’d be no match for you, anyway. Call him out now…you know the way of it. Kill him.
>Slowly, Fenring moved his head, a prolonged turning until he faced Paul.
>“Do it!” the Emperor hissed.
>The Count focused on Paul, seeing with eyes his Lady Margot had trained in the Bene Gesserit way, aware of the mystery and hidden grandeur about this Atreides youth.
>I could kill him, Fenring thought—and he knew this for a truth.
>Something in his own secretive depths stayed the Count then, and he glimpsed briefly, inadequately, the advantage he held over Paul—a way of hiding from the youth, a furtiveness of person and motives that no eye could penetrate.
>Paul, aware of some of this from the way the time nexus boiled, understood at last why he had never seen Fenring along the webs of prescience. Fenring was one of the might-have-beens, an almost-Kwisatz Haderach, crippled by a flaw in the genetic pattern—a eunuch, his talent concentrated into furtiveness and inner seclusion. A deep compassion for the Count flowed through Paul, the first sense of brotherhood he’d ever experienced.
>Fenring, reading Paul’s emotion, said, “Majesty, I must refuse.”
>Rage overcame Shaddam IV. He took two short steps through the entourage, cuffed Fenring viciously across the jaw.
>A dark flush spread up and over the Count’s face. He looked directly at the Emperor, spoke with deliberate lack of emphasis: “We have been friends, Majesty. What I do now is out of friendship. I shall forget that you struck me.”
(Fenring's earlier appearance, at the arena where he speaks with Baron Harkonnen, is of no relevance).
This is very weak in the absence of buildup: it's caprice, basically an example of an authorial 'because I said so'

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