sorry for your loss. I understand your pain. I, too, was
murdered and dismembered. By my own brother.
Those statements were as multitiered as a cruise ship.
What the hell was Osiris implying? Thathehad
butchered Lokan? Payment in kind for what Set had
done to him. Set. Sutekh, Lord of the Desert. Lord of
Chaos. God of Storms. God of Darkness. Seth. Seteh. So
many forgotten names. In the end, they were one. Sutekh.
The Krayl boys called him daddy dearest. Sort of.
Actually, Dagan called him “the old man.” Alastor called
him Dad. And Mal just used his name. It was the best he
could do, given that he loathed his father. And loved him.
Would Osiris dare to tip the balance by killing
Lokan? And why now? What could he hope to gain?
It had been millennia since Sutekh betrayed him. Why
seek vengeance by killing his son now?
Mal had been over the possibilities again and again.
Maybe Osiris’s message of condolence had had a different intent. Maybe he meant to suggest that one of
Lokan’s own brothers had killed him.
If that’s what he meant, it was easy enough to discount. Given the right provocation, any one of them
might have pummeled Lokan senseless. And Lokan
would have given it right back to them. But murder?
They might fight and squabble and glare, but in the end,
they watched out for each other. Neither Dagan nor
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135
Alastor would have killed Lokan. It wasn’t the way they
rolled. And Mal knew for a fact thathehadn’t done the
deed.
Which left Osiris’s message as exactly what it appeared to be: an expression of condolence.
