LOSHAM
The tremor hit suddenly.
One moment Losham was at his desk reviewing a supply manifest, and the next, the entire mansion shuddered as if the island had convulsed. His coffee cup slid across the polished surface and shattered on the marble floor. The overhead chandelier, a massive contemporary installation of cascading glass rods suspended from a heavy brushed steel frame, swayed violently enough that the rods clashed together like wind chimes in a hurricane and the frame slammed into the ceiling, gouging a hole in the plaster.
Losham was on his feet before the shaking stopped. He crossed to the door in three strides and yanked it open.
The corridor was in chaos. Two of the oil paintings that lined the hallway had fallen from their hooks and lay face down on the marble, their frames cracked. A bronze pedestal near the window had toppled, sending the modern art statue that depicted nothing tumbling across the floor, where it had come to rest against the opposite wall.
Hakum emerged from his office four doors down, his eyes filled with panic. Rami appeared a moment later from the adjacent door.
"What the hell was that?" Losham demanded.
"I don't know." Rami scanned the corridor in both directions.
Dust was sifting down from the ceiling in fine curtains, and the air carried a smell that Losham recognized from the previous explosion. Pulverized concrete and the acrid chemical scent of structural failure.
"It came from below," Hakum said, as if it could have come from anywhere else.
The damage in the corridor was worse than the aftermath of the booby traps that had destroyed the glass enclosure. That explosion had been contained to the basement level, its force minimized to a precise location by careful engineering. Whatever had just happened had sent shockwaves through the entire building, rattling every floor, cracking plaster, and shaking loose anything that wasn't bolted to the walls.
"Where are the guards?" Losham asked.
Hakum looked both ways. The corridor was empty except for the three of them and the debris. The guards who were stationed at the office level staircase were nowhere in sight.
"They must have gone down to investigate," Rami said.
"Let's go." Losham led the way toward the staircase, his footsteps crunching on fallen plaster. Hakum and Rami followed.
They reached the staircase and stopped.
It was gone.
The upper landing was intact, a semicircle of marble extending over what was now a jagged void. The staircase itself, a massive dual flight that had been the mansion's centerpiece, had partially collapsed. The right flight was completely gone, reduced to a pile of broken marble and twisted iron railing two stories below. The left flight was still partially attached to the wall, but the lower section had separated from its moorings and hung at a precarious angle, groaning faintly with every aftershock that shivered through the building.
Dust billowed up from the wreckage, thick enough to sting the eyes.
"Great Mortdh," Hakum breathed.
Rami leaned over the edge of the landing and assessed the drop. "Twelve meters. Maybe fourteen. I can make that."
"There is no need," Losham said. "The private staircase from my father's office leads directly to the basement level. We'll use that." He grimaced. "Provided that it didn't collapse as well."
Rami pulled back from the edge. "It might be blocked. Given what we see here, the damage down in the basement is much worse."
"Perhaps." Losham turned from the ruined staircase and started back down the corridor toward Navuh's office at the far end. His office now. "But standing here and speculating is pointless."
"Should we wait for a report from the security team?" Hakum suggested, falling into step beside him. "If there's been another gas explosion?—"
Losham ignored him.
The previous explosions that had been triggered by the booby traps had been attributed to gas tanks exploding because of a careless construction crew, a convenient fiction that had satisfied the rank and file and most of his brothers. Rami knew the truth because he'd been there when it happened, and Losham saw no need for Dave to thrall the knowledge away from him.
Rami was loyal to a fault, and Losham shared with him more than he shared with anyone else.
The booby traps had been Navuh's work, defense mechanisms designed to destroy the glass enclosure and its contents if anyone attempted to access it without his authorization. Those traps had been triggered by Losham's own breach attempt, and the resulting explosion had destroyed the enclosure, killed the human crew that had been working on the glass, and partially collapsed the ceiling of the basement chamber, which had been underneath the backyard, so the damage to the mansion hadn't been all that terrible.
What could have exploded now that had caused a powerful tremor that felt like an earthquake?
