It rang once, twice…
"Yes," Losham barked, but it wasn't just anger and frustration coming through. He sounded on the verge of hysteria, like someone who had reached the end of his rope, and answering this call cut through the last thread. It reminded Kian of the first time Losham had answered their call, and the fact that he sounded like that now was not a good sign.
"Hello, Losham," Toven said, his voice carrying the layered resonance of compulsion. "Your end-of-day report, if you please."
Losham's breath was audible through the line. "If I please? What if I don't please?"
Toven should have known better than to try to be polite with Losham.
"Report, now."
"There's been a collapse."
The answer shouldn't have surprised Kian, not after his mother's premonition, but his stomach twisted on itself nonetheless.
"Explain," Toven said.
"A support column in the basement gave way. It was already compromised from the initial explosions, and when it failed, it triggered a cascade. The entire excavation site is buried under tons of debris again. All the progress we made over the past weeks is gone. In fact, it's worse now than it was after the original explosion."
Kian closed his eyes. Weeks of careful work, undone in seconds. The chests that held Khiann and his four companions were now buried under even more rubble than before.
His mother's bad feeling had been spot on.
"Any casualties?" Toven asked.
"Two humans were crushed under the debris, and fifteen others were injured. It was a mistake to use humans for that job. I should have employed immortals from the start. They wouldn't have liked being forced to do this kind of work, but it would have been done faster. Now the mansion is badly damaged, the main double staircase basically gone, and I had to evacuate it, to the delight of my brothers."
Kian leaned forward. "Was it caused by secondary booby traps?"
There was a long pause. "I don't know. Did Navuh tell you about additional explosives beyond the ones that have already been triggered?"
Kian refrained from answering. They hadn't confirmed that they had Navuh yet, and he wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.
"I didn't expect you to answer that. But I assume this is his work. The timing is too convenient to be coincidental. The collapse happened this morning, and two hours later, a pre-programmed email arrived from Navuh demanding the immediate evacuation of the mansion."
Losham was right about it being too much of a coincidence. He must have known that the collapse was going to happen and also the precise timing of it, which meant a deliberate setup.
The bastard hadn't even hinted that they needed to hurry up or a secondary collapse would undo all their progress. What the hell was his endgame?
"What else did the email say?" Lokan asked, speaking for the first time since the call had started.
"Hello, Lokan. I didn't know you were there. How have you been?" The edge of hysteria was back in Losham's voice.
"Anxious, as I'm sure you are. What else did our father say in his email?"
"He once again talked about the traitor among us and demanded that everyone vacate the mansion and no one re-enters it until the traitor is identified or Navuh personally authorizes it."
"What triggered the pre-programmed email?" Toven asked.
"Most likely the collapse itself. Navuh must have rigged sensors tied to the mansion's structural integrity. When the column failed and the collapse registered above a certain threshold, the email was triggered." Losham's voice dropped. "Which means the collapse wasn't accidental. The column didn't fail on its own. It was engineered to fail."
Lokan shifted in his chair, his face drawn.
"So, you believe that Navuh sabotaged his own house?" Kian asked.
"I believe he sabotaged everything." The bitterness in Losham's voice was visceral. "He set it all up so if he was assassinated, most likely by one of us, there would be nothing left of the Brotherhood for us to inherit. The emails have one goal only—to pit the brothers against each other. Right after the second one arrived, Kolhood demanded that we obey our father's directives.I managed to deflect him with some clever maneuvering, but he'll be back."
"How did you deflect him?" Onegus asked.
