"I told him Navuh was probably rigging things from the harem just to torment us and watch us squirm." He uttered a dry, humorless laugh. "Kolhood accepted that because it sounded exactly like something our father would do. His humor always had a sadistic twist to it."
Losham was under siege from every direction, his brothers, his father's machinations, and Toven's compulsion grinding against it all.
"Your brothers must assume that you are the traitor since you've taken over running the operation," Kian said.
"Naturally. Kolhood suspects me because I'm the one occupying the mansion and sitting in our father's chair. If I didn't know that you have Navuh, I would have suspected Kolhood was his assassin. Still, he could have been behind the collapse because he has the resources to engineer a structural failure. The others suspect everyone. It's a perfect system of mutual paranoia."
"Navuh enjoyed pitting us against each other," Lokan said. "I always thought that he was doing that to select the best one of us as his successor."
"That was what I used to think as well," Losham said. "I didn't agree with all of his methods, but I never thought that he was actually undermining the future of the Brotherhood because he's selfish. Our father doesn't care about the organization. He doesn't care about Mortdh's legacy or any of the other propaganda slogans. He never did. It was always about him. About his personal ambition to be the ultimate ruler of theworld. The mission, the ideology, the centuries of sacrifice, none of it mattered to him beyond its utility as a tool for his own ambition. That's why he created a failsafe to destroy everything if he was gone, rather than let anyone else inherit it."
Losham wasn't wrong, and Kian felt strange about agreeing with him. On some level, he'd always suspected that Navuh's ambition was personal rather than ideological. He even suspected that the so-called vendetta against Annani and the clan hadn't been born from real hatred but rather from utility. It was easier to rally an army around a shared enemy, and humans were just too transitory to serve that purpose. Annani and her people, on the other hand, were everlasting, especially since Navuh hadn't really made a serious effort to eradicate them. They were more useful to him alive than dead.
Still, hearing Losham speak with the raw conviction of someone who had served Navuh's agenda for two thousand years and finally seen it for what it was gave credence to Kian's suspicions.
Furthermore, Losham's bitterness played into Kian's hands.
"You're right, Losham," Kian said. "That's exactly how Navuh thinks. Control or destroy. There is no third option in his mind."
"It's a good opportunity for you," Lokan said. "You need to assert yourself and solidify your position, not to continue Navuh's mission but to prevent a bloodbath. If the brothers turn on each other, thousands will die. You need to take control."
"I intend to." Losham didn't sound convinced by his own statement.
He was agreeing with the part about control and preventing chaos, but there was no indication that he planned to abandon the Brotherhood's mission. Why would he? It was all he hadknown throughout his life. The ideology and the mission were the glue that held the Brotherhood together. Without it, over ten thousand immortal warriors had no purpose, and that was a recipe for disaster.
Kian understood the dynamic because the clan wasn't much different in that respect. Their purpose was defined in large part by the Brotherhood's threat, not to them but to all of humanity as well. Remove that threat, and what was left to hold their people together? The answer, he liked to think, was family, community, and shared values. But he also knew that without the constant existential danger, many of them would have scattered to the four winds long ago. The village would have emptied, and he would have been left presiding over a ghost town.
He shook off the thought. That wasn't going to happen because humans were an even greater threat to them than other immortals, and they weren't going anywhere. Neither was the Brotherhood.
Right now, he needed to focus on the problem of five bodies buried under a mountain of debris and a timeline that had just been blown apart.
"What's your revised time estimate?" Toven asked. "How long until you can resume work?"
"I'm assembling new crews of immortals this time. They'll work in shifts around the clock. They are stronger, faster, and much less vulnerable than humans. Once the structural engineers are done conducting their assessment and clear the area as safe, we resume the work."
"How long?" Toven repeated.
"The assessment will take a day or two. After that, the actual debris removal might take two, three, or four weeks. Frankly, I don't know. The site looks worse now than when we started, but the crews will be more efficient than their human counterparts."
"Be careful," Toven said, and the compulsion woven into the words was lighter now, advisory rather than commanding. "The collapse may have been engineered, or it may have been caused by something the crew did wrong. Until the assessment is complete, you don't know. Don't rush the crews."
"I'm well aware of that." Losham's voice was devoid of emotion. "I don't intend to lose more people."
Kian doubted that Losham cared about the lost human lives, but he was an administrator, and he understood the law of supply and demand, of assets and liabilities. Workers were assets. Dead workers were a liability.
The line went silent for a moment, and then the connection ended. Losham didn't say goodbye. He never did.
Toven leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. "He's close to breaking."
Kian nodded. "He doesn't sound good."
Lokan was staring at the table. "Losham is strong and smart," he said. "He's survived two thousand years under our father's thumb. He can handle this."
"I'm not questioning his resilience," Toven said. "I'm pointing out that he's at the end of his rope, and he might snap. If he snaps, we lose our contact, and I really don't know how we can help him. We need him to keep digging and holding up the fort, so to speak." He turned to Kian. "Perhaps letting Navuh speakwith his sons will help. We can tell him to reinforce Losham's position."
Kian shook his head. "If Losham is right and Navuh wants to sabotage the Brotherhood, he would do more harm than good. And anyway, he will demand something in return."
He stood and walked to the window, looking out at the village below. It was a bright California morning, and the village was a picturesque utopia. Following the conversation with Losham, the contrast between light and darkness was stark.
