"So, we have to wait again. Weeks, possibly. I just hope that Navuh didn't plant more surprises."
"You need to talk to him," Onegus said.
"He will just lie again." Kian returned to his seat. "We can't thrall him, we can't compel him, and we can't figure out when he's lying. It's frustrating."
Onegus leaned back in his chair. "What do you want to do about the forces at Safe Harbor? We've got over fifty Guardians and twenty Kra-ell warriors over there, and while they're deployed to the island, the trafficking rescue operations are running at half capacity. They could always use more training on location, but I think the operations here are more important."
The moral calculus was brutal in its simplicity. Every day the forces sat at Safe Harbor waiting for an extraction that was now weeks away, people who were suffering the unimaginable were not being rescued.
The trafficking operations didn't hit a pause button because the clan had other priorities.
"Bring them back," Kian said. "Resume normal operations as soon as you can. When the excavation gets close to extracting the chests, we can redeploy. We'll have at least a few days' notice."
Onegus nodded. "I'll coordinate with Jade and Phinas. Should I suggest that Drova come with the returning Guardians? Arezoo's wedding was postponed because Drova couldn't be there. She probably won't make it in time for this Saturday, but maybe they can have the wedding next week."
The shift from geopolitical crisis to wedding logistics gave Kian a sensation of whiplash. This was life in the village, existential threats and party planning existing between one breath and the next.
"Good idea," Kian said. "Arezoo and Ruvon will be glad."
The question was whether his mother would be in any state to preside over their wedding. The news he was about to deliver would be devastating to her.
After Onegus departed with Toven and Mia, Lokan remained seated, staring at the table as if the wood grain held answers to the mysteries of the universe.
"What's on your mind, Lokan?" Kian asked.
"I'm thinking about Losham." Lokan looked up. "He's starting to realize who Navuh really is. What he's always been. That's a painful process, and I went through it myself, but the difference is that I had Carol and somewhere to go. Losham knows only the Brotherhood."
"Don't feel sorry for him. You said yourself that he was skimming from the top and accumulating assets for himself."
Lokan smiled. "Losham is not stupid. He was doing that during the time he and Navuh were at odds. I still don't know exactly why, but Losham had fallen from grace several years earlier."
"He failed at something," Kian said. "Navuh never tolerated failure."
"True." Lokan pushed to his feet. "Good luck with your mother. It's not going to be easy to deliver this news."
"No, it won't be."
The great love that had sustained her through millennia of loss and loneliness, the hope that kept her going when everything else had fallen away, had been within reach, and now it had been yanked away again.
After Lokan left, Kian pulled out his phone and called his mother.
She answered before the first ring finished. "Hello, Kian."
"I have news," he said to prepare her for the blow that was coming.
"Tell me."
"There's been a setback. The excavation site collapsed. It will take weeks to reach them again."
The silence on the other end lasted for all of three seconds.
"Then we wait," she said, and her voice was steady even though Kian knew, with the certainty of a son who had spent his entire life reading his mother's silences, that her heart was breaking. "I have waited this long. I can wait a little longer."
30
DAVE
The women scattered again.
