Page 87 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

In the middle of the ninth or tenth oath, Mazlen moved.

He lifted a phone discreetly from a pocket of his dress uniform, glanced down at the screen, then rose from his knees and straightened.

Mazlen couldn't be allowed to leave. He was the one who had challenged Losham openly on the day Bertram had been named, and the one who topped Losham's elimination list.

"Mazlen." Losham did not raise his voice. "You are not done reaffirming your devotion."

Seventeen heads did not lift off the floor because they knew better.

Mazlen stood alone. "It's the radar. The repair crew reports a problem. They need⁠—"

"The radar will wait for the duration of the prayer," Losham said calmly. "Your devotion to a broken machine shouldn't exceed your devotion to the lord. Go down on your knees and lower your head in submission."

For a long moment, Mazlen did not move, and Losham tensed.

He couldn't force Mazlen to stay. He could only pressure him with the force of his personality, and that might not be enough.

When Mazlen put the phone away, knelt back down, and pressed his forehead to the floor, Losham let out a quiet breath and picked up the oath ceremony where he had left off.

He did not watch the clock after that. He watched the rows of bent backs, and kept talking. Somewhere to the northeast, over open water, he imagined a drone closing the distance.

The angel of death was nearing.

He was in the middle of a sentence when the feed turned white.

No sound came through because the microphones had died along with everything else. The screen suddenly flared with a silent burst of light, engulfing the hall and the eighteen bent figures inside. Then it turned black, replaced by the gray static of a signal searching for a source that no longer existed.

Losham did not look away.

The office was very quiet. On the smaller monitors, the other island feeds ran on, ordinary, showing the harbor, the hotel lobby, a corridor. Only one screen was gray.

"Dear Mortdh," Bertram said.

Losham turned to him and found the general exactly as he needed him to be. He was staring at the dead feed, all color drained from his face, watching most of the command structure turn to dust in an instant.

"Bertram," Losham said softly.

Bertram looked at him.

"The lord is not without reach, and neither am I. I command a force that answers to me alone, and this morning it removed every male plotting against the lord's authority and, by extension, against mine. They signed their own death warrants when instead of falling in line, they sought to seize power. I summoned you here to witness their execution. That's what happens to those who mistake my patience for weakness."

Bertram's throat worked. He was a soldier, and he had seen death before, some worse than the swift execution of eighteen traitors.

"An outside force," Bertram repeated.

"An independent force that answers to me alone. I have not spent the years away from the island idly. I prepared." Losham held his gaze. "You saw what it can do, and that is what you will tell the men. When they ask what happened and why, you will tell them that the lord struck down the disloyal."

"Yes." Bertram straightened. "Yes, my lord."

"Good." Losham turned back to the gray screen and, after a moment, nodded to Rami to shut it off. "It is done."

Rami killed the feed, and silence stretched over the office.

Losham had no rivals left on the island, and the significance should have felt overwhelming, but instead it felt like the relief after removing a heavy burden. The muscles were still tense and strained, unaware that the workload had vanished.

He had removed those who threatened to take the Brotherhood from him, and now the chairs those males had filled were empty. The whole apparatus of a ten-thousand-strong army would fall apart unless he could quickly find replacements.

And then there was the enclosure. Shavek was ash now, but the cult was still there, four hundred strong and swelling, led by a woman who answered to no one Losham could reach.