Losham
The water feature against the back wall was doing its work.
It also looked nice, which was a bonus.
Tonight qualified.
"To the new order," he said, raising his glass in Rami's direction.
"To the new order," Rami echoed, lifting his own glass.
They were sitting in the two chairs that had been arranged near the water feature. A small side table sat between them holding the bottle, an ashtray, and a plate of olives that Rami had brought out earlier and that neither of them had touched.
The night was cool by island standards, and the breeze carried the scent of frangipani with a salty undertone.
Losham had sent the women back to the brothel a couple of hours ago, after they'd fulfilled their task, serving as his alibi at the time his brothers had met their demise.
It had been Rami's idea to bring them in on Saturday night and keep them through most of Sunday. Losham had agreed and requested two women for himself.
It was usually his preference to have more than one seeing to his needs, and since he hadn't partaken in such activities in weeks, he had enough stamina to keep both girls occupied throughout the long hours they had been sharing his bed.
Now, he felt pleasantly depleted, or maybe it was just the immense relief of having gotten rid of his nemeses. His brothers were dead, and his position as the island's undisputed ruler was secure.
Rami took a long drink from his glass and set it down with an audible clunk.
He wasn't much of a drinker, but the good news called for celebration, and Rami had been matching Losham glass for glass.
His cheeks were getting red, and his fine motor coordination was worsening, which wasn't a good look for an immortal.
"You should slow down," Losham said.
"I'm celebrating."
"I don't want you falling out of your chair or throwing up."
"I am not going to do either." Rami lifted his glass in a salute and drank it in one go. "Yet." He put the glass down.
He reached for the bottle and refilled both of their glasses.
"You are right, though," Rami said. "Perhaps I should slow down. After this one."
He laughed, which was a rare sound. Rami didn't laugh easily. He smiled sometimes, but this full laugh was a different animal, and it had emerged for the second time tonight.
Rami took another sip, smaller this time, and set the glass down with more care. He picked up his cigar from the ashtray and rolled it between his fingers, examining the ash that had built up at the tip.
"I keep expecting to wake up and find out that I dreamt it," he said.
Losham smiled. "It's not a dream. We did it. Well, Dave did it, but under our direction."
That was a little twisting of the truth because it had been Dave's idea to frame the assassination as an execution by Navuh.
Losham took a slow pull from his cigar and let the smoke roll across his tongue before exhaling. The taste was rich and slightly sweet. Perfect.
"It will feel real tomorrow," he said. "When the messages start arriving from the junior brothers expressing their condolences and their continued loyalty, it will feel very real, and very good."
"You think they will all fall in line?" Rami asked.
"I know they will. There is nowhere else for them to fall.
Kolhood was the only one with the standing to challenge my authority.
Hocken and Hazok provided the appearance of a coalition, but neither of them could have prevailed against Kolhood or me.
With all three gone, the junior brothers have no leader to rally behind.
Each of them will be privately calculating what their best move is, and the calculation will lead each of them to the same conclusion.
Support me. Wait for the situation to clarify and position himself for whatever opportunities emerge.
" He took another puff of his cigar. "Naturally, I will make sure that no such opportunities emerge. "
"You make it sound easy, and I want to believe that it will be."
"I didn't say it would be a walk in the park. It will be a great deal of work, and most of it will be tedious. But the hardest part was achieved today."
Rami lifted his glass again, slower this time. "To the hardest part being done."
"To the greatest obstacle getting eliminated." Losham clinked his glass to Rami's, and they drank.
The water kept washing against the stone, a night bird called somewhere in the garden, and for the first time in months, Losham felt at peace.
The greatest threat to his seat of power had been eliminated.
He was not completely relaxed because that would have been stupid given his position as the leader of the Brotherhood, but he felt on top of the world nonetheless.
He was the king of his pond.
Losham had spent his entire life serving his father, never believing that one day he would sit on Navuh's proverbial throne.
Now, finally, there was no Navuh to defer to, no Kolhood to outmaneuver, and no Hocken and Hazok to manage. There were still the junior brothers to handle, but the juniors were so far below Losham's level that their management would be easy.
He was the sole leader of the Brotherhood. He was at the top of an organization that contained over ten thousand warriors and operated on nearly every continent, and all the continents that mattered. The thought was staggering and intoxicating at the same time.
He could remake the Brotherhood. He could redirect its resources. He could end the worst of his father's policies and preserve only what he wished to preserve. With no one to answer to, he could decide what the Brotherhood would become.
Losham sipped the Macallan and let the warmth of it spread through his chest.
Then he remembered the nightly call and grimaced.
That was the last obstacle to his rule that he needed to eliminate.
For now, the clan was only interested in the bodies in stasis and not the island's internal politics, and they had no problem with him sitting on Navuh's throne, but that might change.
Losham wanted that yoke gone, but he didn't know how to resist their compeller and his commands.
They would be calling later tonight, as they did at the same time every other night.
The compeller's voice on the other end of the line would be that same gentle, dry tone that disguised the powerful compulsion threading through every word.
It was woven into the cadence and the timbre, and Losham couldn't resist it.
He could, however, work around it.
He would have to find a way not to tell the clan about his brothers' fate, but that might prove impossible.
If they asked about his brothers, he would have to tell them the truth. But only if the question was direct. He could give evasive answers to any other kind of question.
He wouldn't volunteer the information, that was for sure.
The trick was to keep the conversation in a territory where the specific questions did not get asked. To answer evasively but not falsely. To redirect the compeller's attention toward subjects where the truth was acceptable and away from subjects where the truth was inconvenient.
Losham had been doing it for two thousand years with his father. He knew every trick in the book.
The biggest advantage of keeping the deaths of his brothers from the clan was that he could use them as an excuse for not doing exactly what the clan wanted from him. That would require careful maneuvering around the compulsion, and he might not be able to pull it off, but it was worth a try.
Rami was leaning back in his chair, his eyes half-closed, the cigar smoldering in his fingers. The flush in his cheeks had deepened to crimson, and his posture had loosened into a slump.
It would have been nice to share his musings with his assistant. Rami was an excellent sounding board, and Losham would have loved to tell him more about the clan than Rami had deduced so far, but the compulsion prevented him from doing so.
The clan's compeller had been thorough.
Losham couldn't tell anyone that he was being compelled, and he couldn't tell anyone that he was in contact with the clan and what they wanted.
He couldn't tell anyone about the calls.
The entire relationship with the clan was sealed inside his head, accessible only to him, and any attempt to share even a fragment of it with another person ran into the same closed door.