Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  Payal hadn’t expected such family-defeating arrogance of her father—he’d always been about building an empire, an unbroken line. But he’d also thought he’d hold on to power forever, so dying with the secret of the drug might not have been a purposeful decision.

  Payal might die because her father had believed himself immortal.

  * * *

  • • •

  FORTY-EIGHT hours later, with pain a constant throb in the back of her skull, Payal continued on with putting a line of succession in place. Too many lives and livelihoods depended on the Rao empire for her to leave it to flounder. She hadn’t yet notified any of the parties, but she had taken up Canto’s offer to have Arwen in the room when she had meetings with various people.

  She let it get around that she was interviewing him for a possible secondary assistant position, and he played the part, taking notes and fetching documents as needed. Ruhi, sure of her position since Payal had made it a point to tell her that she was to remain the most senior member of the office staff, had taken him under her wing.

  One thing was non-negotiable: the succession could not be put on Karishma’s shoulders. Payal’s sister was an artist, a gifted one. She no more understood business than Payal understood how to put paint together in such a way that it came alive on the canvas. But ownership of all Rao enterprises would remain hers, to be passed on to her children if she so wished.

  Payal intended to leave the oversight of her plan in Canto’s hands.

  He refused to discuss it with her, gritting his jaw and changing the subject anytime she tried to bring it up. But she knew that should the worst happen, he’d take care of it, take care of Kari. Because he was in her corner. Always.

  “Payal?” Arwen hesitated in the act of rising from the chair across from her own.

  The two of them had finished their final meeting of the day, and he was now free to do as he wished. He’d mentioned going to see the art that lined the walls of the lower floor of Vara.

  Her headache dull rather than sharp thanks to medication, she looked up. “Yes?” Protectiveness was a pulse in her veins. There was a gentleness to Arwen that made her want to wrap him up in cotton wool.

  Eyes of clear silver searched her face. “You’re not mad with Canto for how he’s acting, are you?” He swallowed. “He loves so hard—and the idea that he might lose you, it’s making him act angry and grumpy. He feels helpless and he hates that beyond anything.”

  “I know.” She still touched their bond compulsively, felt it grow stronger with every hour that passed. “I don’t know how to shield him from this, Arwen.” It devastated the feral girl in her that Canto would hurt after she was gone.

  Because it turned out even a survivor couldn’t outrace this clock.

  Eyes shining with wetness, Arwen shook his head. “You can’t shield from life—that’s what got our race into trouble in the first place.”

  She was still thinking of his words when Canto rolled his chair into her office. Darkness was falling outside, the lights of Delhi beginning to flicker to life. Stopping her work the instant he appeared, she rose to go over to him.

  He glowered at her but wove his fingers through hers. “You look exhausted. Have you eaten?”

  “I love you.” No more hiding from that huge emotion, no more cowardice. “Do you know?”

  “Yeah.” It came out as rough as his bristled cheek. “But it’s nice to hear it.”

  “Shall we go for a walk in the streets of Delhi?” She wanted to show him her city, the vibrancy and the chaos and the stark contrast of new and old.

  Canto’s eyes held no galaxies, his jaw a brutal line, but he nodded.

  He was a tense, alert presence at her side as they exited through the main gates of Vara.

  Which was why it didn’t surprise her in the least when he said, “Stop,” in a cold tone to a short and skinny man who’d darted toward her—from behind a tree outside the gates. He wore a satchel crosswise across his body.

  The man skidded to a halt, his dark eyes shifting to Payal. “Miss Payal, I have information for you,” he said in the local dialect.

  Canto had subtly angled his chair so he—and his hidden weapon—were in front of her.

  Wait, Canto. Payal put a hand on his shoulder. I think I recognize him. The memory was a few years old, and she couldn’t quite place the man, but he wasn’t a stranger. “Why are you lurking outside? You could have contacted me in other ways.” As the Rao CEO, she wasn’t easily accessible, but neither was she insulated from the outside world.

  He looked around, as if searching for watchers. “I wasn’t sure who to trust.”

  Canto, able to understand the dialect because she was permitting him to link to her in a way that was beyond telepathic, said, He’s Psy. Good shields, but nothing martial or extraordinary. No weapons that I can spot, though the satchel is suspect, and his body language isn’t threatening. More scared.

  Payal processed that, said, “All right. Let’s speak.” And because she saw his jittery gaze and constant swallowing, she invited him through the gates of Vara. Once safe from outside eyes, she led him into the garden and said, “You can speak freely. My home has been cleared of those not loyal to me.”

  Payal didn’t seek devotion from those who worked for her, but she did want to know that she could walk the halls of her home without worrying about a knife in the back. To Sunita, the member of staff who had been so very loyal to her, she’d offered a generous pension should the woman wish to retire, but Sunita was basking in her promotion to head of domestic staff and had no intention of retiring.

  It was a promotion long overdue; skilled and hardworking Sunita had been overlooked too many times in favor of Pranath’s favorites.

  “What is your name?” she asked the man who’d stopped her, the garden lights a soft glow against the falling night, and the leaves of the guava tree rustling in the gentle breeze.

  “Nikhil Varma.” Perspiration dotted his dark skin, though it wasn’t a hot night by Delhi standards. “I’m a cleaner. Chemical and medical waste.”

  Payal inclined her head. “A job with a degree of risk.” It was significantly higher paid than general cleaning, but it meant bulky protective gear and a chance of exposure if something went wrong.

  “I work at a Rao subsidiary,” he said, and used the back of his hand to wipe off his brow.

  “Is there a problem with the cleanup standards?” All of Rao was meant to be following the long-agreed-upon international environmental standards that protected the earth. Psy, changeling, or human, breaches of those laws were punished harshly and could tarnish the Rao name. Even Psy didn’t enjoy living in polluted surroundings.

  “What?” His eyes widened. “No, no. I do my work. I do it well.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Which subsidiary do you work at?”

  “Raja MedChem.”

  “That isn’t one of my companies.” Payal had the name of every major and minor company listed in an internal mental database.

  “That’s just it.” Nikhil darted a look toward Canto before shifting his attention back to Payal. “We heard in the lab that you’d sent out a change-of-ownership notice to the entire business, but nothing came to Raja MedChem. We waited and waited, but still nothing.”

  He wiped his forehead again. “I’ve been the cleaner there for years. No one considers me a threat. They talk around me . . . and I heard them talking about just quietly taking over the lab. Changing the documents to make it look like they were always independent.”

  I have to admire their ability to seize the day. Canto’s telepathic voice held a growl.

  “I appreciate this information,” Payal said, a hot, urgent thought blooming in the back of her mind. Canto. A secret lab.

  Fierce exultation in the bond that connected them.

  Chapter 47

  Our cap
acity for love may yet save us.

  —From The Dying Light by Harissa Mercant (1947)

  “I JUST . . . YOU helped her.” Nikhil’s face softened. “Visha.”

  “Visha Ramachandran?”

  A jerky nod. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel anything—we were meant to be Silent then, but it made me feel good to be around her. I used to work in the small Vara lab then. I heard what he did to her, what you did.” Quick blinking. “I heard that you looked after her.”

  “She’s doing well,” Payal told him. “If you wish, I can pass on your details to her, for when she next visits Delhi.”

  If hope could be said to have a face, it was this man’s. “Oh, yes, please.” He fumbled with the catch of his satchel. “I have more information.”

  Payal.

  I’m ready.

  Nikhil didn’t notice their alertness, he was so involved with opening his satchel. “I knew we had to be doing something important—your father was our only point of contact in Rao. That meant high-level.”

  He pushed his hand in, returned with a sheaf of papers. “I stole this,” he admitted. “Specs of the compounds we make at Raja. The top one is the priority.” Another dive into his bag, as Payal accepted the papers.

  “Here, I stole two vials of the newly made batch. I hope you won’t fire me, but I couldn’t work out how else to show you what we did. I thought you’d know.” He held out his palm . . . on which lay vials that glowed a piercing green.

  Payal’s entire world went silent. It has to be tested, she said to Canto with an almost preternatural calm. To make sure it’s what we’re looking for.

  Yes. A single gritty word.

  “Did . . . did I do the wrong thing?” Nikhil’s shaky question had her snapping out of her frozen state.

  Passing the papers to Canto, she took the vials and slipped them into her pockets. “No, you did exactly the right thing. Now, I need you to tell me everything about Raja MedChem.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE small specialized lab was back under Rao control in a matter of hours. The scientists who’d considered rebellion quickly changed their minds once they realized they were known to the Rao successor after all.

  Theirs had been a rebellion of opportunity, not passion.

  Canto had, by then, wiped all security footage of Nikhil’s actions, so that the man could slip back into his position like nothing had happened. It’d be a temporary one, as once they’d checked they had every detail about the manufacture of the drug, Payal intended to disband the lab and have her medication produced by a small, trusted unit. For now, the Aleines had done an emergency test on the vials Nikhil had appropriated, and confirmed it was her medication, so she’d been able to take a dose.

  As for Nikhil, he’d be receiving a serious promotion very soon.

  “Reward people who do the right thing,” Ena Mercant said to her when she visited Delhi the day following. “Make it clear by your actions that good work and ethics will get a person further along in your organization than corruption. Blind loyalty can’t be the first yardstick.”

  “Blind loyalty?”

  “Loyalty is a good thing,” Ena confirmed, “but you want people in your organization who aren’t afraid to challenge you or bring you ideas that break the rules. Your father rewarded only the loyal, and so was surrounded by toadies.

  “You want the kind of loyalty you have with Canto—where you know the person will back you, but they remain their own person, willing to stand against you if required. Nurture the strong who are faithful. That is true leadership.”

  “I understand,” Payal said, adding that piece of data to the decision matrix in her mind.

  “Most of all, keep on being who you are, Payal.” Ena’s eyes held approval when she turned them on Payal . . . and the older woman’s approbation mattered. A great deal. “You stand here today because you acted on your conscience and saved the life of a young woman—and in so doing, you set in motion a chain of events that led to the answer to your problems coming to your door. He came not because you are powerful, but because he trusts you.”

  Payal intended to follow Ena’s advice. “In the meantime,” she told Canto as the two of them lay in a hanging bed on a sprawling verandah in the back of Vara, “I passed on Nikhil’s regards to Visha.” The bed—which Payal had found in deep storage—swung gently in the evening light.

  “You romantic.”

  Payal laughed, wild and unfettered. It came easier now, finding a balance between sanity and total erasure of self. “She blushed because she remembered him, too. She was also proud, I think, when I told her that Nikhil had risked himself to warn me of insurrection. Her shoulders grew straighter, and her eyes shone.”

  “The man is a hero to her now.” His arm her pillow, Canto now curved his hand around to rub his knuckles over her cheek. “You’d better get ready for a wedding invitation soon.”

  Payal moved to lean over him—a maneuver it should’ve been impossible to make easily in this bed designed to swing, but there were advantages to being a telekinetic. Including the fact she could freeze the bed in place when Canto wanted to shift in or out of his chair.

  His beloved face was relaxed as he looked up at her, galaxies in his eyes and his hair damp from the swim they’d just taken in the secluded lake to which she’d teleported them. Soon Vara would have a pool. Being in the water was important to Canto, and so it was important to Payal.

  “Should we?” she asked him.

  “Should we?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Get married.” It wasn’t a Psy thing, but weddings in Delhi were always loud, colorful events, and Payal felt like making a loud, colorful start to her new life.

  Canto’s lips curved in a slow smile. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  She grinned, kicking up her legs. “Yes.”

  “Okay, but you have to get me a ring. And I’m not budging on a small, pretty cake for our private—and naked—post-wedding celebrations.”

  Laughing, she climbed on top of him, her 7J who had never forgotten a single one of her dreams. “Agreed. Done deal.”

  This man, he was hers. For always.

  Divergence

  Coherence, connection, bonds, that has always been the answer. We must fight to hold on to that which makes us a sentient society capable of empathy and hope and joy.

  —From The Dying Light by Harissa Mercant (1947)

  If enough believe, does delusion become reality? What is reality but the will of the masses?

  —Discussion question: Philosophy 101

  IN THE HEART of the Substrate, an unbreakable tendril that connected two anchors sparked with blue fire that began other small fires. As they burned, the waters of the Substrate grew clearer, until parts were translucent limned with blue. Even Ager was astonished, such purity of Substrate flow unseen in their long lifetime.

  Deep in the PsyNet, in the mind of an anchor unlike any other, a neosentience in danger of losing itself forever took its first clear “breath” in hundreds of years. It wasn’t Psy, changeling, or human, its thought patterns unknowable, but it watched the bond deep beneath the starlit sky of the PsyNet as a mother watches her children.

  With hope. With fear. With wonder.

  It sent the mind in which it hid images of a drop of water falling onto a dry seabed, a single blade of grass coming to life in a desert, a tiny iridescent butterfly in a huge rocky gorge.

  Even as that mind woke and asked, “Is it enough?” another, far more twisted mind came to wakefulness.

  The Queen of the Scarabs, she called herself now, though others still said the Architect. The name didn’t matter, only what she was, what she’d become. A spider with endless tentacles, endless disciples.

  The Psy, those inferior minds, had stopped the first wave, but unbeknownst to all but the queen, that h
ad been a test strike to evaluate the enemy. She’d held back many of her children, sacrificed others.

  No more.

  It was time to unleash their full might while the Net was in good enough shape to handle the deluge—but not so strong that it could repel so many of her children acting in concert. Because she knew what to do now. To be a true queen, she had to first rule her own kingdom.

  The easiest way to do that was to take the action the Ruling Coalition had been too cowardly to complete—tear off a piece of the PsyNet, isolate it so it was an island on which the Scarabs ruled. Where she ruled.

  She had everything she needed, everyone she needed. Because amongst her children were three of the bright minds needed to anchor a broken piece. So mad they were, quite out of control had she not squeezed walls around their minds that made them appear sane to their brethren, but they could do their task.

  They would sit below her island and hold it up.

  Are you ready, my children?

  Yes, Mother.

  It is time. Cut the threads, make the excision. Let the Net bleed.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A very special thank-you to Hasna Saadani for reading a draft of this book and taking the time to provide honest and in-depth feedback. You are incredibly kind and generous, and Last Guard is a better book because of you.

  My thanks also to Karen Lamming and Vladimir Samozvanov, for coming to my rescue once again on a Russian question.

  Any errors are mine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nalini Singh is the New York Times bestselling author of the Psy-Changeling novels and the Guild Hunter series.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.