by Nalini Singh
The chaos of thoughts tumbled through Silver's brain in the space of a few heartbeats. Within those heartbeats, her telepathic senses were spreading out, evaluating the threats in the room. She didn't get far. Her head was thick, felt foggy. But that wasn't why. Silver could push through that, could force herself to function even when she was at less than a hundred percent.
She stopped because her psychic senses had brushed up against a mind that had once encompassed her own. She'd been a child at the time, one learning to handle violent telepathic abilities that left her vulnerable to the torrent of noise the world threw at her. "Grandmother." Her voice came out rough, as if her throat were lined with grit.
"Here." Her grandmother, seated in a chair beside Silver's bed, slipped chips of ice between her lips.
Regardless of the questions pounding at her, Silver forced herself to be patient. That was another lesson her grandmother had taught her: to control her psychic abilities, Silver had to learn to leash her impulsive nature.
Ena Mercant didn't believe in flaws or perfection. "We are who we are and we are strong" was her oft-stated motto. It was a motto that had been passed down from one head of the family to the next in an unbroken line.
As a result, the Mercants didn't single out children for traits that would've had them labeled failures in many other families. Instead, all Mercant children were trained and educated according to their natural inclinations. In some cases, that meant utilizing the natural trait. In others, it meant training the child to be aware of facets that might negatively impact his or her psychic stability.
Today, Silver utilized an old mental exercise to keep her questions from pouring out onto the audible or psychic plane. At the same time, as her brain woke to its usual sharpness, she continued her psychic scan . . . and came up against a mind she couldn't read but that was familiar nonetheless. That hard outer "shell" impervious to psychic intrusion belonged to a changeling.
The presence of a changeling wasn't unusual. From the data she'd already gathered about her situation, she was obviously in a hospital; running into changeling or human minds was to be expected. This mind, however . . .
"What is Valentin doing here?" she asked before she realized what it would betray. She'd recognized her grandmother's mind because they had a telepathic pathway between them that had existed for nearly twenty-nine years, the imprint so familiar the knowledge was ingrained. That didn't apply with Valentin.
Yet despite the fact she couldn't even sense Valentin's surface thoughts, his natural shield too powerful, she knew without a doubt that it was him. If anyone had asked her to explain, she'd have been reduced to saying the mind "tasted" like him.
For a Psy, that was a ridiculous explanation.
It was fortunate her grandmother didn't ask her how she'd so quickly pinpointed his identity. "He's the reason you're breathing right now." No change in Ena's tone, but Silver turned her eyes from the closed door to the room and toward the woman who'd been the defining force in her life. She had highly competent parents who'd shared child-rearing duties when it came to Silver, but it was to Ena that Silver had always looked for guidance.
"Like recognizes like," her mother had once said to her. "She understands you better than I ever will."
It was true. Silver rarely had to explain her thought processes to her grandmother.
"I remember Alpha Nikolaev turning up on my doorstep with a data crystal," she said in response to her grandmother's statement. "Then, nothing." The black spot in her memory brought her up short. "Did I have a seizure?"
"It wasn't as a result of a physical ailment or degeneration," Ena said, answering the most critical question. "You ingested a comparatively fast-acting poison."
Silver took in the information, separated it out into its components, absorbed it. Her mind went back to her morning before Valentin had knocked on the door. Why he didn't use the perfectly functional intercom was not a question she wasted time asking. Bears, she'd learned, often did things that were inexplicable just because they could.
Valentin had turned that into an art form.
"I ate dinner at eight the previous night, went to sleep at ten thirty. I woke sixty minutes prior to Alpha Nikolaev's arrival," she said, working it through. "I spent thirty minutes doing yoga." Another exercise she'd been taught to help her regulate her naturally chaotic mental patterns, the exercise now a part of her.
"Twenty-five minutes to shower and dress for the day." It took so long because she had to put on makeup and fix her hair in precisely the right fashion. Icily Silent or open to emotion, Psy reacted to physical stimuli the same as any other race. Silver's appearance was carefully calibrated to trigger a certain subconscious response.
"I spent the next few minutes going through the messages that had come in during my sleeping hours, at the same time preparing a nutrient drink." She remembered drinking half a glass before the familiar heavy knock on her door. "I placed the still half-full glass on the counter alongside my organizer not long afterward, went to open the door to Alpha Nikolaev."
"Did you know it was him?"
"The only two people who knock on my door that early in the morning are my neighbor and Alpha Nikolaev. As Monique Ling is currently in Hong Kong, that left only him." She didn't say she'd recognized the knock, the psychic sense of him. "I was speaking to him, and that's the point where my mind goes blank."
Staying in her seated position beside the bed, her grandmother filled her in. Some of it Silver had already guessed--including that the poison must've been in her nutrient mix. The rest was new.
"Alpha Nikolaev saw me convulse?" Silver was Silent, had consciously retained her conditioning even as the PsyNet began to fill with emotion around her. As a result, she didn't like or dislike things, wasn't happy or unhappy about any given situation. Valentin seeing her while she was so vulnerable, however, changed the power dynamic between them.
That could not be permitted to stand.
Bears had a tendency to stomp their way over opposition they considered weak. Silver wasn't about to be stomped.
"He contacted Kaleb, got you here." Ena closed her hand over Silver's wrist, the physical contact from her grandmother so rare that it was a severe jolt to her equilibrium. "The bear alpha also found poison in a second unopened jar of nutrient mix."
Silver's lashes lowered. When they rose again, she knew why her grandmother was concerned enough to breach the strict rules by which the Mercant family had functioned and survived the years the Silence Protocol ruled the Psy. Because their genetic line had never been naturally inclined toward emotionlessness.
Mercants had been warriors through time, had roared in battle, had run with "fury in the blood," according to old documents Silver had been given access to six months earlier, when she began to take on some of her grandmother's duties. They'd also birthed fiery poets and playwrights whose prose was lauded to this day. Their line was said to be full of passion. To Silver, passion was a mere intellectual concept, but she understood that it denoted wildness.
As a result, Silence had never been an easy fit for them. But along with passion, Silver's ancestors had repeatedly demonstrated a steely will. That, too, was a trait that ran true in their line, and it had allowed them to not only survive but also thrive under Silence.
As a family.
An intense capacity for loyalty was their greatest strength.
"None of my security systems have been set off anytime during the past year," she told her grandmother. "I restocked the cupboard with six new jars of nutrient mix six months ago." They were designed to hold their food value for a number of years. "It took me much longer than usual to finish the first jar because I inadvertently bought several packs of nutrition bars with a short use-by date that I had to eat first."
"Who has been in your apartment in that period?"
Silver held her grandmother's eyes, knowing her words would be an anvil smashing into everything Ena Mercant had fought to build. "Family," she said quietly. "The only pe
ople who have been in my apartment over the past six months are members of the family." Usually, that would've meant well under ten people overall--likely her cousin, Ivan, who worked in building security; her brother; and possibly another Mercant or two passing through Moscow who needed to touch base for reasons of family or business, or who'd asked to stay in her spare bedroom while in the city.
However, approximately five months earlier, Silver had hosted a large meeting that focused on Kaleb's acceptance into the Mercant family. Not as an outsider they trusted, but as one of them. He hadn't been at the meeting, the meeting about him. The discussion had been robust, but in the end, they'd come to a unanimous decision.
Silver had always known it would go that way. Ena had already decided, and her grandmother was the one who set the course of the Mercant family. She'd also known Ena would listen carefully to all the pros and cons, on the slim chance that she'd missed weighing an important factor.
"During the meeting," Silver continued, "I kept no track of the family's movements in my apartment." She hadn't thought she needed to be vigilant; these were Mercants. Their family maxim was Cor meum familia est. My heart is family. The emotional maxim came from a time long before Silence, but they'd left it unchanged because Silence or not, it spoke to what tied their family together, what kept them strong even as others faltered and fell.
Her grandmother's fingers curved over her wrist. "I've already locked down your security and will personally look into every member of the family who has been in your apartment in the past six months. I'll also review all movements in the corridor outside your apartment in the operative window. Whatever it takes, I'll find out who tried to kill my granddaughter."
"Grandmother." Silver sat up, her head having cleared in the interim. "This is my--"
"No, Silver, this is a family problem." Her grandmother's eyes pinned her in place. "You may assist--I will share the data with you, but the most pressing matter is to get you into a secure living space where no one will question why you can't have familial visitors."
Silver considered her options. Because her grandmother was right--if she began turning away those who were Mercants, it would create fine fractures in the structure of the family. That result might even be the poisoner's intent. Silver needed to take herself out of circulation while the traitor was brought to ground.
A single bad seed could not be permitted to poison an entire family.
"I could relocate to the outskirts of Moscow," she suggested. "Family members are far less likely to pass through that region."
"Since there are no secure apartment buildings that far out, you'll have to either hire a full complement of security, or leave yourself open."
That, too, was true. As was another fact: Ena Mercant was too smart not to have used the time Silver had been unconscious to come up with a solution. Oh. All at once, she knew why Valentin was outside her room. Ena wouldn't have permitted him that close unless she needed him there.
"StoneWater?" She stared at her normally very sensible and rational grandmother. "Impossible."
Chapter 4
Glasses broken: 132. Chairs broken: 12. Jukeboxes turned upside down because some bear thought it was hilarious: 1.
Bill to follow. (No charge for the spilled alcohol. Your bears were very careful not to do that. That bill's going to Selenka.)
--E-mail to Alpha Nikolaev from Nina Rodchenko, manager of Club Moscow
"WHY?" ENA ASKED. "It's an easy sell--we tell everyone you're spending time with the bears to gain a better insight into how changelings view the world so you can more efficiently run EmNet."
It was a brilliant idea, could well strengthen EmNet's credibility in the eyes of those who believed a Psy shouldn't be at the helm of what was effectively a humanitarian organization. But--"Grandmother, you're unaware of the differences between the various changeling groups."
"Explain."
"Living with leopards might be an option," Silver said. "They're independent and tend to make homes far from one another, while remaining a tightly knit unit. Similar to the predatory bird clans like the eagles. And all akin to our family." She paused to put her thoughts in order. "From everything I know, bears are like wolves but worse."
"In what way?"
"Wolves create large dens where they live in family or couple units, and while they have single-individual residences, each person is still part of a bigger whole. To find true privacy, you'd have to leave the den and go out some distance into the wilderness." Because, apparently, wolves liked to follow packmates and make sure said packmates were okay.
That was what she'd once heard from Selenka when the wolf alpha made a rare visit to Kaleb's Moscow office. Silver couldn't recall what had led to this particular conversation, but the BlackEdge alpha had laughingly told her that though she was alpha, her packmates had come looking for her a few days earlier when she'd taken off for a hard run and not returned for a day.
"Bears," she said to her grandmother, "are worse by a factor of multiples."
Silver had little personal experience with them, aside from Valentin's visits and the odd meeting with StoneWater's second-in-command, Anastasia, but she knew how to listen, and she lived in a region with a strong ursine presence. She'd heard more than enough over the years to build up what she believed was a fairly accurate picture. "They live right on top of one another and have no concept of what it means to be a loner."
"That makes little sense. Natural bears are not community-minded."
"Unfortunately, it appears the human instinct to be social has been supercharged in changeling bear genetics. I'll have an aneurysm with that much togetherness."
Her grandmother didn't reply for some time, her thought processes as opaque as always. "If they're that close," she said at last, "no stranger would ever get to you. According to the research I did while waiting for you to wake, bears also have an incomparable sense of smell, so you'd be in no danger from poisons."
Searching for anything to get her out of this, Silver said, "Do you know how many Moscow bars have a bear surcharge? All of them." Silver knew that because she knew her city. "Something always seems to get broken when a group of bears is out to have a good time."
"Yet they aren't banned."
"For some inexplicable reason, people like bears, even if they break things." As with Silver and Valentin, the bar owners kept opening their doors to the rowdiest possible guests.
"Good," Ena said.
"Good?"
"To be so welcome regardless of their propensity for disorderly behavior, they must be generally good-natured. However, their reputation means no one will possibly imagine that you'd want to live with the bears for any reason but political expediency."
Ena held up a hand when Silver would've interrupted. "The poisoner, after all, has no way of predicting exactly when you'll open one of the contaminated jars. So he or she won't assume you're leaving your apartment in response to a security breach."
Silver continued to stare at her grandmother. "You couldn't live in such surroundings."
"No." Ena rose to her feet, her tunic and wide-legged pants a pale shade of green, the ornate ruby pendant she wore on a long silver chain an heirloom passed down from one leader of the family to the next. Depending on the individual wearing it, the pendant sometimes became a watch chain or a brooch. Other times, it was carried in a pocket rather than worn.
Silver had seen it around her grandmother's neck all her life.
"But," Ena added, "you're young enough to adapt. You must. The world is changing, and Mercants have survived so many centuries, so many empires, because we adapt without losing the core of who we are."
Silver was having difficulty processing what her grandmother was saying. "Are you telling me to breach Silence?" She knew Ena believed Silence gave them strength when the world around them was falling prey to emotion. But for a single exception, those who could think with crystal-clear pragmatism would always win over the emotionally led.
But that wa
sn't the deciding factor when it came to Silver--discarding Silence wasn't a choice for her, would never be a choice. Not if she wished to stay sane, stay alive. "You know I can't." There was a reason her sub-designation had been considered extinct pre-Silence.
"Of course I know." Her grandmother's response was a rebuke. "What I'm telling you is that you need to learn to function at peak efficiency in a changed world. Silence has fallen; Psy and changelings and humans are beginning to intermingle, mate, produce offspring. Our family must not be left behind."
Steely gray eyes held Silver's, the power in them a pulse against her skin. "You must understand this new world better than anyone else in the family. You will lead after I'm gone."
Silver did not ever think of her grandmother's mortality; Ena was too strong, too much a force of nature. "You're only eighty-three years of age." Those of her grandmother's generation were forecast to live to a hundred and twenty at least.
"Life is a volatile process, Silver. When you were born, I could've never predicted that, today, we'd be living in a world where the most brutally powerful cardinal in the Net would be openly in love with a woman whose closest friends are emotion-drenched empaths."
Ena's gaze was distant, seeing a past that had once been her present. "Designation E was outlawed then, empaths considered useless. Yet now, it is the Es who hold the PsyNet together. Without them, we'd all eventually fall prey to ravening madness. Even the most gifted foreseers did not see this coming."
Silver had nothing to say to that--her grandmother was right. Change was a juggernaut crashing through the world. It could not be stopped, could not be turned back. Not that Silver would make the latter choice even were it possible. Silence was necessary for her, but for others, it was a cage. Empaths, brutalized by having their natural abilities crushed and belittled, were simply the most obvious casualties.
That wasn't even the worst of it.
It was open knowledge now that the century of Silence had done catastrophic damage to the fabric of the PsyNet. All Psy needed the biofeedback provided by their connection to a psychic network. Cut that link and an excruciating death would follow in a matter of minutes. Silence had poisoned that critical network, fostering pockets of seething darkness formed of all the emotions the Psy refused to feel.
