Canto’s lips curved. While waiting for Lalit’s reply, he’d pulled up a number of suitable images and edited out the people in them. Leaving only the location. Then he sent the message: Oh, okay! Here’s a picture. Can’t wait to see you!

A second later, he heard a step upstairs. Right where he’d wanted Lalit to ’port in.

The man had raised a telepathic shield and was moving with care.

Switching on his recording equipment, Canto turned his chair to face the door into his comm room, his mind calm and the weapon he slid into his hand as cool as glass.

“Kari, oh sweet Kari.” Lalit’s voice was singsong as he came down the stairs. “What are you doing in this place with so many trees? I’ve come to take you home, little sister.” A small laugh. “I’m going to send you to see Father.”

Canto didn’t take his attention off the door.

Lalit’s surprise at coming face-to-face not with his youngest sibling but with an armed Canto was almost comical. His eyes flared.

That single moment of indecision was all Canto needed.

Single shot. Center of the forehead.

There was no other way to win against a powerful telekinetic.

Lalit crashed to the floor, dead before he hit it, but Canto went across and checked to make sure he really was gone. “Grandmother,” he murmured, “you’d be proud of my accuracy.”

Ena had made him practice as a teen until he could shoot a fly off an apple. Today, that training had ended one nightmare for Payal. Now they had to figure out the answer to the second one—because even the Aleines weren’t magic. They couldn’t come up with answers in a matter of days.

He and Payal had to locate Pranath’s stash of the medication, buy her time.

Canto, Lalit’s mind just disappeared from the PsyNet.

Sliding away his weapon, Canto said, He came here. I took care of him. Where do you want his body? Lalit couldn’t vanish; people had to know he was dead.

Sounds from upstairs, feet flying down the stairs. The woman who appeared in the doorway was his 3K, fury in her face and determination in her body. “You’re okay.” Ignoring her dead sibling, she crossed over to brace her hands on his shoulders, her chest heaving. “Canto, you’re okay. He came here to kill you.”

“No. He wanted to kill your sister.” Canto felt no guilt whatsoever.

Gripping her nape with one hand, he kissed her hard. “I think you need to reappear with him so no one doubts your power. Tell them the truth—that he invaded the home of a Mercant and was shot as a result.” No one was going to come after Canto for eliminating a man who’d already committed one murder this day. “Because the two of us? We’re in the open now.”

Payal frowned. “You don’t like being in public.”

“I like being by your side.” Then he scowled. “Baby, you’re exhausted. Your fucking cheekbones are like glass. Let me get you some food, then you can teleport home.”

Payal just looked at him for a long time, before giving the smallest smile. “Okay, 7J.”

Chapter 45

The NetMind feels like a kitten in my head today, Max. Excited and jumpy and so very young. As if it can sense something on the horizon that makes it happy.

—Sophia Russo to Max Shannon

THE FALLOUT FROM her father’s murder and Lalit’s death took Payal less time to handle than she might’ve predicted. It turned out Lalit had very few loyalists, and those she fired off the bat. As for her father’s people, that was more complicated—many were highly skilled and necessary to the business.

In the end, she kept most of them. Not the ones like the secretary, but there were very few in that innermost circle. As for the others … while they weren’t people she would ever trust as she’d trust those who’d been loyal to her when she had little power, they were now hers. They knew she hadn’t murdered the man to whom they’d been faithful, and thus they’d transferred their loyalty from father to child.

She was also planning for a certain level of attrition. The Rao family was never again going to function as it’d done under Pranath. For one, her sister was coming home—after Payal cleared Vara of anyone who might make Kari feel flawed or like a mistake or in any way less.

As for Lalit, Enforcement had interviewed Canto, decided he was telling the truth after viewing the surveillance footage from the standoff, and that was the end of it. She’d had the feeling the entire thing had been nothing but theater, the decision already made behind the scenes.

“So much power, Canto,” Payal said to him in the aftermath, as she stood beside him on the highest external vantage point in Vara, Delhi cloaked in the first flush of night around them. “Aren’t you afraid it’ll corrupt you?” Mercants had tentacles everywhere, could conceivably pervert any system.

“Arwen lived inside me for ten years of his life. I couldn’t be evil if I tried my hardest.” He placed one hand on her lower back, the contact as familiar as the touch of their bond.

“But even without that,” he added, “you’ve met my grandmother. She is the fountainhead from which all of us flow, as she flowed from the fountainhead of her grandmother, all the way back to the Mercant who was knight to a king. We’ve never forgotten who we are.” He nudged her toward him.

Curling into his lap was second nature to her now, and she did so with ease, laying her head against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. “I want to build that same kind of honor into the Rao line,” she confessed. “I want those who come after me to be good people.”

“Then it’ll happen,” Canto said. “Nothing stands in the way of Payal Rao when she’s decided on something.”

A point of pain in Payal’s temple, a reminder that she faced one obstacle that she couldn’t strategize away and that even the Mercant network couldn’t fix. Canto had gone so far as to locate a Tk who worked on the micro-med level—such a rare, rare ability—and they’d discussed ’porting the tumors out of her brain.

But the thing was, the disease that created the tumors came from her connection to the Substrate. They would grow again and again, and the position of the tumors meant even the gentlest telekinetic surgical removal could cause permanent damage.

“You’re hurting.” Canto hated that he couldn’t fix this for Payal, hated it. He’d used every possible connection, as had every member of his family, and still nothing.