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 wasn’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.”