possible the Mercants hadn’t truly accepted Canto, that they forced him to stay out of sight? No. The Mercants were known to prize family loyalty; they would not have rejected a child they’d claimed. Which left one other possibility—that Canto Mercant was so invisible because he ran the Mercant information network.
That was how he’d found her.
Still thinking, she walked out onto her balcony. The air was hot but clean thanks to a smog-dissolution device invented by the local tiger pack. Payal had recently negotiated a deal to license a related device designed to eliminate the limited pollution currently created by certain Rao industrial interests.
Despite the clear financial returns forecast as a result, her father had stated she was an idiot for “dealing with the animals,” but her father was no longer CEO. Pranath Rao might have an ace in the hole that meant he could pull her strings, control her on a personal level, but he knew she’d choose the nuclear option if he tried to hobble her business decisions.
This was a new world, and Payal intended to take the Rao empire into it, not be left behind. Which was why she lifted her phone with its encrypted line to her ear after inputting the call code Canto Mercant had included with his letter. She had no idea of his physical location, so she didn’t know if it was night or day there, but when he answered after four rings, his tone, though gravelly and deep, was alert.
“Canto.” A single hard word.
“You sent me a letter,” she said without identifying herself, even though he had to have sent letters to more than one A.
“Payal Rao.” No hesitation. “You sound exactly as you do in the interviews I’ve watched.”
She wondered if he was referring to the “robot” description that had stuck to her like glue. True enough if he was; she took care to never allow her shields to drop, never allow the world to see through to the screams hidden in the deepest corner of her psyche. To do that would be to sentence herself to death.
The Rao family had made an art form of the term “survival of the fittest.”
“You’re attempting to set up an anchor union,” she said, wanting him to lay out his cards, this invisible man who knew too much. “To what purpose?”
“The Ruling Coalition has—from all evidence so far—good intentions, but they’re making decisions without knowledge of a critical factor. You’re a hub. You know full well what I’m talking about.”
Payal’s hand tightened on the phone at the brusque challenge in his tone. “We need to talk face-to-face.” Negotiating with a faceless voice was not how she did business; she liked to see her allies—and her enemies. “For all I know, you’re a clever twelve-year-old hacker from Bangalore.”
Payal hadn’t meant it as a joke. She didn’t do jokes. But she had enough life experience to know that a human or changeling would’ve laughed at the comment. Perhaps an empath, too. The rest of her race was yet coming to terms with being permitted to feel emotion.
She hadn’t worked out where Canto Mercant fell on that spectrum, and his response to her comment didn’t offer any additional insight. “I’ll message you an image for a teleport lock. Can you meet in fifteen minutes?”
“Agreed.”
Hanging up, she stared at her vibrant city. The slow feline stride of a woman below caught her eye, and she knew even from a distance that one of the GoldenNight tigers had ventured into the city streets.
Unlike many feline changeling groups, the tigers and leopards of India didn’t mind interacting with city populations, but they didn’t live in the urban centers. The spaces were too constrained, the pathways too cramped.
As the changeling prowled out of sight, a scooter swerved around a town car, while three pedestrians with shopping bags decided to stop traffic by simply stepping out onto the road to cross.
She’d once hosted a meeting with a Psy business associate normally based out of Geneva. The man had recoiled at the energetic beat of her city. “How can you live here?” he’d asked. “So many people, so much noise, everything … unorganized.”
He was wrong.
Delhi was highly organized. You just had to be a local to see it. But before being a denizen of this old city, before being the Rao CEO, Payal was an anchor.
That thought in mind, she picked up her encrypted organizer once more. Canto Mercant had sent the image as promised: of an oasis in a desert, one made