The Rival Read online

  What Rugad feared was that the Failures believed that he would never arrive, that they would be long dead before the Fey tried ever again to invade Blue Isle. That would be the worst crime, and punishable by severe torture, and death.

  They knew it too. Which made his invasion of Blue Isle doubly difficult. The Failures had lived here for a long time. The Black Throne was represented in the King's family as well as in the Fey. The Failures could, legitimately, fight for the Islanders.

  The Failures could also start a second front.

  Rugad had been careful not to bring family here. His army had no attachment to his son's. All they wanted to do was correct the Fey disgrace. He would have to use all his powers of persuasion to convince the most blood-thirsty to take prisoners first, kill later. That way he could make certain there were no Blood bastards among the Failures. All he needed to do was accidentally kill one of his own family.

  The entire world would erupt into flames.

  He hadn't Seen that, of course, but he was savvy enough to know there were many things a Visionary never saw. Visionaries were not all-knowing, despite their wish to be so. They were fallible like everyone else. The only difference was that they had more opportunities to make things right.

  "We shall deal with the Failures after we locate my great-grandson."

  "You think this pause will warn him, make him come to you?"

  Rugad shook his head. "I suspect he knows nothing of me. His mother and grandfather died when he was still a child. No. I need to have him brought to me."

  "Brought to you?" Wisdom asked. "Who would do that? A Failure? You would want one of those Fey in camp?"

  "No," Rugad said. "We can't trust them. This is what I want to happen. I want you to send Flurry to their King and demand his surrender."

  "Surrender," Wisdom repeated, as if the word were a curse.

  "Surrender. We are not giving him a chance to build an army or even to get out of this. We are giving him the opportunity to show us my great-grandson. He will, of course, protest. Jewel told him that he would be family, and he will say that."

  "A Wisp can't argue with their King. Flurry isn't the man. We should send a delegation."

  "They'd never let a delegation in. A Wisp can get through any closed door. Flurry doesn't need strength. He needs courage. And he's a good observer. He will find my great-grandson for me."

  Wisdom sighed, and shook his head. His scowl had grown deeper. "I don't know why you think their King will act this way. We've heard predictions about behavior before. You're the one who told me that we should never believe how someone is going to act until they do act that way."

  "True enough," Rugad said. "But I Saw Jewel make her bargain with him. I know what she told him. He will act according to that. There is also a Shaman here. I'm sure the Islander King has been warned about making war on the Blood."

  "And if he hasn't?"

  "He's not my concern," Rugad said. "He is not my Blood nor shall he ever be. In-Laws can die. My son proved that in the Oudoun campaign. It must be the Blood, the true Blood, like my great-grandson. Once we find him, we're free to conquer these hopeless people."

  "What if he doesn't want to conquer these people?"

  "What choice does he have?" Rugad said. "He's a boy who has no warrior training. I have fought battles since I was twelve. He'll listen to me. He'll go to Leut, just as I told you, and he'll go as a conqueror."

  Wisdom was quiet for a moment. Then he raised his head, his dark eyes bright. 'he plan does have a symmetry."

  "Of course it does," Rugad said. "And I've only told you a tiny portion of it. We've only just begun here, Wisdom. By the time we're through, the Fey defeat on this Isle will be more than a memory. It will be known as a lull in the battle."

  "So you expect to win where Rugar did not."

  Rugad smiled. His son had been a failure as a Visionary and as a commander long before he came to Blue Isle. The comparison was unfair. But Rugad didn't dare say so, or the Fey would start to question then why he had sent his son.

  It certainly wasn't because he trusted him to succeed.

  He had relied on him to fail.

  And Rugar had failed.

  Spectacularly.

  "Of course I expect to win," Rugad said. He leaned back on the cot and closed his eyes. "Have you ever known me to lose?"

  NINE

  Arianna took a step deeper into the room. The air had a wild scent, the smell of loam and pine mixed with something she had never smelled before. The light shining through her brother's open windows cast halos around the two men. She felt an odd lightness, as if this were all a dream.

  The Fey beside her brother was as tall as Sebastian, and his hair was as dark. They looked startlingly alike. Only the Fey's face was alive in ways that Sebastian's wasn't. And the Fey's eyes were blue. Sebastian's were a stone gray.

  Solanda hadn't told Arianna about all the different kinds of magick. Was there a kind that stole the essence of a person? Was this a Doppelgänger?

  "Get away from my brother," she said in Fey, hands clenched. "Get away from him now."

  "Sebastian," the Fey said in Islander. His voice was deep, warm. Familiar in a way she couldn't place. "Come with me."

  Sebastian turned his head slowly. The light caught the webbed lines on his features, faint crack-like marks he had had since their mother died.

  Since Arianna was born.

  "Ari … too?" Sebastian didn't seem worried. He accepted the presence of this strange man when he never accepted the presence of someone he hadn't met.

  The Fey seemed to take Sebastian's question seriously. "Arianna can come only if she asks no questions. We have to go."

  "Of course I'm going to ask questions," she snapped, not liking their closeness, not liking the way they talked of her as if she weren't there. "I'm not running off with some strange Fey based on his word."

  "Sebastian," the Fey said. He continued to ignore her. "Please?"

  Sebastian's mouth worked. His eyes moved from the Fey to Arianna and back again. "Can't … choose."

  "Well, I can," Arianna said. She walked up to the Fey. She was almost as tall as he was. He looked down at her, and she saw Sebastian in his face.

  Sebastian and their father.

  But she didn't have time to comprehend it. She shoved the Fey's chest, expecting it to be rock-solid like Sebastian's. It wasn't. She could feel the lines of his ribs, the softness of his skin. That familiarity washed over her again.

  "Get out of here," she said to cover the strangeness.

  "Don't send me away. You don't understand — "

  "I understand enough," she said. "I understand that you're trying to kidnap my brother. I know what Fey can do, and you won't harm him, no matter what you want. Now get out."

  She shoved again. This time he had to take a step backwards to keep his balance.

  Sebastian moaned, and reached a hand up in protest. Then the nurse's voice echoed from the hall. The Fey shot a panicked glance to Sebastian, then dove out of the window on his own, catching a tree branch and shimmying down it.

  " … Gift … ?" Sebastian said and started toward the window.

  Arianna beat him there. The Fey was running through the garden. She wasn't going to let him get away this time. He would tell her what he was doing in the palace. If he didn't, she would assume he was trying to kidnap her brother.

  And he would pay.

  "Tell nurse that I went after him," she said to Sebastian. "Have her send guards."

  Arianna's body compacted down into its robin shape. Her robe pooled around her, and she leapt out of its restraining folds. Then she took one step back and flew out the window.

  Behind her, she thought she heard Sebastian wail, "Noooooo," but she didn't know why. She could either go back and protect him or find that Fey and see what he really wanted.

  He had left a swath of destruction in the garden. Trampled flowers, shorn bushes and broken tree limbs. Birds were circling above, cawing at her, com
plaining about his bad manners. When she finally saw him, he was running through the final copse of trees.

  She had chased him this way before.

  Somehow he had outwitted her and made his way back to the palace.

  Her anger flared even more.

  He knew the grounds. He had been here before. Who knew how long he'd been coming to see Sebastian? Did it take a long time for a Fey Doppelgänger to Shift into his prey? She had always understood that the process was quick, but she had never seen it happen.

  She was flying as fast as she could, but her wings were growing tired. She had never been a robin for long, always preferring to circle the garden, stare out at the city, take in the river, and return home. For the first time, she was getting winded. What happened to birds when they couldn't breathe?

  The Fey reached the fence and rolled into a hole beneath it. That's where he had hid. She had been right above him. She cursed, unable to form the words properly through her beak. A jay near her screeched and flew away, over the line of squat guard buildings on the other side of the fence.

  Beyond the guard buildings were shops and one bedroom homes. People were going about their business, oblivious to the Fey man in their midst. They probably couldn't even see him in his protected spot under the stone fence.

  Then he crawled out on the other side, clawing his way up the dirt embankment to the guard buildings, and she dove at him, heading for his face, his eyes. She would peck his eyes out for attacking her brother. He would —

  Suddenly she couldn't move her wings. A fine gauze web was wrapped around her, stopping her momentum. It was attached to tiny sparks of light. She snapped at the web, her strong beak cutting through it. She shoved her feathered body through the hole, freeing a wing, as the lights encircled her again. Then she snapped at one of them, and with a puff of smoke, it turned into a tiny being, no bigger than her beak, naked, with blue wings rising off its back.

  "Stop," the tiny woman said, "we're friends."

  "Friends don't kidnap my brother," Arianna said.

  "He is your brother. We've never kidnapped him."

  Arianna couldn't make sense of the statement so she didn't even try. She freed the other wing, then flew at the Fey man again. He raised his arms to his face.

  Someone screamed above her. Someone else yelled her name and a phrase in Fey.

  Beware the Chaos.

  Arianna didn't know what it meant, so she ignored it. She gripped the Fey man's finger in her claws when a hand grabbed her. She pecked at the hand, and it released her. She flew above it, and saw a shadowy woman, tall and thin, her features indistinct.

  The shadowy woman shouted in Fey, "Gift, run!" and the male Fey did, his feet churning the dirt beneath him.

  Guards were running from the palace and the guard buildings. People were shouting from the side of the road. Arianna flew after the Fey man, determined to get him in a more private spot.

  He had brought an entire Fey attack force with him, to get her brother.

  Or to turn into her brother.

  If they got him before his coming of age ceremony, if they replaced him, then that Fey would lead the country. No slow half-breed, but a quick agile full-Fey.

  She wouldn't allow it. Her father had sacrificed a lot for her, and even more for Sebastian. These Fey couldn't take it away. Solanda had always said the Fey were cunning, but Arianna had never realized how cunning.

  Now she did.

  She was part Fey. She could be cunning too.

  She let herself rise on an air draft, to get out of sight of the ground, and then she followed the running Fey.

  TEN

  Solanda was sleeping in the garden, against the stone of the palace wall. The sun had warmed the stone, making it radiate heat. She had her paws outstretched, and one eye barely open, so that she could watch the bugs swirl around her. She was too tired to hunt — it was nap time — but she might bat at one or two if they came close.

  She had been in the garden long enough to find a sunny patch, and long enough to get drowsy. She knew she had to watch the position of the sun. Good King Nicholas would never forgive her if she failed to attend the lump's coming of age. Who'd have thought a golem would last that long? Who'd have thought it would develop such a personality of its own?

  Solanda had monitored it ever since it saved Arianna's life. It had a core being of its own, too, and that hadn't come from Jewel's magick. It had come from somewhere else, somewhere she hadn't been able to pinpoint in fifteen years.

  That bothered her.

  Making the lump King bothered her too. Especially since the Islanders considered it part Fey. Solanda didn't know what it was, but she knew what it wasn't. It wasn't Fey.

  Then she heard Arianna's voice, high and demanding. She raised her head. Arianna was, in all important ways, her baby. She had never intended it that way, but only a creature as charming, intelligent and challenging as Arianna could have held Solanda's interest for so long. And buried in Arianna's tone was an imperiousness she only used when she was frightened.

  Solanda sat up debating whether or not to get out of her cat shape.

  The lump answered Arianna, only it spoke quickly.

  The lump never spoke quickly.

  The hair rose on her ruff. Solanda was fully awake now. She backed up so that she could see the window above her. She was lying under the turret that was the lump's room. The light blinded her. She could see two shapes of the same height, but couldn't make out who they were.

  Arianna spoke again, her voice growing closer.

  The lump responded, quickly again, and Arianna snapped at him.

  Then the lump spoke — slowly. The hairs on Solanda's ruff stood completely on end. The lump hadn't spoken the first time. It was —

  Gift threw himself out of the window, grabbed a tree branch and shimmied down it. Arianna yelled after him. Solanda backed out of the way. Gift had never been to the palace. Nicholas was too stupid to know that the lump wasn't his son. Solanda had tried to tell Nicholas, but he hadn't believed her.

  She hadn't even bothered to tell Arianna.

  Gift had the look of Jewel at that age, thin and beautiful, the way the lump would have been if he were real instead of a cracked piece of stone. Gift reached the bottom of the tree.

  "Gift," Solanda hissed, but he didn't hear her. He took off at a full run. She was about to change to her Fey form when she glanced up. A robin was shaking itself out of Arianna's robe.

  A robin.

  The girl had said she only had two shapes: a cat and Fey, just like Solanda.

  Arianna had lied.

  The robin flew over the tree tops, hurrying after Gift. Gift was crashing through the garden growth, more speed than agility. If Arianna caught him, and she didn't know who he was …

  "By all the lights in the Empire," Solanda snapped. She took off after Gift. It might be too late already. He didn't know who his sister was, his sister didn't know who he was, and they were both of the Black Throne.

  Chaos would reign.

  Solanda doubled her speed, using the crashing sounds of Gift's progress and the shadow of the bird as her guide. She was in good shape; she'd been hunting with Arianna, and they always made it a game to see who got the birds first. Solanda only hoped that the hunting would pay off.

  The crashing stopped. She caught up to Gift as he rolled in the hole under the fence. The robin circled above, waiting to attack.

  "No, Arianna!" Solanda yelled, but her voice was too small to carry to that height. Gift ignored her too. He shoved his way through the hole and disappeared under the fence.

  "Damned half-breeds," Solanda said as she crawled on her belly through that hole. She would have to clean the dirt off her fur, and the Powers knew what else.

  There was a slight embankment on the other side of the fence, and a string of guard barracks that cast a shade on the road leading to the shops. She could see them all from her position in the hole, but she could no longer see Gift or Arianna.

>   Then Solanda heard cawing and screeching and crying. She pulled herself out of the hole to see Wisps attacking Arianna in the air. It wasn't a real attack — they knew who she was and were trying to prevent her assault on Gift. Gift's arm was over his face, and two Spies were beside him.

  Other Fey had to be hidden in the area.

  Something was happening. Something she didn't understand. Were they trying to substitute Gift for the lump before the ceremony? Had Arianna caught them?

  Someone yelled at Gift to run, and he stumbled forward, down the Islander street, his eyes wild, and his hair flying behind his back. Islanders appeared in their doorways, and more Fey Spies appeared around them, shoving them back. They were protecting Gift, making certain he was all right.

  Her girl had broken free and was pursing him. Soon Gift would arrive on one of Jahn's main streets. Solanda didn't know how the Islanders would react to a young Fey running through the center of town. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out.

  "Curse them all, and their ancestors too," she mumbled, not sure if she was swearing at Gift and his sister or the other Fey or the Islanders. She ran along the cobblestone, grimacing at the pain the sharper rocks caused in her pads. She hadn't run outside the garden in a long time. She was getting old.

  And soft.

  Maybe she should return to Fey form. Maybe she had a better chance of catching him then.

  Arianna was screaming as she flew above them. She would catch him soon, and if his protectors weren't around, she might do actual damage.

  Solanda didn't know what that damage would mean to the rest of the Fey. All she knew was what kind of problems Gift's death would cause.

  Especially if Arianna killed him.

  The Empire would erupt in chaos. Families would slaughter each other. Insanity would rule.