The Rival (61 page)

"You might have no choice," Nicholas said.  He had held out against the Fey for twenty years.  His daughter  —  or his son by blood  —  would lead them.  That was winning, of a sort.

Arianna went to Sebastian and ran a hand over his stiff hair.  He looked at her, took her hand, and leaned it against his cheek.  He still hadn't recovered from the loss of contact with Gift, and the death around him had terrified him so.  Nicholas hadn't known how to comfort him.

Nicholas hadn't known how to comfort himself.

"There has to be something we can do," Arianna said.

"There's nothing we can do," Nicholas said, "short of murdering the Black King and putting you in his place. And we can't do that.  The Shaman's warnings about the Black Blood are clear."

Arianna looked directly at one of the listening posts.  "Tainting the Black Blood terrifies me," she said loudly.

Nicholas raised his head and so did Sebastian.  She never spoke like that.

"I wouldn't make the madness fall on anyone."

Sebastian pulled her closer.  " … Ari … please … "  His grating voice had panic in it.

She kissed his head and eased out of his grip.  "I'll always be sensible, Sebastian," she said.

She made her way to Nicholas, then wrapped her arms around him.  He put his around her, and buried his face in her shoulder. 

"I just got an idea," she whispered.

He started, but she held him fast.

"I can't kill the Black King, but you can."

"Arianna  — "

"Shhh.  If I grab a weapon, they can't attack me.  If I throw it to you, you can kill him."

"Then what?  They won't accept you as leader."

"They'll have to," she said.

"They'll kill you before you have a chance to think." Or me, he thought.

"Not if I Shift.  Not if I can get you, me and Sebastian out of here.  Then the Islanders will still have their King, and any pretenders to the Black Throne will have to fight me.  The Fey would be done.  They wouldn't move anymore."

Nicholas shook his head.  "It won't work," he said.  "You can't even plan something like this.  The Shaman was clear about it."

Arianna bowed her head.  "But we could threaten him," she whispered.  "Nothing could stop us from doing that."

"Except common sense," Nicholas said.  "There has to be another way.  We'll find it, Ari.  We'll find it."

She raised her head.  "But will we find it soon enough?"

" … Ari … !"

She backed away as the door opened.  A Fey came in.  He was young and dressed.  The sword strapped to his side looked Fey made.  "The Black King shall be here shortly," the Fey said, his Islander accented on all the wrong syllables.  "We are stationing guards in preparation for his arrival."

And to stop them from planning any more.  Arianna's bright gaze met Nicholas's.  She thought the same.  There were guards in the listening post.  They couldn't have heard anything, but they didn't want their prisoners scheming together.

Guards streamed in.  All were dressed and several carried swords.  It was the ones who didn't that worried Nicholas.  They had long fingers, and even longer nails.  Foot Soldiers, who could kill with a single touch.  He repressed a shudder.  He had seen their work before.

Twenty-five soldiers came into the room, and lined the walls.  He supposed he should be honored.  The Black King did consider Nicholas and his family a threat. 

Nicholas went to Sebastian and put his arm around the boy.  No matter what Arianna planned, there was no guarantee that Sebastian could move quickly enough to be saved.  There wasn't even a guarantee that one of the Black King's soldiers wouldn't kill her.

Solanda had killed Rugar with no repercussions.  It could happen again.

If Nicholas got a chance, he would try to talk Arianna out of trying anything.  He would negotiate with the Black King, and if that failed, he would wait until the man died, and hope that his children made the right choices. At least they would lead the Fey, at least Blue Isle would remain in the family.

And, he supposed, that was all that mattered now.

Everything else was lost.

SEVENTY-THREE

Flurry hovered over the empty road. It was growing dark.  His wings were tired.  He hadn't flown this much in Nye.  He doubted he had flown this much in his entire life.

And now Cinder was gone, leaving no clue as to where she went.

He shouldn't have left her.  He knew better.  He knew so much better. And yet he had.  He had thought that she couldn't mistake these instructions, that she would understand the importance of them, that she would at least have left some sort of trail.

But he had been so cocky and confident when he spoke to her.  He would be able to find them, he had said.  He would know where they had gone.

Well, he had been up and down this road twice, he had checked the surrounding farms, and he hadn't seen anything.

The growing darkness was casting a blue shadow on the land, making everything very difficult to see.  He couldn't make out details any more, where the road ended and where it began.

He couldn't see.  And the Foot Soldiers would arrive at any moment, ready to take their prisoner. 

They had none.

He would report to Rugad a Failure.

We had your great-grandson and then we lost him. 

Flurry shuddered at the thought.

He flew lower.  The rows of corn were broken slightly by what seemed like a trail.  He had followed it before, and he was going to follow it again.  He wouldn't be a Failure.  He wouldn't let Rugad kill him as he did other Failures.

He just wouldn't.

He paused.  Time to assume the worst.  The boy was of Black Blood.  What if he were worth Rugad's pursuit?  What if he had seen Cinder and knew what she was?  According to Wisdom, the boy had been raised by Wisps.  He would know how to elude them.

And how did one evade a Wisp?

Look unobtrusive from the sky.  Hide in something.  Go inside.  A Shadowlands wouldn't work because a Wisp would be the first to spot it. 

The soldiers could always go an extra distance.  He could bring them back, blame them on being unable to see him.

He could buy a little more time if he needed it.

The cornfield was his best and only bet.

He swooped lower, cursing the failing light.  In the twilight, the broken corn looked like a river of blood in the middle of a moonlit sea.  He already knew what was on the other side.  A farm.  The boy wouldn't be stupid enough to hide on a farm.

Would he?

Or was that wisdom?  Wasn't that just the game that Rugad would play?  Take the expected, use it to his own advantage.

Flurry flew lower, and let himself glow, casting a tiny light on the trail below him.  On the other side of the corn, a haystack.  Then another, and another, all the way to the grain silo. Beyond that, the farmhouse itself.

He flew around the house first.  The farmer, his wife, and five children were eating dinner, oblivious to the battle being fought across their land.  They wouldn't be that calm if they were hiding fugitives.  They wouldn't be eating that much if they knew about the invasion.

The house had no cellar, no basement, no underground hiding spot, at least not one he could see from the outside.  And he needed to be able to see it from the outside, otherwise someone in that house had to be hiding the boy, and no one was.

He flew to the silo next. 

It had three small windows, all of them at various levels in the silo.  He peered in each, then flew in the lowest one.

The silo was empty.  Wisps of grain littered the bottom of the bin, waiting for fall harvest.  All of the grain normally stored here was either eaten or sold. 

The boy couldn't be in here unless he was capable of changing size, like Wisp, or Shifting to a tiny form.  And, according to all Flurry knew, the boy couldn't do either.

That left the haystacks.

If he plunged in them, and the boy was hiding there, the boy would see Flurry and disappear before the Foot Soldiers arrived.   Flurry had to look for something out of the ordinary.

If Flurry were hiding, he would take the center stack.  Not too close to the farmhouse, but not too far either.  Not too close to the corn, but not too far.

He swooped as low as he could get.  The first stack wasn't really mounded.  It was tied.  Several bundles of hay stacked together and bound individually around the middle.  Then they leaned against each other for support.  A few strands of hay on the ground, but nothing much.  Nothing more than the wind could knock free.

But the center stack.  The center stack wasn't organized.  It had several bundles in the middle, but they didn't seem to be leaning on anything.  The twine around them appeared to be loosely tied.  And there was hay all over the ground, hay of all sizes, much of it broken and trampled.

He hesitated a moment, ready to go in to look.  But he could hear the soldiers now, marching on the other side.  If the boy wasn't here, he'd let the soldiers play with the farm family.  That would occupy them while Flurry searched again.

But he knew he wouldn't have to. 

His search was over.

THE CONFRONTATION

SEVENTY-FOUR

The dizzy feeling he'd had after the series of Visions was back, behind his eyes.  Rugad rubbed them.  He had been on edge ever since then, but that strain seemed to be growing worse.

Rugad stood in the Great Hall surveying the weapons wall.  Even though this was not his headquarters it was, he decided, his favorite room in the palace.  It was the only one which had a Fey feel to it.  And he suspected that feel had come from the weapons still displayed on the walls.

He didn't like the morale he was encountering among his people.  They seemed at best startled by the near-reversal, and at worst frightened of it. They seemed to think the Islanders had more powers than any other force the Fey had ever met. 

If he left the rumors unchecked, they would only grow.  And he knew that once they grew, once they became big, they would have a power all their own.

He had to nip it now.

He had chosen, as his headquarters the very room that Nicholas had been captured in. The man had an instinct for fighting, a good natural instinct.  The room, although it was open on all sides because of that bubbled glass, also provided a perfect view of the city and, Rugad suspected, an imperfect view of the areas beyond.  It was large enough to use as a meeting hall, and small enough that a man alone didn't feel overwhelmed.

The broken window was covered with a tapestry.  He would get a Domestic on all the windows in the morning, to get rid of the glass, and to put in Fey glass and make it defensively spelled.

The rest of the palace would need work of a kind he didn't have time for yet.  He would let the Domestics remove much of the Islander's personal items, but he would put them in storage.  There was still much he didn't know about this culture, much that he needed to know, and he suspected some of this material would help him with that.

He had been startled, though, to find Jewel's portrait in a gallery filled with portraits of round, doughy blue-eyed, blond-haired women.  Queens, and future queens, he suspected.  He had stood before her for a long time, wishing he had done right by his granddaughter.  He should have kept her on Nye, and let Rugar destroy himself.  But Rugad had had the vain hope that Jewel could pull it out, that she could take Blue Isle and save Rugad the trouble.

She had done the best she could under startling circumstances.  At least she had left Rugad with two children from whom he could choose his own successor.  The one thing he had learned in all his years of rule was that without a trusted successor, he was nothing.

He had the successor now.  The problem would be trusting him.

Or her.

He hoped they were more Fey than Islander.  He hoped they would understand the value in the Fey Empire, and understand the kind of greatness it took to lead such an enterprise.

If Jewel's children proved not to be up to his expectations, he didn't know what he'd do.  The grandsons he had left on Nye were nothing. They weren't even exemplary Fey.  They had, surprisingly even to him, let him go, thinking that he would get stuck on Blue Isle and they would get the rule by default.

They hadn't even thought through what would happen if he took the Isle.  Or if he found Jewel's children.  And like Rugar, their Vision was sloppy.  The difference was that Rugar's had started good and gone down.  Theirs was starting in a bad place, and could only deteriorate.

So much rode on these great-grandchildren.  And yet, now that he had one in his grasp, he was hesitant to approach her.  He didn't want to find out that she was similar to her uncles on Nye.  He didn't want to know that she wouldn't work as a successor.

Because that only left the great-grandson as yet unfound.  And Rugad liked having two choices instead of one.  At least with the thought of two, he might have a chance.

Still, he hadn't gotten where he was by agonizing over worries.  He had gotten half a continent, and now this Isle, by taking action.  And the action was to finally meet his great-granddaughter, and to begin the process of wooing her over to his side.

In that, he was uncertain.  He had never wooed before, and never with such purpose.  His wife had felt honored being chosen by a member of the Black Family, as had every other woman he'd been with since she died.  His people listened to him, and other rulers he conquered.  The idea of cajoling someone, of coaxing them to his side was as foreign as the customs on Blue Isle.

And then there was the problem of her father.  The man was too smart.  He had mounted a counterattack that, while not successful, had still hurt Rugad's people.  And he had stopped the Fey once before.  He had seduced Jewel, and he had more knowledge of the Fey than most.

And even more important, he was King.  That carried a great deal of weight.  Displaced rulers brought with them hope that they would rule again.  In the past, it had always been Rugad's practice to kill a popular ruler, to stifle hope then and there.