The Rival by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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