The Rival by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

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.