Elliot sat down on the bank with a beautiful elven warrior in the heat of the afternoon sun, and he explained the treaty as clearly and with as much detail as he could. He reminded himself to bat his eyelashes a couple of times.
The rest of the elves set up camp around them, and the blond elf, Silent-Arrow-in-a-Clash-of-Swords, after asking if Luke fancied making the meal and receiving a polite stare of incomprehension, began to prepare some food.
At one point Elliot forgot himself and told Swift that she was an idiot with no grasp of politics, but Swift rumpled his hair and told him he was a little spitfire.
“I am a rough and simple soldier,” she said eventually. “I follow my clan leader and do not become involved in such intrigues. But I can see well enough that you three have done us a signal service. My thanks to you, Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle.”
“Oh wow, thanks,” Elliot muttered.
Swift smiled at him. “And to your charming companions as well. Redheads,” she murmured. “I get it now, Serene. He’s a taking little thing, in an odd way. Grows on you.”
“That was maybe my first ever compliment from a lady,” Elliot said. “Thank you for making it absolutely awful. Oh my God.”
Luke and the black-braided elf, whose name turned out to be Rushing-Waters-Bear-Away-our-Enemies, Rush for short, even had a brief spar with short swords. Luke beat her, and for a moment Elliot thought that Luke would now be honorary member of the elf-warriors-club and Elliot was going to be gently condescended to by everyone all evening.
But then Rush winked at Luke and said: “I like a boy with spirit,” and Elliot felt torn between amusement and annoyance that there was apparently nothing you could do that would make you good enough to enter the club.
The most annoying thing, perhaps, was that the elven troop were obviously good people and were being kind to them, and yet Elliot felt subtly wrong-footed at every turn. He wondered if this was how Serene felt all the time, and he promised himself to bear it as well as she did.
He sat by the campfire, warm in its flickering orange glow, even the dark trees seeming to form a sheltering shell around him. Swift had placed him protectively at her side because she said that some of the younger elves hadn’t seen a boy in weeks and their hands might wander.
Rush and Silent immediately started canoodling with each other, so their hands were wandering but not anywhere near Elliot.
“They’re swordsisters,” said Serene discreetly. “Their warrior bond is very beautiful. Some think that no bond could ever be as strong, no love ever as true, as that between two women who fight side by side.”
“Swordsisters,” was all Elliot managed to get out, in a voice strangled by jealousy. He hadn’t realized that meant—that meant Luke and Serene already—
He looked over at Luke for some confirmation of this on his stupid smug face, but Luke was busy looking away from Rush and Silent with his ears gone red.
“The bond is different for every pair,” said Serene casually.
“You definitely did not mention anything like that to me when we agreed to do it,” said Luke.
Ha! Elliot thought, and rejoiced in Luke’s disappointment.
“There are also simply some women, warriors and not, who can never be tempted by the shining hair and alluring chests of men,” said Serene.
“Sure,” said Elliot. “Guys too. I mean, by women.”
Serene frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, a guidance counselor gave me a ton of pamphlets over this guy called Simon,” said Elliot. “I’ll show you some.”
“It just seems so unlikely, given that men cannot truly feel the pulse of desi—”
“It’s true,” Luke said abruptly, “and if you two start talking like you did last night in front of strangers I will put my head in the fire.”
“The pretty blond one may dress like a harlot, but I think he is truly a modest gentleman,” remarked Silent, whose name Elliot thought was ironic. “Look at his sweet blushes.”
She shut up about Luke’s blushes when Rush tickled her. Elliot felt pleased by the success of their mission and in charity with everyone, amused by all the stories the elves had about the wild escapades of Serene’s childhood.
“She would’ve gotten away with it too if she hadn’t boasted about it to a pretty little boy who went running to tell his papa,” Rush finished.
“Golden-Hair-Scented-Like-Summer is a judgmental boring goody-two-shoes,” said Serene, flushing.
“I heard Serene tried to kiss him and he slapped her,” said Swift, and burst out laughing.
“THAT DID NOT HAPPEN,” yelped Serene, like any kid teased by her big cousin, and Elliot found himself liking the elves after all. It wasn’t just Swift. They all treated Serene like family. He wanted her to have a home where she was safe and warm and loved.
“Oh, you come by it honestly,” said Swift. “Before he met your father, your mother—Sure-Aim-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle,” she added, nodding to Elliot. “She was a devil with the gentlemen. Ruined two gentlemen in the west woods. I heard one of them was married off to a goblin! Of course Sure is settled now. The love of a good man will steady you one day too, you firebrand. Running off and joining the Border camp, of all the mad things to do! Your mother was raving about it for days. But proud too, you could see it. Of course she’d have the wildest daughter in the woods. All the careful fathers had best seal their virtuous sons in the nearest tree!”
Serene crossed her arms over her chest. “I am nothing like my mother.”
“Whoa, you have like, daddy issues about your controlling parent whose exploits inflame your desire to be like him but whose reform and new steady reputation makes you even more rebellious,” Elliot crowed in English. “And all the elven beauties are warned to stay away from you because you’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know. You’re a bad boy! Right, and Luke’s the good boy—golden boy, boring, you know the drill. This is such an enlightening night.”
“Maybe you could stop defining us by, like, literary tropez,” said Luke. “Bluestocking.”
“Tropes, oh my God, loser, of course you can’t speak elvish, you can barely speak English. It’s pronounced like tropes, not like St Tropez.”
Luke looked a little frayed around the edges, but Swift provided a distraction by asking Elliot what gods he kept calling on, and Elliot had to try and explain being Jewish but not practising to an elf. He wasn’t sure if Swift understood, but while they were talking about cultural differences he asked her if she knew anyone who spoke troll, and she promised to send him a troll-elvish dictionary.
“Write to me anything you learn about trolls!” Elliot said. “Or mermaids. Please write to me about mermaids.”
All in all, it was a successful day.
Later that night Luke grumpily rolled his blanket over to Elliot’s and said: “Fine then. Teach me a few words of elvish.”
Elliot grinned triumphantly in the dark. He’d thought the swordsister guilt trip would work.
An alliance with the dwarves and elves followed the surprise discovery of the treaty, extremely cordial on the elves’s side since the dwarves were graciously forgiving of their territory faux pas. The only thing to do was for the Border guard to form an alliance with the dwarves themselves.
All the people who had been talking about the low cunning of dwarves were shut up. And Serene managed to be attending her kinswomen at a conference and mention that since she, an elf, was training with the Border guard, it should be made clear that full-blood dwarves were welcomed there too.
After being away for a few weeks on a family trip, Myra came back. She was no longer hiding behind her hair.
“Oh, hey,” said Elliot, stopping and standing by her table at lunch. “You look great.”
He smiled. She didn’t have the beard most dwarves wore, but she had a mustache, dark, shining, and clearly carefully shaped, and her painted-pink mouth curled beneath it as she smiled back.
He knew a compliment wouldn’t mean as m
uch to girls coming from him.
“Luke!” Elliot commanded. “Tell her she looks great.”
Luke looked at Myra as if he’d never seen her before, and at Elliot as if he wanted answers. Elliot made an impatient gesture.
“Yes . . . ?” said Luke, questing.
Myra beamed and looked so happy that Elliot permitted Luke to seize him by the arm and drag him away without reminding him of the rules about physical force.
“Who was that?” Luke hissed in his ear.
“What do you mean, who was that?” Elliot asked, offended on Myra’s behalf. “That was my friend Myra. She’s in council training with me. She doesn’t look that different!”
“You have a friend called Myra in council training?” Luke said, as if it was news to him. “Since when?”
“For the whole two years I have been in this godforsaken place, Luke!”
Luke looked unconvinced, but at least he was only being self-centred instead of prejudiced against dwarves.
“I wish I could grow a moustache like that,” Elliot said wistfully.
“Probably a bad idea,” said Luke. “You can’t control the hair you’ve got.”
“Besides,” said Serene, joining them, “I know it’s natural and everything, but don’t you think it looks weird if a man has hair anywhere but on his head? I mean, can they not be bothered to put in the time and effort to look good?”
The only problem came when they were all summoned to the commander’s office, and General Lakelost was there, a man with a white moustache so huge that comparing it to Myra’s was like comparing a white whale to a dolphin. General Lakelost and Commander Rayburn asked how exactly one of them had happened upon the treaty in the first place.
It had not occurred to Elliot before, but it was very clear to him suddenly that breaking into the commander’s office was going to get him expelled. Elliot took a deep breath.
“I found it,” said Luke, and the whole room went silent, either in surprise or in total shock at hearing Luke lie. “In my library at home. The Sunborns have a very extensive library. Then Cadet Schafer and Cadet Chaos-of-Battle realised its full significance.”
The story was extremely plausible, especially since nobody wanted to discuss where the treaty had actually been. And nobody was going to expel a Sunborn.
Commander Rayburn looked beseechingly at the general. Elliot knew that the papers had been in Commander Rayburn’s office, and that meant the commander would be blamed for hiding them, even if the rest of the guard had known exactly what he was doing. The Border guard would want to avoid a diplomatic incident. The commander would be in even more trouble than Elliot if the truth came out.
“The Sunborns do have a big library,” the general rumbled out at last, as if weighing the words for believability. “But . . . why on earth would you be in there reading, lad?”
“Improve my vocabulary, sir,” said Luke.
From the corner of the room where Captain Woodsinger had placed herself, she coughed. “He does read a lot,” she contributed. “In the space allowed him around performing his duties. I have often seen him with his head in a book.”
Elliot stared at Captain Woodsinger. She gazed back, her face impassive.
“Oh, oh, very good,” responded General Lakelost. “Er . . . commendable.” He lowered his voice to what was essentially still a dull roar and said: “Is the boy not any good at fighting?”
“He’s excellent, sir,” put in Captain Woodsinger in her quiet voice. “One of our finest.”
“I don’t understand it,” the general announced. He squinted at Elliot. “That child can’t be old enough to be in the camp. He looks about ten.”
“Fourteen, sir,” said Captain Woodsinger. “Undersized, sir.”
Elliot scowled but refrained from comment, since it was for the best to have everyone distracted from issues like “technical treason.”
“Besides, it doesn’t really matter, does it?” asked Luke. “We all want peace. Don’t we? Sir?”
They couldn’t say they did not. Not one of them could actually say that.
General Lakelost did stop Luke at the door, put a fatherly hand on his shoulder, and say: “Maybe ease up on the reading, lad, all right?”
“All right, sir. I know a lot of long words by now anyway.”
This was too much. Elliot broke.
“Oh, really, you do? Like what? I want you to be somewhat acquainted with the definition of this word,” Elliot demanded.
Luke cast him a sidelong glance. “Provoking,” he said. “And I am pretty well acquainted with the definition of the word.”
Elliot beamed. “Aw.”
Elliot thought it was settled, that they’d done the thing, and there would be no more talk of skirmishes and battles.
Until the trolls and the harpies, alarmed by all these alliances, made an alliance of their own. The harpies encroached on dwarf territory, and the dwarves called on their new allies.
And it was happening again, as if everything they had struggled to accomplish had just been to give themselves an escape route that led around in a circle, right back to where they had been before. Right back to the looming nightmare of war.
Luke and Serene were posted to Lieutenant Louise Sunborn’s troop, the 15th, Luke’s sister’s first command. They were given their marching orders and collected their weapons and bedrolls, all the standard military equipment.
Elliot meant to sit and sulk over the pointless waste of it all in his cabin until the very last moment. There was a knock on the door at one point, but he wasn’t done sulking and he ignored it.
He did not make it to the very last moment. When he emerged from the cabin, it was to see the dust of the troops leaving: it was to find Serene and Luke already gone.
Then the news arrived that the trolls had come in far greater force than anyone expected. That the Border guards were hopelessly outnumbered, and the tide of war was turning against them.
Elliot went to pay a call on Captain Whiteleaf, the most senior officer left in charge of the camp. His father had asked for the honor to be granted him. Command did not suit Captain Whiteleaf. He already looked wild about the eyes before he spotted Elliot, and when he did he almost jumped out of the commander’s chair.
“Cadet Schafer, what do you need me for?” Captain Whiteleaf said nervously. “I mean, I don’t want a repeat of the—burning incident last year, and the commander has, has warned, I mean prepared me, for all your tricks. Just don’t . . . just don’t do anything. Go back to class.”
“Why, Captain, you wrong me,” said Elliot with the sweet smile he’d used on the elves. It seemed to make Captain Whiteleaf nervous, which would work just as well as charm. “I thought, as most of the trainees whose duty it is to wait on the officers are off at war, that I would volunteer my services to assist in bringing cool water and snacks to our valiant leaders.”
“Let you in the council rooms?”
“People need drinks and snacks, Captain,” Elliot said in dulcet tones. “It’s a totally normal reason for me to be there. I mean, if you don’t want me to go there—”
“I don’t want you to go there!”
“—for that reason,” Elliot continued. “I can certainly find a different reason to go. I’m very resourceful.” He smiled again, this time less sweetly but very wide. “You’ll see.”
None of the councilors were actually allowed in the council room. They sat in an antechamber, and documents were sent out to them to put into proper language. After the big decisions were already made.
Elliot was allowed to bring water and snacks to the officers in the council room. He peeped at the dispatches sent in. He could usually manage to read the ones for Captain Whiteleaf and edit the replies, since the captain was scared of getting things wrong and maybe a little scared of Elliot. He only got glimpses of the most important dispatches sent to General Lakelost. The general seemed suspicious of him, which was understandable but inconvenient.
When he wasn’t in cou
ncil, he was writing long ardent love letters to Serene and trying to work his way out of feeling so truly horrible.
He’d thought he might enjoy spending more time with Peter and Myra, but he was in a slightly ruffled condition and during one lunch made Peter go off somewhere, he suspected to cry, and reduced Myra to staring at him with stunned eyes.
“Sorry,” he told her, banishing himself from the lunch room for being an unacceptable human being. “I’m in a filthy mood. Sorry.”
He hadn’t even said anything so very bad. Luke would not have been reduced to tears. Everybody needed to work on not being so thin-skinned all the time, he told himself, and went off to deliberately pick a fight with the remains of the Trigon team.
He didn’t even realise that was what he was doing until he spat out another mouthful of malice at Richard Plantgrown.
“Look,” snapped Richard, “you can be as much of a little snot as you want. Luke Sunborn told us if we laid a finger on you while he was gone, he’d have our heads.”
“Luke Sunborn needs to learn to mind his own business,” snapped Elliot, and at least the others looked like they agreed with him there. “Besides, who’s going to tell him? Or are you all just such cowards the mere idea of Luke has you quaking in your—”
Richard did hit Elliot in the face then. Very hard. Elliot hit the wall, and hot pain and blood bloomed, his own flesh breaking open against his teeth. He spat, and this time it was not malice aimed at someone else, but blood hitting the stone. It was still awful.
“Wow, it’s been a while, hello old friend being hit in the face,” Elliot said, putting his tongue out and tasting the blood, feeling the split and swell of his lip gingerly. “Yep, turns out I still hate pain and think violence is pointless. Sorry, I think I was attempting emotional catharsis, but this is dumb and you people are stupid.”
“You’re not going to hit me back?”
Elliot blinked. “And prolong this special encounter? No, thank you. Oh, but don’t hit me again, I don’t want you to, and besides, how do you know I’m not going to tell Luke? I wouldn’t trust me. I’m a shifty character.”
In Other Lands Page 12