“Did you win?” Elliot inquired. “I may have dozed off in the stands for a minute there.”
Luke snorted in his direction, then went off to get changed. Elliot saw people watching Luke, saw the dark look Delia Winterchild had bent on him, and realized one of the medics must have talked. It was always news that was going to get out, and fast, but Elliot had been hoping for not quite this fast.
He scanned the crowd, looking for people who were whispering delicious new gossip or wearing the expressions of those who had just seen a rumor confirmed before their eyes.
Then he became distracted by another thought.
“Serene! Serene, do you realize what this news means?” Elliot demanded. Serene raised her eyebrows interrogatively. “The worst threat to peace in the Borderlands is the alliance between the trolls and the harpies, which so far has precluded any alliances between them and any other groups. Which means we’re always interacting with them as if they’re the enemy. But now we have Luke. Harpies tend to nurture and protect the males, because there are so few of them.”
“Very natural,” Serene murmured. “If you are truly dedicated to a man, you protect him from even the harsh breath of the wind and the cruel eye of the sun.”
“Nobody’s interested in being protected from air and light, but okay!” said Elliot. “My point is, culturally children, especially male children, are welcomed back to the nest and treated well. This is our chance to form an alliance, and that means that the Borderlands will become a chain of linked alliances, and not enemies. This is fantastic!” He rubbed his hands together. “Two harpies, one stone,” he added, and then saw the way Serene was looking at him. “A diplomatic stone! A diplomatic stone.”
“I do not think that we should focus on treaties at this time,” said Serene. “I think we should focus on being emotionally supportive of Luke. And you should take the lead on it, because your sweet masculine nature predisposes you to understanding and empathy.”
Elliot gazed upon Serene. She gazed back at him, her beautiful face full of faith in him and his innate manly tenderness.
“I’m being emotionally supportive the best way I know how,” Elliot said eventually. “By which I mean, I’m leaving, and I’m going to the library.”
He left, and checked out every book about harpies in the library.
Bright-Eyes the librarian gave Elliot his familiar disapproving look, because Elliot was a wanton floozy with many late fines. “You realize there is a limit on how many books you can take out of the library.”
Elliot looked around and saw his former student Cyril Leigh hiding from him behind a bookcase. “Come over here,” he commanded. “Take out half these books.”
Cyril obeyed. Elliot thought that this terrified obedience, even years later, showed that he had not been a bad teacher after all.
He stowed away the books in his own private cabin—final year was amazing—and then took one up to the top of the commander’s tower.
The sun was setting on his first day back in the Border camp, and he was never going back to his father’s house.
The sinking sun threw orange and yellow ribbons over the whole land. Elliot looked out over unexplored oceans touched by fire, the shimmer of lakes already in shadow, the fields humans had made and the stretches of deep forest, treetops haloed with sunset, where the elves and dryads lived. Above which the harpies flew.
If they made a solid treaty with the harpies, that would give the Border guard breathing room to work out last year’s lousy arrangements between elves and humans. They were at peace with the dryads and the mermaids, and the elves and dwarves’ alliance was working better than any alliance with any people ever before. A solid treaty with the harpies, and it would be possible to approach the trolls.
Peace was possible, across the whole of the Borderlands, not peace everlasting but peace for years, peace enough so that all of the groups in this land past the Border would know what it was like to live with and work with each other. They could all learn about each other, and every piece of knowledge about each other gained would take them a step further away from being enemies. Elliot had said he wanted peace before he finished school.
He sat in the stone towertop, book in his lap, making notes while the light lasted.
Woodland and farmland, sky and sea, and peace for years. That was what this news about Luke could bring. Elliot had come back for his friends, and now almost at once this had happened. It seemed meant.
If only he could pull it off.
Later Elliot brought his harpy book and his notes to Serene’s cabin, where they sat around her fire and reveled in finally having privacy and no annoying dorm mates.
Or they should have, if the atmosphere had not been so strained. Usually Luke was the good-tempered one, who would respond to anything either of them said and would not take offence even when Elliot was being—he was man enough to admit it—extremely offensive. Now Luke was very quiet, staring into the fire, and Elliot did not know exactly how to carry a whole conversation and at the same time make urgent notes about harpies.
Serene decided that she would cheer everyone up by talking about how amazing her love life was. Apparently she and Golden had pledged their troth, and also made out.
It did not seem to occur to Serene that it might be insulting for her ex to see how much more excited she was about kissing Golden than she ever had been about anything with Elliot. Nor did it seem to occur to Serene that hearing about her amazing new love life might be slightly upsetting for Luke, when he could not seem to get it together with Dale.
“I was sure he would find it cheering!” hissed Serene, as soon as Luke had left. “Everybody revels in the bards’ tales of love.”
“Well, yes and no,” said Elliot. “Everybody revels in the bards’ tales of love, but at the same time, everybody is bored and annoyed when forced to hear about their actual friends and their irritating love lives. It’s just one of those things.”
Serene looked crestfallen.
“Kidding,” said Elliot hastily. “I’m kidding. I’m happy for you.”
He kissed Serene on the cheek and made his way out into the night. He truly was happy for Serene, even if it stung a little. And he thought back fondly to his occasional glances up from his book at Luke, to see Luke golden by firelight and Luke’s eyes already on Elliot, mutely beseeching him for help. That had been hilarious.
It was possible that Elliot should not have found it hilarious.
It was possibly time to accept that Luke had terrible friends and would require support from another quarter.
Elliot wandered around in the dark knocking on cabin doors and receiving responses like “Schafer, I thought I was finally free of you! Go away!” until he knocked on the right door and heard Dale Wavechaser’s voice, raised in a welcome to the world, saying: “Come in!”
Elliot pushed the door open and said: “It’s Elliot.”