Celaeno clasped him in her arms and brought him down on a gentle drift of air to land light as a leaf beside the harpies’ captives. There was a man with his hands tied, sitting propped up against a tree. There was a gun on the ground by his feet.
“I don’t care,” the man said sullenly, as soon as he saw Elliot. “I don’t care what the monsters do to me. I was . . . I was taken to this horrible place when I was a kid, and I told them I wouldn’t be part of their awful camp, and I managed to get away from them. But I always remembered this place. Remembering got worse and worse, every year. So when some guys came and said, do you want to go back and get rid of them all, wash this filthy nightmarish place clean . . . I said yes. I don’t care. I’m not sorry. The things I’ve seen, that creature and dozens like it, a man with wings, awful women pale as ghosts with pointed ears, even the stone animals they said were on our side: it isn’t right.” He squinted up at Elliot, half-resentful, half-afraid. “Are you even human? What are you?” he asked.
Elliot bent and picked up the small, gleaming gun. He saw himself for a moment, reflected in the man’s terrified eyes: someone tall and strong and strange, with wild hair and a cold face.
“Me? I’m just like you. I’m one of the kids they brought over the wall,” Elliot said. “Only I stayed.”
He’d known this would happen. He’d been sure some of those kids would remember, and come back. On both sides of the wall were strangers and weird sights, terrible until you loved them. Our lands were always otherlands, to someone else.
He held the gun, which was heavy for something so small. Celaeno had said they did not work, which was lucky. Elliot would have thought a gun would work, if a music box did. He wondered: If someone tried more old-fashioned guns, might they work? He could suggest some of the Border guard who could cross take different weapons over, and try them.
Or he could not suggest that. He was the only one he knew of doing experiments with technology past the Border. He could let the instruments of death alone, for a while, until he was absolutely sure they were needed.
He handed the gun to Celaeno.
“Get every one of these to a forge,” he said. “Melt them down.”
“Hey!” said the man, desperate not to be left with winged horrors. “Hey, where are you going?”
Elliot turned around, boots crunching on the fallen leaves, and looked down at him.
“I have to talk to some people,” Elliot replied, “who are more important than you.”
Celaeno took him to the trolls, who seemed startled but pleased that the Border guard still sought an alliance with them rather than continuing the hostilities the trolls had begun. Their captain spoke human, but seemed amused by Elliot’s clumsy trollish.
They set up tables and wrote out two new treaties, one between the harpies and the trolls, and one between the humans and the trolls, right away. Commander Woodsinger came up to them at some point, standing at Elliot’s shoulder and reading over the parchments spread across the table. She did not comment on the treaties, but she had her seal out, ready to sign.
“I feel the tension between our peoples is simply due to a lack of communication. I’m so glad our two species will be learning more about each other and reaching a beautiful understanding together,” said Elliot, looking up at the troll captain through his eyelashes.
“You’re not really my type,” said the troll. “No offence.”
There was an awkward pause. Then Commander Woodsinger burst out laughing, in the middle of negotiations, with people who had been a hostile force less than an hour before.
“I’m glad my humiliation brings you so much joy,” Elliot hissed.
Commander Woodsinger rested a hand on his shoulder. “So am I, Cadet.”
Trolls tended to be more literal than humans, and less deceptive, or at least not deceptive in the ways Elliot was used to. Flirting was definitely out, especially the kind of flirting Elliot employed with the elves. All the trolls thought it was weird.
They liked Commander Woodsinger, though. Elliot was going to have to learn to be more stoic.
The peace talks went on, through the tattered remnants of the day and throughout the night. At one point Elliot looked up, startled, to see they were affixing torches into wrought-iron holders on the nearby trees. Under the warm light he saw, different from all the shadows and branches and bones, a curve of wings and a glint of rich gold.
It was Luke. He was sitting on a tree stump, and had made no effort to attract Elliot’s attention. He showed no sign of restlessness. He was just waiting.
Elliot did not feel in any way prepared for Luke Sunborn, exhausted after another triumphant battle, waiting patiently until Elliot was done with peace talks.
So when Elliot was done, Elliot went to him and illicitly commandeered the commander’s tent for a nap. His judgement might have been impaired by exhaustion.
In the commander’s tent Luke asked him, after a blatant rejection, two kisses, and less than one day, if Elliot was serious about them. And instead of pointing and laughing, Elliot said that he was.
Elliot agreed to be in a committed relationship.
It was very possible that Elliot should be committed.
The trolls were staying awhile with the harpies, to re-confirm their centuries-old alliance. The elves agreed to accompany the humans back to the Border camp, guarding the human hostages. There was some debate about what to do with them.
“Do not execute them,” Elliot said urgently over breakfast. “Do not execute anyone. Please induce magic amnesia so they can only recall this land as a dream.”
“For the last time, nobody can do that,” Commander Woodsinger told him.
The captain of the trolls, whose name was Wfscv’dshfcdz, which translated to “Majestic Eagles Circle the Luminescent Quarry,” raised his or her craggy eyebrows. “That boy seems sweet, but a little simple,” he or she remarked in trollish to his or her second-in-command.
Elliot diplomatically pretended not to understand.
“We could sell them as slaves to the dwarves,” suggested Celaeno, and everybody glared at her. She lifted her wings in surrender. “I was just trying to help.”
Nobody wanted to hear about the Geneva Conventions. While Elliot was trying to explain them, Serene strolled over with Golden on her arm. Elliot was deeply relieved to see them, but distressed by the fresh wound on Golden’s face. That looked like it would scar.
Golden’s head was held high. He seemed to care as little about scars as Louise Sunborn did.
“Before we do anything with the humans from across the Border, we need to find out more from them,” Serene said. “With luck, this expedition was all the humans who might prove a threat to us, but if they have confederates over the wall, we should know about it.”
Even if this particular group had been stopped, there would always be humans who had access to the Borderlands and there would always be children who knew the truth, and would remember.
The Borderlands had to be ready for them.