Elliot was huddled by the fire reading the papers over and over when he saw them coming back. He tried to make a note on some parchment, but that was when his pencil was finally reduced to nothing but splinters and a smear.
That was the last straw. He had no pencil, and must scream.
“Something’s very wrong,” he announced as Serene and Luke sat down.
“You’re not going to die of a chill,” said Luke. “I will give you my cloak if you promise to shut up.”
“I may well die of a chill, I refuse to shut up, and I’ll take your cloak,” said Elliot. “But this isn’t about that. Look at these papers.”
Serene drew close to him and began to read them with some interest. Luke stared blankly.
“They’re the treaties for the dryads and villagers to sign,” he said. “There’s one treaty, and there’s the other. What’s your point?”
“Sometimes people like to do this cool thing with words called ‘reading them,’” Elliot explained. “These treaties say different things.”
He looked toward Serene, who he had faith would understand, and saw the pin-scratch line of a frown between her dark eyebrows. “Considerably different,” she observed.
“There are all sorts of restrictions in the dryads’ contracts,” said Elliot. “Conditions for this peace, ceding territory to the villagers, agreeing to stay off the villagers’ paths while the villagers can go into their woods and chop down their trees.”
“Well,” said Luke. “Naturally they’re going to be a bit different. The villagers are human, and the dryads aren’t. I mean—it’s not like the elves, who are practically human—”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Serene.
“The dryads are our allies, of course,” Luke said hastily. “And they’re not like—like the beast kind, like mermaids and harpies, they’re good mostly, but they’re a bit . . . well, different, you know?”
“They’d better be really different,” said Elliot. “If someone gave me this treaty to sign, I wouldn’t do it. I’d be insulted.”
“You are insulted by people saying ‘good morning,’” Luke pointed out.
Elliot paid no attention to this slander, thought for a few more minutes, and climbed to his feet. “I’m going to talk to the captain.”
Serene got up silently to join him.
Luke said: “Oh no, no you are not.”
“I am simply going to reason with him,” said Elliot extremely reasonably.
“You chose to come on this mission, so you’re a soldier. You cannot disobey your commanding officer on a mission.”
“I’m not a soldier,” said Elliot. “Not ever.”
He looked around the woods, listened to the snap and crackle of the fire and the rustle of leaves that was dryads talking just beyond the cusp of human hearing. He let the magic calm him, and then he spoke again.
“I’m just going to talk to him and point out a few things that may have escaped his notice,” he said. “There’s no harm in that.”
“Fine,” said Luke. “Then I’m going with you two, to make sure that’s all you do. This is no time for your stupid games. I mean it.”
Elliot started to wonder whether they were brainwashing everyone in the war-training course to think alike when Captain Whiteleaf listened to Elliot’s description of what was wrong with the two treaties and said: “Why do you think this is a good time for your stupid games?”
Elliot stood in the centre of the captain’s tent, which Whiteleaf had set up to look like a miniature version of Commander Rayburn’s office, complete with desk and candle, and stared.
“We want peace between these two peoples,” he said. “A peace achieved like this won’t hold.”
“And how would you know?” the captain asked. “You’re a child.”
“I know because it’s . . . really obvious?” said Elliot, and Luke gave the cough which was a signal for “Too insubordinate! Back up!” “Look, one person chops down the wrong tree, and they’re at war again,” Elliot tried.
“Then they will break a peace negotiated by the Border guard,” said Captain Whiteleaf. “And the guard will march back to deal with them.”
“Right, okay,” said Elliot. “But then people will die.”
Captain Whiteleaf said: “So?”
Elliot stared some more. The captain was talking about how the guard kept the peace through their willingness to defend it with blades, and about how battle was a regrettable but necessary consequence of disobedience. Luke was coughing as if he actually had caught a chill. A beautiful peace was descending on Elliot: he knew precisely what he had to do.
He looked back at Serene, who was standing at the mouth of the tent. She met his eyes with her own tranquil gaze, drew her bow, and fitted an arrow to it.
“What are you doing?” Captain Whiteleaf snapped.
“If you call for someone to help stop him,” Serene explained apologetically, “I will shoot them. In the leg, of course. I do not wish to murder any of my comrades.”
“Stop what?” the captain demanded.
Elliot stepped forward and shoved the two treaties into the candle flame. The fire caught the parchment, curling it up with a rich thick crackle, and the flame leaped to show the sudden fury in the captain’s eyes.
“You little brat,” the captain breathed, raising his fist, and Elliot lifted his chin.
Luke drew his sword. The sharp edge glittered in the light of the burning papers, pointed across the desk at the captain. “Don’t touch him.”
Elliot took a deep shaky breath, relieved not to be hit and annoyed at how relieved he was.
“You pack of stupid, traitorous children—” Captain Whiteleaf began, and then he cut himself off and just glared at them, as if he was memorizing their faces and thinking of punishments to visit upon them.
Elliot knew what he saw. Serene at the tent with moonlight in her dark hair and her bow steady in her hands, Luke and his sword glinting in the candlelight, and Elliot. Elliot held firm. The treaties were ashes in his hands by now.
“Listen to me,” said Elliot. “You don’t bring councilors on your missions. So you don’t have anyone who can write up a new treaty. Either you go back and admit you’ve failed in your mission, or you let me and Serene write up new treaties. We can do it.”
“Elves remember everything that they read, down to the framework of the sentences to insure that treaties are binding,” Serene observed. “Elliot tells me that is a helpful skill.”
Captain Whiteleaf stared at the ashes, and then at Serene, and at Elliot.
Matters might have gone very differently, but this was the captain’s first mission. He let them write out the treaties. The villagers signed theirs, and seemed to think the restrictions about not cutting down certain trees perfectly fair.
The dryads were beautiful, green-gleaming wraiths who leaned out of their trees like gorgeous women leaning casually out of windows. Elliot could not stop staring at them, or the way their leader smiled when she read the words he had written. She had not been smiling before: it was like sunlight dissolving mist when she did.
“We expected something quite different,” she said. “I would be happy to sign this.”