Luke, of course, was the clear winner in the who-the-girls-were-staring-at Olympics.
“He’s always lovely to me when we talk, but he never stays. If I could just get him to stick around,” sighed Adara Cornripe, who was golden of skin and hair, the best at daggerwork of anyone in the war-training course, and considered the prettiest girl in the Border camp. Though Elliot figured this gave him his fifty-second piece of proof that people were blind, stupid, and prejudiced against elves.
Elliot was suddenly struck by another cunning plan.
“I find that telling him to go away helps with that,” Elliot offered. “He is very contrary.”
Adara stared at him. “Who asked you?”
“You were speaking quite loudly, and I’m a yard away,” said Elliot. “If you wanted to keep your conversation a secret, may I suggest whispering about it on some lonely midnight? And if you wanted me to politely pretend about anything, I’m sorry, have you met me? But suit yourself. I’m sure tossing your hair as if you’re a pony being bothered by flies will work eventually.”
Adara made a face at him, but looked thoughtful. Elliot had noted already that she wasn’t stupid, or he wouldn’t have spoken up at all.
When Luke left Dale Wavechaser and the rest of the admiring posse of war-training guys (Elliot thought of them as a kind of armed Greek chorus), Adara straightened up on her sunbed, threw her hair back, and called out with sultry daring: “Go away, Luke!”
Luke’s eyebrows hit his forehead, backed up, accelerated, and then hit his forehead again. “Ooookay,” he said, and carefully skirted around the girls’ sunbeds, giving Adara the widest berth possible and also some serious side eye, until he reached Elliot.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“Don’t bother me now, loser, I have a very serious and important question to ask Adara,” said Elliot. “Now, Adara, you said that, and it actually worked. How did you do it? Was it like this: Go away, Luke? Or was it more like this: Go away, Luke?”
Adara shot him a look fit to kill.
Luke lowered his voice. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk to her? I have no idea what I did to upset her. She seems a bit touchy.”
Which was Luke-speak for “she seems weird and mean.”
“Also kind of weird and mean,” Luke continued, speaking even lower and keeping a wary gaze on Adara.
Adara was hiding behind a curtain of golden hair. This was obviously not the way she’d been hoping to get Luke’s attention.
“I just want to know where the stress should lie,” said Elliot. “Like, extra scorn on his name, or extra force behind the ‘go’? I wish only to learn. Teach me your ways, master.”
“Come on,” said Luke, and reached for his arm.
“No!” said Elliot, and batted him away. “We’ve discussed this, Luke. No using your superior physical strength unless it’s an emergency. This dumb lake is not an emergency.”
“Can’t you swim?” Luke asked. “I’ll teach you.”
“Of course I can swim!” Elliot snapped.
His father had made sure he had many lessons so he would not be underfoot all the time: Elliot could swim, ballroom dance, speak French and Italian, and play three musical instruments. He was way more accomplished than Luke.
“I can’t swim,” Adara put in. Elliot admired her tenacity.
“See, Luke?” he said. “Your expertise is needed. You go teach Adara to swim. I will sit here and read my book. Everybody’s happy.”
“Everybody?” Luke asked. “Really?”
“You don’t count.”
That came out a little meaner than Elliot had intended, so he looked up and checked on how Luke was taking it. Luke didn’t look upset exactly, but he was frowning, face slightly troubled under his sunny wet hair.
“Why do you look like an unhappy turtle?” he asked.
The problem was that Luke wasn’t stupid either. Elliot didn’t see why Luke couldn’t do him a favour and be distracted by the blonde Elliot had thoughtfully provided.
“Are you dripping on my book deliberately?” Elliot demanded. “That is just like you.”
Elliot hunched protectively farther into the neck of his dumb dress-slash-shirt and looked yearningly over at Serene and her knot of admirers. She laughed, her laugh like the ripple through leaves, and called over to them.
“What do you think, Luke?” Oh pardon, Elliot, she wasn’t calling over to them at all, but to her swordbrother. “Would I like swimming?”
“Give it a try,” Luke called back, grinning.
Luke could have literally any girl he wanted. Adara was right there, and Elliot had specially selected her as an excellent option. Why did it have to be Serene? Elliot glanced over at Adara, and she looked like she completely agreed. He felt some fellow feeling for the poor girl.
“I shall,” said Serene, laughing again.
She stretched like a young, thin birch tree swayed by a wind, pulled her tight leather top over her head, and tossed it on the ground, leaving her smooth, pale skin entirely bare from the waist up.
There was an echoing silence all around the lakeside suddenly, as jaws dropped in such perfect unison Elliot thought they should have made a tiny collective creaking sound.
It was broken by Luke snapping: “You dropped your book.”
He ran from Elliot’s side then and was with Serene in two strides. He knocked two boys away, flat on their backs in the grass, while Serene was still looking mildly puzzled.
Elliot scrambled off his sunbed and got there at the same time as Mal Wavechaser, Dale’s cousin, and one of the older boys who was on supervisory duty. So when Mal insisted that Serene was going to Commander Rayburn’s, they were both there to insist they were going too.
“You can’t say she was in a scandalous state of undress and punish her for it when she was in the exact same state of undress as more than half the people there,” Elliot shouted.
Commander Rayburn was looking fixedly at the carpet and not at Serene. Captain Woodsinger, who had come upon their procession as they headed for the commander’s cabin, had announced she was duty-bound to accompany them as the highest-ranked woman in the camp. She was looking at Serene, though very deliberately at her face. Serene was still naked from the waist up. Elliot had offered Serene his tunic, even though that meant Luke and half the censorious Border camp would see his clearly not-athletic physique, because love meant sacrifice. Serene had refused his sacrifice with obvious astonishment.
“I am mystified by everyone’s behaviour!” Serene exclaimed. “My breasts are not so large as to need supporting garments, so why should I wear anything on my upper half? Don’t worry,” she added. “I’m not self-conscious about the size of my bosom at this time. I am still very young, and I will develop further. Besides which, I do not subscribe to the superstition that says the larger a woman’s breasts, the greater her courage on the battlefield and prowess in the bedchamber.”