“Any time,” said Serene. He thought she might have liked to smile but found herself not able to do so. “Always.”
Elliot wanted to ask Serene to go out there. She’d obviously be better at comforting Luke and be the one he wanted to see, but he understood that he was the least hurt of the three of them, even if he did have a broken arm. He stood up, and stood looking for a moment at her profile, like that of a marble bust, all set perfect lines, and her gray eyes fixed on a private vision. He swept her dark hair off her face with his good hand, kissed her brow, and walked away. It wasn’t how he’d wanted their first kiss to go, but it had weirdly seemed like the right thing to do.
He walked outside and found Luke sitting on a low wall outside the tent, his bright head bowed. He looked up at Elliot’s approach.
“Hey, it’s you,” he said. “Are you—doing all right?”
“Fine,” said Elliot. “They say I’ll play the piano again. Well, they didn’t, they didn’t know what a piano was, but I’m going to be fine anyway.”
“That’s good,” said Luke.
“How about you?” asked Elliot.
“Oh, you know me,” said Luke. “Great. Always great. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Sure,” said Elliot. “Absolutely, you should be. I’m certain it seemed like there was nothing else to do at the time.”
Luke’s face changed. “Seemed like?”
“Well, ideally we would have been able to reason with the trolls, and there would have been no bloodshed,” said Elliot, sinkingly conscious that he was saying the exact wrong thing but not sure what else to say, now they were talking about this.
“Oh yeah?” Luke demanded. “You think you’re so smart. Did it seem to you that those creatures were going to listen to reason?”
“Well, I mean, maybe,” said Elliot. “We’re never going to know now, are we?”
Luke was white under his tan. “Are you serious? I know what you think of me,” he said. “You’re always really clear on the subject. But is this the time to have a go at me?”
“That came out wrong,” said Elliot. “Obviously, there were extenuating circumstances. There was the child—”
“You know what, Elliot?” Luke demanded. “Could you shut up for once in your life and leave me alone?”
He pushed himself off the wall and shoved past Elliot, fairly hard, on his injured side. Elliot went and leaned against the wall until the jolted pain in his arm subsided, and by then Luke was long gone.
Elliot blamed himself for trying. He was not a comforting type of person: it was stupid, like a hedgehog trying to be a hot-water bottle. Of course he was only going to make Luke more upset.
The village, which the child belonged to—her name turned out to be Aysha, and everyone asked silly questions like “you were trapped with her in a rockslide and never even found out her name?”—had a party to celebrate Luke saving one of their daughters. People made speeches and clapped, and the popularity of the Border guard received a significant boost.
Elliot mainly sat in the corner and sulked over his broken arm. Eventually Serene and Luke came to sit with him, and they were all pretty quiet together.
The incident with the trolls was, they were told, not a skirmish but merely an encounter.
However, the Border camp leaders assured them that there would soon be a real skirmish. It was discovered by the Border guard that the dwarves were occupying several rich mines on land that was rightfully the property of the elves. The elves, a territorial people, were outraged once they were informed and shown the documentation proving their ownership. The guards and the cadets from warrior training were set to ride out in the space of three sundowns.
Elliot supposed you could tell the difference between a skirmish and an encounter by counting the number of corpses. Apparently nobody but him thought it was at all suspicious that as soon as the humans had decided they wanted the land, this conflict between the elves and the dwarves had arisen. He bet some of the land would be granted to the Border humans by the elves as thanks for their aid in battle.
This meant the official neutrality and private distrust between humans and dwarves had now become open enmity. Myra took to wearing her hair loose, hiding behind it like a veil, and slinking around the classrooms as if expecting to be hit.
Elliot might at this point have slightly broken into Commander Rayburn’s office and found a large file of deeds and treaties that he confiscated and took with him to the library, where he sat studying them and trying to project an air of innocence. This worked until Serene came to drag him out to Luke’s next Trigon game.
“I have no time to bother with Luke’s stupid game,” said Elliot.
“Sure, all right, we’re going anyway,” said Serene, who was the most wonderful girl in the world but sometimes did not listen. She went over to grab Elliot’s arm, and as she did her eye fell on the papers. “Elliot,” she asked after a moment’s pause, her voice heavy with foreboding. “What are these, and where did you get them?”
“Ahhh . . .,” said Elliot, reluctant to incriminate himself, and then stuffed the document he had been staring at for ten minutes in her hands.
The treaty which sealed the alliance between the elves and the dwarves, in which the dwarves pledged treasure and the elves pledged land. The very land which the elves were now claiming was theirs.
Everybody had seen the deed that proved the elves had originally owned the land. Nobody had seen this treaty.
“My people believe the land rightfully belongs to them,” said Serene. “They would go to war for nothing less. We will not break any word, once given. If we knew of this document, we would never have agreed to fight. This war would bring us dishonor.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured,” said Elliot.
“Perhaps this treaty was overlooked by mischance.”
“Yeeeeeeah,” Elliot said. “Perchance. Would you bet your honor on it?”
“I would not,” Serene replied at last. “Would you go fetch Luke?”
“Why can’t you go fetch Luke?”
“I’d rather someone found me with the documents than you,” said Serene, and smiled a wolfish smile. “They can’t take them from me. Well, they’d be welcome to try.”
“Okay,” said Elliot. He got up and dashed for the Trigon pitch, hoping against hope that Luke had been knocked out early.
Of course Elliot could never be that lucky. The Trigon game was in full swing, the stands full, and Luke still playing. Elliot had to dodge several interfering people in order to make his way onto the pitch.
“Uh, you’re not meant to be here . . .,” said Dale Wavechaser. “Uh, maybe you could wish Luke luck after the game, or something . . . ?”
Elliot waved him away.
“Only we’re really close to winning . . .,” Dale said, and his voice was faintly pleading. “Against the fifth years.”
“That’s nice for you,” Elliot remarked. “Also disappointing for you in a minute, I suppose.” He whistled. “Oi, Luke!”