Elliot beamed. “Aw.”
Elliot thought it was settled, that they’d done the thing, and there would be no more talk of skirmishes and battles.
Until the trolls and the harpies, alarmed by all these alliances, made an alliance of their own. The harpies encroached on dwarf territory, and the dwarves called on their new allies.
And it was happening again, as if everything they had struggled to accomplish had just been to give themselves an escape route that led around in a circle, right back to where they had been before. Right back to the looming nightmare of war.
Luke and Serene were posted to Lieutenant Louise Sunborn’s troop, the 15th, Luke’s sister’s first command. They were given their marching orders and collected their weapons and bedrolls, all the standard military equipment.
Elliot meant to sit and sulk over the pointless waste of it all in his cabin until the very last moment. There was a knock on the door at one point, but he wasn’t done sulking and he ignored it.
He did not make it to the very last moment. When he emerged from the cabin, it was to see the dust of the troops leaving: it was to find Serene and Luke already gone.
Then the news arrived that the trolls had come in far greater force than anyone expected. That the Border guards were hopelessly outnumbered, and the tide of war was turning against them.
Elliot went to pay a call on Captain Whiteleaf, the most senior officer left in charge of the camp. His father had asked for the honor to be granted him. Command did not suit Captain Whiteleaf. He already looked wild about the eyes before he spotted Elliot, and when he did he almost jumped out of the commander’s chair.
“Cadet Schafer, what do you need me for?” Captain Whiteleaf said nervously. “I mean, I don’t want a repeat of the—burning incident last year, and the commander has, has warned, I mean prepared me, for all your tricks. Just don’t . . . just don’t do anything. Go back to class.”
“Why, Captain, you wrong me,” said Elliot with the sweet smile he’d used on the elves. It seemed to make Captain Whiteleaf nervous, which would work just as well as charm. “I thought, as most of the trainees whose duty it is to wait on the officers are off at war, that I would volunteer my services to assist in bringing cool water and snacks to our valiant leaders.”
“Let you in the council rooms?”
“People need drinks and snacks, Captain,” Elliot said in dulcet tones. “It’s a totally normal reason for me to be there. I mean, if you don’t want me to go there—”
“I don’t want you to go there!”
“—for that reason,” Elliot continued. “I can certainly find a different reason to go. I’m very resourceful.” He smiled again, this time less sweetly but very wide. “You’ll see.”
None of the councilors were actually allowed in the council room. They sat in an antechamber, and documents were sent out to them to put into proper language. After the big decisions were already made.
Elliot was allowed to bring water and snacks to the officers in the council room. He peeped at the dispatches sent in. He could usually manage to read the ones for Captain Whiteleaf and edit the replies, since the captain was scared of getting things wrong and maybe a little scared of Elliot. He only got glimpses of the most important dispatches sent to General Lakelost. The general seemed suspicious of him, which was understandable but inconvenient.
When he wasn’t in council, he was writing long ardent love letters to Serene and trying to work his way out of feeling so truly horrible.
He’d thought he might enjoy spending more time with Peter and Myra, but he was in a slightly ruffled condition and during one lunch made Peter go off somewhere, he suspected to cry, and reduced Myra to staring at him with stunned eyes.
“Sorry,” he told her, banishing himself from the lunch room for being an unacceptable human being. “I’m in a filthy mood. Sorry.”
He hadn’t even said anything so very bad. Luke would not have been reduced to tears. Everybody needed to work on not being so thin-skinned all the time, he told himself, and went off to deliberately pick a fight with the remains of the Trigon team.
He didn’t even realise that was what he was doing until he spat out another mouthful of malice at Richard Plantgrown.
“Look,” snapped Richard, “you can be as much of a little snot as you want. Luke Sunborn told us if we laid a finger on you while he was gone, he’d have our heads.”
“Luke Sunborn needs to learn to mind his own business,” snapped Elliot, and at least the others looked like they agreed with him there. “Besides, who’s going to tell him? Or are you all just such cowards the mere idea of Luke has you quaking in your—”
Richard did hit Elliot in the face then. Very hard. Elliot hit the wall, and hot pain and blood bloomed, his own flesh breaking open against his teeth. He spat, and this time it was not malice aimed at someone else, but blood hitting the stone. It was still awful.
“Wow, it’s been a while, hello old friend being hit in the face,” Elliot said, putting his tongue out and tasting the blood, feeling the split and swell of his lip gingerly. “Yep, turns out I still hate pain and think violence is pointless. Sorry, I think I was attempting emotional catharsis, but this is dumb and you people are stupid.”
“You’re not going to hit me back?”
Elliot blinked. “And prolong this special encounter? No, thank you. Oh, but don’t hit me again, I don’t want you to, and besides, how do you know I’m not going to tell Luke? I wouldn’t trust me. I’m a shifty character.”
He took advantage of either their pause for thought or their pause for confusion and slipped away.
Elliot went to the hallway outside the commander’s office, since the commander was gone with everyone else. Nobody stopped him: it was as if their camp were a ghost town. He went and sat in the dark hall, leaned his hot face against a stone wall, and shut his eyes.
This magic land was all wrong. In the books, you had to destroy an evil piece of jewelry or defeat an evil-though-sexy witch or wizard. In the books, people did not hide documents and steal land and try to cheat dwarves and dryads.
The whole world was stupid, and now he was stupid too. He didn’t understand how this could be happening, how they might be dying. He’d fixed everything. He’d done everything right.
Whenever the dispatches came or the next lot of wounded soldiers were carted in, Elliot went shoving through to the forefront of the crowd—he had very pointy elbows, which was a natural gift he felt called to utilize to his advantage—and asking if anyone had any word of a supremely beautiful elf in a human troop under Lieutenant Louise Sunborn. Or anyone else in that troop. Anyone at all.
Eventually, he heard a familiar name.
“Sunborn?” Elliot repeated, a chill going through him. “Luke?”