Mal Wavechaser hunted him down at dinnertime and professed his eternal gratitude, which was extremely embarrassing.
Elliot was already embarrassed about the letters he had written to Serene, which he had not meant to be as hilarious as everyone had apparently found them. He wanted to tell Serene off for reading them aloud, and at the same time he was too embarrassed to show he cared, since she hadn’t thought it was important.
And he didn’t want to write something that would make them feel worse. He didn’t want anger to be the last thing he ever wrote to them, and he had no guarantees. Any letter could be the last.
So after dinner, he went and wrote a letter for both of them, full of all the news he could think of. It began: “Luke, you miscreant, since apparently you’ve been READING SERENE’S LETTERS . . .”
In the morning, the dispatches said that Commander Rayburn was dead.
Word after that trickled in agonisingly slowly: word of what had happened, and who had died. Word of Captain Woodsinger seizing the flag before it fell and leading the army: “A woman!” said General Lakelost, and yet did not dare send orders that she be removed from command in case those orders were not obeyed.
Louise Sunborn’s troop, now Luke’s, had been in the thick of the battle.
Elliot did not sleep for two nights, not until the list of survivors arrived. He had always wanted to be taller, and now he was finally growing a little and realized it was not worth the price. He was experiencing shooting pains in his legs, which was super fun and so conveniently timed, and he was staying up reading and thinking until he could neither read nor think any more. Until his mind, the only thing that had never failed him, failed him and he was left lying in his bunk having nightmares with his eyes open.
Of course Elliot was scared sick for Serene, but lonely in the night, at the coldest quietest hour, he had to make certain admissions. He had to admit that he was desperately worried about both of them: he had to admit that Luke was Elliot’s friend.
It was so embarrassing. Luke could never know. Elliot decided that he was just going to be Luke’s friend very sneakily.
So he tried to be terribly nice to Louise. He visited her every day and stayed with her a long time telling her stories about how annoying other people were, despite the shushing the medics did, and he bothered the medics about her care.
“Have you no ways to make her better faster?” Elliot asked. “This is a magical fantasy land. Have you no mystical unguents?”
The medic gave him a flat look. “What.”
“Be straight with me here,” said Elliot. “Do we have aspirin?”
“No,” said the medic.
Elliot was relieved she knew what aspirin was, at least. She must come from his world. Elliot wondered if she had become a medic hoping for mystical unguents, and that was why she seemed so disappointed with life.
He tried to touch the bottles in the grouchy medic’s box and read the labels. “What does that do?”
“Kills you,” she said. “And that one makes you vomit for twelve hours straight.”
“Cool,” said Elliot.
“Not cool, young man,” she said. “No touching.”
“You’re a healer. You should be filled with ineffable goodwill and radiate an aura of peace.”
“Get out of my infirmary,” she said. Elliot decided he liked her, and bestowed a smile on her as he ambled over to Louise.
Louise took the opportunity to thank Elliot again for recommending Mal Wavechaser, and said that Elliot had excellent taste. Elliot had dark visions of being sent to Captain Whiteleaf’s office and scolded for being the world’s youngest procurer.
Louise had fever one night, and Elliot sat with her and held her hand. She called out for her mother, but only once. Rachel Sunborn was such a nice mother: Elliot supposed it made sense to still want her, even if you were grown up.
Elliot also came to Louise in order to vent his frustrations when his fury was clearly scaring Myra and Peter: when the offer for a truce came that made the dwarves happy but which gave nothing to the humans and the elves, and the plan was to summarily reject it as an insult.
Elliot sat with Louise that night still furious, thinking: just say yes, just bring them home. Later when he could not sleep and he was thinking about it as if it were a war in an old book, long fought and which he could regard as a game, he realized that if the elves and the humans were both unhappy, the peace would not work. He would not have them given back to him only to be inevitably snatched away.
“It’s a question of the size of the territory!” said Captain Whiteleaf the next day, raging imbecile that he was. “And the honor shown us!”
“Oh, well, I don’t think that’s true, is it?” Elliot asked in his sweetest, least argumentative, talking-to-the-elves voice. He poured General Lakelost his water. “Trolls want rock, so if they’re ceded something we think of as a barren wasteland, like for instance here . . .” he gestured pretend-carelessly at a map. “And elves want the woods. In fact, I happen to be in correspondence with a well-connected elven captain, Swift-Arrows-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, who mentioned a particular bit of woodland her people had their eye on. Here it is. Humans want farmland and gold, and if the trolls switch us this little space here where there’s meant to be gold in exchange for the barren wasteland . . .”
“What about honor?” snapped Captain Whiteleaf, weak chin quivering with indignation.
Elliot gazed, wide-eyed. “I’m sure that’s important too.”
“Indeed, indeed, but forget about it for a second,” said General Lakelost. “What were you saying about gold, lad?”
“My friend Myra’s part of the Diamond clan,” said Elliot. “She seems pretty sure. I mean, I’m not saying she has insider information . . . Oh dear, the jug is empty and you fine officers need to be refreshed. Gotta go refresh!”
He raced away.
The next day, Captain Whiteleaf was too ill to come out of his room and take part in the negotiations.
“You did this,” he croaked to Elliot when Elliot went to check this was in fact the case.
“Don’t know what you mean, sir,” Elliot said. “But I’m sure you’ll be better in, oh, twelve hours.”
He shut the door and went to bring the general more juice.
“I don’t know what it is, lad,” said Lakelost, ruffling Elliot’s hair—Elliot was pretty sure the general still thought he was ten—“but I think much more clearly with you bringing me apple juice.”
“Important to keep refreshed so your mind is at peak performance, sir,” said Elliot, and pushed a treaty he’d selected as a good new model into the general’s hand.