“I don’t care about mapmaking!” said Luke. “Nobody in the world cares about mapmaking! Or about how anyone’s doing in class!”
This was very bad news for Elliot. He’d assumed that his scholastic prowess was a huge plus for him with Serene. But Luke was a philistine who clearly cared more about hot bodies than brains. Elliot had proof of this: Luke had a crush on Dale Wavechaser. Probably intelligence appealed more to Serene. Elliot was going to have to hope so.
“Why are you frowning at me?”
“That’s just what my face does when I look at you,” Elliot said automatically.
“Look,” Luke said, raising his voice. “I don’t know what you’re assuming, but it can’t be just—just any guy.”
Elliot wanted to argue that someone who was top in mapmaking was hardly just any guy, but he could tell that Luke was about to be annoyed with him for being offensive.
He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m only trying to help.”
“Well, your helping is terrible,” said Luke. “Everything you do is terrible.”
“Fine,” said Elliot. “I have more terrible work to do. Please leave.”
Luke pushed one of Elliot’s books out of the way to uncover Peter’s instructive manuals.
“Enjoy your work,” he said, and stalked out.
Elliot had to break the news to Peter that Luke was not interested, which led to Peter glaring a lot at Luke for toying with his affections. This was made more hilarious to Elliot by the fact Luke noticed someone glaring at him, but still had no idea why or who Peter was.
“Do you think he might be one of the people working against Commander Woodsinger?” Luke asked in a low voice when he and Serene came to visit Elliot in the library, and Elliot laughed and laughed.
He didn’t feel much like laughing, these days. He never saw Serene without Luke anymore.
Elliot had been telling himself that of course he and Serene couldn’t pursue anything until the matter of who had attacked the camp was answered. But maybe that wasn’t it at all.
Luke didn’t like women, but Serene could still like him. Maybe the only reason she’d gone after Elliot at all was because she couldn’t have who she truly wanted. Maybe she had realized that Elliot was no substitute, and never could be.
Elliot couldn’t think about it, or about the way Luke and Serene went out, united in their purpose: the way Serene did not stay in the library the way she used to. He went back to his books.
Myra joined him, pulled up a chair to his table and took one of the books from his unread stack.
“Luke and Serene told me what you were doing here,” she said. “And I—I like Commander Woodsinger. She’s kind to my cousin, who’s all dwarf, and I don’t want the camp to have any other commander, and I want to help.”
“So you know who Luke is,” said Elliot.
“Of course I do,” said Myra. “We get on quite well. He’s always really nice to me.”
Elliot wanted to say: he has no idea what your name is, but he was being a prince of tact these days, so he made a tactful sound instead. “Mmm.”
Myra blushed. “He’s very handsome. It’s such a pity about . . .”
“Awesome luck for the guys,” Elliot said firmly.
“That’s true, I wonder if he and Dale Wavechaser will go out,” said Myra, and Elliot was deeply noble and did not try to get her to make a bet.
Even with Myra’s help, they had found nothing by the time the real attack came, the soldiers flooding in under Colonel Whiteleaf’s command, calling on Whiteleaf’s famous name, intent on replacing Commander Woodsinger with his son.
There were too many of them, and the camp was full of children: Commander Woodsinger and the guards who remained loyal to her had to act to protect the children before they did anything else. The commander sent out messages pleading for reinforcements and then took the field against the invaders.
Everybody knew reinforcements might be slow in coming: that the other fortresses might be hoping that a woman would be replaced, and they would later reprimand the colonel and leave it at that. Colonel Whiteleaf was still honored for his valiant deeds in a battle against mermaids twenty years ago, but apparently no one cared about Commander Woodsinger’s valiant deeds last year. This was the reward someone got for being a war hero, if they weren’t the kind of war hero people wanted.
That gave Elliot an idea. He went to look for books about war rather than mermaids at the exact moment when Luke and Serene showed up to take Elliot to a place of safety.
“You don’t understand,” Luke said. “Colonel Whiteleaf has more men. They have already taken the commander’s tower.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” said Elliot. “I’m staying here. We can barricade ourselves in here: we’ll be as safe as anyone in the camp.”
Serene looked upon him with worry and, Elliot thought and hoped he was not imagining it, fondness. She was the only person in either world who ever looked at him like that. “You have a valiant spirit. I will respect your wishes, but you cannot ask me not to worry.”
Luke looked tired: he addressed his words exclusively to Myra. “Can we take you to a place of safety, at least?”
“No,” Myra said slowly. “I’ll stay here with Elliot.”
Maybe Myra could be his favorite of Myra and Peter forever.
They kept reading, through the silence of a siege and then when the battle finally broke out: men in Border guard uniforms attempting to take the camp and appoint Captain Whiteleaf as commander. Colonel Whiteleaf had come from his own fortress and occupied Commander Woodsinger’s tower. There was still no sign of Whiteleaf Junior. Elliot assumed he would be produced, pretending to be innocent of any rebellion, once Commander Woodsinger surrendered.
Elliot thought it was meant to be a quick coup, and perhaps it would have been. Except Colonel Whiteleaf’s Border guard had not expected the cadets to fight back: not so fiercely, not for a woman. They had not expected the commander to fight back so fiercely herself. Commander Woodsinger was not surrendering.
Elliot had not slept for two days and found himself drifting off, even though his bed was a hard chair and his lullaby was the sound of clashing weapons.
It was Myra, leafing through books of genealogy, who gave a soft incoherent sound of triumph and nudged Elliot out of his doze.
“Look at this,” she said. “There’s something wrong with the dates—there’s something wrong about the mermaids—”
That was when lightning struck for Elliot, and he leaped out of his chair as if lightning had set it on fire.
“I can stop all this. I have to see Colonel Whiteleaf right now.”
“You can’t go out there! It’s much too dangerous.”
Elliot looked out the window. There were buildings burning out there, cabins and towers where he had been sleeping and playing and learning for years. He had chosen council training; he would have been rubbish at anything else. Most fights were always going to be at a remove from him, but this was his home and that meant this was his fight.