“Me, of course,” said Luke. Ah, there went all positive feelings. Status quo restored.
“Okay, loser, quit bragging,” Elliot commanded. “We have a real problem here. This has been made deliberately impossible for Serene. They won’t go any easier on her. We have to coordinate our efforts.”
“I don’t understand,” said Luke.
“I don’t know how to express the depths of my surprise,” Elliot told him. “How would it be if Serene skipped the earliest classes, and you remembered the lessons and trained her? And while you train her, I could read to her and try to catch her up in our lessons so she won’t have to study late. She’ll have to multi-task, but she won’t be too exhausted to do it.”
Luke thought this over, and then nodded. “All right. So we’ll work together on this. Truce?”
“For the year,” said Elliot hastily. “We’re not friends.”
“I’m not confused on that issue,” said Luke. He spat in his hand and held it out. “Deal?”
Elliot backed away. “Ugh, no, I’m not touching your spit. That’s disgusting.”
Luke flushed and wiped his hand off on his trousers. “It’s a totally normal—”
“Save the performative manly exchange of bodily fluids for the people in your military training, loser!”
“Why are you helping her?” Luke asked abruptly, and loud enough so that Bright-Eyes the librarian elf gave them a sharp warning look. Of course Luke had no idea of appropriate manners in the library.
“Why are you helping her?” Elliot shot back.
“She’s my comrade-in-arms,” said Luke. “And this isn’t fair. But you hardly have a code of honor, so why are you helping her?”
So Luke was saying that he was helping Serene out of the goodness of his heart, but naturally he assumed Elliot had no goodness to speak of. Because if Elliot’s code of honor wasn’t the same as Luke’s, it might as well not exist at all.
Elliot did note that Luke had not mentioned any romantic interest in Serene, so he chose this time to stake a prior romantic claim.
“If you must know, she is the one soul destined for my own, and we are going to be together forever,” he declared loftily.
“That’s weird,” Luke told him. “We’re thirteen.”
“I don’t care what you think!”
“Elliot, don’t yell, we’ll get thrown out,” Serene grumbled, appearing rumpled in the stacks. “Merciful goddess, Luke, what are you doing in the library?”
Luke looked betrayed.
That was how the study-slash-stabbing lessons got started. Elliot made Luke sign them up for one of the good practise rooms in the towers, because the war-training kids didn’t let the kids in the council course sign up for practise rooms, and people had been known to scribble out the elf girl’s name, but nobody was going to scribble out a Sunborn.
There were a few benches at the back of the practise room. Elliot sat on those and perfected his lesson plan. It had to be sharp, short bursts of information: purely aural and oral learning, striking enough so that Serene would remember what she needed to.
One method was to quiz her at the same time as Luke and Serene were fighting with quarterstaffs: using the clash of wood on wood as a rhythm for belting out questions, like a song.
“Name the lake where mermaids have historically murdered the most sailors.”
“Lake Atar,” said Serene, whirling and striking her staff against Luke’s.
“Correct! You’re the greatest. The place where the largest host of the harpies resides.”
“The Forest of the Suicides,” she said, whirling away as Luke struck back, her plait flying.
“One thousand percent correct. You’re amazing. The richest dwarf mines?”
“The Edda mines,” Luke chimed in, circling Serene.
“No, no, shut your face, these questions are not for you,” Elliot said sternly. “But actually that is the correct answer, thank goodness, because if you had confused Serene with another wrong answer there would have been consequences.”
Torchlight caught Luke’s grin before he lunged forward and met Serene’s defence.
One night, Serene fell asleep in the practise room, and rather than wake her and deprive her of yet more sleep, they let her sleep. Luke covered her with his jacket. Elliot found that offensive showing off, since Elliot’s uniform did not come with a cool leather jacket.
“I have to say,” said Luke as they were walking back to the cabins. “I would’ve thought you’d give up well before now.”
“Really,” said Elliot. “Because kids from my side of the Border don’t have any follow-through or honor? Or just because you think I don’t?”
“You did say you were only helping because you . . . had a crush on Serene,” said Luke.
“Excuse you,” said Elliot. “I worship her. Do not underestimate my feelings. My devotion is intense and will be enduring!”
“I was trying to say something nice,” Luke said crossly.
Elliot imagined that anyone else in the camp would have fallen all over themselves at receiving a compliment from a Sunborn, however grudging or double-edged.
“Yes,” said Elliot. “Very flattering that you assumed I was inferior to you in commitment. You really seem to think you’re something special, Luke Sunborn. It’s strange. I don’t see it myself.”
He went into his cabin, leaving Luke standing speechless behind him. Once he was in the darkness and relative privacy of the cabin—given that all his annoying roommates were doing was begging him to “get into bed” and “stop torturing us like this”—Elliot allowed himself to smile.
Spending time with Luke was not actually as painful as Elliot had assumed it would be. Not that Elliot intended to let him know that.
A few more dark weeks followed, in which Elliot was tired enough to snap at a couple of people who couldn’t take it and make them cry, and he and Serene and Luke ate dinner standing up over lessons rather than around their separate council and war campfires every evening, and Elliot passed out in his cold uncomfortable bunkbed every night without noticing the cold or the discomfort until morning, when he woke aching all over.
It was worth it, because Serene and Luke were both getting rather good, Elliot thought. He would’ve thought about being a teacher when he grew up, but Elliot knew himself, and he knew that the impressionable and tenderhearted should be protected from him.
When Luke and Serene both got merits in the two classes the council and war courses shared, and Serene merits in every other class, Elliot felt like he could finally relax.
Then it occurred to him that he was spending all his time with Serene. Of course she was his heart’s chosen darling, and every moment spent drowning in her eyes was bliss, but she was also—it was unfortunate, but it could not be denied—a sporty type. In the occasional times when Elliot had daydreamed about having friends, they had not been sporty.