“I’m attached to my name,” said Elliot. “Because it’s mine. And I don’t know—I don’t even know if I want to stay.”
“It is rare that anyone with council training is allowed to attend meetings like these,” said Commander Woodsinger thoughtfully. “Usually they are summoned to draw up documents afterward. But you have allied yourself with the Sunborns and the House of Chaos, two very influential families, and you see the result. You could have an effect here, if you stayed and were clever about it.”
Elliot stared at her, revolted. “I haven’t allied myself with anyone. I never wanted—I only wanted to be with Serene.”
“Or you could go back to your own world,” the commander continued. “It’s no concern of mine what you do. Though I admit I am curious to see what you do next.”
She gestured him around the back of the tower.
The pit under the commander’s tower was dark and deep, a hollow scooped out in the shadows. Elliot came down a narrow flight of steps carved in mud and stone, through a large wooden door opened with a set of jangling keys. When Elliot stepped into the pit he could see the faces of the others high above him, and he felt like a gladiator in the Roman games, being watched by the faraway, indifferent eyes of citizens.
Or maybe he felt like a Christian about to be eaten by a lion. He knew why the general had let him come: Elliot was expendable. If he was killed he would be no further trouble, and they could say they’d tried everything.
He could see the dull glint of a crossbow in Serene’s hands. He wasn’t expendable to everybody.
They let the bandit Masterson in through a different door, more of a gate that led to the pit from a small dark tunnel. He was tall and thickset, dark stubble on his face and his hands shoved in his pockets.
Elliot knew Serene and Luke. He knew how people stood when they had concealed weapons. He took a step toward Masterson, hands up, showing he was no threat.
“Bat Masterson,” said Elliot. “The name of Wyatt Earp’s deputy? What was your real name, back in the otherlands?”
Bat Masterson shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I carved it on the wall and left it behind. Can’t live there. Don’t want to serve the Border guard. So this was my choice, and this is my name.”
“Fine, go through life using the name of a winged mouse, I don’t care,” said Elliot. “But have you considered that the combined might of the Border guard and the elves may crush you? Which leads me to my next question—have you ever thought about a treaty in which the elves concede some territory in return for the surrender of certain seized lands and valuable items such as jewels?”
There had been some attempts at kidnapping people, but the cultural barrier had led to the bandits trying to take the women and being killed in the face, while occasionally a puzzled bandit had been forced to deal with an elvish gentleman screaming he wished for death before dishonor.
“Once you’re captured, you’re no longer the leader. I’m not in a position to make treaties. And I’m not interested in listening to the chatter of a stupid brat,” said Masterson, and hit Elliot.
Elliot had never been hit by a grown-up before, the meaty fist crashing down with all the weight of muscle and bone and discipline behind it. He staggered and felt the inside of his mouth crash and break against his teeth, the warm gush of blood from his lip to his chin. Elliot choked slightly on the blood in his mouth, coughed and grabbed Masterson’s arm, moving in between him and the steely glint of Serene’s crossbow.
“That may have been the arrangement in your camp, but I bet they would still listen, if you came with terms,” Elliot said, speaking rapidly, trying not to let his cut lip blur the words.
He only had an instant: he saw Masterson going for the slight bulge in the shoulder of his jacket. He only had an instant, and he wasted it. Elliot felt a flicker of fear for his life. Elliot looked toward the torch burning in the wall. Elliot thought about a weapon, rather than using his words.
It was only an instant, and then it was too late. There was a knife in Masterson’s hand. And there was a bright blur over Masterson’s shoulder. Luke had somersaulted from the watchers’ balcony above. Luke struck a blow with his sword before his feet ever hit the ground.
Luke’s face over Masterson’s shoulder was blazingly furious and intent. The blade went clear through Masterson’s chest. Elliot caught the man’s heavy weight in his arms by reflex, sagged and sank under it so he was kneeling in the dirt with him, trying to staunch the flow of blood with his hands.
“You’ll be all right,” he murmured as blood leaked out of Masterson’s mouth and the light bled out of his eyes. “It’s not too late, we can still talk—”
Lies did not stop the man from dying. Elliot looked away from his dead face because he could not keep looking any longer. He looked at Luke, instead.
“You can’t just do things like this!” Elliot raged.
Luke’s face was not blazing anymore, but shut down as if someone had slammed an iron door on a furnace.
“I can,” said Luke. “I did. He hit you. I killed him. That simple.”
Elliot bit his lip and was furious with himself for glancing toward that torch, for not having enough faith in himself to keep talking. He felt guilty because he knew Luke had seen him look to the torch, and was sure Luke had known what that look meant. And he felt unexpectedly and wrenchingly sad: for the sunny boy he’d met his first day in a magic land, the boy who’d been sick the first time he’d killed someone. Now Luke wasn’t even looking at the dead man. Luke had not even flinched. Elliot wondered what this magic land would make them all into, in the end.
He felt furious and guilty and miserable, and impatient with it all: it was no good to feel that way now the man was dead. He had tried to talk to him, and accomplished nothing.
The others came down afterwards. There was no longer a captive in the pit, or any reason to stay out.
“He was from my world,” said Elliot, still sitting in the dirt with the bandit’s head in his lap.
“That makes sense,” said General Lakelost. “They’re a treacherous people there, and strange: metalworkers without morals, not our kind and not to be trusted.”
Elliot looked around to see several people, including Luke, nodding. “Hey!”
Luke did not look up from cleaning his sword. “I just meant it’s obviously not safe there. You shouldn’t go back.”
“Do you know how many times I saw people murdered with swords before I came here?” Elliot raged. “Murdered in any way at all? Zero! Zero times! I was not supposed to live like this, and I don’t want to.”
“It is of no interest to me what you want,” said the elder elf. “You wanted peace, and there is no way to get that now, is there? Much good you humans capturing Masterson did us. We decline your help—”
“You are in no position to decline,” said General Lakelost. “We are coming into the bandits’ territory whether you like that or not.”