“With respect, sir,” Serene began.
“No,” said Commander Rayburn, a big burly guy in the standard excessive leather. He had an actual candle burning much too close to a stack of parchment on his desk. “The war-training course demands total dedication and extreme discipline. It leaves no time for anything else, certainly not another course. The council-training course also, I have no doubt, takes up considerable time. You would not be capable of studying both.”
Elliot noted the commander’s obvious deep commitment to the council-training course.
“With respect, sir,” said Serene. “And meaning no offence to you or my fellow cadets, but while it might certainly be too much for the delicate, I am a woman, and scientifically we have more endurance than men—”
Commander Rayburn’s face grew darker. Elliot tried to gesture to Serene to cease this line of reasoning.
Which turned out to be a terrible mistake, because the commander’s eye lit upon him. “Do you have something to say, cadet?”
“No,” said Elliot prudently. Then his actual personality reasserted itself and he said: “Well, actually yes. Okay, I’ve only been in the otherlands for a day, and so far it’s all horrible and confusing, but this much I understand. Serene is the first female elf to join the Border camp, and the women of her kind are more highly valued socially than the men. She’s also of a very high rank. If you send her home saying that you doubt her capabilities, you will be insulting the elves, and they are one of the few nonhumans the humans actually have an alliance with. Why insult the elves when you do not have to? Moreover, Serene is extremely intelligent and by all accounts really good at stabbing stuff and whatever. You should want to have gifted students who may excel in both courses, and you should be encouraging students when they show interest in their studies. Do you not want warriors who are brilliant, and diplomats who are brave? The war-training course is also obviously the command-track course. Do you want the next generation of commanders and captains to be idiots like Luke? If the coursework proves too much for Serene—which I do not anticipate—she can always make a choice between the courses, and at that stage it will be a choice made with more information than she has now, and with mutual goodwill.” He took a deep breath. “Also, that candle so close to your papers is a fire hazard. I thought you should know.”
Captain Woodsinger gave Elliot an appalled look. Elliot suspected she had never forgiven him for the child-predator remark.
Commander Rayburn’s lip curled. “You’d be in the council-training course, I assume.”
“Yeah, you can tell by my pretty dress,” Elliot snapped.
“Well, your deluge of slippery words and Chaos-of-Battle’s burgeoning insubordination fail to convince me, for some reason,” Rayburn said drily.
“My mother always said men’s minds were unsuited to the rigors of command,” Serene murmured. “With respect, sir.”
Captain Woodsinger smiled faintly. The commander did not.
“What did you say?” Commander Rayburn thundered.
“I agree with them,” Luke Sunborn said loudly.
He had not spoken before, only saluted and stood to attention, hands clasped behind his back and listening seriously to what his commander was saying. He stepped forward now.
“I beg your pardon, Sunborn?”
“I agree with everything Serene and Elliot are saying,” Luke said. “Except the stuff about guys, obviously. Serene, you have to remember the cultural differences.”
Serene inclined her head. “My apologies.”
“And the fact that Elliot insulted me, which was completely rude and uncalled for.”
Elliot smirked.
“Aside from that, sir,” said Luke, “it does no harm to let her try. She’s amazing with a bow. You should see her in the ring. If she was asked to choose between courses, she might not choose war training, and she would be a real loss to the camp.”
Elliot did not miss Luke’s implication, as clear as the commander’s, that council training was useless.
“She has a brain, you know,” Elliot said. “She’d be right not to choose war training.”
“I speak for myself,” Serene announced, her arms crossed. “And I am brilliant with both a bow and my brain. But if you do not know how to value a daughter of Chaos, that is your loss.”
She walked over to a chair, which she flung herself into, and sat in a rebellious slouch. Elliot looked at her with love and joined her in sitting down, though he didn’t think he had quite Serene’s élan. Luke remained standing, but he moved to the other side of Serene’s chair.
It was Serene’s absolute refusal to be cowed or to submit that changed the commander’s mind, Elliot thought. But he figured the support of a Sunborn and Elliot’s statement of some shatteringly obvious facts about diplomacy didn’t hurt.
“You can take both courses,” the commander said eventually. “On trial. For a year. If you do not perform satisfactorily in both, you will be asked to choose at the end of a year, whether you wish to or not.”
“Thank you,” said Serene.
“And I hope I don’t regret this.”
“I intend you will not,” Serene informed him. “I intend to excel.”
They left the tent with Serene striding in the centre and both of them flanking her.
“Well, Serene, you were amazing,” Elliot told her. “Now, you’ll want to learn what you missed in council training today. Come with me to the library and we will go over the lessons. Good-bye, Luke.”
“Right,” said Luke. “See you in archery at dawn, Serene?”
“Indeed,” said Serene.
Elliot was calling that one a draw. For him and Luke, that was: obviously Serene had triumphed in her altercation with the commander, because she was wonderful.
Serene was obviously in way over her head.
It was not her fault. She was brilliant and amazing and perfect, and if anyone in the world could have done it she could have, but there simply were not enough hours in the day. Those in council training were meant to burn the midnight oil (literally; God grant Elliot patience, but he would rather have electricity), and those in war training were meant to rise at dawn.
She was not getting enough sleep.
Elliot came forcibly to this realization when he was reading to her aloud in the library about the adventures of a dwarf prince and the elven commander of his armies. It was also an interspecies romance, because Elliot’s courtship was both intellectual and sneaky.
Their burly elven librarian, Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women, walked over and coughed pointedly as Elliot was reading.
Elliot ceased doing the voice for the dwarf prince. “Am I talking too loudly—” he began, and then saw that Serene was asleep, her dark head cradled in her arms. “Oh.”
He shut up the book, slipped off his chair, and went into the stacks where he could give himself furiously to thinking. He had only been brooding there for a few minutes when he was interrupted by Luke.
“What are you doing here?” Elliot demanded.
“I’m worried about Serene,” said Luke.
“No, I didn’t mean why did you come here,” Elliot explained. “How did you even know how to find this place? Did you get somebody to show you the way? Do you know what these objects on the shelves with all the words in them are called?”
Luke did look somewhat out of place in the library and mildly uncomfortable about it, but in response he stopped looking uncomfortable and started looking annoyed.
“We were having an archery competition this morning.”
“How is that different from having archery practise every other morning?” Elliot asked. “Wait, don’t tell me, I just remembered I’m not interested. So?”
“Serene missed every bull’s-eye,” said Luke. “She could barely focus on the target. She still did better than a lot of the other cadets, mind you,” he added with notable pride: it almost made Elliot have a positive feeling about Luke.
“Who won the
archery competition, then?”
“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.
Besides, he was a modern independent man who intended to have his own interests and circle of acquaintances, even if he had found his soulmate young.
One day when he was not too tired, he came to mapmaking class—the last class of the day—early and carefully studied the maps everyone was working on. There were not that many. The council-training course was far, far smaller than the war-training course. Apparently they needed ten swords to every brain.
The other students seemed disturbed to have their work surveyed and commented upon.
“Do you mind?” snapped a boy from Elliot’s cabin who had already taken against Elliot because of his “endless whining” over “central heating or whatever.”
Elliot beamed. “Not at all.”
That boy’s map was distinctly substandard. Elliot let him know.
Then he stationed himself at two desks pushed together, where the two best maps in class lay on proud display. The owners of the desks were cadets Elliot vaguely recognized—a human boy called Peter, and a girl called Myra.
There were not
many girls in the Border camp at all, and Myra was special. Elliot had wonderful suspicions about Myra. She was very short and had dark hair on her upper lip. Elliot had seen dwarves on the day people had signed up for training camp, and never after: it made sense to him that they had been seeing off someone who had signed up.
Also, Myra had an elaborately carved axe under her desk. Not that Elliot was making any judgments based on that fact. Elliot did not judge.
“Hiiii,” Elliot said ingratiatingly as they approached.
Myra and Peter looked surprised to see him, but—Elliot thought—not unhappy. Elliot was an expert in people being unhappy to see him.
“Can I sit with you guys?” Elliot asked.
“Of—of course!” said Peter.
Elliot felt his winning smile widen into a real grin. He had not expected this to be so easy. He’d always had to chase the kids down the road to make them keep him company.
“I’m Elliot Schafer,” he added.
“Oh, I know,” said Peter mysteriously. “I’m Peter Quint.” He seemed to feel his introduction needed further explanation. “I was born in the otherlands, but my dad is from your world across the Border. He kept his name.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” Elliot asked.
“Most people don’t,” said Peter. “My mum hates it, thinks it’s really embarrassing.”
“In my world,” said Elliot. “Surnames like Waggletwig are embarrassing. Let me tell you that.”
Peter nodded eagerly. “I bet in your world, your name is really cool.”
Elliot examined him for signs of sarcasm, and found none. “Yes,” he said at length.
“I’m Myra of the Diamond clan,” Myra said. Her chin was raised, and she had drawn herself up to her full height. She might be the only person in the camp shorter than Elliot.
“So you are a dwarf!” Elliot said. “I mean, dwarves—the species with axes and mines and so forth—I’m not being offensive, am I?”
Myra studied him. “My mother’s a dwarf, and my father’s human,” she said in the same defiant tone.