In Other Lands

  Elliot tapped on the door, and when nobody answered he peeked around it. Serene and Luke were the only ones inside. Neither of them had lit the candles, though day was slipping down to night.

  “Hi,” said Elliot.

  “Hello,” said Serene.

  “Why do you walk inside when nobody’s told you to come in?” asked Luke.

  “I don’t want to spend my whole life waiting outside closed doors,” said Elliot. “I wanted to . . . talk to you. I might have been taken by surprise and expressed myself in ways I did not exactly intend.”

  “Is that so?” said Luke.

  “I might have not shown enough consideration for your feelings,” said Elliot.

  “Sorry,” said Luke. “Are we just talking about today?”

  The thing about Luke was that he was a secret snarky jerk. Elliot was not sure how Luke kept that a secret: possibly it was a secret from Luke himself. His shoulders looked a little bit less tense, though, and Serene looked a little bit less like a bodyguard standing in front of the bunkbed.

  “I’m terrible at feelings, it’s like they’re knives, I don’t really know what to do with them and I end up throwing them with too much force,” said Elliot, advancing. “But I have strong views on having a more accepting society, and everyone getting to be who they really are, and so it’s excellent that you made your class announcement, and if anyone else had been insensitive about it I would have been extremely vexed and plotted vengeance.” He paused. “I don’t suppose anyone was insensitive about it later?” he asked hopefully.

  Luke shrugged, the last of the tension going out of his shoulders. Serene looked relieved. Elliot knew that she lived in the constant fear that one of them was going to go off into hysterics.

  “Just the one guy at first,” said Luke, and smirked. Such a secret jerk: it was unbelievable that nobody else had caught on.

  “I can’t plot vengeance against myself, you must see that,” said Elliot. “But I can plot something else! I love plots, you know that.”

  Luke, grinning a little, looked up at Serene: she looked fondly down at him, and smiled. “How many times have the words ‘I love plots’ been followed by good consequences?”

  “Statistically it has to be very few,” said Serene.

  “So little faith,” Elliot said mournfully.

  He closed the distance between himself and them. Serene subsided onto the bunk beside Luke with a little sigh of satisfaction, and Elliot sat at her feet, leaned an elbow against her knee, and looked up at Luke expectantly.

  “So,” said Elliot. “Is there a boy you like? Tell me.”

  Luke choked on air and spluttered.

  “Elliot, that’s inappropriate,” said Serene. “Luke has his maiden purity to think of. To be modest and discreet is to be much desired. Although I am not quite sure how it works when two gentlemen desire each other.”

  “Serene,” said Luke.

  “Presumably it is a very tactful courtship, and no doubt most chaste—”

  “Serene, you’re not helping me!” said Luke. “Neither of you is helping me.”

  “No, I know,” said Elliot, leaning toward him. “But I want to help you! I can help you! Tell me who it is.”

  “Drop it,” said Luke, and squirmed across the mattress, away from both of them. His shoulders were hunched again.

  This was a clear sign of guilt.

  “The fact that you’re not answering me makes me believe that there is a boy you like. You can’t fool me, because I’m extremely intelligent. Now tell me or I’ll keep pestering you to tell me.”

  “You’re supposed to be supportive of me!” said Luke.

  Serene nodded. “That’s what the pamphlets said. We studied them carefully.”

  Elliot’s pamphlets had been taken from him and used against him, and he couldn’t even be angry because this was more important.

  “I’m trying to be supportive of you!” he told Luke.

  “Then stop yelling at me!” said Luke.

  “I will stop yelling at you if you let me support you,” Elliot proposed. “Do we have a bargain?”

  Luke’s shoulders were still hunched in, but he glanced over and down at Elliot: there was a deep flush running along his cheekbones. “You’ll laugh at me.”

  “I won’t,” Elliot promised. “I’ll be supportive. We’re going to be supportive, aren’t we, Serene?”

  “If you wish to tell me, I will be happy to hear your secret,” said Serene. “I vow not to mock at you and never to tell anyone the object of your tender maidenly affections, not even if they torture me. A true gentleman’s heart is as sacred as a temple, and as easily crushed as a flower.”

  Elliot and Luke absorbed that in a brief moment of silence.

  “See?” Elliot said. “We’re being supportive. I promise not to laugh.”

  “You promise?” Luke asked warily.

  “Yes. Trust me,” said Elliot. “Tell me.”

  “Okay.” Luke took a deep breath. “Dale Wavechaser.”

  “Uh,” said Elliot, and broke into a grin.

  “Elliot, you promised!”

  “No, no,” said Elliot hastily. “I’m not laughing at you. But that’s pretty convenient, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?” Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Just because he’s into guys doesn’t mean he’s into me.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean? Why did you smirk?”

  Elliot had smiled because that was so typical of Luke’s life, that everything would go smoothly for him. Confessing to a crush on someone who clearly had a crush on you back was a bit like saying you were hungry with breakfast already laid out before you: expressing a wish that was already granted.

  But Luke looked upset, and Luke’s life was not quite as easy as Elliot had always supposed—not as easy as Elliot had thought it was when he first saw Luke, not even as easy as Elliot had thought it was this morning—and Elliot had promised to be supportive.

  “I didn’t mean to smirk,” said Elliot. “That’s great. You should ask him out!”

  “Are you trying to make fun of me?”

  “Usually yes, today no,” said Elliot.

  It was ridiculous, how uncomfortable and upsetting this was. Elliot glanced at Serene, but she was looking to Elliot, clearly expecting him to make things right: not only because she thought men were the ones who talked about feelings, but because Elliot was the one making Luke so tense and unhappy. Luke had trusted Serene with his secret, and that had obviously gone well. It was Elliot messing everything up. It was Elliot who always did.

  It was clear, from the elves and the council of war and Adam Sunborn, that Elliot needed to learn how to tact, both personally and professionally. Being more tactful was the only possible tactical decision.

  Elliot cleared his throat and tried again. “I mean, I like Dale.”

  “Yeah?” Luke brightened. “He’s nice, right?”

  “Sure!” said Elliot. “Also super handsome. You should definitely ask him out!”

  Serene and Luke both spoke at once, Serene vehemently on the subject of modesty and chastity and Luke even more vehemently on the subject of not being pushed or teased and also it being a little soon.

  “I only just decided,” Luke finished, as Serene said: “—a gentleman’s most private treasure!”

  “Oh, you only just decided?” Elliot inquired. “Like, you decided today? Luke.”

  Well done Dale Wavechaser for putting his hand up, he supposed. He could not help laughing.

  “You promised not to laugh at me!” said Luke, but he was laughing a little too, even though he didn’t seem sure why.

  “I’m trying!” said Elliot. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

  He wasn’t just laughing. He was plotting. And he was thinking, as well, about something that perhaps should have occurred to him earlier: if Luke liked guys, he didn’t like Serene, not in that way. Elliot had got it all wrong. Elliot might not have any real co
mpetition: Elliot might really, truly have a chance with her.

  The next day was bright and clear. The sky was blue, trainees wandering over the grass between classes, luxuriously slow as the wisps of cloud moving across the sky, and Elliot was not in a love triangle.

  “Hi. Hi, wait a minute. Hey, wait. Oi, Dale!”

  Dale Wavechaser turned around and looked startled to see Elliot bearing down on him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Elliot forestalled him: Elliot was on a mission.

  “I wanted to say,” said Elliot, speaking fast and fiddling with the strap of his bag. “I’m really sorry if I came off badly in class yesterday? I was just surprised. I think it was brave of you to tell everyone, and I totally support you.”

  “Oh,” said Dale. He smiled crookedly. “Cool.”

  “Also I like you,” said Elliot. “And I want to be friends. Good friends. Can we be friends?”

  “Uh . . . sure.”

  Dale’s smile got brighter. Elliot smiled back, and in case it would help tried to add charm to the smile, the endearing air he had used on the elven warriors and on the council of war last year. Oddly, it seemed to work.

  “The rest of the guys from the Trigon team are coming to meet me, and we’re all going down to the Elven Tavern,” said Dale. “Do you want to join us?”

  Elliot shook his head gently. He was devoted to his new life of tactfulness, so he carefully did not say that he would rather be boiled alive in a cauldron of fire ants and cyanide.

  “I don’t want to be friends with them, Dale.” He gave Dale the soulful look that he had practised on the elves. “I only want to be friends with you.”

  Dale looked surprised, and still a bit puzzled by Elliot’s behaviour, but mostly pleased.

  “You should come hang out with me,” Elliot said. “And Luke and Serene and Luke and me. Anytime you see us. Come hang out. Anytime. Also it seems to me that you might need help with your classes. You should come to me about that. Especially about history. No offence meant.”

  “I think history’s kind of boring,” said Dale, and Elliot controlled himself and did not flinch. “But that’s really nice of you.”

  “Yes,” said Elliot. “We’re both nice. This is why we’re such friends.”

  Dale laughed. He was actually nice, not pretend nice like Elliot was being. It was probably better to know how to interpret what everyone said to you as the best thing they could’ve meant than to know history. Probably he and Luke would be great together.

  Behind Dale, Elliot could already hear the clatter of boys coming from Trigon, loudly discussing the many imbecilic intricacies of the game. Escape became urgent.

  “I’m looking forward to hanging out,” Elliot told Dale earnestly. “But now I must go. Good-bye, friend.”

  He thought that had gone excellently. Get Luke and Dale together, be very supportive of Luke and Dale together, and get Dale to like Elliot so that almost all of them could be friends. Elliot’s plan was fiendishly brilliant, elegant in its simplicity, and bound to succeed.

  Elliot was feeling fairly good until two hours later, when somebody attacked the library.

  Elliot was peacefully looking up facts about mermaids, feeling a thousand leagues away under a cool blue sea, when the smell of smoke and fire made him slam his book shut and jump to his feet. He looked up to the roof and saw it kindle: saw the thatched roof open into a burning hole.

  “Don’t worry, children, the women will protect us!” shouted Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women.

  The students, mainly boys, looked skeptical but frightened as well. They were mostly young, in council training because those in war training didn’t spend much time in the library.

  Elliot raised his voice. “Come on, follow me.” He strode over to the library door, opened it, and saw fighting in the yard beyond. He slammed the door swiftly shut again. “Never mind that! Let’s not go out there. You and you, behind those stacks, you and you, under the table. You two, help me with the fire. If the fire gets too bad, get out and make for the lake—don’t go back to your cabins.”

  A first-year boy helped Elliot pull down one of the heavy curtains and muffle the floor where one burning arrow had hit. The wood smoked and crackled, Elliot coughing in the poisoned air, but he was mainly concerned about the books.

  “In my world there’s this beautiful thing called running water,” sighed Elliot.

  The boy looked at him as if he was crazy. “We have running water here too,” he said. “In rivers and streams. Where water runs.”

  Through the tall narrow windows of the library, like windows in a church in Elliot’s world, Elliot saw the sudden chaos in the courtyard, saw the Border guards in camp and the warrior-training students running out, their weapons gleaming in the light of the sinking sun. He saw battle joined.

  He thought for a moment these were the bandits in the eastern woods whom he’d been hearing rumors about, and realized the next moment that this was much worse than a bandit attack.

  The people fighting were all either in Border guard uniform or in the uniform of cadets. The people fighting were all human. It was chaos, even worse than battles usually were. Cadets were being cut down by adult guards, and protected by different guards. Elliot could not tell who was on which side, or why they were fighting. He saw people in the battle who looked as panicked and confused as he felt.

  There wasn’t time to hang out the window and stare at the battle, even if Elliot had the stomach for it. He turned away and got back to pulling down curtains.

  The skirmish was brief, the newcomers in Border guard uniforms receding as swiftly as they had appeared. Elliot saw the blades sheathed almost as soon as drawn out through the windows.

  He still tensed when the door was flung open, but it was Serene, who stood framed in the doorway with her braid flying and in the process of sliding her sword home in its sheath, attached to her belt. Elliot had seen Myra and Adara wearing jewelry on special occasions, but Serene’s swordbelt was the only ornate thing she ever wore. She didn’t need jewelry.

  “Rest easy,” she said, and Bright-Eyes looked pleased to be rescued by a lady, even if he did clearly think Serene was only a young whippersnapper. “We have beaten back the foul attackers. You are all safe.”

  There was a flaming arrow, set deep and burning in the centre of the table. Serene strode over to it and took the parchment rolled around the shaft of the arrow, careless of the fire that licked at her fingers.

  She walked out to the threshold of the library, and unrolled the parchment.

  It read: HAVE THAT WOMAN GIVE UP COMMAND OR WE COME TAKE IT.

  So that was what this was all about. Elliot thought of the whispers about Commander Woodsinger this summer, the captains no longer allowed on missions, the rising discontent. Commander Woodsinger had been the hero of the last war, but people’s memories were short, and there would always be another war.

  Someone did not want a woman in charge of the Border training camp. Someone had been willing to go beyond whispers and petty vandalism. Elliot wondered who had mounted the attack. Captain Whiteleaf was the only one whom he’d heard spoken of as a replacement for the commander, and Captain Whiteleaf would not have the nerve.

  He slowly became aware that beside him, Serene was vibrating with outrage.

  “Oh, men are cowards,” said Serene. “So afraid of a woman in charge that they would commit treason. They must worry that she will show the world a woman is a far more able commander than any man.”

  “They’re not going to take Woodsinger’s command,” said Elliot. “Let them come and try.”

  Serene looked at him. The lights of the torches of war were reflected in her cool gray eyes. She was panting and disheveled from battle, beautiful beyond his dreams, and she held onto his arms with strength far beyond any strength he had.

  “When we saw the library roof catch fire . . .,” Serene began.

  Her tight grip on him made Elliot think that she might be shaking if she were not holding on s
o hard. He could see her violent distress: Serene always ignored how different human ways were from her own, right up until the point she could not ignore it any more.

  “You must have been furious.”

  “I thought you had been killed,” Serene breathed, and kissed him.

  They were kissing, they were finally kissing again, and this time Elliot was not too stunned to participate. He curled his fingers around her braid and drew her closer against him, kissed her and kissed her again.

  He kissed her until they were both breathless, then he whispered breathlessly against her mouth: “No. Nope, I’m awesome.”

  She kissed him again, pressing him against the threshold of the door. Her mouth was warm, searching, burning-sweet, and her body against his was lithe, strong, and urgent. Elliot realized her hold on his arms had changed: that she was tugging him downward. He kissed her throat and felt a spike of nerves in his own throat, as if he had swallowed a tiny shark of panic and could feel its fin scraping on the way down. He felt the warm beat of her pulse against his mouth and opened his lips to kiss her again, taste her skin, and to say he didn’t know what he was doing.

  There was a sound, low and startled: Serene turned to it and let go of Elliot, though he reached out a hand to keep her.

  His hand fell by his side when he looked where she was looking, and saw Luke. It was truly terrible luck that both Serene and Luke should make for the library as soon as the battle was over.

  Luke had stopped and was staring at them, blue eyes very wide.

  “I didn’t—” Luke began. “I’ll go. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  He turned around, boots cutting furrows in the mud with the force of his turn, and left. He had hardly been there for more than an instant.

  “I should—” Serene began, blinking as if she was dazed.

  She wasn’t looking at Luke’s retreating back. She was looking toward the commander’s tower. Elliot filled in the rest of the sentence for her: after years at the Border camp, he knew a soldier’s duty.