“You should go,” said Elliot. “Show that note to the commander. We can talk later.”
He stood in the doorway of the library for a long time, dazed himself, until it occurred to Elliot that he was in over his head, and he needed to find out more about women and how to please them immediately. Fortunately, he knew where he needed to go in order to obtain knowledge.
He was still dedicated to being tactful, so he waited an hour and half so that everyone could put out the fires before he sidled back into the library.
“I need some books full of elven lore,” said Elliot urgently.
Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women gave him a very suspicious look. “What kind of elven lore?”
Elliot gave up on subterfuge, clung to the counter, and said, “All right, you got me. I need some books full of specific elven instructions on how to please an elven lady.” Bright stared at Elliot, and Elliot wondered if he had perhaps misunderstood. “Sexually please her, I mean,” he clarified. “Very specific instructions, please. Do you know of a book like that?”
Bright drew in a deep breath. “How dare you?”
“The library is meant to be a place of learning, not of judgment,” said Elliot.
“I suppose you think that just because I am unmarried and in employment I am no better than a hussy peddling pornographic literature!”
“What?” Elliot said. “No. What?”
“I’ll have you know, I am dedicated to my passion for the written word,” Bright raged. “And one day, my true elven knight will come, and she will understand my love of literature and why I felt called to promote said love among human children. Moreover, I will come pure to my marriage bed, as all true gentlemen should aspire to do!”
Elliot took a moment to assimilate this new information. It was only a moment.
“Okay, cool, good for you,” said Elliot. “But what if . . . just for instance. . . a guy didn’t aspire to come pure to his marriage bed? Like, if he was no true gentleman, but a hussy? Is there any advice for hussies in this library? I need advice for hussies.”
Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women made it clear the only thing hussies were going to get in his library was detention.
Elliot gave up. There were other avenues to find out these kind of things, he’d heard: you were meant to learn all you needed to know through something called “bro time.” What he needed was a little help from his friends.
It was well after dinner, but the tables were crowded with people talking about the attack on the library. Elliot did hear a few people speculating on who had ordered Border guards to go after their own people: some familiar names were being thrown around. Captain Whiteleaf was nowhere to be found, though he had not been sent out on any missions, and all messages sent to Colonel Whiteleaf’s fortress received no response.
And yet nobody had come out in open rebellion against Commander Woodsinger.
They could not be sure the Whiteleafs were the ones in mutiny, any more than they could be sure who else was on their side.
They could not tell what side those who had been killed had taken. Nobody alive who had remained in the camp would admit they had fought against the commander. Nobody’s accusations of others, or defence of themselves, could be trusted. They all wore the same uniform. They were all supposed to be on the same side.
The commander had given no statement, and no new orders. Elliot did not know if ignoring unrest would make it go away.
Elliot heard Commander Woodsinger’s name being spoken, in sympathetic and critical tones, and took note of who was truly on her side and who was not.
On the other hand, there were also idiots busy congratulating each other on their first skirmish or describing it as a “good little fight.” Elliot gave up on eavesdropping and surged forward. It was the work of a few moments for Elliot to cut through the crowds, elbowing people judiciously, and separate Dale Wavechaser from the throng.
Dale grinned at him when Elliot grabbed his elbow and forcibly turned him around.
“Hey, Schafer,” he said. “I was worried about you. I kind of figured you’d be in the library. But you’re doing okay?”
“Excellent, never better, thanks for your concern, pal. I don’t suppose you like girls as well as boys?” Elliot inquired.
“Uh,” Dale said. “No.”
“Lots of people do, you know,” said Elliot.
“Not me,” said Dale.
Elliot had further arguments to make on the subject, but he didn’t want to be offensive.
“That’s cool, buddy,” Elliot told him, and clapped him on the back. “Suit yourself. It’s always a pleasure. But I have to go talk to another guy about something.”
He rushed away from Dale, who wore the puzzled but friendly expression that was his default around Elliot, and almost crashed into Luke, who caught him before he hit Luke or the wall or anything else.
“Luke, I need bro advice,” said Elliot.
“Oh,” said Luke, looking startled. “Okay. Is this about—”
“So, have you seen my friend Peter?”
Luke blinked. “You have a friend called Peter?”
“Uh,” said Elliot. “Yes? He’s friends with my friend Myra.”
Luke was scowling now. “I don’t know a Myra.”
“I don’t have time to discuss the long list of things and apparently people you do not know,” said Elliot. “Gotta go, bye!”
Luke looked as though he had more to say. Elliot assumed that Luke had done something super heroic during the library attack. He spun Luke around by his elbow and had his faith justified when the person now facing Luke immediately begin to congratulate him. Elliot slipped away while Luke was still trying to escape congratulations.
Myra had been singled out by another member of the war-training class, who wanted to tell her all about his valor in today’s clash. Peter was actually sitting at a lunch table on his own, looking forlorn, which was sad for Peter but useful for Elliot.
“Peter, you like girls, right?”
“Uh . . . yes?” said Peter, looking very startled by this greeting.
A thought occurred to Elliot, briefly distracting him from his purpose. “Hey, do you like boys as well as girls?”
He knew it was unworthy of him to be so concerned about Serene when he should be thinking about the uprising against their commander. On the other hand, as every terrible day in the otherlands proved, life was short and elves were extremely foxy.
“No! Wait, why do you ask?” Peter asked. “Is this about Luke Sunborn?”
“Maybe,” Elliot said cunningly. “Would you go out with him if it was?”
Peter looked like he was considering it. This was typical of Luke’s life, absolutely typical: now boys who didn’t like boys wanted to be Luke’s boyfriend. On the other hand, Peter was a lot smarter than Dale, and Elliot thought he could talk Luke around on the subject.
“No,” Peter said at length. “I mean . . . well, I mean no.”
“Why don’t you think it over,” Elliot suggested. “Luke has many fine qualities.”
“I really don’t think . . .,” Peter said, and hesitated. “Did Luke say he liked me?”
He sounded equal parts disturbed and flattered.
“I can read Luke like a book,” Elliot told him evasively. “And I read books extremely well. Speaking of which, do you have any instructive pornographic literature?”
Peter looked like he was thinking of drowning himself in his pudding. “Oh my God.”
Again, Elliot noted, not a denial. Just like Luke not denying he liked someone. Once you watched out for what people didn’t say, everything became very clear.
“Great, I need to borrow it.”
“Oh my God. Elliot, don’t you—don’t you have some of your own?”
Elliot blinked. “For recreational purposes, do you mean?”
Peter looked around at the milling crowd. “Kill me,” he said, which was not something Elliot would have said to a riled-up bunch of people w
ith a selection of various weapons.
“It wasn’t necessary for me to have any before now. I have a very vivid imagination,” Elliot reassured him. Peter did not look reassured. “But I need some now,” he continued. “I need to learn how to satisfy a lady. Really quickly. Let’s go get your literature. Can I borrow it right now?”
“Will you leave me alone if I give you some—some, not all—of my educational literature, Elliot?” Peter asked. “Seriously, do you promise not to say anything upsetting to me for like two weeks?”
“Deal. I really think you and Luke should date,” Elliot added. “I think you might be soulmates.”
“Um,” said Peter. “Were you actually in the library when the attack happened?”
Elliot nodded. Peter looked awestruck.
“People are saying that they recognized some of Colonel Whiteleaf’s men!”
If that was true, it was the father, then, trying to get the command for his son.
“Are they?” Elliot asked. “Are they indeed?”
Peter’s pornographic literature turned out to be not very educational or instructive. The women in it were genuinely enjoying themselves, in Elliot’s opinion, about as much as the pictures and statues in the Elven Tavern were genuine elven warriors. Elliot wondered why people liked bad illusions so much more than reality.
It did, however, enlighten Elliot on several key points of mechanics. He dearly wished he had some access to the internet in this land, but this was better than nothing. He looked through them and made some notes in the five minutes every hour he allotted himself between his new task of reading every book in the library.
Commander Woodsinger had not stepped down from her post. People said that the attack on the library had been a mistake, the result of an order given in error, or a band of rogue guards striking out on their own. People said there would not be another attack. Elliot did not believe any of it, and he kept researching.
At one point Luke came and tried to get him to come back to class.
“I won’t,” said Elliot. “Someone attacked this camp. And I remember reading something odd about Colonel Whiteleaf when I was doing further reading on 1,000 Leagues Across a Sea of Blood. We have to know more about Colonel Whiteleaf, if he’s the one who attacked us.”
“The library isn’t where you go to win wars!” said Luke.
“The library is where you go to learn more. By the way, what do you think of Peter?” Elliot asked. “To go out with, I mean?”
“For me to go out with?” Luke asked, and looked badly startled. “I don’t even know who he is!”
Elliot waved a hand. “He’s great. You’d like him!”
Luke began to blush, which was mystifying until he muttered out: “I told you I like Dale Wavechaser.”
“I know, I’ve taken that onboard too,” said Elliot. “You can go out with him whenever. I just thought you might like another option. Peter knows four languages and is probably going to be top in the class in mapmaking!”
“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 s
pirit. 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.