Adara bowed and held out her hand, with Radiant’s wary chivalry: Red Rose sank to the floor, eyes sparkling up at her from the direction of Radiant’s ornate belt buckle.
“It’s been a long time,” said Radiant, and helped Red Rose rise. They began to move across the floor, Radiant leading but Red Rose making moves that he should not have.
“Have you missed me?” Red Rose asked, laughing softly.
There was a set of boxes to represent the table and chair that Radiant and Red Rose danced across: Adara had not proved able to catch Elliot when he leaped from the table, so instead they leaped together: neither of them could stumble or both would fall. The world whirled by and narrowed to the press of their bodies and the clasp of their hands.
“How would you desire to be missed?”
“I would desire to be missed like the remembered and desperately sought fragrance of a strange flower that grew in your garden: missed like a riot of color gone from your eyes, missed like the sweetest of feasts lost from your lips, missed like a carpet of the richest and most gorgeous silks, which you long and long to lay down on the floor once again.”
“You desire too much,” said Radiant. “But you always did.”
“As a flower drinks the sun, as the earth drinks rain, I know that you will come, come taste me again,” whispered Elliot, and he kissed Adara, his fingers in her hair, her arms going around him.
“No,” Luke’s voice said. “Nope. No. No. What’s happening and why is it happening?”
Adara pulled away. “It’s part of the play,” she said with a saucy wink. “I can’t wait for our kiss scene.”
Luke said his new favorite word again. “No. No way. I’m going to see Commander Woodsinger.”
“What? Why?” Adara demanded, but Luke was already gone.
Elliot picked up the bucket of paint because he didn’t have time to untie the rope from his wrist, and followed.
“Elliot, where are you going with the paint?” Myra asked, sounding distraught, and came after him grabbing at the bucket.
Adara went with them, so Luke arrived at the commander’s office and walked in without knocking but with an entourage. Commander Woodsinger looked startled by this entrance.
“I have a complaint,” said Luke, throwing himself down in the chair across from the commander’s desk.
Elliot and Adara hovered by the chair, not wanting to sit and not wanting to miss anything. Myra confiscated the bucket of paint and carried it to the back of the room, out of range.
“If this is about Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle again—”
“No,” said Luke, flinching. “No, I understand that . . . I have to do my duty.” He began to look embarrassed. “It’s nothing serious like that. But I’m in Captain Whiteleaf’s play.”
“My condolences,” said Commander Woodsinger.
“There’s meant to be kissing,” said Luke. The commander dropped her quill with a haunted look. “I don’t want to do it.”
Adara flushed dull red. “Well, you have to!” she snapped. “It’s in the script.”
“I won’t,” said Luke.
Commander Woodsinger looked as if light had broken in on her, shining with the promise of rescue. “This is, I think, a matter to be taken up with Captain Whiteleaf!”
“I can’t; she tells him what to do,” said Luke. “But I won’t. I don’t want to let anybody down, but you have to tell the captain I won’t.”
“I refuse to give the captain any orders about kissing,” Commander Woodsinger said with dignity.
Myra clutched her bucket of paint. “Well, the commander has spoken. We’d better go and sort this out amongst ourselves!”
This was not Luke’s usual unhappiness about the play.
“Hang on a minute,” said Elliot. “Luke doesn’t have to do it if he doesn’t want to. Nobody has to kiss anybody they don’t want to. Plays are supposed to be about fun and enlightening the masses, not forcing people into distasteful acts.”
Adara made an explosive noise of outrage. Elliot raised his eyebrows at her and grinned.
“That’s true,” said Myra reluctantly. “I wouldn’t want to kiss someone only for a play.”
Luke looked with gratitude at Myra. Commander Woodsinger gazed at her with a clear sense of betrayal.
Elliot swept on. “So you’re going to have to talk with Captain Whiteleaf about stage kisses. If they hold their heads at the right angle, it’ll look like they’re kissing when they’re not. You just have to make it clear that’s the way it has to be.”
“If you leave my office immediately,” said the commander, “I will do so.”
Adara looked as if she wanted to weep with mortification. “It’s in the script! Why didn’t you people read the script all the way through?”
“I read the script. And I have no problem with kissing Adara, obviously, she’s gorgeous,” said Elliot, and then realized what he’d said in front of the girl he was trying to court. “I mean, she could look like a severed thumb and I’d still do it. For my art. I’m an artiste.”
Adara tossed her long golden hair over one shoulder. “Well, I don’t want to kiss you.”
“Okay then, you shouldn’t,” Elliot agreed. “Nobody’s kissing anybody. Is everyone happy now?”
Adara did not look happy. Myra looked embarrassed to be there. Commander Woodsinger looked like she wanted to brain him with her paperweight. A certain amount of tension had slid out of Luke’s shoulders, though, so Elliot was calling it a win.
“Please leave,” said the commander. “If the impulse to come into my office and chatter exclusively about kissing ever comes over any of you again, I urge you to crush that impulse. I will expel you for wasting my time.”
Commander Woodsinger was as good as her word, and the play continued smoothly and took up most of their time, and the rest of the time Elliot tried to remember to look out for Luke, not to be mean. He’d promised.
Since he went to Trigon practice, he made Luke go with him one day when the bookstalls were set up outside school. Elliot had a great many credits for academic prowess that could only be redeemed for books. Elliot got a little over-excited, lost Luke and found himself in a literary avalanche before he realized that he was completely hidden from view, and Luke must be wondering where he was. He picked up his booty and emerged.
“Looking for your friend?” he heard the nice bookstall lady ask.
“He’s not my friend,” Luke’s voice answered. “But my friend would want me to watch out for him.”
“Hey, loser,” said Elliot, coming up to him with his pile of books and a blithe air. “Sorry for keeping you waiting.”
“That’s all right,” said Luke indulgently. “Do you want to go to the last bookstall?”
Don’t be mean, Elliot told himself.
“No,” Elliot said. “I’m all done.”
The kissing matter was not the only complication offered by the play. Nobody liked their costumes.
“No,” Luke said, waving the flouncy white shirt as if it were the head of his enemy. “No way. Add buttons.”
“How many buttons?” asked Myra.
“How many have you got?”
Luke sat down disconsolately on the edge of the stage, to stare into the distance and dream of buttons. Adara sat down beside him and began to speak of her vision for their love scene. She put a hand on his knee.
Elliot looked at them from behind his curtain. “Would either of you help me with my trousers?”
“No!” snapped Luke, going pink around the ears.
“In your dreams,” said Adara, tossing a scornful look over her shoulder. He leaned out from behind the curtain slightly in order to wink at her.
“Maybe. You can never tell what weird things will happen in dreams.” He raised his voice. Everything was playing into his hands. He was a genius. “Myra! I need help with my costume, and the mean blonds are bullying me!”
Myra came bustling over, her mouth full of pins, and slid into the cha
nging space behind the curtain with him.
“Luke’s not mean.”
Elliot smiled down at her adorable naiveté even while she helped him do up his trousers. “Luke’s got everyone fooled.”
“He’s not the only one,” said Myra, and gestured at Elliot, who thought this appreciation for his manly charms was a very good sign. “Do you want me to get the paints?”
“Wait, are we actually painting my chest?” Elliot squawked.
He squawked incautiously loud, and Adara and Luke, united for once, burst out laughing. Elliot put his hand outside the curtain to make an obscene gesture.
He studied Myra, whose face was crestfallen. “As long as you’re the one doing the painting,” he said to her in a low voice, and he thought for a thrilled moment that she blushed.
Later Elliot went out to inspect her handiwork in a mirror and found Adara, whose costume was a more practical version of Luke’s, tying up her flouncy shirt to bare her midriff. Elliot glanced at her, appreciative, and Adara was in a good enough mood to catch his eye and wink.
“I’m sure Adara is a very nice person underneath it all and she means well and everything, but I have a few problems with her,” said Luke later, when everyone was back in their normal clothes and looking thankful about it. “The first problem is that I don’t like her.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Historically, I have not been opposed to mean blonds,” said Elliot.
“Um, mean people are awful?” Luke pointed out.
Elliot rolled his eyes: if Luke was going to be ungrateful whenever Elliot expressed affection, he wasn’t going to bother.
The camp was alive with rumors of the Border guard mobilizing to enter elven territory without permission. Elliot knew Luke wanted to go: knew that nobody would listen to Elliot’s objections, that they might even think he did not care about Serene. Nothing was decided yet. Elliot was throwing himself into the play and trying not to think about it until the night of the play had passed.
But then the night of the play came, and Elliot saw Luke’s parents and Louise in the audience. He was certain that they could not all have come for their posts to watch Luke: he was sure the Sunborns had been summoned.
Elliot did not allow Red Rose to falter. He continued plotting with Radiant’s evil stepsister.
The play was received very well. Adara was absolutely magnificent. Luke had hostage eyes throughout and might as well have been carrying a sign that said THIS IS ALL STUPID PRETEND! HELP ME! but he looked the part. Each new scene backdrop got applause, with Myra glowing in the wings. Elliot even thought people liked him.
It was going wonderfully, until the penultimate scene where Red Rose’s treachery was exposed and Jewel and Radiant shared their first kiss. When Luke muttered “Radiant, Radiant, wherefore art thou Radiant?” Adara actually kissed Luke on his startled mouth.
Red Rose was meant to turn bitterly on Jewel: Elliot yanked Luke away.
“Lovely child, you think the world is so bright,” said Red Rose: they were the only words he ever spoke to Jewel in the play, as if men didn’t talk to each other. “You have not learned yet that the light of the world is men burning. The years will pass and you will know what it is to be consumed.”
Jewel was meant to look annoyed by Red Rose’s spite, and it was the one thing that Luke had ever managed to do believably. Now he couldn’t even do that. He looked upset.
Elliot turned, and Red Rose gave Radiant a parting kiss: Elliot made viciously certain that it was a real kiss too.
Red Rose was never seen again in the play, fading out as if his character arc was not as important as any other character’s, as if his purpose was more about being alluring than anything else. Elliot had decided to at least make his exit meaningful, so as soon as he had kissed Adara he leaped from the stage and into the audience.
The audience started applauding. Elliot made his way over to the Sunborns, where Rachel was patting the seat behind her and Luke’s father was shaking his head slowly and sadly over the whole business.
“Move up one, rearrange yourselves, I want to sit next to Little Red,” said Louise, and Rachel and Michael shifted with good-natured grumbles.
Louise sat next to him and kissed him smackingly on the cheek. “You were very sexy,” she told him. “Well done. Luke looks like he wants to die, and it is hilarious!”
Elliot cackled with her. After the play was done, a surprising amount of people came over to Elliot and told him he’d been good, though none as memorably as Louise.
Best of all, Elliot seized a moment to ask Myra to meet him on the balcony outside Mr Fleetwood’s office. Tonight was the perfect time to ask her to be his girlfriend.
Tonight was the night Elliot would die. It was absolutely freezing on the balcony. He should have stopped to find a shirt, but it had seemed such a good idea to woo Myra with his chest painted in the green and red and blue and gold patterns she had inscribed on them, glancing up at him through her eyelashes as she painted, checking that he was okay.
“Elliot, you are shaking so much it looks like you’re about to have a fit,” said Myra.
“I am great, never better,” said Elliot, when Luke’s jacket landed around his shoulders. Elliot clutched it. “Thank you so much,” Elliot said, heartfelt. “Now please leave.”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” said Luke, rolling his eyes and leaning against the stone carapace. “So, the play’s over at last.”
Myra answered him, but Elliot could not hear over the roar of terrible realization in his mind, like a lion of revelations. He told Luke to go away so often without meaning it that now nobody could recognize when he did mean it.
“Oh my God,” Elliot said in a hollow voice. “I did this to myself. I am the boy who cried wolf.”
“There’s a wolf?” asked Luke, and his hand went to his sword.
Myra clutched his arm. “I can’t see a wolf!”
“There is no wolf!” Elliot cried.
Myra squinted. “Then why did you say there was a wolf?”
Here Elliot was, on a balcony under a starry night sky with a beautiful, kind girl who he thought liked him, and thanks to his amazing wooing skills she was poised to flee from the wolves.
“Luke, I need to talk to you inside,” he announced. “Myra, I’ll be right back, hang out here for a minute.”
“With the w—” Myra began, but Elliot had already dragged Luke inside and shut the door on her protest.
Luke looked annoyed. Elliot could hardly blame him. Elliot felt forced to do the one thing he absolutely loathed: be emotionally vulnerable.
“Here’s the thing. I like Myra,” said Elliot. “Romantically. I want to ask her out. Please go away so I can do that.”
“What?” said Luke. “Really?”
“Yes!”
Luke was clearly bewildered, and still upset by the whole play business. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think—I’ll go.”
“Please.” As Luke went down the corridor, Elliot’s heart misgave him. “Hey,” he said quietly, and Luke turned. “I wanted to say . . . since it was the first, if you wanted it to mean something, it still can. I don’t think a kiss counts, unless you want it.”
The light from the torch affixed to the wall was burning low, but it was enough to see Luke blush. “How do you know that it was . . . that I haven’t . . . I’ve kissed loads of people. Loads of times.”
“Sure,” said Elliot, letting it go.
“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” said Luke. “Just because you’re girl crazy doesn’t mean romance is everyone’s first priority. There are more important things, to some people.”
To better people than you, Luke’s tone implied.
“I’m girl crazy?” Elliot repeated. “Oh, okay.”
“Yes!” said Luke. “You only started our truce, much as you hate it, because you wanted to be with Serene. And now you forced me to be in this humiliating school play because you want to be with Myra. A play, of all the useless, ridiculous things . . .”
r /> There were so many points to argue with in Luke’s speech that Elliot hardly knew which one to choose first.
“The play wasn’t only about Myra,” he snapped. “The play was important to me. I wanted to do something, to find something in this land that wasn’t about war. Even the stories about magic land are all about battles, and there has to be something that matters more. If there isn’t art and imagination and exploration, what are you fighting for? You must think about that. You can’t just be a clockwork soldier, swinging your sword in the direction other people want.”
“Just because I don’t like plays doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” said Luke.
“I never said you were stupid!”
“Oh, you have said I was stupid, actually,” said Luke. “Many times.”
Elliot almost said: I never meant it but bit down on the urge. Insults sometimes felt like the only protective armor he had.
“Well,” he said, instead. “I didn’t mean to force you into doing the play. I’m sorry you hated it, and I’m sorry about what Adara did.”
He didn’t have much in the way of armor. He was shivering in this stone corridor, despite Luke’s jacket. He wondered if he should offer to give it back.
“You thought it was hilarious that I hated it, and you like Adara,” Luke snapped.
That was true as well. Sometimes Elliot wished Luke was stupid.
“It doesn’t mean that I can’t be sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry for me!” said Luke.
“What do you want, then?” Elliot demanded.
Luke’s hands were in fists at his sides, his breathing harsh as the crackling of wood consumed by fire. Elliot could hardly make out Luke’s face in the low light of the dying torch, but it seemed like Luke wanted something. Elliot took a step forward, and hesitated before taking another.