He took advantage of either their pause for thought or their pause for confusion and slipped away.
Elliot went to the hallway outside the commander’s office, since the commander was gone with everyone else. Nobody stopped him: it was as if their camp were a ghost town. He went and sat in the dark hall, leaned his hot face against a stone wall, and shut his eyes.
This magic land was all wrong. In the books, you had to destroy an evil piece of jewelry or defeat an evil-though-sexy witch or wizard. In the books, people did not hide documents and steal land and try to cheat dwarves and dryads.
The whole world was stupid, and now he was stupid too. He didn’t understand how this could be happening, how they might be dying. He’d fixed everything. He’d done everything right.
Whenever the dispatches came or the next lot of wounded soldiers were carted in, Elliot went shoving through to the forefront of the crowd—he had very pointy elbows, which was a natural gift he felt called to utilize to his advantage—and asking if anyone had any word of a supremely beautiful elf in a human troop under Lieutenant Louise Sunborn. Or anyone else in that troop. Anyone at all.
Eventually, he heard a familiar name.
“Sunborn?” Elliot repeated, a chill going through him. “Luke?”
“No,” said Captain Whiteleaf. “Louise Sunborn, the sister. She’s one of the wounded, being carried into the tent now.”
Elliot turned and ran. He made it to the largest of the brown tents and stood for a minute just inside the flap, plotting a subterfuge to make his way inside.
A grumpy voice, with that Sunborn ring of expecting absolutely to be listened to, rang out. “Will someone bring me Little Red?”
Or the direct approach might work.
“Hi,” said Elliot, darting in and around some medic trying to interfere with him. “You mean me, right? You wanted to see me?”
Louise stared up at him from her cot, her blond hair tangled and filthy. There was a bandage covering half her face: under the white stretch of cotton Elliot could see an open and darkly gleaming wound.
Louise saw him looking. “Yeah, kid, I’m going to have a big scar. You think nobody’ll marry me now?”
“I don’t think any of them are going to mind,” said Elliot matter-of-factly. “Mal Wavechaser says that you have the most rocking bod in the otherlands.”
Louise let out a peal of laughter, then put her fingers to her jaw and winced.
“Sorry, sorry!” Elliot said. “I don’t know the force of my own wit.”
“You’re a trip, kid,” Louise informed him. Something about the way she looked at him just then reminded him of her mother, Rachel, and he loved her for that alone. “My little brother asked me specially to look in on you. He seemed to think you might be getting into trouble.”
“Me getting into trouble?” Elliot asked. “That is so unfair. I’m the only one not on a battlefield getting pointy weapons of death jabbed at me.”
“Well, he seemed to think you could manage anyway,” Louise said. “Are you being a good boy?”
“Yes,” said Elliot positively. “I have nearly got these treaties worked out. Captain Whiteleaf almost completely messed up a codicil the other day, but I set him right.”
Louise’s eyes were half-lidded, he suspected not with sleepiness but with pain. “Whatever keeps you amused.”
Elliot hesitated. “Are . . .”
“They’re both okay,” said Louise. She must have seen the mute appeal on his face, because she continued: “The first battle’s never easy, and this is the first battle and the first campaign all rolled into one. But they’re tough kids, and they’ve got each other.” She smiled a tiny bit. “They like your letters. You should write them more.”
“Luke’s been reading my letters?!” Elliot exclaimed.
“Well, we all do,” Louise said. “I mean, they read them out at the campfire.”
“What,” said Elliot.
“No, they’re great,” said Louise. “They really give everyone a boost. They’re hilarious.”
“They are not hilarious. They are touching and private love letters for the eyes of my lady alone,” Elliot told her severely. “They are addressed to Serene! They begin with a greeting to Serene! They are extremely personal!”
“Ah, you’re so much fun,” said Louise. “Write Luke a letter tonight, okay? He’s nervous about taking over command.”
“Ahahaha,” said Elliot. “Now you are the one who is being hilarious, because you did not leave a fourteen-year-old in command of armed forces.”
Louise hesitated. “You have to understand. They’re doing better than okay. Better than all the grown men I have under my command. I couldn’t have left my men with anyone else. They wouldn’t have followed anyone else when there was a Sunborn to lead them.”
“Obviously you’re delirious from some sort of medication,” said Elliot. “Or maybe I’m delirious, because you talk and all I can hear is la la la suicide mission la la la your fourteen-year-old brother!”
“Serene’s there to help him,” said Louise. “I left the command to both of them, really.”
“Serene is, what’s the word I’m searching for here, oh yes, ALSO FOURTEEN.”
“What about you, Little Red?” asked Louise. “Getting tired of fiddling with those treaties? Going to leave it all to the grown-ups?”
Elliot opened his mouth to argue. He knew that Luke and Serene were exceptional. He had been told that and had seen that over and over again. But shouldn’t the adults, if they loved them, if they were responsible for them and cared for them more than for anything else, the way adults were supposed to . . . shouldn’t they try to stop them saving the day, even if they could do it? Unless Elliot’s father was only the most honest of the adults, and all adults were willing to betray children if offered an incentive.
Surely there had been other soldiers, not as good as Luke but grown, with strength a kid could not have and experience a kid could not have. For a fourteen-year-old to come to the fore as the obvious leader, others must have made the choice, conscious or not, to step back. Elliot did not know how they could live with letting this happen, letting someone this young be the leader and the sacrifice.
But this was Luke’s sister, Rachel’s daughter. She had led while she could stand. She was a grown-up, but lying there with her face bandaged, she did not look so very old. She looked tired and hurt.
Elliot leaned his chin sulkily on his fist. “I’ll write.”
“That’s a boy,” Louise murmured. “He’ll like that.”
“Do you want me to stay with you? Can I fetch you anything?”
Elliot was thinking of grapes or something, but one of Louise’s eyes popped all the way open. Luke’s eyes, kingfisher blue, but with a wicked expression.
“Yes, you can,” she said. “This Mal Wavechaser you mentioned.”
“Uh . . . what about him?”
“How old is he? And, don’t lie to me Little Red, is he good-looking?”
“Well—yes, one of the best-looking guys at school. And he’s a fifth year. He only stayed behind to be Captain Whiteleaf’s aide-de-camp,” said Elliot. “So seventeen, I guess?”
“Close enough,” said Louise. “Send him to me. Tell him that a lieutenant with a rocking bod needs her . . . pillow smoothed.”
Elliot’s mouth fell open.
“Go on!” said Louise. She leaned over to the next cot and stole one of the pillows, ignoring the patient in that cot’s feeble protest, and fired it at Elliot’s head. “I’m an invalid and I need to be cosseted. Besides, Sunborns, we’re a family with great enthusiasm for living, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I don’t,” Elliot lied firmly, and backed away.
“We’re like lions on the prowl,” Louise shouted after him.
“Don’t speak to me like that, I’m an impressionable child!” yelled Elliot.
“Would both of you please stop shouting, this is a place of healing,” snapped the redheaded medic.
>
“Why, Little Red, when I was fourteen—” Louise shouted, and Elliot did not hear the rest because he had wisely departed, which was to say fled. He admired Louise Sunborn’s style, but she was a grown-up and Luke’s sister, and it was too weird.
Mal Wavechaser hunted him down at dinnertime and professed his eternal gratitude, which was extremely embarrassing.
Elliot was already embarrassed about the letters he had written to Serene, which he had not meant to be as hilarious as everyone had apparently found them. He wanted to tell Serene off for reading them aloud, and at the same time he was too embarrassed to show he cared, since she hadn’t thought it was important.
And he didn’t want to write something that would make them feel worse. He didn’t want anger to be the last thing he ever wrote to them, and he had no guarantees. Any letter could be the last.
So after dinner, he went and wrote a letter for both of them, full of all the news he could think of. It began: “Luke, you miscreant, since apparently you’ve been READING SERENE’S LETTERS . . .”
In the morning, the dispatches said that Commander Rayburn was dead.
Word after that trickled in agonisingly slowly: word of what had happened, and who had died. Word of Captain Woodsinger seizing the flag before it fell and leading the army: “A woman!” said General Lakelost, and yet did not dare send orders that she be removed from command in case those orders were not obeyed.
Louise Sunborn’s troop, now Luke’s, had been in the thick of the battle.
Elliot did not sleep for two nights, not until the list of survivors arrived. He had always wanted to be taller, and now he was finally growing a little and realized it was not worth the price. He was experiencing shooting pains in his legs, which was super fun and so conveniently timed, and he was staying up reading and thinking until he could neither read nor think any more. Until his mind, the only thing that had never failed him, failed him and he was left lying in his bunk having nightmares with his eyes open.
Of course Elliot was scared sick for Serene, but lonely in the night, at the coldest quietest hour, he had to make certain admissions. He had to admit that he was desperately worried about both of them: he had to admit that Luke was Elliot’s friend.
It was so embarrassing. Luke could never know. Elliot decided that he was just going to be Luke’s friend very sneakily.
So he tried to be terribly nice to Louise. He visited her every day and stayed with her a long time telling her stories about how annoying other people were, despite the shushing the medics did, and he bothered the medics about her care.
“Have you no ways to make her better faster?” Elliot asked. “This is a magical fantasy land. Have you no mystical unguents?”
The medic gave him a flat look. “What.”
“Be straight with me here,” said Elliot. “Do we have aspirin?”
“No,” said the medic.
Elliot was relieved she knew what aspirin was, at least. She must come from his world. Elliot wondered if she had become a medic hoping for mystical unguents, and that was why she seemed so disappointed with life.
He tried to touch the bottles in the grouchy medic’s box and read the labels. “What does that do?”
“Kills you,” she said. “And that one makes you vomit for twelve hours straight.”
“Cool,” said Elliot.
“Not cool, young man,” she said. “No touching.”
“You’re a healer. You should be filled with ineffable goodwill and radiate an aura of peace.”
“Get out of my infirmary,” she said. Elliot decided he liked her, and bestowed a smile on her as he ambled over to Louise.
Louise took the opportunity to thank Elliot again for recommending Mal Wavechaser, and said that Elliot had excellent taste. Elliot had dark visions of being sent to Captain Whiteleaf’s office and scolded for being the world’s youngest procurer.
Louise had fever one night, and Elliot sat with her and held her hand. She called out for her mother, but only once. Rachel Sunborn was such a nice mother: Elliot supposed it made sense to still want her, even if you were grown up.
Elliot also came to Louise in order to vent his frustrations when his fury was clearly scaring Myra and Peter: when the offer for a truce came that made the dwarves happy but which gave nothing to the humans and the elves, and the plan was to summarily reject it as an insult.
Elliot sat with Louise that night still furious, thinking: just say yes, just bring them home. Later when he could not sleep and he was thinking about it as if it were a war in an old book, long fought and which he could regard as a game, he realized that if the elves and the humans were both unhappy, the peace would not work. He would not have them given back to him only to be inevitably snatched away.
“It’s a question of the size of the territory!” said Captain Whiteleaf the next day, raging imbecile that he was. “And the honor shown us!”
“Oh, well, I don’t think that’s true, is it?” Elliot asked in his sweetest, least argumentative, talking-to-the-elves voice. He poured General Lakelost his water. “Trolls want rock, so if they’re ceded something we think of as a barren wasteland, like for instance here . . .” he gestured pretend-carelessly at a map. “And elves want the woods. In fact, I happen to be in correspondence with a well-connected elven captain, Swift-Arrows-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, who mentioned a particular bit of woodland her people had their eye on. Here it is. Humans want farmland and gold, and if the trolls switch us this little space here where there’s meant to be gold in exchange for the barren wasteland . . .”
“What about honor?” snapped Captain Whiteleaf, weak chin quivering with indignation.
Elliot gazed, wide-eyed. “I’m sure that’s important too.”
“Indeed, indeed, but forget about it for a second,” said General Lakelost. “What were you saying about gold, lad?”
“My friend Myra’s part of the Diamond clan,” said Elliot. “She seems pretty sure. I mean, I’m not saying she has insider information . . . Oh dear, the jug is empty and you fine officers need to be refreshed. Gotta go refresh!”
He raced away.
The next day, Captain Whiteleaf was too ill to come out of his room and take part in the negotiations.
“You did this,” he croaked to Elliot when Elliot went to check this was in fact the case.
“Don’t know what you mean, sir,” Elliot said. “But I’m sure you’ll be better in, oh, twelve hours.”
He shut the door and went to bring the general more juice.
“I don’t know what it is, lad,” said Lakelost, ruffling Elliot’s hair—Elliot was pretty sure the general still thought he was ten—“but I think much more clearly with you bringing me apple juice.”
“Important to keep refreshed so your mind is at peak performance, sir,” said Elliot, and pushed a treaty he’d selected as a good new model into the general’s hand.
He wasn’t poisoning or drugging General Lakelost. Brandy was medicinal.
In the time it took for the new treaty to be delivered, there came word of another big battle: at the pass in Tharnapyr, trapped between the harpies’ Forest of the Suicides and the trolls’ Roaring Cliffs. Where the 15th were stationed, and no other troop close enough to reach them. When Elliot heard about it, he was sitting with Louise. She had to be strapped down to her bed to stop her from rising, commandeering a horse, and riding off to a fight that was already over.
Elliot sat with her all that long, cold night.
Word came in the morning, not slowly as before, but in shouts piling on shouts from every messenger and passerby, like the sound of victory bells. They heard of how the 15th had held the pass, their young leaders never faltering, and how Michael and Rachel Sunborn had led an army of their own people from across country and crushed the trolls’ force from behind.
The name was repeated so often it began to seem like a thousand candles lit one by one and illuminating night into dawn; it began to seem like a hosanna: Sunborn, Sunborn, Sunborn.
“Alive?” snapped Elliot and Louise as one, the sound instinctive as crying out when hit.
“The whole family,” said Rachel. “By which of course I also mean that gorgeous elf girl. She stood on the cliffs and fired until we had no arrows left, and every arrow hit a mark. Her kill count is in the hundreds. I’m kidnapping and adopting her.”
“Only daughter right here,” said Louise.
Rachel strode over to Louise’s bed and began to undo the straps. Louise let Elliot’s hand go.
“I thought you might be pleased to know the new treaty’s getting signed today, little funny face,” Rachel said over her shoulder. “You like all that kind of thing, don’t you?”
“It was a pretty good treaty,” Elliot said.
He was not heard, but he did not mind. Rachel was sweeping Louise’s hair off her forehead, looking at the stark wound on her face, and Elliot liked watching her until he heard what she was saying and the cold that had been freezing him all night long trickled back into his blood.
“Never mind that you missed out on the last bit of the fun, baby,” Rachel murmured. “There’s always another war.”
Now the treaty was signed and Rachel was with Louise, there was nothing to be done but go to class, so Elliot went because learning was imperative and he worshipped at the temple of knowledge.
“Could you stop looking out the windows, Cadet Schafer, and listen to the question?” asked Mr Dustlaid, his voice hopeless.
“The Wavechasers discovered the island a hundred and twenty-four years ago,” Elliot snapped. “I read extra materials. And looking upon greenery makes the mind relax and absorb information better. That’s science. Brain science.”
In Other Lands Page 13
