Luke did not look particularly shy, though, when Elliot looked around the door of the equipment room. Elliot might’ve got a bit taller, but Luke was really tall for his age, and strong. He didn’t look afraid about facing down grown-ups. He had, Elliot supposed, done it before.
“Hey,” he said, looking over at Elliot with a small smile and continuing to strap weapons on.
“You know I hate violence in all its forms,” Elliot announced. “And if you wanted to sit out this stupid contest, I would be supportive.”
Luke tilted his head inquiringly. “What would you being supportive even look like? I’ll pass. It would be too much of a shock to my system.”
“Okay, that token protest made,” said Elliot. “You’re better than Adam at everything, right?”
“I’m better than Adam at some things,” said Luke. “Though I don’t feel the need to boast about it all the time.”
“I know, we hate him,” said Elliot, delighted. “Also when you say some things, can you name anything that Adam is better at?”
Luke was modestly silent.
“Great!” Elliot declared. “Can you beat him in this stupid contest so that we don’t have to hear about it for the rest of time? By an embarrassing margin, if you can manage it. Please and thank you.”
“Yeah,” said Luke, still smiling. “I think I can do that.”
“Cool,” Elliot told him, and ducked back out. He and Serene had a date to watch the Sunborn trials together, and she had saved him a seat on the stands.
“Hey, are you Elliot?” asked a woman on the stands with them, in a Border guard uniform. Elliot thought she was Rafe Sunborn’s girlfriend. Serene looked at her with recognition: they reached across Elliot and shook hands, but the woman was still looking at him and smiling. “I was in Louise Sunborn’s troop. I loved your letters,” she told him. “They were hilarious.”
“Oh were they, hey, that’s great, kill me,” Elliot added urgently to Serene. She patted him on the back.
She did a lot of patting him on the back that day, as the heat haze rose from the ground and the Sunborns went into the ring. Dust rose, choking in his throat and stinging his eyes. Rachel was in that ring. Louise was in that ring. And Luke.
He opened a book and leaned against Serene. He’d thought he might be able to watch, but he wasn’t able to at all. When Neal Sunborn, who Elliot actually disliked, broke his leg and the snap cut through the air, Elliot shuddered against Serene and knew she felt it, was helpless to do anything else. He refused to even look up when Luke was in the ring. He only knew he was because of the ripple of sound that was his name, the hum of approval that Rachel and Michael’s son was doing so well. He hated literally everyone around him. Except Serene.
“Hit her again, Luke!” Serene yelled.
Occasionally also Serene.
Rachel Sunborn got struck out with a lucky blow to her helmet—she told him afterwards, Elliot obviously did not see for himself—and Elliot hurried off to the kitchen, where they had set up a makeshift infirmary.
“Oh, honey, go back, you don’t want to miss all the fun,” said Rachel, but Elliot refused, held her hand, and tried not to wince at the clash of swords, the twang of bow strings, or the thump of bodies on the ground filtering through. Neal was moaning in pain. Adam, for once, didn’t bother Elliot but rushed to his brother when he came into the kitchen, and Elliot supposed that meant Adam had been knocked out of the contest.
Elliot waited for Luke and Serene to come into the infirmary, either to find him or because—if Luke was hurt, but they did not come. Eventually there came a great roar from outside, Elliot knocked something over, and Rachel got up despite the fact that her head was bandaged and she’d told Elliot he was holding up seventeen fingers. Elliot went with her, letting her lean on him, and for the second time in a handful of months, he saw Luke being carried away on people’s shoulders. He heard the chants of ‘Sunborn!’
They were all so pleased with themselves. They had set this up like a game, they acted like it was all a game, like honor or glory was an acceptable exchange for a life.
The Sunborns thought battle was a game and choosing a champion was reason for a party. They lit a bonfire and roasted a pig, set the minstrels playing and the torches burning. Elliot made himself busy carrying stuff and setting up places for the wounded, and it was not until the sunlight was nothing but a slice of orange between dark hills and darker sky that Luke found him.
“Hey,” said Luke. “Did you see—”
“No, wasn’t watching, don’t tell me about it, don’t want to know,” Elliot said hastily. “Oh, but—good job.”
“Right,” said Luke.
“Hi, Luke,” said a blond girl who looked Sunbornish. Elliot hoped she wasn’t a very close relative, given the way she was twirling her hair around her finger. “You were fantastic today.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Luke.
“Do you want to dance?”
“Oh, uh, no,” said Luke. “I don’t really dance.”
“I like to dance,” Elliot offered helpfully.
“Um . . .,” said the girl, looking both disappointed and disgruntled. Elliot could not quite work out how to withdraw his offer. “Okay.”
The girl was a bit taller than Elliot, despite his recent strides in that area, and her hands in his felt like unenthused dead fish.
“Have you known Luke long?” she asked as Elliot spun her and the sparks from the fire flew upward.
“Two years.”
“That must be amazing,” said the girl.
“Every day a gift,” said Elliot.
“He’s so brave and strong. And so good and kind.”
“Also his hair,” Elliot commented. “Very shiny.”
The girl glared. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Can you blame me?” said Elliot. Apparently she could: she pulled her hand away and stomped off to her friends.
Elliot looked around hopefully for Serene, but she was sitting across the fire letting Neal Sunborn pity-hold her hand. Stupid lucky people with broken legs.
“Hey,” said Adam.
“You,” said Elliot flatly. “Fantastic.”
He looked around for Luke, but Luke was hidden by a crowd of admirers. Elliot eyeballed the sky wildly for answers. He couldn’t see where Rachel was, and Louise was sitting in some boy’s lap. There was no help anywhere.
“Want to dance?” asked Adam.
Elliot stared at him. He couldn’t quite work out the joke. “Um,” he said, and felt a touch on his hand. He looked down and saw Culaine. “I think I’m going to take the dog for a walk.”
“I’ll come with you,” Adam said promptly.
“Uh, wow. I guess I . . . walked right into that.”
It was stupid to walk Culaine, since he lived in a world composed largely of fields and woods where he could roam freely. It seemed Elliot was doing it anyway. Stumbling in the dark, almost falling down a hill, walking a dog that didn’t need to be walked with Adam Sunborn. What an adventure. Maybe he’d break his neck and wouldn’t have to suffer the company any longer.
“So, it’s been cool to get to know you better this summer,” said Adam.
“But imagine how fun it would be to do something new and different,” suggested Elliot. “Next summer, we could not see each other at all.”
Adam laughed. He did not ever seem to understand that Elliot’s jokes were not for him. “I know I had you all wrong last summer, when I thought you were just a snotty brat,” he said. “I didn’t realise until the kitchen, with the dancing, that you liked to have fun. That you were fun.”
“Sure,” said Elliot. “Barrel of laughs, that’s me. A joy forever. Anyway . . .”
Elliot was still trying to work out what exactly Adam was doing when Adam grabbed him by the arm. Elliot tried to jerk away, but Adam held on fast. Elliot was pulled in and pressed against him, and then Elliot was being kissed.
“Wait, are you trying to express romantic feelings for me?�
� Elliot demanded. “God, what a terrible day.”
Something about Adam’s face told Elliot that he had been less than tactful.
“Sorry, um. It’s not you, it’s me,” Elliot said. “I don’t like you.”
Elliot was beginning to suspect he was not smooth in these situations. He truly did not like Adam, but it was flattering, he supposed: he couldn’t quite get his head around the idea that it might be possible for him to hurt somebody, but if it was, he didn’t want to.
“The thing is that I’m in love with Serene,” he announced.
There. Surely liking someone else was an acceptable and not too insulting excuse.
“What?” said Adam. “Not seriously? You don’t have a chance with her.”
“Wow, keep wooing me with your sweet words, lover,” Elliot snapped.
Adam laughed and used his hold on Elliot to pull him closer. “Come on, I know you like me.”
Elliot tried to twist his hand away again. “I have a serious question to ask you. During today’s trials, did anyone hit you on the head really hard? Did you have a fall? Are you feeling all lost and confused?”
“Stop messing around,” said Adam, his face darkening, and Elliot recognized the expression on his face: that of a spoiled child not used to being denied anything he wanted.
That expression had always spelled trouble for him in the past. It seemed worse now, in this unfamiliar and confusing situation: Elliot pushed Adam away again, to very little effect, and tried to yank his arm away, only succeeding in wrenching it. This felt like a fight. “Let go.”
Culaine, who clearly thought this was a game, went yapping and winding around their legs, and Elliot shoved as Culaine wound, and Adam tripped backward over the dog and ended up flat on his back. Elliot looked down into his angry face.
“You are still the same snotty brat,” Adam snarled.
“Finally you get it,” said Elliot, and ran.
By the time Elliot reached the fire and the festival, Luke had sneaked away somewhere, but Elliot was pretty sure he’d know where to find him, so he made his way to the house.
“Luke,” Elliot called. “Luke, I have something really funny to tell y—ohhhh.”
Luke was not in the equipment room. Rachel Sunborn was, wrapped in the arms of a man who was not Michael Sunborn: who was not Luke’s father.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Elliot, and shut the door fast.
Then he leaned against the wall and tried to focus all his energies on not having a heart attack before he turned fifteen.
“Elliot,” said Rachel, emerging from the room a moment later. “It’s not what you think.”
“Okay,” Elliot said numbly.
“Michael knows all about it,” Rachel said. “We have an understanding. On a festival occasion, like this, or when we’re apart on patrol, it’s all right for us to have—other friends. Lovers. It’s grown-up stuff, so you might not be able to understand completely—”
“You have an open relationship,” said Elliot, deeply relieved. “I read a lot.”
“Something like that,” Rachel said. “But the thing is . . . It’s not that Luke doesn’t know. I’m pretty sure he does. But he’s kind of bashful—I don’t understand it, he didn’t get it from my side of the family, and if you said anything to him he might be unhappy or embarrassed. So if you didn’t . . .” Rachel raked her fingers through her tumbled golden hair. “I sound like one of those people who sneak around and make excuses. I’m sorry. Never mind. You can talk to whoever you like.”
“No,” Elliot said slowly. “I trust you.”
Rachel gave him a small, worried smile. “Sorry if I upset you, kid. I don’t know how they do things in your world. Probably all a bit more civilized there.”
“No,” said Elliot. “I’m okay. I don’t mind. I . . . like it here. I like you.”
“You’re always welcome, kid,” said Rachel, and ruffled his hair. “Except obviously right now is grown-up time. Off you go. I think Luke is practising archery.”
Luke was indeed in the archery ring, stringing a bow as Elliot approached. The target glimmered like a tiny moon, far off in the distance. After doing awful sports and violence all day, Elliot did not see how Luke could wish to do more, but he supposed that if the other Sunborns were being lions on the prowl Luke probably wanted to be discreetly elsewhere.
“Hey, I was looking for you,” Elliot said.
“Yeah?” Luke smiled. “Here I am.”
“Why are you doing the archery again?” Elliot asked. “I heard you beat everyone.”
“I wouldn’t have if Serene had been allowed to compete.”
Elliot was pleased by this tribute to Serene until it occurred to him that she would probably be able to participate in the trials when she and Luke were married. Luke lifted the bow, arms steady and able to master it in a way he hadn’t quite been two years ago, and hit the bull’s eye. He aimed and fired again, three times in a row, and every time the arrow he fired hit the arrow before it and split it, so every one landed in the bull’s-eye.
“So I came to tell you something hilarious,” said Elliot, sitting on one of the low wooden benches surrounding the ring and bored by all the martial prowess. Culaine came to his arms with a soft whine, butting against Elliot’s chest for praise and petting. “And also, Culaine is a hero!”
“My dog is a hero?” Luke looked confused but amused.
“Blind people have, like, seeing-eye dogs,” Elliot continued. “I think Culaine could have a real future as a sexual harassment preventing dog.”
“Wait,” Luke said. “What? Who was . . . getting sexually harassed?”
“Me!” said Elliot.
“What,” said Luke.
“I know!” said Elliot. “I was surprised too! It was Adam! Can you believe it! That was what all his hanging around annoying me was about, apparently. He is such a smug blond idiot. He kissed me, and I could barely manage to stop myself from laughing in his face.”
“Yeah,” said Luke. “I’m amazed that you had that much restraint myself.”
Elliot looked up from Culaine, startled, at the flat sound of Luke’s voice. He wasn’t frowning and laughing at the same time anymore, in the way where he felt he should disapprove but secretly was on Elliot’s side. His face was like thunder.
Elliot suspected he had gone wrong somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. He knew Luke could be kind of prudish about these sort of things, and wondered if he was being judged as a floozy, which seemed massively unfair.
“I never liked him,” Elliot said uncertainly. “I always made that very clear.”
“Oh, you always do,” Luke said. His voice was savage.
“What?” Elliot asked. “I should have taken it as a compliment?”
He got up and walked away, back to the house. He didn’t have to deal with Sunborns and their monstrous egos for a moment longer.
Luke probably thought it had been a compliment. Just because Adam was a Sunborn, and at the last, when their loyalties were tested, Sunborns were loyal to each other. Sunborns thought they were all so much better than everybody else, and their attention must be an honor.
“Yeah!” Luke said, coming after him, shouting the word at his back. “Maybe! It would’ve been better than acting the way you always do!”
“Wow, sorry that everything I ever do offends you.”
The Sunborns were so stupid, and Elliot was done with it. They were so stupid they thought having a champion just turned fifteen was a glorious thing, instead of a target painted on Luke’s back. Now he was the Sunborn, instead of just a Sunborn, he was going to be someone people looked for in a war: his death would now be someone else’s trophy. Luke and all the other Sunborns seemed too stupid to realise that or too stupid to care. Luke’s own mother had cheered for something that was likely to get Luke killed.
“Do you hear yourself?” snapped Luke. “Do you actually hear yourself saying these stupid things? No, I guess you never do.”
“Everythi
ng I ever do and everything I ever say, apparently,” Elliot snapped, storming into the house. “You didn’t have to invite me here if you think I’m so unbearable.”
“I barely did,” Luke shouted back, slamming the door. “I had to, to be polite! Who wanted you here, asking people to do things and then not even watching when they do? You are the rudest person in the world. And you didn’t have to come running because of an invitation I didn’t mean, all because of Serene and your stupid idea of a stupid truce.”
“Stop calling me stupid!” Elliot yelled.
“You are stupid!” Luke yelled back. “You don’t understand anything!”
“Luke?” said Rachel from above, sounding stunned.
She was standing on the balcony that overlooked the hall, wrapped around with a bedsheet. Elliot looked up and saw the shadow of a man at her bare shoulder, and had a sudden moment of fear on top of distress: he wondered how he could possibly get Luke away without Luke seeing.
But it was Michael. Luke glanced up at his parents, threw up his hands, and walked away, making a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.
“Teenagers yell sometimes,” Rachel said, as if she was testing out the words. “Even Luke. This is normal.”
“Haha,” Elliot said. “Yep. Normal stuff. People are always yelling at me. It’s fine. I’m vexing. Go about your business. I will try to keep the vex down.”
“Okay,” said Rachel.
“That kid is a weirdo,” Elliot heard Michael mutter as Luke’s parents both walked away from the balcony and back toward their bedroom.
“I know, I’m crazy about him,” Rachel returned.
It pleased Elliot in a distant way to hear it, but it didn’t matter, not really. He kept his head high in case Rachel looked back, and he walked away, outside the Sunborn tower in the opposite direction to the one Luke had gone. He couldn’t come be Rachel’s friend. Rachel might like him, but she loved Luke. Nobody had ever loved Elliot, but he was really smart. He was smart enough to know the difference.
In Other Lands Page 16
