Commander Woodsinger was stiff but perfectly civil, and Serene, naturally, was being an avatar of elven perfection, discussing weaponry and different battle techniques and hot gentlemen. Elliot heard her shyly confiding about her sweetheart back in the elven woods to a few harpy warriors.
Luke was also very good, somewhat to Elliot’s surprise. He stayed close by Elliot, which was absolutely correct behavior because Elliot knew the most about harpy customs, and he drank out of several skull cups and even, at Elliot’s not-really-but-trying-to-be-gentle-nudging, talked about archery and other forms of hunting. Elliot knew enough about archery, to his eternal shame, that he could tell they were talking about it from the perspective of having better eyesight than humans. He wondered if Luke knew that.
The harpies were making a real effort. The harpies wanted Luke. Elliot could not even imagine how it would be, to have two families who wanted you.
He tried not to be angry with Luke, who had always belonged to a family who wanted him, and had not wanted another.
He was angry with the rest of the troop, and expressed this at length later in his and Luke’s tent.
“Elliot,” said Luke. “I know you’re not in warrior training, so you are not as familiar with missions or battles that require sleeping outside. Maybe you’re not familiar with tents. But the thing is, tents are made out of material. Material is not like walls. People can hear you through tents.”
“Oh, really?” said Elliot. “Thank you for that information about tents. Very useful.” He raised his voice. “And another thing about how unacceptably rude the company is being . . .”
Luke gave Elliot a look that suggested he thought Elliot was being unacceptably rude, so Elliot was forced to explain to him at length why the treaty was necessary. He even brought up something that had been worrying him for some time, but which he had never mentioned before.
There were humans living on the other side of the wall who could climb over. There was every chance somebody from Elliot’s world would see something to exploit on the other side of the Border, and come for it. If that day came, the people of the Borderlands had to be ready, and they had to be united.
Luke did not look convinced about any of this, but he listened.
“We’ll have the alliance,” he said, at last, and Elliot thought it was meant to be comforting. “You’re very good at being friendly with the harpies. Maybe too good.”
And what was that supposed to mean? Elliot frowned. Luke grinned.
“Celaeno called you a pretty thing,” he said, and Elliot was flattered for an instant before Luke set fire to the moment by adding, in an unacceptably casual voice: “But don’t worry: I told her you were my boyfriend.”
What? said Elliot, from the depths of his soul. What? What? What?
“You did what?” he asked. He was proud of himself for not shrieking.
Luke frowned, as if he found Elliot’s calm, measured response to insanity unsatisfactory in some way. “You’re welcome.”
Elliot realized, with a sudden burning sense of indignation, why Celaeno had taken Podarge and Elliot’s dead bunny of love away, and why all the harpies had treated him like a member of the family. Because Luke thought this was an appropriate time to torment Elliot with practical jokes.
“Why are you out to ruin my life? Is it your idea of fun? Oh no, no awesome autumn flings for Elliot, his life has to be a never-rounding end of misery because Sunborn says, is why, because that’s hilari—”
“Oh my God,” Luke exploded. “Don’t tell me you would let one of those creatures touch you!”
There was a sudden silence. Luke looked upset, but he did not look as if he realized the depths of disgust and self-hatred he had just revealed. Elliot had no idea how to respond to any of it: to how Luke felt, or what Luke had said, to the argument Luke thought they were having, or the argument they were actually having.
He felt like a child who had wandered off the path into the dark woods. He was not remotely thrilled any more. This was not an adventure. This was just being lost in the dark.
Elliot did not work out a way to respond. He wasn’t the one who could convince Luke he was wrong. He changed the subject awkwardly to the horrific privations of camping, and pretended to go to sleep soon after.
Luke scoffed at his complaints about being cold, uncomfortable, and far from civilization, but once he thought Elliot was asleep, he covered Elliot carefully with his own blanket. Elliot had his eyes closed, but he felt Luke’s breath against his cheek, and Luke’s hand drawing the blanket over Elliot’s shoulder.
Once Luke was asleep, Elliot sat up in the tent and his new nest of blankets, and looked down at Luke. He was sleeping curled up around his pillow, gold hair in his face, and even his sleeping face looked troubled and puzzled, the face of someone for whom trouble was new.
For a moment, Elliot thought that he would throw away the treaty and everything the treaty meant, if only he could make Luke feel better.
It was a ridiculous thing to think. Elliot was worried he was coming down with something.
When Elliot woke up that morning, he was comfortably warm, which was excellent. Luke was bothering him about something, which was not.
Luke kept yammering at him to wake up right now, but there didn’t seem to be a battle or a literary dispute or anything too urgent going on, so Elliot continued snoozing. He was really warm, for the one of the first times in the Borderlands, where the weather was worse than England and the heating situation was medieval. The blankets felt heavy and warm as down, and when Elliot cracked an eye open he saw the tent arched above him, gold and shining.
Except the tent was not gold.
Elliot opened his eyes.
There was no need for alarm. The tent had not magically transformed into a golden dome overnight. The tent was simply filled with wings. The idea sounded scary, as if Elliot had been enveloped in a storm of birds, but the reality was anything but. The moment was quiet, the wings motionless and serene, even the sounds of the outside world muffled. The wings, gold-touched pearl like those of Caroline the Fair from long ago, caught the light filtering in through the fabric of the tent. They turned into bright gilt arches which were, somehow, soft and warm and alive.
Elliot reached up a hand and ran his fingers lightly, very lightly, down the radiant row of feathers.
“Elliot,” Luke said, sounding as if he were holding onto the fraying edge of the robe of Patience. “Do not touch them!”
Which was when Elliot was forcibly reminded that these living wings belonged to a living person, and his behavior was completely terrible. He snatched his hand back and, in a move that would have surprised absolutely no one who had ever met him, began to babble.
He heard his own voice, bringing up Jase and the fact Jase’d had ginger in his goatee. He was stunned and dismayed by his own lack of subtlety. Really, he was bringing up his ex-boyfriend? Really? Elliot despaired of himself. He might as well have said ‘Whoa, Luke, buddy, enough of your personal feelings of self-doubt and trauma over body horror, because those wings are really working for me.’
Fortunately, Elliot babbling was normal enough behavior that it actually seemed to calm Luke down. Luke worked out how to fold his wings back up, and Elliot only made one joke containing the words “morning wing” which was restraint, because he’d thought of forty-seven.
“Shut up forever,” said Luke, trying to pull his shirt on. He had chosen a linen shirt rather than his usual leather, but the shirt still presented him with a certain amount of difficulty. For obvious reasons.
Moment with the wings aside, Elliot was a bigger person than to stand around checking out his friends when they were in trouble. It didn’t matter how shirtless they happened to be. Such things were totally irrelevant to him.
“Okay,” he said. “Let me help you.”
“No!” Luke snapped.
“Okay,” Elliot soothed. “Only someone has to. Do you want me to get Serene, or Da—”
“No,”
said Luke, and his voice was terrible, cracking or turning into a croak like a raven’s, Elliot could not tell and it did not make any difference, because either way it meant Luke was totally freaked out.
“Okay,” Elliot said for a third time, voice as soft and consoling as he could make it. “Give me a knife.”
“What?” Luke asked. “Oh no. What are you planning to do with a knife?”
This was familiar alarm, alarm Elliot knew perfectly well how to deal with: alarm at what terrible thing Elliot might do next.
“Trust me,” Elliot said, almost laughing.
“Oh no,” Luke muttered again, and handed him the knife.
It was one of the knives Luke habitually carried, familiar enough to Elliot that it was not disturbing to handle. The bone handle was worn smooth in Elliot’s hand, and since the knife was owned by Luke, who took conscientious care of all his things, the blade was sharp enough to cut fabric with ease.
Elliot pulled the shirt out at the back so it billowed, slicing the material at the points where the shirt folded, so the material would still conceal the wings but there would be room for them to unfold.
Luke was obviously a long way from relaxed, the muscles of his shoulders knotted and the feathers in his wings trembling as if caught in an upward draft of wind. Elliot put a hand on the back of Luke’s neck absentmindedly as he did his extremely rough version of tailoring for wings.
“Shhh,” he said.
“You shouldn’t,” Luke said. “You shouldn’t have to touch—”
“I don’t mind,” Elliot said, calm and factual.
He stepped back and examined his handi-or-knifiwork critically. It really was not so bad.
And this was a good development, Elliot thought. Rachel Sunborn had said so, and the medics back at home and the harpies here had all agreed: it was time, and past time, for the wings to come out. This was always going to happen, and not the disaster Luke imagined.
Also wings were cool.
He did not express these feelings to Luke. It was not Elliot’s body. If it had been, Elliot might be considerably more disturbed. Luke did not have to agree that wings were cool, Elliot reminded himself. He just had to cope.
He was coping all right, Elliot thought. He was recovered enough to be cranky about Elliot’s clothing.
“What is that on your shirt?”
“It’s a rock band,” Elliot answered.
Luke gave him a look that clearly conveyed Luke’s disdain for the idea that stones could form a group.
“And what are those?”
“They’re jeans. Remember?”
“Oh, I remember. And they’re as awful as I remember,” Luke scolded. “And they’re contraband! You can’t wear contraband. The commander will be furious.”
Elliot was amused. “We’re on holiday. Besides, what’s she going to do about my contraband clothes? Execute me?” He fished one of his pens and a notebook out of the pocket of those jeans things, glanced up and saw Luke still looking disapproving. He stepped in and drew the pen over Luke’s throat, pretending to be the commander cutting it. “Confiscate them?” he said, and grinned. “Hardly. I have to go meet Podarge, she’s a very nice lady, she promised to show me how harpies garden.”
He left Luke alone to go do what Luke was obviously dying to do, which was walk into the veiling trees of the forest and remove all the feathers from his hair. Elliot himself was not on any search-and-rescue feather mission. His hair was a trap made of ginger snakes, and he was living in proximity to a hundred harpies. It was time to embrace the unintentional feather headdress.
Podarge gave Elliot a wistful look as he met her near her nesting tree.
“I do apologise for yesterday’s misunderstanding,” she said.
“Heh,” said Elliot. “About that . . .”
He tried to work out a way to explain Luke’s joke that did not make Luke sound prejudiced against harpies. He gave up.
“No worries,” he said finally. “You know, when I go home I would love to keep in touch with you through letters. Would you be willing to write to me?”
Podarge looked worried.
“I really want to learn about aerial gardening through the seasons,” Elliot said, truthfully.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Podarge decided.
Elliot glowed. “Wonderful!”
Surely in one of those letters, he could manage to casually mention that he was single and fancy-free. And the letters meant they could get to know each other better. Project flying girlfriend might still be on.
“Now,” said Elliot. “Tell me—”
That was when a shadow blotted out the sun. Elliot realized, in a dark moment of revelation, that harpies did that on purpose: that they knew where to fly so they would cast a shadow over the camp and send a silent alarm.
Podarge was already in the air when the second, unnecessary alarm sounded. The harpy shouted: “Troll force in the woods!”
Elliot was aware of exactly how badly this could go, when the trolls saw the humans in the harpies’ territory and understood that an alliance was being drawn up. A troll sentry must have seen one of the troop, and if the harpies had not informed them the humans were coming, the trolls might be very angry indeed.
One of the spears landed in the ground beside Elliot, thick as a young tree with a pointy end. Elliot regarded it thoughtfully.
Then he ran to find Serene.
There were a lot of trolls, far more than would have been in even a group of sentries. This was planned. And, Elliot thought, weaving through the trees and out of sight: this was vicious. He could see the trolls, so much larger and stronger than humans, flinging members of his troop around like dolls. He thought the trolls were out to prove to the harpies how useless human allies would be.
The harpies were amazing, swooping down and plucking humans off the ground and out of the trolls’ reach. The humans, in turn, were adapting to being picked up and carried off fast. Elliot saw Natalie Lowlands grasped in a harpy’s talons and using her bow. With the harpies’ help, it was easier for humans to keep their distance from the trolls, so the trolls’ greater strength and reach mattered less.
Elliot was still keenly aware that he could be crushed at any moment. He was relieved and delighted to find Serene.
He was less relieved and delighted that she was out of arrows, whirling around and trying to stab three trolls at once.
“Elliot!” she called out. “Fear nothing! I will save you!”
“Um, is your hair actually soaked with blood?” Elliot asked, delicately.
Serene gave him a blank look, then stabbed a troll in the foot with a sharp tooth on the forest floor. Elliot suspected the tooth actually belonged to the poor troll in question. She danced backward as the troll bellowed in rage. “Not my blood.”
“Oh,” Elliot said doubtfully. “That’s cool, then.”
Another troll came at Serene, and Serene laughed a high, pure, joyous laugh. Elliot flattened himself against a tree. Serene looked so small, valiant and daring and utterly outmatched, blades flashing and hair swinging as she turned in the circle of trolls. The trolls were closing in, and Elliot did not know how to help her.
Then came a descent of gold from the trees. Elliot caught his breath.
It was Luke, and he was flying. He was a gilded waterfall of flash and feathers, and he carried Serene away.
This became a less spectacular moment when the trolls, robbed of their prey, turned their heads and noticed Elliot.
“Hi,” said Elliot, seeing one troll’s eyes narrow. “Hey? No?”
No sign of comprehension on any of the trolls’ faces.
“You know,” Elliot continued, edging around the tree. “I understand your point of view. I should have learned trollish sooner. I should not expect people to comprehend my language. This is all happening because of my poor judgement.”
The trolls advanced.
“Parlez-vous francais?” Elliot asked, and bit his lip. “I didn’t think so.”
He heard the scream of someone, a human badly hurt or dying, in the distance. Then he heard a far more welcome sound: the sound, above Elliot and descending, of wings.
Luke had barely landed before Elliot flung his arms around Luke’s neck. He held on while Luke ascended, which was a strange unsteady and wonderful feeling, mindful of the fact Luke had only started flying today.
“Don’t let me die. I’m brilliant and worth at least four soldiers, and you’ll need me when the battle’s over.”
“I won’t let you die,” Luke promised.
Elliot could feel Luke’s heart hammering, closer than the beat of wings in the wind. His own heart was going pretty fast. No more excuses: he was going to learn how to speak to trolls this year.
Luke dropped him, with care, at a point among the trees where Elliot could still hear the sounds of battle but could not see any of the combatants.
“Stay here where I can see you,” Luke said, absently palming the back of Elliot’s head. “I’ll be in the air. I’ll see if anyone approaches and I’ll deal with them. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m not an idiot,” said Elliot.
Luke’s eyes narrowed down to sapphire chips.
Elliot saluted and smirked at him. “I’ll do exactly what you say. I swear. Sir.”
Instead of ripping all his hair out, Luke flew away. Elliot mentally congratulated Luke on this choice.
Elliot waited outside the trees, listening to the sounds of battle, until they faded away. He had his usual special time of wondering whether everyone he cared about was dead, but he listened even harder and made out the sound of human voices, laughing and shouting with triumph, and the shriek of harpies dominating a victorious battlefield. Elliot made his way back to the campfire, where he was met by an anxious Serene.
“There you are,” she said, patting him down, searching for any sign of injury, as he cradled her blood-streaked face in his hands and studied her for any sign of the same. “You’re safe! And Luke’s safe. And we won!”
In Other Lands Page 43
