In Other Lands Page 4

  “And you have a clan system!” Elliot said rapturously. “How is it different from the elf clan system? Wait, let me take notes.”

  He dragged a desk over to join the other two. Its legs squeaked on the floor. His classmates regarded him with expressions of exhaustion that Elliot found hurtful. They had only known him for a few weeks. People as young as they were should have more stamina.

  “Before I take notes about the clans,” said Elliot. “I have a few quick suggestions about both of your maps.”

  He was interrupted by the arrival of their teacher, Mr Dustlaid. Teachers in the council-training course did not have any military rank, and Elliot had heard the war-training cadets call them “Mister” and “Miss” with a sneer. Teachers in the council-training course had the sad desperate look of old biscuits dunked in tea, who wanted to crumble but were too soggy. All the councilors Elliot had seen so far had the same defeated look. Elliot wondered what that was about.

  “Cadet Schafer,” Mr Dustlaid said in a sad, wet voice. “To your desk.”

  As soon as class was over, Elliot leaped up to resume sharing his thoughts with Peter and Myra.

  “Sorry,” he said at length. “Am I boring you?”

  He usually was, and he usually realized it about now: twenty minutes too late.

  “No,” Myra told him. “It’s really cool that you want to hang out with us.”

  Elliot beamed. “Really?”

  “Usually you pal around with Luke Sunborn,” said Peter.

  Elliot stared at Peter in shocked betrayal, then transferred his gaze to Myra, who he now felt was his favorite of the two. Myra was also treacherous: she was nodding, her dark eyes shining.

  “To which of the students in this learning establishment do you refer?” Elliot asked haughtily. “I am not familiar with that name.”

  Myra and Peter stared at him. Elliot stared challengingly back.

  “You know, Luke Sunborn!” Peter said.

  Elliot shook his head firmly. “Not ringing a bell, sorry.”

  “He’s famous!” said Peter. “His whole family is famous!”

  “How nice for him,” said Elliot. “Whoever he may be.”

  “And he’s very handsome,” Myra said softly.

  “I don’t know anyone handsome,” Elliot lied, and demoted Myra from her position as favorite.

  “He’s the tallest boy in our year, and he’s the best at everything in the war-training class, and he’s . . .” Peter, already babbling, descended into an incomprehensible mumble.

  “Satan line dancing?” Elliot asked. “Peter, are you drunk?”

  “Standing behind you,” Myra said in a low, clear voice.

  “What—oh my God,” said Elliot, turning to find Luke lurking behind him like a terrible blond iceberg. He almost fell out of his chair. “Don’t do that! Why would you do that?”

  “Hi,” Luke said awkwardly.

  A terrible thought occurred to Elliot. “Is Serene all right? Has she been injured in one of your reckless training exercises?”

  Luke frowned. “She’s fine. Captain Woodsinger offered to give her extra lessons, to smooth her transition in taking on two courses.”

  Elliot had thought he saw a trace of sympathy in Captain Woodsinger’s face during their interview with the commander. If the captain was on Serene’s side, he decided to forgive her impatient attitude toward Elliot himself.

  If Serene was fine, though, that raised the question of what Luke was doing here. Surely he would prefer to be doing something sporty with his terrible sporty friends.

  “Where’s Dale Wavechaser?” Elliot demanded.

  Luke blinked. “Who’s Dale Wavechaser?”

  “Your friend!” said Elliot.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Luke. “Which is life as usual, I guess.”

  Just because Luke, Serene, and Elliot had fallen into something of a routine did not mean that Luke had the right to describe that routine as “life as usual.” He was giving Elliot’s new friends entirely the wrong impression.

  “Dale’s about this tall,” Elliot said, waving a hand haphazardly far above his own head. “Very good-looking.”

  “What?” said Luke.

  “Elliot is right,” said Myra, which Elliot enjoyed hearing, so Elliot made her his favorite again.

  “I’ve just never heard him say anything positive about anyone before,” said Luke.

  “That’s absurd. Serene is an avatar of elven perfection, and I praise her every day,” Elliot snapped. “Anyway, Dale Wavechaser has the disturbingly happy face of someone who doesn’t think very much.”

  “That’s more like you,” said Luke. “Also, I don’t know this person.”

  “He followed you around all through the first day of camp!”

  “Oh,” Luke said, and frowned again, this time in concentration. As if people following him around worshipfully was such an ordinary state of affairs he barely noticed. “I think I remember. I don’t know him, though.”

  “Well, good news!” Elliot declared. “He wants to be your friend!”

  Luke did not look especially pleased by this revelation. Of course, he was probably used to people wanting to be his friend.

  Elliot remembered his new friends, and also his manners.

  “My new friends, meet,” Elliot said grandly, “some guy.”

  “Luke,” said Luke.

  “We know,” Peter and Myra chorused.

  Elliot noticed that Luke did not ask Peter and Myra’s names, and Peter and Myra did not volunteer them. Everybody clearly had a strong opinion about who the important one in this social interaction was.

  Elliot refused to accept other people’s version of reality. He debated asking Luke what he was doing hanging around, and whether it was actually Luke’s intent to sabotage Elliot’s life because of their rivalry for Serene’s heart.

  It sounded a bit terrible in Elliot’s head when he thought it, though, and when things sounded terrible in Elliot’s head that was a bad sign. Elliot thought it was probably bad manners to actually tell people they shouldn’t be where you were. It was not something that had ever come up in Elliot’s life before. Usually people took extreme care not to be where Elliot was.

  Elliot decided to accept the situation, with ill grace.

  “Since you’re here, make yourself useful,” he commanded. “Hold all of these.”

  He gave Luke his bag.

  “Do you have rocks in here?” Luke asked.

  “I have all my books with me, obviously, and several library books,” Elliot answered. “What if I wished to consult a book and did not have the relevant volume on hand? Think about it. Now if you are carrying my books, I can take the atlas back to my cabin with me and inspect it.”

  The atlas of the otherlands was not a globe, but a square flat stone, smoothed into shape like a tile. The forests of the otherlands were drawn out, and villages, and the seas beyond.

  “Elliot!” Peter said, his voice slightly high. “I’m not sure you’re supposed to take that.”

  “Nobody ever said I wasn’t supposed to take the atlas home for private study,” Elliot told Peter. “Did they? By the way, do people think this world is flat? Is it flat? What happens if you try to cross the sea?”

  “If you sail into the deepest ocean, you are killed by giant mermaids,” Peter said flatly.

  “Fascinating,” Elliot sighed. “You’ve made me very happy.”

  He contemplated the atlas in his hands, which also made him very happy. There was a place where the actual words HERE BE DRAGONS were written, and it was probably true.

  “I don’t want to help you steal stuff,” said Luke.

  “You are talking nonsense, Luke. Obviously I am going to give it back. Besides, is Mr Dustlaid going to punish me? Really? He can barely summon up the will to live. I don’t know how any of the councilors get any treaties written.”

  “Well,” Luke said pityingly. “They don’t exactly write the treaties. They used to,
but the Border guard is too large and too vital to the defence of the otherlands now. Councilors advise on the treaties, of course, and help put them into the proper language, but Commander Rayburn or—if the situation is important enough—General Lakelost decides what goes into the treaties.”

  “Reeeeeally,” said Elliot. “Under those circumstances, I might lose the will to live myself.”

  The system of war training and council training in the Border camp made more sense now. Once, perhaps, there had been no general, and no colonels beneath him, and only a few fortresses with commanders and their trusted councilors running them together. Now there were fortresses dotted across the otherlands, a general placed over them all, everyone thought they were too important and military to listen to councilors, and the commander who ran the Border camp was under orders to produce more warriors.

  No wonder the council course had shrunk down to nothing, and all the councilors taught in a despair fugue. They had given up.

  Giving up was not Elliot’s style.

  He waved a cheerful good-bye to Peter and Myra. The atlas, held in only one hand, wobbled. Peter gulped. Myra, Elliot’s favorite, stayed cool.

  Elliot went back to holding the atlas in both hands. Luke punched him in the arm.

  “There you go,” he said. “Hang on to it.”

  Elliot stumbled slightly and glared up at Luke, waiting for the next blow. It did not come. Luke stared down at him.

  “Don’t hit me,” said Elliot.

  “I didn’t!” Luke exclaimed. “I didn’t—hit you.”

  “Oh, no?”

  Luke flushed. “Other boys punch—people they know in the arms all the time,” he said. “I’ve seen them do it.”

  “Yeah, I’ve actually been punched before,” said Elliot. “I don’t like it.”

  “Who punched you?”

  Elliot waved this off as irrelevant. “This is part of the truce,” he explained.

  “The truce,” Luke said. “Oh.”

  “No violence. No hitting, no kicking, no throwing my bag over my head, no shaking trees so I fall out, no shaking the jungle gym so I fall out, no shoving me out of windows so I fall out—”

  “Elliot!” said Luke. “I’m not going to—”

  “No interrupting!” said Elliot. “That is doing violence to my train of thought and verbal flow.”

  “That is ridiculous,” said Luke.

  “So you insist on perpetrating acts of wanton brutality on the helpless?”

  “No!” Luke exclaimed. “Okay, fine. No violence. That’s fine. Since I didn’t hit you.”

  He glared at Elliot. Elliot glared back. Elliot returned to studying his atlas.

  “On one side is the ocean, and on one side is the wall,” said Elliot thoughtfully. “But were the otherlands part of my world once? Who built the wall that marks the Border?”

  “Nobody built the wall,” said Luke. “It’s always been there.”

  “Someone built the wall,” said Elliot. “Because it’s a wall, and not a rock. Rocks are always there. Walls are not. Someone has to make a wall. Nobody has to make a rock.”

  “Says who?” asked Luke.

  Elliot squinted. “Luke, are you being metaphysical?”

  Luke looked alarmed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Pity,” said Elliot. “I would have been very impressed.”

  “I doubt that somehow,” said Luke.

  Elliot disregarded this cheap shot and regarded his atlas. He tried to think of a way to ask Luke not to talk to him in front of Peter and Myra, since it might ruin Elliot’s reputation, but that also seemed a terrible thing to say out loud.

  “What is being metaphysical, exactly?” asked Luke.

  Elliot gave up and tried to explain. This took several hours, and by the time he surrendered in frustration, Serene had returned to him. She really seemed to like him, Elliot thought. It was amazing. He was pretty sure it wasn’t just about the help he gave her. He was pretty sure she hung around him voluntarily.

  He was almost happy in the Border camp.

  Until, naturally, Luke ruined his happiness by rudely reminding him what the Border camp was actually for.

  “We could help you, you know,” Luke said over lunch one day.

  Both the courses shared lunch in one of the larger buildings, around small tables and benches like picnic tables and benches but inside. Elliot always sat with Serene, naturally, and had to put up with Luke.

  Elliot looked to Serene for translation, but she was nodding, so it was one of those military things they both understood and felt he should too.

  “I don’t need or want your help, loser,” he said, rather than betray any uncertainty. “But I will take your pudding.”

  He took the pudding. Luke let him. To reward Luke for this, and also because Elliot did not trust green food, he pushed across his apple.

  “Because basic self-defence training is going to start up soon,” Luke said. “Even the people in the council-training courses have to do it. You signed up to fight when you signed up to guard the Border. You don’t have a choice. I mean, what if the camp was under attack?”

  “I hope you and Serene would have the decency to protect me!”

  “Yes, of course,” said Serene, and Elliot smiled gratefully at her.

  “I’m not saying this to upset you. I’m trying to tell you what you absolutely have to do. What if we were both dead?” asked Luke.

  Elliot looked at his pudding and was very sad about his life and his choices. How had he wound up here, in a place where all he had was pudding—Elliot would have sold his soul for a chocolate bar—and awful people who at the age of thirteen asked questions like “What if we were both dead?”

  “Amazing choice of mealtime conversation, loser,” he said. “Now I’m not even hungry.”

  “Give back my pudding then.”

  “No,” said Elliot, on general principles.

  “Your gentle nature is unsuited to war,” Serene told him. “It’s all right to be frightened. I think you have a valiant spirit and you will rise to the occasion.”

  Elliot glanced up into the steady light of Serene’s eyes. She might sympathetically express her opinion of men’s weakness at every turn, but she had this belief in Elliot, despite the fact that she was the best cadet warrior in the Border camp and based on what Elliot did not know.

  She had misunderstood the situation, but her faith in him meant a lot.

  “I’m not frightened,” said Elliot. “And I know just what to do.”

  He finished his pudding.

  Elliot had been to the practise grounds before, when Serene and Luke wanted to do their fun pretend murder outside. The other kids from the council-training course had not, and they were all looking at the cleared dirt with what seemed to be nervousness and excitement. Elliot always sat with Peter or Myra when Serene was not there to sit with, and he had hoped for better from them.

  “Don’t worry, you guys,” said Dale Wavechaser, coming up with a giant box of throwing knives. “All of the war-training class are going to come and help you learn, since it’s your first time.”

  Dale was exactly the type a teacher would trust with equipment: he could lift any heavy things, and he was reliable.

  Elliot smiled at him winningly. “Hello.”

  “Oh, hello,” said Dale. “Elliot, right? I bet Luke will teach you.”

  “How thrilling for me,” said Elliot. “Actually, I know how to throw knives.”

  “Really?” Dale asked. “That’s great.”

  “So great,” Elliot agreed cheerfully. “So can I have them?”

  He looked around, and from the cluster of cabins, coming across the grass, was Captain Woodsinger and other students from the war-training course. Including Serene and Luke. Now was the time to act, or never.

  Dale blinked. “Have them?”

  “I like to pick my own,” said Elliot, and seized the box.

  Dale did not actually resist his grab, which was excellent as th
e box was horribly heavy and Elliot almost tipped over and right into the big container of knives. He dropped it into the dirt instead and clung possessively to the side.

  He smiled reassuringly at Dale, and across the field he saw Luke break into a run. He picked up the first knife that came to hand.

  “Watch this,” he said, and threw the knife at Dale.

  Dale stumbled backwards, and Elliot grabbed up several more knives and hurled them in random directions. The council-track class let out screams and scattered.

  Elliot grabbed more knives.

  “Forcing groups of teenagers to learn how to use deadly force is really weird and disturbing!” he announced, throwing another knife, and another, and then one over his shoulder. “Everyone has a choice, if they choose to make one, and I choose not to do this. The value of people does not rest on their ability to hurt others.”

  He threw the knives down viciously, as if they were grenades. Puffs of dust rose when they hit the ground.

  “I am not winning any arguments because I know how to hurt someone. How does that prove that you’re right? How does being stronger or more vicious prove anything, except that all this talk about honor is stupid? Where’s the honor in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can’t win any other way. As if I can’t win in a better way.”

  Luke and Serene got to him just before the captain did. Elliot threw the last knife at their feet.

  “He said he knew how to throw knives,” Dale Wavechaser said, faint and traumatised, somewhere in the distance.

  “I do know how to throw knives,” Elliot said. “I can already do all I want to do with knives, which is throw them away.”

  Luke and Serene were both pale, breathing hard, staring around and visibly pleased that nobody had been accidentally knifed. They were also wearing looks of deep apprehension . . . about Elliot’s fate, Elliot assumed, since the knife box was empty.

  “Yes, your point was extremely clear,” said Luke. “You’re just making the whole thing laboured and awkward now.”