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 the 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.”
Elliot rolled his eyes as he was dragged off to the commander’s rooms, where Commander Rayburn walked in and said, “Oh, the elf’s little ginger boyfriend” in a despairing and, Elliot considered, unprofessional manner. “What have you been doing now?”
“Staged a pacifist protest,” said Elliot. “Also, Serene and I have not defined the parameters of our relationship yet, though I have high hopes.”
“He staged a pacifist protest by hurling knives all over everywhere,” reported Captain Woodsinger from her place at the door, throwing the commander a snappy salute.
“Unusual,” said Commander Rayburn. He sounded very, very tired.