Elliot shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”
He got dishwashing duty for the next three weeks and was sent away, possibly so Commander Rayburn could have a soothing nap. Serene and Luke were waiting outside. Once they had established that Elliot was not expelled, they told him very firmly that he should have been expelled.
“Your behaviour was very rash,” Serene said. “And you called enormous amounts of attention to yourself, which is not the way my mother taught me gentlemen should behave.” She was wearing her tiny smile, designed to be missed, except that Elliot never missed it. He smiled at her, and she told him: “If the camp is attacked, I swear to protect you.”
“And if we’re both dead, the odds are pretty good you’ll annoy people until they chop off their own heads in sheer frustration,” said Luke.
Elliot was pleased by this tribute. Luke and Serene stopped leaning their overly tall leather-clad selves against one of the endless fences surrounding the endless fields, and they walked away from the commander’s tower back toward their cabins as Elliot told them about his actual punishment.
“Oh, what?” Luke said. “You’re going to miss my first Trigon game.”
“Is that the stupid game with the glass ball and the weird hills that some of the war-training guys keep playing?” Elliot asked. “Oh no, do you play that? The others have been playing it for ages.”
“It’s a good game,” said Luke. “But I didn’t really have time to play until we got into the swing of helping Serene. She’s more important.”
Serene shoved Luke’s shoulder with her own in a rough affectionate gesture. Elliot regarded Luke with deep dislike. Everything had gone downhill so fast.
“So, what, they just kept a place for you on the team?”
Luke blinked. “Sure. They were upset I couldn’t play, of course: they know they won’t win against the other years without me.”
“But with you they will?” Elliot inquired sweetly.
“Well,” Luke said. “Yeah.”
“He displays great prowess in every physical activity,” Serene said in her measured way, and Luke buffeted her in the shoulder in the same way she had just done to him.
“I have no idea why you would think I might want to go and watch your ridiculous game, loser,” Elliot said. “The truce doesn’t extend that far. I have no interest in the game or you, and I already see your face more often than I would prefer.”
“Suit yourself,” Luke snapped. “Have fun washing dishes while I’m winning and everybody else is cheering for me.”
Washing dishes, or literally anything else in the world, sounded better than that. But when the day came, Serene appeared and announced that she had got Elliot off early.
“That’s so great, Serene,” said Elliot. “Except I don’t want to go.”
“I want to go,” said Serene. “You have both made a sterling effort to support me, as my true and trusted comrades, and I wish to show support for you in my turn. And if I appear at an event without a gentleman by my side, people will assume that I couldn’t get one.”
Trigon was as stupid a game as Elliot had imagined it was. It involved a lot of jumping—someone was going to sprain an ankle, if not break a leg—and grabbing at a giant glass ball. Someone was going to get hit in the head and get glass shards embedded in their skull.
At least nobody was actively trying to hurt each other, and Luke was good at jumping, if you considered that something to brag about. For about five minutes, Elliot almost wanted him to win.
But then Luke looked over at Serene a few too many times and the crowd leaped up and cheered for him a lot too many times, and Elliot retreated to his book and sulked because Serene did not understand his jokes about Tigger.
Luke won. His team carried him around on their shoulders, his hair shining in the sun, their glad shouting rising up into the sky. Dale Wavechaser and Darius Winterchild gave Luke many back-pats and fist-bumps, so Elliot presumed Luke had at last found his sporty brethren. Luke still, rather to Elliot’s surprise, came over to them later.
“So?” he asked, grinning with what Elliot found to be offensive bashfulness. “What did you think?”
“I do not see the point of this game, but you were excellent,” said Serene.
Elliot looked up from his book. “Is it over?” he asked. “Who won?”
It wasn’t that Luke caused all the terrible things at the Border camp to happen. It was mostly just that he was the one who told Elliot about them, and so it seemed like they were all his fault.
Elliot chose to blame Luke anyway.
“What is the point of parents’ day?” he demanded at yet another Bad News Lunchtime.
“Men are naturally attached to their homes,” Serene said sympathetically. “I believe that parents are allowed to visit to ease their hearts and assure them of their familial affection. I have been going on hunting expeditions away from home since I was a squire, of course, so a visit from my parents will not be required. Are your parents not capable of crossing the Border?”
“Nope,” said Elliot, whose father believed he was at military school and whom he would never have dreamed of asking to come to his school anyway.
“My parents are coming,” said Luke.
“Okay.”
“So’s my sister, Louise.”
“Good for you,” said Elliot.
“Serene’s going to come with us,” Luke said. “We’re going to have a picnic.”
“This is a very boring story, loser,” said Elliot, instead of saying “Quit rubbing it in.” “Did it sound different in your head?”
“You can come if you like,” said Luke. “Since nobody else is going to ask you, and everyone should have something to do on parents’ day.”
“That’s all right,” said Elliot. “I actually can’t imagine anything worse than having to attend an all-Sunborns-all-the-time parade.”
On parents’ day he went to the library, because it was amazing in the library and he loved it there, and today he had promised himself a special treat: he was going to read a contemporary account of the great harpies battle over the Forest of the Suicides.
He had to put on special gloves and turn the pages carefully, under Bright-Eyes the librarian’s watchful gaze.
It was a really enjoyable half hour until Luke showed up.
“So sorry,” said Elliot politely to Bright-Eyes, and then to Luke: “Are you lost?”
Luke was giving the library a look of unhappy mistrust. In fact, now Elliot was paying attention, he looked more downcast than usual: it probably could not be attributed to the library. Possibly someone had made fun of his hair.
“You have to come to the picnic,” he said.
“Why?” Elliot snapped.
“My parents are expecting you,” Luke said reluctantly, as if each word were a tooth that had to be pulled.
“Why?” Elliot repeated inflexibly.
“I don’t know why, Elliot!” Luke snapped back. “I didn’t tell them you were coming. But they asked where you were, and I said you were in the library, and they said to go fetch you then.”
“How did you know I was in the library?”