Which turned out to be a terrible mistake, because the commander’s eye lit upon him. “Do you have something to say, cadet?”
“No,” said Elliot prudently. Then his actual personality reasserted itself and he said: “Well, actually yes. Okay, I’ve only been in the otherlands for a day, and so far it’s all horrible and confusing, but this much I understand. Serene is the first female elf to join the Border camp, and the women of her kind are more highly valued socially than the men. She’s also of a very high rank. If you send her home saying that you doubt her capabilities, you will be insulting the elves, and they are one of the few nonhumans the humans actually have an alliance with. Why insult the elves when you do not have to? Moreover, Serene is extremely intelligent and by all accounts really good at stabbing stuff and whatever. You should want to have gifted students who may excel in both courses, and you should be encouraging students when they show interest in their studies. Do you not want warriors who are brilliant, and diplomats who are brave? The war-training course is also obviously the command-track course. Do you want the next generation of commanders and captains to be idiots like Luke? If the coursework proves too much for Serene—which I do not anticipate—she can always make a choice between the courses, and at that stage it will be a choice made with more information than she has now, and with mutual goodwill.” He took a deep breath. “Also, that candle so close to your papers is a fire hazard. I thought you should know.”
Captain Woodsinger gave Elliot an appalled look. Elliot suspected she had never forgiven him for the child-predator remark.
Commander Rayburn’s lip curled. “You’d be in the council-training course, I assume.”
“Yeah, you can tell by my pretty dress,” Elliot snapped.
“Well, your deluge of slippery words and Chaos-of-Battle’s burgeoning insubordination fail to convince me, for some reason,” Rayburn said drily.
“My mother always said men’s minds were unsuited to the rigors of command,” Serene murmured. “With respect, sir.”
Captain Woodsinger smiled faintly. The commander did not.
“What did you say?” Commander Rayburn thundered.
“I agree with them,” Luke Sunborn said loudly.
He had not spoken before, only saluted and stood to attention, hands clasped behind his back and listening seriously to what his commander was saying. He stepped forward now.
“I beg your pardon, Sunborn?”
“I agree with everything Serene and Elliot are saying,” Luke said. “Except the stuff about guys, obviously. Serene, you have to remember the cultural differences.”
Serene inclined her head. “My apologies.”
“And the fact that Elliot insulted me, which was completely rude and uncalled for.”
Elliot smirked.
“Aside from that, sir,” said Luke, “it does no harm to let her try. She’s amazing with a bow. You should see her in the ring. If she was asked to choose between courses, she might not choose war training, and she would be a real loss to the camp.”
Elliot did not miss Luke’s implication, as clear as the commander’s, that council training was useless.
“She has a brain, you know,” Elliot said. “She’d be right not to choose war training.”
“I speak for myself,” Serene announced, her arms crossed. “And I am brilliant with both a bow and my brain. But if you do not know how to value a daughter of Chaos, that is your loss.”
She walked over to a chair, which she flung herself into, and sat in a rebellious slouch. Elliot looked at her with love and joined her in sitting down, though he didn’t think he had quite Serene’s élan. Luke remained standing, but he moved to the other side of Serene’s chair.
It was Serene’s absolute refusal to be cowed or to submit that changed the commander’s mind, Elliot thought. But he figured the support of a Sunborn and Elliot’s statement of some shatteringly obvious facts about diplomacy didn’t hurt.
“You can take both courses,” the commander said eventually. “On trial. For a year. If you do not perform satisfactorily in both, you will be asked to choose at the end of a year, whether you wish to or not.”
“Thank you,” said Serene.
“And I hope I don’t regret this.”
“I intend you will not,” Serene informed him. “I intend to excel.”
They left the tent with Serene striding in the centre and both of them flanking her.
“Well, Serene, you were amazing,” Elliot told her. “Now, you’ll want to learn what you missed in council training today. Come with me to the library and we will go over the lessons. Good-bye, Luke.”
“Right,” said Luke. “See you in archery at dawn, Serene?”
“Indeed,” said Serene.
Elliot was calling that one a draw. For him and Luke, that was: obviously Serene had triumphed in her altercation with the commander, because she was wonderful.
Serene was obviously in way over her head.
It was not her fault. She was brilliant and amazing and perfect, and if anyone in the world could have done it she could have, but there simply were not enough hours in the day. Those in council training were meant to burn the midnight oil (literally; God grant Elliot patience, but he would rather have electricity), and those in war training were meant to rise at dawn.
She was not getting enough sleep.
Elliot came forcibly to this realization when he was reading to her aloud in the library about the adventures of a dwarf prince and the elven commander of his armies. It was also an interspecies romance, because Elliot’s courtship was both intellectual and sneaky.
Their burly elven librarian, Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women, walked over and coughed pointedly as Elliot was reading.
Elliot ceased doing the voice for the dwarf prince. “Am I talking too loudly—” he began, and then saw that Serene was asleep, her dark head cradled in her arms. “Oh.”
He shut up the book, slipped off his chair, and went into the stacks where he could give himself furiously to thinking. He had only been brooding there for a few minutes when he was interrupted by Luke.
“What are you doing here?” Elliot demanded.
“I’m worried about Serene,” said Luke.
“No, I didn’t mean why did you come here,” Elliot explained. “How did you even know how to find this place? Did you get somebody to show you the way? Do you know what these objects on the shelves with all the words in them are called?”
Luke did look somewhat out of place in the library and mildly uncomfortable about it, but in response he stopped looking uncomfortable and started looking annoyed.
“We were having an archery competition this morning.”
“How is that different from having archery practise every other morning?” Elliot asked. “Wait, don’t tell me, I just remembered I’m not interested. So?”
“Serene missed every bull’s-eye,” said Luke. “She could barely focus on the target. She still did better than a lot of the other cadets, mind you,” he added with notable pride: it almost made Elliot have a positive feeling about Luke.
“Who won the archery competition, then?”