Another autumn morning dawns cold, but at least the castle walls shield the royal archery range from the vicious wind. Zelda recites a prayer of thanks to Nayru for holding back the rain during practice today, and tries to feel properly grateful. It is hard to feel generous about anything in the third hour of dawn, and harder yet when she is weighed down under twelve layers of silk.
She tells herself to be grateful for the warmth of last night's ballgown, and draws the bowstring to her ear.
"Stop. You are leaning into the weight of your sleeve. Reset and do it again." Impa folds her arms over her broad chest, red eyes sharp as her words.
Zelda closes her eyes, and does not make a face at her governess and bodyguard and closest friend. She is twelve, and old enough to know better than to indulge such childish fits of temper. She lowers her bow. She breathes. She centers. She reminds herself that Ulus promised fruit tarts for breakfast today if she could sink sixty arrows in the red.
"Better. Again, but at full draw this time," says Impa. The sheikah is always stern in lessons, but somehow it is harder to bear this morning.
"Can you not hear the fabric strain? I will tear seams for certain if I try," says Zelda, selecting another flawless arrow fletched in white and blue.
"Do not try," says Impa mildly.
Zelda recites a silent prayer to Farore for strength, sighting down arrow forty-eight. She misses the target completely. The shaft explodes into a thousand splinters when it strikes the white granite wall beyond.
"Not ideal, but if the enemy happens to have a squire or servant with him, he will surely be inconvenienced hereafter," teases Impa.
"I wouldn't miss at all if you just let me wear proper gear," grumbles Zelda. None of the guards would be shocked to see Impa's silent apprentice in the royal gardens, and the entire court knows the crown princess often rises late and retires early since her mother died years ago. Everyone agrees it is hard for a maiden to lose her mother, and how much worse for the shy, pious, bookish princess?
"If war possessed the manners to stay on the other side of fences and walls and restrict its savagery to battlefields and wastelands, a great many soldiers would be out of work. Again, and remember to breathe into the shot."
Zelda frowns, rejecting an arrow with spoiled fletching and choosing another. "I am breathing as much as the damn stays permit."
"Language."
Zelda rolls her eyes, and sinks a twenty-fourth bullseye. "The Zora princess is allowed to swear."
"She is thirty-five and confirmed as the anointed priestess of their god. Another."
Zelda hears a thread pop with arrow fifty-three, and lets the bolt fly with a snarl of decidedly unladylike fury. It sinks through the pithy wood so near the edge it opens a crack across the outer white ring of the target board.
"Good. He's lost the use of his sword arm. Press your advantage at once," says Impa.
Zelda groans, hitching her sleeve a little higher so maybe it won't tear any worse. "And what if this imaginary assassin should be left-handed? Now he is angry, and will charge at me, and I cannot run in all this nonsense."
"Not today perhaps, as your father expects you to make an appearance at lunch. The Labrynian envoy wishes to convey her gratitude for your intercession with the rain spirits, and I count sixty-seven still in this basket. At this rate you will barely have time to wash and dress."
Zelda begs Nayru for patience, and Din for mercy as she sights the fifty-fourth. "Father will have a cat if I ruin all my dancing shoes running the training circuit."
Impa snorts. "I didn't know you were on speaking terms again."
"We aren't," says Zelda after arrow sixty, waiting for the deaf pageboy to pull and sort the bolts into the brightly dyed baskets. Only twenty eight have hit the red center. "You are always saying the sacred maiden must set the highest standard. It is wasteful to ruin expensive court dress wearing it for the wrong purpose when there are thousands of peasants lucky to own two outfits at all."
"All the more reason to practice not ruining it," says Impa, picking up the little pile of flawed arrows. "War does not obey borders and social schedules. A queen must be prepared to defend herself and her country at any hour, in any circumstance."
Zelda scowls, snatching the bundle of arrows from Impa's hands, fitting three between her gloved knuckles and loosing them all at once. The pageboy cowers behind the old yeoman's shield at the edge of the range as she hammers three volleys into the board. None strike red, but six of the nine thunk solidly into the painted wood.
Impa coughs, but Zelda sees how the stoic sheikah's red eyes crinkle at the corners. When she can sink all nine, Impa will smile for certain. If she can cluster them close to the heart, maybe she will even laugh.
"Everything about the civil war has been wasteful and stupid from the day it began. Father will never have the respect of other kings and chiefs when the whole council behaves badly. Barons who do not listen to the crown should not be barons anymore."
