Chapter One: The Sleepy Kingdom by the Sea
There was once a kingdom, lying sleepy by the sea. Rich and beautiful, it was left to be. At least, until a race of long-eared, pale-eyed creatures -- who rode dust-blowing monsters transported to the island in their wicked battleships -- swept over the peaceful isle and overwhelmed its pitiful military forces like hail in a storm. Shrines to the local deity were leveled; libraries that held priceless books written in the predawn of man were burned to the ground; and the native inhabitants of this kingdom lying sleepy by the sea were turned into the slaves of the...Hylians.
The Hylian governor and consul, who arrived from the mainland soon after the conquest, beheaded the entire Royal Family and claimed the riches of the kingdom's treasury as their own. They sought to completely demean the natives! As a final, crushing blow -- a decision made out of fear and ignorance -- the new government made the native people learn the Hylian language, and erected massive icons of the Seal of the Golden Power, representative of the Three...some of the old goddesses, who demanded sacrifice. In less than a hundred years -- and completely under the reign of Harkinian I, one thousand years in the past of present-day Hyrule -- the province of Koholint, forty miles off Hyrule's coast, had no more than a whisper of the memory of its glorious past.
Link Medilia listened to those whispers. He gleaned what he could from them of the illustrious history of what had once been the sleepy kingdom by the sea, of the land he lived in now. Even while the thin atmosphere of his mountain home starved him of air and the lack of sufficient food and water made him nearly as emaciated as an ideal Hylian lady, he fed on his hatred of the Hylians and what they had done so long ago, somehow keeping himself strong. It was what helped motivate him to continue repelling Orca's assault. As he did now.
"Left, up. Right, right, up. Down, left, up, left, right. Thrust, left!" Blocking the blows his master called out as he performed them, Link helped create a terrible metallic sound as his own sword clashed with identical steel. Beyond the two men engaged in their swordplay, a dramatic red-yellow sunset lit the cliffs of Death Mountain. Evening would soon be upon Koholint Island -- something the older, potbellied swordsmaster seemed to keep in mind. "Down, right, thrust, left, down, up, thrust. Thrust, up, down, right, right, down, thrust, thrust, left. Left, down, down, up, left, down, thrust, left -- left -- left!"
Orca's last slash came from the right instead of the left, throwing Link off, knocking the blunt, forbidden tourney sword from his hand. Seeing his master's sword coming toward him again, the teenager grinned and threw up his hands. "Yield," he groaned, a mischievous glint in his sloe eyes. "I yield, you lying old man. Put down your sword, I trust you not."
Shaking his head in disappointment, Orca stopped mid-swing and let his sword fall to the rocky ground with a clatter. "You yield again? This is one of the simplest of exercises, Link. I thought you'd learned not to listen to words years ago. Your enemies will not allow you the luxury of predictability when you come to murder them with a sword in your fist." The swordsmaster's expression now was deeply troubled, his forehead creasing as he reached up to scratch the top of his bald head.
Flushing, Link turned away, his eyes first on the crude wooden hut that served as their home and then on the rest of Death Mountain. This high up, their heads nearly scraped against the clouds. Last week was the second time during this moon's cycle that they'd had to climb higher into the mountains to escape the Royal Bodyguards' swords -- and even that didn't guarantee safety. Now, however, he'd found something completely new to worry about. "I know," he said after a pause. "It's just...I can't concentrate today."
When Link lapsed into silence, Orca finished for him. "It's been nine years...as of today." His gravelly voice was faint as he, too, remembered. It had been nine years since Orca had come to the boy's native Animal Village, taking him away to apprentice in the ways of the sword. Nine years since Link had known a day free of the song of swords. Nine years since he had seen his unpretentious, hardworking carpenter of a father.
Chin jutting, Link reached down to collect the two blunt swords, not complaining about their weight; despite the shameful failure he'd just experienced, he was conditioned and well-muscled. "Never mind," he muttered as his muscles worked. A swordsmaster was a superior creature to mere men, he had been taught, disconnected from the family ties that shackled others to failure and death. Thinking of the past had lowered him in the eyes of Orca once today; Link resolved never to dwell on such weakness again. "What we should be talking about is why you gave me such an easy challenge today."
"An easy challenge you couldn't surmount? I noticed the look in your eyes, even if you did not. You looked as if you needed that. Besides" -- as if trying to break the somber mood, Orca's tone lightened -- "someone of mingled blood couldn't hope to match a full-blooded Koholint's endurance all the time."
With Orca's offhand comment, Link's mind was brought back, against his will, to his ultimate shame -- the pointy ears, blond hair, and dark blue eyes that marked him more the offspring of a Hylian mother who he had never known (nor cared to know) than his Koholint father. At least, he thought as he put the swords in a crate and looked down at the green tunic that identified him as a Koholint noncitizen, his citizenship had been determined by the citizenship of his father; at least he wasn't completely tainted.
"I suppose not," Link responded, his voice just a trifle cold; Orca was, after all, one of those full-blooded Koholints. With the swords put away, he went to join his swordsmaster where he stood near the edge of a cliff that dropped down a hundred feet into a green valley. Looking around at the clumps of bushes that inadequately hid their home, he asked in a whisper, "When are we going back to Kanalet?"
When Orca gave him a thin-lipped frown, Link knew that the old man was as worried about the answer to that question as he. The two of them were reluctant members of an underground rebellion group of Koholints led by a man named Mutoh. They had joined him only because he promised them eventual freedom from the Hylians, though he'd never done much to make that dream a reality. The trouble was, the base of the "rebellion's" operations was raped and ravaged Kanalet Castle, the ancient seat of the Koholint Royal Family that died so long ago, the ancient seat far away from where Link and Orca were forced to hide. The last time they'd been able to get away, it had taken them a moon's cycle to get back and forth. The old man had cursed Mutoh in his cups for choosing a stronghold that wasn't centralized nearer them, but sober, he acknowledged there was nothing he could do to change it.
Orca picked at a hangnail. "Maybe never. A swordsmaster ties himself down to no one, no cause, Link."
"But if we can pull free of the Hylians--"
"I can tell you one thing: it won't happen that way." Orca's voice was uncharacteristically harsh. "Mutoh can barely speak for himself without that damned lady around; he can't even plan raids against the Hylians! Wars are won with words in the end, Link, not swords. Mutoh has mastered neither art. In essence, he's signed his own death warrant."
This was a subject Link felt passionately about. He had never known a day of freedom, of being able to swear his allegiance to a Koholint monarch, of peace with the fact that he'd never be stopped in the street to be accosted and humiliated by the arrogant Hylians. He could identify with Mutoh completely. They, themselves, had signed their own death warrants by having those tourney swords, as well as sharper weapons inside their hut -- especially when their Hylian overlords had gone to such lengths to keep weapons away from the Koholints (the "Disarmament" in the days of Harkinian I resulted in the slaughter of one-sixth of the island's population). Indeed, they were being searched for by the Royal Bodyguards. What, really, did they have to lose? "All the more reason to help him! We'll never be free if we don't--"
But Link never did tell Orca what would free the Koholints. He stopped mid-sentence, his mouth open, at the sound of rough voices speaking fluent Hylian, the scrape of a sword against a scabbard, the rustle of movement in the bushes that hid them from the Hylians and that hid the Hylians from them.
One of Orca's hands shot up and gripped Link's upper arm so tightly he thought it was like to break off. Link knew the action was meant to keep him still, for the safety of them both, but it slightly annoyed them. This had happened to them before, down in the lower levels of Death Mountain; it was the inevitable result of being marked dead men. He knew what to do. Always before, so long as they'd stayed still and quiet, the Hylians had left them alone and moved on. They'd only had to kill one small detachment of Royal Bodyguards sent in search of them.
That night would become the second time, Link knew, the moment he heard the Royal Bodyguards stop moving. "It looks so deserted up here," said one with a youngish voice. "So deserted... I can hardly breathe."
"Well, the noncitizen said they'd be up here," said one who sounded slightly more authoritative. "I trust her. She's served her true government faithfully many and more times. They'll have hidden themselves, I'll wager. Suck the air, Linden, if you're having trouble breathing. You don't hear anyone else complaining, do you?"
Link didn't understand the Bodyguards' rapid Hylian, but apparently Orca did, for his grip on his apprentice's arm tightened. He made Link face him and stared at him, his eyes boring into the half-Koholint like twin brown needles. "Do you remember our creed? The creed that all Koholint swordsmasters have recited since the beginning of time?" Orca asked him in a whisper-voice while the Bodyguards made crude jokes about Linden and sucking.
"I am prepared to die today," Link said, repeating the words Orca had taught him at seven years old.
"Good." Orca released his grip on Link's arm. "They won't allow us the dream of an easy peace this time, I fear. Go into the hut, Link. Go, and prepare to fight and die."
They were the words that preceded every fight that the two of them had ever fought together. Then why does he sound so scared?
The Royal Bodyguards were bickering, and while they were preoccupied, Link and Orca turned their backs on them. Climbing onto their tiptoes, they crossed the expanse of land that separated the edge of the cliff from their hut without disturbing the loose gravel beneath their feet; a Koholint swordsmaster mastered stealth early in his training, or died. But in their haste to get inside the hut, neither of them remembered to pick up the crate that contained their tourney swords.
Inside the dusty, reeking hut, that hardly seemed to matter. Orca and Link lowered themselves together, and looked beneath their cots for their weapons. The two swordsmasters rose as one, each clutching their longswords. Link didn't like looking at his own cheap steel that much, but watching Orca swing his own sword in powerful arcs through the air, as he did now, made his heart swell with pride.
"The tempered sword," the Koholint told his apprentice as he swung, putting no particular emphasis put on either part of the sword's name. "It's a longsword, deadly sharp, the steel folded on itself so many times that it glows red in the right light and mood. It was passed down to me by my own swordsmaster, who had it passed down to him, and back many and more generations." He paused to look at Link importantly. "It was forged during the Disarmament by priests of the Wind Fish. It is a holy blade, so sharp that it was used to slit the hard ivory throat of Harkinian the Bloodthirsty, the king who conquered Koholint."
That was a speech Orca had recited dozens -- hundreds -- of times, but Link never tired of hearing it, just as he never tired of responding, "But one of Harkinian the Bloodthirsty's own Royal Bodyguards slit his throat, Master."
Orca straightened importantly. "With this sword," he maintained stubbornly. "What will you trust -- your swordsmaster's words, which he received from his own swordsmaster, or a revisionist Hylian history?"
Link grinned at him. It was not so amazing to him as it might have been to the Royal Bodyguards outside that they were able to make such light comments to each other when facing the threat of death. Koholint swordsmasters had been prepared for death since the beginning of time, after all. He even found his tense muscles relaxing and was glad; he knew that it would be easier to slaughter the Hylians when he was loose and calm.
He was also off-guard. With a terrible scream, the door of the swordsmasters' hut sailed off its hinges and four Royal Bodyguards swarmed in, dropping the tourney sword crate they'd used to ram the door. "Let me up front! I knew they'd be here!" snapped the authoritative one Link had heard earlier. While he watched, the oldest Bodyguard pushed his way to the front of the others, who were still young and wide-eyed.
The captain dies first, Link thought as the man stopped to look at them; he wasted no time in preparing to make that a reality. Without looking at Orca, he slid into his battle stance: lifting his sword and positioning the front of his body to face the adjacent wall, offering his enemies only the narrow blade of his side to attack.
The captain's eyes were trained on Orca, Link saw. "Do you know who I am?" he asked the old man. His hand was hovering near the hilt of his sword, safe in its scabbard. And it best stay there, if he knows what's good for him.
Orca had adopted the standard battle stance too, his tempered sword glowing faintly red-yellow with the remnants of sunset. "I know you're a trespasser," the swordsmaster said without fear or worry. "I know you shouldn't be on my land, or manhandling the crate that my swords are in. I know you're about to die."
"I think the old fool's forgotten he's property of Hyrule, not some barbaric Koholint royalty." The captain chortled and looked around at his underlings, inviting them to share in on the joke. Their meaty laughter echoed through the wooden hut. "Well, it doesn't matter if you know who I am or not, old man. I know who you are. I've been trailing you for months, truth be told -- and if my eyes don't deceive me, you're brandishing a sword, and are breaking Hylian law."
"Why does Hylian law apply to an old man minding his business on Koholint?" Orca complained.
"The old man doesn't hear too well, does he?" the captain sighed. His hand moved away from the hilt of his sword and slid into his purple and gray surcoat.
Link thought of attacking the Bodyguard then -- he hadn't noticed him yet, apparently -- but the captain's underlings had taken out their shortswords and were fingering the sharp edges of their weapons threateningly. Link called himself a swordsmaster, but he was certain that if he took on three adversaries, he'd lose. The captain would keep Orca preoccupied, he knew, and Orca had slain all but one of the last Bodyguards who'd dared confront them.
The captain pulled a parchment from his surcoat, and unrolled it with a snap of his wrist for the noncitizens to read. Link could not decipher the cramped Hylian script on the parchment, for he could not read very well, but he recognized the Seal of the Golden Power stamped near the bottom of the paper well enough.
"An Order of Execution's been signed for you, old man. You've ignored the law of your rightful rulers for the last time. These are the orders of Governor Quillan Agah himself."
"Governor Quillan Agah...The Deceiver!" Orca spat. "A hypocrite! A traitor to his heritage!"
"Do all Koholints speak in slogans?" the captain complained. "Well, I suppose sheep can only memorize a few choice phrases. I grow weary."
"As do I. I am prepared to die today, Captain."
"As you should be." The captain's tone had changed considerably; it had gone husky with something that Link couldn't name. Can't name? Of course you can name it you fool, you just don't want to, you're no swordsmaster if you deny the truth, fool fool fool. "You are about to die, after all."
"Not if I have anything to do with it!" Link didn't recognize the voice coming from his mouth; nor did it ever cross his mind that it would have been better to melt into the shadows, flee to Kanalet, and prevent the rebellion from becoming two swordsmasters the poorer. He became overwhelmed by emotion in a way that swordsmasters never were.
He had just admitted he half-loved his swordsmaster and was instantly sorry. Orca did not turn to acknowledge Link's comment, but his body stiffened; he'd heard him, and he didn't like it. The captain was more overt in expressing his displeasure. His eyes, hard and merciless as transparent green glass, flicked to him a moment. "Put down the wooden sword, little boy. No one wants to hurt you," he said.
Rational thought left Link for a moment. His master complained often about his nonexistent grooming habits and flippant comments, but it was the boy's temper he detested most. Maybe the captain would hate it, too. "I'm not a little boy!" he shouted in quick outrage.
"Shut up, boy!" Orca growled before the captain took too much interest in him. "I'll take care of this. I'll die before I let you put your filthy hands on the boy, and I mean to kill you if you try it. It's me you want, Captain, and it's me you shall have. Take me into custody, Captain, if you can. I must warn you that swordsmasters are superior creatures to you mere Royal Bodyguards, who are shackled to failure and death by your needless family ties."
"Spare me the speech!" The captain rolled his eyes and looked at Orca again once he was done. "And there'll be no being taken into custody for you, just your blood in the dust, and later, a hole in a ground. Back up your talk, old man."
Orca was nearly gone, now; the sparkle in his dark eyes that made him a kindly, wise old man with a potbelly had fled, as the sun now fled the sky. It was no different from other battles, Link reflected; Orca's personality hid in some safe place deep inside him while he killed. It was safer that way. But still he whispered, "Gladly. I'll give you time to regret entering my hut and paying any mind to the boy before I kill you."
He loves me, Link knew then, though Orca had never addressed him by name. Early in his training, Orca had played at loving him, seeing if he could separate emotions from business, as a swordsmaster should. He'd passed the test, but maybe, as they became fugitives all alone together, Orca had come to fail. He loves me. He's protecting me, like I'm a child, a girl.
The shock made his cheap longsword tumble from his hands...and then the world exploded.
The captain had his longsword out of its scabbard and was swinging at Orca faster than Link could blink. While he watched the both of them, two of the underlings rushed him, as he had feared -- and then they had their strong unyielding arms curled around him, keeping him from moving. He blinked, surprised for a moment, sure that things had happened too fast for this to be anything but a dream. "No!" he screamed furiously, struggling.
The captain and Orca paid him no mind. They moved in a tight circle, making experimental swipes at each other, testing the other's defenses. Then Orca swung his sword up and around and towards the captain in a tight arc, an attack that sent the Bodyguard stumbling backward as he defended it. Hope swelled in Link's heart, so strong it made him forget he was a captive; although he was taking longer to slaughter this one than usual, Orca was gaining an advantage over the captain with an almost laziness.
It was that same laziness and arrogance that must have made Orca decide to show off. He spun and backflipped remarkably well for an old man, meeting the methodical blows the captain used to try to defeat him. He performed a backflip once more as the captain tried a thrust and Link squirmed in his tangled prison of arms, eager for some sort of resolution...
But as Orca landed his legs folded like paper money (if it was out of exhaustion, Link certainly couldn't tell), and his sword slid out of his grip. The captain looked down at the fallen swordsmaster, triumphant.
"No!" Link cried again, jerking. The two Royal Bodyguards holding him looked his way with faces blank and impassive. The third Bodyguard, perhaps the youngest of them all, watched eagerly as the captain considered, sheathed his own sword in its scabbard, and scooped up Orca's tempered sword. The blade glinted red with murderous intent.
"No!"
Orca was breathing heavily, Link noticed; sweat gleamed in fat droplets on the top of his shiny bald head. But he struggled to his feet, and stood up straight, and looked at the captain holding the tempered sword straight in the eye, his chin tilted upward. He barely looked fazed in the face of death. He is truly a swordsman born, unlike me. "I am prepa-"
He was never allowed to finish. "You aren't a martyr, you silly man," the captain sneered. He tilted the tempered sword he held in his hands -- the sword forged by priests of the Wind Fish, the sword that was red in the right light and mood, the sword that had been used to slit Harkinian the Bloodthirsty's hard ivory throat. He tilted the tempered sword and pushed it into noble Orca's belly, and dragged the blade upward, and pulled it free with a sickening wet sound.
Orca wasn't sweating any more. The red hole of his mouth was open, as if he was about to ask for mercy, and he hovered dreamily on his feet, as if he wasn't dead. But he is dead. He's dead.
The captain smiled in satisfaction as Orca finally fell, bleeding and ripped and dead. The Koholint's tempered sword, in the captain's hand, glowed a sullen red with its former owner's blood. "So I guess 'swordsmasters' aren't superior to us mere Royal Bodyguards after all," he said.
I'm a monster, Link thought dully as the captain boasted and the other Bodyguards guffawed, staring at Orca's twisted corpse. A monster... My swordsmaster's dead and I can't avenge him with my sword, nor cry.
No...I'm a swordsmaster. He remembered that suddenly. A swordsmaster lived without the ties that shackled mere men to failure and death...
The captain casually flipped Orca's blood off the tempered sword and laid it aside, advancing toward the captive Link. He contemplated him with his green eyes and leaned close, scrutinizing the pores of his face.
"What a pleasure it will be to present you to the consul..." the captain breathed at last, his sour breath feathering over Link's face. "He'll take you to see the High King and our regent, the Princess Zelda. I know it. Perhaps you'll regret turning your cloak when the princess sentences you to death by slow torture."
"P-Princess Zel--?" When he was fairly certain he was in imminent danger, Link was hardly the best speaker of the Hylian language.
"Don't you dare speak her name!" the youngest Bodyguard shrieked, breaking the intimacy the captain and Link shared; with sudden dreamlike horror, Link saw him reach for the shortsword in his scabbard, and he realized that it was very likely he, too, would die this evening. "Don't you dare. You don't deserve the privilege!"
"Put that away, Linden!" the captain said impatiently. "I don't want you sticking that sword in the turncloak. The consul pays good money for Koholints and traitors caught fresh from the field...and this is certainly a fresh boy. I'll show you how incapacitating them is done."
Link felt a flutter of hope for a moment -- but the captain was not offering him clemency. He realized that now, too late. The captain's upper lip curled and he seemed to consider a moment before he swung a mailed fist at Link's face. He thought it was funny how he heard his nose break from inside his head, not outside, at how much it hurt.
He didn't realize he was laughing until the captain, upset by his sick bloody laughter, hit him again, this time above his right eyebrow. That was a blow that made his legs wobble, that made him attempt to slide his fingers over the cut on his forehead (slick with wet and drying blood) just to make sure he wasn't dying.
"That's how you do it to leave them fresh," the captain said importantly as he stepped backward, his voice husky with bloodlust. He wiped his bloody fist on his surcoat and then turned away from the mess he'd made of Link's face. "Get that weakling traitor out of here. Quickly! We need to be off these mountains and onto the next ship to Hyrule by midnight."
Trembling with quiet rage, overwhelmed by it, Link couldn't stop his head from drooping, no more than he could stop the whimper growing in the back of his throat. Like an animal from Animal Village. Blood oozed from his broken nose and whatever cut the Captain's mailed fist had made above his right eyebrow, drip-dripping onto the dirt floor. Link closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at the his blood anymore, but the blackness behind his eyelids was worse. In the black, he could see himself dying
He tasted blood in his mouth and immediately hated tasting it. The blood was too coppery, too hot, too reminiscent of the taste of failure and death.
He spat blood on the floor as the two Royal Bodyguards pulled him forward, and the colors of the world swirled together.
"I suppose a drink of water is out of the question," Link said in ragged Hylian, hot bloody anger and flippancy overtaking his pain, but the Royal Bodyguards paid him no mind. Hylians were too superstitious to talk to the dead.
Koholint's governor always took his tea with sugar. The woman opposite him, clad in the embroidered green silks of a Koholint who had acquired some manner of wealth, disgustedly (and a little hypocritically) wondered how he could justify such luxury when those who hacked away at his precious sugarcane were not permitted to taste it themselves. She didn't say anything, of course -- not inside the Governor's Palace and especially not in this room. Furnished with exotic Hylian and Gerudo finery, the Governor's Tea Room was very attractive and inviting. Truth be told, she was probably more attracted to the man herself. She could not pretend to be fond of him; after all, she did not know him very well. But he seemed intelligent, articulate, clean, and even handsome (his dark hair was just starting to go gray). She supposed if she gave it much thought, she would like him.
"Is the tea not to your liking, Clare?" the governor asked, stirring a teaspoon of the white granules into his drink. The governor was a methodical man, and spoke cleanly and crisply. "I recommend the sugar, it...gives the tea the taste it lacks on its own." His gray eyes, cool and purposefully distant, almost seemed to smile at her from under his dark eyebrows.
Clare lowered her eyes quickly. She wrapped her chubby, tanned hands around her own
steaming cup of tea (too warm to drink right now, and the governor knew it), and shivered, even though the day was unseasonably warm for Koholint's island winter. "No, I...I don't need sugar, Quillan. The tea is lovely."
"Ah! Clare..." Abruptly he set his teacup down on its saucer on the mahogany teatable between them. Noticing pale brown spots of tea on the front of his fine white tunic, he smiled apologetically...but his eyes were no longer smiling. Lowering his rich, rolling voice he asked, "Do you have the Kokiri...product I asked you to procure for me two months ago, then?"
Clare was the governor's supplier of contraband. His tastes varied from month to month but invariably included both Hylian liquor and Kokiri forestweed. When he discreetly sent a message to her several years ago requesting almond wine and tea leaves from the mainland and something else his powerful friends could not risk their reputations being caught with, she had counted it as too big an opportunity to pass up. The governor was more powerful than her usual clients, and knew things and people, that her other clients simply didn't.
They tell me you're the best, she remembered him saying during their first meeting. Don't let me down! She hadn't, and she had spent the years cultivating their minor relationship. It was good for her, and very good for her ulterior schemes and goals and plans; he paid well, which was important because her clandestine activities ate up wealth faster than it could be acquired, though she was hardly poor.
When she had started her little business at the age of fourteen, she had never dreamed of reaching such lofty heights! At thirty, she lived comfortably, dressed extravagantly, and spoke Koholint, Hylian, and Calatian fluently. She was not particularly proud of her success; it just meant that even though she hadn't had the start in life many of her Hylian counterparts had, she had made the right decision. It was more than most women could say.
"That's why I came here," she lied after a long pause. "We...the forestweed...there's a problem."
"Problem?" the governor repeated, his eagerness withering away like a waterlily in the midsummer sun. He took a delicate sip of his tea, winced, added more sugar. Looked down at his timepiece. The rich light of the setting sun, spilling into the Tea Room from a window paned with stained glass, glittered strongly on the glassy face of the watch as it ticked away time ceaselessly. He set it carelessly on the table between them. "What's the problem, Clare?"
"The forestweed is the problem, Quillan," Clare said shortly, hesitant to tell the story and cursing herself for ever revealing such an error to her wealthiest client. I should just come out with it. "There is none! There have been no ships allowed out of Southern Harbor for the last month except those on official business for the kingdom. You know that. There haven't been any ships allowed in, either. Willow-Weed" -- referring now to her own, personal ship, held in the name of a fictional Hylian husband -- "is still docked in the harbor at Lake Hylia. Surely you can persuade the High King--"
The governor, who had been stirring his sweet tea restlessly, lowered his drowsy eyes. "Ah...please don't mention Harkinian in this room in that manner," he said delicately. "I hold no influence over him. He's merely my friend."
"All right." She wondered, suddenly, why he bothered sparing the feelings of a thin-blooded Hylian. "I'm sorry, Quillan, but my problem still stands. I can't get my hands on any sort of contraband whatsoever."
Quillan's thin lips grew even thinner, and he rose. For one outraged moment, Clare thought he might hit her, but he abruptly sat back down. "Then perhaps you'd like to tell me why I've been graced with your lovely presence this evening? I'm supposed to be seeing Sasaery off."
He was being polite. On a whim, she had journeyed to the capital city, barged into his lovely home, and asked coolly to speak with him. Although she was uninvited and unwanted in these gleaming halls, a woman of her obvious wealth, noncitizen though she was, was not kept waiting long.
Clare quickly changed the subject. She did not get where she was by disappointing her clients. "Sasaery? Where is she going?" What he did outside their business relationship was none of her concern, she knew. What she also knew was that this vein of conversation would doubtlessly take his mind off of her shameful failure. And it's not every day that he mentions his wife to me.
Quillan frowned at her. "My sweet wife's off to Southern Harbor to meet Koholint's newest Imperior Advisor...Lady Medilia Vermot. It's a very new position, created by the Princess Zelda. It means that hereforth Lady Vermot is Harkinian's eyes, ears, and hands in Koholint -- and that she will be residing in the Governor's Palace, so that I might report to her."
Clare didn't bother to hide her surprise. "The Imperial Advisor? A woman?"
"She's not exactly the right sex to be the Advisor. I'll admit that," Quillan said lightly, but Clare knew he was bitter. The governor, the supreme political power in Koholint, would now be reporting to a woman. A woman! "She is, however, a Hylian, and Princess Zelda has been fond of her. Of course, she has her connections...and if you ask me, she has Harkinian's illness to thank for her lofty position. Our princess is regent, fond of putting women in positions of power and changing the natural order of things. Not unlike her useless mother, Isa." Hastily he added, "I'll deny everything if you ever decide to go public with that."
Angered by his talk, Clare asked softly, "And how did you become governor, Quillan?"
Quillan's cheeks flushed an angry scarlet. "What's the matter, Clare? Am I too light for you?" Here was a man with a chip on his shoulder.
"Never mind," Clare said smoothly, tucking her round ears beneath her commode self-consciously. She had heard whispered talk about the new Imperial Advisor before this, of course, and though reports were vague they all mentioned she was very beautiful. Tan, dark-haired, and rather heavy, Clare knew Medilia's beauty to be matchless when she sadly compared herself to her. Conditioned by years of wheeling and dealing with Hylians on distant coasts, she was convinced that aping Hylian appearance was the only way to reach true beauty. She was annoyed, slightly, that Quillan had spoken of Medilia with anything less than reverence and she reacted badly. She lowered her eyes from the Governor's own ears, and it took all her willpower to do it.
"I was a good consul," Quillan said thinly, looking down at his tea. His hand hovered for a moment over his teaspoon, then went back to his cup. "It was the only reason he..."
"Good evening," said someone behind Clare.
Clare whipped her head around. There, standing in the threshold of the Tea Room, was the Lady Sasaery. She was, in the eyes of many, the ideal Hylian lady, despite the fact that she had the appearance of someone who had failed to thrive: her white hair was straight and fine, her gray eyes dead and pale, her tall boyish body devoid even of breasts. Today she wore a black gown and matching traveling cloak, which did nothing to ameliorate her dreadful whiteness. Maybe the Hylians found that attractive, but even Clare found her appearance slightly unnerving.
Quillan stood. "My lady," he said in a small voice. He seemed to have grown smaller with the appearance of his wife; he had even thrown back his chest slightly, as if he were trying to distance himself from her. Clare sensed the tenseness between the married couple, and found it slightly amusing how one wore black and the other wore white. They hate each other, she knew then.
Lady Sasaery had a high-pitched, thin voice that hurt Clare's ears. "I'm leaving now," she said.
"I wish you a safe journey, my lady." Quillan bowed stiffly.
"Is that all?"
Heat had crept into Sasaery's voice, but Clare was far from surprised; there was a harshness in the Hylian woman's pallid face that suggested she was inclined to give in to her temper. Or maybe she just knows how to threaten her husband.
"Yes. My lady." Quillan wiped his upper lip.
"Very well. I suppose I'll be back in a few days then. Sweet husband." Sasaery curtsied. As she rose, her queer pale eyes swept over Clare, and Clare felt herself stiffen. The moment passed quickly, though, and Quillan's wife left. She's smarter than most Hylian women, I suppose -- she knows not to pay too much attention to some Koholint...
Quillan sat down heavily as Sasaery swept out. He looked pale and drained. "I'm sorry about that," he said.
"It's all right." And it was; it was nice to see one of the dainty, thin, languishing Hylian ladies spoken about like faeries of legend doing something productive.
"You had something else to speak to me about?"
Here was the part she loathed. Putting Sasaery out of her mind Clare sighed inwardly, looked Quillan straight in the eye, and said, "I think...I think it's time I told you more about myself than I originally intended."
While he listened in wide-eyed silence, Clare told almost her whole tale -- how, on one trip to the coast to pick up smuggled gossamer, she had run into Mutoh the bandit; how she, a woman who was not much of a loyalist to begin with, became a full-blown patriot after talking for a half-hour with him; how, for the last month or so, she had devoted herself fully to the recalcitrant carpenter's cause. "I don't agree with everything he says," Clare said, wryly touching her gown -- part of a Hylian's standard dress -- before continuing, "but he has good ideas. Koholint should no longer be under Hyrule's rule." There was a long pause as she awaited his reaction. Everything, all her carefully made plans, the two years she had spent gaining his trust for this moment, depended on what he said to her.
Quillan studied her a moment with a very un-Koholint expression on his face -- wary control -- that he must have learned from his Hylian fellows before finally saying, "I am flattered by your trust, Clare, and...intrigued by this revelation. I've been aware of Mutoh's underground anti-Hylian activities, of course. However..." He shrugged, too weak or too polite to say he wouldn't involve himself in the activities of a few Koholint malcontents. "You've been forthright, and I'll admit that I have watched this rebellion with interest." He paused, took a drink from his cup. "Clare, if you have come here to solicit my support--"
"There will never be a better time to attack the kingdom," Clare said, heat rising in her voice. She felt as though she were drowning. "Don't you feel the slightest bit of patriotism?"
"No. I--"
"Mutoh believes the kingdom will crumble under the pressure of his continued attacks because Harkinian is old and ill, and even if the Hylians would accept a woman as his heir--"
"The Princess is..." Quillan smiled palely and looked down at his tea, growing cold.
"They say she's mad," Clare said, her voice growing soft as she studied him, "haunted by demonic, prophetic visions. She will not be an able ruler, Quillan! Surely you can see that. You must have known..."
"I pledged allegiance to the High King and to whomever he saw fit to leave as his heir when I was appointed to my governorship," Quillan said, his voice growing hard as he looked at her -- his expression, she saw with dismay, had turned into one of incredulous disbelief. "The kingdom is nowhere near crumbling, and Mutoh's ragtag team of bandits will never gain their independence in this manner. Now, I ought to go catch my wife before she leaves vexed with me. You should go now." He got up, shining in his white finery. His unattractively rounded ears were revealed from beneath his hair as he stepped away from her and turned to look out the window. "Go, and I won't report you to the captain of the garrison. Come back when you have my product, and never mention such a thing to me ever again. Thank you, Clare." But to her, thank you sounded a lot more like get out.
A/N: Okay, so I have to know -- you don't think I'm creating Mary Sues and Gary Stus with Clare and Quillan and, to a lesser extent, Sasaery, do you? I'm kind of worried about that, even though I think I've given them some pretty huge, gaping flaws...
Please let me know how I'm doing and review! ;)
