Wood had grown dear, and her loyal men had been forced to dismantle the traitors' beds for fuel. They arranged planks in a rectangle before the queen and piled the rest in the center. The stronger pieces of wood had gone into constructing a platform above the planks; then came the makeshift stakes, thin trunks of young trees tied securely to the platform. Zelda had watched the building impassively all night but now she turned away. "Bring forth the traitors," she commanded, her voice too loud in the predawn chill.
The traitors were brought forth. They were seven in all, naked save for the manacles and chain that tied them together, their manhoods flopping obscenely as they tripped and stumbled. Let them stumble, Zelda thought as she watched them, let them be shamed. They had shamed her yesterday when word reached her of what they had done, when a few survivors laid the twenty dead men before her throne. She had looked on all their faces, and vowed not to forget even one.
One of the traitors, with a comely face and long dark curls, looked at her. "You will not hear us scream," he told her, his voice hard.
Yes I will. She turned to the guards that flanked her, her loyal men. "Silence the traitors' bleating," she commanded. "The sound of them offends me." Her guards moved forward, iron cudgels in hand, and took their weapons to them all. The traitors were silent after that.
Then the traitors were tied to the pyre, the chain between them clinking. They were dabbed with the queen's perfumes as well, strong-smelling oils that made their skin shine in the torchlight; her guards dumped the rest of her oil onto the planks. Zelda watched the rise and fall of the traitors' chests, watched the contempt in their eyes turn to fear. By the time the thing was done the sky was pink in the east, and true dawn was a bleeding line on the horizon that threw Lord Emery's camp into shifting shadow.
They were all here now: the servants and her guards, the garrison...and her lords. Zelda watched them too. Lord Tally was wearing a black tabard and a grave frown; pale as milk, Lord Ellison was trying to stifle a cough and failing; and Lord Alberik was watching her instead of the prisoners. I must show no weakness, she knew the moment the lordling averted his gaze. Any one of them could betray me next...
Grimly, she turned to face her duty.
"These seven cravens killed twenty good men, and injured forty others," she told her court, gesturing at the traitors where they were bound. "The Crown does not take such betrayals lightly. Behold the fate of traitors."
Silently, the guard to her right handed the torch to her. The flames writhed and jumped, the heat washing over her face. How light this torch seemed...but she knew the true weight of it. She prepared to say the words then, as Berent had taught them to her, and her royal father before him. "In the name of Berent Pollard, sovereign of the Hylian Kingdom, by the word of Zelda Pollard, his wife and queen, I do sentence you seven to death." She strode forward, and flung the torch into the pyre.
The oil caught fire first. Zelda drank in the smell of flowers and fruits for a moment, watching the flames move across the saturated wood with a startling quickness, till the pleasant scents were drowned out by the odor of burning wood. She watched as the first smoke appeared and escaped harmlessly up into the air; she watched as the flames grew and stretched, rising higher and higher. It was growing harder to bear the heat, harder to breathe, but Zelda scarce noticed her discomfort till two of her loyal men led her gently back to a comfortable distance.
Zelda watched them all, determined not to look away, as the fire swept over them: first the one with boils all over his nose, then the one who'd spit on her when she'd attempted to interrogate him, the insolent one with his long sensuous curls last of all. For a moment she forgot to breathe, wondering if they'd hold true to their pledge; then the first cry arose from the conflagration, a long moan full of agony, followed by what seemed a thousand others. The screams of the traitors seemed to intensify in Zelda's ears till they were all she could hear, their cries as cruel as curses. Is this the sound of our kingdom falling?
Then the sight of the traitors' burning flesh was lost to her, hidden behind the rising wall of flames, but she saw their shadows still. Behind her veil of tears, it seemed that their shapes were struggling, fighting to break free... The smell of them reached her, no different from the scent of horsemeat fresh from the spit, from that of roast pork. Hunger gnawed at her and drool filled her mouth, so indescribably horrible that she fled from the execution and vomited over a rampart.
The traitors had fallen silent by the time the doctor reached her. Zelda stood to face him, wiping spit from around her mouth with one of her sleeves. He was still in his bloodstained robes, the emotion in his dark eyes hard to read. Without ever asking her leave he laid a hand on her shoulder, applying just enough pressure to help her keep her feet. "Is it the wound troubling you, Your Grace? Or is there something else..."
"I-" How could she tell him with all her court watching? Zelda averted her gaze. "The smell, it..."
"I understand. A man will smell like that when he's burning, for a while at least. It's easy to find the smell unpleasant." He paused. "If I may ask, why didn't you throw the traitors into a cell until you had need of them? The two on the end looked especially healthy...very lean. In a few moon's turns, you might be glad for some fresh meat."
For all she said of outlasting Lord Emery, such talk as this frightened the queen, and fear made her angry. "I will not suffer to sup on a traitor's flesh, doctor," she said sharply. And if you tell it true, I'm not like to live for a few more moon's turns. I must deliver justice while I can. "The next time I require your counsel I shall ask for it. Wait here and hold your tongue while I make an end to this. I would pay my respects to the injured."
She left the doctor gaping and turned back to face her court, skirts swirling as she walked toward them. She'd chosen good black wool to wear today, an appropriate choice that served her purpose. The fire still burned when she stopped and stood before the pyre, but it was their queen the court was watching. Zelda looked out on them, studying the sparse aristocratic faces of her lords and the blank expressions on the faces of the garrison men, wondering what she could say to ensure their continued loyalty.
"Lord Pollard laid siege on my castle near a year ago," she reminded them. "You stayed to defend the Crown for honor, for gold, for love. In return for your service, you expected your liege lord and lady to give you protection. But I cannot promise you safety, or your life, or that you'll ever return home; these traitors ended thinking that I could. Would that I could, but war makes beggars of us all. I can promise you that you will know more hardship and pain than you ever have...but I can also promise you justice. I will see Lord Pollard and all traitors like him dead. There is no justice without sacrifice, and you must look to your gods to know what you'll have to suffer. I know I have."
One man reached a hand up to pick his nose, but that was all. She might have been all alone on the roof for all the noise her court made. No more than I expected, she realized wearily. It's me they hear, but it's my husband they want. I've hidden myself away too long for them to love me now.
When the pyre had grown cool enough to approach, two of her guards donned padded mitts and searched for the traitors' remains; Zelda had decreed their bones would be flung over the castle walls once they were burned to death. But what her guards brought forth from the ruins was nothing like what she expected. It was just, she had to tell herself when she saw the burnt corpses. I did it for the men they killed. Justice is justice, no matter what form it takes.
She bade her court watch as the remnants of the traitors were thrown over the ramparts, then dismissed them. For a moment she watched as the ragged men departed, worried by how few they seemed, then spun on a heel and went back to the doctor. The sun was high in the sky now, the day close to afternoon. "You know the way from here?" Zelda asked the doctor at last, her voice soft and precise. The sleepless night she'd spent watching her guards build the pyre was making itself felt, and she wanted to be done with this next piece of business before moonrise.
"Yes, Your Grace."
Once they were alone on the roof they descended the ladder, the doctor climbing down first so that he might catch Zelda if she fell. Annoyed by the very threat of coddling Zelda forced herself to make the descent slowly, not wanting to fall into the arms of the man waiting below her. Her arms were shaking and the wound beneath her clothes was aching by the time her feet touched the floor. Once the queen had straightened her skirts, the doctor led her forth to where the wounded and dying were being housed.
At Zelda's insistence, the castle's great hall had been given over to the wounded. The doctor thought it unwise to move the garrison men any more than was necessary, and in the great hall a man was never far from fire, food, and comfort. The latter two had grown dear in the past year, and Zelda was unwilling to lose any more men to death than she had to. When she entered the great hall now, she was pleased to see that the trestle tables had been pushed back, the injured men reclined on makeshift beds, and torches burned in every sconce while large fires roared in the hearths.
The doctor looked at her dubiously as he removed a wineskin from his voluminous robes. He must have thought she would turn back by now, but she was determined to prove his assumptions wrong. "Now...are you sure this is wise, Your Grace? With your wound, perhaps you should-"
"Nonsense. Nothing was ever wiser."
Zelda quickly learned the doctor - usually as timid as a mouse - was a different man when treating sickness. He set her to boiling wine while he poked and prodded at the men, sniffing closed wounds and sewing up reopened ones best he could. It quickly became Zelda's job to pour the boiling wine over the men's wounds to burn out infection. Once she burnt herself so badly blisters appeared on one of her hands in half a heartbeat, but she dug the fingers of her other hand into her thigh so she scarcely felt it.
The two of them slowly made their way around the room, trying to repair the damage that had been done by the traitors yesterday. Zelda tried to provide comfort where she could. She murmured meaningless courtesies to the raving and wiped sweat from the brows of the fevered, engaging in small talk with those who were aware to take their minds off their dire predicament. She enjoyed the work...but both dreaded and anticipated its end. For once she was done with the majority of her duties, she might chance to see him, Link. They had talked yesterday. He'd made her feel giddy as a girl - and as frustrated. Like as not, he didn't realize the effect he had on her; he never had, and her marriage seemed to have just made him worse.
He was by one of the fires, eyes closed, his face drawn and pinched with pain. When she and the doctor kneeled beside him Zelda took note of the sweat on his brow, the pallor of his skin...the naked flesh peeping out from beneath his thin coverlet. You great blond fool, what have you done? "I should like to care for this one myself," she told the doctor.
The man protested for a moment, till he remembered who she was. He relented then, but vowed to supervise her closely, and to pull her away if he thought she might kill him. "I'll try not to harm him." She'd meant for the comment to sound mild, but it came out breathy. That was frightening. What was happening to her?
The doctor pulled back the coverlet, baring Link to the waist. It was then that Zelda realized why he was here with these other fevered, injured men. Someone had tried to take his sword arm off at the shoulder; the vicious cut there was swathed in dirty silk, but she could see how red the area was around it. A long line of stitching ran diagonally from navel to the bottom of his right nipple. The sight of his wounds made her furious all over again, made her wish she could relive the execution of that morning. Then she remembered the smell of the traitors' burning flesh, and forcefully calmed herself.
At the doctor's prompting she bent over Link's sleeping form to sniff at and feel the skin around his wounds. His skin was surprisingly soft beneath her fingers, and it was the stitched wound that smelled strange to her.
Zelda looked up at the doctor. "Some boiling wine, I think. My own, with the magic powder."
The doctor made a small sound of assent and moved away to find her wineskin. Alone with Link, Zelda concentrated on her task. She reached for the silk, preparing to unbind and clean the wound...
...and Link opened his eyes. "Zelda," he said, staring at her. His voice was faint, papery. "I fear I'm in no condition to receive you."
She could feel some emotion, long latent, stirring within her. Ill at ease, she groped for her anger again and found it. "And no wonder," she said hotly. "They had you seven-to-one, Link...what did you think was going to happen? They killed twenty men between them." Her voice had changed, though she never told it to. It was softer now, less indignant. "You might have been among them. When I heard...that was what I feared most."
"That I might die?"
That gave her pause. Zelda averted her eyes, but that didn't make her sudden discomfit go away; nor did it make her heartfelt words any less true. "Of course. Who else?"
"Your husband, for one. Did he make a gift of that gown to you?
"My husband was in no danger, and as it happens, he did give this to me as a gift. I remember what you said of silk and samite. How do you like this wool?"
"I don't. Black is not a happy color on you."
Before Zelda could think of a reply, the doctor returned with a kettle full of boiling wine infused with magic powder. The powder was strong stuff; its odor clung to the back of her throat, and didn't please Link much either, judging from the way he wrinkled his nose. Zelda gave a cursory glance at the kettle's contents, then looked up at the doctor. "Thank you for your kindness. Leave me now. I can handle the rest myself."
The doctor's mouth fell open, and there was disbelief in his eyes, but obedience won out. Zelda watched him expectantly as he warned her to be careful and took his leave of her, leaving her in the great hall all alone with these wounded and dying men...and Link.
Link was watching the kettle, she realized, the look in his eyes halfway between disbelief and fear. "You're going to pour that wine over me," he said.
"That's the idea."
"Please don't," he begged. "I don't fancy the idea of being burned. Just stay here and talk with me a while, and tell that doctor you tortured me sufficiently when he asks you later."
But Zelda was losing herself to infection, and she didn't like the idea of letting Link's wounds fester. She was about to insist on treating him when Link, made clumsy by his wounds and bandages, reached out and took her by her uninjured hand, guiding her closer. "All right," she relented, strangely flustered at his touch. "But if the doctor treats you on the morrow and finds pus under that dressing, don't say I didn't warn you."
"Don't trouble yourself about that. I will tell the doctor how gently you treated me, and that you spoke to me with such kindness."
"As you say." Zelda looked Link over. His face was thin and wasted, and she fancied she could see his ribs, but... "You look surprisingly well, considering what happened here yesterday."
"Yesterday was a skirmish, nothing more."
"Yesterday seven garrison men killed twenty and injured forty," Zelda argued stubbornly. "Ten of those injured are like to die before the day is done. That doesn't seem a skirmish to me."
"Did it make you sad, the killing?"
That made her smile. "Link, you know me better. I'm no maiden girl, to weep at the sight of blood. I know what war looks like as well as you...mostly, it made me angry."
"You were a maiden girl, last I saw you, but fair enough. I fear I've been too long away to sense your moods."
This is not the Link I talked to yesterday, Zelda realized with a start of fear. His voice was so gentle now, as open and welcoming as his expression. And his eyes...they were as pale a blue as hers, and just now shining with warmth...and hunger. Had his brush with death changed him, warped his emotions? Discomfited by his stare, Zelda dropped her gaze.
Her eyes landed on his chest. It was not the fresh wounds she looked upon, but the old, the scars she had wondered about when he'd been the Hero of Time. His torso was crisscrossed with scars both short and long, some shiny and obviously gotten in Calatia, others ragged and old, twisted with time travel. She could imagine each of the scars as they had been as open wounds, copiously weeping blood. He has endured so much...
Link's eyes followed her gaze. "So you see my scars at last," he said softly. "Do they please you?"
The frank question made her blush. Giddy as a girl, she thought bitterly, when you'll be thirty in six moon's turns. Then some other emotion rose over her embarrassment, some want. "I..." she started. What would he think of her if she said the rest? "May I touch them?"
"If it please you." He was staring at her intently, the heat of the dying torches reflected in his eyes.
Zelda froze for a moment, her last resistance, then did as he coaxed her. Her good hand hovered over Link's chest and finally lowered. She touched the scars lightly at first, then harder, as the heat of his skin warmed hers. The newer scars were soft, the older ones rough and raised. She found an especially long one and lingered there, her fingers skating back and forth across it. "How badly did this one hurt?"
"Fiercely."
Her mouth felt so dry she could scarcely speak the words. "The pox...it hurt too. Not at first, not truly, but after..."
"Every one of my scars is an honor, but it is said that a woman's honor is different from a man's. Your scars..." He touched them tentatively, his right thumb brushing over the back of her hand.
I never gave you leave to touch me. She wanted to say the words, she wanted to, but they would not come. Instead the smallest sound escaped her, so low and weak that Link couldn't have heard it, and she did not pull her hand away. "My scars are my shame," she admitted, "or so my councilors would have me believe. Men will never again look on me with any great yearning, or..."
"Hmm..." Link didn't appear to be listening, distracted by his task. His hand moved over hers, started to move up her arm.
"Your scars," Zelda continued. How hard it was to speak, to concentrate, with Link touching her. "Your scars proclaim your courage...your finesse...your..."
He didn't answer her. His hand dropped and for a moment Zelda was relieved, till it slid up her wide floppy sleeve, ticking her thick forearm. She felt as though no one had ever touched her arm before, as if the heat radiating from Link's palm was cooking her alive. Their eyes met and Zelda wondered what Link saw in hers, because his hand was moving upward with increased urgency...
My vows. She remembered the temple where she'd said them, the sweet ache in her knees that came from kneeling beside her feeble bridegroom, how when she'd hesitated the gods seemed to be watching, waiting... She remembered how Berent had looked at her when her gown fell away from her body for the first time, the look full of hurt Link had given her when she told him of her betrothal. Then she couldn't see either of them anymore, not even him, because the torches were guttering and the fire was down to embers. Sorrow filled her, sudden and powerful, and she pulled her hand away.
"Zelda..." His eyes met hers. He must have seen the tears in them because he froze. "If I have given offense-"
"You haven't." If truth be told, you've pleased me. Too much so. "But...that was ill done. What would my husband say if he knew what happened here?"
"I don't know." His voice was so soft, hardly a whisper "Are you like to tell him and find out?"
"I..." Was she? Was she? Her heart was beating fiercely now, Zelda realized, and her arm still tingled where Link had touched her. But she lowered her eyes and said, "I am a woman wed..."
"You're a woman wed," Link repeated. That might have been regret Zelda heard in his voice, but in the dimness it was hard to say. And then her hand moved, ghosting over his bare torso before she found his own hand flung carelessly over his stomach. They stayed like that a moment, her hand resting comfortably over his, before their fingers twined together.