oOo
II
PROPOSAL
"It is a marriage proposal!" said the grandmother in red, laughing. "See, Ganondorf, these Hylians, they write to ask you—ask for your hand in marriage!" Her mouth made little movements, as if she meant to speak further, but she was clutching her side now, her words dissolving into hysterics. A pair of handmaidens guided her to a chair. She slumped against the padded armrest, and laughed until she cried.
Lord Ganondorf Dragmire sat enthroned upon a dais, staring at the grandmother with a look of idle humour upon his face. He held, between loose fingers, the Hylian letter that had arrived at dawn. It had come escorted by a retinue of ten men: seven soldiers in the gilt and gold of the Royal Guard, two pages, and a messenger, who rode in upon a stallion that streamed finery like a castle tower dressed for celebration. Ganondorf had dismissed all ten to a room within the stables when both pleasantries and errand had been dispatched, and had then retired to a private chamber to read his letter. He took only the grandmothers, Koume and Kotake, with him.
Age had dried the sisters into replicas of one another, in every inessential aspect except for that of personality. Ganondorf called them "grandmother" equally, because neither Koume nor Kotake could quite remember which of them had borne the girl who had led, eventually, to him. Such considerations hardly mattered.
It was Koume who now laughed. Her sister, Kotake, who stood at the king's right hand, peering down at the letter, shook her head in Koume's direction. A distinct look of irritation passed over her face.
"Din's blood, Koume, do not act the child. You shame yourself. What is there to laugh at?" Her tone was cold.
"Such a brazen bid for our love!" Koume gasped. She forced herself upright with a shaking hand. "Do they think we want their wafer-pale princess? What does she have that a Gerudo does not?" She rolled her head back down on her arm again, laughing.
Her sister went stiff with disgust, and looked with helpless anger toward Ganondorf. His smile was thin.
Koume roused, at last, from her hysteria; she stumbled to her feet, and her handmaidens gripped her beneath the arms, and guided her in the direction of Ganondorf.
"Do not—do not tell me you are still considering the thing, my lord." Koume pulled free of the handmaidens and tottered up the steps. She reached out to take the letter when she had gained the dais.
"Why not?"
"We will have no truck with Hylians." She smacked the letter for emphasis. "Hylians! They spend their days cowered in their castles, flattering liege lords, flouncing in their costumes. Their king? He spends his days hunting. Deku Babas and Helmasaurs and the occasional Bublin… Pah. Call that a man? Call that anything? He takes no cities, no people. He's only ever conquered the poison mites that he steps upon, the women he beds. Hylian chattel." She spat down the steps. "What do we want with his Hylian bitch; does he think to cow us with his grandness? Impress us that he's a big man, can do big things, offers up his daughter like a sacrifice? Pah. He won his strength with treaties. Not with his own arm. Pah." She spat again.
"And what is our alliance with the Zuna, then?" Ganondorf asked, voice soft. "It was won with treaties, was it not?"
Koume offered him a crooked smile. "Treaties? Oh, child, they do not call you Mandrag without reason. No treaties won this alliance. The Zuna saw what became of the Twili and the Subrosians. They know where they stand."
Ganondorf said, "Yes."
"But if the Hylian king offers us his daughter, why then can we not accept?" said Kotake. She had begun to pace with slow, careful steps. "An alliance through marriage is certainly solid. Provided it is performed and consummated in the name of the goddesses." She looked sideways at her sister. "Even if we do not love the Hylians, we may yet be allied to them."
"And what good will that do?" Koume said, voice touched with a shriek. "Can any be both friends and acknowledged enemies?"
"We may yet strive to be reconciled, Koume. See! Their king extends an olive branch. He is willing to overlook past grievances, unspoken feuds."
"Unspoken?" Koume snorted. "His grandfathers spoke loud enough, when they raided our borderlands. Tried to rape our women." Her lip contorted with a leer. "They learned better."
"I do not see how they are only at fault, sister. We raided their borderlands. Raped their men. Did we not?" Kotake's mouth bent in a cold, humourless smile.
Someone knocked at the door, before Koume would answer. Lord Ganondorf, who had been watching the sisters with an unreadable expression, glanced toward the door.
"Yes?"
"My lord." The door opened, and a girl bowed her way inside. "The Lady Nabooru would attend you."
"She may attend."
The girl retreated, and was replaced by a tall, long-limbed woman. Her face was stiffly inexpressive, her back straight as steel; she moved with sharp, jerky movements, as if upon her sat an ill-fitting confidence that governed her by contradiction: she was painted and dressed in all the elaborate wealth of nobility, and yet held herself like a foot soldier, all caution and discomfort before the presence of royalty.
"Dra—Majesty." The word came awkwardly, as if its shape were foreign in her mouth; she recollected herself, and swept a bow. Her waist-length hair flowed across her shoulders, a flood of scarlet tipped in gold plating. Her face was a palette of colour: lips as red as grapefruits, cheeks brushed in gold, lips painted silver. Her natural beauty had been suffocated, but vestiges of it lingered in the grayness of her eyes, clear as sunlit water and fierce with their intensity. She straightened, met Ganondorf's gaze, and blurted out, "There are Hylians in the stables who said they are waiting to be housed. Lord."
"They have been housed, Nabooru. Exactly where you found them."
Koume laughed.
Nabooru's eyes narrowed. "There is a royal messenger among them. Lord. I trust you have taken his message?"
"I have."
"Nabooru, come." Kotake beckoned to the once-regent. "The message they brought is here. I would have you read it… if it pleases you…" She directed this last toward Ganondorf. He waved his permission; she stepped toward Koume and retrieved the letter. Nabooru mounted the steps cautiously, and accepted it from her.
It took her very little time to read it. Her eyes slid across the lines, and her expression grew tight. When she had finished, she looked at Ganondorf.
"Men who bear such an important proposal should not be treated thus. My lord."
Ganondorf lifted an eyebrow. "Do you trouble yourself still about the Hylians in the stable? It is a decent enough chamber. I slept there, often, before I was king."
"But if you will pardon me, lord—after you were king, you were a warlord." Nabooru returned the letter to him with lofty disdain. "You know there is no shame in honest accommodations, even in rough quarters, even beneath the elements. These Hylians… they are soft and they…" She paused, and for a moment the intensity of her eyes wavered. "They are too apt to take offense."
"Such soft sensibilities, Nabooru?" Ganondorf's tone was musing.
Koume snorted. "She gave up her own rooms to house the first envoys, when she was regent."
Nabooru turned her stiff glance in Koume's direction. "There was no other place for them."
"There were rooms."
Nabooru's momentary silence was pointed. "None that fitted the honour of their station."
"And was their station above yours?" Koume shot back. "Envoys, to be exalted over regents?"
"Enough," said Kotake, suddenly. Nabooru had opened her mouth to retort; she snapped it shut. "I will not have you quibbling over niceties," Kotake continued. "What think you of the Hylian proposal?"
"What can she think, addle-brained wench, in love with Hylians girl?" Koume snapped.
"She was regent, Koume," Kotake retorted.
"I think they honour us with their proposal," Nabooru interrupted, shrugging.
"Honour?" Koume shrieked. The violence of her exclamation unbalanced her; she went staggering against the steps. Her handmaidens hastened to her side.
"Sister!" Kotake held out a hand. Her eyes were fixed on Nabooru, and she asked, voice gentle, "What do you mean by this, Nabooru?"
"I mean that Hylian royalty does not offer up its children for marriage lightly, my lady. They are taking the prospect of our friendship seriously." She looked sideways at Koume, who sat upon the dais, glowering at her. "And I think we should respect this generous gesture of theirs, rather than… prolong hostilities—however unspoken—by the ill-treatment of their envoys and retainers."
"These Hylians, they fear us!" Koume bawled. "This fear—that is the truth of it. Not generosity. Fear." She bared her teeth, as she drew out the word. "And they think that if they say, come, here is a princess, wed her, bed her, get daughters on her, only sign this treaty and say we are friends—"
"What is wrong with alliances?" Nabooru burst out.
"With vermin? Ach!" Koume threw up her hands, and her screech echoed through the chamber. "They do all things from fear, and must we stoop to play their games, sign over our freedom for their peace of mind? They write their treaties and want us only to sign them, and they will throw in a girl to make the treaty go down; they will tie our hands with their quills and parchment and blasphemy before the goddesses!"
"Why must you think ill of them?" Nabooru shouted. "Why must all they say and do be lies lies lies with you?"
"When has what a Gerudo says and does been anything but lies lies lies to a Hylian? Answer me this!" Koume shrieked. "Girl who loves them, sighs for them, stupid girl, useless chattel; they will never love you for all you grovel for them!" Her words burst from her in a spray of saliva.
"Koume." Kotake had slipped to her sister's side, and now laid a hand upon her shoulder. "You excite yourself too much. Come away."
Koume struggled, briefly, against her sister, but was at last overcome by the handmaidens. "Ganondorf.. Nabooru." Kotake nodded to king and once-regent, and then left, trailed by a string of handmaidens and her sister. Koume had begun to wail.
In their wake, the silence lay heavy and suffocating.
"I mean to accept," said Ganondorf. He did not look at Nabooru, who stood trembling at his feet.
"You do not take Lady Koume's position then?"
"Does the position I take concern you?" His eyes flickered to hers; they were cold.
Nabooru's head jerked back, as if she had been slapped. "Yes," she spluttered, "yes. She is only a little girl. Fourteen. You must be…" She paused, and seemed to grope for words that were beyond her. "You must be… good to her."
"Do you believe me incapable of goodness?" His voice was so soft that Nabooru could barely make out his words.
She stared at him, aghast and still desperate for meanings that would not unknot themselves for her. "I did not say that," she said at last.
His silence spoke for him. She tried again.
"It is just… Ganondorf. You cannot be… you cannot be cavalier toward them. Hylians. I have spent time among them, I have known them, I…"
"Men as fearful as Hylians cannot be insulted, Nabooru." He rose slowly. "What do you fear?"
She looked at him, and her expression was raw and desperate.
"The same Ganondorf who left me as his regent did not return to relieve me of his throne," she said.
He did not speak.
"Ganondorf." She spoke his name in a breath, like a prayer. "Be kind to them. They will learn to be good—they will learn not to be afraid—if you are only patient with them. If only you do not—" She halted, bit her lip.
He descended the dais and came to stand before her, slow step by slow step, and lifted a thumb to stroke her jaw. He was close enough that the heady scent of him—warm coconut oil and cinnamon, and the softest breath of pomegranates—washed across her.
"Do not presume to call for Ganondorf Dragmire, regent," he said. "As far as I know, he cannot hear you any longer."
He left her alone in the meeting chamber. She sat, and watched the single window, until the midday had slanted away from it, and the desert began to turn to dusk.