A/N: The end of this chapter was edited as of March 1, 2014. I cut Aveil's introduction; she will appear in the next chapter instead.
oOo
IX
DOWRY
A horseman rode from the belly of the desert.
The young acolyte stationed on the rear wall of the Spirit Temple caught sight of him only as he crested the surrounding dunes and descended into the temple oasis. The sight jarred her. She could swear upon the Sand Goddess that there had been no horseman a moment before.
It was too late to alert another guard of the intruder. The rider closed in upon the rear gate, his horse's hooves skimming the sand, swift and dogged. The acolyte peered over the wall at him, mouth dry, hands sweaty on the shaft of her glaive.
"Who are you?" she called. Her words vanished into the hot, heavy air. The horseman did not look up.
"Horseman. Who are you?" She shouted now, leaning out so far over the wall that she teetered on the balls of her feet. "What do you want?"
The horseman glanced up. A scarlet veil hid his face from the cheekbones down. A cowl, also scarlet, draped his head, pinned back from his eyes by a golden brooch. What the girl could see of his skin looked so pale that she thought she saw hints of blue in his broad, muscled hands.
"State your name," the acolyte called.
The man dismounted in a flurry of robes—scarlet, purple, gold. When he turned to her, she saw a massive eye, stitched in blue thread, at the center of his chest. Her heart squeezed. Who was this man to flaunt the Eye of the Sheikah? All of the Sheikah were dead.
"I have business," the man called, "with King Dragmire."
"State you name."
The man tilted his head. "I cannot do that."
"Why not? Where do you come from?"
"Child." The man's voice thinned. "The king awaits."
She unhooked the horn slung at her hip. Perhaps it was not too late, after all, to summon another guard.
"Call whomever you need if it will make you feel better," the stranger said, his tone dismissive.
The acolyte lifted the horn to her mouth. Why would he not stop being so difficult? She wondered. "What business have you with the king?" She gestured with her chin to his chest. "And why do you wear the Eye of the Sheikah?"
The man said nothing. The acolyte blew a long, warning note.
She swore, later—to herself, to the other guard that she had summoned, and finally to her superior—that while she had blown her horn, she had kept her eyes on the robed stranger. She had neither blinked nor glanced away. And yet, somehow, when she lowered the horn, the man and his horse were gone.
The acolyte stared, for a long time, at the empty space he left behind.
oOo
"Wizard Agahnim." Ganondorf Dragmire's voice cracked the silence, when he stepped into the inner sanctum of the Sand Goddess a quarter of an hour later. "I expected to find you already here. What is the meaning of your delay?"
Agahnim knelt before the altar at which Ganondorf had been wed only the evening before. The wizard's posture was not one of prayer—he gazed up into the Sand Goddess's impassive face with a grim, tired expression. At Ganondorf's words, he swiveled on his knees, rose, and pulled aside his veil to reveal powdery blue skin and a sturdy face. He bowed from the waist and peeled back his lips in a grin.
"You do find me here, my friend—belatedly. I had meant to be here before your returned, but the road home gave me some difficulty. I ran into bandit Bulblins." He pronounced this last word with a sensational flourish, then paused when he noticed the frigid look Ganondorf leveled at the symbol stitched onto his robes.
"Three years," the king said. Every syllable dripped disgust. "Three years you have served me and still you flaunt that emblem as shamelessly as any Hylian whore."
Agahnim recoiled. "But the Eye is harmless, my friend; it means nothing."
"You know as well as I do the meaning that Eye carries in this place." Ganondorf's lip curled. "Is it so much to ask that you do not vaunt your execrable bloodline in these halls? Among my women?"
It had been centuries since the Sheikah had vanished from the earth, Agahnim thought bitterly—centuries since their Hylian-abetted bloodfeud with the Gerudo had vanished with them—and still Ganondorf Dragmire recoiled from the sight of the Eye as if it were a sword leveled at his heart.
The wizard dropped his eyes. "I meant no insult. It is simply… the Eye has served me well, these past few months."
As, he thought, the Eye has served you—and serves you still.
Elsewhere in Hyrule, men still revered the Sheikah—for their magic, their bond to Hylian royalty, and for the tragedy of their extinction (which had happened, the legends said, in the space of a single night, centuries upon centuries ago). The Eye of the Sheikah commanded respect, and this was one reason why Agahnim wore it. It was his inheritance, though he had less than a quarter of Sheikah blood in him and knew of the Shadow Folk only through books and hearsay.
The benefit that Agahnim had reaped from wearing the Sheikah symbol had lulled him into complacence. He had not forgotten that he served the one man in Hyrule who loathed the Eye. It was that he hoped Ganondorf Dragmire would, after three years, acknowledge his deepening debt to it.
But standing, now, before the King of the Gerudo himself, the wizard trembled and smothered his hope; he swept his outer robes over the Sheikah symbol as if to hide his nakedness.
"I did not consider the pain it would bring you," he finished, with a convulsive shrug. "My deepest apologies."
"Do you ever consider anything, Wizard Agahnim?"
"It was a mistake." Agahnim's mouth felt dry, his words like gibberish.
"You will not forget again."
"Of course not."
"Was your entrance observed?"
"It… I did what I could to be inconspicuous. But there was an overeager child on guard. I—"
"She saw the Eye."
Agahnim winced. "I am sorry."
"And she saw your face?"
"She did not."
Ganondorf made a sound deep in his throat, as if he meant to spit. "See to it that that none of my women ever do. You will cover yourself while the Eye is upon your person. I will not burden my Gerudo with the knowledge that a man of Sheikah descent walks among them."
"I understand." Agahnim bowed his head. Vicious thoughts lanced through his brain. Burden the women be damned. Ganondorf would not have them learn that he fraternized with a Sheikah. That he trifled with magic that had once terrorized their grandmothers.
"What news have you brought me?" Ganondorf asked.
With the question, the air between the men changed. The king's voice was low and tight, and Agahnim's muscles tensed in response. He felt anxious, but a bright, buoyant energy was humming through him as well, sudden as a geyser. He had been waiting for this moment for three years. More than three years. Even before Ganondorf Dragmire had found him in that hole of a Zuna alehouse, stinking of cheap beer and sick with the weight of his continued failures—long before Ganondorf had seated himself at Agahnim's table, flung a slender volume of Sheikah lore into Agahnim's lap with an almost careless gesture, and whispered, "Come serve me, wizard, and I will give you more books of your people's lore, history, and culture than you ever dreamed could exist,"—long before this, Agahnim had hungered for this moment.
He had not ever supposed that he was share the moment, this triumph, with anyone—his family was dead, and no one but a Sheikah would understand. Or so he had supposed—before Ganondorf. Before their bargain.
The wizard withdrew a map, drawn upon a sheet of vellum, from his robes.
"The Sheikah temple whispered of in legend exists," he said. He tried to keep his voice light, but it shook with a sense of victory as raw as anything he had ever felt. "I have found it, my friend. I have found the Shadow Temple at last."
Ganondorf Dragmire went still. "Are you sure?"
"I am." Agahnim's voice broke. "I am."
He pressed the vellum into Ganondorf's hands, and his sweat-slicked fingers smeared its furred edge. Ganondorf unfolded the map, perused the heavy blue strokes of its lines. His lips parted. His breath quickened.
"At last," he breathed.
"It lies northeast of Death Mountain," Agahnim said. "I felt its vibrations deep in the mountain slopes. I felt, too—" and here his voice dropped, and his face changed, bending with dismay as the anxiety returned and engulfed his buoyancy, "a shadow. A sickness. It was something I have never felt before. Not even even in burial grounds. Not even in crypts."
"But how did it look?"
Agahnim's face clouded. "I did not—"
"No." Ganondorf snapped around. "You will tell me this in private. Let us walk."
Agahnim armed himself with a torch, as he followed Ganondorf from the inner sanctum. He lit it with a gesture, a muttered word.
The king led him down a labyrinth of low-ceiling corridors. The halls were gloomy, even where the torchlight licked the stone with its weedy, yellow flame. Sand rasped beneath Agahnim's boots. The wizard stepped with care, feeling for splintered flagstones and fragmented brickwork, crunching the husks of dead poison mites. The stale air and the smoke from his torch clouded his lungs.
They walked for so long that the silence began to grate on Agahnim. "Dragmire," he began. "There is something I must tell you about the temple—"
Ganondorf snapped his fingers and raised a fist for silence.
But Agahnim could not contain his need to fill the hush. "Rumor has it," he began again, "that you have a wife."
Ganondorf did not answer.
"The alehouses hum with news of her," Agahnim said. He tried to smile, to forget the tendril of misgiving that threaded through him whenever he thought of the Shadow Temple, that was supposed to be his triumph and yet was not quite one. "Shall I have a chance to see this Hylian rose? It is said that she is very beautiful."
"She is Hylian," Ganondorf said, quietly. "Rumor exaggerates."
Agahnim snorted. "I hope her dowry compensates."
Ganondorf's mouth twitched. "It does. As I expected that it would."
Agahnim inclined his head. "Indeed?"
But Ganondorf had finished speaking.
At long last, the corridor down which they walked dead-ended. Ganondorf passed his hand through the air and murmured a word. The face of the stone began to bubble and bleed white.
In seven heartbeats, the paint formed the picture of a boar's skull. Chalky white trickled to the flagstone and gave the boar a garish, gruesome appearance.
"I do not remember this," Agahnim said.
"Then you have been absent far too long."
The king splayed light fingers above the boar's empty eyes and spoke a string of words. The slab groaned, dribbled a plume of dust and stones, and wrenched sideways to reveal a doorway.
He followed the king into the chamber. Ganondorf spoke another incantation. Mounted braziers flared to life, bathing the room in a muted, bloody glow. The air was stale and fetid with the stench of what was surely spellwork gone wrong. A brew of charred vellum, blood, contagion, piss burned Agahnim's nose. He raised his sleeve to cover his face.
Ganondorf looked at him. The wizard dropped his arm.
"Does the smell of Gerudo magic offend you?" The king leveled a humorless grin at Agahnim, as he stepped toward a littered desk hulked in a corner of the room. He had unfolded Agahnim's map of the temple in Faron Woods.
"I have been gone too long," Agahnim murmured, turning his eyes carefully from his companion. "I do not remember half of this."
The light had revealed a string of bookshelves, cut into the walls, haphazardly piled with books, scrolls, and age-stiffened folios overstuffed with loose-leaf. The braziers illuminated cauldrons, clay pots, lengths of wood cut down to wands. But it was the heap of gifts in the center of the room that caught Agahnim's attention. Chests gaped, overflowing with bolts of cloth, fine books, precious metals, jewelry.
"So many chests." Agahnim crouched and touched a corner of rich fabric to his lips. It smelled of rose oil. "Your wife's dowry?"
Ganondorf did not dignify the question with a response. Agahnim continued, "Will she not note its absence?"
"It is customary for husband and wife to share the dowry in common."
"Not Gerudo custom, surely?"
"No. It is Hylian."
The wizard ducked his face, hiding the sudden curl of his lip. "But surely you do not hold with Hylian customs."
"I do when it suits me."
As my Sheikah magic suits you, Agahnim thought, for all that you spit upon it. His chest burned. For all that you spit upon me.
"How did the temple look when you found it?" Ganondorf's voice cut into Agahnim's reverie.
Agahnim hunched his shoulders. "I did not get so close as to see it."
"Why not?"
"It is… entombed in a mountain hollow. By rockslides or mudslides over the centuries." He opened his hands. "My spells had not the power to unearth it.
"And even if I could, the legends… the legends do not lie when they say that the temple sleeps in shadow. There was a… heaviness upon that place. A darkness. I do not wonder at it." His voice dropped. "It was in that hollow, legends say, that the Sheikah met their end."
Ganondorf refolded the map. "You are frightened of shadows, man?"
Agahnim looked at the floor. "No. I am not."
"It does not matter." Ganondorf's manner grew suddenly brisk. "You have done as I asked."
The king's words drew Agahnim up short. "Do you no longer require my services, Dragmire?"
"I do not. Come." Ganondorf gestured toward a small bookshelf. Leather-bound volumes similar to the one he had tossed before Agahnim three years ago crowded it. "There are the books I promised you," he said. "Take what you will."
He looked away as the wizard moved with toward the shelves. Agahnim passed his hand along the flaking spines. His head felt weightless, detached. How long—how fruitlessly?—had he searched for books such as these? He could not begin to count the months, the years of frustration he had suffered, discovering another Sheikah burial ground only to discover that it had been gutted, robbed, desecrated. No love had been lost between the Gerudo and the Sheikah, legends said. Agahnim did not doubt that the Gerudo had had some hand in plundering what the slaughtered Sheikah had left behind.
He started to pluck a book from the shelf. But he found, suddenly that he could not.
"But Dragmire." He turned toward the king. "What of the Shadow Temple?"
"What of it?"
"Do you really mean to enter it? To wake the shadow that sleeps within?"
Ganondorf's smile was frigid. "I do not seek the temple for my private amusement."
"But I have told you. It is impassible."
"Not impassible," said Ganondorf, "to Gerudo magic."
Agahnim inhaled the reek of potions that poisoned the air. "Even if you do unearth the temple, how will you enter it?" he said, with a shudder. "The legends say only one who holds the Ocarina of the Royal Family of Hyrule may gain entrance—and whether such a thing exists, what man can say? Only a gods-blessed Hylian may play the Ocarina with any result, anyhow."
"Ah, yes. The gods-blessed Hylian. Will Hyrule ever have enough of the gods-blessed Hylian?" Ganondorf regarded Agahnim with a withering glance. "If they are so godsdamned blessed, why, then, did they sell me this?"
The king muttered a word and traced his fingers across a sealed drawer. It opened beneath his touch. He drew forth a small, blue object and held it up for Agahnim's inspection. The wizard stepped forward, squinting—and then froze, his mouth ajar.
"Gods," he breathed. "The Ocarina."
"Yes," said Ganondorf. "The Ocarina."
Weightlessness had returned, again, to Agahnim's skull, except this time his entire body felt detached, as if he were floating.
"Are you sure it is the Ocarina?"
"We shall see," Ganondorf said. "I must see a man about it, before I am certain."
Agahnim met the king's eyes. "So you really do mean to open the temple." Ganondorf inclined his head. "But the gods-blessed Hylian. Who will play the Ocarina?"
A smile curved Ganondorf's mouth. Agahnim could not be certain if he imagined the indulgence that tinged it.
"I have my Hylian," Ganondorf said, his voice low. "I married her last night."
oOo
The command to leave the Spirit Temple came, as it inevitably would, in the middle of breakfast.
"Elder Kotake, tell me." Nabooru rubbed the bridge of her nose, ignoring both the retreat of the runner who had delivered the message, and the shushed footsteps of an acolyte setting the table with flatbread, cheese, and date wine. "Is Ganondorf rash, crazed, or simply old?"
Kotake pursed her lips. "What does age have to do with anything, girl?"
The two women sat in a chamber that overlooked the oasis. The sand gleamed white, like crushed glass; already Nabooru could see veiled servants leading horses to the front steps. She snapped to her feet.
"Something, surely." She began to pace. "What in the name of the goddesses is he doing? What does he mean by cutting his time here short?"
Kotake eyed the younger woman over her date wine. "It is his prerogative."
"But what does he mean by it?"
"Not being him, I cannot say."
Nabooru halted before the elder and knelt so that the women were eye to eye. "What does he mean by any of it?" Her voice was low, urgent. "By cutting his stay among the Hylians short? By insisting on marrying their princess here? He isn't—" She paused and opened her hands in helpless gesture. "He isn't like I remember. Before his campaigns."
Kotake's eyes softened. "You cannot expect him to remain the same, Nabooru."
"I can expect him to make sense."
Kotake snorted and returned to her food. "That you cannot."
"Why not?"
"Do not be stupid, girl. You have been among Hylian men."
Her words startled a joyless laugh from Nabooru. "But Ganondorf is not Hylian, Elder Kotake." Her glance narrowed into slyness. "You all keep telling me that."
"It does not change the fact that he is still a man," Kotake mumbled around a mouthful of bread.
Nabooru laughed again, but the sound was curt and hard. "And suddenly men are all the same? Unless Gerudo men are less the same than others?"
Kotake eyed her with some disdain. "You wanted answers and I gave you answers. If you will now play the child, take your meal elsewhere."
Naboou clasped her hands. "My apologies. It is just that you have lost me."
"Why? You are a smart girl."
"It does not mean I cannot be confused." Her expression grew contemplative. "You say I cannot expect Ganondorf to make sense because he is a man. And yet we jump upon his commands."
"We do not jump, Nabooru."
"Oh yes, Elder Kotake. We jump."
"In what way?"
Nabooru sat upon the floor and began to count off her fingers. "We do not question him. Not to any effect, that is. His word is our law."
"Were he a woman, his word would be law still."
"Would it?"
Kotake was still for a moment. "Yes."
"We have other laws. Traditions. Does his word have greater authority than these things?"
"He does not contravene our laws."
"And yet he contravenes our traditions."
"Traditions are not laws."
"The Consort's Corridor is our tradition. No explicit law governs it." Nabooru lowered her hands to her lap; her eyes grew sad. "Our time in this temple is our tradition. No law governs it."
Kotake sucked her teeth with a sound of exasperation. "Any traditions he does not keep, Nabooru, are not vital to our survival as a people. He does nothing wrong."
"But he would not have done these things before his campaigns, Elder Kotake, that is what I am saying. The campaigns changed him. I understood him, before he rode off to war."
Kotake pinched her lips together for the space of a heartbeat. "Did you truly?"
Nabooru tilted her head. "What—?"
A timid knock at the door interrupted her. The former regent scrambled to her feet. "Yes?"
"Lady Nabooru?" The Consort's voice drifted in, frail and barely audible. "May I enter?"
"Of course, of course! No need to ask."
Zelda entered, with her hands clasped before her. Her hair was a tangled halo of watered down gold, her eyes wide and staring. She was still dressed in a sleeping shift. Kotake sighed, as if the girl's clothes and bowed shoulders disappointed her, but still she rose and inclined her head. "Good morning, your Majesty," she said. Nabooru echoed her greeting.
"Yes." Zelda's face was pinched with anxiety. "Thank you."
There was a moment of silence. Did Hylians greet one another in the mornings? Nabooru wondered.
"Nabooru." Zelda's voice brought her back to attention. "May I speak with you?"
Nabooru chuckled. "You are speaking with me now. Come." She gestured to the table. "Eat with us."
"No thank you. I—" The consort's eyes shifted to Kotake. "May we speak in private?"
"We are in private."
Zelda's mouth opened and closed, like a fish upon a land. Her eyes darted between Kotake and Nabooru.
"I will go," Kotake said.
She rose. Zelda blushed and mumbled something that might have been, "My apologies," but the elder simply bowed her head. "Your Majesty," she said and disappeared through the door. Nabooru raised her eyebrows in wonder.
"What could you not say before Elder Kotake, Prin—Majesty?"
"The courtiers." Zelda spoke the word in a rush. "My lord wishes for me to dismiss the envoys and courtiers by tonight. He said they have overstayed their welcome."
"What?"
Zelda held out a hand. "Please do not be angry."
"What else did he say?"
"That my presence, as a Hylian, would satisfy the provision that a Hylian envoy must remain in Gerudo Valley."
Nabooru's mouth worked. "Except it will not. Gods. This is too much." She took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I must speak with him."
"Nabooru?" When the once regent neither glanced up nor answered, Zelda touched her shoulder. "Please do not speak with my lord just yet."
This caught Nabooru's attention. Her eyes opened with a snap. "Why not?"
"Because I—I wish to speak with the courtiers and envoys myself. I do not want them sent away."
"This is why I must speak with the king, then, your Majesty."
"I do not think he will listen."
Nabooru began to object. But even as she did, stray memories clouded her mind, invalidating her protest. Ganondorf had not listened when she objected to his rushed sojourn in Lanayru, had not listened when she begged him to deal carefully with the Hylians. Why would he listen to her now?
She felt Zelda's soft, dry touch upon her hand and blinked down at the Consort. The child looked so ridiculously slight and pale, standing there, like some little girl's porcelain doll. She was hardly ready to be any man's wife, let alone a king's consort. The former regent's hand jerked to Zelda's cheek; she cupped it with loose fingers and shook her head once, twice, three times. She wanted to say something comforting, but her mind was empty of comforting thoughts.
"If I do not speak with him before nightfall, we may lose our chance to gently treat your father's envoys, Majesty. We will have to send them into the desert with little ceremony or preparation."
"No," said Zelda, "we will not."
"Your Majesty?"
"I said that I do not want them sent away. I mean to keep them here, Lady Nabooru."
Nabooru's mouth tightened, bitter with memory. "I know the king. Once he has commanded a thing, he will ensure that it is carried out."
"I mean to keep them with me." Zelda pressed Nabooru's hand, her voice urgent in a way Nabooru found surprising. "I mean to house them in the Consort's Corridor, until such a time that we may speak sense into my lord."
The proposal caught Nabooru off guard. "The Corridor?"
"Yes, the Corridor. It is mine to rule as I wish, is it not?"
"But if the king discovers that they are still in the Fortress—"
"He will not know." Zelda's clasp tightened so suddenly that her nails bit into Nabooru's skin. "Not until the time is right for us. Not until we decide to tell him."
Nabooru gazed down at the Consort for a long moment. "You would do that?"
"I would. I am." Zelda paused. "I need your help."
Slowly, Nabooru bowed her head. Her eyes never shifted from Zelda's face. "Then you will have it. All the help I can give."
Someone had to save Ganondorf from himself. Kotake would not. So Nabooru would.
oOo
The Hylian courtiers and envoys complained. Zelda wished that they would stop mobbing her horse and protesting that they left unfinished breakfasts behind. The return trek to Gerudo Valley had enough peril, as it was—Leever tracks had been spotted in the sand, and the scent of the beasts made the horses skittish.
"I am sorry," Zelda kept repeating, "but his Majesty the King Dragmire would have us depart for the Fortress. Please do not fret. The king has asked me to throw a feast in your honor."
The reassurance of food silenced her father's courtiers; she watched them fall back into line with self-satisfied smirks. She wished Nabooru rode beside her, to serve a buffer between her and the stream of high-born Hylians, but Nabooru was on the lookout for Leevers—one of the few members of the party equipped to do so.
The next challenge presented itself when the party reached the Fortress. Zelda sent a runner to the kitchens, with instructions that a feast be prepared for the evening. The runner returned barely five minutes later to deliver the regrets of the kitchen staff. There was little food to be had. Her Majesty's wedding had put a dent in the provisions that it would take some time to replenish. The runner delivered the message with heavy-lidded disdain, though she quickly concealed her glance by casting down her eyes. She spoke in a tone of accusation, as if Zelda should have already been aware of this.
"What food remains from my wedding feast?" Zelda inquired. "Might the kitchens make a meal of it?"
Again, the kitchens sent their regrets. There was nothing left of Her Majesty's wedding feast.
"What happened to it?" Zelda cried.
This Nabooru could answer. "We Gerudo eat well when the opportunity presents itself," she said, opening her hands in a gesture that Zelda was learning meant regret. "What remains goes to the women and children who could not attend—the old, those who are too young or too sick. Otherwise…"
Zelda bit her lip. "Have I done this terribly wrong?" she asked, in a breathless voice. "Was asking that the kitchens prepare a feast… extravagant?"
"You did not know," Nabooru said. "Though I wish you had told me you planned to feast your father's men."
"I am sorry."
"Don't be." Nabooru gave a heavy sigh. "You did not know. I should have told you."
The debacle of the feast nearly killed Zelda's determination to execute her plan. The mortification of having assumed that there would be food, and plenty of it, gnawed at her, and she longed to retreat to her Corridor and forget her error. Perhaps she would do as her husband commanded, dismiss the courtiers and envoys by tonight. If she sent runners to them now, they would have some time to prepare for their departure. She would not have to face them, if she sent runners. Perhaps the men would forget her promises of a feast. Perhaps their dismissal would go smoothly, without resentment.
But then she thought of spending long, lonely hours in the Consort's Corridor, with no one for company but Gerudo who would resent her for her assumptions—so Hylian, so privileged, when she was not even their queen. Her dismay hardened her resolve.
"I received several caskets of wine as wedding presents," she told Nabooru. "Will the courtiers like that?"
Nabooru cracked a smile. "I do not know of many men who wouldn't."
"Then they shall feast on wine."
Nabooru snorted.
"Lady Nabooru?"
"Not enough, I hope, to get them drunk."
Zelda stiffened. "Of course not." But then she relaxed, and a rueful smile shadowed her mouth. "But I did mean to ask: how much wine would be too much?"
She sent runners with invitations to every Hylian in residence. By evening, every courtier, envoy, and sage was gathered beneath the soft, brazier light of the Consort's Corridor, sipping sweet wine from an assortment of Gerudo chalices and clay tumblers.
The miscellany of drinking vessels distressed Zelda. She asked her handmaidens if there were not better goblets to be had among her wedding gifts and dowry, but the pair of handmaidens who had fetched the tumblers shrank from her; they said they did not know.
"Did you not look?" Zelda asked.
The girls looked at one another, their mouths stubbornly shut.
"Please ask Lady Nabooru to look, then," Zelda said with a sigh. "There were twelve brace of goblets in my dowry. Please ask her to bring them."
When the handmaidens had gone, she moved among her guests, clutching a goblet from which she dared not drink. The men nodded and smiled, congratulated her on her marriage, the splendor of her rooms, the excellence of her wine. There were no more than twenty people in the room and yet Zelda felt stifled, pressed in by their eager talk. She wished that she had not sent Nabooru away.
But even as she thought this, she caught sight of the former regent striding toward her. Nabooru's face was grim.
"Prince—your Majesty." Nabooru slipped in between the chattering courtiers and bent to speak into Zelda's ear. "Your dowry has vanished."
"Vanished?" Zelda's stomach sank.
"I went through all the rooms, but I could find nothing."
The women looked at one another, Zelda's expression helpless, Nabooru's brow furrowed.
"I will look into it," Zelda said at last, voice faint. "But I must address my father's men."
Zelda and Nabooru moved to the outskirts of the throng, and Zelda set aside her goblet. "My lords." Nabooru lifted her voice so that it rang out above the hum of conversation. "Her Majesty would have a word."
She spoke with such loud command that the voices of the courtiers died away. Heads turned. Zelda clasped her hands convulsively, then just as hurriedly separated them. She could not let them see how much their attention unnerved her.
"My lords." Her voice was reedy in the silence. "I wish, first, to thank you for your attendance, both this evening and since my departure from my father's house in Lanayru. I have been most pleased to have the honor of your company."
Polite applause and gratified murmurs broke out.
"It pains me that I will not long have the pleasure of your society after tonight."
Faces grew dark with bewilderment. "Your Ladyship?" a voice called—a courtier, with a chalice halfway to his lips. Zelda flexed her fingers until they crackled.
"My wedding is now concluded. The treaty, between my lord husband and my lord father, is signed. My lord husband has requested that we return to daily business. As such, he asks that you elect a party of envoys to remain here in Gerudo Valley, as stipulated by the treaty. I wish, those of you who choose not to remain, a safe journey home. I shall arrange an escort of my lord husband's finest warriors to take you as far as Lake Hylia."
A silence greeted this announcement, so deep that Zelda began to crackle her toes in the silk of her slippers.
"His Lordship could not deliver this announcement himself?" someone asked. Zelda winced.
"My lord husband wished to have the honor of addressing you," she said. "But he… had to see to business—terribly vital business—he sends his most sincere apologies and hopes that he will have the pleasure of seeing you off tomorrow morning."
The men accepted this explanation with an ease she did not expect; she heard someone snort, "Vital business indeed. I suppose those Zuna desertmen will not be ignored any longer."
"Kicked down his door, probably," another person muttered. Zelda heard stifled laughter, saw men exchanging knowing looks. She glanced at Nabooru for clarification, but the Gerudo's face was blank.
"I will leave you to elect the three envoys you wish to remain," Zelda continued. At the sound of her voice, the courtiers again grew silent. "When you have made your decision, I would ask that the chosen men move their belongings to this Corridor. You will be provided with rooms. The rest of you should prepare for an early departure."
She turned to Nabooru, when the room began to fill again with the courtiers' voices. Nabooru squeezed her shoulder.
"How are you feeling?"
Zelda reached for the chalice of wine she had abandoned; she drank down a mouthful, and Nabooru chuckled humorlessly.
"How will I feed them?" Zelda asked, very low. "Or keep my attendants from talking?" She stared, glumly, down into her chalice. "Do I permit them to keep their horses? Do I send all their horses away? I do not want the stable hands talking. Will they?" She took another draft. "I did not think of that. Why did I not—"
"You will not have to hide them long," Nabooru said. "We will speak with the king soon, yes?"
"When the time is right."
"When is that?"
Zelda looked at the ground. "I do not know yet."
"You must make up your mind soon, your Majesty. Now come. The matter of your dowry distresses me."
Zelda set her chalice aside and followed Nabooru through each room of the Corridor. The furnishings had not changed since the first time Zelda had set foot here; they were Spartan, silent, and cold with the coming night. Her gifts and dowry had completely vanished. Only the casks of wine remained.
"Where has everything gone?" Zelda cried, when they returned to her bedchamber. She slumped onto her bed. "Was it not brought here yesterday?"
"I spoke to the attendants," Nabooru said. "Neither the handmaidens nor the guards saw anyone either bringing the dowry or taking it away."
"We must ask whoever saw to the horses, the luggage."
"Your Majesty?"
Zelda and Nabooru glanced at the doorway, to find a handmaiden outlined in brazier light.
"Your Majesty, the Hylians request your attendance."
"They must have chosen their envoys," Zelda said, rising.
When she and Nabooru emerged, a courtier stepped up to them and bowed. "If it please your Ladyship." He gestured to three older, grizzled men behind him. "We have made our decision."
Zelda glanced over the men, distracted. One of them was the sage, tonsured head gleaming dully, eyes downcast, as if it pained him to look at her.
"Of course," she said. "You have chosen well."
She sent attendants to move the envoys' things to the Corridor; the rest of the company she bade a good night. She watched the last group of courtiers make their bows and depart, watched as the darkness, and their swinging lanterns, reduced them to shadows lurching across the sandstone walls.
She stood far longer than was necessary, listening to the Hylians' softening footsteps, their retreating voices. She felt no sense of triumph, in having secured the company of two envoys and the sage, no victory in thwarting, for a moment, the isolation that would have otherwise (undoubtedly? Or perhaps, only possible?) been her lot.
"I will arrange their escort for tomorrow morning," came Nabooru's voice, from behind her, so unexpected that Zelda jumped. The Gerudo glanced at her, askance, as she paused at Zelda's side.
"Thank you." Zelda stared down the hall, unwilling to meet the odd look Nabooru was giving her. "Will you ask Lord Dragmire…?" Her voice drifted, as she considered the implications of her request with dull unease. "But I suppose I can do that myself."
"Ask him what, your Majesty?"
"If he will see the envoys off as well. I told them he would. Since he could not come tonight. I did not want them to feel slighted. But I suppose… I suppose I must ask him." She winced up at Nabooru. "Since I am to. Share. His bed." Her voice died, by degrees; her words ended upon a question.
Nabooru's face remained blank; she said, "Did he send for you?"
"No."
"Then he does not want you tonight."
The knot of unease inside of Zelda loosened. "Truly?"
"The marriage bed is nothing to be frightened of, your Majesty. It is an easy enough duty." Nabooru shrugged. "It can be a pleasure, even. You must not be so frightened all the time. You shame yourself and you shame your station with fear."
"I am not afraid." The protest burst from Zelda's lips before she could consider it. She said again, voice ragged, "I am not afraid—I only wish it was not my duty. That none of this—"
"Hush." Nabooru nearly touched Zelda's mouth with an upraised palm, as if to push the words back into Zelda's mouth, but she froze, before her hand connected; she dropped it. "It's too late for wishing. It only makes things worse."
She stared down at Zelda, and Zelda met her gaze, and for a long moment they were caught, Zelda's lips parted with surprise and the words she had choked back, Nabooru's face crumpled.
"You should sleep, now—the envoys leave at dawn." Nabooru spoke at last, her eyes shifting away, her posture going stiff, a soldier at attention. "I will see to it that your other three Hylians move their things. As for the king—I will speak to him of your request. Good night."
She bowed, as she left, a gesture Zelda could not remember the former regent making, before now in private, as if she meant more than farewell by it—as if she meant to say remember yourself, Hylian. Remember your dignity.