Against the odds, She Prayed

The rain had not stopped for three days when Lord Kuroda received the summons. He read it once in the lamplight of the small room they had been given behind the eastern barracks, then set the paper face-down so Aya would not see the seal.

She saw it anyway. She always did.

“They are calling the northern houses,” she said. She knelt across from him, still in the plain indigo robe she wore inside the walls, her hair only half-pinned. “The Shogun’s riders passed the lower gate at dusk. I heard them.”

Kuroda folded the edge of the paper with his thumb. “The Ashikaga want every banner that can still stand. The western lords have already refused two levies. If the north does not answer, the capital will call it treason.”

“And if the north answers, the capital will spend you anyway.” Aya poured the last of the barley tea into his cup, then into hers. Her hands were steady. “You told me the Shogun cannot hold the roads past Owari. You told me the stores at the river forts are already counted twice and still short.”

“I told you the truth.” He looked at her. In the four months since their wedding he had learned the small changes in her face: the way her mouth set when she was calculating loss, the way her eyes stayed on his when she had already decided not to beg. “I also told the council I would not march while the harvest was still in the fields. They have chosen not to hear it.”

Aya set her cup down. “Then hear me. If you go, go knowing I will keep the house ledgers myself. The steward drinks. The headman at the lower village will try to shift his tax onto the widows. I will not let either happen. And if word comes that the Shogun has traded your command for a peace he cannot enforce, I will still be here when you return. That is not hope. That is the work.”

He almost smiled. “You make refusal sound like desertion.”

“I make staying alive sound like duty. Someone should.” She reached across the low table and straightened the collar of his under-robe where the rain had stiffened it. The touch was brief. “When do they expect you?”

“Dawn. The vanguard leaves whether I ride with it or not.”

They did not sleep. They sat with the lamp between them while the rain worked at the eaves, and they spoke of small things because the large ones had already been said: the roof that still leaked above the storehouse, the letter from her brother that had arrived three days late, the name they had not yet chosen for a child who did not exist. When the first gray showed at the edge of the shutter, Kuroda stood and put on the armor his squires had left outside the door. Aya helped with the cords at his shoulder. Her fingers did not tremble.

At the gate the household had gathered despite the hour. The old master of horse held Kuroda’s helmet. Aya stood one step apart from the others, as a wife was permitted to do, and watched him mount. The horse shifted under the weight of the rain-soaked tack.

“Come back with your head,” she said, low enough that only he heard. “The house can survive a lost campaign. It cannot survive explaining to the villagers why their lord decided glory was heavier than grain.”

“I will come back with the men I am given,” he answered. “If the Shogun spends them, I will spend myself last. That is the only promise the road allows.”

She nodded once. He turned the horse. The column moved. Mud rose around the hooves. Aya remained at the gate until the banners had thinned into the rain and the sound of the march had been swallowed by water. Then she went inside, lit the lamp again, and opened the household ledger to the first blank page. Outside, the weak Shogun’s war continued its slow, expensive argument with the provinces. Inside, she began the quieter work of keeping one house standing until the general—her husband—either returned or did not. The odds were poor. She wrote anyway.