Considering that Utaka cared a bit more about fighting than how the fights came about, he was glad to have Takeo handling the actual negotiations and everything involving battles. His advisor more-or-less did the work of a military aide and made general suggestions on things Utaka couldn’t quite understand yet.
It was a month after Utaka’s birthday—about three months after Okimi died. He wasn’t doing much at the time; just…trying to work through it. He still felt like Okimi should be there to help him. Fortunately, most of the complicated stuff was things that Takeo could do instead.
Erize joined him after a while, coming back after visiting friends. She had a bit of a worried expression, but she didn’t say anything when he glanced at her. Utaka assumed, for a little bit, that it must’ve just been some piece of gossip or another that she didn’t agree with.
He didn’t think to question her, simply allowing her to help him with his work until Takeo came in with a similar expression—except he looked more willing to share the reasoning.
Takeo handed a paper to Utaka and explained it simply. “There was some trouble at the border with Kuro,” the man said.
Utaka cursed. He never understood what made Kuro decide they wanted to attack; positions were no more or less shaky than they were three months ago, or back when Okimi was alive.
Regardless, he still had to try to assess the situation. “Was there an actual skirmish, or just threats?”
“A small fight broke out,” Takeo replied. “One of the younger Hiroki boys got a few scratches, but those men see enough battle that it won’t be much. That paper’s the full report.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“Just doing my job, boy. I’ll let you know if I see anything else.”
Utaka nodded, opening up the report as Takeo left. It listed casualties, time, and other things; fortunately Hiroki territory was about the only place for an army to cross over by land, so only the Hiroki family would see an immense amount of battle. They were used to it by now—and from the looks of it, it was just a small force of a hundred or so men. Kuro must not be entirely serious yet, but that didn’t make it any more or less annoying.
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Erize only glanced over at the report and frowned. “How likely does it seem like they’ll carry on to war?”
“With my bias,” Utaka replied, looking at her, “I would guess ‘very’—but it could depend, I suppose. It wasn’t a particularly large force and they didn’t have any known generals in command, so it could very well be one of their bloodlust skirmishes.”
“And they say that Ginshin’s line will usher in the end…” Erize murmured. “I can’t imagine it would be anything but self-defense, given Kuro’s insistence on fighting.” She sighed, shaking her head and going back to her set of documents.
Utaka opted to go back to his work as well. When he finished up most of it, he went to find wherever Takeo liked to work to talk through a few plans for either scenario—whether Kuro was trying to instigate war or just decided that they didn’t want to go overseas in order to entertain themselves with battle. A letter addressing the problem was written and sent, but never received a reply.
A week passed, and then another report came about another battle. It was annoying—Gin stopped instigating wars with Kuro after Tsujihara Seiko’s rule due to the instability it seemed to cause within the kingdom and the royal family specifically, but Kuro was more than happy to continue fighting with Gin. Their current ruler—Queen Nari, if he remembered correctly—was likely eager to fight, or at least eager to watch her family fight. She couldn’t have been queen much longer than Utaka.
Come the third report about a month later, Utaka decided he would meet with them in person to try to get an answer. Apologizing to Erize, he kept Takeo there with her and took the Fujita sons with him instead—or planned to, at least, until neither decided they were willing to fight should it come to that. Masaru and Ninsei were left there, then, and Utaka met with the Hiroki family by the end of the month with only his two guards accompanying him.
His time was spent waiting around a short while until another batch of Kuro soldiers came. Utaka fought them off personally, aware that it was a return of hostility. The Kuro soldiers only seemed even more excited when they saw him—silver hair stuck out pretty easily among crowds, to his annoyance. There were only a dozen or so men left of the Kuro force until they started to retreat; they moved beyond the bridge that connected the two nations, which prevented anyone from pursuing without actually calling it a war declaration.
Utaka had no doubt that the survivors returned to Nari and told her about the situation. He wrote to Erize, apologizing yet again and explaining that he would like to stay until he could figure out if Kuro was going to continue hostilities.
Unfortunately, Queen Nari personally came the fourth time—it was the first and second-to-last time Utaka ever saw her, since she only participated in that one battle. It was a harder fight, but Kuro was driven back after a few hours. From then on, it seemed, another war began.
Life couldn’t be simple, could it?