To the lovely people who review in Spanish: thank you so much! Everybody is free to review in the language they're most comfortable with, I'll get the jist.
Also, I will be updating Monday and Thursday this week.
Compass of thy Soul
Kita slowly settles into a new routine, which manages to be a mix of the comfortably familiar and the confusingly alien. Every morning she checks on her freshly-hatched caterpillars –familiar– and cuts extra branches for them if necessary, then washes and goes to help with breakfast. Breakfast is both familiar and unfamiliar: she has been helping Mama with the cooking for years, but what Hikaku and his younger siblings eat is not the same as Kita is used to eating. They have dried fish flakes for breakfast, along with the usual rice, miso and pickles, rather than nattō. Kita has to admit that dried fish tastes better than nattō, but it still takes getting used to.
After breakfast comes housework and training, the former familiar and the latter not. As the prospective bride of the Head of Outguard she is a target for Senju reprisals –and a target for other people too, but only the Senju are specifically mentioned– so needs to be capable of defending both herself and any future children. Her wire-handling skills are deemed sufficient –Papa taught her how because the test of good wire is smooth handling– but her knife skills are apparently not enough on their own despite being called 'good', so on alternate days she has naginata lessons. When not spending her mornings being drilled in stances and sweeps until her arms burn, there is laundry and dusting and sweeping to be done, along with gardening and food preparation. She does not have to mend tatami or shōji –Ohabari-oba pays somebody else to carry out domestic repairs– but that's not much of a respite.
Lunch is a quiet meal, because all the boys are given bento at breakfast so they don't have to come home in between their own lessons in the schoolroom and on the training field. Ohabari-oba generally uses the occasion to either discuss Homeguard matters over a simple meal, or to teach Kita how to lay out dishes for specific festivals and occasions, which involves a lot of very beautiful and variously-shaped chinaware. Learning to actually cook the dishes will be put off until the various events arise; the clan can't afford to waste food. The Uchiha might be a noble clan, but it's not so wealthy as to be able to afford out-of-season extravagances.
After lunch come the more mentally taxing lessons. Madara teaches her new kanji and corrects her calligraphy about twice a week, but the actual timing is fluid as he regularly takes missions and leads patrols: there can be anything from two days to an entire week between lessons. If he's not available Ohabari-oba allows her an hour to practice independently, playing the koto in the study with her and critiquing her efforts. She is required to write each kanji on paper at least once a day, and all her efforts are then presented to Madara at the next lesson so he can gauge her improvement.
Kita has only recently been let off from writing the first ten kanji he taught her; she has thirty-five she is currently working on and it is very challenging indeed to not muddle them up in either meaning or order of brushstrokes. A good half of the difficulty comes from switching to using her left hand, although she has always done that at home anyway and can only write some kanji with her left hand. She still lacks the muscle memory in her left hand for about half the common kanji, but the ones she has used in her sealing are more practiced.
If Madara is teaching her, the lesson lasts until mid-afternoon; if he is not Kita has koto practice until that same time. Ohabari-oba gives her an actual lesson once weekly, but on all the other days Kita is expected to go over what she has learned until it becomes automatic, fluent and above all else tuneful.
Kita likes the koto and likes music, but she does not like practicing. Scales are not interesting and it is incredibly hard to move the bridges to exactly the right place on a first try. She is getting better, but her progress is a frustratingly snail-like crawl.
On days when Madara does teach her, koto practice takes place after the lesson. She cannot escape koto practice. She is doomed to sore fingers and frustration.
After koto practice Kita either has clan history to memorise, examples of Homeguard disputes to study and then discuss with Ohabari-oba or tea ceremony practice. Tea ceremony practice is her least favourite; every movement has to be perfect, like a long, slow and incredibly intricate dance, and Kita is not graceful. She is in the midst of the growth spurt, she has never had dancing lessons and she tends to bang her elbows on things. The only positive thing Ohabari-oba has to say about her efforts is that she has good sleeve etiquette and proper posture. She will improve the more she practices, but repetition does not nurture enjoyment.
Then there is dinner to make and serve to ravenous little boys, dishes to wash while Ohabari-oba has little boys to wash, the supervision of small clean full boys until their bedtime –which frequently involves them wanting her to do things with them– and then an hour or so of freedom until her own bedtime.
Those evening hours are when Ohabari-oba has most of her social guests, as opposed to the guests visiting on clan business who stop by in the afternoons while Kita is practicing koto or studying. There are probably occasional morning guests too, but Kita is usually out of the house in the mornings so doesn't see them. Sometimes she is expected to sit in on the evening socialising, but mostly she is granted free time.
As the evenings are bright enough now that she doesn't need a lantern to see by, Kita spends her precious free time re-reading and softly reciting the clan history she is supposed to memorise, playing around with seal ideas and thinking up designs for new coat patterns, aided by Madara lending her his mother's copy of the creation myth and various other illustrated mythic texts, including a print book of the Takamagahara. Half of which he hadn't actually been able to read, because they were written in hiragana and he'd never been taught them; hiragana are women's script and his father hadn't seen the need. Kita had instantly walked him through the syllabary, then read him the first page out loud so he could take in how the script worked.
He'd still let her keep the stories though; he'd quickly leafed through them with his sharingan active, recited a random page to her to prove he knew it now and then dashed off for the mission he was going to be late for after staying so long. Kita finds it a bit unfair how blatantly the sharingan lets a person cheat; Madara had probably learned all his kanji inside a week after finding out it let him do that. She obviously can't do that, so has to chip away at them the hard way like everybody else without the sharingan does.
If he isn't dashing off on missions, the evenings are generally when Madara comes over to spend time with her. To begin with Izuna came too, but as the weeks pass he seems to lose interest and stops. Kita thinks he's decided she's boring until Madara gleefully reveals that his little brother has a crush. She immediately resigns herself to Izuna's eventual return, either to ramble adoringly or to mope and wail because the girl in question isn't interested.
Neither happens. Izuna proves shockingly well-adjusted in matters of romantic relationships, spends the months over the height of summer dallying with one of the Uchiha clan's many girls called Naka –Kōjin lineage apparently– then somehow ends the relationship with no hard feelings on either side around the time that Kita is spending all her time drying and reeling her silk cocoons, supervising the breeding and freeing of her moths, boiling those cocoons separately from the lower-quality cocoons –of which there are fewer this time– and setting up the spindle so she can spend the next few months making green-gold thread in every available moment.
Madara is as baffled by Izuna's romantic success as she is. However the respite from the fourteen-year-old's interference is very welcome: it gives her time to talk about more personal things with Madara and for him to decide to share similarly personal things with her, including how he wants peace so the clan can prosper.
Madara's mother died when he was nine, so he doesn't remember her very well. Partly due to it being before he got his sharingan, but mostly because his father had taken over his education when he was four and his not having spent much time with her after that. Izuna remembers her better despite being fourteen months younger, as Father hadn't taken much of an interest in his second son until after his wife's death.
Izuna often comments on Madara having their mother's looks, which Ohabari-oba confirmed once. Father has said a few times that Madara has his mother's soft heart, generally while disparaging him over some tactical choice which he disapproves of.
He doesn't see much of his mother's family; they're the branch of the Uchiha who do most of the trading missions, pretending to be regular civilians and selling Uchiha white charcoal, pine charcoal, inksticks and other goods across Fire country and various neighbouring nations, then using the money to buy salt, dried fish, iron sand, various other necessities and a smattering of luxuries. Most of them don't have a known lineage, but they're possibly the clan members with the most personal wealth and are certainly the most well-travelled; some of them go on trading ventures that last most of a year. A number of his variously distant maternal cousins are in the Outguard and most of them have extremely respectable chakra reserves. Those not in the Outguard generally don't develop the sharingan though, as being mostly traders limits their combat experience to training and the occasional bandit ambush, which is not really the kind of environment conducive to activating the clan's bloodline.
Madara knows he has far more chakra than his father, even at fifteen, and that he has his mother's blood to thank there. He does look a bit like his cousins on that side too: they're all more solidly built than Father is, with broader shoulders and thicker waists. They also tend to be loudly sociable, which Madara most certainly is not; clearly that's something Izuna inherited instead.
Kita's not anywhere near as sociable as Izuna is, but she's not as reclusive as Madara either. Not that he doesn't like company, but he's discovered since learning to rein in his chakra that there is such a thing as too much company. Kita however doesn't mind small children and is happy to be in the general vicinity of a conversation, even if it doesn't actually include her.
She's a good listener and really interested in learning new things; not just practical things, but absolutely anything. She wants to know about places he's been on missions, people he's met, stories he's heard and is even happy to listen to him talk about training and patrols. She also asks questions about all those things, sometimes to fish for more details but other times just to get his opinion, which he then has to explain with other details.
Kita never dismisses his opinions or thoughts as naïve or unrealistic, but she doesn't agree with him just because he's going to be the next Head of the Outguard either. She listens, she counter-argues, she expects him to defend his position and she will acknowledge the merits and benefits of his perspective that she can see before poking holes in it. He's not been able to talk to anybody like this since that brief summer he spent meeting Hashirama down by the river and he's missed it.
Madara finds himself speaking about his dream for peace and is utterly delighted when she actually agrees with him and then backs up her agreement with various practical points about how the Uchiha clan runs to support peace. War is expensive, she says, then points to all the ways it costs the clan –in iron and steel and fabric and labour and lives– and talks about what it's like to live on clan grounds when the entire Outguard is away, how less gets done and everything takes longer because farmers and craftspeople are doing double duty patrolling the borders and the constant low-level strain that comes from knowing that if another clan were to attack them now, they would be extremely vulnerable.
He's never had the domestic perspective on the costs of war spelled out like that before. He knows war is terrible for what it does to the people fighting it; he's not really considered that it costs the rest of the clan just as much.
Her perspective on peace is different too; she describes war as 'an imposition' to contrast peace as 'a collaboration.' Her explanation makes sense too: war is incited by a minority, who –by attacking the ones they have decided to be offended by– force everybody else to take sides and take up arms, either to defend themselves or to support their allies. Peace on the other hand is enacted by the majority, who all work together to maintain it and resolve disputes between individuals before warfare can develop.
"I think waging war is a sign of failure," she tells him quietly one hot summer evening after Tanabata while spinning silk on the engawa, her eyes never leaving the fine green-gold thread being extracted from the fuzzy mass on the spindle. "A sign that you have been utterly unable to come to an agreement by other means, so are resorting to hitting the other party over the head until they give in. Declaring war on somebody says you are unwilling to collaborate or compromise, and not wanting to work with somebody is often a sign of greed or some other major flaw. What was that war between the Fire and Tea daimyos about?"
"Money," Madara says sourly; she's right. It's uncomfortable, but she is right. Why are the Uchiha even fighting the Senju these days? Revenge for everybody the other clan has killed? Well, the Uchiha have killed just as many and chasing that revenge is just leading to more people dying, so who exactly is responsible for those deaths again?
"Fighting is easy though," Kita muses. "We're on our side, everybody else is the enemy and because they're the enemy they're wrong and we're right. Peace is hard because you have to consider all the perspectives and recognise that maybe you were wrong. Homeguard stuff is hard because everybody's Uchiha and everybody thinks they're right, but in an argument with five sides obviously they can't all be right."
Madara winces; he is so glad nobody is expecting him to be Head of Homeguard. It sounds like a nightmare. One that he is well aware he does not have the patience or the diplomatic skills for. Leading the Outguard is much more straightforward.
"The problem is that while in those cases everybody is generally wrong about something, they all also have things they're not wrong about and there is so much negotiating and flattering and reasoning with people you have to do until they all realise that the proposed solution is going to benefit them somehow. That the hard part of peace, I think: ensuring absolutely everybody has a stake in it, because if everybody knows they're going to benefit then they're all willing to help make it happen."
That seems far more practical and reasonable than Hashirama's assumption that they can just decide they want peace and make everybody else go along with it. Madara already knows that will never work; he can't just make the whole clan do what he wants. "So how do we get the clan to want peace?"
Kita frowns thoughtfully, busy hands pulling incredibly fine thread from the fluff on the spindle. "Well, first we have to get them to see that the clan is better off overall in the years when we don't clash with the Senju as much. Also appealing to people's pride over how the only reason we fight the Senju so much is that greedy civilians take advantage of the rift between our clans to hire one of us because some economic rival has hired the other clan. I mean, if that happened with a clan we weren't deadly enemies with, the warriors sent to fight would at least try to avoid conflict with the other party, doing the minimum for defence until the end of the mission then go home. Or, if we were hired to take something, wait until the hired shinobi were busy or had left. But it's the Senju, so we charge in and people die and the clients benefit." She pauses. "At least, that's what the stories I've heard from Outguard members imply."
"No, you're right," Madara agrees quickly. "Clients do take advantage and squads whose missions come into conflict with other clans do try to avoid fighting them if possible." Unless those 'other clans' were Senju allies of course; things were less predictable then. "I mean, I've been on missions where a client's rival has hired Aburame and the mission leader decided the best course of action was to discreetly meet the Aburame team leader in a tea house, discuss objectives and mission requirements and compromise in such a way that respective contracts are kept to the letter if perhaps not in spirit. Or compensation was offered to the team whose mission objective was going to be compromised, because we don't want to fight them and they don't want to fight us either."
Of course that doesn't always happen and it never happens on missions his father leads, but his father never goes on routine caravan guarding or small-time acquisition missions anyway. As his father's heir Madara needs the experience of what happens on such missions because he will eventually be the person assigning them, but once he is Outguard Head he won't have the time to run them himself anymore.
"If only we could negotiate with the Senju like that," Kita sighs. "Then again, if we had peace, what would you do? I mean, if we get a real lasting peace, acting as a military force for hire isn't something that's going to bring in money anymore, is it?"
Madara has not thought about that. Peace –true peace– would leave him without an income or anything to do beyond falconry and sparring. "Um…"
Kita smiles at him tentatively. "Chakra techniques have non-violent uses too; maybe between missions you could wander around the clan, see what people who aren't full-time shinobi do with their chakra? I think you'd be surprised."
"I will," he assures her quickly, reaching over to ruffle her hair. "Thanks, Kita-chan." She supports his dreams for peace and that's possibly the best thing about getting to know her.
Shortly after Obon Kita notices that one of Ohabari-oba's regular visitors is not, in fact, visiting to discuss clan matters. Tsuyoshi-san, one of the senior Outguard members –whose name she only knows because Izuna insisted on dragging all Tajima-sama's main lieutenants over and introducing her to them as 'my brother's betrothed'– is visiting Ohabari-oba twice a week –sometimes more– because he is courting her. Kita's not sure if she's surprised she missed it until now or if she's surprised Ohabari-oba is being courted at all; a little reflection reveals the latter and she is disappointed in herself. Ohabari-oba can't be much older than thirty, which isn't so old really. She could still have several children if she wanted to. Mama is probably older than Ohabari-oba and she doesn't think Mama is old.
Armed with this information, Kita makes more of an effort to eavesdrop. It being autumn means her caterpillars don't need feeding –because the new batch are still in their eggs and won't hatch until April– and the garden doesn't need weeding either, so she has more time. Time she is currently using all of to spin in.
However there's no reason she can't spin just out of sight of the open study shōji, on the engawa where she can enjoy the sunshine and see the koi pond. Ohabari-oba's koto playing is always lovely to listen to after all.
Izuna got a high price for her peace silk last spring and Kita has plans for that money, but this year she is weaving herself an obi from the cocoons of the moths that hatched. She is not going to even try to dye any of it, preserving its pale green colouring, and when it is all spun she is going to ask Grandma about a simple obi weave. Then once the obi is completed she will decide if she wants to keep it plain or embroider it.
She will probably end up embroidering it, but she doesn't want to get ahead of herself. First spinning her silk, then weaving it; thinking about the embroidery now would be putting the cart before the horse.
Kita has plenty of spinning left to do, so has plenty of time to eavesdrop in. Not that it's a particularly interesting conversation; music and theatre, mainly, and Kita has never seen any plays. Or even read about any plays, to be honest. Not here at least. She's heard a bit of music –there are various Uchiha who play instruments and festivals are always loud and cheerful– but she doesn't know composers or civilian performers like Tsuyoshi or Ohabari-oba clearly do.
Love matches are the usual way Uchiha –and, as she is learning in her new lessons, most of the other ninja clans– go about getting married. Arranged matches like Kita now has are the exception, and are usually only set up for political reasons; as a result they disproportionally affect the immediate family of a Clan Head. Tajima-sama arranging his son's match is therefore not too unusual.
Non-Uchiha arranged marriages however do not have a clause for when one or other party falls in love with somebody else. That is an exclusively Uchiha attitude, because the sharingan bloodline goes hand in hand with stronger emotional responses and a degree of difficulty in overcoming them. Uchiha are fiercely emotional in ways that civilian culture apparently frowns upon; samurai literature condems falling in love at all to be a sign of weak-mindedness.
The Uchiha clan however knows that their hearts are their strength, so they make allowances for it. Other ninja clans make allowances for love matches for more pragmatic reasons: it's exponentially harder to marry off an unwilling ninja than an unwilling civilian. Civilian lovers who are set up for arranged marriages with people not of their choosing frequently commit suicide; well, perhaps not frequently, but certainly often enough for it to be a popular literary trope. Ninja betrothed against their will –or whose civilian lovers are betrothed to third parties– are more likely to decide that murder will be effective in solving their problems.
It doesn't happen so much nowadays, as word has got around. Even a civilian clan-member's request to their lover's parents is likely to be accepted in light of murderous relatives potentially lurking in the wings.
The peasant class don't do arranged marriages –too much effort for not enough payoff when a love match between willing parties improves collaboration in a subsistence context– but the merchant class do it almost exclusively. As a result, a surprisingly large proportion of middle-class civilian women –and the occasional young man– are open to shinobi courtship despite the associated risks from rival clans.
Her own great-grandparents are proof of that.
Kita can see why though: it is better than having no choice at all. She has no objections to eventually marrying Madara –he is kind to her and he is focused on the welfare of his clan as his life's primary goal– but it is comforting to know that, if she ever does fall in love, she will be free to pursue her heart.
By the Chrysanthemum Festival in September the Uchiha already have mission offers for the following spring, to burn the half rice fields of specific landowners within the Land of Fire who had taken advantage of the terrible weather much of the country suffered in the first half of this year by conspiring together to drive up prices. There are also contracts to attack and burn the caravans of certain tea merchants, no doubt to reduce competition and again drive up prices.
Madara knows the clan will definitely take the field-burning missions –easy money– and also that the greedy landowners in question will doubtless be hiring the Senju to protect their fields after losing the first crop. This is probably going to turn into yet another year-long war.
The tea issue is more problematic, but after talking to Kita he tentatively suggests to his father than they steal the tea rather than burning it and then sell it themselves; that will fulfil the contracts to the letter, bring in additional income for the clan and ensure the price of tea does not get driven up long term.
Moving the tea will be tricky, but Kita promises she can make a heavy goods seal that will allow the Outguard to swiftly move and carry all that tea without it being obvious. She comes through on her promise a week into autumn, following a fortnight of testing supervised by Yamasachi-san and Sannosawa-sensei.
It's a rather odd setup: the seal is stitched into the bottom of a shallow, very wide-based drawstring canvas bag and is little more than a thick outline surrounding a picture of a furled umbrella with the handle shaped like a parrot's head. It works by contact: the user first activates the seal with a touch of chakra, then shoves everything into the bag –the seal makes no distinction; so long as one end of an object can be slid into the bag it will vanish into the seal– and 'closes' the seal with another application of chakra. Once the seal is closed, other things can be placed in the bag to hide the seal.
Taking things out is more challenging; you have to have a firm picture of what you want as you add chakra to the seal, or else everything will simply come out in reverse order. Father however does not consider this a flaw –with sacks of tea it doesn't really matter– and Madara suspects these bags will soon see usage for both smuggling and storage. Dried foodstuffs in seals don't degrade and weapons don't rust, so clan outposts will probably want sets of these, appropriately labelled of course.
The bags can be worn slung across the back and although having the opening on the long side is a bit awkward, they're just the right size for storing a rolled-up overcoat or a few changes of clothes. With his father's approval, Kita spends the whole of the next month stitching seals into canvas bags made to her design by other members of the clan, all dyed indigo so as not to stand out against Outguard members' coats. Every single warrior gets one, although this massively depletes the clan's fabric stores; being able to carry or loot extra food or weapons without being weighed down by them is an advantage they can't afford to pass by.
His father orders a greater proportion of the coming year's harvest be dedicated to hemp to compensate for the reduced stock of canvas. Seeing as the Outguard will be entirely absent for most of spring and summer and with the new seal bags enabling more efficient storage, the clan will hopefully not go short of food to enable this; they will probably grow more buckwheat in the late summer after the hemp has been harvested, which will mean eating more soba and less soy or adzuki the year after.
With another long military season on the horizon, Ohabari-oba and Tsuyoshi declare their intent to marry. This makes for all kinds of upsets: Ohabari-oba will be moving into her husband's house so will no longer be able to care for Hikaku, Hijiri, Hidaka and Benten, but more significantly will no longer be able to organise the upkeep of the clan hall as was her duty as only living close female relative of the Outguard Head.
Father decides that both these tasks are now Kita's problem, increases the allowance she has access to accordingly so she can hire on lower-ranking clan members to see to the cleaning, cooking and upkeep of the gardens, and leaves the fine details to the women to sort out. Ohabari-oba rises to the occasion admirably and Kita's grandmother also gets involved; by the first day of winter everything seems to have settled down again, with the main task at hand being wedding preparations. The date has been set for the fifth of January, but Madara's primary concern right now is Kita's birthday.
She's going to be thirteen in a little over a week. It's not a significant age, but he wants to give her something special regardless. He's just not sure what.
Unexpectedly, the person who comes to his rescue is his father. Madara is dragged out on a very cold and snowy cross-country run to Kōgei-gai, marched through a range of artisan establishments and eventually settles on a glazed teapot with a bamboo handle over the top and a pair of yunomi.
The yunomi make him blush a bit, because a matched pair like this, identically patterned but one slightly bigger than the other, are called 'married couple teacups.' Teapots and yunomi are for brewing and drinking tea every day, rather than the elegant chawan which are only for tea ceremonies, and giving Kita a set like this is implying that one day they will live in the same house and drink tea together every day, just the two of them.
Not entirely accurate –Izuna will be living with them too, unless he marries first and moves out– but the sentiment stands.
His father seems approving of his choices and they move on to collect several different items from a range of other shops, all evidently ordered in advance as he only opens each parcel long enough to give its contents a cursory examination with his sharingan before paying. After each shop they discreetly slide the purchases into their new umbrella bags, then once everything is done and they have eaten they run back to clan grounds in the early dark.
On the way back Madara finds himself wondering what Kita is going to give him for his birthday after the winter solstice. He's going to be sixteen –which is significant as he will be old enough to lead missions– and with how busy the past few months have been, he's not sure when she would have had the time to buy or make him anything.
It doesn't really matter –she doesn't need to get him anything– but he's still hopeful.
More importantly, now he knows what to do and where to go for future gifts, which he's very grateful for. When Kita's a bit older he'll ask his father about commissions and who the clan patronises for those; he can't always just buy things off the shelf, not when he's going to succeed his father as Outguard Head. Leading a noble clan like the Uchiha means setting an example, not just following other people's lead.
Kita has certainly seen clan weddings before, but Ohabari-oba's is the first one she will be attending as a guest rather than just a spectator. She therefore has to embroider the clan crest over the back seam of her beautiful wisteria kimono with cream silk, so it will be appropriately formal for the occasion.
She doesn't have much time, not now she's responsible for the upkeep of both the house she lives in –now Hikaku's house rather than Ohabari-oba's– and the clan hall where Tajima-sama lives with Madara and Izuna. Most of the work is organisational and financial –keeping the kitchen stocked, doing the laundry, sending appropriate people over to cook, clean and carry out necessary maintenance and then paying them– but it's still a lot. Ohabari-oba will continue tutoring her on Homeguard things for another few years, but Kita will have to visit the older woman for that now and that will make things more challenging.
Actually, she will probably have to invite Ohabari-oba over to visit her, because all the necessary records will be staying where they are. As will the formal tea service and other accessories; Ohabari-oba is marrying a man of no known lineage, so she is not leaving the Amaterasu lineage entirely –although her children will not be able to claim it– but she will still be dependent on her husband's income rather than her brother's despite Tajima-sama likely providing her with a generous dowry. Tsuyoshi-san has spent the past few months carrying out significant renovations to his new house, so it will be more suitable to his bride's station, but it is still not quite as grand as Hikaku's, where the front hall opens into a formal reception room rather than directly into the main living room with the iori. The only other house with a formal reception room is the clan hall. Kita suspects that Hikaku's house is technically supposed to belong to the Homeguard Head, but under Tajima-sama it has become simply a cadet Amaterasu lineage property.
Kita has not managed to get any weaving done yet this autumn; first the seal, now Ohabari-oba's marriage and the associated changes. She has at least managed to get Madara's birthday present finished though, which is something. She's made him hilt-wrapping tape and a hanging cord to tie his sword to his belt with, both out of her reeled wild silk; they are braided rather than woven and more easily hidden when guests suddenly visit while she is working. She partially disguised her intentions there by making herself new obi cords as well, which she will be wearing for the wedding in February.
She isn't quite thirteen and she has so much to do. She's technically responsible for two households, still has lots of Mary Poppins bags to make for the Homeguard –Outguard orders came first due to the upcoming conflict but the Homeguard needs them just as much, if not more– is basically raising two-year-old Benten, Ohabari-oba has increased the frequency of cooking lessons in light of her imminent departure from the house and Kita also has a bunch of patchwork coats belonging to clan elders to freshen up and repair in time for the wedding.
Her calligraphy lessons with Madara are positively restful in comparison.
She is so busy she completely forgets it's her birthday until Hidaka presents her with a set of lacquered hair combs after breakfast, his two older brothers looking on with barely-concealed nerves.
"Thank you very much," she says automatically to hide the pang in her heart at not being at home with her family today, then looks more closely at her gift. "Oh, there's one for every season, how lovely!" Orchid and peony for spring, lotus and water iris for summer, chrysanthemum and dianthus for autumn and plum, pine and bamboo for winter.
"The winter one is the prettiest!" Hidaka says eagerly, bouncing on his toes. "Like you, Kita-nee!"
"Well I am a winter's child, aren't I Hidaka-kun?" Kita replies, opening her arms so he can dash in for a hug. "Thank you again for my beautiful present, Hikaku-kun, Hijiri-kun; I will be sure to wear them often." It is evident that quite a lot of pocket money has been spent on these, or else that they have raided their mother's jewellery box. She hopes it is the former; Benten deserves to inherit her mother's treasures.
The day continues according to her usual routine, but with gifts appearing at odd interludes. Izuna briefly crashes her naginata training session to give her a new uchiwa fan frame and a set of three different prints to mount on it, Papa visits at lunchtime with Tateshina, Naka and Midori to present her with a new woven basket loaded with useful gifts, including two new nagajuban printed in colours that compliment her kimonos and a wealth of dyed and metal-wrapped silk threads. Her little sisters go home again immediately afterwards, but Papa stays on.
"It's for you to use on your clothing, north-star," Papa tells her firmly as they eat their bento together, "not for coats, unless it's your own coat. Embroider an obi, add detailing to a printed kimono or buy a new plain one and do all the work yourself; wear your beauty on the outside as well as on the inside."
"Yes, Papa. I promise." Grandma has included meticulously detailed instructions for weaving a plain obi, a few notes on how to weave a two-tone reversible obi and two simple damask charts, one for checks and one for a Bishamon tortoiseshell lattice, as well as orders to invite her to visit when she decides to start the plain obi, so she can ensure Kita doesn't accidentally set the loom up wrong.
"Your grandma's joints are aching today, so she couldn't come herself," Papa adds quietly, wiping his mouth after finishing his food. "We've done very well out of the new field; your aunt Tsuyu has promised to supply you with paper at reduced cost in exchange for a share of the hemp and we planted buckwheat as a second crop."
"Thank you Papa." He and Mama could have kept that paper for themselves or sold it, but they've given it –or part of it anyway– to her, for her calligraphy practice and seals and patterns. "Once Madara-sama says my calligraphy is good enough I'll make a wall scroll for her."
"She will like that," Papa says warmly, bending down –not as far as he used to, she is definitely growing– to kiss her hair. "Take care of yourself, Kita."
Her progress in kanji is currently at a crawl –she has so little time to practice in and her current fifteen are intensely complicated– but Madara still visits twice a week despite only having taught her two new characters in all of the past month. The more complicated characters have accumulated despite originally having been taught over several weeks, the simpler ones they were interspersed with having been set aside as fluent.
Today he gives her a birthday present before starting. It is a teapot of her very own and a pair of husband-and-wife teacups. Kita loves them, not just for the implication of commitment –one day they will have their own home and drink tea together in it– but because with Ohabari-oba marrying she will have to host her lessons herself, or else visit Madara at the clan hall. If she hosts here she doesn't want to use the teacups that belonged to Hikaku's parents, and using guest teacups wouldn't be appropriate either. Now however she has her own cups to drink tea with Madara from and her own pot to serve with.
She makes tea in them immediately, much to Madara's bashful delight. Not that it prompts him to go any easier on her as she attempts to form the kanji for 'foothold,' 'fear,' 'threaten,' 'rectify' and 'echo' without hesitating over the strokes or getting the lengths and angles wrong.
There are twenty separate strokes in 'echo,' three little characters squished on top of a larger flattened one, and fitting them all in is hard!
Tajima-sama arriving after koto practice is unexpected. Ohabari-oba expecting Kita to serve him formal tea is even less expected, but at least she already knew she was doing tea ceremony practice today and is suitably dressed in her pale iris kimono and the cream obi with gold woven through it to scatter roses across the fabric, her new comb sitting in her hair. Ohabari-oba provides fresh yōkan to go with the tea and Kita slowly, deliberately carries out a chakai before her uncomfortably attentive audience.
She knows she is not good at this. Having to do it all right-handed does not help. The tea ceremony cannot be done left-handed, no matter how much less awkward that would be for her.
Ohabari-oba and Tajima-sama engage in casual conversation as she carefully portions out matcha one cup at a time, adds hot water and whisks it in the appropriate manner; this is part of a less formal tea ceremony, so she has to ignore the talk even though she is the subject of their conversation. At least it is not her lack of fluidity in serving tea that is being discussed.
Once tea has been served –making her own tea last– it must be drunk, which also takes time. Kita carefully cradles her very precious and beautiful tea bowl, peering at her two guests over the top of it. Ohabari-oba is wearing a soft sepia kimono damasked with withered leaves and a faintly mottled pale grey obi embroidered with crows in flight. Tajima-sama has on a charcoal kimono damasked with clouds, delicate silver bolts of lightning embroidered here and there.
She is thirteen today, has been learning tea ceremony for less than a year and is feeling very, very intimidated. Especially since the ongoing conversation between Tajima-sama and Ohabari-oba is currently lingering on the subject of her knowledge of clan history.
"Kita-chan," Tajima addresses her abruptly, "explain the Uchiha's clan's lineage system."
Kita lowers her tea; she can't put it down, she hasn't finished it yet. "The Uchiha clan's system of lineages is based on the heritability of the Mangekyō, the form taken by the grief of one who has manifested the sharingan," she says, taking care to keep her tone soft and measured. "The clan currently has eight known lineages. Most prominent of these is the Amaterasu lineage, to which the Outguard Head traditionally belongs."
Properly she should say, 'to which both Outguard and Homeguard Head traditionally belong,' but Tajima-sama has changed the rules there and it would be impolitic to draw attention to that. "In addition to the eight known lineages the clan has records of an additional nine Mangekyō manifestations, but the details of those family lines have been lost. Should any member of the clan manifest one of these nine historic Mangekyō, they would immediately be formally established as head of that clan lineage. There may be other unknown Mangekyō lineages within the clan, but as these have never been formally documented they are unrecognised and unnamed."
"List the eight lineages in order of current prominence."
"First is the Amaterasu lineage, the lineage of the Outguard Head. Second is Yatagarasu, third is Raiden, fourth is Inari, fifth is Kōjin, sixth is Toyotama, seventh is Konjin and eighth is Yomotsushikome."
Tajima-sama nods and turns back to Ohabari-oba; Kita finishes her tea as swiftly as is polite, as it is not more than warm now. Hopefully they too will finish their tea soon, so that she can collect the bowls and leave to do the washing up. Setting down her cup, she waits for the adults to take the initiative. She has already eaten her yōkan –sweets are eaten before drinking the tea– so she just has to sit tight and be patient.
The tea finally crawls to a close and Kita is permitted to bow them out of the room and escape; after washing up she returns to the study, where Ohabari-oba and Tajima-sama are waiting for her.
Waiting with two fukusa-draped boxes; this at least is a ritual she knows about, even if she's never experienced it for herself.
A fukusa is not like a furoshiki; it is more expensive for one, and after admiring it and removing the gift from the box under the cloth, both box and cloth are returned to the gift-giver.
Kita duly admires the cloth embroidered with Amaterasu emerging from the cave and seeing her radiance in the mirror of Yata, carefully sets it to one side and opens the box. Within is a silk kimono in lush coral pink with a bold pattern of very pale blue ripples framing white cherry blossoms and the occasional white-and-red-orange fish, along with a silk nagajuban in deep red with a simple all-over purple-black scale print, a cotton undershirt and slip in mottled creamy yellow, white tabi, wooden zōri and a sky blue obi heavily embroidered with red peonies, vibrant green grasses and a scattering of various bright-coloured butterflies.
It's an insanely extravagant gift.
She can't turn it down.
Legally she is in his care, so this is less something he is giving to her and more something he is buying to see her wear for his son; at the very least, wear on Madara's birthday next week. Tajima-sama's probably going to do this again, even. Slightly closer examination at least reveals that the kimono and obi have been previously worn; probably by his late wife. That is slightly less terrifyingly extravagant, even though everything else is stiff and new.
Kita bows her head and offers suitably humble thanks for this magnificent treasure, carefully folds everything back into the paper wrappings and sets it to one side, then turns to Ohabari-oba's gift.
This fukusa is more modest, embroidered with a crane soaring above the setting sun and a turtle swimming through algae below. In the box underneath are a collection of kanzashi: four lacquered kogai hair pins that match the combs Hikaku and his brothers gave her –evidence that Ohabari-oba had assisted them in selecting their gift– and two pairs of bira-bira, one pair with chimes and one with tiny bells. There is also a packet of regular plain pins.
Clearly Ohabari-oba means to make sure she will no longer need to borrow hair ornaments. Kita offers her thanks, bows to both guests and sees Tajima-sama out of the house. Ohabari-oba then gives her time to put her gifts away and change into her everyday kimono before enlisting her to help make dinner.
The duck soba is very nice, both to cook and, once the boys are back, to eat; it settles her nerves. The sweet red bean paste dessert is also wonderful.
However this has definitely been the most stressful birthday of her life. Kita hopes very much it is not the start of a trend.
Madara fidgets with the hilt of his sword as he sits on a tree branch, his eyes on the road at the bottom of the short drop mere yards away from his perch. Kita gave him hilt-wrappings and a cord to tie his sword to his belt made of her hand-reared green silk for his birthday, which he has taken to fiddling with while waiting around outside the clan lands. They're beautifully soft and have more give in them than any of his previous accessories, so when they eventually wear out he's probably going to ask her for another set.
Ohabari-oba's wedding went smoothly, but she's still at Hikaku's house most days to teach Kita about being a member of the Amaterasu lineage and eventual Homeguard Head. Madara thinks Kita will be good at it; she certainly has an eye for loopholes and the creativity to take advantage of them. Just look at what Madara is doing now, hiding up a tree on a mission which had started out as arson and murder and has turned into trickery and theft.
The tea caravan –carrying the southern peninsula's new sencha harvest and the shade-grown jade dew tea that will be hand-ground for matcha– is due to pass by today. When they're not exactly sure, but rice planting hasn't even started yet so Father has granted Madara the services of the clan's crow summoner –one of his Yatagarasu second cousins– who currently has a bird circling overhead. Talking to Kita about the tea trade prompted him to do a little research along the way here, so he now knows that there are only three parts of Fire Country where tea leaves suitable for being ground into matcha are grown and that this tea caravan has won the privilege of supplying the daimyo and the country's temples for three years running, due to their leaves having pleasant umami undertones in addition to the usual fresh, subtle flavour.
These merchants and the tea plantations they collaborate with won't be entirely bankrupted by the loss of that contract –they supply plenty of other teas to the wider market later in the season– but they will have to make adjustments for not getting returns on their investment and reduce their expenditures accordingly. Madara can't say he's surprised that this group's competitors have resorted to sabotage –jealousy and envy underpin so many of the contracts offered to the Uchiha– but at least the strategy Kita helped him put together means that the tea won't go to waste. It won't arrive at the capital in time to compete for the highest prices on new tea or be included in the annual matcha competition for supplying the temples and the daimyo, but it will arrive at a market, it will be sold and it will be bought. Probably at lower prices than intended too, so it will reach a wider audience than merely priests, monks and the capital's wealthiest officials.
Madara knows that his father will be keeping a large quantity of the matcha-grade leaves for the clan. The umbrella bags –and that name has stuck– allow for fully airtight storage so the tea will not sour or degrade. Rather than buying small amounts of matcha fresh every month in case of guests and having to use it up regularly they can now store it indefinitely in powder form, which means being able to buy in bulk and of a higher grade.
Or in this case, steal in bulk, although they will have to pay for it to be properly stone ground. The contract simply requires them to 'destroy the caravans so that no tea arrives in the capital before June,' so ambushing them with blunt force trauma and subtle genjutsu, emptying the carts and then picking a different ambush point for the next round is easy enough. The next caravan is likely to be much better guarded though, so Madara has made clear to the forty clansmen under his command that they are to ensure none of the merchants remember exactly who it was they were ambushed by –making them think it was bandits is fine– and to keep jutsu use to a minimum.
No need for anyone to realise this is an Uchiha operation, which would inspire them to hire Senju. That's going to happen over the rice later, since they have to be visible for the intimidation factor.
"They're in sight," his cousin Eboshi says abruptly. "Not going to be in range for a good hour though." A jutsu lets him see the world through his summon's eyes; a highly effective scouting method when crows are ubiquitous.
Madara reaches for his umbrella bag and pulls out his bento. "May as well eat first then." It's going to be a busy six weeks; he's grateful Kita's seal has a volume limit rather than a weight limit and that she can fit the entire contents of a storehouse in one twice over; they're probably going to need all of that.
He had no idea people drank so much tea.
Two weeks later, when the first batch of stolen tea has been handed off to the civilian clansmen who organise the Uchiha's trade shipments and Madara's subordinates all have their empty umbrella bags back, another trading caravan approaches their new –and much earlier– ambush point.
The tea merchants have indeed hired the Senju. They may well have tried to hire the Uchiha first –Father would know– but all the Uchiha are currently 'employed elsewhere' and that is probably suggestive all by itself.
At least Tobirama isn't down there; if he was the ambush would already be over. The brat's barely fifteen and already a better sensor than anybody the Uchiha can field, which is terribly annoying as it's not possible to ambush anybody within ten miles of him.
If Tobirama's not here –and neither's Hashirama by the look of things– then they must already be guarding the rice crops of those landowners who took advantage of last year's flooding. The civilians hiring the Uchiha probably haven't kept their mouths shut about their intentions after all, so the landowners have had time to prepare.
Madara knows that his father is a cunning warrior, but he and Izuna can't fight off Butsuma, Hashirama and Tobirama all by themselves. He'll have to send a message with one of Eboshi's crows and see if his father is willing to let him delegate command and head north.
First though, the ambush.
"What's the plan, Madara-sama?" Hikaku asks quietly, staring hatefully down at the Senju walking alongside the caravan coming slowly up the valley. Hikaku absolutely loathes the Senju for his little sister Toku's death.
"We've got another month to go, so we can't afford to get injured," Madara says firmly. "We also can't afford to draw attention; if the Senju realise I'm here, they'll send Hashirama on the next escort and we won't be able to steal the tea. We need that tea," he insists as several other nearby Uchiha side-eye him. "The last shipment all by itself is making the clan at least five times as much money as this mission is!"
"So what's the plan?" Eboshi drawls, sharingan eyes spinning in annoyance.
"We are going to make complete fools of them," Madara says fiercely; he knows how to get his clansmen on his side. "It's going to be slow, but it will work. The Senju will know by the end that it must have been us, but with their pride wounded they will probably downplay the risks to Butsuma. After all, if we were hiding then we must have been weaker than them. We'll probably get Tobirama on the last delivery to thwart ambushes entirely, but that's still better than Hashirama; he'll sense me coming and realise he can't win." That would also make matters easier for his father and Izuna; Tobirama being away would make Hashirama restless and distracted, especially once he realises that Madara is not there and likely therefore to be facing his younger brother across the battlefield.
Tobirama is not an honourable opponent, but he is at a least pragmatic one. The brat knows Madara is stronger than he is, so will choose retreat over an extended confrontation even with a mission on the line. Madara will be able to take on Tobirama and the best of the Senju all together while the rest of his clansmen rob –and probably burn seeing as they will have limited time to work– the caravan and deal with lower-ranking Senju.
"How?" Hikaku asks, looking abruptly very interested.
"We're going to use genjutsu. Sneak into the caravan while it's moving, in pairs with chakra suppressed, and replace the tea shipment with rocks and tree branches over several days. One of the pair has an umbrella bag loaded with junk, unloading the junk as the other one loads the tea so the weight and handling of the carts doesn't change, putting a genjutsu over the rocks afterwards so the civilians don't notice the difference too soon. We all know what a sack of tea weighs now and how many each of those carts fits; we can sneak their goods out from under their noses so the Senju feel all smug until they arrive at the end and realise they've failed completely," Madara says vindictively. "The rest of us can follow alongside in case of things going wrong, ambush civilians quietly to borrow their clothes for the infiltrators to wear and carry them along so that afterwards they can get dressed again and rejoin the group; that way the Senju will never realise that they even left."
The manic grins all around tell him he's successfully got everybody behind his –admittedly rather complicated– plan.
"If the Senju don't realise who we are they won't think to avoid looking us in the eyes," Taka, one of the five women in the party, muses maliciously. "This is going to be a pleasure, Madara-sama." Taka is a highly respected genjutsu specialist in a clan where everybody with the sharingan can make illusions as easily as breathing; this mission is exactly her kind of thing.
"You all know who's best at genjutsu and stealth and who has seniority," Madara says bluntly. "No more than ten going; pair up, borrow extra bags and head down the slope. The rest of us will be staying well above the tree line so as not to give you away."
"By your command, Madara-sama," Rausu chirps, already falling in beside Taka, who has seniority and is best in genjutsu of everybody present; she will have effective field command for this.
It itches not to be on the front lines, but shadowing the illusionists from ahead and above, ready to swoop down and attack should they be caught, is the best use of his skills and position of authority. This way he has command of the entire field, has Eboshi to report details to him by crow and won't get them found out because his ability to suppress his chakra still slips when he's stressed.
It's a magnificent success; Eboshi's genjutsu projection of the Senju's reaction when the theft is revealed a week later –as seen by crow eyes– has the entire battle group rolling on the ground laughing with glee in their hideout twenty miles away.
Tobirama is indeed sent with the third –and last– shipment they are contracted to waylay. That clash is a violent, wasteful carnage –Madara loses Rausu and twelve other clansmen have to be carried from the field due to their injuries– but they take half the tea, the rest is burnt along with the wagons and the merchants have hopefully learnt that pitting Senju against Uchiha gets everybody in the vicinity killed too, especially when the clash takes place in narrow valley passes with nowhere to get away from the battlefield.
Tobirama survives and retreats exactly as predicted, but the Senju took more casualties, failed their mission and didn't manage to keep even half the civilians alive. Madara doubts they'll be hired again; more likely that next year these merchants will hire the Uchiha first, so as not to find themselves on the opposite side of a contract.
Then he is ordered north with the twenty fittest of his group to join the rice-burning mission, which has indeed turned into outright clan warfare; the rest of the group will limp home west –with the tea and the carrying-wounded– and the ones who are able-bodied will then double back after him.
Hopefully he will arrive on the battlefield before Tobirama does.
Kita is thirteen and what her body is currently doing is definitely puberty. Knowing that however really doesn't help when she is currently the technical Homeguard Head and the entire Outguard is off either engaging in grand theft tea, burning rice fields or scouting around the edges of the Senju forces to ensure the other clan doesn't decide to fulfil their contract by going off and trashing other people's rice fields, thus ensuring a universal price hike that will benefit their current employers.
She's not sure Izuna even realised that was a possibility until she pointed it out, but he'd instantly grasped the wider implications and taken them to Tajima-sama, which was why the entire Outguard is away this year despite the mission not strictly calling for it. They'll be picking up minor local missions of course, but it still means they're not available for more profitable work elsewhere.
Unfortunately, pointing out the implications of the field burning prompted Tajima-sama to appoint her as Homeguard Head before leaving and taking all the warriors with him, so Kita is thirteen years old and in charge of the proportion of the Uchiha clan not away completing contracts. She hadn't expected displaying an understanding of economics and its implications to be enough for Tajima-sama to grant her actual authority; surely there is more to being Homeguard Head than that? Even if her decisions have to be approved when he returns and she needs to persuade the elders to support her choices, he can't exactly change what she's done and spent retrospectively.
Ohabari-oba is still doing most of the interpersonal bits for her, but Kita has to personally sign off all the financial stuff and decide what the clan is going to do with all the tea that they suddenly have piling up.
Kita was not expecting her –very basic– knowledge of market forces and the effects of plenty or scarcity on price to be such an asset to the clan. Yes, all the clan members who go on trading ventures do know that you get a better price for something if it is a thing the customer can't get elsewhere without compromising on quality, but the Uchiha clan mostly deals in specialist goods and services so they don't really have a conscious understanding of what flooding the market does to fellow traders in the short- and long-term.
It is at least easily explained with a few thought exercises, so she doesn't have any trouble getting the clan's trading branch to be fully on board with splitting up two-thirds of the tea –still in the now-officially named 'umbrella bags'– and agreeing to take it out of the country. North for the first shipment; the tea season starts later in the north, so there'll be a lucrative market for new tea there at this time of year and the clan will be able to command high prices for it. They'll also be able to spend the money on goods that are harder to get hold of in Fire; the groups heading for Hot Springs and Iron are under orders to buy iron sand. As much iron sand as they can get at such short notice; it is easy to stockpile now the clan has essentially unlimited space and will provide wider market opportunities later. The quarterly local iron sand order will of course continue unchanged; no need to alienate their usual supplier.
There will be a smaller group heading west into Wind in a few weeks, provided there is more pilfered tea to load them up with; Wind doesn't have much to sell. In the meantime however the remaining tea is being divided up so that some of the matcha-grade can be stone ground immediately –well, taken to a suitable tea-grinding cooperative where the clan will pay for it done with a percentage of the product– and the rest is stored. The new sencha is valued, tithes are set aside for the Outguard and Homeguard Heads and the rest is made available to the clan at a fairly nominal fee.
The tea was essentially free, so charging more than a token sum intended to supply income to those clan members who run the storehouses would be exploitative. There's also an upper limit to how much tea any household can buy, so that nobody gets it into their heads to hog it all. The new tea still all vanishes inside a week; the next load does indeed arrive in time to justify a small trading party heading to Wind.
By this point Kita has a detailed wish list from the clan's craftspeople –things that would enable them to expand their business or improve productivity– and another wish list from the clan's elders, which is more along the lines of militarily useful things and luxuries.
She is already investing heavily in iron sand, which will go a way to boosting the military side of things. Additional items she feels comfortable purchasing in bulk before tea profits come in from the Wind trip include nori, kombu and other edible seaweeds, salt, dried or otherwise preserved fish and seafood, lacquer and washi. Other things will have to wait until later in the season, but she has plans for citrus trees, white mulberry trees –genetic diversity is important and Mama's trees are all clones– paper mulberries, rice bran for pickles, cotton –both raw and woven– along with medicines, dyes, precious metals and other raw materials the clans only needs small quantities of but will suffer without. Including books; education and entertainment are both important.
She may end up buying silkworm eggs as well; Mama only raises enough for her own projects and if the clan could make its own silk that would be a steady source of income as well as pride. It would also provide impetus for an increased investment in peace; silk requires peace to be truly beautiful, as raising silkworms needs a steady supply of leaves, weaving is time-consuming, the various more exotic dyes must be bought and the resulting bolts of cloth must be sold. Yes, there is a market for raw cocoons, but the prices are far lower. Processing and labour add value, which is only to be expected.
With domestic silk the hard part is keeping the silkworms fed; they eat like mad, far faster than Kita's wild caterpillars do, and there are several generations a year. White mulberry thankfully grows very fast, so it is possible to scale up silk production so long as you can also scale up the number of available trees.
Kita is planning on planting new white mulberry saplings in communal clan space and dedicating a nearby storehouse to raising silkworms in, so that the resulting silk will belong to the clan as a whole rather to any specific individual. Individuals are of course free to grow trees from seed in their own gardens and buy their own silkworm eggs, but making the main bulk of the trees –and silkworms– communal means that everybody can dedicate a few hours to the process without any one person becoming overwhelmed. It also hardens production against individual deaths, illnesses, travel and other unexpected responsibilities.
Kita also has vague plans for a clan pottery; they have charcoal and smelt steel, they have a riverbank and nearby clay hills, so why not? She's very interested in how Uchiha techniques could assist and refine the firing process and she's sure clan pride can be leveraged there as well. Imagine serving tea with clan pottery!
She has talked about all these things where people can hear her; well, not her ulterior peaceful motives, but about how she wants to make the clan more prosperous. She has also mentioned the possibility of rearing their own livestock –probably pigs, pigs will eat anything and with the silk they're about to invest in, they'll soon have a regular supply of silkworm pupae from the reeled cocoons– and a few people already seem to be on board with the idea of reducing food waste and not having to buy pork.
By the time the battered remnant of the tea raiders return to the compound, full of glee at their successes despite their injured and dead and carrying another decent load of leaves, Kita has stitched many more seals for storing the purchased iron sand in, authorised two young clansmen to apprentice themselves to a potter in a nearby affiliated village, ordered the building of a very sturdy pigpen on the edge of the compound –nobody knows whether having pigs will attract wild boars and letting the animals roam in a fenced section of woodland is better than sacrificing part of a field– replenished the pharmacist's stores and marked out an area of communal clan land for an orchard.
Hearing that Madara has been summoned directly to assist in the field burning mission with the rest of his division –evidence that matters have indeed escalated into all-out war– is really worrying, but all Kita can do about that is arrange for the last load of tea to be sold on various local markets, stock up on leather and lacquer to repair armour with, fix up the coats of the wounded, hold funerals for the dead –thankfully only three– and try to come up with ways for widows to earn money. Soon it will be time to harvest the hemp, and with how much has been planted everybody is going to need to help with the processing, so that's a temporary fix at least.
The merchants who funded the tea raids have paid in full, so Kita just has to get her next round of purchases approved by the elders; it's mostly gone through as the only remaining arguments are over what is going to be done first. Considering the Wind trading group are due back any day with more money –and probably a fair amount of gold; there are gold sands in Wind– the bickering will hopefully die down a bit. It is only possible to do so many things at a time when almost half the most able-bodied adults are off killing each-other and getting killed in turn. Maybe she can push the silk thing as a way for the clan's widows and older orphans to bring in money? It would take the onus for such things off everybody else and raising silk is considered a suitably feminine profession.
The only benefit of the field-burning mission is that, it being commissioned by large-scale rice growers, the clan has been paid in rice. Well, rice futures; they won't actually get to collect until harvest time.
Kita just hopes the war won't stretch too far beyond harvest time. The weather this year has been surprisingly mild, so if that stays true the fighting could continue well into November. She desperately hopes that won't happen, but the saying on how fortune favours the prepared has truth to it so she consults with retired Outguard members –who make up the martial side of the Homeguard– to reinforce patrols and provide extra training to teenagers who have little to do over the summer outside of the busy but brief harvest periods.
Clansmen aren't allowed to actually join the Outguard if they're younger than fourteen, but training is available to everybody over the age of eight. Madara, Izuna and Hikaku joining as young as they did was due to Tajima-sama deciding for them.
Kita hopes that all the things she's done in Tajima-sama's absence will meet with his approval. Or at least Madara's approval; her betrothed is more likely to see what she's actually trying to achieve.
It is in fact November before the Outguard limps home, fifteen men short and more than half the survivors injured. The funerals will be ongoing for well over a week; her uncle Sefuri is among the dead. She didn't know him that well, but his death hurts and Auntie Tsuyu is inconsolable.
Madara rants at her for almost an hour about Hashirama trying to sell peace with bloody hands before finally managing to burst into tears and mourn his lost clansmen. He falls asleep by the iori, his head resting on her calves as she strokes his hair, and Kita probably would have sat up all night so as not to disturb him if Hikaku hadn't shuffled out of his bedroom carrying spare pillows and blankets to make Madara comfortable with so she can sleep in her own bed without waking up her betrothed and sending him home.
This is how Kita discovers Madara is a sleepwalker: when she wakes up the following morning he is curled up next to her under the blankets, still wrapped in the one Hikaku covered him with the night before, one arm snaked around her torso and his face buried in the back of her neck.
He wakes up the moment she tries to slide out from under him and his utter mortification at having crawled into her bed –complete with babbled apologies and the incidental admission that it is usually Izuna that he does this to– drives him to hide in the study for an hour, chakra an agitated swirling mass, which in turn forces Kita to coax him out with food and assurances once the younger boys have all been fed and firmly sent out for their lessons.
She very much appreciates his moral fibre, but she would like him to trust that she knows he is a kind and respectful person. She isn't about to assume he has nefarious motives for something as innocent as falling asleep on her. Conveying this to her profoundly embarrassed betrothed is however somewhat challenging; Kita just knows she's going to be late to naginata practice.