Chapter 18: His Hands

The horn blew three long notes, and the whole yard moved at once.

The captain bellowed.

Soldiers ran for the rack by the door and came back buckling on their swords.

The Princess stood on a barrel in the yard and gave orders in a clear voice.

"The inn is the fort. Barricade the front. Archers on the roof, wagons across the road."

"The village comes in. All of it."

Hanae did not wait to be asked.

She sent Tamae to ring the iron triangle by the well.

By noon three hundred people from Mikage were coming down the road with babies and pots and goats.

She put the old ones in the dining room, the children in the storeroom, and every pan she owned on the fire.

She fed the soldiers on their feet.

Kaito, grey as dishwater, was put in Room Three by the captain's order.

Two men stood outside his door.

No one said it was a guard.

At dusk the lookout came down again.

The vanguard had camped on the far bank, a mile north.

They would cross the river at first light.

The inn went quiet by degrees, with the lantern burning over the door.

Hanae stood in the dark kitchen with her hands on the table where, that morning, she had been laughing.

Now they would not stop shaking.

The pantry door opened.

She turned.

Jiro stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, with the lamp behind him.

He had not slept either.

"I could not make my hands be still," he said. "I came to see if yours were the same."

She held them out.

He took them in his one good one and turned them over.

They were small and chapped and scarred from the oven, and they trembled in his palm.

He kissed the inside of each wrist.

"Come to your room," said Jiro.

"I have three hundred people on the floor..."

"They are asleep. The Princess has posted the watches. For one hour, Hanae, you are not the cook."

She went with him.

Her narrow room was under the kitchen stairs, and it was the only quiet place in the house.

He closed the door and turned the key, and put it in his pocket.

"For a month you have been looking after me," he said. His voice was low and very steady.

"Tonight you will keep your hands at your sides, and I will look after you."

Heat climbed her throat.

"Jiro. Your arm."

"The arm is not the point."

He sat her on the edge of her bed.

He knelt at her feet on the boards and untied her apron, slowly, and set it aside.