Chapter 5
The acrid tang of smoke clung stubbornly to my clothes as I stood before Lady Eboshi and the assembled denizens of Irontown, every heartbeat thudding loud enough in my chest to make me wonder if anyone else could hear it. This was no classroom of half-asleep teenagers. These were people whose entire lives depended on the iron they dragged from the mountain's bones, and I was about to tell them that they were, essentially, doing it wrong.
The meeting had to be held in the evening, since every person present spent their days keeping the forges alive, never letting the fires die before the next shift took over. The air inside the hall was thick with skepticism, the light of lanterns flickering over faces worn by heat and soot.
"Thank you for gathering today," I began, surprised to hear my own voice come out steadier than I felt. "I've spent the past few days observing your work, and I have seen remarkable skill and dedication throughout Irontown."
I unrolled the rice paper diagrams I'd prepared, hands careful not to smudge the ink. Every eye in the room tracked my movements—from Lady Eboshi's calculating gaze to the narrowed, suspicious looks of the forge supervisors. They watched me like people who had heard promises before, and seen most of them break.
"However," I continued, "there are dangers in your current methods. Dangers that won't show themselves right away, but will claim lives all the same, given time."
A low murmur passed through the group. Toki, arms crossed over her soot-stained work clothes, raised an eyebrow. Around her, a few other women exchanged glances—a mix of curiosity and doubt.
"What I'm about to propose isn't just about making better iron, or better things from that iron," I said, smoothing out the edges of my sketches with calloused fingers. "It's about keeping the people who make those things alive long enough to enjoy the fruits of their labor."
Lady Eboshi sat at the head of the table with perfect posture, her face unreadable as she studied my crude diagrams. I'd spent days trying to capture the ideas with what little I had: drawings of lungs blackened by soot, water sources fouled by runoff, and simple diagrams of chimneys and vents.
"So you're saying our forges are slowly killing us?" Toki broke the silence, her voice flat but with a trace of something else behind it—a hint of fear that surprised me. The other supervisors looked at each other, uneasy.
"Not right away," I clarified, keeping my tone even. "But over the years, yes. The black smoke you breathe settles in your lungs. The metals you handle seep into your skin and blood. These things build up. They don't show for years, but when they do, they steal years, maybe even decades, from your lives."
"And these changes you propose," Eboshi said, one finger tracing the outline of a redesigned chimney, "they will prevent such illness?"
"Not prevent, exactly, but reduce it. Significantly," I replied, grateful she was engaging with the details. "The human body is tough, but also fragile in certain ways. I won't bore you with a lesson in anatomy, that's not the point. But these improvements will help your bodies hold up longer under the punishment of forge work."
I gestured to the diagram of the ventilation system. "First, we redirect the smoke up and away from where you breathe. Right now, too much lingers at head height."
I paused, letting the words settle, watching faces for signs of understanding.
"Continue," Lady Eboshi prompted, her gaze sharper now.
I nodded and moved to the next diagram. "Then, your water. The runoff from the forges carries metals and other poisons into what you drink and cook with. A simple system of settlement pools will filter much of it out." I pointed to the sketch of stepped basins. "Cleaner water means fewer stomach illnesses, fewer deadly fevers, and healthier children."
"And stronger workers mean more iron," Gonza interjected, his voice practical and direct.
"Exactly," I agreed, glad for the support. "These aren't just health measures—they'll make every worker and artisan more productive in the long run."
"But there's more," I said, unrolling another sheet. "The masks I've drawn up aren't just to keep out soot—they're designed to filter the smallest particles, the ones you can't even see, but which do the most damage. The face coverings you use now are a good start, but they can be improved."
I saw the beginnings of understanding on several faces.
"How much work will these changes take?" asked a stocky forge woman, her arms roped with muscle. "We can't stop production. The demand for our iron only grows."
"Most can be done gradually, alongside regular work," I explained. "Ventilation can be improved one forge at a time. Some things will take a bit of trial and error."
Lady Eboshi studied me for a long moment before turning to the workers. "What Mikko-san describes matches what I have seen myself in the past. Too many skilled people are lost to wasting sickness brought on by the work. If these measures can extend their years, the investment will be worth it."
Her words shifted the mood. Skepticism remained, but now it was mixed with a grudging consideration.
I walked them through the rest of the changes, translating terms like "heavy metal poisoning" and "particulate matter" into analogies that were more palpable for the local conditions, and thankfully saw heads nod in recognition.
The questions came fast: "What if the land gives less wood, or the snows come early and chill the forges?" "How do we keep the masks from clogging in thick smoke?" "Who will tend the settlement pools, and what do we do with the sludge?" I answered as best I could, sometimes deferring to Lady Eboshi's judgement, sometimes to the practical wisdom of the workers.
Toki, who seemed to be the main one speaking for the forge teams, pressed hardest. "If we make these changes and the iron runs thin, who takes the blame?"
I shrugged. "The changes are meant to help—not slow you down. If anything goes wrong, I'll take responsibility, and I'll fix it. That's my word."
The room was quiet for a moment, broken only by Nakki's soft whine from his spot by the door. Eboshi finally nodded. "Then we begin tomorrow. One of the smaller supporting forges will be the test. If it works, the rest will follow."
A ripple of agreement moved through the hall. Not everyone looked convinced, but I could sense a shift—a cautious willingness to try, if not yet to trust. The meeting broke up in the no-nonsense way of people with real work to do. Within minutes, supervisors were already dividing up the first tasks, arguing over whose teams would handle which changes.
I lingered at the table, rolling up my diagrams and trying to steady my breathing. Lady Eboshi waited as well, her gaze lingering on the departing crowd.
"You did well," she said, voice pitched low so only I could hear. "Better than some of my own overseers. But now we'll see if your ideas work in practice."
I waited, unsure if she would offer praise or a warning. She only smiled, just barely, then turned and left with Gonza at her side, her steps as measured and confident as ever.
The next morning, the first of my proposed improvements began to take shape. We couldn't overhaul everything at once obviously as Eboshi had said.
And I understood exactly why.
The risk of disrupting too many systems at once was too great, thus if the proposed changes didn't bear fruit, it was only one of the smaller forges in a town with, like, at least eight total.
But today was devoted to the stovepipe of a smaller one that was mainly used to work the metal that was refined at the main smelter into smaller, more practical shapes and sizes. I worked alongside the forge crew, sleeves rolled up, sweat beading on my brow. The women eyed me with a blend of suspicion and wary curiosity; some pretended not to notice, but their attention lingered on my hands as I measured, cut, and hammered alongside them. Mikasa, the ever skeptical foreman of the forge in question, hovered at my shoulder, clearly waiting for the first slip or sign of weakness.
"Careful with that seam," she barked as I fitted the elbow joint into the chimney's rising length. "If it leaks, we'll be breathing more smoke than before."
I grunted an acknowledgment and double-checked the alignment. The joining process was stubborn—the old-fashioned wrought iron nails, warped metal, and years' worth of caked soot made the fit less than perfect—but after a few persuasive blows with a mallet, the piece slid home. I smeared a clay-and-ash paste over the seam, smoothing it with the side of my thumb.
"Not bad," The older woman muttered after a moment. "For a man who used to read books for a living." There was the faintest hint of approval in her voice, and it felt like more of a victory than the physical labor itself.
By midday, the new stovepipe rose above the roofline, visible from nearly anywhere inside the walls. Nakki sat at the base of the ladder, tail thumping against the packed dirt as he squinted up at me through the haze. Every so often, someone from a nearby workshop or cookhouse would pause to gawk at the foreigner helping to re-engineer the heart of Irontown.
When the work was finished, I wiped my brow with the back of my hand and glanced down. Mikasa stood below with the others, arms folded, studying the finished stack. She gave a short nod, then jerked her chin toward the lunch shed. "Come eat. You earned it."
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of rice and stewed root vegetables. I sat at the end of a low table, surrounded by women who had either worked on the project directly or found reasons to "inspect" our progress during the morning. Conversation ebbed and flowed around me—a current of jokes, complaints, and stories about the day's labor.
A woman across from me, fingers still blackened from bellows duty, asked, "Back home, do all men do this kind of work, or just the unlucky ones?"
I considered her question, searching for a way to phrase my answer that fit this world. "Where I'm from, everyone learns to work with their hands in some way, but not everyone is good at it. Some are better with words, some with numbers, and some with shaping the material world around us."
"And you?" she pressed, eyes narrowed in curiosity.
I hesitated. "I've always been good at figuring out how things work and how they could be made to work better. Sometimes that made people angry. Sometimes it helped."
Toki snorted. "Here, if you make things better, you get more sake, but also more work. That's your reward." Laughter rippled through the group, but I noticed the way their gazes softened, both toward her and toward me.
After lunch, I walked the perimeter of the settlement with Nakki at my side. Few people ventured near the palisade during the day, but I found Okunami there, her massive frame hunched over a load of timber. She straightened as I came closer, tossing the log onto the growing pile with a single arm.
"How goes the world of iron?" she called out, grinning. "They haven't thrown you in the furnace yet, I see."
"Not yet," I replied. "Give it a few days." I glanced at the timber, then at the sweat gleaming on her skin in the bright sun. "What about you? Fitting in?"
Okunami shrugged. "It's honest work. They pay me with food and coin, and it helps that they don't constantly throw curses my way. I could get used to this, Mikko. Even if their jokes need work."
We stood in companionable silence, watching the lake shimmer in the afternoon light.
"You've changed since we left the forest," she said after a moment. "Quieter. More thoughtful."
"We all change," I replied, though I wasn't sure I believed it.
She didn't push. Instead, she hefted another log onto her shoulder as if it weighed nothing. "If Lady Eboshi asks for you, I'll say you were off inventing new things to make life easier," she said, laughter echoing behind her as she strode off toward the east wall.
Later that day, once I was back inside the walls of Eboshi's garden, I made a point to check in on the lepers' workshop. The air was thick with the smell of oil and metal shavings, a tang that clung to the back of my throat. Ota, the craftsman with the milky eye, was hunched over a gun stock, hands working with the slow, deliberate focus of a monk at prayer. He didn't look up as I entered, but I noticed the tremor in his hands was less pronounced than on my first visit.
"Oh, hello again, Mikko-san." He greeted me without pausing his chisel work, eyes never leaving the grain of the wood. "I received your notes about the gauge and the new drilling jig. I studied the drawing until the lamp ran out of oil last night. It was… most interesting."
He set the stock aside and ducked beneath the workbench, emerging with a bundle of bamboo rods lashed together with cord. "I made this," he said, voice carrying a note of pride. "It's not quite what you drew, but it guides the bore better than my eye ever could." He turned it in his hands so I could see: a tapered central rod, wrapped with waxed twine to hold its shape. Primitive, a bit rough, but it was a clear attempt to bring my sketch to life.
I tried it on a test barrel, and though the fit was far from perfect, the improvement was obvious. The drill's point no longer wandered, and the bore stayed truer down the line than before. Ota watched my face, his own expression guarded, waiting for my verdict.
"This is excellent," I said, not bothering to hide my approval. "If you add thin shims of leather or rice paper to adjust the fit for each new barrel, it'll work even better."
Ota nodded, and for the first time, a genuine, lopsided smile flickered across his face—a brief, crooked thing, but real. "We will do this," he said, then gestured at the rest of the workshop. "The others want to hear about the powder."
I spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing their process for mixing, drying, and grinding gunpowder. With their limited ingredients, all I could do was help tweak the ratios, but now that they had a rebuilt balance for weighing, the batches came out stronger and more consistent. There were still failures—a few burst test barrels, the occasional dud—but the margin for error was smaller, and there was a new confidence in the air.
By sundown, Ota presented a finished firearm to Lady Eboshi herself. She turned it over in her hands, examining every detail with the clinical focus of a surgeon. "It feels sturdier," she said, testing the action. "Does it shoot truer?"
Ota glanced at me, leaving the answer to me. "The barrel alignment is improved," I said. "You'll notice the difference most at range. Less scatter, more force is maintained behind each hit even at greater distance."
Eboshi's eyebrow arched with interest. "We will test it at tomorrow's range," she said, then looked back to Ota. "Will this method increase output?"
"Not necessarily. If anything, it adds extra steps," Ota said with a dry chuckle. "But it should keep more barrels from being scrapped. Maybe one in three will be saved. Means more actual working guns in people's hands."
"Good," Eboshi said, already turning to her next concern as if praise were something to be rationed.
After she left, Ota busied himself with tidying up, but as I made to go, he called my name.
"Mikko-san. What you have given us—I believe now it is more than I could have ever imagined when I first met you." He met my eyes, voice steady. "My hands will not last for much longer in the state they are in. But maybe the next craftsman, or a child born without the curse, will build better guns than any of mine." He hesitated, searching for the words, then settled on a quiet, "Thank you."
I inclined my head, knowing that was all he needed.
The day of the range test dawned clear. The surface of the lake next to the town was shining like a polished mirror, and the mountains were wearing a thin veil of mist.
A line of straw targets stood along the embankment beyond the outer palisade, their bellies stuffed with old straw and reeds, faces marked with charcoal circles. Some members of the forge crew who were waiting for their shift had gathered in a loose semicircle, their chatter a low hum.
Ota and two others brought out three guns, each tagged with a tiny scrap of parchment. Eboshi arrived last with Gonza, her hair tied back, sleeves rolled high. She looked, for once, like she couldn't quite keep the anticipation out of her expression.
Ota held the first gun as if he were presenting a child. "This one was made with the new bore guide," he said to Eboshi, indicating the markings. "We suggest testing it first at twenty, then at fifty paces."
He passed the gun to a woman from Toki's team, who set her feet and shouldered it with a sense of ease that came with repeated practice. A match was touched to the serpent's end. She breathed out slowly, the new iron sights aligned, and squeezed. The crack rolled across the water. When the smoke cleared, there was a neat hole punched just inside the inked circle.
Murmurs. A few heads snapped toward me. I felt heat rise in my cheeks and kept my face still.
At fifty paces, the shot landed short of the center but still inside the ring. Ota's milky eye creased in satisfaction. The second gun, similarly marked, performed a hair worse. The third—a control, produced the old way with a completely smooth bore—hit the straw face on the edge and then bit mud.
Eboshi accepted the results without comment at first, then turned to Ota. "Keep the guide. Improve it further if you can. If yields rise, we'll assign an assistant to your bench."
He bowed, a stiff, awkward movement, but his voice was steady. "Of course, Lady Eboshi."
I had thought the demonstration would end there, but Eboshi turned to me and nodded to my rifle. The eyes of the crowd followed her gaze like iron to a lodestone.
"Shall we see yours?" she asked, almost conversational.
I'd hoped to avoid it—the ammunition was finite and could not be reproduced with current technology. Each shot was a slice from my old life—but there was no gracious way to refuse. I slung the strap, flicked the safety off, worked the bolt with deliberate care, and checked the chamber. The weight was familiar, like it always was.
"Pick a mark," Toki called out encouragingly. "Something small, so we know just what yours can do."
I glanced down the range, then above, around, and eventually beyond it, and finally pointed to a small barren tree on the side of the mountain with a bucket hanging from one of the lower branches, presumably left there by one of the miners using the water from the nearby stream. It was far beyond the last target and barely even visible to the naked eye.
"That one." I said, waiting long enough for everyone to see what I was pointing at.
The distance made quite a few scoff at the thought I could land such a shot, if they even saw what I was trying to shoot at in the first place.
"There's no way any gun can hit a target that far…"
I lay against one of the big rocks lying around the range to steady the shot, the way my old man had taught me in the forest near our old home, back when his legs still worked. Nakki settled beside me, quiet as snowfall. Through the glass of the telescopic sight, the world narrowed and steadied.
A quick calculation of the distance.
Compensate for drop.
Strong winds—gotta adjust point of aim for windage.
Breathe in.
Exhale.
Pause.
And finally… squeeze.
The recoil was a firm handshake to the shoulder. The crack was sharper than the town guns, and for a moment the only sound afterward was lake water lapping at stones.
The distance was great enough that the impact was not immediate, but about a second later one could see the bucket get torn right off the branch as the wood shattered.
I then calmly got up, cycled the bolt, and pocketed the empty cartridge.
"I assume that will suffice?" I asked Eboshi.
The silence stretched. Three heartbeats, then five. The assembled crowd stood motionless, gazes flickering between me and the distant mountain where splinters of shattered wood still tumbled down the slope. Even Okunami's mouth hung slightly open, her usual jokes and smartass comments lost somewhere behind surprise.
"Gods above," someone whispered behind me. "That must be... three hundred paces? Four?"
"More," came another voice, hushed and tinged with something between fear and awe.
Lady Eboshi's expression remained composed, but I caught the faint widening of her eyes—the subtle way her fingers tightened, almost imperceptibly, on the fabric of her sleeve. When she spoke, her voice was clear and unhurried, carrying easily through the hush.
"A remarkable demonstration, Mikko-san." She stepped closer, examining my rifle with renewed interest. "Such range would change the nature of warfare entirely. A single marksman could eliminate commanders before their armies even realized battle had begun."
I slung the rifle back over my shoulder, uncomfortable with the direction of her thoughts. "It's a hunting weapon, Lady Eboshi. Meant for clean kills at distance—not war."
"All tools serve the purpose we give them," she replied, that calculating look returning to her eyes. "But we will speak more of this later. For now, your test has proven the value of your improvements."
The crowd began to disperse, voices rising in animated discussion. I caught fragments as they passed: arguments about what they'd witnessed, speculation on how the weapon worked, wonder at what else I might know. More than a few glances were thrown my way, some admiring, others wary.
Ota approached as I was checking my rifle, his damaged hands clasped before him. "The kind of accuracy you demonstrated," he said softly. "Is it the weapon, or the man?"
"Both," I admitted. "The rifle is only as good as its user, but even the best marksman needs proper tools for the skills to properly shine."
He nodded, slow and thoughtful, that crooked smile appearing again. "Then perhaps there is hope for us yet, if we can learn even a fraction of what you know."
The initial series of improvements arrived in slow, rolling waves. The new stovepipe at the forge drew out the smoke so efficiently that even skeptics like Toki, arms folded and lips pursed, had to admit the air tasted better by the hour. The stepped settlement pools behind the workshops began clarifying their runoff within days. They required daily tending and shoveling, yes, but the logic of the design was so plain that even the laziest apprentice came around.
The mask was the hardest sell. It had to be cheap, breathable, and durable—a combination that seemed impossible given the time period and the materials I had to work with.
I first thought back to the very early gasmasks they made for soldiers in the First World War, but quickly realized that even that might be a bit beyond our current means.
Then I remembered something from the locals in Lapland: about old tales of workers fashioning makeshift respirators by layering birch charcoal between linen to filter out woodsmoke when working away at a charcoal kiln.
In the present context, I improvised with frames made of natural fibers like bamboo, leather straps, and linen rags holding charcoal that was ground to a kind of coarse powder. The first masks were uncomfortable, unwieldy, and ugly. Most importantly, though they were not the most effective at their actual task, given they needed constant adjusting from the wearer to keep from falling off and were not properly sealed so plenty of pollutants were still getting through.
Rome wasn't built in a day though, and I was sure that with enough iterations we'd be able to perfect the concept enough for people to start wearing them regularly.
At night, after the final bell rang and the forge embers died down, I would sit beneath the paper lanterns outside, scribbling notes for further improvements or just letting my mind wander back to the landscapes of pine forests and lakes back home.
Sometimes Toki or one of the other forge women would pass by, nodding at my solitude. More than once, they invited me to take part in the nightly card games or rice wine marathons. I was never the heart of the party, but over time my presence was quietly, gradually accepted.
Okunami stopped by now and then in the evenings, usually reeking of sweat and the sharp tang of freshly cut cedar. She'd lean against whatever wall was closest and ask, "So, are you a prince yet, or just Eboshi's new pet foreigner?"
"Neither," I'd reply. "But someone has to think about the long-term implications of everything that's happening and come up with solutions."
She'd cackle, tip back a ladle of rice wine, and launch into a story about her day: lifting triple loads, arm-wrestling six men in a row, and eating enough dumplings to shame a sumo wrestler. She watched the world with a wry affection, and I found her company oddly comforting, even when her jokes landed like bricks thrown down from a rooftop.
More than once she invited me to join her and the night crew at the bathhouse as well. I always demurred, citing cultural differences or the need to walk Nakki, but her laughter told me she didn't take offense.
"Suit yourself, Mikko-san," she'd say, ruffling my hair like I was a child instead of a grown man. "Someday I'll drag you in there, and we'll see if the air stays as clear after that."
The days and weeks that followed brought a subtle but unmistakable change in the way Irontown regarded me. Where once I had been the strange outsider with odd ideas and an accent no one could quite place, now I was something else entirely—and perhaps, in their eyes, something a bit dangerous. During that time I poured myself into the work with renewed purpose, partly to avoid thinking too much about what I had revealed, and partly because the current of change was already sweeping through the town.
The pools behind the various workshops were expanded and reshaped into a series of stepped basins, each one filtering the water a little more than the last. We tried every material we could get our hands on: layers of sand, gravel, charcoal, and even crushed lake shells.
Eventually, we struck upon a breakthrough combination that left the water nearly clear.
The forge ventilation project grew beyond a single chimney. Together with Toki and the rest of her people, we fitted angled baffles that drew the smoke upward and out, while pulling fresh air in from below. The difference that such a large scale change was obvious almost immediately in the air around the whole town.
Eboshi remained true to her word when it came to giving me what I needed, as the protective masks too went through several more versions even after the initial prototype.
The current iteration, designed in cooperation with the workers, used a combination of leather, layers of cloth, iron sockets with a simple locking mechanism for changeable box filters made from a metal casing, inside of which were the linen pouches filled with charcoal and plants that already naturally absorbed heavy metals from the soil.
Other quality-of-life additions were the rudimentary goggles for eye-protection, even a one-way output hole around the mask's nose area for letting out carbon dioxide. They weren't perfect by any means still—not by the standards I remembered—but they were a world better than rawdogging the dirty air inside the forge buildings.
Some of the workers took to decorating theirs, embroidering patterns or attaching small charms. It became something of a contest, with each section of the workshop trying to outdo the others with the most elaborate designs. I watched this unfold with quiet satisfaction. When safety equipment became something people wanted to wear, rather than something they had to, half the battle was already won.
"You know," Toki remarked one afternoon as we wrangled with the angle of a particularly stubborn baffle, "I haven't had to stop for breath once today. Used to be I'd be wheezing like an old dog by now and feeling all light-headed because of all the fumes."
"Give it a few more weeks," I said, tightening a bolt. "Your body will start clearing out the old soot that's gathered up. You might cough more at first, but then it'll get better."
She gave me a sidelong glance. "You talk like you've seen this before."
I had, in a manner of speaking. Memories of public health posters and safety lectures from a world that felt impossibly distant now. "Something like that," I replied, keeping it vague.
"Well, regardless, it's a good thing you've done for us. It'll eventually be like we were never sick in the first place."
I didn't have the heart to remind her that they'd all likely still have lifelong health complications because of the heavy metals already present in their bodies that clung to things like fat tissue and wouldn't simply be flushed out like a lot of other toxins.
She just hummed at my silence, choosing not pushing the line of questioning further.
Three weeks following the completion of the initial series of improvements, I was summoned to Lady Eboshi's chambers for a private meeting. The sun was setting, painting her room in shades of gold and amber. She sat behind her low writing desk, papers spread before her, but her focus was entirely on me as I entered.
"Sit," she said, gesturing to a cushion across from her. "We have much to discuss."
I settled myself, acutely aware that Gonza was not present. Whatever was to be said here, it would be said without witnesses.
"Your work is bearing fruit faster than I anticipated," she began, her tone measured. "The workers are healthier, more productive. They have told me themselves how they are able to work longer shifts because of the new masks and the improved ventilation. The quality of our iron has improved with the new production methods and additions that you suggested. Even the weapons…" She paused, as if weighing how much to reveal. "The firearms produced with your guidance are showing marked improvements from anything we've made before ourselves."
"I'm glad that my work has been useful to the community," I replied, though I could sense there was more coming.
"Indeed." She leaned forward ever so slightly. "Which brings me to my next point. Irontown will not remain hidden forever. The threats from outside the town grow ever greater and ever present, and our need for defense grows with them. And I'm not only talking of the creatures of the forest."
I nodded. It was a topic that I hadn't wished to think about when helping Irontown improve upon its weapons. Killing a dumb animal was one thing, you could justify it to yourself easily in a variety of ways, chief among them being that you needed to eat.
But using a gun to kill a person? A fellow human being? That was a different story.
I wasn't a pacifist by any means, sometimes deadly force was a necessary evil when it came to ending conflict. And I had come to understand that the era of Japan I had arrived in was a state of near constant conflict.
"I understand your position," I said carefully. "But I hope you understand mine as well. I've shown you how to make weapons more accurate, more reliable. That knowledge can't be taken back now. But I won't actively design weapons meant purely for killing other people."
Lady Eboshi's expression didn't change, but something shifted in her eyes—not disappointment, but a kind of reassessment. "You speak of killing as if it were separate from survival. Here, they are often the same thing."
"I know," I admitted. "And I'm not naive enough to think that violence can always be avoided. But there's a difference between defense and conquest."
"Is there?" She picked up a piece of paper from her desk—a report, by the look of it. "The local Daimyo, Asano, grows bolder. The samurai marching under his clan's banner test our borders weekly now. The Emperor too eyes our iron production with increasing interest. And the forest..." She trailed off, her gaze distant for a moment. "The forest has its own intentions, but at least a part of it definetely involves wiping Irontown and its people off the map."
I thought of San and her wolves, of the kodama clicking in the trees, of forces I barely understood moving in patterns older than memory. "The improvements I've made—the health measures, the efficiency gains—they and others like them in the future will help Irontown defend itself simply by making your people stronger. Isn't that enough for you?"
"For now, certainly," she conceded. "But I wonder, Mikko-san, what you will do when 'for now' becomes 'not anymore.' When those samurai breach our walls and their swords cut down our people, or when the forest spirits decide we've taken too much and decide the only solution left is to kill as many of us as they can..." She stood, moving to the window that overlooked the forges, their glow painting her silhouette in orange. "Will your principles survive the first time you see someone you've come to care about cut down because their weapon wasn't good enough?"
The question hung between us like smoke. I thought of Toki and the other workers and the rough kindness they'd showed me, of Ota's quiet dignity as I taught him and the rest of the lepers like I'd taught a generation of school kids in the past… even of the boisterous friendship full of mutual banter between Okunami and I.
Would I really stand on principle if their lives hung in the balance?
"I suppose we'll find out when that day comes," I said finally.
She turned back to me, and for the first time since I'd met her, I saw something like approval in her expression—not for my answer, but for my honesty.
"Yes," she said softly. "We will." She returned to her desk, the moment of vulnerability passing as quickly as it had come. "For now, continue your work. Show me that I didn't misplace my trust in you when you and your Oni companion first walked through our town's gates."
I recognized the dismissal and rose to leave, but her voice stopped me at the door.
"Mikko-san." I turned back. "Your rifle. How many shots do you have remaining?"
The question I'd been dreading. "Forty-nine," I admitted. "Once they're gone, it becomes little more than an expensive club."
She nodded slowly. "Then we must hope that when you need to use them, you choose your targets as carefully as you choose who you place your trust in."