Tetsu Cogari's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

That afternoon Iroh Wanabi drilled Tetsu Cogari in the lane between the heaps. The ronin held a length of rebar in his one hand. Tetsu came at him with the wooden sword the way he had been shown, feet square, elbows in. Iroh knocked the strike aside. Tetsu turned and cut again. On the third pass the rebar met the sword flat and the wood split down the grain. Half of it spun into the dirt. Tetsu stood with the stub in his fist. "Wood breaks," Iroh said. He lowered the rebar. "You need steel." Tetsu picked up the broken half. He had carved the sword himself. He had used it to show the six smaller bots how to stand. "I don't have steel," he said. Iroh looked at the crushed car under the gear pile. The dull square the small urchin had pointed at through the fence. "You have better," he said. "Sleep. I work tonight." Tetsu shut down on the cabinet with the two halves of the wooden sword beside him. He woke once in the dark. A furnace glow moved on the far side of the yard. Iroh crouched over a stone bowl with his one hand. The crushed ingot sat in the coals, softening at the edges. The broken sword lay across two bricks. Iroh dipped a rag on a stick and painted molten platinum along the wood, layer over layer, until the grain disappeared under a bright skin. He fitted the two halves and bound them in more metal at the break. Tetsu shut his screen and slept. In the morning the sword lay on the cabinet beside him. The wood was gone. In its place was a blade shaped like his old practice sword, heavier, cool, plated in dull platinum with the crack still visible as a seam down the middle. He lifted it. It hung different in his hand. Iroh sat against the archway, screen dark under the rice hat. "Try it on the post," he said without looking up. Tetsu cut a stack of bent pipe in the corner. The blade bit and rang. The pipe fell in two. Then the gate rattled. Tetsu turned. Tanu Gilar stood outside the wire again, and this time he was not alone. A second bot stood beside him — a heavy frame with a boiler chest, oversized claws, sect beads at the throat. Behind them, four more in purple robes waited on the road with spears. Tanu did not crouch and did not bargain. He pointed through the fence at the crushed square under the gears. "That," he said. "We are taking it." The six urchins gathered behind Tetsu in the lane. Iroh stood up slowly from the archway. Tetsu stepped forward with the plated sword low at his side. His practice weapon was gone. What he held now was a blade, and the sect was already at the gate.