Tetsu Cogari planted his wooden sword in the dirt and told the six smaller bots behind him to hold their line. He was a young brass-bot in a rice hat, and he had promised these urchins a roof by winter. The scrapyard behind the fence was going to be that roof. He meant to win it back from the junk dealer, clear a floor, and raise an orphanage dojo where the smaller bots could sleep and train. This morning the fence was open, and a stranger in purple robes stood inside it. The stranger was fat and silver, dressed in martial robes stitched with lapis, holding a spear that cost more than the whole yard. He drove a stake into the ground and hung a banner from it. The banner bore a sect mark Tetsu did not know. "This yard is claimed," the stranger said. "The sect is mining it for ore. Divine weapons need clean metal. Move the children off the pile." "They sleep here," Tetsu said. "There is nowhere else." "That is not my problem," Tanu Gilar said. He leveled the spear at the nearest urchin, a scuffed bot half Tetsu's height clinging to a rusted cargo cube. "Off the crate. Now." The small bot froze. Tetsu stepped between them and raised the wooden sword across his body, the way he had shown the urchins to stand when they were afraid. The spear tip touched his chest and pushed. Tetsu did not step back. Tanu shoved harder. Tetsu's heels dragged in the grit. The urchins scattered off the cargo cube and behind a heap of gears. A voice came from the pile. "Point down." A one-armed bot in tattered Jianghu garb sat on a crushed cabinet, a wide hat low over his screen. Rust ate the socket where his other arm should have been. "You are shoving a child with a war spear," Iroh Wanabi said. "Point it down or use it." Tanu turned the spear on him. Iroh stood. He crossed the yard in three steps, caught the shaft under his one arm, and drove his forehead into the silver bot's faceplate. Tanu staggered. Iroh wrenched the spear free, snapped the haft over his knee, and dropped both halves in the dirt. "Go tell your sect the yard is taken," he said. "By me." Tanu Gilar picked up the broken spear and walked out through the open fence without a word. The banner stayed. Tetsu lowered the wooden sword and turned to the ronin. "Teach me," he said. "I have six of them. I need to hold this ground." Iroh looked at the urchins creeping back to the cargo cube, then at the brass-bot in the rice hat. "One student," he said. "You. The rest sweep." He sat back down on the cabinet. The yard was Tetsu's for the night. The sect would come for it in the morning.

By morning the sect member was back at the fence. Tanu Gilar did not come through the gate. He stood outside it in his purple robes, one hand on the broken haft of his spear, and watched the yard through the wire. Tetsu Cogari saw him from the top of the scrap pile. The ronin was asleep on the crushed cabinet with his rice hat over his screen. The six urchins were sweeping a lane between the heaps, the way Iroh Wanabi had told them to before he shut down for the night. Tetsu climbed down and crossed to the fence. He kept the wooden sword low. "You lost already," he said. "Go home." "I am not talking to you," Tanu said. He looked past Tetsu at the smallest urchin, the one who had frozen on the cargo cube the day before. The urchin had stopped sweeping and was watching them. Tanu raised his voice, but only a little. "You. Come here." The small bot looked at Tetsu, then walked to the fence. Tanu crouched so his faceplate was level with the urchin's. "The sect takes outer disciples," he said. "Robes. A bunk. Three meals. I need a good eye in this yard. Find me a platinum block, crushed square, heavier than it looks. Point at it through the wire. You wear the robes by nightfall." Tetsu stepped between them. "He is lying," he said. "He was thrown out of here yesterday. He cannot give you anything." The urchin looked up at Tetsu, then back at the silver bot in the ornate robes. Tetsu saw the small bot count the robes, the lapis, the spear-shaft, and weigh them against a scrapyard floor. "I have looked at every pile," the urchin said quietly. He turned and pointed across the yard, past the archway of stacked salvage the ronin used as a gate, to a dull square wedged under a heap of gears. A crushed car, folded down into a block. Platinum under the grime. Tanu's eyes brightened. "Good," he said. "Bring it to the fence." Tetsu caught the urchin by the shoulder before he could move. "No," he said. "There are no robes. There is no bunk. He needs that block to pay a debt, and when he has it he will not come back for you." He crouched the way Tanu had crouched, so the small bot could see his screen. "I promised you a roof. He is promising you nothing." The urchin's hand dropped. He stared at the ingot, then at the silver bot, then at the dirt. He shook his head and stepped back from the fence. Tanu Gilar straightened. He looked at Tetsu for a long moment. "Then I come back with the sect," he said. He turned and walked off with the broken spear over his shoulder. Behind Tetsu, on the cabinet, the ronin's screen lit up under the rice hat. He had been awake the whole time.

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.