A new weapon arrives. Old loyalties fracture. War begins to change.
A foreign ship grounds in the night, and Aoyagi Masanobu spends a day in the dune grass watching what men will do for the two objects aboard her. A foreigner fires a matchlock at a braced plank at forty paces, and every man there puts his fingers in the crater afterward and does the same sums.
When a copied gun has to reach an inland workshop, the hand that carries it is his: the gun, its powder, its written notes, and the smith who made its barrel.
Almost nothing survives the road. Sea water ruins the powder. The lock shears mid-fight — and the smith lays the pieces on a cloth and says the thing that changes the journey. A finished gun does not show how its parts were made.
Masanobu can lose the gun. He cannot lose the man.
