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"Why the fuck's this happening again?!"
A goblet of wine flew across the room and hit the wall, staining the cream colour maroon. The bronze clang echoed in the silent room as a fat man, in his late fifties, with a few strands of thinning hair combed over his head, sat hunched over on a diwan.
Baizan made his money from iron. He had followed his father into smelting, turning ore into iron in heat and smoke, but unlike his father, who had never risen above a wage-slave, he had become the owner of his own ironworks. In five years, he had two blast furnaces. In ten, he added a dozen more, each bigger and hotter than the last. When smelting wasn't enough, he expanded into smithing, turning raw materials into finished products.
But his fortune truly bloomed with the Second Shinobi World War, when the demand for iron, steel, and weapons couldn't be met even by an entire nation's ironworks pumping out metal around the clock. They wanted more, so the Daimyo and the Hidden Leaf gave ironworks around the country endowments—funding to open more furnaces and train more smiths—without ever needing to return the money.
As an already big player in the industry, he received a sizable endowment and an even more substantial contract that only grew as he consistently met their demands. While the endowment was nice, the contracts and friends he made were better.
By the time the Third Shinobi World War rolled around, he had extended his reach to the Daimyo's court, which allowed him to get into the mining industry, gradually gaining mining contracts for many small and medium-sized iron deposits.
He was the Land of Fire's Iron King. He had dined with the Fire Daimyo and often sat down with court nobles.
However, his success also brought him into contact with some unusual personalities, and Shimura Danzō was chief among them. One meeting was enough to tell him that the shinobi was a dangerous man, and not just in the skilled-killer kind of way. He had grown used to people who could kill him as easily as stepping on an ant from being in the company of samurai, and had seen enough from the former shinobi in his employ.
Danzō was a different kind of dangerous, but was as valuable as he was dangerous.
"Didn't we take care of this already?" Baizan yelled at his subordinate. "I increased their wages just last year! They want more? Again?!""
"They're saying it's not enough—"
"Greedy good-for-nothings!"
One of his many towns—"his" because he employed the majority of the able-bodied men and a substantial number of women in the town—had suddenly declared a labour strike and refused to work until their wages were increased, and other demands were met. There wasn't much he could do because the town's furnaces couldn't be moved, and it would be difficult to find others who could take them over, along with many other problems, which made it an actual headache to solve.
He could put pressure on them: threaten to close down the ironworks altogether, fire a few, or let them run themselves into the ground until they gave up, but he needed the workers to keep the furnaces burning around the clock to meet the contractual demands of his clients.
Baizan didn't have the liberty to take things slow unless he wanted to eat losses and lose the market's trust, and he knew if he relented in one town, his other operations might demand the same treatment, which would cost more money down the line.
The last time he had this problem, Danzō had helped him take care of it. A different town had dared to demand more when they should have felt grateful for what they earned. Danzō nipped it before it could turn into anything serious, but now, the old shinobi had been run out of the Hidden Leaf and was wanted across the Land of Fire for his crimes.
"What was their name? The Scorched Wolves? Call them! I want this solved as soon as possible!"
Baizan clicked his tongue, thinking about how many losses he would incur this time around. Last time, it had taken over a fortnight to resolve the situation and another week for everything to return to normal. He was even forced to go down to show his face.
"Master, we don't need those mercenaries. I saw how they did it last time. We can handle this problem with the men we have here. Handling it by ourselves would be quicker than going through the fixer, negotiations, and then their eventual arrival," said Hisasa.
Baizan gazed at his right-hand man. "...I don't like failure, Hisasa."
"I wouldn't dare."
"Are you sure you can handle it?"
"I'll make sure that they get back to work as soon as possible."
He nodded. "Then take care of it quietly."Quicker or not, it'd definitely be cheaper to keep it in-house.
———
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"If the master wants us to work, then he knows our demand. We have been loyal to him, and believe what we ask is what we deserve, and we hope he sees it the same way," said one of the workers.
He was a healthy man with bronze skin in his early thirties. His body was corded with muscles tempered by the heat of the furnace and forged under the weight of iron.
Hisasa narrowed his eyes at the man before him, named Ennotora. They were sitting in the town hall. His gaze moved past the man to the room full of ironworkers and others from the village sitting behind Ennotora, thoroughly filling the hall.
They were all employed by Baizan, and seeing them nod and speak up in firm agreement didn't fill him with confidence that it would be easy to break this up. He met some of their eyes, and while some hushed their muttering under his gaze, not as many as he would've liked did so.
"I'm afraid he doesn't see it that way," Hisasa said with a downturn of his lip.
"We are grateful to the master. It's because of him that we're able to feed our families, but we also know our own worth and don't want to feel insulted every time we are paid," said Ennotora, his words raising more voices behind him, this time louder.
Hisasa hid his frown, not wanting to give anything away, but he certainly wasn't happy.
"We request a meeting with the master. I'm sure if we can explain our side, he'd understand that we're only being reasonable."
"The master is busy. He doesn't have the time to show up to meet unreasonable people," Hisasa said, getting up from his chair, his men standing up behind him.
"We know our value, Mister Hisasa. I'm afraid the master can't ignore us even if he thinks that we're being unreasonable. Please relay our message. Our town will be ready to receive him. If he does right by us, we will return the favour by giving him the best iron and steel in this country. WON'T WE?"
With Ennotora's shout, the entire village of ironworkers erupted in loud support, showing their enthusiasm and resolve in the face of their livelihood on the line.
Among the crowd, a pair of eyes, neither resolute nor anxious, silently watched the exchange play out.
———
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"Who is that man?" Hisasa said as they returned to the master's mansion in the town, putting his leg up on a table decorated with the mother-of-pearls, one he wouldn't dare buy despite his earnings as the right-hand man of the Iron King. That same table sat collecting dust in a town house Baizan hadn't visited more than a couple of times since its construction.
Sitting across from him was Baizan's cousin, the person in charge of the town, who had allowed the matter to devolve to this state. Borumi lay on the back couch, looking just a bit sheepish, but lacked any kind of guilt for what had happened under his charge.
"Who is he?" Borumi asked a lanky, bespectacled man beside him, who didn't seem like he had ever worked near a flame and seemed to be the chief bookkeeper for the business
"Ennotora, leader of the third furnace. He got here four years ago—"
"And he's the leader of the furnace?" Hisasa frowned. That wasn't enough time to become the leader of a furnace. Even if he were a skilled ironworker, it was too soon for an outsider to be trusted by the workers.
"He's very good at his job and very charismatic," Borumi answered.
Hisasa pursed his lips. "Yes, that's a problem I'm abundantly aware of, thank you."
Having a charismatic leader meant it would be harder to break the strike, as long as there was someone to rally and guide them, and from what Hisasa had seen, Ennotora seemed to have a level head on his shoulder and knew the cards he was holding.
This was already looking tougher than he expected.
"There's no problem. Just ask cousin to pay them what little money they're asking. How much could it be? Our family has no lack of wealth and besides, they do good work. Imagine how much work they'd do if they're satisfied, huh?" Borumi laughed, waving the matter away as if it were no big deal.
Hisasa wanted to remove his slipper and whip the lazy good-for-nothing until he cried, but hitting the master's family wasn't something he could do, no matter how useless they were. And yet, Borumi wasn't exactly wrong. The business didn't lack money, and they could definitely pay. However, the rich were more stingy with money than those who had none. Baizan wouldn't part with a single ryō unless he had no choice and would try everything before he would pay his workers, regardless of whether they deserved it or not.
"Master doesn't want to pay, so we will need to figure out a way to break this strike," Hisasa sighed, fed up with Borumi. He turned to the chief bookkeeper, who actually looked to be of some use. "Get me the information on the furnace leaders, their second-in-command, and the poorest of the workers."
Last time this had happened, the master had hired a mercenary group called the Scorched Wolves, which employed truly devious tactics like turning the furnace leaders to their side by offering to increase their wages as long as they convinced those under them to break away from the strike. If the furnace leaders refused to cooperate, they approached the next in the chain and tempted them with a promotion and the benefits that came with being a furnace leader, as long as they could do the same. And it had worked like a charm, as people chose to betray their fellow workers, friends, and neighbours.
The irony was that the "traitors" weren't offered much more money, and they could've got roughly the same amount if they had stuck with the strike. Of course, they targeted the poorest, who felt life's pressures the most, by threatening to fire them even if the strike succeeded. Last time, a few with debts had folded immediately, breaking away from the strike and agreeing to return to work, which created a crack in the strong coalition.
It was time to hammer in some cracks this strike as well.
———
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Tozo, the chief bookkeeper, saw Borumi off to his home, but instead of returning to his home or to work, he snuck off to a specific building in the town. It was no different from any other home, and when he knocked, a gentle old lady opened the door.
"You should eat more. There's no meat on those bones," she said before he could say anything.
"Is she here?" he sighed.
"She's been waiting for you."
He entered the living room of the old lady's home to find a young woman sitting on a couch with a flower-pattern. She had a book in her hand that she looked up from when he entered.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"They've asked me to send them names of leaders, second-in-commands, and the poorest. Just as you said they would," he said, swallowing in nervousness.
"Well, they're using a certain mercenary group's tactics. It was surprising to see them move so quickly, but it made sense. They decided to handle it in-house. I don't know if that's wise. Seeing it once doesn't make one a master."
Even though Ennotora was the leader of the strike, the woman sitting before him was the real mastermind. She was the one who had chosen Ennotora as the leader, guided him through everything from gaining confidence to organising everyone to present a united front. Without her, it would've been much harder to get everyō ne's support and get everything to become something that would be taken seriously.
"W-What do you want me to do?" Tozo asked, clenching his fists.
Even though he wasn't part of the strike, he wanted to be because he supported the cause. As the bookkeeper, he knew how much money the town's ironworks made and how much the workers were paid. As Ennotora said, it was insulting. He had wanted to join the cause, but the woman had stopped him, telling him to be their spy, using his position as Borumi's close aide to be a source of information.
"It's time to show that they can't just push us around," she said and closed her book to happily help the old lady set up the tea and snacks on the table as they got ready to listen to a daily radio show.
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The link is in the synopsis!