Chapter 169

By the next afternoon, Azuki thought she'd learned more about coal mines than she had ever thought she'd want to. Lord Eitaro kindly remembered that the coal deposit had been her discovery and somehow thought that meant she would be interested in every little detail of its extraction from the earth. Lord Eitaro was a short, broad, muscular man who walked nowhere he bustled, trotted or swept. He was quick to anger and known for snap decisions that were, in the long run, most often proven right, so he was not only tolerated, but sought after. He was a warrior by nature and excelled on the battlefield, though politics both bored and confused him. His wife, Lady Satsuki, excelled at the kind of subtle maneuvering that constituted politics in feudal and post-feudal Japan. They were a very good match.