3.10: Progress – 1

As we left the insula, I turned to Emma, who had quietly accompanied us for breakfast without uttering a single word.

“Emma, could you please accompany Master Darron to the hospital and introduce him to everyone?”

She nodded silently.

If he wasn’t going to join us permanently, he wouldn’t get to see the industrial district.

Rowan and Ansel had nowhere else to go, while I had struck a deal with Harald to employ his sons in Falkenheim in exchange for his lifelong services.

As they left, my carriage arrived from the castle, driven by Wenik.

“He kept bothering Commander Rafiel until he agreed to let him drive,” Theo said.

“It’s fine,” I replied, nodding to him.

Only in an ambush would his inability to run become a liability.

I looked at the beautiful vehicle, which shone gold and silver under the morning sunlight. I would have preferred to ride, but the rest of my companions couldn’t.

No. I had to take it because I now had to worry about being shot. In my own bloody home.

Sighing, I opened the door to let the others in.

They looked at me with confusion until I gestured for them to hurry. Aprilia smiled as they entered the carriage.

I climbed in after them.

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Rowan tried to not fidget as Count, no, Supreme Leader of Chadom and soon to be Prince Consort of Nanon Jack sat on the bench opposite him. The seat felt too plush and expensive, and the company intimidating.

Closing the door, he scooted next to one of the most beautiful women Rowan had ever seen, and put an arm around her. She leaned into him, fitting as if she belonged there, making him even more uncomfortable.

He could feel the Ansel the glassmaker’s nervousness emanating from him, while Harald’s face was a mask, like a living rock.

Rowan guessed it must be the result of his years of experience as a noble’s head steward.

The man sitting in front of him was unlike any noble he knew. Not that Rowan knew many besides the late Lord Grunric.

Harald did, and he had confirmed last night, when neither of them knew what might happen the next morning, that he hadn’t met any noble like Lord Jack either.

What kind of noble held doors for commoners and ate with them? And how the hell did he survive consuming poison?

Rowan didn’t know if he had made the right decision agreeing to Count Jack’s offer, if it truly had been one, but he would have struggled to survive in Mondgrove after his patron’s death. His heart beat faster at the memory of Grunric’s head decorating a spike atop the gatehouse. He swallowed. It was another reminder that while the man acting like a newlywed might act kind and nice, he was by no means harmless.

“So, what happened in the industrial district?” Count Jack asked the lady.

Rowan couldn’t fathom how she wasn’t. Her posture and beauty matched the Dowager and the tall dusky woman from distant lands.

“It’s a completely different place now. You’ll see,” she replied.

Dirt crunch underneath the carriages’ wheels as it rolled at a steady pace. He couldn’t help but notice the ride was very smooth. He suspected it had something to do with the large bow like iron attachments the carriage sat on, but he wasn’t brave enough to interrupt the couple making eyes at each other.

The valley drifted by. It was a beautiful place, but his heart was too unsettled to admire it.

A distant noise broke his line of thought.

Then it grew louder, and louder, until it had turned into an air shaking roar. Soon it had overpowered the rattle of the carriages’ wheels and the clatter of harnesses. Rowan was wondering what that was happening when the carriage slowed down.

The moment it stopped, lord Jack opened the door.

The noise hit Rowan like a slap.

He walked out with shaking legs as a vista unlike anything he had ever seen opened in front of him. A large waterfall crashed down from the mountain side. Its basin was hidden by mist, which gleamed silver under the sunlight. Two enormous waterwheels turned underneath it so fast their paddles blurred together.

Buildings surrounded the waterfall. Odd ones.

To the left, tall stacks belched thick black smoke into the air, and so did the chimneys at the back of a long building closer to them. Its walls were just scaffolding for its massive windows. He could see men working and glowing coals within.

Rowan confirmed he wasn’t the only one staring at the strange view.

Even Harald gawked.

The buildings belching dark smoke, marring what would have been a beautiful view, were not a very pretty sight, but they stirred something within him.

He could not name it, but he could feel he was about to witness something special. Something kept hidden from the rest of the world.

As they followed Lord Jack to the large building, the air became thick with the smell of smoke, metal and water.

A blast of heat greeted them as Lord Jack opened the door. The soot covered craftsmen kept working, as they couldn’t possibly hear them over the din of their work.

It was a workshop unlike anything he had seen. He could tell they were blacksmiths, but they used strange tools.

A row of forges lined one side, where sweating men lost to the world heated the steel bands til they glowed red-hot. One of them took the hot work-piece to a gigantic device, which had a wheel mounted horizontally on top. Putting the piece underneath, the man spun the massive wheel with one hand, then lifted his work piece to check it.

For the curve? Rowan thought.

“What is that, my lord?” Ansel dared a question.

“A fly press,” he answered promptly.

An older blacksmith was finishing his piece off the old fashioned way on a large anvil. Water sizzled in a trough as another quenched his finished work. On the other side of the aisle, men filed grooves into the finished crossbow prongs, for that’s what they resembled, for the string.

The hiss of cooling steel and the roar of forges mixed with the rhythmic clang of levers and hammers.

One of the craftsmen noticed them. His face split in a grin as he cheered, lifting his still glowing prong by the tongs.

Lord Jack waved back to him.

Rowan felt something lift off his chest.

He had seen soldiers acting frank with the lord. Even Harald had looked mortified at the way they talked with him, but Lord Jack had been just as frank in return.

Rowan should have felt relief, but he didn’t know soldiers. He did know craftsmen. If they were this happy to see him, he couldn’t be that bad of a man.

They walked deeper into the workshop, following their new lord.

“Hmm. The heat is pretty bad here. We’ll have to do something about it,” Lord Jack muttered to himself. “Maybe… stirling engine based fans?”

The lord greeted the blacksmiths in passing, until he stopped at a rough table where an older man was hunched, focused on his work.

He was fiddling with the more delicate parts of the crossbow, filing away imperfections. Two younger men did the same, occasionally looking at him when they thought he wasn’t looking.

“Master Zevan, you are working here as well?” Lord Jack asked him.

He almost jumped out of his seat. His eyes gleamed as they found the lord. “Milord! Yer a sigh for sore eyes. We were wondering when you would come see us.”

“Are you sure you are fine doing this work,” Lord Jack asked the rather old man.

“Aye,” he said, giving the lord a toothless smile. “I saw these lunkheads tryin’ to make the triggers for your crossbows by smashin’ hammers, so I came here to teach them a thing or two.”

“How is that going?”

“Their sausage fingers have no delicate touch, but I keep tryin’.”

The young apprentices snorted, but their eyes held undeniable respect.

“Thank you for all your work.”

“No, no, milord. Thank you for sending all those sheep an’ cattle an’ grain. We’ll never go hungry or cold again.”

“No we won’t.”

As they exited through the other side, cool air from the waterfall rushed in, almost chilling Rowan.

The rhythmic thunder of industry kept going behind them.

“I’ve never seen anything like those machines, milord,” Ansel spoke up.

Lord Jack turned to look at him with excited eyes. “You’ll see many surprises here, Ansel.” Then he lowered his voice. “Soon you will be making one of them.”

“Me?”

“Yes. How would you like to be known as the glassmaker who invented transparent glass.”

“Trans—parent?”

“Clear. Like clean, still water.”

Ansel scoffed. “Glassmakers ‘ave been tryin’ to make that for generations. Nobody’s done it.”

“That’s because they don’t know how to approach knowledge. If you keep making assumptions without testing them against reality, you end up at dead ends.”

Rowan felt a connection with that statement. His ma, may her soul rest in peace, made her ale only one way and scolded him for ‘playing’ with it. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have figured out how to make spirits.

Ansel’s face twisted in offense before he hid it. “We’ve made good glass that lords of Nobart have prized for centuries.”

“You have, but your people have been stuck for generations. Do you know why?”

He shook his head.

“As you progress further in any field, problems become more complex. At a certain point, trial and error just isn’t enough.”

“What else is there?”

“True understanding.”

He cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

“What exactly are different materials made of,” Lord Jack continued. “How they interact with each other. How to break and make the bonds that keep them together to make new materials. It’s a whole field of knowledge called chemistry. Rowan here will focus on the fundamentals in depth, but you will need to know at least the basics if you want to become the best glassmaker in the world.”

His eyes became as big as dinner plates.

“I’ll teach you whatever theory I know, but you’ll have to figure the practical part yourself.”

Ansel stopped in his tracks and bowed. “I’ll do my best, sire.”

“I know you will.”

They crossed the bridge to the other side which was guarded by soldiers. Rowan noticed that the other waterwheel’s shaft extended into the building in front of them.

It must house something special.

Lord Jack stopped and turned to face them, forcing them to halt in their tracks.

“If you go into that building,” he said, his voice serious, “you become part of Chadom. This is not a secret I would reveal to anyone who is not one of us. You may not tell anyone about what you see here, nor would you be allowed to leave Chadom for the next few years.”

Rowan gulped. The lord’s eyes were sharp, looking at them as if he could read their minds for lies.

He glanced at Ansel and Harald. Both of them nodded. He had seen enough to make a decision. Gathering his courage, he looked the lord straight in the eyes, and nodded. He was sure Ansel and Harald had done the same.

Their lives were now forever bound to Lord Jack.

“Excellent,” he said, smiling. “Now. Let’s see what Kovar and Aramid have achieved in my absence.”