I continued visiting Spathian’s workshop whenever Ryn became occupied with guild matters.
At first, this was accidental.
Then it became a pattern.
Eventually, one of the house staff simply began sighing whenever I walked toward the rear wing.
I suspect they had already accepted my fate.
On the third morning, I found Spathian hunched over a worktable surrounded by springs, brass rods, and several spoons attached to rotating wheels for reasons I still do not fully understand.
Without looking up, he suddenly spoke.
“Want to go somewhere?”
I blinked.
“Where?”
“The Resistance.”
I remember staring at him in complete silence.
The Resistance.
There are certain combinations of words that immediately sound illegal.
That was one of them.
Naturally, I followed him anyway.
We left the manor in a manner that suggested we were either escaping assassination or stealing national secrets.
Neither of us actually knew why we were sneaking.
Spathian simply seemed to enjoy the atmosphere.
At one point, he even pulled me behind a hedge because a gardener walked past us.
The gardener greeted him politely.
Spathian still whispered:
“Stay low.”
I did not question it.
Mostly because curiosity had already defeated survival instinct several entries ago.
Eventually, we reached one of the massive southern shipyards near the industrial harbor.
The atmosphere there felt completely different from the elegant promenades near central Port Roderick.
The air smelled of salt, heated metal, oil, sawdust, and smoke.
Workers moved constantly between unfinished hulls larger than buildings while cranes lifted massive timber beams overhead.
Hammers rang endlessly across the docks beneath shouting engineers and shipwright crews.
Several workers immediately greeted Spathian the moment they saw him.
“Master Carver!”
Some waved from scaffolding.
Others approached carrying blueprints stained with charcoal and oil.
The respect they showed him felt completely genuine.
Not forced.
Not political.
Earned.
One older engineer explained proudly that newer Roderick vessels now traveled faster and survived rough currents better because of Spathian’s hull designs.
Another claimed rival guilds had spent years unsuccessfully trying to replicate his balancing structures.
The entire time, Spathian accepted the praise with the energy of a distracted man being interrupted during lunch.
At some point, I quietly realized something uncomfortable.
Ryn calling him a “weirdo” may have been an extreme understatement.
Eventually, Spathian brought me toward a large worktable hidden deeper inside the shipyard workshop.
At first glance, it looked ridiculous.
Several metal spoons moved rapidly along circular rails by themselves.
They spun, accelerated, shifted directions, and chased one another endlessly across interconnected tracks glowing faintly beneath glass tubes and tiny arcs of blue light.
I stared for several seconds.
Then longer.
The spoons were not random.
Their movement was controlled.
Deliberate.
Complex.
Spathian adjusted one of the mechanisms while speaking casually.
“Magnetic force,” he explained.
“Electricity.”
“A little arcane stabilization.”
I understood approximately half of those words.
Possibly less.
Still, I could not stop staring.
The spoons moved impossibly smoothly along the rails.
Fast.
Efficient.
Without horses.
Without visible pulling force.
As if motion itself had been captured and forced into obedience.
Spathian noticed my confusion immediately.
Then he said only one sentence.
“Imagine the spoons are wagons.”
And suddenly—
I understood.
Not fully.
Not technically.
But conceptually.
The image struck my thoughts all at once.
Cargo moving without beasts.
Trade routes changing.
Distance shrinking.
Entire systems transforming.
The small spinning spoons before me no longer looked ridiculous.
They looked dangerous.
Not in the way weapons are dangerous.
In the way ideas are dangerous.
Spathian smiled after seeing my expression.
Not proudly.
Excitedly.
Like someone who had finally found another person willing to see the shape of a future that did not exist yet.
Around us, the shipyard continued roaring beneath smoke, metal, and ocean wind.
Workers shouted measurements across unfinished hulls while cranes groaned above the docks.
And in the middle of all that noise, I found myself staring at spinning spoons while wondering whether genius and madness were perhaps neighboring rooms separated only by a very thin wall.
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