The messenger arrived at dawn, his horse lathered and trembling on the Darsha courtyard stones. Rain pearled on the lacquered tube he carried—crimson wax impressed with the double-headed falcon of King Aldwin III. Lady Darsha broke the seal in lamplight while servants hovered, their breath frosting in the hallway chill.
> **By command of the Crown,** > *Lord Sharath Darsha, Son of the House of Darsha, is invited to present his mechanical astonishments before His Majesty in Highcourt, Capital of Navaleon, on the sixteenth day of Frostmoot.* > **–Attested, Lord Chamberlain Varek, Keeper of the Emerald Seat**
A single sheet, yet it rang like a cathedral bell. Royal notice meant unimaginable opportunity—and deadly scrutiny.
Sharath, still short enough to stand on a stool to meet his mother's eyes, felt nerves buzz through his limbs like live wire. "Six weeks," he whispered. "To pack, to plan, to perfect what the king must see."
Lord Darsha convened an emergency household council. Maps unfurled across the library table—inked ribbons tracing the river road west, the cobbled imperial highway through misty oak vales, the snow-risk passes north of Eldridge. Bandits, weather, political ambush: every mile a lesson in caution.
Master Henrik insisted on transporting three fault-tolerant cycles—each modified with brass plate guards, spare chain loops, and fold-down couriers' racks. "If these break under royal eyes, we look fools," he muttered, tightening a torque-wrench until it sang.
Sharath spent nights revising demonstration scripts. He would show the pedal-chain's math with chalk on slate, prove bearing tolerances by rolling spheres across glass, and—if palace courtiers allowed—race a stable boy around the marble forecourt in full view of stained-glass clerestory windows. Failure was impossible, yet terror hissed at the back of his skull. He remembered Baron Sorrin's sneer, the sabotage at Riverbend, and knew palace intrigue grew vipers far subtler than provincial fearmongers.
Six weeks blurred to three. Mistress Mira stitched riding cloaks lined with quill-stuffing for mountain cold; Jakob reinforced crate corners with angle-iron. Lady Darsha drilled her son in court etiquette—depth of bow, address protocols, the three-beat pause when receiving royal questions.
Then, on a morning painted gold by low winter sun, the Darsha caravan rolled out: two wagons laden with prototypes and ledgers, four mounted guards, Henrik and his best smiths, Sharath perched astride his newest two-wheeler—cog arrays glinting like fish scales. As the manor gate swung shut behind them, Lady Darsha's voice carried on frost-crisp air: "Remember, my son—truth spoken softly can fell stone walls."
The road to the capital awaited, and with it a test greater than any forge could temper.