### Chapter 31 – The Assembly Line
Morning sunlight spilled through the clerestory windows of the Riverbend Granary and ran, like liquid gold, across a changed landscape. Gone were the benches and haphazard piles of parts that had defined the workshop in its infancy. In their place stretched a single, sinuous wooden platform—twenty paces long—punctuated at regular intervals by low iron posts fitted with rotating cradles. Each cradle bore a half-finished cycle frame; each frame would advance, station by station, until it rolled away a finished machine.
Sharath stood at one end of the line—bare feet on the polished planks, grease under his fingernails, and a stupid, irrepressible grin on his face. The whole structure hummed with latent possibility; it seemed to breathe.
"Stations one through four for frame work," he explained to the gathered craftsmen, voice still piping but filled with calm authority. "Five and six: gear assembly. Seven, eight: wheel seating and tensioning. Nine: brake fit. Ten: final inspection."
Garrick the Farrier crossed bulging arms. "And we just shuffle the thing down the track like a cheese at harvest?"
"Exactly." Sharath set a toe against the closest cradle's rim and nudged. Wood glided on oiled iron; the frame slid two cubits along the line. A ripple of awe passed through the men and women who would soon become production specialists.
Jakob stepped forward, mallet poised. "No more walking half the shop for each tool." He pointed to the tool boards behind every station, where silhouettes were painted in charcoal. "A place for everything, so no one wastes a heartbeat hunting."
Mira, sleeves rolled past elbows, hoisted a crate of steel bearing spheres onto Station-Seven's shelf. "Color tags for every batch—yellow for imperial courier order, blue for farm-co-op batch." A glance at Sharath: *Did we forget anything?*
He shook his head, pulse racing. "We test today with five frames. Tomorrow, ten. Next week? Twenty."
Master Henrik slammed a hammer onto Station-Three's anvil with a clang that set the rafters singing. "Enough talk. Let's spin the gear."
They did. At first, movements were clumsy—too many hands reaching across the line, jokes shouted, a misplaced wrench clattering to the floor. But within an hour rhythm emerged: bang of rivet, hiss of quench, rasp of file, thrum of chain. The cradle advanced on Mira's tally-stick cue—tap-tap-tap—and the line crawled like an iron snake shedding skins of raw parts and growing new scales of finished assemblies.
By dusk five cycles, identical twins of polished cedar and burnished steel, stood gleaming in the courtyard. Sharath ran a palm along one, feeling the sermon in every flawless weld: specialization, coordination, repetition—the holy trinity of the assembly line.
Henrik, sweat-slick hair plastered to his skull, chuckled. "Used to take us two days a piece. Today we built five in twelve hours. Tomorrow…"
"Tomorrow we're faster," Sharath finished, stars already kindling overhead. He knew this was only the first note of an industrial symphony—and every note after would change the kingdom's rhythm forever.