The success of the line carried a price: parts bins emptied quicker than merchants could fill them. Three weeks later, Lord Darsha's study resembled a battlefield of parchment—ledgers, requisition scrolls, bills of lading. Sharath and his parents hunched over them, candles guttering in dwindling midnight air.
"We're out-stripping the smiths in Eldridge," Lord Darsha muttered, tapping a quill against a column that showed *SERIAL HUBS: back-ordered 340 units*. "If every workshop doubles output we'll deplete iron stockpiles in four months."
Lady Darsha slid forward a map pricked with colored pins. "Eastern hills have untapped hematite veins. We need roads and contracts before the consortium beats us there."
Sharath, eyes gritty, traced supply lines. "Not just iron. Spokes need ash from the Greenbelt forest, bearings need carbon steel we still can't mass-temper. Solution is vertical integration—control raw, refine, assemble."
His father arched a brow. "You speak like a merchant prince."
Sharath grinned. "Grandfather Konrad will like that."
Konrad Arren—Lady Darsha's father—arrived ten days later: snow-white beard, cunning merchant eyes. Within hours he'd brokered logging rights with Greenbelt elders (in exchange for new wagon axles), secured ore claims by promising a miners' hospital, and chartered river barges dedicated to moving iron south.
But material flow was only half the puzzle. Labor lagged. Garrick tallied schedules: "We're pulling fourteen-hour shifts. Not sustainable."
So Sharath proposed shift-work—two overlapping crews, bells signaling rotation. Workers balked at "clock tyranny" until Mira organized a midday feast lit by cycle-powered grinders churning free apple mash. Ale loosened ears; Sharath explained that shorter shifts plus guaranteed half-day schooling in metallurgy raised wages and skill.
Uptake soared. Within a month the shop floor ran sixteen hours a day without overtime fatigue. Output tripled; order backlog shrank; coins clinked through Riverbend like spring meltwater.
Yet scarcity sprouted elsewhere: road congestion. Wagons queued for hours at the granary gate. Jakob sketched a switch-track yard: cycles loaded on flatbeds, shunted by mule to river docks. Konrad funded graded roads. Lord Darsha deployed tax breaks for merchants who delivered at night.
Piece by piece, a supply lattice emerged—an unseen skeleton supporting the kingdom's beating economic heart. Sharath could almost hear it: alloy grinders, sawmills, river barges groaning under ore; a music of prosperity composed one logistic at a time.