The road east from Honeyburrow was not a single path, but a succession of choices.
It wound through marshland first—long stretches of reed and standing water where the sky seemed too wide and the earth too soft. Sir. Wilkinson's wheeled machine hissed and clicked as it rolled, its hidden pistons assisting when the ground grew stubborn. Roald walked beside it at times, rode upon it at others, watching his village shrink not just in distance, but in certainty.
For the first two days, he spoke little.
He carried with him a small bundle: spare shirt, carving knife, a sliver of oak from his father's yard, and a scrap of cloth Seren had pressed into his palm before he left. It smelled faintly of lavender and hearth smoke. At night, when Sir. Wilkinson banked the burner and the world went quiet save for frogs and wind, Roald would take the cloth from his satchel and hold it as though it were a compass.
Sir. Wilkinson noticed.
He noticed the way Roald's eyes lingered westward at dusk. The way his fingers traced idle shapes in the dirt—small hulls, narrow chimneys—only to erase them absently. The way excitement and ache wrestled visibly in him.
On the third evening, as they camped beneath a twisted alder tree, Sir. Wilkinson broke the silence.
"You are measuring the distance," he said, adjusting a valve on the travel engine.
Roald looked up. "Yes."
"In miles?"
"In… everything."
Sir. Wilkinson studied him for a moment. The firelight caught in the brass buttons of his coat.
"When I first left Dillaclor," he said, "I believed myself immune to homesickness."
Roald blinked. "You left?"
Sir. Wilkinson gave a small, dry laugh. "Even renowned boat makers begin as sons."
He leaned back against the cart wheel.
"I was apprenticed at twelve to a master machinist in the southern quarter of Dillaclor. I thought the city grand and merciless. I missed the narrow street where I had grown. The baker who slipped me crusts. The river's evening bells."
"You went back?" Roald asked.
"No," Sir. Wilkinson said. "But I outgrew the ache."
He reached into a compartment of his cart and withdrew a small metal object wrapped in cloth. He handed it to Roald.
It was a compass—but unlike any Roald had seen. Its casing was etched with intricate patterns, and instead of a simple needle, it held a delicate arrangement of balanced rings, all turning subtly within one another.
"This," Sir. Wilkinson said, "was given to me by a navigator of the eastern fleets. It does not merely point north. It adjusts for iron in the earth, for storms brewing beyond sight. It anticipates drift."
Roald turned it carefully in his hands. The rings shimmered in the firelight.
"In Dillaclor," Sir. Wilkinson continued, "there are workshops that span entire courtyards. Libraries filled not with sermons, but with schematics. Engineers who argue until sunrise about the optimal curvature of a hull."
Roald's gaze lifted slowly.
"There are vaults," Sir. Wilkinson went on, his tone softening just enough to invite wonder, "where prototypes are kept—engines that failed gloriously. Machines that nearly flew. Submersible crafts that sank only once before being improved. You will see metals that do not rust. Lenses ground so finely they can read the surface of the moon."
"The moon?" Roald breathed.
Sir. Wilkinson nodded.
"The ruler funds expeditions upriver, downriver, and across the sea. There are rumors of islands whose shores glitter with minerals unknown to our forges. And treasures—not merely gold, though there is plenty of that—but knowledge. Designs guarded for generations."
The fire crackled between them.
"You will not be fetching coal," Sir. Wilkinson said quietly. "You will be shaping fleets. You will test vessels that have never touched water before your hand steadies them. And when the capital gathers along the great river to witness a new craft cut through the current without sail or smoke…" He paused. "You will know your mind helped build it."
The ache in Roald's chest shifted.
It did not vanish—but it loosened.
"And the treasures?" Roald asked, a flicker of boyish curiosity returning.
Sir. Wilkinson's eyes glinted.
"There are markets in Dillaclor where merchants trade in relics from distant kingdoms—clockwork birds that sing when wound, astrolabes studded with sapphire, chests filled with gears so finely cut they seem grown rather than forged. Apprentices of the crown are granted stipends."
"Stipends?"
"Enough to acquire tools beyond imagining," Sir. Wilkinson said. "Enough to send letters westward with couriers who do not lose them."
At that, Roald's fingers tightened slightly around the cloth from his satchel.
"I could write?" he asked.
"You could write," Sir. Wilkinson confirmed. "And perhaps one day, when your engines are strong enough to command the river itself, you might send more than words back to Honeyburrow."
Roald pictured it—one of his cleaner-burning vessels arriving at the humble bend of his village river, steam rising white and proud instead of black. His father standing rigid on the bank. His mother shading her eyes. His brothers speechless.
The image did not erase his longing.
But it gave it direction.
Sir. Wilkinson rose and stoked the fire once more.
"The journey is long," he said. "But so is the river in Dillaclor. And it awaits us."
Roald looked eastward, where the stars gathered in unfamiliar constellations.
For the first time since leaving Honeyburrow, his somber expression softened into something brighter—not naïve, not careless—but lit from within by possibility.
The fire had burned low.
Across the small clearing, Roald slept beneath his cloak, one hand curled loosely around the strap of his satchel as though even in dreams he feared losing what he carried from home. His breathing had settled into the steady rhythm of youth spent honestly.
Sir. Wilkinson remained awake.
He sat on an overturned crate, elbows resting on his knees, watching the embers pulse and collapse inward. Sparks rose now and then, brief and defiant, before vanishing into the night.
The glow of the coals reflected faintly in the polished fittings of his left sleeve.
He flexed his hand—wooden fingers responding with a soft, articulate click.
And the years peeled backward.
He was twelve again.
The capital of Dillaclor roared around him—river traffic colliding with shouted bargains, anvils ringing from open workshops, gulls shrieking over the docks. Smoke hung thick and permanent above the southern quarter, as much a feature of the skyline as the palace spires.
He had stood then in a courtyard workshop that seemed less a place of labor and more a cathedral of iron.
It belonged to Sir. Mallious Of Icamac
The name alone commanded space.
Sir. Mallious was a legend in Dillaclor—not merely for his inventions, but for his temperament. He was tall and reed-thin, with hair like white wire and eyes that missed nothing. His workshop overflowed with half-finished marvels: segmented armor that flexed like skin, crossbows with triple-latched triggers, experimental steam pistons bolted beside racks of swords.
He believed in precision the way priests believed in scripture.
"You will hammer it again," Sir. Mallious had said that day, his voice sharp as a file.
The spearhead lay on the anvil—gleaming, symmetrical, deadly.
To Wilkinson's young eyes, it had been perfect hours ago.
But not to Mallious.
"The edge must taper as though it were drawn, not forced," the master had insisted. "A weapon must not merely pierce—it must intend to."
So Wilkinson had hammered.
All day.
The rhythm had numbed his palms. His shoulders had burned. Sweat had fallen onto hot steel and vanished in faint hisses. Each time he presented the spearhead, Mallious had turned it beneath the light, studying the reflection along its curve.
"Again."
By dusk, Wilkinson's arms had trembled so violently he feared he would drop the hammer.
He had wanted to shout. To demand why a weapon that could already split leather and bone must be shaped further.
But he had not.
He had hammered until the metal seemed less forged and more coaxed.
And at last, as twilight bled into the courtyard, Mallious had grunted.
"It now understands its purpose."
Wilkinson had never forgotten that phrasing.
Another memory surfaced—darker.
The testing yard beyond the workshop walls. A newly balanced sword clutched in his hand, its hilt bound tightly with leather he himself had wrapped. The blade had been experimental—lightened along the fuller, reinforced near the tip.
Mallious had watched from a distance, arms folded.
"Strike the post," he had commanded.
Wilkinson had swung.
The blade met oak with a ringing crack.
For a breath, there was triumph.
Then—failure.
The tang, imperfectly seated within the hilt, sheared free.
The blade twisted mid-rebound.
He remembered the impossible brightness of it—the way steel flashed as it spun loose.
He did not remember the pain at first.
Only the shock.
Then the red.
His left arm—below the elbow—gone in a heartbeat.
He remembered collapsing to the dirt. Remembered Mallious shouting—not in anger, but in something far rarer.
Fear.
Darkness had followed swiftly.
When he woke, he had expected pity.
Mallious did not deal in pity.
Instead, the master had stood beside his cot, holding a carved wooden forearm bristling with brass hinges and leather straps.
"You erred," Mallious had said evenly. "So did I."
Wilkinson had stared at the prosthetic, hollow with grief.
"My arm—"
"Was a tool," Mallious had interrupted. "Tools break. We build better ones."
For weeks thereafter, Wilkinson had endured a new apprenticeship—not of steel, but of self. Mallious adjusted the prosthetic daily, refining its joints, tightening its springs, shaping wooden fingers to grip hammer and chisel. He forced Wilkinson to relearn balance, to compensate, to innovate around absence.
"Loss," Mallious had declared while fitting a brass pivot at the wrist, "is merely design imposed upon you. Improve it."
The first time Wilkinson lifted a hammer again with the mechanical arm, the workshop had gone silent.
Mallious had watched.
And nodded once.
The present returned in the gentle collapse of a log within the campfire.
Sir. Wilkinson flexed his wooden fingers again. The mechanisms responded smoothly, polished by years of refinement. What had once been crude oak and hinge had evolved into something elegant—part wood, part brass, part defiance.
Across the fire, Roald shifted in his sleep, murmuring faintly—perhaps dreaming of rivers or smoke that burned clean.
Wilkinson allowed himself a small, private smile.
He had once been that boy—thin with longing, fierce with hunger, uncertain of how much of himself the path would demand.
Sir. Mallious of Icamac had taken more than Wilkinson had thought survivable.
And given more than he had believed possible.
The fire burned lower still.
"Loss is design," Wilkinson murmured softly into the dark.
Roald did not stir.
Sir. Wilkinson leaned back, watching the embers glow like distant forges, and for a fleeting moment, he felt the presence of his old master—not as a shadow, but as a steadying hand guiding steel toward purpose.
Then the night deepened.
And the road to Dillaclor waited for dawn.