The bells of Valemorra rang soft and hollow, not in greeting, but in rhythm with coin. From the moment Kalem and Garrick stepped beyond the northern gate, the sound of trade—of deals struck and promises broken—buzzed in the air like locusts. Here, power wore perfume, and blades came hidden beneath ledgers and ledgers beneath blades.
"It smells of vinegar and lies," Garrick muttered, his cloak drawn tight. His historian's totem—a brass-ringed rod etched with memory runes—clicked softly as he recorded the shapes and voices of the city.
Kalem grunted, eyes scanning the skyline. There were no towers of kings here. Instead, domed counting-houses, sprawling bazaars, and manor-forts with coin-marks on their banners. The merchant lords ruled this land not by bloodline, but by ledgers fat with gold and contracts older than cathedrals.
"Fifteen lords, five guilds," Garrick noted aloud. "No throne, only purses. A fragile balance, kept not by steel or spell, but price and pride."
"And both are brittle," Kalem replied, his gaze drawn to a shouting match between two warehouse masters across the street. "This place is ripe."
"For conquest?" Garrick raised a brow.
"For invention." Kalem's mouth curled into a slight smile. "They're all waiting to outdo one another—but none are building. They rely too much on rune-wrights and sweat. Let's see what happens when they taste iron."
They rented a small shed on the western edge of the trader's quarter—cheap, shadowed, and perfect. Within hours, Kalem had unpacked iron rods, bolts of wood, coils of spring wire, and a hammer that hummed when it struck. There was no magic in it—only design, balance, and Kalem's endless hunger to make.
Garrick sat nearby, scratching in his leather-bound folio and occasionally glancing through the slats of the shuttered window.
"Do you have a plan?" he asked.
"No," Kalem said, fitting a cog into a wooden disc. "That's the point. I'll build whatever my hands feel like."
"You always did say structure was a cage."
Kalem didn't answer. His mind was already gone to the click of gears and the smell of hot iron.
By nightfall, the first creation was done—a crude but clever rolling cart, fitted with a tension-spring that kept the wheels spinning for several paces after being pushed. A child's toy by appearance, but the mechanism could carry load with little effort.
"Whistle cart," Kalem named it.
"Who needs it?" Garrick asked.
"Anyone with arms too tired to push." Kalem rolled it out into the street, left it before a fruit vendor's stall, and walked away.
By morning, two more had been built by a smith who had taken the device apart and replicated the work.
By noon, seven more lined the market path.
By evening, Kalem had fifteen people asking for plans.
He gave them away.
Wooden pulleys followed. Then a simple rope hoist. Then a gearbox that could turn with a crank and lift sacks of flour with one hand. All without rune, spell, or charm.
The merchant lords ignored it at first.
Then came whispers. That a boy who once hauled crates now ran his own store. That a wine-seller doubled her profits using a wheel-lifter that didn't require paid hands. That a baker, too poor for rune-heat, now used a bellows-pump oven, hand-cranked but fast.
All Kalem's design. All given for near nothing.
Garrick watched the pattern unfold with the calm dread of a man who sees storm signs while others picnic.
"They'll not let this lie," he warned, scribbling in his totem. "Every tool you give cheapens a guild's secret. They will answer."
Kalem didn't look up from his next sketch, a hand-mill with rotating arms. "They can try."
"Even here," Garrick continued, voice lower, "even now, you're not a simple smith. You're the Lord of Armaments. They will remember that, and not kindly."
"Let them," Kalem said, then gave the sketch to a passing stablehand.
Word spread faster than coin. Artisans from far parts of Valemorra came to see the "iron-maker without magic." Kalem welcomed them all. He taught some. Gave others designs. Even argued with a few tinkers who tried to improve his builds—arguments that often ended in long nights and new friendships.
Garrick stayed close, ever the quiet tether to reason. He kept Kalem from building contraptions too large, too chaotic. When Kalem suggested an automatic cobbler's bench with twenty levers, Garrick shook his head.
"You're not trying to replace them, are you?"
"No," Kalem answered. "Just free them from wasting life on the same footstep."
But the merchant guilds saw it differently. The Rune-Guild of the Coined Hand tried to challenge Kalem's plans with enchanted tools that cost tenfold. The public laughed. One device of Kalem's, a gear-driven seed-spreader made from scraps, worked better and broke less.
Garrick recorded it all.
In a small scroll, he wrote: The great shift began not with war, but with wheels and rope. When one man's mind moved faster than a guild's greed.
The chapter of Valemorra had begun.
And it was only the first day.