Advancement cast long shadows. On a dusk ride along the new boardwalk, Sharath spotted an emaciated draft mare tethered beside an abandoned smithy. Ribs jutted; hooves cracked. Its owner, Old Merin, nursed a mug outside the shuttered door. "No shoeing work," the farrier rasped. "Everyone's on wheels. Horses stand idle, eat coin."
Guilt pricked Sharath like hidden thorns. He had predicted displacement; here it stood, hollow-eyed. That night he convened the Road Transition Council—farmers, smiths, grooms, and two skeptical priests. Over bread and cider they thrashed out the Mobility Dividend: a levy of one silver chime on every cycle sold, earmarked for reskilling programs, small-holder feed subsidies, and low-interest loans to convert stables into repair depots or boarding kennels for the burgeoning courier service.
Critics cried "charity tax!" Sharath countered in the *Gazette*: "Innovation that fattens a few but starves the many is rot disguised as fruit." The levy passed the king's privy council by a single vote—coming from Baron Sorrin, whose own estates had lifted from debt on cycle profits.
Within months, Old Merin's smithy rang again—this time with the ping of spoke nipples and hiss of quenched bearings. His mare, well-fed, pulled a delivery cart bringing iron billets to Riverbend. Not all transitions proved so tidy, yet the principle held: progress paid dues to those it displaced, funding paths into new callings.
And Sharath learned that every gear gained required grease—sometimes the coin-bright grease of compassion.
* * *