Brewing Bad Ch. 95-96

Ch. 95 - Setting Things Right

Lucas was fuming at the thought of whatever it was Adin was up to. That wasn’t the real reason, though, and he knew it. It was just an excuse. The words of the Prince rang in his ear as he took the stairs two at a time once he got back inside the house. 

The man is a leach. Did you know he once tried to sell his sister’s virtue to me for a tax debt that was almost sixty dragons? 

Those terrible words were something that he’d always meant to handle, eventually. However, if he was here, and if the asshole was stealing from them, then he might as well handle everything at once. 

Lucas barged into Adin’s room without knocking and found him standing there with his arms out while his manservant dressed him. Both of them turned in surprise, but even as Lord Parin’s smile widened and he started to greet Lucas, Lucas barked, “You, take a hike. Your master and I have something to discuss.”

The manservant backed away uncertainly, and that uncertainty only grew when Adin grabbed for the man’s arm and said, “Now Lucas, I’m sure that what you have to say has some urgency, but surely it can wait until after I'm decent, and I’ve eaten breakfast.”

“Decency isn’t something I really something I associate with you, man,” Lucas answered as he cracked his knuckles menacingly. “Your manservant is welcome to stay if he wants to show loyalty. I can respect that, but I’ll still kick his ass too.”

Truthfully, Lucas wasn’t much of a fighter. Without a sword in his hand, he was mid at best, but against a limp-wristed sop like Adin, he was practically a heavyweight champion. His manservant wasn’t a lot better than that, but still, Lucas was confident he could take them both if it came to that. 

Fortunately, it didn’t. Instead, the well-dressed young man took one look at the situation, pulled his hand free from his master’s grip, and quickly exited the room. 

“Now Lucas, you know that this place is crawling with guards these days,” Adin said, backing away toward the wall that held the pull cord for the call bell. “One ring from me and…”

“Adin, you wear fancy clothes, attend all the best parties, and live in a house that has your name on it, but don’t think for a minute that means this place belongs to you anymore,” Lucas answered, slowly walking closer. “Anyone you call is getting paid by me and—”

“Perhaps you haven’t heard,” the noble shot back. “While you were gone, my debts were settled, and I’ve gotten my titles back. Do you know what the penalty is for striking a hereditary noble?”

Lucas paused and let the man look smug for a moment. With his puffed-out chest and his unbuttoned shirt, he obviously thought he was untouchable. Lucas waited for a second like he’d let the reality of the situation sink in. Then, just as the lordling started to relax, he punched him hard in the stomach. 

Adin doubled over, and then, after another second, he dropped to his knees. “How dare you,” he hissed as he gasped for breath. 

“How dare I?” Lucas asked. “How dare you be so fucking stupid? Do you have any idea what they do to people like you where I come from? They break your fingers. They put you in a coma. They throw you off the overpass into the expressway.”

The unfamiliar words obviously confused Adin more than they put the fear into him, but he ignored that. “I’m getting married next week, and when the Torvins hear about how you’ve treated their son-in-law, they’ll—”

“They’ll know you're weak and easy to put in your place,” Lucas interrupted. He’d thought about hitting the man again, but unless he was going to really fuck him up, he’d probably sent enough of a message for now. So, instead of kicking the man while he was down, he sat down on Adin’s bed and decided to beat him verbally instead now that he’d made his point. “As to your marriage, my present will be not to punch you in the face, so you have to show up to the chapel with a black eye.”

“You might think that you’re important, but the Prince will not stand for this sort of behavior; he’ll—” Adin said, with more confidence this time now that he’d slowly straightened back up. 

“Hey, asshat,” Lucas shot back. “I’m working for the Prince right now, but if you think running to mommy and crying is going to do shit, well, I won’t even feel bad about what happens next. The fact is you’ve already fucked up, and the fact that you’re threatening consequences and retribution instead of asking me what in the fuck is going on tells me everything I need to know.”

“But I haven’t—” Adin started to say. 

“Where we go,” Lucas answered, ignoring him. “Too little, too late. You fucked up, and you thought I wouldn’t be around to notice.”

“You’d believe the word of that dwarf over me?” Adin asked.

“Every day of the week,” Lucas answered. “I mean, it’s my fault, I knew you’d steal a little, but I didn’t have a better answer. This, though - it's too much.”

“A Parin would never steal!” the noble shot back. “I may have repurposed some funds, but then a third of all of this is mine. It's hardly theft when I’m simply securing my fair share.”

“Fair share, huh? That’s what we’re going with?” Lucas nodded. “I’ll have Kar’gandin note that in his books and—”

“The man is a twice damned thief,” Adin cursed. “You know that. A smuggler and a thief!”

“It’s true,” Lucas agreed. “But since you want to talk about the good old days, then remind me, what was it you were in that dungeon for?”

“I…” Adin’s mouth moved up and down, but no words came out as the gears in his head started to spin. He might be a weasel, but when it came to things like this, he was clever enough. 

“Listen,” he started again. “I can imagine what it is that the Prince might have told you, but I can assure you that—”

“Offering your sister up to a man like that just because you enjoy spending money more than you enjoy making it?” Lucas said, not bothering to hide his disgust. “I don’t want you near her. Honestly, I don’t want you living under the same roof as her.”

That threat wasn’t nearly enough for his boiling blood. Lucas wanted to thrash the man. He wanted to bounce him off the walls until he was begging and bleeding. He didn’t, though. He kept his rage on ice while he tried to work out what the smart thing to do was. 

“You think you can kick me out of my own house?” Adin answered. “This manor is mine by title and deed. I mean to move my wife here in a few weeks time, after a short honeymoon, of course. Not even the Prince would step in to remove a Viscount from his own abode.”

“Fine,” Lucas said, agreeing with that assessment for once. “Then we’ll move her out. And when all of this is said and done, you can stand on your own two feet like the proud Viscount you are.”

Honestly, Lucas wanted to strangle the man, but given the relationship with the Whisperers, that was not wise. Moving Danaria away from him, though, that was a fine plan. After all, if they could move Danaria away, they could move the lab too, and once they did that, there was no reason not to cut Adin off completely or at least be able to if necessary. It made for a fine threat. 

“What do you mean, my own two feet?” Adin said, his eyes narrowing as his racing mind seemed to reach a similar conclusion to Lucas’s. 

“I mean what I said,” Lucas smiled, standing once more. He hadn’t kicked the man’s ass as he’d planned, but he certainly felt better about the whole thing. “I didn’t have to help you after you got shot. I didn’t have to ride out here and save your life, and I certainly don’t have to keep carrying you. Do you want to be a part of this thing? Then, be useful. You want to sit around and spend money you don't have and didn't do much to earn? Well, that's an option, too, but not for a hell of a lot longer.”

“Are you threatening me?” Adin responded, looking a little angry. That was pretty typical. Addicts usually got pissed when you told them the gravy train was over. 

“No, I’m telling you what happens next,” Lucas answered with a shrug as he turned to the door. “A threat would be reminding you that every man guarding your home is being paid by me. A threat would be explaining how Hura’gh would probably make sure you disappear forever for free. A threat would be reminding you that the only reason you’re still breathing is because of a political alliance of questionable value now that I’m on a first-name basis with the ruler of the kingdom.”

It wasn’t all true, of course. The Prince might do him a solid, but the price would certainly be high, and Hura’gh would happily rip Adin to pieces, though he’d certainly charge for the service. It didn’t need to be true, though. It just needed to be frightening, and Lucas didn’t have to turn around to see that he’d hit his mark. 

Outside, Lucas found the manservant he’d dismissed so roughly standing there along with Gerwin and one of the aforementioned guards. “I trust that Master Parin is still fit to be dressed and resume his duties?” Gerwin asked. 

“He’s fine,” Lucas said, flashing the three of them his best shit-eating grin. “He and I just had a lot of catching up to do, that’s all.”

“Very good,” Gerwin agreed dubiously.

Lucas left them there, noting the confusion about what it was they were supposed to do in a situation like that. Adin might not like it, but they reflected the truth. Whether he was a Parin or not, Lucas was the real master of this house. At least he was for now. If that snake Arissa was going to be living here, though, well, maybe it would be for the best if his operation started moving out to somewhere a little more secure. 

Given all the money they’d invested in repairing the old place, it seemed like a terrible waste. That said, it was going to be nigh impossible to keep any secrets from her watchful eyes once she had a run of the place, and she’d figure out the trick to the cider house in no time with all the traffic coming and going from there even if Adin didn’t spill the beans first. 

The whole idea gave him a headache. This wasn’t what he’d come home to discuss and was a waste of his valuable time. Still, it needed to be done and was better done now than six months from now when the Torvins had already made their move, whatever that was going to be. 

Lucas tried to look on the bright side. Now, he had the perfect excuse to sit down with Danaria and chat for a while. The fact that he had to figure out how to suggest that she consider moving out of her ancestral home… well, that was something he’d figure out along the way.

Ch. 96 - Future Plans

“You want me to move in with you?” Danaria asked, almost spitting out her tea in surprise as the two of them sat in the second-story drawing room, chatting. 

She looked at him with such shock that he might as well have asked her to come back to his place, which, in a way, he did, he realized belatedly. Even if it was by accident, the idea of cohabitating was pretty alien to the idea of the upper crust of this world. 

She and Lucas had spent a couple hours there, and though the maid was there just often enough that he wasn’t tempted to do more than talk, which was fine. Danaria was a breath of fresh air compared to everyone else in his life, and especially after spending so much time with a grumpy gnome, he’d be perfectly happy to listen to her talk at length about whatever she wanted. 

When he’d apologized for making her go out night after night in the cold to retrieve messages, she’d just smiled and told him about the way it felt to fly using different sets of wings. She was just always so positive and more interested in discussing the challenge that some bird had working the scraps of paper out of the crack in his window where he’d left them and carrying them off in their tiny beaks without dropping them than discussing any discomfort on her part. 

Well, usually she was positive, at least. She’d blushed and switched that topic quickly enough when he mentioned stroking the one bird that he’d brought in from the cold. She immediately started telling him about how Meadowin was doing. She went on and on about the tailor’s daughter and the cobbler’s new apprentice. After that, she talked about the new greengrocer and how well the market was doing.

She would have gone on forever about the clinic that his favorite red-headed herbalist opened if Lucas had eventually stopped her and said, “I was thinking that maybe we move there sometime soon. Or, if Meadowin isn’t fancy enough, we could look at Lordanin, of course.”

That’s what caused the outburst, and she looked at him in shock for a moment before she finally managed to sputter, “Is that what you call a proposal?”

“I mean, that can come later…” he started to say before she blushed a shade darker. 

“You know what? Let me try again,” he said finally because he didn’t like where this was going. 

“This is not a conversation about marriage. Not today,” he said, speaking slowly and trying to get her to calm down. The idea that you couldn’t date someone and see if you were really compatible in this world and instead had to just marry them and see how it went was crazy to him, but this wasn’t the time for that discussion. “This isn’t about me, or even you, really. It’s about your brother. He’s getting married soon and—”

“Oh, but you’ll be there for the wedding, won’t you?” she asked, smiling. “I’m told it will be very festive despite the winter gloom. They even hired a mage to grow flowers and grass at the—”

“Sadly, the timing will not allow me to be there,” Lucas lied, “But I hope it's a wonderful day and you have a great time. But after the wedding, they’ll be moving here, and it's probably better for the newlyweds if we give them as much space as possible, at least starting out, don’t you think?”

“So then you’d move your—” Guilelessly, she'd started to talk about things she shouldn’t in front of the maid, and Lucas quickly cut her off. 

“I’m talking about moving everything off the estate,” he quickly clarified. “You, me, Hura’gh and Kar’gandin… everything. We don’t have to live together. Not at first, but I was just thinking that we should—”

“Meadowin,” she said finally. “If I get a say, I’d much prefer to live among the people than in the city proper. It’s so crowded there.”

“Why wouldn’t you get a say?” Lucas asked, taken aback by her choice of words. 

“Well, Adin, and even you tend to just tell me what’s going to happen next,” she said with a shrug. “What I want doesn’t always seem to matter.”

She hadn’t said it to be mean, but even so, it slipped between Lucas’s ribs like a knife. He hadn’t told her what to do specifically or anything, but he had gotten into the habit of bossing around pretty much everyone these days, and she was part of everyone. 

I’m going to have to work on that, he thought to himself. He could save beating himself up for later, though. 

“Well, I’m going to talk it through with Kar’gandin, but I figured we’d just build something from scratch, so if you want a big picture window or whatever, just let him know, and he’ll—”

“Wait, you’re building a house… for me?” she asked, taken aback. “You can’t, Lucas. That’s really too much.”

“Well, for us, and it will have some… business purposes to it as well, but you shouldn’t have to deal with that aspect too much,” he said, smiling as he reached across the coffee table to take her hand. “This will take a long time, and I don’t think they can even start until the spring, but I’m sure there’s a cottage or a townhome we can rent for you until everything is ready.”

Danaria quickly moved past the shock and disbelief, and once she finished peppering him with questions about the whole thing, she was somewhat on board. She didn’t even seem to mind the idea of an alchemical laboratory in the basement so long as he continued to work on healing potions and cosmetic products, which he promised to do.

He wondered if the glowing screens in his head would count any of those as real potions or not. The answer to that probably lay in how closely he followed the approved alchemist guild recipes, but that made no sense at all.  

When their conversation was at an end, and the teapot was completely empty, he finally left her to return to the cider house, but he only left the parlor after a very long hug. It was funny because he was supposed to be discussing an escape plan to get her away from her brother, but what he’d really ended up talking about was building a life together.  

It wasn’t like that on the surface, of course, but as the conversation wound through, the minimum amount of servants a household could really get by on and how many place settings a proper dining room must have. Hidden in the sweeps of those details was a life that might easily become their life if he didn’t get himself killed dealing with the Prince, the Torvins, or whoever else might have a grudge against him.

When he told the dwarf and the half-orc about his plan that afternoon, they were fairly positive. “Makes sense to me,” Kar’gandin nodded as he scribbled some calculations down in his ledger. “We’d spend a lot of coin on the facilities you describe, but they’re doable enough, and if we paid that back by cutting our Viscount out of the loop, we’d be in a profit inside the year, and if we built a larger lab and hired more people then—”

“Well, that would be hard to hide,” Lucas said with a frown. “We pretty much own that village, but we don’t want to hang up a shingle that says drug lab here.”

“No, of course not,” Kar’gandin agreed, stroking his beard. “I was thinking, more like we pay for a writ from the guilds to open up a small shop that’s officially allowed to make potions and the like. Cassara could run it, and make it seem like it's all above board.”

“We’d be paying a lot of taxes for that kind of camouflage,” Lucas mused. “Maybe even more than we pay the Knights of Brass for—”

“Oh, we paid them plenty when we burned down that brothel,” Hura’gh chuckled. “Fighting in the streets for days after that, but as long as we keep the whole thing away from the nice parts of town, no one cares too much.”

“That’s sort of the way things are,” Lucas agreed, remembering the Prince and the cold lens he saw the world through. He probably wouldn’t care if a whole district erupted into open warfare as long as he got his cut. “Just the same, we sent a message, and now we can try to keep a lower profile. I don’t want to be fighting every gang in the whole damn city; I just want people to know that we are not to be fucked with.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Hura’gh agreed, “The only thing I don’t get is why you don’t just kill the man. Adin, I mean. Just put him out of his misery already and be done with it. We have fourteen-year-old runners working for us with more balls than that guy.”

“Aye, our misery too, eh?” Kar’gandin blurted out after that. They both laughed at that, and Lucas nodded.

“Well, I wouldn’t be sorry to see him go, but who knows what that would do to our relationship with the Whisperers,” Lucas answered. “That’s why I think we should start to diversify our shit. I’m not saying we should go legit or anything. I’m just saying we should have other backup plans and products in case, you know, the worst should happen.”

“You mean with the Prince,” Kar’gandin answered. 

“Yeah,” Lucas nodded. “Who else.”

He’d told them both about some of the things that were at play with this new complication, both when he’d come back the first time and this morning, but he told them both a little more now. Mostly, that was in terms of how the Prince was going to want them to start paying a lot of cash under the table. Neither of them were too happy about that. 

“So we won’t be making more if we cut Adin out,” Hura’gh said finally, “We’re just giving the cut of one asshole who ain’t doin’ shit to another asshole who gonna ain’t do shit.”

“Pretty much,” Lucas agreed, “but at least when we pay the Prince he makes the guards look the other way, so at least there’s that.”

Lucas had come out here to get started cooking up a new batch. He’d been eager to see how his new skills translated to his old equipment. He wanted to know what part of the improvement was due to his increased skill and what percentage was due to the gnome’s gear and the laboratory's location dangling in midair like that. 

He never quite got to it, though. Instead, he spent the afternoon shooting the shit with Kar’gandin and Hura’gh about every topic under the sun. It was a conversation that needed to happen, of course. Hell, they were all conversations that needed to happen, and by the end of the day, he couldn’t help but feel like time slipped through his fingers. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to have to do something about that, he decided. There's only a few more days before I have to head back, and I’ve got lots of shit to do between now and then.