Brewing Bad Ch. 78-79

Bonus chapter! (Because this one is a 2 parter)

Ch. 78 - Starting Over

Lucas reached for his cup of tea. Despite the fact that it was still scalding, he took a sip to give him a moment to think. The idea that it might be poisoned meant nothing compared to everything else that was going on. Honestly, coughing up blood and choking to death here in this dim, over-decorated room might be the best thing that could happen to him because he felt like everything was spinning out of his control. 

Was the Prince about to strong-arm him and take over his business exactly the way he’d prevented the Whispers from doing so recently? 

That has to be it, he thought to himself. 

What else was left? Geopolitics? War between kingdoms? It beggared belief that a man that was this on the ball would need a street rat like Lucas for any of that. Still, even after all this reflection, he knew nothing, so he decided to deflect as much as he could to learn more. 

“Better, huh?” Lucas said, setting the saucer and cup back down. “I’m not sure what the word on the street is, but if my stuff gets any purer, people will start dying.”

“That’s true,” the Prince agreed, not seemingly particularly disturbed by the idea. “Though most of the deaths seem to be from the low-grade stuff, according to the guard. By all accounts, the upper crust is quite happy with your product. Indeed, they’re eager for more.”

“You want me to… poison the nobles I’m supplying to?” Lucas asked, trying not to sound as confused as he felt. “Is there just like… one family in particular, or are you looking for more of a clean sweep here?”

The Prince’s response to that was to laugh long and hard. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said finally, pretending to wipe away a nonexistent tear from his eye. “When you wipe out enemies, new ones only appear to take their place, and I have all mine categorized and monitored quite nicely at this point. I don’t need to replace them with anyone new.”

Lucas opened up his mouth to ask a follow-up question, but the Prince continued. “Though, you seem to have gotten your claws into even the stodgy old lord Torvin. I can’t say I saw that coming. Sometimes, people really do surprise you. Take you, for instance. I’ve seen you at what, three, four parties now?”

“Three,” Lucas answered, surprised that the man remembered his face in a crowd at all.

“Just so,” the Prince agreed. “You never struck me as an alchemist or really a man with any learning. I thought you were a card sharp, or perhaps you were there looking for a rich widow. I’m not one to judge, so you can imagine my surprise when Mister Blue was hiding in plain sight this whole time!”

Lucas was even more creeped out now. The man wasn’t just being fed information by some kind of Whisperer-like spy network. He was clearly smart and remembered even minor exchanges at random parties. Lucas was definitely out of his league here. This was not someone to be fucked with. 

“So then, what’s it for, your highness?” Lucas asked finally, deciding there was no way to play the information out of the man. “I mean, I need some idea of what you want if I’m going to be able to—”

“Let’s say… we’re after bigger game than any Duke or Count in the land, and leave it at that, for now, shall we?” the Prince answered dismissively. 

“I mean, you were hunting me for so long I kinda figured this was personal for you,” Lucas said, trying to see what might slip out if he tried to agitate the man.

“Me? No, I never touch the stuff.” the Prince said. “I prefer other drugs. Yours cloud the mind, though in this case that’s exactly what we want.“Heizenburgle will fill you in on what you need to know when the time comes.”

“Heizenburgle?” Lucas asked. “Who’s—”

“Let’s make one thing perfectly clear,” the Prince said finally. “I’m asking because it's easier than telling, but your only real play here is Yes? Are we clear? There’s no other way out of this for you. My purser has paid an entire sack of dragons to that conniving bitch that brought you in, which will make this year’s tithe that much harder to put together, so I am going to get my money’s worth out of you. Are we understood?”

“Yes, Your Highness, I would be happy to help you if that’s what’s required of me,” Lucas said, trying not to grit his teeth, “But I have some questions if I uhhh... If it's not too rude.”

“Please,” the man said dismissively. He seemed perfectly happy to toy with Lucas as long as Lucas knew his place. 

“I help you with this,” Lucas said, “and when it’s done, what happens to me?”

“Well, I imagine that you’ve racked up quite a sum in profits during your time in Lordanin,” The Prince answered, “So if you’re still palling around with Kar’gandin, he can open his books… the real ones, mind you, not the fake ones I know he keeps too, and if not, well then I’ll have one of my loyal tax collectors conduct an audit, and issue a fine. As long as you pay that and you ensure your fair share ends up in the treasury going forward… well, I’d consider you a valuable asset to the city. If not, well… the gallows don’t take long to put up.”

“I see,” Lucas said, not sure that he believed him. “So you want me to make you a special batch of blue for a specific customer, then you’re just going to let me pay my taxes and continue on my way?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” The Prince asked. “No doubt the Alchemists' guild will throw a fit if you become any more prominent, but perhaps we can buy you a guild license as well. Training or no, you surely make enough to afford one.” 

Lucas must have still had some trace of a skeptical look on his face because the Prince continued. “You really don’t get it, do you? You think I’m out to cut off your head because of some imagined slight. I appreciate people like you, Mister Blue. My nobles are so stuck in a rut that they spend half their day scheming and the other half relaxing. The family I always see you with… the Parins, right? Adin is a perfect example of what I mean. 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?” 

“No shit?” Lucas asked. Forcing himself to laugh at that so that his anger wouldn’t show on his face. 

Inside, he was raging. It wasn't because of the accusation or even the terrible things it implied. He was pissed because it was almost certainly true. 

For a very long time, Lucas tried to square the man who went to the dungeons for his sister with the man he worked with every day. He’d never been able to. However, if you reversed that one little detail, suddenly, everything snapped into place. 

“She’s a pretty thing, I grant you,” the Prince said, “But there’s not a woman in the kingdom worth that much.”

Lucas nodded along as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, but he believed just the opposite. He wouldn’t trade Danaria for every perfectly painted whore in the Red Lantern District. 

“The point is, Lordanin needs people like you,” the Prince continued. “You have no idea what our peace and prosperity costs, but it's a bill that has to be paid. If anything, you’re thinking too small. We should be brewing and exporting your potions to other cities. Think of the returns. We could…”

“But that’s for later,” The Prince said, reigning himself in. “After you’ve had a chance to recover from your ordeal, I’ll send you, along with some men. You can stop by wherever it is you lay your head to collect some clean clothes, and then you can spend some time with my own pet alchemist for the next week or month, or however long it takes to put together something truly special.”

Weeks?! Lucas thought to himself, letting the impossibility of that word weigh in. Yeah, maybe if we can just, you know, distill it down for another couple of points of euphoria. If he wants more than that, though… well, it might well take a lifetime. 

Lucas couldn’t imagine how hard it was going to be to find a new ingredient that he could add to the mix that wouldn’t have a negative interaction with one of the existing ones. He didn’t bother the Prince with any of that, though. 

It was clear the man didn’t want to talk details. He was a big-picture guy. He sat there talking with Lucas about his vision for the city and, more than anything, struck him as an amoral, Machiavellian type. He literally didn’t seem to care if something was right or wrong as long as it worked, and the castle got its cut, and honestly, Lucas could work with that. 

If any of it was true. Even by the time the Prince had lost interest in Lucas and left him to munch on cookies while he awaited whatever was going to happen next, Liam had very little certainty about exactly what was and wasn’t true in what the man had said. The dude was a high-functioning sociopath, which meant that lying and maybe even murdering wasn’t going to be enough to make him twitch. 

Unfortunately, the Prince’s keen eye made escape impossible. Oh, Lucas could run. He would probably be able to get away, but the man had seen him with Danaria on more than one occasion. 

If Lucas were to split now, the man would come down on everyone associated with the Parin manor like a ton of bricks. While he could try to escape with Danaria, and there was a chance he wouldn’t find the lab, it would hurt everyone else, including all the good people of Meadowin. 

“Nope,” he sighed to himself. “You’re going soft. That’s where you fucked up. You coulda taken the money and run, but you had to go and make friends instead.”

It was okay. Well, it was going to be okay, probably. He wasn’t in a dungeon, the Prince was a piece of work, and the man wanted him to do what he was best at. When the guards came for him a little while after that, he didn’t put up a fight or try any tricks. Instead, he was escorted to a carriage, and then they departed the castle on their way through Lordanin toward the east gate. 

It was night now, but something told him that a carriage bearing the royal crest would have no trouble going through a gate no matter what time it was. Now, he just needed to figure out how to explain this to everyone else in whatever window he was going to have to do that.

Ch. 79 - Starting Over (part 2)

The carriage made no stops. It proceeded through the gate, over the roads, and straight toward the Parin’s house. A normal man might presume this whole gesture of sending Lucas home for fresh clothes and kidnapping him in a well-padded carriage were all signs of weakness, or at least kindness. 

Lucas knew the truth. ‘We know exactly where you live,’ is what it was telling him. ‘We know exactly who you work with and more than a little about how your operation works. Fail or betray me, and it will all end up in ruins.’ It was exactly what they did in mobster movies when they told the businessman or the juror just how much they had to lose. 

That’s a nice house you got there, he thought to himself as Parin Manor came into view. It would be a real shame if something were to happen to it.

While at this moment he’d be happy to burn down the whole damn building if Adin was inside, he definitely didn’t want to hurt Danaria, and really, there was no reason that the servants had to die just because of one asshole. Even Jeeves was a decent sort these days; he always had a little too much sarcasm for Lucas, but that was fine. He preferred that sense of judgment and superiority to the alternatives of stiff formality or obsequiousness.  

Still, that was exactly what he received when his carriage pulled into the gravel of the front drive. Despite the fact that the visitor was unexpected, there were two well-dressed guards and two footmen, along with both old man Gerwin and Adin. It was clear that neither of them had the first idea why a carriage with royal livery would be showing up at such an hour, but they tried to be as ready as they could be. 

Whatever they prepared for or expected, no one was ready for was for Lucas to step out of the thing, especially not in a half-ruined outfit. 

“Is everything okay, sir?” Gerwin asked, “You’re a bit late in joining us for supper.”

Terribly sorry about that, old boy,” Lucas said, walking past him and patting him on the back, “I was having tea with the Prince, but if there’s anything warm, you can have the cook make me a plate. For now, I need your help. It’s time to do some packing.”

“The Prince,” Adin gasped. “Did you—”

“I had a good time,” Lucas said, nodding at the two guards that were trailing behind him, “and for now, we’ll leave it at that.”

Adin got the hint and said nothing more on the subject, which was good because Lucas wanted nothing more than to punch him in his lying mouth. Instead, he walked trailing Gerwin and then everyone else behind him as the footmen opened the large double doors before him, and he entered the house.

There, he saw Danaria standing at the top of the stairs. She was a vision of beauty, even in the simple lilac dress she wore, and he would have very happily stared at her all day under other circumstances.

Her face lit up as soon as she saw him, but before she could start talking he said, “Run along, Miss Parin, the men of the house have some official business to discuss, nothing to worry your pretty little head over.”

A storm passed across her features for a moment, but she got the message and walked off as soon as she saw the guards trailing behind him. It was kind of hard to miss the burnished armor of the city watch, after all.

After that, Lucas beckoned to the two footmen. He told the first one to start hauling cold water upstairs to get the bath started and the second to go to the kitchen and start boiling some in a cauldron and add just enough hot water to make it bearable. He needed to make a little time, and the elaborate ritual of drawing a bath before the invention of hot and cold running water was the perfect excuse.

Lucas continued as if everything was normal until the two guards tried to follow him up the stairs. That was where he drew the line. “Gentlemen, please,” Lucas said, acting offended. “I have accepted his majesty’s command and did not bring you here simply to try to escape. I need to wash, change, and pack for this adventure. So please kindly wait here, or better yet, wait in the dining room. I’m sure one of the kitchen boys can get you some pie or something.” 

As an afterthought, he followed that up with, “Adin, please entertain our guests until I’m quite finished.” The Viscount looked more than displeased to be excluded from whatever was happening, but he was smart enough not to make a fuss since his tax debts had not been officially cleared yet. 

Lucas had no idea if the offer of pastries sealed the deal, but the two men stopped following him, and he and Gerwin went upstairs alone. Once they were there, Lucas stole Adin’s largest steamer trunk, dumped out the contents on his bed, then went to his own room to start packing.

“Alright, man, we gotta make this fast,” he said, speaking quietly as he moved to the closet and started to pull out shirts and jackets, folding them haphazardly and stuffing them in the trunk. 

“Sir, please, you’re wrinkling everything,” Gerwin said, distressed to see how poorly he was treating his fine wardrobe. Lucas ignored that, too.

“Talk less and listen more,” Lucas said. “You can chastise me when I get back, I promise. If I get back, I mean, if not, well, take care of Danaria for me. Find her a nice man far from that brother of hers because—”

“A nice man?!” Danaria said, bursting from the door to the washroom, where she’d obviously been eavesdropping. “Lucas Sharpe, if you think that I—”

“All of you, stop, just stop,” he sighed. “Look, any minute, those assholes are going to come upstairs and drag me off to who knows where, so I don't have time to explain what’s happened or why. This is what I need from you.”

He waited a moment, and this time, when no one interrupted, he continued. “I want Hura’gh to send a man after me, on a fast horse, far enough behind us that he won’t be spotted because I have no idea where they are taking me. That’s the first thing. Once he finds out where this party is happening, he should come back and tell you guys. You got that? No heroics. If I want to escape, I’ll escape, but that's a terrible idea just now for any number of reasons.” 

“Two,” he continued, “wherever it is, I'll find a way to leave little notes by my window so that someone…” he looked meaningfully at Danaria, “Can fetch them for updates. If there's a plan, you’ll know it so that Kar’gandin can decide how best to proceed. He’s in charge while I’m gone, you understand? Not Adin. Fuck Adin.”

“But why does it have to be like this,” Danaria pouted. “You were only supposed to be selling perfume, and—”

“And that leads to number three,” Lucas said with a touch of anger. “That bitch sold me out, so you tell Kar’gandin to handle it. Pay the Knights of Brass, or whatever. I want the Fallen Orchid in ashes. She thought she could sell me to the Prince for the reward, and I’d just disappear? Fuck that.”

“Oh my goodness?” Danaria gasped, approaching him like he was a wounded bird. “Did she do anything to you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lucas letting her hug him for a moment before he brushed her off because she obviously needed it more than he did. “But I really need to finish this.”

“Item three: burn her down,” Gerwin spoke up from where he now stood at the writing desk. “What else, sir?”

“Four: let everyone know this is only supposed to take a few days or a few weeks. I’ll be back, and we have more than enough of, well… you know what, stocked to maintain normal distribution. Let Adin hand out the blue to the nobles, but tell Kar’gandin to count that shit, or he’ll rob us blind.”

Lucas moved back to stuffing his trunk with a few pairs of pants, and when that was done and he had a chance to breathe, he finally said, “Five, business as usual, okay? This is not a fucking crisis. This is just another curveball, and we’re going to get through it. With a little luck, I might even be able to turn it into a good thing.”

He wasn’t sure he believed that last part, but it was important that he seemed like he did. This was the sort of event that could easily cause everyone to panic and start skipping town. Lucas wasn’t about to go through whatever fresh hell the Prince had planned for him, just come back to an empty… well, whatever this life was becoming.

“Will there be anything else then?” Gerwin asked. 

“Check on that bath,” Lucas sighed. “I want to feel clean before whatever happens next.” feeling vaguely like a condemned man.

Gerwin nodded and left the room, leaving him alone with Danaria. It was only when they were alone that she sat down on the bed next to him and said, “I don’t like this. Not one little bit.”

“Me neither,” he answered with a shrug, putting his arm over her shoulder. “But they got me by the… well, they got me, at least for this job, and there ain’t shit I can do about it for the moment.”

“What is the job, anyway?” she asked. “Is the Prince really addicted to drugs like they say?” 

“Well, if he is, it ain’t the shit we’re selling,” Lucas laughed. “Listen, that man is dangerous. He remembered seeing me at a party months ago. Just another face in the crowd. He just wants me to help his pet alchemist with a project. It should be fine. I’ll spend a few weeks brewing potions, and then I’ll be right back. I promise.”

The two of them sat there for a few minutes in a comfortable silence that was only ended when one of the footmen informed him that his bath had been prepared. 

“I’ll miss you,” Danaria said, unwilling to get up just yet once the young man had shut the door.

“I’ll miss you too,” he said, smiling sadly before he kissed her on the forehead. This time, he was less surprised to find that he meant it. Danaria looked at him then with eyes where smolder warred with sadness. Then she got up and left before she started crying. 

Lucas almost got up and followed her. Instead, he sighed and started to unbutton his shirt as he made his way to the bathroom. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” he sighed.