Brewing Bad Ch. 67-68 (End Book 1)

This completes the end of Book 1. Its a little longer than I anticipated, but I welcome feedback for anywhere in the middle you think I could tighten up and anywhere in the ending you think I could make punchier. Obviously this is not the end of Lucas's story, and the so new excitement is coming up in book 2. I'm well into act 1 now, and I love how it's shaping up.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! 

Ch. 67 - A New Equilibrium

By the time Lucas’s new partners started to wake up, their obvious weapons had been removed and set on the far side of the desk, and a large glass jar of small blue candies had been set between them. He did his best to sit there looking supremely confident, though his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. Adin had left the room and taken his fiancee with him, which made room for Kar’gandin to join Lucas in the cramped little study. The presence of a demihuman among such important people was sure to make them even more annoyed, but honestly, Lucas was looking forward to that part.

Kar’gandin was the only person that Lucas had shared his plan with before everything had gone down, and though the dwarf had been leery, he hadn’t seen a better play. “Yer gonna kick up a right hornet’s nest if ye do this boy,” the dwarf had cautioned him, but it was what it was. 

 Lord Broan was the first one to wake up. He was more confused than anything. “What is the meaning of this!” he demanded. 

Lucas just smiled thinly and said, “I’m sorry to inform you, but after due consideration of your kind offer, I’ve decided to renegotiate our deal.”

That he managed to say it with a straight face amused him, but not as much as the other man’s reaction. For a moment, the sharp-nosed Lord struggled to understand what Lucas had said, but as soon as he’d processed what Lucas was saying, murder replaced the haze that clouded his vision. 

“Don’t you know who I am?” the man blustered. “I’ll have you killed. I’ll have your whole family killed. Here in Lordanin and across the seas in…”

He kept going like that for a while, but his increasing volume started to wake up the other two men who had been struggling with their own brief but intense high, and Lords Torvin and Halforn slowly started to stir. 

“Let’s save the threats for when your Master’s wake-up, lapdog,” Lucas interrupted. “I’m sure they’ll want to make some too, and I’d rather have them all out on the table at once so they don’t get too repetitive. ”

The man was clearly not used to this sort of disrespect and was stunned into apoplectic silence for a moment, but that was all the time it took for Lord Torvin to open his eyes and glare daggers at Lucas. He was sharper than his minions, and he knew what Lucas had done right away.

“You really think you can subject us to this… humiliation and expect to live,” the man rumbled dangerously. “I’ve got a dozen killers out there. At a word, I could have you castrated and flayed.”

“You could certainly try,” Lucas nodded, “I’ve got plenty of killers here tonight too. Maybe we could make a bloodsport of it. I’d be careful, though. You already blundered into this trap; who knows what others are waiting for you.”

Lord Torvin was silent for a moment before he said, “You think you’re some kind of mastermind? You think you can outmaneuver me? I have men at every level throughout this city. It is I who—”

“And I appreciate all that hard work,” Lucas nodded. “You thought to use my drugs to own Lordanin, but now I’ve used my drugs to own you instead, so I suppose, in that sense, that makes Lordanin mine.”

“You think you can hold me were mere chains of addiction?” Lord Torvin roared. “I’ll beat this, and then I’ll beat your cousin bloody for your insolence as well.”

Lucas laughed then. “That’s funny. You still think after all this time, I’m related to the Parins? They were just a place I decided to crash when I came to town with a few kegs of blue. I mean, really, we look nothing alike. The first thing I did was get them hooked on Blue, the same as you. Do whatever you want to them; I’ll just pick a new family and a new name. Maybe I’ll be Lucas Torvin next; how does that sound to you?”

“But that can’t be…” Lord Torvain said, showing signs of doubt. “Arissa told me…”

“I hope she told you that Adin has been hopelessly addicted for months now,” Lucas said blandly, sure that she had. There was no way a fop like Adin could hide his gaze from her keen eye. 

“He’s tried and failed to quit twice now,” Lucas lied. “He used to have a little pride, but look at him now. He practically begs for the stuff after a few days. I guess we’ll see if you’re any stronger than that.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” Lord Halforn said, trying to get a word in edgewise. “We could have been reasonable. We could have—”

“From the very minute you walked in this door, you looked down your nose at me and my operation. This was never a partnership. You thought I was going to work for you,” Lucas nodded. “And now the shoe’s on the other foot. Now you’re going to work for me. That’s all. Other than that, everything stays the same.”

“And what are your terms?” Lord Torvin growled. 

Lucas was under no illusions that the man had been cowed or given in in any way. For now, he was just looking to get as much information as he could to decided how to screw Lucas over. That was fine. He’d expected no less from the man at the center of so much intrigue. 

“The same as before, just with the roles reversed,” Lucas smiled coldly. “You go on playing your shadowy games. You can even use blue to do it. You just belong to me now. That’s all. I make the drugs, you use the drugs, we both profit.”

“You think I’ll be a dog on a leash for you?” Lord Torvin spat. “You think this is a game?”

“You certainly did when you thought that whole ‘enslave people with addictions’ thing was going to apply to your enemies instead of you,” Lucas said with a smile. “The only thing that’s changed is that now you have skin in your game.”

“This changes nothing,” Lord Torvin said, standing, “except that after my men kill you, I will get this poison out of my system and—”

“Maybe ye should try that in the reverse order there, chief,” Kar’gandin said, chiming in for the first time. “I’ve seen dwarves shake this shite off after a few months, but humans? The only customers we’ve seen that managed to quit for more than a week were suicides.” 

“Then we’ll get it from other sources,” Lord Torvin said, unwilling to change his tune. “I will not tolerate your existence a moment longer than I have to.”

“What over sources?” Lucas laughed. “I disappear, and this whole operation dries up and blows away, leaving you with nothing but a growing craving you’ll never be able to sate. You think Dusk will scratch that itch? Dragon’s Blood? You ask the junkies in the kingdom how much that helped them when I ran out for a few weeks last month. Those men would have given all they had for one more fucking hit.”

The two of them glared at each other for several long seconds before Lord Torvin’s eyes flicked down to the jar full of blue candies. “What’s that then?” the man asked. “More poison?”

“A show of good faith,” Lucas quipped. “40 days worth of Blue for one person, or 10 days worth spread between your two lieutenants here and your daughter. I don’t want you to think I’m going to cut you off at any moment. If you spread it out and only take a couple a week, that supply could last all of you for a month.”

“A long leash is still a leash,” Lord Torvin answered. 

In this case, it's technically a noose since I’m giving you enough rope to hang yourself with, Lucas thought to himself, but he said nothing. 

The man obviously didn’t like the current situation, but now that his outrage was fading, he understood the trap that had been laid. It was impossible to believe both that a drug was so addictive that he could use it to control his enemies but so weak that he could cast off its chains. 

Kar’gandin’s words had been a lie, of course. Any habit could be kicked if you went cold turkey long enough. Blue was no exception to that. In fact, the sooner the men in this room started, the more likely they were to succeed. That’s why Lucas was making that job that much harder by giving some product away for free. The more they took, the harder it would be to break that narcotic spell, and the less they would want to, so it was in his interests that they gave in and accepted the inevitable as soon as possible.

The Lord seemed conflicted and looked to the dwarf-like he was about to talk down to him, but instead said, “Is this your real partner then? Perhaps I should burn down his home instead, my soon-to-be son-in-law’s. Maybe that would send the right message.”

“Burn down whatever you want,” Lucas said, putting his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “We’ll have to go to war, of course. I can’t be publicly disrespected any more than you can, but your fine allies have an awful lot more to lose than my junkies, and unlike you, I can start over somewhere else. My empire is portable, and yours isn’t.”

It was a bluff. In Lucas’s mind, it wasn’t even a particularly good bluff, but as Lord Torvin started to deflate, Lucas realized that they’d won, at least for tonight. Somehow, this wasn’t going to devolve into bloodshed for now. He could feel it. 

The conversion continued, and eventually, it became less adversarial as Lucas insisted he didn’t want to do anything to screw up the Whisperer’s current arrangements. That was a lie, of course. Just like Lord Torvin pretended that he might ever be okay with a subordinate arrangement, Lucas pretended that he was going to let the man keep running roughshod over the city. 

The truth was, there were going to be a lot of changes around here. If Lucas was going to keep peddling poison, he was going to do it to the right sort of people. That might even be enough to give his burgeoning little gang a name: the Bluebloods, he decided. 

If aristocracy was going to be a weapon, then he might as well see if he could accomplish some good with it. After all, he’d barely tried, and he’d improved the lives of the nearby villagers immeasurably. If he found himself with the resources of half the nobility of the city, well, who knew what he could accomplish. 

When the five of them finished their conversion, Lord Torvin took the offered Blue with him. He even shook hands with Lucas, though there was nothing but ice behind his forced smile. Even as he returned everyone’s weapons, he was reasonably sure that Lord Broan was going to pull out his wand and vaporize them. That didn’t happen, though. Instead, they exited the study, and a few minutes later, they were leaving the grounds entirely. 

“I didn’t think they were the type to leave so meekly,” Kar’gandin said, once the two of them were alone on the front porch and the last of the carriages was retreating down the front drive. 

“They didn’t,” Lucas answered as he shook his head. “It’s still going to be war. They just need to figure out a new plan to fuck us over. Shit is going to get ugly, I think, just not as soon as before.”

“Well, that gives us more time to prepare then,” Kar’gandin said with a smile, clapping him on the back before they went inside to call it a night.

Ch. 68 - Aftermath (End Book 1)

For the next couple of weeks, very little of what went on could be called productive. He was so concerned that invisible spies might be watching him or that the ambush they'd all been waiting for might begin that he didn’t actually cook once. Instead, he sat around bored out of his mind, pretending to have a good time with Adin or going on leisurely herb gathering trips where he plucked anything but the ingredients to Blue. 

He also made sure that no one left the grounds without an armed escort. It didn’t matter if it was him, the Parins, or even a messenger boy. They weren't going to make this easy on Lord Torvin because, like it or not, Lucas was sure the cagey old man was planning his revenge. The man had a heart of flint and a devious mind. He also paid people in the village to watch the road and keep an eye out for strangers, and he arranged random guard patrols of the grounds and the orchard. None of that would have been enough to stop a determined attack, but all of it would make the planning that much more difficult. 

It turned out that waiting for the axe to fall wasn’t the most difficult part of the whole thing, even though Lucas had thought that it would be. It was pretending to be someone like Adin the whole time in case he was being watched. Trying to throw the Torvins, along with anyone else who had a vested interest in killing him, off the trail, was exhausting work. He just wasn’t made to be a dilettante and eat finger sandwiches while he had long conversations about nothing at all. 

The second most difficult part, though, was putting up with Adin all day long and his incessant whining about Annise. Apparently, she was very displeased that she’d gotten hooked on Blue in all of this, and though she couldn’t break the engagement for appearance’s sake, she’d barely spoken a word to him since and had refused to see him on numerous visits. Lucas found how upset he was by that to be more than a little amusing, considering how it was supposed to be a marriage of political convenience. 

“Just tell her it was all my fault,” Lucas said. “Tell her I’m the monster that made you do it, and you’re in the same position she is. It’s pretty much what I told her father, so she’ll definitely believe it.”

“The only thing worse than being a villain is an impotent fool,” he snarled back. “If I told her that, she’d never respect me again.”

“You’d rather be hated?” Lucas asked, laughing.

“Love isn’t necessary for a strong relationship, but respect is,” Adin sighed. “Ours was never going to be a loving bed, but for a time, it was quite nice. Annise is very clever, I’ll have you know. You could learn a thing or two from her.”

Of that, at least, Lucas had no doubt. She was a snake, for sure. 

Spending time with Danaria was nice, at least for the most part. She still seemed to run hot then cold, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that. One day, everything was fine with them, and the next day, she was chastising him for being a drug dealer. It wasn’t a fight he could win, so he rarely tried. Instead, they talked about other things, like the cosmetic research he’d tried. 

She wasn’t much for makeup, but she hoped that he would try perfumes one day, which, honestly, wasn’t something he’d ever considered before. Could he make perfumes with his alchemy skills? Lucas had no idea, but he supposed it was worth a shot. They were mostly just just alcohol and sweet-smelling things, weren't they? 

Wait, didn’t whaling have something to do with it, too? He thought to himself. He had a brief recollection from history class about something to do with whaling and whale oil, but it was gone. He’d never exactly paid much attention in school, so that was hardly a surprise. 

Lucas wasted almost two full weeks. It was only when he risked a trip into town and hired a sage for the extortionary price of 8 golden dragons to explain to him how the ring of invisibility worked that he was finally able to get back to work. He needed to. They were spending a small fortune on precautions, and pretty soon, the Knights of Brass were going to be on his ass about re-upping. 

Honestly, Lucas wanted to phase out that whole line of business in the not-so-distant future and sell exclusively to the nobles. Not only would it be less destructive in the long run, but it would be much more profitable, and he could feel good about both those things, so long as the sage could tell him how to slip away so that he could come and go as he pleased. 

“You see here,” the wizened old man pointed out. “This symbol here is what controls the device.”

“What? Like a button, or is it more of a command word?” Lucas asked, unsure of how exactly he would pronounce a diamond shape with several cursive squiggles that ran through it. 

“Neither,” the sage said. “First, you wear the ring, and then you visualize the sign on it in your mind, which links your mana to it and…” As he spoke, nothing happened for several seconds, and then suddenly, the old man vanished in the blink of an eye like he’d never been there at all. 

Lucas had just enough time for his jaw to fall open at the minor miracle, but before he even finished reaching out to touch the man, the sage reappeared and handed Lucas the ring. “Now you try,” he said calmly.

If it was that easy, Lucas felt like he’d been seriously ripped off on the fee to meet with this man, but it turned out not to be the case. He put on the ring, but try though he might he couldn’t feel more than a tickle. 

“You must calm down,” the sage said after several attempts when Lucas’s irritation started to become relevant. “Channel essence can only happen with a clear mind.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do here,” Lucas sighed. 

The old man walked him through a series of breathing exercises. Then, after that interminable waste of time, Lucas tried again. At first, he felt nothing, just like before, but on his second attempt he felt a slight tingle, and on the fourth try he flickered out of existence long enough to notice, before the sudden surge of excitement at that realization broke the spell and ended it immediately. 

“Woah,” he gasped.

“Indeed,” the old man said softly. “It can take some getting used to, but it’s important to stay calm, first and foremost.”

“And once the magic is active, it just stays on? Until when?” Lucas asked. “How do I know when I’m running out of mana or whatever?”

“These things will become clear to you when you practice more,” the sage said. “Mana is like any other form of endurance, and it improves with practice. Initially, you might find you can only use this trinket for short periods of time, but with practice… well, I’m sure you’ll get the results you seek.”

The man offered to sell him a child’s toy that nobles often purchased for promising you mages to improve such skills, but at 55 golden dragons, Lucas balked at the price. He would happily practice with his ring instead, which was exactly what he did that night. 

Because he was being watched, he was sleeping in the guest bedroom of the main house, instead of in the ciderhouse with the guys. And after he went to bed he spent more than an hour practicing his invisibility. This time he got it on the second attempt, but by the fourth he was able to just hold it in place with a little bit of concentration. 

That first night, he couldn’t even sit up without breaking the spell, but after a few nights of trying, he was able to sit up, stand up, and even walk around. Opening doors and picking things up without reappearing took longer, but after a few more nights, he got there. All in all, though, he was able to stay invisible for several minutes without any real strain. Starting on the second night, he tried to hold it for as long as possible.

Though Lucas didn’t have a clock, he estimated that he could hold the invisibility effect for maybe three minutes without any effort and maybe five before he started to really feel the burn. “I wish there was some way to quantify this better,” he sighed to himself. “You know, like numbers and shit.”

Part of him hoped that some stupid pop-up window with all of his magic stats would appear when he said that like it did with his alchemy stuff. That didn’t happen, though. After almost a week of practice with the ring, including a few late-night walks around the mansion while everyone was asleep, he finally decided to test it the following day outside, where people might catch him. 

Somehow, despite his nervousness, he managed not to fuck that up, and he quickly and quietly made his way down to his beloved lab. It was only when he was standing there in the near darkness that he realized how much he missed the place. Despite the noise of people working above him now that apple harvesting was in full swing, he felt more at peace down here than he had anywhere since that whole stupid trip in the woods had almost left him gutted. 

Lucas spared a moment to enjoy that, but after that, he got to work, reviewing inventories and noting what ingredients were still good and what would have to be tossed out. Fortunately, he’d thought ahead and dried vast quantities of witch grass blossoms, wizened gnome caps, and dwarf berries for just this moment, and they’d boiled off the water from the goblin bile and blue esper vine sap to make a more purified and shelf-stable version. While he noted a few of the jars of bile now had the status of rotted or putrified, most of them were still fine. 

So, Lucas quickly got to work. After all, he was going to need a lot more blue soon. They all were. Their regular noble customers needed over a hundred doses a month now, the Knights were going to need forty doses a week of the watered-down stuff, and Lord Torvin and his bunch, well… Given that they hadn’t been attacked yet, Lucas was pretty sure he could put them down for another forty or fifty a month just to be safe. 

The result came out to be almost four batches a week, which definitely meant more mats than he had right now, at least in terms of goblin bile. His mind racing, Lucas realized he was going to have to get the boys out scavenging again, and he was looking to pick up any esper vine they could before the weather turned. Then there was talking to Kar’gandin so the dwarf could get more bounties out there for the bile and… 

Lucas forced himself to stop, then feeling slightly ridiculous, he used one of the breathing exercises the sage had taught him to force himself to calm down a little. All that could wait. It could certainly wait until the end of the day and probably until the end of the week. All that mattered now was what he was doing. He’d waited weeks to get back to it, and he wasn’t about to blow a cook because he was distracted. 

Refocused, Lucas smiled and then lit the fire on his stove. It was time to get to work.