Brewing Bad Ch. 60-61

Another bonus chapter... because I can! No, seriously, I completed the ending for Book 1 last night, and started on book 2 and feel like celebrating in my own small way. How far in the future is it? Well, it's not long now... Less than 10 chapters to go.

Ch. 60 - Happily Ever After

 Lucas did not like this plan. Not from the very beginning, but since it was all decided while he was incapacitated for what turned out to be the last two weeks, all he could do was deal with it. Rather than pump her for information and use that information to destroy the people she worked with, they’d thought like nobles think and decided that an alliance was in order. 

Of course, Lucas was equally certain that the two of them were already trying to figure out how to backstab each other to get everything for themselves. He could practically see it. It was their nature. Adin got something out of the deal, of course. He got his debts paid, and his name cleared. Apparently, The Torvin house was powerful enough to pull strings on its own that even the Whisperers would struggle with. 

“Her father will insist on it, don’t you see?” Adin explained to him. “He’ll have to clear my name and give the Parin’s a renewed sense of legitimacy before the wedding is announced, otherwise it will make him look bad, and once we’re related by blood, well, our interests are aligned. It's the perfect match.”

Lucas admitted that the man’s point had a certain kind of sense, but he didn’t see how simply murdering Adin in his sleep wasn’t also an option. “The moment you ally with those people, you’re putting a target on all our heads,” Lucas argued. “She’s only trying to save her skin and get the Blue. After that, you will be one more casualty in whatever secret war it is they’re waging to seize power in the city.”

  There were no answers that night nor in any of the nights that had followed. One night, after Lucas was strong enough to walk around, they sat together near the edge of the clearing, and he finally learned that the price for the marriage alliance was one-quarter of all the Blue they made going forward. 

Lucas argued that was bullshit, but Adin countered that he was already entitled to the four-way split, and he’d only given up his share. “She wanted the recipe; fortunately, I don’t know it, do I?” he said sardonically. “You said so yourself. I’m terrible with different herbs and forever mixing them up.”

“You’re betting your sister’s life that you’re right, you know?” Lucas told him a few days later when it looked like they’d all be able to go back to the manner and get back to work soon. 

“I think you already did that when you started making drugs and my house and selling them under my name, dear cousin,” Adin taunted him. 

If Lucas had been stronger, he would have knocked him out right there. The man was getting testy because they were almost out of Blue, and Kar’gandin hadn’t seen fit to bring any more because everything was still buried and hidden in case the guard came back. 

“You might think this is going to protect your sister,” Lucas spat, “But I don’t see how this ends well for you.”

“What do you mean?” Adin asked. “I get a beautiful high-born wife, a freshly cleared name, and connections I’d never have been able to manage before. I don’t see how this doesn’t end well for me.”

“What about the blue?” Lucas asked, allowing himself a smirk.

“What about it?” the noble asked, kicking some rocks. 

“Well, you gave away your share to the Whisperers. Where are you going to get more?” Lucas countered. 

“Everyone around me is swimming in the stuff. I’ll simply buy a vial when I need one now and then. It’s not that big of a deal.” Adin answered, but Lucas could see the doubt he was trying to plant worming into the noble's thick skull. “Surely my wife will—”

“Give it to you?” Lucas asked, leaning forward from where he was sitting on a low stone wall. “She better because all your income came from your share of the drugs I sold, and you gave that away. Buy more? From who? With what money? You might think this is a fabulous deal, especially for you, but I see exactly one upside to the whole thing.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Adin asked peevishly.

“It's going to finally force you to get clean,” Lucas chuckled, despite the pain, “And boy, I don’t envy you that.”

Adin walked away that day frustrated, which was good. It meant he’d gotten the subtext. The Viscount could either get clean, buy blue with money he didn’t have, or he could ask his new wife and her friends nicely. Both of them knew that there would be a lot of strings attached to that third choice. 

Perhaps that would put the fear in the lordling where none of Lucas’s other words had, he thought smugly as he slowly walked back to the tent like an old man with a bad back. 

Lucas had gotten a lot stronger in the last week, but he was only halfway back to normal. He knew that when they got back to the Manor, he could speed that up with potions, but even so he hated for people to see him like this. It could’t be helped, though. If he didn’t move and exercise he’d never recover, despite the healing. 

At night, when he took his shirt off, he saw the puckered scars of three stab wounds in his ribs, making it trivial to imagine how big that monster’s claws had been. He was told that the wound in his back was the biggest of the four as well as the ugliest, but he couldn’t see that one, and honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

. . .

After almost a month in the wilderness, they were finally given the all-clear to go home. Lucas rode a mule back, but only at Cassara’s insistence. Even so, he walked the last leg from the orchard to the house so he could look stronger than he felt. 

All of them had a celebratory dinner in the main dining room after that, and though Lucas ate sparingly and waited for the other shoe to drop, there was no late night guard raid that put them back in the dungeon. Honestly, the hardest part of the night was dealing with Arisse. She was even more difficult than Danaria. 

Danaria wished only to smother him under worry and affection. She had heard about the owlbear attack, but everyone had assured her that he was fine. Now that she could see he was most definitely not fine, despite his best efforts to fake it, she became an even more suffocating nursemaid than Cassara had been. 

That at least was done with the best of intentions. Arisse, though, she’d been arrogant even when she was bound hand and foot. Now she was insufferable. 

“You’re not going anywhere until any number of guarantees are in place,” he reminded her on more than one occasion. He still didn’t fully understand the dynamic of the warehouse bombing and so many other facets. Would the Whisperers just forgive those deaths because they finally had a trickle of their blackmail drug? That seemed unlikely, but given how cold-blooded they were, it certainly wasn’t impossible. 

Still, she seemed to prefer the prison cell of a well-appointed room to a month in the woods, so at least she didn’t try to escape. It was a small enough blessing, but he’d take it. 

The next morning, Lucas decided that he was going to start cooking again. Before he started, though, he made it very clear that Arisse was not to be let out of her room even if the Manor was on fire. 

“We must do everything in our power to make her believe that we continue to import this stuff from abroad,” he lectured his partners when they all sat around the table in the cider house that morning. It was the first time the four of them had been together, and other than him, none of them seemed worse for the wear. “We only just finished building this lab, and the second she knows where it is, we might as well burn it down and start building one somewhere new.”

Everyone agreed to that, even Adin, so he might be completely out to lunch in all this. “Second,” Lucas continued, “We now know they run around with invisibility and shit, so we need to be more careful. All this stuff needs to look like a legitimate enterprise up here to hide the illegitimate one down there, right?”

No one disagreed with that either. Indeed, they’d made great strides toward that since he’d been gone. The room was now filled with new bunk beds, wooden kegs, and apple bins. Even the pressing equipment had been refurbished. To all appearances, it looked like they were getting ready for the harvest season that was coming in another month or two.

Once all that was done, he finally climbed down the hidden staircase in the back that led to the new lab. Once he was there, though, he took a few moments to look around before he got to work. The place had turned out a lot nicer than he thought it would be. 

He’d expected a dirty little hole in the ground. That had been the original plan, of course, but apparently such things weren’t up to Kar’gandin’s dwarven sensibilities, and he’d had the walls bricked in and laid flag stones on the floor. Lucas still had a stove and a still, but now they were both bigger and better than before. 

Those were really the watchwords for the whole place. The ingredients were labeled and sorted in various bins that were clearly labeled; his glassware stood clean and ready to use on a counter that was now plained wood instead of a split, rough-hewn log. If he had a few more apparatuses, he’d have been tempted to call this modern. 

Once Lucas was done gawking, he got to work. That didn’t mean Blue, though. That would have to wait. The first thing he wanted to do was create the weak potions of healing with some endurance ingredients. 

So far as he was aware, there was no way to make the effects of a boost potion permanent, but with the right ingredients most recipes could be turned from normal potions into slow acting potions. For a person like him that was still recovering from his wounds, that could make all the difference in the world. 

So, after deciding on a few recipes he wanted to try, he gave a few of the boys that they’d hired for this sort of thing his wishlist, and they went off in search for what he needed. In addition to the normal healing potion ingredients, they were also looking for hedgehog thistle root and the flowers of a poison creeper. Either of them might work, but he wasn’t sure. He’d never tried to make a slow-acting endurance potion before. 

Once they went out hunting, he got started purifying all the other ingredients. Not only had Lucas’s absence given Kar’gandin the time to stockpile pretty much anything that Lucas had asked for in the past, but with the new still, he’d have pretty much all the alcohol he’d ever want.

Some of the things that had been collected had already rotted, and others were starting to go bad, but the various barks, mushrooms, and flowers had all been dried by someone just the way Lucas had explained before. So, that was nice to see at least. 

He spent the rest of the day in the hole, finally doing his job for once. Honestly, it felt good. This was all he really wanted to do. He just wanted to while away the day, fine-tuning formulas and trying new recipes, and the rest of the world seemed hellbent on dragging him off to adventure after adventure, but for a while at least, he wouldn’t let it.

Ch. 61 - Open for Business

Once they had a few kegs of Blue to sell, they had to start selling again. There was no choice in the matter. They needed money, and Junkies needed their fix, and that’s all there was to it.

All Lucas wanted to do was stay in the basement and fiddle with the balance of the potions he was making between batches of their favorite product, but the many junkies that now lived in and around Lordanin weren’t the patient type. 

Those first two kegs went to Sir Tristin and his men so they could get back in business. That was fair. Lucas understood that. He would gladly have given him all the rest, too, if that had meant that he could have stayed in the lab, but that would have left the noble clients, who were their real moneymakers at this point, out in the cold. 

Sir Tristin had tried to strong-arm them by doubling their protection money when he met Lucas one day in a quiet tavern not far outside the main gate. “It’s only fair; the city is a mess right now, and costs have gone up.”

He was surprised when Lucas agreed immediately. “It’s true,” he nodded. “Five dragons is more than fair with everything that's gone on. I’m glad you understand.”

“Understand?” the knight asked, confused. 

“Yes,” Lucas nodded, “that costs have gone up. I was about to tell you the same thing. Sadly, because of the trouble the Whisperers have caused and some uhh… let's say necessary changes to our operation, we’re going to have to charge thirty dragons a barrel going forward instead of twenty.” 

The man had not been happy, but then he’d opened the door, so he had very little room to maneuver. In truth, Lucas hadn’t been planning to raise the price of anything. It was almost all pure profit to him anyway. The relationship was more important than the money, but if someone was going to try to fuck him over, then turnabout was fair play. 

After that, he was forced to put on his fanciest clothes and become Lucas Parin once more. Rather than go to all sorts of different houses all over the countryside, Lucas suggested that they have their own party right here. “It would be nice and simple,” he joked over breakfast. “We put the food over here, the dancing over there, and right in the middle, we have a line for the drugs with a cashier and a couple of guards. A one-stop shop.”

“What’s a cashier?” Hura’gh asked.

“It’s… it doesn’t matter,” Lucas protested. “The point is, there’s got to be simpler ways to do this than me spending a week riding all over. I’ve got work to do!”

“The manor ain’t ready for that kinda show, and we ain’t ready for that kinda heat, and ye know it,” Kar’gandin said, pointing at him with a breakfast sausage. “Maybe in the winter, or perhaps the spring, we can—”

“Die of exhaustion because shit never stops?” Lucas suggested. 

The dwarf stared at him blankly for a moment, then they both laughed at that. Hura’gh joined in their laughter a second or two late, indicating he didn’t get the joke but didn’t want to be left out, but Lucas ignored it. 

Truthfully, he thought he might well die of exhaustion. Every day he felt a little stronger, but recovering from being at death’s door was a real bitch, even with his little pick-me-up.

Long Lasting Flask of Tainted Curative (5 doses): Endurance 2 (for the purposes of recovery only), lasts for four hours, poison 1.

Still, he shouldn’t complain. He’d be a dead man without his potions, and he was a live man with them, and that was all he needed to know. Currently, the only things they really imported in bulk were sour dwarf berries and goblin bile, but once their cash reserves were looking a little better, Lucas planned to order a few more exotic herbs and reagents to try to bump up the bitter elixir that he kept in the flask in his pocket. 

It was enough to keep him on his feet throughout the day, but only barely. Making social calls was definitely going to push both him and it to the limit. 

Fortunately, Kar’gandin had been busy while he’d been gone. He’d had his ‘cousin’ Lady Danaria answer the steady supply of calling cards they’d received the whole time he’d been away, expressing her condolences that her cousin wasn’t currently in Lordanin. 

According to the dwarf, most of her messages went something like, ‘Dear Lord Suchandsuch, I am so sorry that my dearest cousin will not be able to make it to your luncheon/dinner party/jubilee/garden party. Currently, he is abroad and has put to sea. I don’t know what for exactly, but he said something about seeking out new supplies and told me to let anyone looking for him know that he was going to be back in a month or two. Kindest regards, Lady Danaria Parin.’

While he’d made sure to have all of those condolences sent by official channels, he’d also had the tailor whip up some liveried outfits for their own messenger boys. Now that the time was right, they would send those young peasants on horseback anywhere there was a rich young man looking for a fix and inquire as to their availability. 

Their messengers would of course wait around to collect the response and ensure it was delivered, thus bypassing any remnant Whisperers that might still be looking for him and his movements. Fortunately, thanks to all of this, they had a ready list of nobles to visit in the form of dozens of calling cards all stacked up neatly on Danaria’s writing desk. 

Lucas took that stack and spread them out on the table, spreading them out to determine who’d sent him multiple invitations. Most had only sent a single letter, but several had sent two, and some had sent them missives practically weekly, showing the desperate state of their addiction. They started there for obvious reasons. 

Of course, no one refused him. As soon as the messenger came to let them know that he was once again in the city, they insisted that he come calling at once. Soon, Lucas’s social calendar was completely full.

Before everything had gone sideways, he’d hoped to pawn this job off on Adin, but now that he was in bed with Arisse, both literally and metaphorically, he no longer trusted the man. There was no telling what favors he would demand in lieu of cold hard coins from their rapidly expanding customer network. 

So, for the foreseeable future, at least half of every day was spent eating fancy meals, exchanging pleasantries and gossip he didn’t care the least bit about, and dealing drugs to the richest people in the land.

Oftentimes, he was booked for both lunch and dinner and spent almost the entire day away from the estate. He traveled with Mort every day. Apparently, the young man had been learning how to fight should the unexpected happen again. Sometimes, Kar’gandin sent another one of their growing stable of warriors, with him posing as a manservant. Though that person changed pretty frequently depending on what else the group had going on that day, it felt good to have a little backup.  

There was no trouble, though, even though Lucas expected it. There were no ambushes or attempts at entrapment by the city watch. Instead, there were any number of frivolous games and diversions planned by his hosts to ingratiate them into his good graces. Lucas, in turn, spoke about the renovations he was having done on his sister’s home and how he would host them soon. 

Though he didn’t do much riding for obvious reasons, he got reasonably good at mallets and friendly card games. He was showered with any number of invitations for deeper relationships by men who never wanted to be without their drugs again. Brothers offered him their sisters, and husbands offered him their daughters. Sometimes, an engagement was suggested, and other times, a more scandalous tryst was offered in its place. Even a few of his rarer female clients hinted they might be open to some sort of discrete physical arrangement for a steady supply of Blue; it was hardly the first time a junkie had offered herself up for a fix to him.

Mr. Sharpe was disgusted, and his wonder about Adin’s story regarding his sister grew with each new attempt to bribe him with a pretty young thing. On Earth, he would have turned them down flat. Here, he had to be a bit more circumspect. Mr. Parin couldn’t afford the luxury of being disgusted by scumbags. Instead, he had to smile and tell the man across the table drinking brandy what a tempting offer that was. 

It was only after he seemed genuinely interested that he could turn down such things without any hurt feelings. So, his backstory grew, one tawdry conversation at a time. It turned out that he was engaged you see. To the daughter of a Baron back home, and for reasons related to his father’s debts, he couldn’t cancel such an important alliance.

Yes, Lucas had more than his share of dalliances, but his dance card was already quite full. “In fact,” he often said, “After this, I expect to be entertaining two different women from a very good family for the evening. Yes, at once. So, you see, I must save my strength for them, but perhaps next time…”

Of course, with his rising disgust came rising costs. Good customers who were happy to pay in cash, like Lord Corrin, would receive the old rate. For the rest, though. For people like Baron Ronwhite, or the heir to Hessenburough who tried to offer him the flesh of his prettiest maid as partial payment instead, Lucas would have to deliver the unfortunate news that, sadly, due to a ship lost at sea, and another plundered by pirates, the price had gone up to six and a half dragons. 

For some with even more terrible offers and growing desperation in their eyes, he might not even be able to sell at that rate. Sometimes, he had only a single vial left to his name just now, and he couldn’t part with it for less than eight or perhaps even ten dragons. It was tragic, really. He considered these extortionary rates, of course, and reserved them for those who offered him a night with their non-human slaves. 

He always expected them to balk, but really, he shouldn’t have. He had what they needed, and no one else did. Oh, a few people would mention that the stuff circulating the streets of Lordanin was much cheaper. That was true, of course, but the Knights of Brass stepped on their product pretty hard. Lucas has seen samples. It was barely even blue at that point. It was just euphoria 2, and at this point, it was only enough to keep away the pangs of addiction rather than bring real bliss. 

To that, Lucas’s answer was always the same, “If you like what they’re selling, then you should buy from them instead of me.”

He could have cut them off then and there, of course, but he wasn’t in the business of making enemies. Enemies had a reason to make his life hard, whereas customers, even ungrateful, disreputable customers, had reasons to help him, or at least look the other way. 

There were other drug dealers and other gangs in Lordanin, of course. None of them sold Blue, though. None of them sold what these men needed, and after a few doses, it really was a need more than it was a want. 

So, every day for weeks he departed the Parin estate with a strong box full of vials, and every afternoon or evening he returned with a small pile of gold, honestly, it wasn’t a bad life, but it wasn’t really what Lucas wanted to be doing with his time either.