Brewing Bad Ch. 184-185

Ch. 184 - Restless Peace

For the better part of the next week, things were mostly quiet. A few more nobles died, but this time neither Lucas nor anyone in his employ had anything to do with it. He was so enchanted with his fiancée that he barely paid attention, and unless a couple of assassins paid him a visit one night, or an army came marching toward them, he had no plans to change that. Even thoughts of sneaking into the castle in the heart of town to murder his fiancée’s brother rarely disturbed him, though he did sometimes think about it. 

Adin really is the last loose end, he thought to himself. I really should pay someone to take care of him, or at least find out if Duke Torvin already did. I really doubt he’d let him live. 

Lucas’ murderer achievement was up to three now, and while he wasn’t eager to bring it to four, and he definitely wasn’t eager to see what happened when it reached ten, it still needed to be done. Adin’s fate wasn’t any more public than the viscounts and baronesses that woke up dead the next few days, though. It wasn’t pretty, but at least it wasn’t a full-blown civil war. After a week, the pattern of deaths made it likely that they were being done by Duchess Morana, in a bid to put her own elderly ass on the throne. 

Out of everyone at the duke’s dinner party, she’d struck him as the most capable, which was why he’d picked the other two to spread his lies and half-truths. So, he was glad to hear that her bid for power had met with failure.

Lucas would have liked to thank his threats, but after a few whispered conversations, it seemed far more likely that there were enough men in the nobility who refused to unite around a woman as their leader. Sexism hadn’t been Lucas’s plan, but he’d take the win where he could. Instead, after a few tense nights, something close to a governing body started to come into being.

Some called for a council, others called for a proportional vote based on acres owned, serfs ruled, or taxes paid. Lucas didn’t really care about the details. He wouldn’t be participating in politics no matter how it turned out. Instead, he focused on the basics, which meant more about planning for a couple hundred guests than it did for the alchemical reagents that were flowing into his alchemical workshop so he could get back to work.

He didn’t have the time or energy to worry about wizened gnome caps or goblin bile, not when he was trying to make sure there would be enough beer and food for the big day. “No one tells you that the hardest part of being a gang boss is making sure you have enough beer for three hundred guests when you throw a party,” he griped to Hura’gh and Kar’gandin one afternoon, drawing gales of laughter from both of them. 

They’d be holding the ceremony itself in a picturesque meadow not so far from the village, but the reception would be in a party in the town square. That meant lots of work, as it turned out. Suddenly, instead of gathering herbs or delivering cargo, he had every man he could spare making paper lanterns and knocking together trestle tables from whatever lumber they could buy in the area. 

“Don’a worry, lad,” the dwarf answered. “I’m sure it will all be worth it, even if they come to put your head on a pike partway through the party.”

“Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself,” Lucas grumbled. While he didn’t mind some honest work, in some ways he would have rather fought the dragon all over again. That wasn’t out of stress over his impending marriage, or even the fact that there was so much work to be done. It was the fact that he was constantly in the spotlight. 

Before, everywhere he’d gone, he’d been Milord or Mr. Blue; now, every time he was walking through town, he knew that he and his partner were being judged as man and wife. It felt weird, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle that. 

Lucas had never been particularly good with his feelings, which was fair, considering half of his girlfriends had been as secret as their mutual drug addictions; being in the public eye as a member of the community felt entirely different. He did his best to cope by spending time in his alchemy lab. This time he wasn’t making Blue or Lwynthenll, though; he was making fireworks, or at least bootleg copies of them. 

The ingredients for gunpowder were common enough, and when mixed with iron and copper shavings and a little mana thanks to empowered alchemy, he got something suitably impressive. They weren’t mind-blowing or anything, but he thought it would be a good party favor for the crowds during the wedding feast. 

No matter how busy he tried to stay, though, he couldn’t ignore the outside world completely. As the date drew ever closer, the government in Lordanin continued to firm up. Eventually, a messenger was even sent by the city to them because of the turmoil. This time, though, it wasn’t sent to Lucas, but to Danaria, the sole remaining member of house Parin. 

Well, at least the sole remaining Parin who wasn’t locked up beneath the castle. Lucas still hadn’t found out if he was actually breathing, but he’d yet to find anyone that said he was. 

The messenger wouldn’t say what it was about, but when she opened it, it was a ballot of sorts, and she was instructed to choose from three fairly complicated forms of quasi-representative government. “Which one is correct?” she asked, turning to Lucas. “I wish my brother were here. He’d know the right choice to make.”

If he were here, he’d get high and tell us all how he should be king, Lucas told himself. 

He didn’t say that, though. Instead of badmouthing her dead brother, he just looked the thing over and then explained the options. “In this first one, a few of the most powerful people get to decide everything. I guess you’d call that an oligarchy, or maybe a plutocracy. I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school. After that, it’s more like, I don't know a republic, or a limited democracy maybe?”

The words meant nothing to her, so after a side track into the nature of representative government that made its way out of his mind thanks to an ancient civics class that had lodged in there somewhere, he said, “Look, do you want a few people to run the government, more people, or a lot of people, because that’s pretty much what this amounts to.”

“Can’t I say that all of the people should get a chance to decide?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem fair that it's not an option.”

“I mean you can,” Lucas said with a shrug. He wasn’t going to try to stop her. Medieval democracy sounds like a good time, and he was here for it. “Just skip those boxes and write in that—”

“Excuse me, madam,” the messenger said, interrupting their conversation, “But I was instructed that you must select one of the three—”  

“She’s the one that will decide that, not you,” Lucas chastised. “Leave her alone.” 

If he wasn’t going to try to influence her vote, then no one else would. In the end, he doubted it would matter anyway, in the grand scheme of things. Governments were messy things, and whatever they created would probably collapse two or three times before the rubble finally settled, and if they played their cards right, all of that could be someone else’s problem. 

The messenger looked at them crossly, but didn’t say anything else while Denaria wrote down a bit about how nice it would be to have a direct democracy. While she did that, Lucas smiled blandly and wished he remembered what it was like to be so idealistic, and he wasn’t alone in that regard. That evening, when he relayed the event to his comrades, Kar’gandin regalled them all with a long diatribe on dwarvish law and the Council of the Clans. 

No matter how many times Lucas tried to change the subject, the dwarf returned to it, insisting that it was the fairest system devised in the history of the world. “Each dwarf is a member of a clan, unless he’s an outcast who shouldn’t have a voice at’tall,” the dwarf repeated. “However, it would be unfair for all clans to have the same vote, so every year a census is held, you see? For population and productivity…”

He went on at length, but what it boiled down to was every dwarven representative had an icon of very specific weight, and there were these giant scales that they all voted with. They literally weighed the productive output of the kingdom, and moved it around in a series of complicated votes. It sounded pretty dumb to Lucas, but then he supposed that’s what happened when you put a race of merchants in charge of such things. 

As tedious as all that was, though, it was probably better than the orcish equivalent. “The people of the plains vote with blood,” Hura’gh explained. “Champions are chosen, battles are fought, and the winner sets the rules.”

“Isn’t that wasteful?” Lucas asked. “Killing every time people disagree?”

“Better that a single champion die than whole clans go to war,” the half-orc insisted. “It’s for the best.”

“But wouldn’t it be better if, you know, everyone lived?” Lucas asked, trying again. 

“Better for who?” Hura’gh asked suspiciously. “Those who wish to persuade the people must be willing to set their lives on the line for their causes. Nothing less is acceptable.”

“So what if someone is right but they are weak and—” Lucas asked before the half orc cut him off. 

“The weak are never right,” he insisted. “If they were right, they would have the strength to show it.”

Lucas sighed, sorry he’d brought any of it up. He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and closed it again.

“Why would you let the powerless have a say?” the half-orc asked again. “Their weakness already brought them low. Why let them bring everyone else down with them?”

“Oh, democracy is terrible,” Lucas agreed, not caring that his burned friend would entirely miss the irony of his statement. It was probably better that way. “It’s the worst system of all, besides every one that’s been tried before, that is. Maybe this time they’ll think of something better? Who can say?”

Ch. 185 - A New Life

No matter how much Lucas waited for doom to fall on his head in those weeks, nothing did. The worst thing that happened to him was that Heisenburgle declined his invitation to the wedding, claiming to be much too busy to waste time on a former assistant in light ‘of the current, utterly avoidable chaos.’ 

That stung, but it was also probably fair, and Lucas didn’t respond to the message. He also managed to dodge a last-ditch attempt by a few of the men in his employ to take him out for the local equivalent of a bachelor party. 

\“We can’t just go into the Red Lantern district and hope that they don’t remember who burned down the Fallen Orchid!” he insisted. 

In reality, he’d almost certainly be fine; he just wasn’t looking to go behind Danaria’s back like that. Even after all their setbacks, he had enough coin that he could have been drowning in those sorts of ladies and more than a few noblewomen besides, but he didn’t have much interest in finding creative new ways to hate himself now that he was no longer a drug addict. 

He didn’t even want to be a drug dealer anymore, not really. He could still look himself in the mirror while he did that, of course, but he didn’t like what he saw. 

It’s better that it’s Lwynthenll now, he reminded himself regularly. We’re going to use it to get people off the hard shit. 

So far, that benevolence had only really applied to the peasants who couldn’t really afford that habit in the first place, unfortunately. As much as he wanted to turn over a new leaf, he had no intention of letting his richer clients off the leash until things settled one way or the other. In a time of chaos, it was good to have friends, whether they liked it or not. 

His partners would be happy if that never changed, but he’d assured them that it would, in time, in no uncertain terms. “Pfa!” the dwarf answered. “What’s the point in investing in a new lab then, if it’s all going to go to waste?”

“We can make a profit on other things besides drugs,” Lucas assured him. “Makeup, perfumes, and healing draughts. All have excellent margins.” Kargan'din grumbled about that, but not so much that he didn’t start looking for new suppliers for some of the reagents that he mentioned. 

Work didn’t stop on their lab or their future home. If anything, it had sped up since the wedding was announced. It wouldn’t be finished by the big day, but Mort and his team of carpenters were working tirelessly to make sure that the bedroom would be at least so that their life together could get started on the right foot. 

Still, even with all of that work whirling around him, it seemed like it would never get done, and then, one day, Lucas woke up, and it was here. He was getting married. Even waking up in bed and thinking that was surreal. This might be the last time I sleep alone in a very long time, he told himself silently, followed shortly by, I wish grandma could be here to see this. 

Lucas hadn’t had a very good relationship with her even years before his death, but even so, she’d always insisted that one day he’d find the right girl and settle down. He’d never believed the woman, so it seemed a shame that she couldn’t be here to see how wrong he’d been.

Still, even though he knew it was happening, he had a little trouble believing it, and even though Danaria was whisked away by her friends first thing in the morning to get ready, he still had trouble believing it. 

Lucas himself didn’t start getting ready until after a large breakfast and a couple of beers. That took the edge off. “There’s still time to escape and preserve your freedom,” Hura’gh said, though Lucas wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking. “We could make for the plains and live by our wits as mercenaries.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll take my chances here,” Lucas answered with a smile as he got dressed in his new suit. It was strange, but he really did feel like he was taking his life in his hands today. It shouldn’t, of course, but he’d never felt such anticipation about something positive before. 

That feeling didn’t get any better when he looked at himself in the mirror. He’d been considering using a powder or a cologne to bump his appearance up by a couple of points for the big day, but really, he didn’t need it. As it was, he barely recognized himself, and if he became any more handsome, he'd be a complete stranger. 

When Lucas had fallen into this body, he was a half-staved, pockmarked corpse. Now he was a moderately handsome man, that might have been, at best, distantly related to the person he’d been before. And yet somehow Danaria liked me even before all of that, he thought wryly. That girl has no taste. 

That nervousness only intensified as he took a carriage to Meadowin and saw the number of people there. Even with all of its growth, it was a sleepy village that had perhaps two dozen people out and about by noon; today, there were nearly a hundred, and that crowd, combined with the bunting and flowers that decorated the town, made him wish he’d belted on the sword. Everyone was smiling and congratulating him, but it still felt like some kind of ambush. 

Those feelings only increased with the well-wishing. Eventually, it felt like he was getting a premonition of an ambush, but no one else seemed the slightest bit concerned. Even when he shook Sir Tristan’s hand and thanked him for coming, the man laughed off his concerns. 

“We’ve got watchers on every road, and half a hundred men in the woods,” he boasted. “I pity the fool that tries to spoil your big day.”

Reassuring as those arrangements were, Lucas couldn’t help but look around the crowd that had gathered in the meadow. Picturesque though it might be, with a flowered trellis, and a blue-robed priest who shook his hand and asked him a few questions before the ceremony. 

Still, his eyes kept darting to the treeline, searching for a hidden threat. Lucas had no idea if this was a warning from the gods or if he was just going insane. He’d never had so many eyes on him in his entire life, and he did not care for it. 

Is this PTSD, he wondered. Is that what’s going on?

That suspicion lingered a few moments longer, but when he saw his bride walking down the aisle between the two crowds toward him, all of that anxiety vanished in an instant. Danaria’s presence always made him feel like a weight had been lifted, and that was more true than ever as he looked past the two young girls who were throwing handfuls of flower petals in a path in front of his bride to her lovely dress. 

Danaria was clad from head to toe in white, and in a world where everything was made by hand, that much pure, unstained fabric represented real luxury. He couldn’t see almost any part of her, but that didn’t matter. He’d know her even if she’d been dressed in a shapeless canvas sack, and there was nothing shapeless about her gown. 

Danaria’s outfit was the height of modesty, and it showed off her curves without letting you see any of them. It included gloves and a veil, and even her ankles and legs, which showed themselves slightly with each step toward him, were covered in white tights. 

Once he saw that, the rest of the crowd might as well have disappeared. His dreams of wealth and building some kind of criminal empire certainly did. In that moment, as she stepped daintily toward him, all he wanted was to build a life with her. 

He didn’t get much of a chance to reflect on that, though, because before he knew it, she was there standing next to him, holding her little bouquet tight enough that he could see her knuckles whiten. Somehow, it made him feel better to see that he wasn’t the only nervous one. 

He wanted to reach out and reassure her, but of course, that was impossible. As soon as she stopped, the priest who officiated their ceremony started to speak. 

“We have come here today to tie together the lives of two of our fine citizens who require no introductions to any of you,” the priest announced. “On the one hand, we have our lady, Miss Parin, the last of her house…” the priest paused, and for a moment Lucas thought that he was about to bring up her dowry, or lack thereof, which appalled him. Fortunately, he moved on. “And on the other hand, her chosen partner, Mister Sharpe, who has done many good works for the community.”

Both names brought some light applause, but Lucas was not displeased that his wife-to-be drew more. He was practically hypnotized by her. While he couldn’t see her face under her three-layered white lace veil, he could see how beautiful she was in her dress. He’d spent a small fortune on it, but even if she only wore it once, it was money well spent. She looked perfect.

While he gazed at her, the priest went on at length, offering a benediction to several Gods. Lucas didn’t care about that part, and while he glanced occasionally at the man, he had trouble tearing his eyes away from his bride-to-be. 

That task became even harder when she lifted her veils, one at a time, to show them her beautiful face. The priest was saying something to her, but Lucas was so fixated on her nervous smile that he really didn’t pay any attention to it. That didn’t change until she said, “I will.” 

Then she was reaching for his hand to put the ring on his finger. That snapped him out of his trance as he realized what was happening. The vows. He’s asking for the vows. That forced Lucas to refocus, and he turned to face the older man. 

“And do you, Lord Sharpe, so swear to take this woman to be your wife?” the priest asked. “Do you swear to be with her and only her for the rest of your days, and to care for her in times of hardship and struggle as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” he said without hesitation, looking into her sky-blue eyes. As he spoke the words, he reached out and added a gold band to the finger that already held her gaudy ruby engagement band. 

As he spoke, he saw a pop-up in his vision. Happily Ever After - Achievement complete! He ignored it. 

Lucas didn’t have a doubt in his mind. He would take care of this woman forever, no matter what gods or angels had to say on the subject. He decided that even before the priest raised his arms and announced, “Then you may now kiss her, and bind your futures as one, now and forever.”

Lucas didn’t need any encouragement and grasped Danaria, dipping her with both hands as he kissed her full on the mouth. She gasped in surprise and blushed hard. Whether that was because he’d done something scandalous or just because that was how she reacted to everything, he couldn’t say, but he didn’t care. Instead, he basked in the feeling of her lips against his as their hundreds of guests cheered and whistled in the background.