Brewing Bad Ch. 37-42 (Patreon)

Ch. 37 - Rolling Deep

Lucas could see that he’d stirred up a hornet's nest even before he left the small courtyard. Well, he hadn’t, not really. It had been that asshole mage that had knocked half a building over. He didn’t want to think about how many people were buried under those bricks, but it wasn’t like it was his fault. 

There were already lots of guards on the main streets in and around Greybottom, but he bought a cheap cloak to cover up his bloodstained shirt and hide his fucked up book, walked north out of the main gate, and no one gave him too hard of a time. 

He was certain this would have consequences, and he kind of regretted that the mage didn’t die with the rest of his victims, but the fact that he’d survived wouldn’t make revenge any less likely. Mages didn’t seem to be the forgiving type, and even without a dagger that always pointed to him, Lucas doubted that the weasel would forget his face any time soon. 

By the time Lucas made it home, the sun was getting low in the sky. Even though he shed his cloak as soon as he was well away from the gates, no one troubled him. He was just one more loser with a donkey heading back to his village after selling his wares as far as anyone was concerned, and he made it back to Parin Manor without incident. 

By the time he reached it and walked by the main house, he saw Gerwin looking at him from the porch with disapproval. “So much for just going for a little talk,” he said stiffly. 

“Look, I wasn’t expecting to get jumped either man. I’ll buy you a nice new shirt, alright?” Lucas answered. 

“Will that be in place of, or in addition to, an apology?” the manservant asked. 

“Jeez, man, I’m sorry, okay,” Lucas sighed. He didn’t even bother to stop as he walked past, and when he was well past the porch and walking along the side yard, he finally muttered, “Asshole.”

He found his friends where he’d left them. No, not friends, he corrected himself. Business associates. Partners in crime. Thinking about strangers that might slit your throat while you sleep was a good way to end up dead. Adin was a junkie waiting to happen, Hura’gh was a killer, and while Kar’gandin might well be growing on him, the man was a known liar and a cheat. 

Still, that resolve became harder to hold when they were so sympathetic. When he arrived at the cider house, Hura’gh was chopping wood, and Kar’gandin was on the porch fiddling with his account books when Lucas walked up. To their credit, not even the half-orc laughed; instead, he said, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Two ambushes, a fight, a mage, and a big ass sale to the Knights of Brass,” Lucas said. “That’s what happened.”

“Ye have the money, though, right?” the dwarf asked, pointing at him with his pen. 

“Yeah, most of it,” Lucas nodded. “But before you blow up about it, let me tell you how it all went down.”

So, as Adin came out Lucas sat down on a firewood round that hadn’t been split yet and the them the whole story from the beginning. “So I started with this nice clean shirt,” he said, holding out his arms, “and it all went down hill from there.”

He told them about his meet up, and the easy sale followed by the hard sell that followed. There were a few chuckles as he explained how he got one over on Sir Tristen and salvaged that situation, but the laughter stopped when he was almost murdered by the mage that had been waiting for him. 

“Boy someone sure wants you bad,” Kar’gandin said. “Do ye know how much it costs to have a mage in your pocket every day just waiting for yer sorry self to show up? All the dragons we just made wouldn’t be enough for a week.”

Lucas had not, in fact, considered that. It was a sobering thought, and in his mind, the only place it pointed to was the castle. There were noble houses that could certainly afford that bill, of course, but he hadn’t busted out of their dungeon and made a fool of them in their own city. 

Or maybe there’s more to it than that, he thought. Maybe someone in the castle has a taste for…

“Do you think he can follow you here?” Adin piped up, disrupting that train of thought before he could get any further. “Like - are we in danger? You saved my life, but If they’re going to turn us into toads or light us on fire, then maybe it's best if—”

“Don’t be a baby,” the half-orc said. “If a wizard thinks they can come on our turf and do as they will, then I will teach them the error of their ways.”

Lucas doubted that the orc would have much luck with that, but he ignored the comment and said, “Why do you think I didn’t bring the dagger with me? Who knows what they could do with their magic if they got close to something they’d already cast a spell on. Better to bury somewhere no one will ever find it again.”

Kar’gandin was less concerned about the mage than he was about the protection money, of course, but he agreed that Lucas had done the right thing. “I’d hoped that they would have seen the value in the relationship, but it seems they got greedy as well,” the dwarf nodded. “Still, ye showed spine, and that counts for something. The next time ye go back, we’ll have to have a couple tough-looking men with ye to show that we’re growing so they don’t—”

“Back?” Lucas exclaimed. “I’m not going back. The fucking mages are hunting me, man. I may never enter Lordanin again at this rate.” 

“Nonsense,” the dwarf said, putting down his book. “Ye have the relationship with them. It’s vital you’re the one that does this. We just have to be smart about it.”

“Why can’t you do it?” Lucas asked. 

“As a human, ye might not be the most aware of this, but not all the people of your kingdom care for my kind,” Kar’gandin said. “Aye, I could go and handle it, but we’ll get a much better price with fewer troubles in the long run if it's a human face that shakes their hand and drops the product. Still, if you feel comfortable letting someone else walk off with years worth of magic potion, I’m sure I could think of a name or two that could do the delivering for us for a modest fee. They might even come back with all the dragons.”

Lucas sighed. He remembered just how violently Sir Tristan had reacted to talk of a half-orc as Lucas’s champion. That was more than enough to prove Kar’gandin’s point. “Nah, I think I’m good on that front. I just want to know how I’m supposed to get in and out of the city without getting pinched.”

“Well, that part’s easy. We just have to make sure that you look so different that you hardly recognize yourself,” Adin answered with a grin. “It just so happens that my dear sister has engaged a tailor to take your measurements tomorrow after lunch. If we pair a nice new suit along with a haircut and a shave, then you’ll look like a—”

“An idiot,” Lucas snorted derisively. 

“A whole new you,” Adin finished. “This won’t be enough to make you fit in amongst the upper crust, of course. We’ll still need to book a dancing instructor, a riding instructor, and then there’s the table etiquette to consider of course…”

“Sounds like a lot of work to sling a little product at parties,” Lucas grumbled. 

“Nah,” the dwarf said with a shake of his head. “You said so yourself. We’ll get more money from the gentry and their parasites than we ever will for the working stiffs. It’s just going to take some prep work, is all.”

Kar’gandin managed to say all that with a straight face, but as soon as he finished, he cracked a smile and said, “I’m just glad I ain't the one that’s gotta get dressed all nice and fancy.” After that, he laughed, and everyone else, including Lucas, joined in. 

After that, they ate. Eventually, Lucas got around to sorting out all the mushrooms and other herbs that Adin had spent the day gathering. Well, a day might have been a bit of an exaggeration. There were two full baskets and a pile on his bench, which probably meant four hours of work and eight hours of relaxing and complaining. 

Though he'd end up throwing a lot of them away, the haul was mostly useful, though. In addition to the wizened gnome caps he needed, there were some black spots, a few bearded ladies, and an assortment of shelf style mushrooms in golden, grey, and curdled milk. While he hadn’t planned on making any potions of night sight, he definitely could if he tracked down a little copper leaf, and some of the rest could be pondered down for catalyst purposes. 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad haul. There was no goblin bile, though, which meant making another batch of blue, which was out until he went on a hunt. Adin swore he hadn’t seen any, which was strange this time of year, but Lucas dropped it. If the man was lying because he’d been too squeamish to butcher the little bastards, then it wasn’t like badgering him was going to change that. 

It was only when he was lying in his bed later that night, listening to the war of snoring between the dwarf and the half-orc, that he realized that moments like this were why he couldn’t help but think of these guys as friends. Well, except maybe Adin, between being a junkie and holding on to some idea that he was somehow better than the rest of them, that gap was probably unbridgeable, but he’d play his part or tragically disappear if worst came to worst. 

The rest of them, though, hell - even Gerwin and Denaria were pretty great. If they could just bring on some more muscle that wouldn’t try to kill them in their sleep to ward off any further encroachment by the Knights of Brass or any of Lordanin’s other gangs, they’d be all set. 

Honestly, he’d been surprised that no one else had been more upset at the idea of paying the other gang protection money. Is that just because I’ve seen too many mob movies or what? Lucas wondered. To him, it felt like weakness, but not even Hura’gh saw it that way. 

“It is not dishonorable for a smaller tribe to pay tribute for peace,” the big man had said. “In time, when they are the smaller tribe, and we are the larger one, they will pay us for peace. This is the way of things.”

Lucas didn’t know if it was or wasn’t, but to him, it felt wrong, even if there wasn’t really a choice in the matter right now. That was the thought he fell asleep to that someday they’d be the bigger gang, and they’d be the ones to decide what was right. He just didn’t know what he’d decide when he got that far.

Ch. 38 - Fitting

In the morning, once they’d finished eating breakfast, Lucas gave Adin a wish list of herbs and roots he wanted the man to find along with very detailed descriptions and asking Hura’gh to guard him in case goblins attacked. The noble protested and asked, “Why am I the one that always has to pick berries,” but Lucas blew him off. 

Maybe when you know how to do more than pick berries and complain, you can spend your time on other things, he thought. He didn’t say that, though. Instead, he just shot back, “because I’m doing more important shit, and someone's got to do it if we’re gonna cook, alright?”

The truth was that he wasn’t actually in a hurry to cook more blue just yet. They’d barely started spending money from their last windfall, and he didn’t want enough gold lingering for someone to get greedy. As long as they were still living hand to mouth, everyone was staying focused on what needed to be done, but as soon they got comfortable, that could fall apart. 

Lucas had long ago decided he preferred to work alone, especially when he was tweaking, and his paranoia was maxed out. If he had to have a partner or two, then he needed to think of it like a shark. A shark never rested comfortably or took a nap. They either keep swimming, or they died. This arrangement was like that, too, even if they didn’t know it, and Lucas was going to do his part to keep everyone so busy that they didn’t think about it. 

Of course, he also wanted a few things that had nothing to do with making more drugs. Now that he had his recipe book again, and he could rely on more than just admittedly faulty memory, he’d be happy to work out what it was he needed to make other interesting potions that they might be able to sell for a little money on the side. 

After all, despite the fact that blue made five times more than a good healing potion, it would be a waste of money and the chance to do more experimentation to leave other ingredients to rot. So, he’d make a few small batches of other potions and maybe learn a thing or two.

Hopefully, those assholes find some goblins, or I’m going to be looking for a substitute for that ingredient soon enough, he thought to himself as he organized his workspace. 

He wasn’t really sure if there was a substitute ingredient for such a complex recipe, of course. In theory, there was always the chance that there were ten more ingredients that would work just fine. Theoretically, as long as it was toxic, it might work, but in practice, it was harder. 

Through trial and error, Lucas had worked out a number of snake venoms and a couple of more common poisons because they all conflicted with at least one other ingredient. That was the problem, ultimately. A weak potion usually consisted of just two ingredients put together after being processed correctly. 

The man that had taught him alchemy when he’d arrived in this world liked to add all sorts of placebo ingredients that did nothing, but the didn’t seem to hurt anything either, most of the time. It was when you added a third real ingredient, or a fourth, that things started to go wrong. He’d gotten lucky in the prison cell, but probably only because all the ingredients were so nasty that no sane person would drink them. 

Lucas dwelled on those thoughts for hours as he tried to decide what he should brew up next, while he organized his ingredients into neat piles to grind and pulverize later. Sometimes he felt like he was forgetting something while he continued to make progress on deciding the best use for each little herb and mushroom, but since nothing came to mind he shook it off and kept going. 

These would be a healing balm, and those would be used to create a restorative elixir of second wind. Everything could be used for something, and the few herbs he hadn’t played with enough to write down a recipe for? Well, those were put in the experimentation pile. He was always down for an experiment or two. 

He honestly could have spent all day working on his little house cleaning project if Danaria hadn’t come and interrupted him. “Lucas, here you are! What are you still doing back here and why haven’t you come to the Manor?” she asked impatiently. 

“Was I supposed to?” he answered her question with a question. “I was just…”

His words trailed off as he suddenly realized what it was he was forgetting. “The fitting,” he breathed.

“The fitting indeed,” she said, stomping her foot in irritation. “Now, put on something nice, and we can leave. My carriage is already waiting and—”

“This is it,” Lucas said. 

“What is it?” she asked, confused. 

“This is the nicest thing I have at the moment,” Lucas said, looking over his stained and sliced shirt. A couple days ago, it looked pretty decent, but now it was almost as bad as his only other outfit. At least this one still smelled mostly clean. 

“That's… it?” she asked again in confusion. “Surely you jest. Have you no wardrobe? No baggage?”

“Sadly, I misplaced my carriage and my manor house, Miss Parin,” Lucas said with a smile. “Surely, my servants will be along any day to rectify the issue.”

“Your servants? Are you… Ohhhhh, you are jesting with me, aren’t you?” she asked with a smile tinged with a touch of blushing that made her look almost twice as pretty as she had the moment before when she was being cross with him and doing her best to feign seriousness.

“Guilty,” he said with a smile of his own. There was a little moment there between them where their eyes met, and their smiles matched. If she’d been someone a little less innocent, he might have put the moves on her. Instead, he let the moment pass and said, 

“Come on, we’ve got a tailor to see.”

The two of them walked to where the carriage waited on the front lawn. Lucas hadn’t seen it before, but it made sense for her to have it. Most of the nobility in Lordanin traveled exactly like this. He was less concerned about how they were getting there than where they were heading. 

“Are we going into the city?” he asked. 

“I didn’t think it was necessary, so I made an appointment with Mister Twee. He has a shop in Meadowin,” she answered almost apologetically. “He’s done many of my finest dresses, but if you wanted something more fashionable, I’m sure we could find something on high street or—”

“No, your choice will be just fine, thank you,” Lucas said, breathing a sigh of relief as he opened the carriage door. 

If they were only going as far as the village, it made even less sense that they were taking a carriage when they could walk or ride, but he was too relieved that he wasn’t going to have to roll the dice with the guards again so soon after his last disastrous trip. So, he didn’t complain. He just sat there quietly as he watched the road reel by while Danaria made conversation. 

She talked about the village and the tailor at first, but since it was a largely one-sided conversation, it eventually drifted to other things like the weather. Lucas nodded along wherever it was appropriate but mostly took in the beautiful weather and the contrasts between the woman’s dress and her carriage. 

The vehicle had obviously seen better days, just like the house and the grounds, but her clothing was nice and new. It was stylish even. She seemed oblivious to money matters, so he was left to wonder if she was wearing her floral print canary dress and matching hat and yellow slippers because she didn’t know how bad the house’s finances were, or if her brother spoiled her despite that. 

Lucas would have asked, but by the time he’d worked it all out, they were already in Meadowin’s market square, and the horses were coming to a stop. It had been such a short ride that he was again reminded that it was a complete waste of time. 

The shop itself was a simple affair, with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls, as were all the other buildings in the village. Inside, it was a little nicer. Bolts of colorful cloth hung from the far wall, and dummies with partially finished outfits were positioned near the window so they could be worked on. 

The proprietor was not immediately present, though. Instead, he was in a back room, tending to someone. Lucas couldn’t see who that was, but he could hear someone coughing. 

After a moment, the man came out and introduced himself. “Ah, right on time,” he said, even though they were clearly late. 

Lucas let Danaria make the introductions, but when she started to make excuses for his appearance, he took over and said, “I’m her cousin, Lucas Parin, from the Esterbrocken Parins, and on the way here to pay my dear cousin a visit, I was waylaid by bandits.”

“How, how dreadful,” the man said. 

Lucas wasn’t sure whether the tailor believed his story or not, but the man certainly acted like he did. Of course, he probably went along with whatever his paying clients told him, Lucas realized. When dealing with nobles, it was probably best to keep your head down. 

The three of them discussed fabric and styles for the next twenty minutes, and though Lucas didn’t have much of a preference, he pretended like he did. He would appear to act indecisive or talk about the current fashion at home before bowing to his dear cousin’s opinion. 

In the end they decided on 2 two dark suits in the modern style, 1 in a more archaic but fanciful style along with a dozen shirts and a few trousers in various shades of blue and black along with underclothes, pocket squares, and a few waistcoats and cravats. 

It seemed a bit excessive, but Lucas couldn’t deny that he had literally nothing to wear beyond two ragged sets of clothing now that his home had been thoroughly ransacked. All in all, though, it was barely more than a handful of dragons to replace a fancy wardrobe. 

Of course, eight dragons was a lot of money, and most of that would go to buying the materials. Still, if Lucas had to choose between a landless cottage, a new wardrobe, or two wagonloads of cheap beer, he knew which one he would purchase. 

It was an enjoyable enough game, and though Danaria almost gave it away more than once, she quickly grew used to it. It was only after he’d paid the tailor when it was time for him to strip to his underclothes for measurements that she excused herself. 

Lucas had never been to a tailor before. He was an off-the-rack sort of guy on Earth, so it was a new experience for him as the older man took his measurements one by one and made idle conversation while he jotted down the numbers. 

Once, during a coughing fit, he made Lucas stand there while he went and attended to whoever was in there, but other than that, the man worked quickly and efficiently. 

“So, how long do you think all of this will take?” Lucas asked, eventually, when he was finally getting dressed. 

“Oh, weeks and weeks, I’m afraid,” Mister Twee said. “Normally, I’d go faster, but with my daughter being so sick, well… I’ll try to have you something as soon as I can.”

Lucas nodded at that and said all the right things, but as soon as he was done, he quickly left the room behind to go find his so-called cousin so they could go home, and he could get back to cooking.

Ch. 39 - Linger

When Lucas shook the tailor’s hand and left the shop he’d planned to head right back to the cider house. Danaria, it would seem, had other plans. As he moved to get into the carriage with her, she got out on the other side and said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uhm, back to the house?” he said, not sure where else they would be doing. 

“But what about the cobbler and the barber?” she asked. 

“Well, I do need a shave, but I already have good boots, so…” he looked down at his muddy boots and immediately regretted it. They’d been black once, but after so much wear, it was hard to tell anymore. 

“That,” she said, pointing at his boots, “Is exactly why you need to visit the cobbler. We could buy you the fanciest cravat on High Street, but no one would believe you were my cousin without better footwear.”

She smiled at that last bit, which was infectious as always. She obviously loved their shared secret. No doubt it was great fun. It would get more serious, though, once he started making connections and snaring more addicts like her brother. Had she given any thought to how dangerous that might be for her? He wondered. 

Before he could contemplate that any further, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him along to another shop further down the street. This time he met a dour faced man named Finnegan, who started shaking his head the moment he saw Lucas’s worn out shoes. 

“Ya ever think to polish these even the once?” the man asked in exasperation as he examined the battered things. 

Lucas stayed polite and tried the same excuses about the bandits, but the man was much less circumspect than the tailor. “You?” he laughed. “Her cousin? In these boots?”

“Distant, cousin,” Lucas insisted. “Very far removed.”

Danaria seemed quite horrified that they’d already been caught in their little lie, but before she could confess everything and apologize for leading the man astray, he interrupted and put in an order for new boots like the ones he was wearing, a higher set of riding boots, and two sets of shoes: one for dancing and the other for court. 

All of that was barely more than a dragon, and once the quarrelsome man bit the coin to check it, he became a lot more biddable. By the end of the translation, he’d even started calling Lucas Sir, though he’d been extremely sarcastic about it. 

Danaria seemed entirely impervious to such things, as only sweet, naive girls like her were. As they left the shop, she clutched his arm and said, “Wow, I can’t believe you fooled Mr. Wake like that,” she said, still giggling. 

“Well, he’s a canny man, but nothing blinds like gold,” Lucas said, trying to ignore how nice she smelled as they walked across the square to the barber. 

There had been a few people out and about when they arrived, but now that it was almost noon, the village had fully come to life. People were buying and selling vegetables in the few stands that made up the market. 

It was a pleasant enough scene, but that was quickly interrupted when they walked into the barber shop and found the man extracting a tooth from a customer. “I-I think I’ll wait outside,” Danaria said, suddenly turning and walking back out into the square. 

Truthfully wanted to do likewise, but he didn’t want to look like a bitch even more. So, instead, he shut the door behind him and found a seat on one of the chairs against the far wall. 

“Now hold still, Earl!” the barber said, readjusting his grip on what looked a lot like a wrench. “The sooner I get this out, the sooner it stops hurting!”

Lucas let his gaze drift to the window, and instead of concentrating on the screams of the man who was having a very painful sort of root canal, he looked out the window and watched as Danaria gave away copper coins to small children. It was both adorable and vaguely patronizing, but from the way they reacted, he could tell that was something she did quite often. 

From the way she smiled, it obviously made her happy to be kind to them, and he doubted that she was the type to worry about counting coppers. He was just starting to imagine what it would take to get her to smile at him like that when the barber suddenly wrested the tooth free from his patient, and the barber’s chair was vacated. 

“Now what can I do for you,” the bushy bearded man, asked. “Just here for a trim, or…”

“Give me the works,” Lucas told him. “I need a shave and a haircut. After so much time on the road, I’m a mess.”

Lucas spent the next half hour getting shaved to within an inch of his life while he told the man a harrowing and completely fictional tale about his travels to Lordanin. The man seemed to believed him. Not that it mattered. Lucas wasn’t so much trying to convince him as practice the story and try the identity on for size. 

A good lie to preparation and details. It required you to commit to the part, and when he finally had some nice shoes and some clothes to go with his new haircut, the last thing he wanted to be was an empty suit. 

Despite how uncomfortable he was letting a stranger hold a straight razor to his throat when it was over, and he checked himself out in the distorted mirror of polished bronze, he had to admit he looked better than he had in a long time. It had definitely been worth the quarter crown. 

When he got back to the cider house, Hura’gh teased him and called him a youngling, while Adin clapped him on the back and congratulated him on becoming halfway respectable. Only Kar’gandin grumbled. 

“What de ya mean? No big deal,” he fumed. “The best part of a dozen dragons on clothes?! Pffaa! Armor, I could understand. Weapons I could except, but wool and cotton are not steel me, boy, you’ve been duped!”

“What can I say,” Lucas shrugged. “You gotta spend money to make money, and when we can start selling pure to the rich assholes that Adin knows, well… I bet I can make all this back in one night of hobnobbing.”

“Pure?” Adin asked. “Definitely, but if you want someone to try it out, to, you know, make sure it’s up to snuff… What?”

Everyone started laughing at that, and only Adin wasn’t sure why. Junkie logic always made guys like him think they were being slick when they couldn’t have been more obvious. 

After that, they spent the rest of the evening discussing the only real bad news of the day, which was that there were no goblins to be found pretty much anywhere. 

“None?” Lucas answered in exasperation. “Really? They’re vermin. You should be able to kick over a random stone and find three anywhere in the Greenwood!”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Hura’gh agreed. “But they ain’t there.”

They discussed it a bit but came to no answers. As it stood, they really only had two choices. They could either figure out where they went, or they could try to find them somewhere else instead. 

As Lucas lay in bed that night, he found it difficult to sleep. At first, he thought it was the way that Danria had been distractingly pretty that was keeping him up. It had been a long time since he’d had a girlfriend, and since this was pretty much his longest period of sobriety on record, that thought was really starting to weigh on him. 

As he thought about it, though, he realized it wasn’t how pretty she’d looked in her yellow dress that he’d been obsessing about. It was the copper bushels she’d been handing out to the people of her village. 

A copper coin was literally nothing to him at this point, but for an impoverished family, it might be enough to feed them for a day, and those children had clearly been impoverished. He didn’t know all the fancy medical terms, but he could see crooked bones and gapped teeth. 

Hunger was a frighteningly common problem in this world. He’d learned that in the few years he’d been here as he worked his way up from near zombie to small-time drug dealer and had more than a few hungry nights himself. It was something he’d just learned not to see after a while, but that was harder after he saw the way it pained good people like Danaria. 

He didn’t even really care, but it still ate at him like some kind of emotional acid reflux. So finally, instead of letting his subconscious torment him indefinitely, he got up, got dressed, and put on his boots. Then, walking past his snoring roommates, he grabbed a basket, and proceeded to collect half a dozen healing potions that didn’t have too much poison in them and started walking back toward Meadowin. 

He felt kind of stupid for doing it. A few weak healing potions probably wasn’t enough to cure any of those ills permanently, but it would be enough to make him feel better, and that was the only thing he was looking to fix right now. 

Lucas took his knife with him. Technically this time of night, the roads probably weren’t safe to walk alone, even this close to the city, but he doubted anyone was going to fuck with him. Ten minutes later, he was pounding on the tailor’s door. The village was dark, but there were candles and hearths still burning in a few windows, including this one, so he didn’t feel too bad about it. He mostly just felt like an idiot for being here at all. 

Mister Twee eventually looked out his window, and after a few seconds, he removed the bar from his door and opened it just a crack. “Oh, uhm, Mister Parin, was it?” the older man spoke quickly. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. When I said that your clothing would take some time, I didn’t mean today, perhaps next week or even—”

“Here,” Lucas said, thrusting the basket in the man’s face. “I thought you could use these more than I could.”

The tailor straitened his glasses and peered into the cloth-draped basket, but before he could ask what was in it, Lucas volunteered, “They’re healing potions. Please give one to your daughter to help with that awful cough and the rest, well, just give them to whoever else might need them in the village.”

“Healing potions,” the man said in disbelief. “And so many? No, Mister Parin, there’s no way that I can possibly afford such a—”

“I understand your financial state,” Lucas said. “And since I just paid you good gold to replace your wardrobe, you understand mine too, I’d imagine. So, think of it like this… It is imperative, or whatever, that I receive my garments as quickly as possible, and you said you’d need your daughter’s help to do that, so now she can help.”

“But there must be two dragons worth of potions here,” the man said, “I couldn’t possibly.”

Maybe like a dragon and a half if they were up to the alchemist's guild’s standards, Lucas thought, but lesser potions with foraged ingredients, we’re talking maybe six kings. Maybe. 

He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he just muttered, “Exactly, pocket change to a man like me. So take the potion, get your girl well, then put her to work, alright?”

The tailor was about to decline again. Lucas could see it in his eyes, but another terrible, wracking cough made him reconsider. Instead, he took the basket and said, “Thank you very much. I will find a way to repay you with time and quality, if nothing else.”

“See that you do,” Lucas said sternly, leaning into his role as a noble as he summoned all the limited imperiousness his shave and haircut provided him. “See that you do.”

As the door shut in his face, Lucas started walking back to the manor. His heart felt a little lighter, and now he could finally get some sleep.

Ch. 40 - A New Supply

Lucas spent the next day doing what he could with the herbs he had while Adin went out and got him more inner rosewood bark and sagethorn root. While they did that, Kar’gandin and Hura’gh spent the day chatting up strangers at the inns along the main road looking for answers about their goblin dilemma. 

When the four of them were reunited at dinner time, Kar’gandin declared he’d found the source of their problem. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all he’d discovered. As soon as the dwarf sat down at the table in the barn that served as their dining room, he slapped a wanted poster down on the table. This one had one major difference over the last one, though: the only one on it was Lucas. 

Where as before there was a poster with all four of them on it, now it was just him, along with the promise of a sizable reward. It was a terrible likeness of course. Not only did it show him with the beard the mage had almost certainly seen, but he was described as far more menacing and muscular than he actually was. 

With all of those shortcomings, he wouldn’t have worried if it wasn’t for the money that was offered for his capture and questioning. 

“Fifty golden dragons shall be offered for the man if he be delivered alive to the castle. For further questioning,” Lucas read aloud before setting it back down. 

There was a lot more about his various misdeeds, including assaulting a mage and slaughtering dozens of innocent people along with guards over the course of his many escape attempts while he continued to poison the city, but he didn’t care about any of that. All he cared about was the way the other three men at the table were looking at him. 

“So is that it,” he asked. “Are you losers going to turn me in for a lousy pile of dragons?”

“I wanted to,” the half-orc admitted, “but the dwarf talked me out of it.”

“Yer damn right, I did!” Kar’gandin said. “I might sell me own mother for such a sum, but the man that can make twenty or thirty dragons in a week with random ingredients he finds on the ground? He’s worth way more than that!”

“Thanks, I think,” Lucas answered with a grateful smile. He was pleased that at least one person knew there was more money to be made in feeding the golden goose instead of slaughtering it. “You let me know when it hits five hundred, and I’ll start to worry.”

“Boy, it would take a thousand for me to even consider such a thing,” the dwarf smiled. 

There was a little more joking, but after that, the four of them discussed the more serious matter of the missing goblins between bites of leak soup and loaves of freshly baked bread. Kar’gandin’s answer surprised him, even though it shouldn’t have. 

“You’re serious?” Lucas asked after the dwarf started laying out the big picture. “The Blind are hunting them?”

“Well, not directly,” Kar’gandin replied. “But through intermediaries, they’ve put out contracts, a king for a corpse, no questions asked. Apparently, adventurers from all over have been purging lairs. It’s practically a gold rush.”

“That’s fucking bullshit,” Lucas cursed. 

He’d already done the math in his head. Even if their jank-ass midnight potion or whatever it was they were calling it was selling for half what his blue was, they were still tripling their money because the fire salts they were using as a catalyst were far from expensive. 

“So, is there an alternate ingredient we can use?” Adin asked. The man was clearly fiending. It had been a few days since his last fix, and he was taking this news harder than anyone. “Maybe troll blood or orc…”

Adin trailed off when Hura’gh looked at him with fire in his red eyes. “Sorry,” the noble mumbled. 

“Well, the lad has a point,” the dwarf agreed, “If we could find an alternative, we might—”

“We can’t, not any time soon anyway,” Lucas said, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s complicated alright, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is how simple the rest of this is all of a sudden.”

“Simple?” Hura’gh asked. “Simple, how? Do you know where to find goblins they don’t?”

“There’s always going to be more goblins, man, don't worry about that,” Lucas shot back. “But they don’t matter either. What matters is that the Blind bastards stole my recipe, and now we gotta fuck 'em up.”

“Fuck them up how?” Adin asked. “They’re way bigger than us. They got a claim on most of the best spots in the market district and dozens of men. Hundreds, maybe.”

“Yeah, but they also got someplace where people are turning in those corpses,” Lucas shot back, “and as vile as that work is, I doubt very much they’re bringing them into the city. So, it simplifies things. We find out where they’re carting off our goblins. We break in, steal whatever they got worth stealing, and then burn the place down as a warning to the rest of them.”

“That will start a gang war for certain, sure,” Kar’gandin said, though Lucas noted he didn’t seem particularly upset by it. “If we start killing people, then—”

“Whoah, who said anything about killing people?” Lucas asked. “I doubt they’re running a 24-hour operation. Who’s going to want to steal a bunch of dead goblins? Besides me, I mean.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to kill them?” Hura’gh asked. “Doesn’t that send a stronger message?”

Because I’ve never killed anyone before, for one, was what Lucas thought, but he didn’t say it. He couldn’t. That wasn’t a message he could share with these men. The city watch was making him out to be some kind of mastermind on a murder spree, and even if that wasn’t true, his growing gang certainly saw him that way. The Knights of Brass probably did, too. 

It wasn’t like he didn’t understand that people needed to die, he just wasn’t sure he had it in him. People had already died because of him. Guards, elves. Whether he swung the sword or not, dead was still dead. 

While he wrestled with these thoughts, he lied and said, “We attack while people are there, then we send a stronger message, but if someone escapes, then they know who did it. We strike in the dead of night then no one is there to see it, and we can make up whatever story we want and pit them against the gang of our choice.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Adin asked. “A nicely worded invitation. Dear Mister Blind, we stole your drugs, sincerely, the Butchers?”

“The Butchers are a great idea, actually,” Lucas said with a gleam in his eye. “Whose more likely to break up than an illegal drug ring based around butchering monsters than those meatheads?”

Lucas went over his plan after that: find out where the Blind were taking the corpses, ambush it in the middle of the night, find enough bile to keep cooking, and then sell any vials of midnight that the bastards might have already cooked up and find a way to sell it to their rivals cheap. 

It was a simple plan, and in his experience, those always worked best for him. That was doubly true when he was going to be working with mouth breathers like Hura’gh and Adin. There was just one problem. They didn’t have nearly enough people for something like this. 

They all knew it, even the noble. “What are the odds they don’t have even a small night shift or a few watchmen to keep the place safe until morning?” the noble asked. “If it’s as important to them as you say it is, then they’d be fools to leave it unguarded.”

“The man has a point,” Kar’gandin nodded. “Rare, true, but it has happened.”

Adin almost thanked the dwarf before he realized he was being insulted. “Hey!” the noble shouted, but everyone else just laughed at his expense. 

“Well, then we grow the gang,” Lucas said. “We could tap into our relationship with the Brass Knights, but it would be impossible to keep it a secret then.”

“What other choice do we have?” Adin asked. “I know Viscounts, Baronesses, and Earls, but not a single mercenary company looking for work, I’m afraid.”

“You know lots of people,” Lucas said. “Servants that might drive the wagon, those villagers you were going to hire to do construction on the cider house. Kar’gandin probably knows a couple of dwarves who are good with an axe, too. If he doesn’t, then I’m sure his cousin does. You guys are tight like that, right?”

“I know a few caravan guards, sure,” Kar’gandin said, cautiously, “But I’m not sure exactly what it is you’re getting at here.”

“What I’m saying is we gotta build our own muscle, our own network,” Lucas said. “Someday, we should handle everything up to and including distribution. That doesn’t happen until we have enough money to buy a few members of the watch, though.”

“But teamsters and brute labor… they aren’t killers, Lucas,” Adin said. “I could hire all of the strongest men in Meadowin. Most of them know how to use a sword or an axe, but they’re hunters and farmers, not murderers.”

Neither am I, Lucas thought, but that doesn’t mean we won’t all become one sooner or later. He didn’t say that, though. Instead, he just shrugged, and when that wasn’t a good enough answer, he said, “Have you seen the state of your village, man? Kids so skinny you can see their ribs through their shirts. If a man’s family is starving, and you’re offering to put food on their table, or they have a sick wife, and you can make the cure, you can own them pretty cheap.”

He paused as he listened to the words coming out of his mouth. It wasn’t something he planned in advance, but it was definitely on the right track, so he decided to double down. “Us four, we’re stuck together now, for better or worse, until we make enough money to go our separate ways, but we start inviting just anybody to come work for us, and sooner or later, one of the other big gangs is going to figure out who we are, where we cook, and how to put us out of business. We want to avoid that, well - we’ve got to be smart about it, you know?”

“Why worry about city dwellers at all?” Hura’gh asked. “We could simply pay tribute to a tribe from the great plains, and they—”

“And they would stick out like a sore thumb,” Lucas said, trying hard not to sigh. “We need people that can blend in. People with a particular set of skills if you will. If you got a buddy or two you trust to crush some skulls, then I’m all ears, but a tribe…maybe not right now.”

Hura’gh glowered at him, but since he didn’t actually growl, Lucas called it a win. 

“Ye know lad, I might have been wrong about ye,” the dwarf said, as he leaned back in his chair. 

“Oh yeah? How’s that?” Lucas asked.

“I thought ye were just a lunatic looking to make some quick coin, but yer really tryin’ to build something here, ain't ya?” The dwarf’s tone was approving, but even if it wasn’t Lucas would have grinned. 

“I’m just a guy trying to put together enough coins to open a bar and invent Mexican food,” Lucas said. “But we need to make a lot of money to get there, and I’m sure this is the way to do it.”

Even after dinner wound down, the four of them talked about his plan to find and take out whatever abattoir the Blind had set up. To him, it seemed more than doable. The bastards were most known for petty theft, pickpocketing, and begging rings. They were scammers, not fighters, so as soon as the four of them put out some feelers and found where they needed to hit, he was sure they would fold easily enough.

Ch. 41 - A Simple Plan

For the cost of another four healing potions and a few handfuls of silver coins, Adin was able to recruit half a dozen strong young men from the village, and Kar’gandin was able to borrow a few good dwarves from his cousin. It took more to arm and armor the farmers than it did to hire them, but the dwarves at least came well-equipped with heavy crossbows and battleaxes. 

Lucas had considered making potions of strength and toughness for everyone, but he’d been a little short on some ingredients. So, he decided against it. After all, they were going to outnumber their opponents more than two to one, and they had the element of surprise on top of that. They didn’t need an even bigger trump card for this, though he conceded that they might for future operations. 

Instead, he just brought a few more healing potions with him than usual. He hoped they wouldn’t need them, but it would be cheaper than paying out the death benefits they’d agreed on to any widows and orphans.

Those efforts were enough to almost triple the size of their meager little band, bringing it to 11, not counting the two younger boys who were just there to drive the wagons. It took a few days to recruit and equip the newcomers, but that was fine with everyone except for Adin. He was the only one fiending for a fix. 

It only took two days of asking around about the bounty to find the decrepit old farmhouse a few miles north of town, just inside the Greenwood. Adventurers were happy to share that bit of news with Kar’gandin for the price of a few drinks while he bullshited them about some grand plan of his.

He told them a story about how he was looking to recruit hunters to import fresh goblin corpses from the dark warrens beneath the Amaranthine Range to the north. He figured that he could empty out whole tribes of greenskins in an afternoon, and then bring back the corpses on ice to turn a tidy profit rather than hunting through the nearly depleted Greenwood like everyone else. They bought it too, hook, line, and sinker. 

Why shouldn’t they, though. It was a great plan, and probably what they’d have to do once all this was done since the Blind would almost certainly keep poaching supply this close to the city. 

A couple nights of surveillance later, they had their answer. The place was a shack with perhaps three or four people inside at any given point on a long abandoned farmstead that had long since been taken over by weeds. Corpses were slaughtered and hung from trees not far from the building before being disposed of via an ever present bonfire. After that, bile came in, and sometimes barrels went out. 

At this point, they didn’t know if those barrels contained Midnight or simply bile, but either way, they were worth taking. In the end, they opted to time their assault a few hours before the next expected shipment, and the group arrived after moonrise, just before ten. leaving their horses, drivers, and a pair of guards a few hundred yards from the drug lab. 

After that, they advanced on foot, quietly through the underbrush. Well, as quietly though the underbrush as nine armored men could be, at least. Lucas smelled the place long before they saw it. 

Finding the bonfire of corpses was easy enough, and once that was spotted, Hura’gh had no trouble sneaking up on the man who was tending the fire despite his size. He quickly ripped out the beggar’s throat before adding the man’s body to the pyre. 

Lucas watched the man struggle briefly as he burned before he stilled forever more,  

That surprised Lucas, and though he’d never had to fight a full-blooded orc in this world, watching his comrade in action reminded him that he never wanted to if he could help it. Humans were dangerous enough for him.  

That left three, probably. Maybe four people left, depending on how many were inside the actual farmhouse. The guard outside the front door of the ramshackle farmstead didn’t see them coming, and when his chest was pierced twice with two powerful bolts, his death wasn’t quite so quiet. Each of them bit loudly into the wood of the wall the watchman was leaning against, which was more than enough to alert anyone inside. 

He had enough time to call out an alarm, too, though, with a punctured lung that was already partway deflated, it was more of a death rattle. By the time two men were already advancing on him with swords held high, the only thing that was holding the watchman up were the bolts that pinned him to the wall. He didn’t even have the strength left to raise his spear before he was struck down by multiple blows.

The men that Adin had gathered obviously didn’t have a lot of combat experience, but what they did have was heart. They seemed eager to impress, too. 

Getting paid a week's wages for a night's work almost certainly meant that they wanted to be called back for more in the future. Lucas understood that as he stood there with his knives out, waiting to see what surprise awaited them next. 

He’d hoped someone would charge out of the building to investigate, only to get cut down, but instead, he heard shouts of alarm followed by the sound of whoever was inside barring the door. That would make things slightly more difficult but not difficult enough to become a problem. 

The dwarves quickly dropped their heavy crossbows and drew their axes to hack down the door. Hurrah was faster, though. He just walked to the part of the wall that looked to be in the worst shape and then started tearing dry rotted boards off of it one at a time. In less than a minute, there were two different entrances into the structure: the shattered door and a gaping hole in the wall. 

Lucas charged in just behind Hura’gh and regretted it almost immediately. The place was foul. There was no alchemy being done here, just butchery for profit. The reagents were scattered around mixed with the scents of poison and decay. 

Goblin Bile: Poison 9, strength 3, endurance -1, violent diarrhea

Fire salts: Poison 2, endurance 1, intelligence -2, makes mixtures more volatile

The Beggar closest to them held a shortsword and feinted twice at Hura’gh while he shouted, “The Blind are not to be messed with! When our reinforcements arrive, we’ll—”

He never finished the sentence. When he thrust his blade at the intruders for the third time, Hura’gh reached past it, grabbed the man by his hand, and then used that grip to smash him against the wall several times before tossing him to the ground and crushing his rib cage with a single deliberate stomp. Lucas heard bones crack with each blow and doubted very much that the man would survive without healing magic that was well beyond anyone here. 

One of the dwarves bellowed in pain as the other man with a weapon got a piece of him, but even before he’d finished yelling, his partner chopped right through the man’s near leg, drowning out everything else with a terrible scream. 

Lucas tuned that out for the sake of his sanity as he moved forward toward the last man that was still standing. That was when he realized that he recognized the man. Garren. 

For a moment, Lucas couldn’t help but remember the last time he saw this asshole, and that was when they’d beat the secret for making Blue out of him. He hadn’t given them the real recipe, of course. He’d just made up whatever he could to play for time. After that, they’d beat him to unconsciousness and kicked his insensible body until they’d broken several ribs in a quiet alley not far from the market. 

“Come on, man,” he’d whispered, “Tell us the last step, and I won't have to take your fingers before I take your life.”

The man was a snake, and Lucas would certainly be dead now if those assholes had searched him for the backup healing potion he’d consumed as soon as he’d woken up. Even so, he’d crawled into someone’s basement and waited to die for two more days before he was strong enough to stagger to a well in a safer part of town and drink. 

“Lucas,” the man gasped as his face went white as a sheet, “You’re alive, but how… I… I—”

“Because you didn’t finish the job, asshole!” Lucas shot back as he advanced on the man. 

“Listen, we can talk this through,” Garren said as Lucas stabbed the dagger he’d had in his left hand and grabbed him by the collar. “This is your recipe, right? We couldn’t make Blue without you, but Dusk… Midnight… well, we’re making kings hand over fist. I can cut you in. I can talk to the boss. Ten percent, no questions asked. We can—”

Lucas slammed him against the wooden wall, hearing the whole thing creak from the force as he glared at the man with dead eyes. “Why in the fuck would I want my name near any of this?” he asked. “This isn’t alchemy. There’s no skill here. It’s fucking garbage, just like the people that make it.”

Lucas didn’t say that to be hurtful, either, it was obvious in the little pop-up alerts that let up the room all around him. Even after they’d beaten his secrets out of him, they had no idea what they were doing. 

Poisonous Potion of Midnight: Euphoria 5, poison 4, 30% chance to pass out for 1 to 4 hours, addictive

Poisonous Potion of Dusk: Euphoria 7, poison 5, -2 intelligence, addictive

Alchemical Mixture: Poison 5, strength 2, endurance -1

There’s not even any damn alcohol in here to refine the bile, Lucas realized, looking around the room for the missing step. He saw some espever vine sap, but it was from the wrong kind of tree, and so it was more purple than the aqua color one needed to make blue. No wonder they’re making trash. 

Violet Esper Vine Sap (processed): Agility 4, poison 2, intelligence -2, unable to sleep for the duration of the effect, 10% chance to hear voices

“You’re killing people? You know that?” Lucas said sternly. “Getting people hooked is one thing, but you might as well be feeding them drain cleaner.”

Garren looked at him in confusion about the strange term, but as soon as his eyes flicked to Lucas’s knife, he said, “Who cares. Silver is silver, and there’s always more customers. It’s not like you give a shit about life either.” 

That was enough to make Lucas pause, but only for a moment. He wasn’t a murderer. He’d stolen, he’d betrayed, he’d made and sold drugs, and done a thousand other terrible things. Murder was about the only line he hadn’t crossed in his life, but it wasn’t like his hands were clean just because he hadn’t pulled the trigger. Every man that had died tonight, and every man that had died in their escape from the castle, those bodies were on him, and he was going to have to find a way to square that. 

Not tonight though. Tonight was about doing what needed to be done, and more importantly, revenge. Ignoring his misgivings, Lucas dragged his knife across the other man's throat in a motion so fast that Garren’s eyes showed disbelief more than pain. Some part of Lucas died there, along with his victim, as the man started to down in his own blood. 

He was surprised to find that there was no joy or thrill in the moment as he let go of the Beggar’s collar, and he slid down the wall to the ground. It was a moment of brutal clarity, but before Lucas could examine it any further, people were cheering their easy win. 

That worked for Lucas. He started barking orders about what to take while he surveyed the damage on his side. No dead, and only one man wounded was pretty much perfect, he thought with a nod. That was almost enough to wipe away the sick feeling from what he’d done, too. Almost.

Ch. 42 - Constant Distractions

They made a clean get away, taking everything of value, and planting a few meat cleavers and a pigs head which were the typical calling card of the Butchers. After that, Lucas set fire to the place and he and his men set off into the night. Even though the job had gone just as well as he could have hoped, he couldn’t shake the feeling of everything they’d done. 

In the end, what ate at him more than the guilt of killing one piece of shit, was the idea that they were going to take any of the foul product that these assholes had been moving. Blue might be addictive, and it might ruin lives, but short of an overdose, it wasn’t going to hurt you. Not physically, at least. 

He could barely bring himself to take even a little bit of the midnight with him that they could use to spread the blame. After all, it wasn’t much different than killing the user himself. If they’d purified the bile with alcohol, that would be one thing, but this was rat poison. 

Adin could do a better job than this, Lucas thought with a sigh as they rode back. 

The only bright spot in the whole thing was that they had nearly twenty gallons of goblin bile. Lucas didn’t even want to think about how many goblins it would take to have so much of the foul stuff. It was only low grade because it had started to spoil, but Lucas was sure he could get plenty of blue out of it yet.

As they took the long way home to make sure they weren’t followed, Lucas used those details to distract him from everything else. How the problem was going to be that they didn’t have nearly enough of everything else for more than a couple batches, but if he kept Adin busy as hell for the next couple of days, they would probably be able to get enough blue esper willow vine sap and witch grass blossoms to cover the difference before this went bad. 

The only problem was, now that he had the goods, he didn’t want to make a ton of it and flood the market. He was going to of course. He had to, people were depending on him at this point, but something felt off about it. After all, what was the difference between contaminated poison like Midnight and pure poison like Blue?

That question kept Lucas awake for hours that night, but it didn’t stop him from kicking everyone out of his lab so that he could work anyway when he woke up in the morning. Adin and Kargandin had decided to keep the men that had worked so well with them last night to dig a hidden root cellar beneath the cider house, but all Lucas did was agree with them while he had his bacon and eggs. 

It was a good idea, but his mind was on other things, so he’d agreed with it. Otherwise, he didn’t give it much thought. Instead, he went to the small keg of Midnight he’d brought back and parceled it into two dozen vials so that Hura’gh could sneak it into town inside their keg within a keg and pass it off to another half-orc he knew. 

Lucas told the warrior not to drive too hard a bargain but to make sure he got enough money so that it wouldn’t be suspicious either. It was only once all that was done and everything had been set into motion that he sat down and got to work on the next batch of Blue. He was more than a little surprised when the sound of digging interrupted his distillation partway through the blue esper willow vine sap. 

He endured it for a few minutes. However, as more shovels joined in, forming a steady rhythm of digging, it quickly became intolerable.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lucas asked, taking a break as soon as he finished processing the wizened gnome caps. 

“What?” Kar’gandin asked. “Ye said that ye were fine with the idea of an underground laboratory, did ye not?”

“Yeah,” Lucas agreed. “Like, fine in theory. Like, fine, eventually. But right now? I’m trying to get work done in there!”

“Presumably, ye will be working in there almost every day,” the dwarf countered. “Be that as it may, we have to move forward. Ye’d hate to be ambushed and meet the same fate as the Blind, wouldn’t ye? Best if we build something a little more discrete and defensible, don’t ye think?”

Lucas had been prepared to tell him to fuck off no matter what he said. His time spent mixing ingredients and getting proportions just right was nearly zen as far as he was concerned. It was sacrosanct and the next best thing to getting high himself, so the last thing he wanted was to interrupt it. 

Still, the dwarf made a good point, and for a moment, he couldn’t help but imagine it was their drug lab that was burning instead of the Blind's. “Fine,” Lucas said finally, “but I don’t see how we’re going to be able to keep any of this a secret much longer, he said, looking at the three men.”

“You think that I would—” one of the men asked. Lucas hadn’t bothered to learn any of their names yet, but he knew that people thin-skinned enough to take offense to a broad accusation like that were the ones you wanted to watch out for. 

“What he means to say is that if we get much bigger, we’re certain to be noticed,” Kar’gandin said, smoothing things over. “And that’s true enough, but”

“Everyone in Meadowin already knows theres something strange going on at the Parrin estate,” the third man said with a shrug. “I’ve known for over a week, long before Adin recruited me to help out. Even before you passed off those healing potions to old Mister Twill—”

“So he could get my new clothes finished faster,” Lucas said defensively as the dwarf looked at him askance. 

“Sure,” the man agreed. “The point is, no one knows shit, and no one has said shit. That’s all. The Parins have been good stewards of the area, and this… well, you seem like a smart man, Mister Blue. Better to be workin’ for you than workin’ against you, as far as I see it. With you and the Viscount working together, I don't see how all of us don’t prosper and—”

“Don’t call me that,” Lucas said. He’d thought the perspective was interesting, but putting him and Adin on the same level almost made Lucas burst out laughing. 

“Mister Blue?” the workman asked. “Uhmmm… what should we call you then, sir?”

“Lucas does just fine,” he shot back. “Or Mister Parin since I’m supposed to be the uhm… Viscount’s cousin. Anything else just spreads the gossip faster, you got it?”

He didn’t wait for the man to answer. Instead, Lucas whirled on Kar’gandin and said, “Fine, keep digging, but try to be quiet about it. I’m at a very delicate stage in here.”

That quieted them enough for a while, but within half an hour, the digging was just as loud as before, and from the looks of things, this was a project that was going to take weeks. Lucas sighed in frustration, looking at his mediocre product. He’d hoped to distract himself from how he felt about being a killer now by cooking, but instead, he’d been so distracted by the noise intruding on his sanctuary that he couldn’t really think about cooking at all. 

Instead, everything was a jumble, and this was the result. It’s fine, he told himself, even though it wasn’t. It was good enough to sell even, but it was nothing to be proud of, and they wouldn’t be able to dilute it as much as they had the last stuff. 

Brew of Mana Intoxication (pure) (40 doses): Euphoria 7, poison 2, intelligence -1, mana regeneration decreased by 170% for 1 hour. 

No one but him would notice the difference, but it was still a disappointing result, but it was probably be the best he was going to be able to do with that racket. He would gladly put the whole thing off for a week, but the bile might go bad by then, and unfortunately, refrigeration was not exactly a thing yet. 

When Adin finally came through the door, Lucas was almost relieved by the distraction. That lasted only long enough to notice that he was wearing one of his good suits instead of carrying a heaping herb basket. 

“What’s up, man? I thought you were supposed to be getting the plants I put on that list for you!” Lucas said in annoyance as his relief dissipated. “The last thing I got time for is to cook and pick by myself.”

“That will have to wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid,” he answered with a smile, trying and failing not to look at the fresh pot of Blue that was simmering gently at the edge of the brick stove. “My sister has retasked us, I’m afraid.”

“Your sister has… retasked us?” Lucas laughed. “Since when did she become the boss here?”

“Since she hired a dance instructor for this evening to come by and start your lessons,” he said with a shrug. “Now come along. We must make you presentable.”

“Dance instructor?” he said, completely baffled, as he tried to remember if that was something she’d mentioned to him. “Can’t that wait? We have a lot of shit to do.”

“I imagine that will be your answer on any given day,” the lordling agreed, tearing his eyes away from the drugs he craved to meet Lucas’s gaze. “However, since I have secured an invitation for my sister and her cousin to the VanDavin’s garden party on the next festival day, I think it’s best we start on this immediately. After all, we have plenty of product to sell but are desperately in need of more wealthy customers, are we not?”

Lucas sighed at that but didn’t disagree. He could sell some extra pure distilled shit to a few rich bastards and hook them hard, just like he’d inadvertently done with Adin. After that, well, men like that would do anything for another hit. 

They’d keep selling to the Brass Knights, of course, especially if gang warfare really burned through the city in the coming days. Of all the toughs in the city, they were the ones best equipped for a brawl. 

With a shake of his head, Lucas rose and said, “Sure, man, just let me wash my hands, and I’ll—”

“I took the liberty of having the housekeeper draw you a nice hot bath,” Adin said with a smile before leaving the room.

It took Lucas a moment to figure out the man was being so helpful to try to get to the drugs he’d made as soon as Adin left the room. The fact that he’d done everything he could not to mention them was a dead giveaway. 

He took the pot off of the heat and set it to cool on the work bench. This would easily be enough to kill the lordling, Lucas thought. That might be inevitable, he realized, but still, for now at least it was undesirable, so he took the time to dilute the brew down to euphoria 4, and then open the back door, call Kar’gandin in, and explain the circumstances to the dwarf. 

“So, ye want me to bottle up the blue stuff there, leave the other ingredients alone because ye’ll finish with them later, and ye absolutely want me to keep Lord Parin from getting another taste while ye go learn the ways of the fancy folk?” the dwarf asked. “Is that about the size of it?”

“Yeah, you got it,” Lucas agreed. “Try not to have too much fun while I go and publicly embarrass myself.”