DWinchester
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Brewing Bad Ch. 74-75
🕑 Added 2024-08-19 14:00:09 +0000 UTCSo first, as promised, a bonus chapter. I hope you enjoy it. Second, the chapters I've been writing for this story the last couple weeks... Well, they are awesome. No spoilers of course, but certainly well above average. I love all my stories equally of course, but lately Brewing Bad is the most fun to write. I blame Lucas.
Ch. 74 - Some Like it Hot
In the end, Lucas presented her four choices, one that was heavy on lavender and evercrimson, two that were more fruity than anything, and the first one he’d greeted. He needn’t have bothered, though. As it turned out, Danaria liked the first one he made most of all, and took to wearing it almost every day after that. She acknowledged that one of the other fruity ones was okay but decided he should go back to the drawing board on the other two.
It did seem to make her prettier, though. That was the good news. He wasn’t quite sure how, of course, because she didn’t look any different, but when she wore this scent, he somehow felt more drawn to her than he had before.
The bad news was that she now insisted that they make the time to go into the city and find some customers for some of the beauty products he’d made, despite his plans or the weather. “I know you, Lucas Parin,” she said mischievously. “You won’t follow up on this seriously until you find a way to make money off of it. Surely one of the brothels in Lordanin or perhaps some of the noble wives of some of your other customers would be interested?”
“If you add public hanging as the third option, I think I’ll pick that one,” he laughed, even though Danaria didn’t think it was funny.
Truthfully, both of those options sounded absolutely wretched to him. After the way they left things, it would probably be fine to approach the Red Lantern Gang about another deal, of course, especially if he offered up a little Blue to sweeten the pot. The very last thing he ever wanted to do was go door to door, shilling products like the Avon lady.
Hello, can interest you in this perfume of transcendent attraction, or perhaps you’d prefer mouthwash of +3 to kissing… It would hurt his soul. Though he was sure there were snake oil alchemists that made their living just fine going from town to town to pitch miracle cures from brightly colored wagons, even they would draw the line at pedaling beauty cream to rich women. At least, he hoped they would.
“You have to do something with all this,” she insisted. “What would you do if not sell it?”
Give it to you so you walk around smelling nice, he thought, but he viciously repressed the thought so as not to say it. Instead, eventually, he relented and sent a messenger into town to seek out decision-makers at the Fallen Orchid, where word had it that Artesia Dannica, who’d headed that delegation to his drug auction so long ago, could be found.
He’d expected her to play hard to get, but though she didn’t quite come out and say it, her reply contained a number of detailed questions that revealed just how interested she might be in such products. That made sense; when your business was flesh merchant, you wanted your girls to be as pretty as possible. Really, what those girls probably needed was potions of cure disease, he thought with a chuckle. Maybe he’d throw in some of those on the house.
Eventually, after three more exchanges, they agreed on a date the following market day, and he was invited to the Orchid directly. The date worked for him because he needed to meet once more with the Knights of Brass anyway. The only problem was that Danaria wanted to tag along.
“I am not taking you into a whore house,” Lucas insisted, banging the table and making Adin laugh as she brought up the topic once more over dinner.
“But… that’s not fair,” she pleaded. “Adin gets to participate in your operations. Why can’t I at least help with the beauty part?”
“Adin isn’t doing shit besides preparing for his upcoming wedding,” Lucas said with a scowl, making the Viscout laugh again. “And you… I could list a dozen reasons. You’re a woman. You’re a virgin. You’re unmarried…” As Lucas spoke, he listed them off one finger at a time. “It would be entirely disreputable.”
“Some women do, you know,” Adin said with a smile as he stirred the pot. “Lady Vermilia. Lord Rothin’s younger sister. It’s been seen and discussed, but they were able to keep it secret for a while with cloaks and masks. If you ask me, women have needs too, perhaps—”
“See,” Danaria interrupted, “I could wear a disguise.”
Lucas sighed loudly and rubbed his face in exasperation. Eventually, they agreed on a compromise. Danaria could go with him into town and visit the Knights of Brass with him, but when Mort dropped him off at the Orchid, she was staying with him, and that was the end of it. The noblewoman was disappointed but eventually agreed.
Lucas felt bad babying her like this. He wasn’t her husband or her father, but he’d feel even worse if she picked up some terrible habit from the women in those places; she was much too sheltered to be shown that wide of a world at once.
Of course, Lucas expected that if he went to the small courtyard, he expected that Sir Tristin would pit him against one of his squires or perhaps a lieutenant if he wanted to embarrass him, so he was glad he’d spent so much time the last few months practicing his sword fighting techniques. That was doubly true since Danaria would be there with him this time, which meant that juicing was probably in order, he decided as he got ready that morning.
He’d deliberately avoided taking flasks of endurance or strength during his training to improve as much as possible, but faced with professionals, he saw no reason not to take every edge he could. So, after he chose an outfit complete with a doublet thick enough that it could serve as an arming jacket if need be, the two of them shared a light breakfast and then made their way into town.
“Have you been avoiding me?” Danaria asked as soon as his men had loaded both deliveries he planned on making and the carriage had left the driveway for the snowy road, letting him know it was going to be a long ride. She didn’t ask the question so loudly that Mort or the other man they had traveling with them as a guard could hear them, but the words rang in Lucas’s ears all the same.
“Of course not,” he lied. “I’ve just been busy. That’s all.”
“Well, it’s just that… Since that night, I’ve just been wondering what you think about… us, but I never got a good chance to ask you because you were never around,” she said with nervous, halting words.
To Lucas, it was as honest and forthright a conversation since Brianna Killpatrick had passed him a note in the third grade that asked, ‘Do you like me?’ with two little check boxes labeled yes and no just beneath it. The whole thing was heartbreakingly adorable, but the last thing he wanted to do was break Danaria’s heart.
“Look, that was a mistake,” Lucas said, looking up at her to keep her from making this any more awkward than it had to be. He saw a look of disappointment cover her features immediately, but he took one of her hands in both of his to reassure her. “It was a mistake, but it was a welcome one, and I’m glad it happened. That said, if you and I ever want to try… courtship, or whatever it is you call it here, it has to be done the right way, alright? You said so yourself, you can’t be with a man that peddles poison, but maybe in the future, I can be less of that guy and more of the guy you want me to be, alright?”
That reassured her somewhat, and they talked about things for a while longer without any real change in the status quo. Well, no change, save for the fact that they held hands most of the way to the city gate. Lucas honestly couldn’t say where this was going exactly, but he wanted it to go somewhere, eventually.
The guards didn’t so much as challenge a high-born carriage, and they rolled into town across the market district to Blacksmith's Row without any issues. On the way there, Lucas saw a single warehouse that had been almost entirely leveled by fire and wondered if that had been the one he’d burned down. The snow made it look less ugly, but it was still a horrible gap in an otherwise neat row of buildings.
When Lucas reached the small courtyard, the guards there offered him only slightly more of a challenge than the city guards had, and that was likely only because he hadn’t come into town himself in person for months. Instead, they only sent two men to retrieve the keg of watered-down Blue he’d brought with him in the secret compartment beneath the seats.
“Ah, if it isn’t Mister Blue, come to pay us another visit after all this time,” Sir Tristin said, rising to his feet and shaking his hand warmly. It wasn’t hard to see why. The man was more gold than before, and his inner circle seemed better armed. Even if they were only getting the dregs of Lucas’s business, they were still making a lot of money. “And who’s this lovely creature,” the grey-haired knight said, bending low to kiss Danaria’s hand in a way that caused an unexpected twinge of jealousy.
“She’s my cousin,” Lucas answered stiffly, “and after I took care of business here I promised to buy her something nice on Market Street.”
“You’re cousin, huh?” he asked with a lascivious grin that showed he’d gotten entirely the wrong idea. “Well, don’t you have great taste in family then? Would you care to show us if you’ve gotten rusty over the winter, or is your… shopping… too urgent?”
“Bring it on,” Lucas growled, letting his annoyance leak out. “Maybe this time we should go with the blunted steel blades instead of the wooden ones, so you can really check for rust.”
“Splendid,” Sir Tristin said, clapping his hands together. “I think that Maerik will be an excellent test of your skills.”
As Lucas put on a set of chain mail, Danaria took a seat amongst the Knights of Brass inner circle, not far from a warming brazier, and even before Lucas sent Mort over there to babysit her, he noted the other men sat a respectful distance from her. That was good because if one of them tried something, he was going to have to murder someone.
Murder would not be required, though, as it turned out. Instead, the situation only demanded brute force, and the apprentice that they sent out to fight him was put on his back almost immediately as Lucas locked shields with him and then tripped the young man.
That drew a mixture of cheers and boos, which he’d expected, but all he really cared about there was the way that Danaria smiled as she clapped at his win. After that, they sent him against a man named Luther, and when Lucas beat him, there was a Cedrin.
The first two had been younger men, still very much in training. They were probably in better shape than Lucas, but they were hopped up on potions after weeks of private tutoring, and his reflexes, along with Sir Milen’s most annoying moves, were what won the day in those cases.
Cedrin, though, was a hard-bitten man with enough scars to show that he’d fought in some real battles, and he put Lucas on his back foot immediately with a series of well-timed blows that made Lucas’s shield all but useless. So, he cast it aside. He hated the thing anyway, and there was no way that his sword could keep up with his opponents using a one-handed grip.
What followed was the first and only real sword fight of the morning as the two exchanged a flurry of blows. Steel rang out against steel over and over in the yard until all the other small fights and distractions stopped to watch.
Lucas could parry his dance instructor’s blows with reasonable success now, but the man was so fast that he’d never managed to block more than two or three in a row. This morning, though… Well, Lucas didn’t know if it was because Cedrin was a little slower or the potions made Lucas a little faster, but each attack was stopped, as it became a battle of will as much as anything.
In the end, it wasn’t Lucas's potions or his talent that won that match, but the ice. He took a step forward, and Cedrin took a step back, and when his foot landed on an icy cobble, the thing was done. Lucas felt a little bad about that, but not so bad not to take the victory and then help the man to his feet with a grin.
“Next time, we’ll fight in good weather,” the older man growled, but Lucas just nodded. Next time they fought, he’d be even better than he was today; he was sure of it.
Ch. 75 - Some Like it Hot (part 2)
“You’ve come a long way,” Sir Tristin nodded once Lucas had gotten free of his armor and joined the group. “Personally and organizationally. Perhaps in time, you won’t need my Knights at all.”
Lucas recognized the trap for what it was and simply smiled. “The bigger we get, the more we will need men ready to fight. You know that.”
“Indeed,” Sir Tristin agreed, taking the coins.
At this point, Lucas felt like an asshole, he’d fought the man so hard over three golden dragons, and that wasn’t shit now. Clearly, he’d have to find an excuse to pay the Knights more when the time came because Lucas was sure that the ability to buy the loyalty of a small army on short notice was a superpower he would always want, just in case.
They talked a while longer, but when he noticed that Danaria was starting to get cold despite her coat and the brazier, he made his excuses, and they returned to the carriage. There, Lucas instructed Mort as to the rest of the plan. “I have no idea how long negotiations with those, uhh… women, are going to take. So, once you drop me off, take Danaria to High Street and let her do some shopping. When I’m finished, I’ll find you there.”
“Aren’t you worried that they could try something?” Danaria asked. “Maybe if you asked Sir Tristin nicely, he’d loan you a few guards while you—”
“It’s going to be fine,” Lucas said. “They’re in this to make money. There’s no grudges here.”
Honestly, Lucas was pretty sure they would try something. Probably more than once, but bringing guards with him wouldn’t protect him from getting seduced, which was the only real danger that the Red Lantern women could unleash on him if he could hold his own with men like Cedrin.
No, he thought to himself, the worst thing that could happen is they bend me over the price of something, and I ain’t agreeing to that until I consult with Kar’gandin, he told himself as they got in the carriage and started back across down into the seedy area between the harbor and the market district on the west side of town known as the Red Lantern District.
Lucas had not spent a whole lot of time here before, but it was about what he’d expected. Brothels of various quality fought for space with bars and taverns, and all of these were mixed together with two and three-story tenements, which created slums of even more questionable quality. It was like someone took the Gray Bottom he’d spent a few months living in, slapped on some brightly colored paint onto the biggest buildings, and called it a day.
The end result was that there were islands of wealth and debauchery surrounded by forests of poverty, which was so bad that there were half-naked children with their begging bowls out along the main thoroughfares, even in the snow.
Lucas saw Danaria looking at them sadly and said, “Listen, we can open up a soup kitchen for them or something, but you are not going to hand out coins to them like you do in Meadowin. It’s dangerous here. Someone would knife you for your purse before you knew what happened.”
“I understand,” she nodded. Her eyes never left the poverty, though. There was a lot of wealth in Lordanin, but it was not spread out evenly.
It turned out that he was going to the biggest island of wealth in the whole area. The Fallen Orchid was a four-foot-tall building painted in bright purples that towered over its nearest neighbors and competitors. In fact, the closest that poverty reached it was the end of the street. It was a grove of opulence amid a forest of misery.
“No stops,” Lucas told his driver when he got out and started removing his case with the cosmetic samples. “I’ll hire myself a carriage when I’m done here. This place isn’t safe for even a midday stroll.”
“Big man, you’re with me,” he said, referring to the tough that had accompanied them throughout the day but done absolutely nothing so far. It pained Lucas to say it, but their organization had grown so large that he no longer knew everyone’s name, so he was just going to have to wing it.
The truth was that it wasn’t any more dangerous here than it was in Gray Bottom; the real difference was when he lived there, he was a scrawny fuck in dirty clothes that didn’t look like he had anything worth taking. In this outfit, though, someone would definitely try for his purse or his throat before he made it somewhere respectable.
Here, though, there were no beggars, and the doorman let them right through. Inside, he had just enough time to take in the over-decorated interior that relied heavily on gilding, mirrors, and velvet upholstery to make it look fancy. However, before he could even introduce himself to the beautiful woman who was standing there in the lobby to greet new customers, she said, “Mister Blue? You’re expected. Please follow Azela, and she will take you to your appointment.”
As soon as her name was uttered, a younger girl appeared, as if by magic, and led Lucas toward one of the two large spiral staircases that lead to the upper floors. If this had been Earth, the place would have no doubt had elevators, but that was one more thing that hadn’t been invented yet. So, he followed the girl, trying not to stare at her ass as she walked in front of him in a slinky dress that made it very clear that she was also on the menu if you were into the waifish type.
He wasn’t into any type on the menu here, though. So, instead of staring at her, he took in the surroundings. The first floor had been made into a giant sort of parlor or bar. It was basically a waiting room, so it was clean and brightly lit. The second floor had many of the same decor choices, but its lights were dimmed, and the shadowy place was filled with seats that gave the men seated there the perfect place to stare at one of the dancers grinding and gyrating on one of several different platforms.
They hadn’t invented pole dancing in the fantasy world, for that didn’t matter too much. There was a beautiful elven woman wearing little more than a bikini as she did something like aerial silk dancing and a bustier human redhead that was dancing nearest the stairs wearing little more than a slowly decreasing number of veils.
Lucas’s eyes glazed over each of them in turn and did not linger as he took in the place, though he noted the muscle he’d brought with him was more than a little distracted by the show. It was about what he’d expected. If anything, it was a little classier. The waitresses were dressed in a dazzling array of dresses and gowns that would make even Danaria’s expensive wardrobe green with envy, and there were a number of guards mixed in among the clientele.
It wasn’t hard to pick them out immediately. They might be dressed like noblemen, but their swelling physiques combined with the fact that they were the only ones with weapons in here made it clear who were the bruisers and who were the johns.
They didn’t stop on the second floor. Instead, they proceeded past the third, which was only an intersection of hallways that led to rooms in all directions to the fourth. The noises on the third floor made it clear that many of those rooms were already occupied and that, at least when it came to the Fallen Orchid, business was booming.
It was only there, on the fourth floor, that they left the stairs and moved to a door that was well guarded enough by men who wore black leather armor instead of nice clothes that it was obvious the boss lay behind the door.
"My mistress will see you now your man can wait out—," Azelea said
“My man can follow me right in,” Lucas corrected her. “No offense to you or yours, but you got all the muscle in the world, so I’m entitled to a little of my own.”
She frowned and said, “The Misstress wil be displeased by your lack of trust, but that shouldn’t be a problem.” with a slight bow before leaving him there to begin her own journey back down the stairs.
The men gave both of them a pat down and searched his case for anything obviously dangerous but let him through without much trouble, which was stupid if he thought about it. Not only did they not take their obvious weapons, but they didn’t take anything that might have been a disguised weapon either.
He was a drug dealer and an alchemist. He might have had anything in there posing as perfume, and even though he didn’t, it was still negligent as far as he was concerned.
The office was dominated by large floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a commanding view of the district, all the way out to the castle in the distance. Other than that, it was remarkably spare, almost zenlike. On one side there was a here was a simple bedroom that he could only glimpse beyond an elaborate dressing screen painted to resemble an elaborate flower garden, and on the other side, there was a large wooden desk in front of the far window, along with a single table in the center of the room with four chairs.
That was where he found Ms. Danica, seated in an elaborately embroidered silk robe, steeping a pot of tea. “Ah, Lucas, I’m so pleased you could make it,” she smiled, not bothering to rise as she ignored his bodyguard.
He gestured for the man to stand by the door, but it didn’t escape his notice that somewhere along the way, she’d picked up his first name. While that was enough to make him wonder what else she might have learned, it wasn’t enough to make him afraid. Like it or not, he was getting to be well known, and it was going to be impossible to put the genie back in that bottle.
“How lovely to see you again, too, Artesia,” he said with his most confident smile. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“You like it?” she smiled back in a lifeless way that made her look almost like a doll for a moment. “If any of the girls caught your eye, I could arrange for a private tour once our business is concluded.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, sitting down. Once he was seated, he opened the small case and started laying out the offerings he’d brought with him one at a time on the table between the two of them. “I’m just here to show you how you can make your girls a little prettier and make you some extra cash. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” she asked, pretending to be disappointed as she picked up one of the vials of perfume. “Pity.”
After that, Artesia poured him a cup of steaming tea in a porcelain teacup, which he thanked her for, even if he had zero intention of drinking. Once the formalities were out of the way, Lucas got to work explaining the benefits of the various things he had on the table in front of him.
“No cosmetics?” she asked, partway through the spiel. “Perfume and face cream are important, but if you aren’t selling magical lipstick, well… that’s almost as disappointing as your decision not to sell us your drug. It’s taken the city by storm, you know. We could have helped you with that.”
“As I seem to recall, your taster tried to pretend it was weak and barely worth taking,” Lucas responded, riposting her verbal thrust. “As to lipstick, that’s a work in progress. I—”
“It took Julania almost six weeks to get your poison out of her system, and I’m told she still craves it from time to time, all these months later,” Artesia retorted so quickly that it was like she almost expected that answer.
Before Lucas could figure out what to say next, she produced and rang a small silver bell. Before he could react and do more than turn his head, the doors to the room started to open.
Did this bitch just set me up? He wondered as he thought about what he would do if a bunch of armed men came running through that door.
Comments
HenryMorgan
The Cliff!
