To say the next few days were filled with baby steps was an understatement. Lucas’s initial hopes were quickly clouded over by bickering and infighting. It wasn’t that his little gang didn’t want to work together. It was that they all thought they should be in charge.

Adin at least still did what Lucas told him, despite his attitude, and was content enough to go and gather more Elderberries and Rosewood bark, but the other two… Lucas found it hard to concentrate on anything while the two argued about how exactly they were going to retrofit their little cabin.

Honestly, he didn’t care if they knocked the damn thing over and started from scratch if it would shut them up, but that didn’t seem to be an option. Finally, after noon, when he ran out of ingredients, he went in to try to break them up and found the cider house to be almost completely unrecognizable. Despite their feuding, they had succeeded in cleaning most of the debris and broken down furniture from the place, but only at the cost of filling the whole of the one-room building with choking clouds of dust.

“What in the hell are you two doing in here?” Lucas gasped, coughing.

“Demolition,” shouted Kar’gandin at the same time Hura'gh grunted, “Taking out the trash.”

“I see,” Lucas said, only a little concerned that they might kill each other. “Well, don’t demolish it too much. We still need somewhere to sleep.”

“That’s what I told him!” the half-orc grunted. “I told him that the Kingdom of Nye wasn’t built in a day.”

“It’s all work that needs doing,” the dwarf insisted. “We’ll need to clear areas for brewing, ingredient preparation and storage, and all the potions ye’r about to start maken’. That’s going to involve more than just moving a couple beds out of the way. We’ll need lumber and bricks, which means clay. We could hire someone, but it would be cheaper if we just made em ourselves, and after that, we could make a kiln and save a lot of money on potion vials if we—”

“Do we even have clay around here?” Lucas asked, trying to keep the conversation from spinning out of control. “I didn’t really see any…”

Currently, they could get their ingredients off the ground, and if any of them ran short, he supposed they could always switched to collecting scum lilies and skunk blossoms since pine nuts weren’t really common around here. It wasn’t his favorite potion to make, but they would still sell well, and there would be no overlap with the materials they’d need for blue, unlike mana potions. Thinking about kilns and warehousing space seemed a little like putting the cart before the horse to him, though, and he could kinda see Hura'gh’s point.

“Do we have clay, he says…” the dwarf said, shaking his head. “Pha! Of course, we have clay. Did you not see it? The white bands amongst the tawny grey silt down by the stream? Digging out would be backbreaking labor, no doubt, but exactly how do you plan to brew your ingredients at carefully calibrated temperatures without a proper firebox and dampers. Do you even—”

“You think digging a hole is back breaking?” Hura'gh laughed. “I thought that was what dwarves did? Dig holes!”

“Careful…” Kar’gandin growled. Until then, he’d been fidgeting with a piece of wood that looked like it had once been a chair leg and drawing in the dust where he thought different things like ovens and chimneys would go. Now, he was holding it like a cudgel.

Thinking fast, Lucas said, “Hey - go easy on him Hura'gh, not all of us are as strong as you, okay?”

The dwarf flashed a look of anger at Lucas but paused when Lucas gave him a quick wink before turning back to the half-orc. “I’ll bet you could dig up that much clay in a couple of hours.”

“That’s right, I could,” Hura'gh agreed. “More even. Earth would never pose a problem to a warrior of the wide plains.”

Lucas thought for a moment about asking him why a warrior of the tribes would be slumming it in Lordanin, but he already knew the reason, just as he knew what an insult it would be to ask, so he ignored, and said, “Well then by all means, don’t let us stop you, if it’s so easy why don’t you go take care of that, while I help Kar’gandin air this place out.”

The half-ork looked back and forth between the two of them with suspicion, and for a moment, Lucas thought he was about to be called out for his bullshit reverse psychology, but even as Hura'gh opened his mouth Kargandin said, “Bah, talk is cheap, but digging is—”

“Fine,” Hura'gh roared. “I will dig out your red clay. I will dig your weight in earth in a single hour. Then you will see!”

“You don’t have to do that,” Lucas said, but even as he spoke the half-orc was storming out of the room and as soon as the big warrior grabbed a shovel from the shed his footsteps retreated into the distance.

They both waited a few seconds after that before Kar’gandin let out a low chuckle and said. “Very smooth for a youngin’ like ye’, Lucas; I will have to keep an eye on ye’ lest you find a way to lead me around by the nose like that.”

“What do you mean?” Lucas asked, feigning innocence. “I’m just trying to make sure all the work we need to do gets done, you know?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Aye,” the dwarf nodded. “And there’s a lot of work to do. The wood is rotted through in places, and though getting the straw to re-thatch the roof will na’ be too hard, I’m not exactly plannin’ to build a sawmill to redo this shiplap, if ye know what I mean.”

“I get it,” Lucas answered as he looked around the room. “This place doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to be functional for now. Once we have the funds we can find some place more… defensible.”

“Defensible?” the dwarf laughed. “That’s just another way to get more eyes on ya’ laddie. We don’t need defense. We just need to keep a really low profile. Sell to wholesalers, show no flash, let others take the fall?”

“That’s kind of a weird thing to say when talking about your cousin,” Lucas said, a little disturbed.

“Oh, no one will be taking the fall for some bootleg healing potions,” Kar’gandin said. “And I wouldn’t get him involved in anything that’s truly illegal. He’s too much of a straight arrow for that. He thrives in gray areas, and I see no reason to change that now. When the time comes, we’ll just have to negotiate with one of the gangs for a cut of the profits. That’s all.”

“I tried that already. Twice, actually,” Lucas confessed as he started opening up all the shutters he could to clear the air. “The first time was with the assholes that run the market district, and—”

“Ah, The Blind,” the dwarf nodded ruefully. “Why did you ever think you could trust those maggots?”

“Well, when I first showed up here, they seemed like the only game in town, so I tried to partner up with them. When I was small time, it was fine, but once I started to make real money…”

“They tried to gut you like a fish and steal your recipe?” Kar’gandin asked, pretty much finishing Lucas’s thought.

“Pretty much,” Lucas agreed.

“Well, that makes things simple. We’ll approach the Knights of Brass or the Red Lantern Gang. They hate the beggars, not that we can trust them either.”

“No shit!” Lucas yelled at the feeling that his paranoia had somehow been vindicated. “That’s why I went to Brog and—”

“Brog… Verdwin?” Kar’gandin said with a disbelieving laugh. “The dwarf who owns the Chimera’s Chalice? Why’d you get in bed with that snake?”

“How was I supposed to know he was a snake,” Lucas said defensively as he picked up a broom and started angrily sweeping. “I was told that he was a dwarf with his finger on the pulse of everything, and that was just about what I needed.”

“Yes, a dwarf on the pulse of everything… for Prince Raston,” Kar’gandin chided Lucas. “The man has his talents, but the only reason he got in bed with you was to sell you out to his true master.”

“Now you fucking tell me,” Lucas griped. “So, who are you going to sell me out to? Your clan?”

“Nah,” the dwarf said, taking a step back and grabbing another broom. “The last thing I want is to mix clan Bronzebeard in with drugs. We have a bad enough reputation in certain circles. I’ll happily take my cut, and then once I’m made whole from Lordanin’s legal deprivations, I’ll go home and count my blessings. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

Lucas considered those words long after they switch topics, and even after they stopped talking at all. Bailing on something like this was probably the smart move. There was deffinitely such a thing as too much of a good thing. How will I know when I get there, though, he wondered.

Lucas reflected on his last life while he worked. There’d been a number of points, usually just before he got arrested or beat down, that he thought he couldn’t lose. That, he decided was probably the trigger. When everything was great, it just meant that something awful was lurking around the corner.

The rest of the day turned out to be a productive one. Adin eventually came back with whole baskets full of mostly the things they actually needed, Kar’gandin managed to strip every last thing out of the now empty cider house except the four best beds, and Lucas brewed up everything they had, with pretty decent results.

Tainted Lesser Healing Potion (2 doses): Lesser healing, poison 1, endurance 1.

It was only when the three of them went to see what the half-ork was up to that they found a real surprise. When he hadn’t come back after a couple hours, Lucas had expected that he’d given up or decided this was a waste of his time. That’s what Lucas would have done.

Instead, they found Hura'gh in a pit that was past his waist not so far from the stream next to a mound of clay that was both taller and wider than Kar’gandin. “See, did I not tell you?!” the half-orc boasted as soon as they got close. “It isn’t back breaking, it’s easy!”

“Yeah, you sure showed us,” Lucas called back with a pasted on smile as he approached the pile and played with a handful of the plastic red earth. “This going to do the job Kar’gandin?”

“Aye,” the dwarf nodded. “We just need to make some brick molds, make a whole pile of bricks, and then we’ll fire 'em.”

“Fire them?” Adin asked. “How do we do that? I thought that was careful work for guild artisans.”

“It can be,” the dwarf admitted with a shrug, “But in my experience, it’s easy enough. You just need to keep a good campfire going for a few days, and that’s that.”

“Digging clay… making bricks… Cooking them… It just seems like a lot of work. Wouldn’t it just be easier to, I don’t know, buy them?” Adin asked, still looking at the whole thing with obvious distaste.

“Certainly,” the dwarf said with a wide smile. “You could get a few laborers to bring you a whole wagon load for a copper a brick. Maybe less if you order in bulk, or you could get a couple of guild artisans out here to turn this clay right here into bricks for you just the way I described for maybe half that. All you need is five or six golden dragons. I don’t suppose you have a few on you?”

“Well… that’s not so much in the grand scheme of things, but until we sell these potions, I’m afraid I’m a little short,” Adin confessed.

“No, I’m a little short,” Kar’gandin laughed. “You, you’re flat busted, so we need to make what we can and spend where we have to. Maybe in a few weeks, that will be different, but for now… welcome to the lower class with the rest of us.”

Lucas and Hura'gh both laughed at that as the dwarf offered the noble his dirty hand. Adin didn’t see what was funny, but he did shake the offered hand just the same.