Everyone’s reaction to the vial was different. The Brass Knight, who looked a little like every addict that Lucas had ever seen, just popped open his vial and downed it without a thought. The elvish delegation discussed it at length in their strange musical language before doing likewise. The Butcher’s taster tried just a drop, trying to determine what it was made of, but became insensible before he could do much besides babble about how sour it was.

In the end, only the beautiful ladies of the Red Lantern Gang and the Whisperers seemed to have no intention of tasting it. No, that wasn’t right, he realized. One of the Red Lantern women had taken the drug, but somehow, they remained standing or in this case, sitting, he couldn't say.

Lucas let out a low whistle and said, “Well, I’ll bet you’re fun at parties.”

“Julania has tasted the finest poisons and potions that this world has to offer,” the older woman with the plunging neckline said about her subordinate. “If she can handle Demon’s Blood, then something this weak would hardly be of difficulty to her.”

Suddenly, Lucas saw the wisdom in the dwarf’s words. He could see the younger girl was struggling with the effects of the blue, and for a second he wondered if she’d taken something to delay the effects, or to counteract them. He knew from bitter experience that taking uppers and downers at once could be hard on the body, but he didn’t mention that.

Instead, he said, “That’s just the sort of hardball tactic that would have served you well if we were doing business one on one, but look around lady, everyone else is enjoying this but you. Well, you and the women in black back there. What’s a matter ladies, too scared to try it for yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t need to sample your work to know what it’s worth, Mr. Blue,” the tall, pale woman said with a smile that chilled him to the bone. “I’m sure you’ll find our offer more than reasonable in any case.”

As the tall woman spoke, the younger woman with violet eyes stood and walked over to Lucas, and handed him a slip. He hadn’t even seen them fill it out, but there it was, neatly folded before him. He took it and set it down in front of him unread.

“Well then, the bidding has started,” he said with a smile. “Please confer amongst yourselves, and I will review your offers at the conclusion of this meeting.”

While everyone enjoyed or endured the effects of his drugs, he got up and ordered another round from the bar, along with whatever they had that was warm. Tonight was going to be a profitable night, so Kar’gandin could hardly be cross with him at splurging.

Lucas helped himself to a few ribs and a decent stout while Hura’gh went through two turkey legs. It was about as much fun as you could have watching other people get high, and for the first time in a long time, it made Lucas crave something light, like weed. He had yet to find cannabis in this world, of course, but Faerie dust was supposed to be close.

Lucas ignored that thought, though. He just had to take a hard look at the drooling idiot in battered armor sitting off to his left to know where that path led. They were called gateway drugs for a reason.

So he made conversation instead. He spent a little time talking to each of the representatives of their respective gangs to pass that time. The topic of the conversation didn’t matter so much to him, though he did make sure to talk shit about the Beggars whenever possible. He found out that the Brass Knights were currently at war with the Beggars over turf just south of the tannery and at other points all along the river, which was enough to raise their estimation a notch or two in his eyes.

Otherwise, the only thing he really learned was that all the stereotypes were true. The Red Lantern girls were haughty, the slants were standoffish, and the Whisperers were a bit of both. Still, as everyone started to come around and hasty conversations were had, numbers were scribbled on slips of paper, and those slips were handed in.

It was only when Lucas had all five that he actually began looking through them, though. He didn’t want his reaction to give any of the parties an advantage in the bidding. That had obviously been the right move because the Red Lantern ladies had only given him their slip when it became obvious that nothing would proceed until that happened.

Lucas quickly found that none of them were anywhere close to each other. The Butchers offered a price of five silver kings a dose, which came out to seventeen and a half dragons. That was probably the lowest bid. The Brass knights came in next, offering him twenty, which was another lowball, but at least in the realm of reasonable.

He’d been getting fifteen dragons for fifty doses from Brog which worked out to less than either of these bids, but to be fair he hadn’t had a rep back then. He’d had to take the first offer to come his way. Thanks to his crew, he wasn’t going to have to make that mistake twice, and that was enough to make him smile as he set those two slips aside and reviewed the rest.

The Red Lantern ladies offered him only five crowns in cash, along with a seventy crowns of credit in any of the pleasure houses, which was enough to make him smirk. The Whisperer's offer was enough to make him smile even wider, just because it was such an asshole move. Their slip simply read, “One more silver king than the highest offer.”

He was about to make a sarcastic comment about how that wasn’t how sealed bids were supposed to work, but when he got to the slant’s offer, he frowned instead. It simply said you have stolen. You have stolen from the forest. Our Goddess's love is not for humans to taste! Give us your recipe, or perish!

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

When he looked up, he could see the elves were serious, too. They’d looked at him with general contempt until now, but that was fairly common for their type. Beneath that, though, he could see the edge of violence. That was even more true in the eyes of the man who had tasted the blue than the ones who hadn’t.

Are these fuckers religious fanatics? He wondered. Just what I fuckin’ need.

“Listen,” Lucas barked. “We aren’t here for that shit, we’re here to do business, so if you’re only here to try to bully your way to a better deal, then you can…”

His words trailed off as they both shrugged off their cloaks and rose to their feet. Both of them were holding two hand crossbows. They weren’t as intimidating as a real crossbow, or even a long bow. In fact, their tiny bolts were more like throwing darts than the bolt he’d pulled out of Adin not so long ago.

No one would have been afraid of them if not for the elves’ reputation for coating the projectiles with deadly poisons. “You have two choices,” one of them said, “You can give up the recipe, or it can die with you. The choice is yours!”

Lucas put his hands up out of force of habit as he said, “Hey, you’re talkin’ to the wrong guy. Even if I wanted to tell you, I’m just the messenger!” This wasn’t the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him, and he wasn’t particularly scared. He was just trying to buy a little time to figure out what the next move should be.

“Liar!” The other elf screamed. “They called you Mr Blue. The Whisperers know that…”

The elf’s words trailed off as he looked over to the women standing in the corner and saw that the older one had pulled out a scroll. Scrolls were something that Lucas had heard of before, but he’d never seen one used before. They were a poor man’s mage. They were supposed to be a spell all written down except for the final word, and when that was said by its wielder, it activated.

In this case, that word turned out to be “Velaforsanith!”

None of them knew what would happen as the thin parchment started to burn while slender lines of arcane power traveled through the words, completing the complex glyph that powered whatever was going to happen next. The closer elf released two bolts at the woman holding the scroll, but she vanished before they struck home in a quick inversion of reality.

One second, the two women clad in gray dresses and dark veils were there, and the next, there was a ripple that took out part of the wall and a few of the floorboards. The strange shockwave that caused was enough to cause a gust of wind to blow throughout the room, snuffing out all the candles and reducing them to the light of two oil lamps that had been shielded by their glass shade and the light from the common room that made its way out under the door.

Everything happened at once after that. Hura’gh threw the nearest chair at the spot where the elves had been standing as the sound of swords being unsheathed and crossbows being fired filled the near darkness.

After that, there were screams and the sounds of reloading. The people that used those devilish little crossbows often kept spare bolts on their thighs in a holster that allowed them to be reloaded at the same time they were being recocked in a single, quick movement. In that way, they really were like guns, only instead of a bullet putting you out of your misery quickly, you were stabbed with a pencil and then allowed to suffer as the poison ran its course.

Even as Lucas pulled his dagger and leaped up onto the table, he didn’t feel anything hit him, but he wasn’t sure he would with all the adrenaline pumping through his veins. Getting shot was a problem to be dealt with only after he’d closed the distance, though.

Fortunately, he wasn’t the only target. The Whisperers might have vanished, and the women from the Red Lantern Gang might have disappeared under the table to wait this out, but both the Butchers and the Knights of Brass were on their feet, and before Lucas had even gotten close, those burly toughs were hacking the elves to pieces.

“Wait,” Lucas called out, but there was no point. He’d been hoping to get some answers to their sudden, bizarre outburst. Who was their Goddess? Why did they think the bliss of his drug specifically belonged to the elves? Were they just fucking crazy? He had no way to know for sure now.

When it was over there were a lot of armed men looking at each other uncertainly in the semi darkness of the room, and after a second Lucas realized they were looking at him.

“Hey, I’m not the one that went crazy!” Lucas shouted defensively. “This isn’t on me.”

“You’re the one that invited them. You—” The Butcher with the salt and pepper beard said.

“Is everything alright in there?” the bartender yelled, pounding on the door.

“Fuck,” Lucas sighed under his breath.

“Listen,” he said, louder this time. “This is going to have to be continued. We’ve got to bounce, but I’ll make it right with you.”

“How you gonna make this right?” One of the Brass Knights said as his friend slumped against the wall. “The bastards poisoned Ritchie!”

Lucas looked at the dart the man pulled out of his friend, but even as he did that, he was sheathing his blade and hopping down from the table. When he reached the floor, he pulled out a dark green potion of lesser antivenom and handed it to the man. “Give this to your friend, and he’ll pull through.”

He pulled out a second one, along with a healing potion, and said, "Is anyone else hit? How about you, Hura’gh. You okay over there?”

“I hit them with a chair,” the half-orc bragged. “How could they hit me with anything at all after that?”

Lucas ignored that bravado and gave the big guy a once over, but he seemed to be fine. As the Red Lantern Ladies slowly stood up now that the coast was clear, it became obvious that the only other person to be injured was one of the Butchers. Since the elves had been holding bows instead of knives, it was obvious he’d been stabbed by his buddy, but Lucas didn’t say shit about that.

Instead, he just tossed the man a healing potion and said, “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here before this gets any more complicated.”