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.
Stolen novel; please report.
“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 in several weeks, 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.”