Once they had a few kegs of Blue to sell, they had to start selling again. There was no choice in the matter. They needed money, and Junkies needed their fix, and that’s all there was to it.
All Lucas wanted to do was stay in the basement and fiddle with the balance of the potions he was making between batches of their favorite product, but the many junkies that now lived in and around Lordanin weren’t the patient type.
Those first two kegs went to Sir Tristin and his men so they could get back in business. That was fair. Lucas understood that. He would gladly have given him all the rest, too, if that had meant that he could have stayed in the lab, but that would have left the noble clients, who were their real moneymakers at this point, out in the cold.
Sir Tristin had tried to strong-arm them by doubling their protection money when he met Lucas one day in a quiet tavern not far outside the main gate. “It’s only fair; the city is a mess right now, and costs have gone up.”
He was surprised when Lucas agreed immediately. “It’s true,” he nodded. “Five dragons is more than fair with everything that's gone on. I’m glad you understand.”
“Understand?” the knight asked, confused.
“Yes,” Lucas nodded, “that costs have gone up. I was about to tell you the same thing. Sadly, because of the trouble the Whisperers have caused and some uhh… let's say necessary changes to our operation, we’re going to have to charge thirty dragons a barrel going forward instead of twenty.”
The man had not been happy, but then he’d opened the door, so he had very little room to maneuver. In truth, Lucas hadn’t been planning to raise the price of anything. It was almost all pure profit to him anyway. The relationship was more important than the money, but if someone was going to try to fuck him over, then turnabout was fair play.
After that, he was forced to put on his fanciest clothes and become Lucas Parin once more. Rather than go to all sorts of different houses all over the countryside, Lucas suggested that they have their own party right here. “It would be nice and simple,” he joked over breakfast. “We put the food over here, the dancing over there, and right in the middle, we have a line for the drugs with a cashier and a couple of guards. A one-stop shop.”
“What’s a cashier?” Hura’gh asked.
“It’s… it doesn’t matter,” Lucas protested. “The point is, there’s got to be simpler ways to do this than me spending a week riding all over. I’ve got work to do!”
“The manor ain’t ready for that kinda show, and we ain’t ready for that kinda heat, and ye know it,” Kar’gandin said, pointing at him with a breakfast sausage. “Maybe in the winter, or perhaps the spring, we can—”
“Die of exhaustion because shit never stops?” Lucas suggested.
The dwarf stared at him blankly for a moment, then they both laughed at that. Hura’gh joined in their laughter a second or two late, indicating he didn’t get the joke but didn’t want to be left out, but Lucas ignored it.
Truthfully, he thought he might well die of exhaustion. Every day he felt a little stronger, but recovering from being at death’s door was a real bitch, even with his little pick-me-up.
Long Lasting Flask of Tainted Curative (5 doses): Endurance 2 (for the purposes of recovery only), lasts for four hours, poison 1.
Still, he shouldn’t complain. He’d be a dead man without his potions, and he was a live man with them, and that was all he needed to know. Currently, the only things they really imported in bulk were sour dwarf berries and goblin bile, but once their cash reserves were looking a little better, Lucas planned to order a few more exotic herbs and reagents to try to bump up the bitter elixir that he kept in the flask in his pocket.
It was enough to keep him on his feet throughout the day, but only barely. Making social calls was definitely going to push both him and it to the limit.
Fortunately, Kar’gandin had been busy while he’d been gone. He’d had his ‘cousin’ Lady Danaria answer the steady supply of calling cards they’d received the whole time he’d been away, expressing her condolences that her cousin wasn’t currently in Lordanin.
According to the dwarf, most of her messages went something like, ‘Dear Lord Suchandsuch, I am so sorry that my dearest cousin will not be able to make it to your luncheon/dinner party/jubilee/garden party. Currently, he is abroad and has put to sea. I don’t know what for exactly, but he said something about seeking out new supplies and told me to let anyone looking for him know that he was going to be back in a month or two. Kindest regards, Lady Danaria Parin.’
While he’d made sure to have all of those condolences sent by official channels, he’d also had the tailor whip up some liveried outfits for their own messenger boys. Now that the time was right, they would send those young peasants on horseback anywhere there was a rich young man looking for a fix and inquire as to their availability.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Their messengers would of course wait around to collect the response and ensure it was delivered, thus bypassing any remnant Whisperers that might still be looking for him and his movements. Fortunately, thanks to all of this, they had a ready list of nobles to visit in the form of dozens of calling cards all stacked up neatly on Danaria’s writing desk.
Lucas took that stack and spread them out on the table, spreading them out to determine who’d sent him multiple invitations. Most had only sent a single letter, but several had sent two, and some had sent them missives practically weekly, showing the desperate state of their addiction. They started there for obvious reasons.
Of course, no one refused him. As soon as the messenger came to let them know that he was once again in the city, they insisted that he come calling at once. Soon, Lucas’s social calendar was completely full.
Before everything had gone sideways, he’d hoped to pawn this job off on Adin, but now that he was in bed with Arisse, both literally and metaphorically, he no longer trusted the man. There was no telling what favors he would demand in lieu of cold hard coins from their rapidly expanding customer network.
So, for the foreseeable future, at least half of every day was spent eating fancy meals, exchanging pleasantries and gossip he didn’t care the least bit about, and dealing drugs to the richest people in the land.
Oftentimes, he was booked for both lunch and dinner and spent almost the entire day away from the estate. He traveled with Mort every day. Apparently, the young man had been learning how to fight should the unexpected happen again. Sometimes, Kar’gandin sent another one of their growing stable of warriors, with him posing as a manservant. Though that person changed pretty frequently depending on what else the group had going on that day, it felt good to have a little backup.
There was no trouble, though, even though Lucas expected it. There were no ambushes or attempts at entrapment by the city watch. Instead, there were any number of frivolous games and diversions planned by his hosts to ingratiate them into his good graces. Lucas, in turn, spoke about the renovations he was having done on his sister’s home and how he would host them soon.
Though he didn’t do much riding for obvious reasons, he got reasonably good at mallets and friendly card games. He was showered with any number of invitations for deeper relationships by men who never wanted to be without their drugs again. Brothers offered him their sisters, and husbands offered him their daughters. Sometimes, an engagement was suggested, and other times, a more scandalous tryst was offered in its place. Even a few of his rarer female clients hinted they might be open to some sort of discrete physical arrangement for a steady supply of Blue; it was hardly the first time a junkie had offered herself up for a fix to him.
Mr. Sharpe was disgusted, and his wonder about Adin’s story regarding his sister grew with each new attempt to bribe him with a pretty young thing. On Earth, he would have turned them down flat. Here, he had to be a bit more circumspect. Mr. Parin couldn’t afford the luxury of being disgusted by scumbags. Instead, he had to smile and tell the man across the table drinking brandy what a tempting offer that was.
It was only after he seemed genuinely interested that he could turn down such things without any hurt feelings. So, his backstory grew, one tawdry conversation at a time. It turned out that he was engaged you see. To the daughter of a Baron back home, and for reasons related to his father’s debts, he couldn’t cancel such an important alliance.
Yes, Lucas had more than his share of dalliances, but his dance card was already quite full. “In fact,” he often said, “After this, I expect to be entertaining two different women from a very good family for the evening. Yes, at once. So, you see, I must save my strength for them, but perhaps next time…”
Of course, with his rising disgust came rising costs. Good customers who were happy to pay in cash, like Lord Corrin, would receive the old rate. For the rest, though. For people like Baron Ronwhite, or the heir to Hessenburough who tried to offer him the flesh of his prettiest maid as partial payment instead, Lucas would have to deliver the unfortunate news that, sadly, due to a ship lost at sea, and another plundered by pirates, the price had gone up to six and a half dragons.
For some with even more terrible offers and growing desperation in their eyes, he might not even be able to sell at that rate. Sometimes, he had only a single vial left to his name just now, and he couldn’t part with it for less than eight or perhaps even ten dragons. It was tragic, really. He considered these extortionary rates, of course, and reserved them for those who offered him a night with their non-human slaves.
He always expected them to balk, but really, he shouldn’t have. He had what they needed, and no one else did. Oh, a few people would mention that the stuff circulating the streets of Lordanin was much cheaper. That was true, of course, but the Knights of Brass stepped on their product pretty hard. Lucas has seen samples. It was barely even blue at that point. It was just euphoria 2, and at this point, it was only enough to keep away the pangs of addiction rather than bring real bliss.
To that, Lucas’s answer was always the same, “If you like what they’re selling, then you should buy from them instead of me.”
He could have cut them off then and there, of course, but he wasn’t in the business of making enemies. Enemies had a reason to make his life hard, whereas customers, even ungrateful, disreputable customers, had reasons to help him, or at least look the other way.
There were other drug dealers and other gangs in Lordanin, of course. None of them sold Blue, though. None of them sold what these men needed, and after a few doses, it really was a need more than it was a want.
So, every day for weeks he departed the Parin estate with a strong box full of vials, and every afternoon or evening he returned with a small pile of gold, honestly, it wasn’t a bad life, but it wasn’t really what Lucas wanted to be doing with his time either.