The next few days were packed with preparations around the manor and the rest of the grounds, but Lucas did his best to ignore them. He only had a couple of things to do before the big day, and the hardest one of those by far was to pretend he was happy about this strange turn of events. He welcomed the new arrangements with exactly as much enthusiasm as he might summon for skinny-dipping with piranhas.

So, he left discussions about security to Kar’gandin, and with the help of a few other guys, they shut down the lab completely. Instead, he kept a small crew back there to start harvesting and pressing apples. Fortunately, when it came to trade, the dwarvish mind simply couldn’t be beaten, and the willy trader figured out how to turn Lucas’s lies into truth.

“Ye see, they’ve heard all this time that our blue comes from the docks, but they haven’t seen it, so in a couple of days, when all then that girl’s family and her accomplices are here, we’re gonna make sure they see a big delivery coming in with their own eyes,” he explained, looking as smug as Lucas had ever seen him.

Kar’gandin arranged for a number of crates from several different ships to be picked up on that day, and brought by wagon just before the other guest were due to arrive. He would make sure their enough clues about their origins were clearly visible on the outside to provide the Whisperer agents any number of false leads to chase down.

“Of course, the box we give them with their cut of the product will be carefully stripped to try to conceal the origin, but that will only make the other clues seem more real,” the dwarf said with a smile.

“So we’re going to smuggle drugs into the city just to smuggle them back out again?” Lucas asked, confused. “Isn’t that kind of counterproductive?”

“Ye need to think outside the box a little more, my friend,” the dwarf laughed. “The crates, we’ll have whatever they have in them. Wool, grain, pottery. It doesn’t matter. They’ll leave Lordanin just fine, and then, on the road between here and there, we’ll switch the contents so that our new friends can see us unloading them.”

“And then they chase their tails for weeks trying to steal a connection with traders that doesn’t exist,” Lucas shouted, finally putting all the pieces together. “I fuckin love it, man. Great plan. Let me know if you need anything, I have to go into Meadowin and check on the happy couple’s engagement present.”

“Oh? And what is it yer getting made for Adin?” the dwarf asked. “A knife for his back? I think his bride-to-be already picked out a couple of those for him.”

They both laughed at that for longer than they should have before Lucas finally said, “Nah. We all got plenty of knives out already. This is just some custom glassware for the couple’s future home. It seemed appropriate.”

Lucas was forced to take the carriage into town, but only because he wasn’t carrying a crate of glasses all the way back by himself. That would have been murder on his hands.

“Is it true that there’s going to be trouble?” Mort asked when they were halfway there.

“What makes you think there will be trouble?” Lucas answered, curious about what the normally quiet young man had heard.

“Well, I heard that your orcish friend is hiring a lot of extra guards just in case, and—” the carriage driver started to say.

“The best way to make sure there won’t be trouble is to be ready for trouble,” Lucas said with confidence he didn’t have. They could have two dozen extra guards, and it wouldn’t even be worth one of the wands that any one of the Whisperers might have on them when shit went down.

Lucas had looked into buying himself a weapon like that just in case, but when he saw that they started over a hundred gold dragons, he decided that maybe it wasn’t quite time to pull that trigger yet. By contrast, the glasses that he’d had their loyal glassblower make came in at only thirty-five silver kings for the whole set.

Lucas took a long, hard look at each piece before he paid the man. There were eight elegant wine flutes in all. Each of them was shaped like a beautiful flower that he planned to claim that Blue was extracted from on a faraway tropical island, just to muddy the waters that much more. The only difference was that five of them were a beautiful shade of blue, and four of them were crystal clear. They were fancier than anything he’d ever want to own for himself, but for Adin, they were just about right.

As he loaded the carriage, he looked around the village, noting how much it had grown in the few short months he'd been coming here. Everyone referred to him as Mister Parrin or Sir now, and he found that he enjoyed that more than he should.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Lucas had never been a benefactor before, and the experience had given him a lot of insight into gang culture back on Earth. That wasn’t something he’d messed with, but seeing a flourishing neighborhood that was blossoming because of his misdeeds was a balm to his soul, even though he knew that it shouldn’t be. He’d need that, of course, what came next.

Adin, for his part, walked around with his head in the clouds. He was as obsequies to Lucas as he was demanding over everyone else, after getting the new dose. Lucas knew that the addiction would buy loyalty for a while at least, but he was under no illusions that the man’s future bride would be clever enough to pick up the clues that the man casually dropped to figure out the shape of the true situation in a year or two.

That sad reality made everything that was going to happen next more important than ever. Still, Lucas brooded about what he needed to do for days after that, even after all the preparations were done. By the time dinner rolled around that weekend, the place had never looked better. Parin Manor was polished within an inch of its life, and the house was overflowing with servants in formal liveries in a way that he’d never seen before. Honestly, he would scarcely have recognized it compared to the threadbare place it had been the first day he’d been here, but that spoke to their success as much as anything.

Even Arissa was finally let out of the room he’d been imprisoned in and allowed to dress in her fancy gowns once everything she shouldn’t see was shut down. It wasn’t like she was going to try to escape now, not when she was going to do her best to devour them whole.

On the day of the engagement dinner, no less than 12 carriages dropped off guests of various levels of importance. The bride-to-be’s father, her mother, and all of her brothers were in attendance. There were other people, too, including well-dressed friends who were more than a little cagey with names or using obvious aliases that told Lucas all he needed to know as to whether or not the Whisperers were, in fact, in attendance.

For his part, Lucas was dressed up in as fancy a suit as he had and joined his ‘cousins’ on the front steps for all of the hand-shaking and introductions he could stomach. He quickly lost track of all but the most important names. It was easier to simply refer to people as Lord or Lady Torvin whenever possible, which was lazy but effective.

Despite the fact that they were outside, he found the whole thing suffocating, both because the comrades he could count on most were absent as much as the way that the upper crust dressed and acted. Kar’gandin and Hura’gh might make an appearance later when it was time to discuss business. Adin had insisted that demi-humans would not be welcome for the formalities when guests of this caliber were involved.

Still, at least the whole thing started with a garden party. The whole thing had been planned out sort of like an onion by Adin and his bride. More than fifty people would be in attendance for the reception, but only perhaps the most important dozen of those would stay for dinner. Then, sometime after that was concluded, Lucas, Adin, his bride, her father, and another power broker or two would get together in the library with glasses of wine or brandy and have a real discussion about what came next.

Lucas’s grip tightened on his drink just thinking about it. After all the hard work they’d put in, including recovering from some mortal injuries, the very last thing he wanted was to be made a flunky in someone else’s organization. The very thought enraged him, but he tried to keep his cool as he mingled with strangers and pretended like he belonged.

A couple of the young noblemen he’d sold to in the past tried to cop from him here, but even if he had any blue on him, he wasn’t particularly interested in selling with so many new eyes on him. Instead, he made a joke that no one in this world was likely to get. “You come to me on the day of my cousin’s wedding and show me this disrespect…” he said in his best Italian mafioso accent, barely managing to keep a straight face.

All in all, the whole thing went reasonably well, even though he couldn’t help but feel like he was a bit underdressed. The one snag that seemed to stand out only to him was all the strange poison testing that went on. Lucas could understand how, on some level, that made sense, especially in the presence of an underground alchemist of ill repute like him, but even so, it seemed excessive.

No less than half a dozen nobles at the gathering had their own private poison testers, and Lord Torvin had a small magical charm that glowed green whenever he passed it over food or drink that was safe to drink. Presumably, it would glow red or some other color if it wasn’t, but of course, none of the platters of snacks or flutes of wine had been tampered with in any way.

By the time the gathering started to dissolve and the core of the group retreated to the main dining room for dinner, Lucas was already exhausted. It wasn’t like he could stop, though, and just let events play on without him. So he was forced to continue to play the good host and keep a smile that was as indefatigable as it was insincere plastered to his face as they made their way to the dining room.

At this second gathering, he found many more questions than before directed his way, and they were often more pointed than before. No one came right out and asked if he was the notorious drug dealer known as Mister Blue or anything, but nobles were quite fond of beating around the bush.

“Is it true you’ve recently been involved in a hunting accident?” Arissa’s eldest brother asked? “You’ve recovered quite nicely.”

“Perhaps next time you’ll go out with us and show us a thing or two,” her younger brother commented blithely.

Lucas shrugged off their words with smiles and drinking. “Don’t you worry,” he promised them, “I know a thing or two about taking down big game.”

The two of them reacted to that in a manner that was just as blasé as he thought it would be, but that was okay. Lucas was happy for them to underestimate him. He was focused on his plans for later in the evening.