By the time Lucas’s new partners started to wake up, their obvious weapons had been removed and set on the far side of the desk, and a large glass jar of small blue candies had been set between them. He did his best to sit there looking supremely confident, though his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. Adin had left the room and taken his fiancee with him, which made room for Kar’gandin to join Lucas in the cramped little study. The presence of a demihuman among such important people was sure to make them even more annoyed, but honestly, Lucas was looking forward to that part.
Kar’gandin was the only person that Lucas had shared his plan with before everything had gone down, and though the dwarf had been leery, he hadn’t seen a better play. “Yer gonna kick up a right hornet’s nest if ye do this boy,” the dwarf had cautioned him, but it was what it was.
Lord Broan was the first one to wake up. He was more confused than anything. “What is the meaning of this!” he demanded.
Lucas just smiled thinly and said, “I’m sorry to inform you, but after due consideration of your kind offer, I’ve decided to renegotiate our deal.”
That he managed to say it with a straight face amused him, but not as much as the other man’s reaction. For a moment, the sharp-nosed Lord struggled to understand what Lucas had said, but as soon as he’d processed what Lucas was saying, murder replaced the haze that clouded his vision.
“Don’t you know who I am?” the man blustered. “I’ll have you killed. I’ll have your whole family killed. Here in Lordanin and across the seas in…”
He kept going like that for a while, but his increasing volume started to wake up the other two men who had been struggling with their own brief but intense high, and Lords Torvin and Halforn slowly started to stir.
“Let’s save the threats for when your Master’s wake-up, lapdog,” Lucas interrupted. “I’m sure they’ll want to make some too, and I’d rather have them all out on the table at once so they don’t get too repetitive. ”
The man was clearly not used to this sort of disrespect and was stunned into apoplectic silence for a moment, but that was all the time it took for Lord Torvin to open his eyes and glare daggers at Lucas. He was sharper than his minions, and he knew what Lucas had done right away.
“You really think you can subject us to this… humiliation and expect to live,” the man rumbled dangerously. “I’ve got a dozen killers out there. At a word, I could have you castrated and flayed.”
“You could certainly try,” Lucas nodded, “I’ve got plenty of killers here tonight too. Maybe we could make a bloodsport of it. I’d be careful, though. You already blundered into this trap; who knows what others are waiting for you.”
Lord Torvin was silent for a moment before he said, “You think you’re some kind of mastermind? You think you can outmaneuver me? I have men at every level throughout this city. It is I who—”
“And I appreciate all that hard work,” Lucas nodded. “You thought to use my drugs to own Lordanin, but now I’ve used my drugs to own you instead, so I suppose, in that sense, that makes Lordanin mine.”
“You think you can hold me were mere chains of addiction?” Lord Torvin roared. “I’ll beat this, and then I’ll beat your cousin bloody for your insolence as well.”
Lucas laughed then. “That’s funny. You still think after all this time, I’m related to the Parins? They were just a place I decided to crash when I came to town with a few kegs of blue. I mean, really, we look nothing alike. The first thing I did was get them hooked on Blue, the same as you. Do whatever you want to them; I’ll just pick a new family and a new name. Maybe I’ll be Lucas Torvin next; how does that sound to you?”
“But that can’t be…” Lord Torvain said, showing signs of doubt. “Arissa told me…”
“I hope she told you that Adin has been hopelessly addicted for months now,” Lucas said blandly, sure that she had. There was no way a fop like Adin could hide his gaze from her keen eye.
“He’s tried and failed to quit twice now,” Lucas lied. “He used to have a little pride, but look at him now. He practically begs for the stuff after a few days. I guess we’ll see if you’re any stronger than that.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” Lord Halforn said, trying to get a word in edgewise. “We could have been reasonable. We could have—”
“From the very minute you walked in this door, you looked down your nose at me and my operation. This was never a partnership. You thought I was going to work for you,” Lucas nodded. “And now the shoe’s on the other foot. Now you’re going to work for me. That’s all. Other than that, everything stays the same.”
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“And what are your terms?” Lord Torvin growled.
Lucas was under no illusions that the man had been cowed or given in in any way. For now, he was just looking to get as much information as he could to decided how to screw Lucas over. That was fine. He’d expected no less from the man at the center of so much intrigue.
“The same as before, just with the roles reversed,” Lucas smiled coldly. “You go on playing your shadowy games. You can even use blue to do it. You just belong to me now. That’s all. I make the drugs, you use the drugs, we both profit.”
“You think I’ll be a dog on a leash for you?” Lord Torvin spat. “You think this is a game?”
“You certainly did when you thought that whole ‘enslave people with addictions’ thing was going to apply to your enemies instead of you,” Lucas said with a smile. “The only thing that’s changed is that now you have skin in your game.”
“This changes nothing,” Lord Torvin said, standing, “except that after my men kill you, I will get this poison out of my system and—”
“Maybe ye should try that in the reverse order there, chief,” Kar’gandin said, chiming in for the first time. “I’ve seen dwarves shake this shite off after a few months, but humans? The only customers we’ve seen that managed to quit for more than a week were suicides.”
“Then we’ll get it from other sources,” Lord Torvin said, unwilling to change his tune. “I will not tolerate your existence a moment longer than I have to.”
“What over sources?” Lucas laughed. “I disappear, and this whole operation dries up and blows away, leaving you with nothing but a growing craving you’ll never be able to sate. You think Dusk will scratch that itch? Dragon’s Blood? You ask the junkies in the kingdom how much that helped them when I ran out for a few weeks last month. Those men would have given all they had for one more fucking hit.”
The two of them glared at each other for several long seconds before Lord Torvin’s eyes flicked down to the jar full of blue candies. “What’s that then?” the man asked. “More poison?”
“A show of good faith,” Lucas quipped. “40 days worth of Blue for one person, or 10 days worth spread between your two lieutenants here and your daughter. I don’t want you to think I’m going to cut you off at any moment. If you spread it out and only take a couple a week, that supply could last all of you for a month.”
“A long leash is still a leash,” Lord Torvin answered.
In this case, it's technically a noose since I’m giving you enough rope to hang yourself with, Lucas thought to himself, but he said nothing.
The man obviously didn’t like the current situation, but now that his outrage was fading, he understood the trap that had been laid. It was impossible to believe both that a drug was so addictive that he could use it to control his enemies but so weak that he could cast off its chains.
Kar’gandin’s words had been a lie, of course. Any habit could be kicked if you went cold turkey long enough. Blue was no exception to that. In fact, the sooner the men in this room started, the more likely they were to succeed. That’s why Lucas was making that job that much harder by giving some product away for free. The more they took, the harder it would be to break that narcotic spell, and the less they would want to, so it was in his interests that they gave in and accepted the inevitable as soon as possible.
The Lord seemed conflicted and looked to the dwarf-like he was about to talk down to him, but instead said, “Is this your real partner then? Perhaps I should burn down his home instead, my soon-to-be son-in-law’s. Maybe that would send the right message.”
“Burn down whatever you want,” Lucas said, putting his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “We’ll have to go to war, of course. I can’t be publicly disrespected any more than you can, but your fine allies have an awful lot more to lose than my junkies, and unlike you, I can start over somewhere else. My empire is portable, and yours isn’t.”
It was a bluff. In Lucas’s mind, it wasn’t even a particularly good bluff, but as Lord Torvin started to deflate, Lucas realized that they’d won, at least for tonight. Somehow, this wasn’t going to devolve into bloodshed for now. He could feel it.
The conversion continued, and eventually, it became less adversarial as Lucas insisted he didn’t want to do anything to screw up the Whisperer’s current arrangements. That was a lie, of course. Just like Lord Torvin pretended that he might ever be okay with a subordinate arrangement, Lucas pretended that he was going to let the man keep running roughshod over the city.
The truth was, there were going to be a lot of changes around here. If Lucas was going to keep peddling poison, he was going to do it to the right sort of people. That might even be enough to give his burgeoning little gang a name: the Bluebloods, he decided.
If aristocracy was going to be a weapon, then he might as well see if he could accomplish some good with it. After all, he’d barely tried, and he’d improved the lives of the nearby villagers immeasurably. If he found himself with the resources of half the nobility of the city, well, who knew what he could accomplish.
When the five of them finished their conversion, Lord Torvin took the offered Blue with him. He even shook hands with Lucas, though there was nothing but ice behind his forced smile. Even as he returned everyone’s weapons, he was reasonably sure that Lord Broan was going to pull out his wand and vaporize them. That didn’t happen, though. Instead, they exited the study, and a few minutes later, they were leaving the grounds entirely.
“I didn’t think they were the type to leave so meekly,” Kar’gandin said, once the two of them were alone on the front porch and the last of the carriages was retreating down the front drive.
“They didn’t,” Lucas answered as he shook his head. “It’s still going to be war. They just need to figure out a new plan to fuck us over. Shit is going to get ugly, I think, just not as soon as before.”
“Well, that gives us more time to prepare then,” Kar’gandin said with a smile, clapping him on the back before they went inside to call it a night.