Brewing Bad Ch. 70-71

Another bonus chapter for my fine readers. I think that brings us to 15 ahead of the general public. I can't wait until 2 a week is an every week sort of thing, but those days are coming.

Ch. 70 - A Long Cold Winter

The hectic pace only held up as long as the weather did. In those waning weeks of autumn, as the world began to shut down and the villagers started to prepare their harvest feasts, it became harder and harder to find men willing to work for coin. Aden assured Lucas that was typical, but he didn’t really believe it until he heard the words out of Kar’gandin’s mouth, too. 

Still, by the time the first real storm dumped snow across everything from Lordanin to the Greenwood, they’d harvested everything worth harvesting, from blue esper vines to apples, and they’d set about preserving as much of it as they could by roasting it over low flames or filtering and boiling it. They’d even dispatched a few orders for ingredients from further abroad to augment their supplies. 

So, while sour dwarf berries might not arrive for months, they would expect a big shipment of them sometime just before spring. Likewise, Goblin bile could be had year-round, and it was by far the most finicky ingredient he used regularly; it was just a matter of paying adventurers to venture further and further afield. 

None of that mattered anymore once he woke up to the snow. Before all of this fantasy world bullshit, Lucas had lived in Idaho, which had pretty rough winters. Still, nothing in his recent memory looked quite so picturesque as the suddenly white countryside. Though they’d done a lot of work on the manor in the last few months, it still had a ways to go. Suddenly, all that was erased by a blanket of pure, driven snow that was too fresh to even be marred by the chores of daily life. 

Lucas stood there at his window for several minutes, just looking out and shivering. He was smiling, too, though, and it was only when he could resist the chill radiating from the glass that he finally retreated to his wardrobe to get dressed. 

The house had four large fireplaces on the ground floor, not including the two that were used for actual cooking, and all of them were roaring by breakfast time. They lent the whole place of backward charm that Lucas could appreciate, even if he could never explain it to the Parins or his business partners. 

He went out and checked on them first thing and found the cider house relatively cozy. It had a large fireplace in it now to hide the smaller one in the laboratory in the basement, and though Hura’gh complained about the cold, they both seemed to be doing just fine. 

“Don’t mind him,” Kar’gandin said, smiling from behind his pipe. “Orcs prefer the heat. We’ve got enough firewood to last for two winters if need be.”

“Not prefer,” the half-orc shot back, “Require. It is one of the reasons we are a nomadic people and half the reason we don’t conquer you all!”

“What he means to say is that they flee from the winter as fast as they charge toward battle,” Kar’gandin laughed, “And it’s not the weather that keeps the horde away. I believe that would be a certain red dragon with a taste for green flesh…”

“The tribes flee from nothing, not even winter,” Hura’gh retorted. “A to Embermaw, one day we will have our vengeance on her!”

Lucas thought about pointing out that Hura’gh wasn’t exactly roaming the grassland here. Instead, he just shot the shit with the two of them for a good part of the morning. Work barely even came up. It was like the winter weather had hit a pause button for everyone, which made for a nice change of pace. 

Partway through the conversation, Lucas almost let Kar’gandin’s present slip while they were talking about drinking, and he mentioned applejack, but the dwarf let the reference slide over him. Even if he had some idea of what frost distillation was, he didn’t seem to know the word. So, Lucas was able to slip away from them without anyone being any the wiser. 

Even though he’d been really busy, he’d actually put a lot of thought into gifts for everyone. It wasn’t just because their Winter Feast was apparently as much a tradition here as Christmas was back home, either. It was because he was loaded. Lucas had more money than he’d ever had in his life, and he was more than a little sick of watching it stack up only to be frittered away on ingredients and upgrades. He wanted to spend it on something he cared about, and if he couldn’t start his tavern yet, then extravagant gifts for his friends would have to do. 

They are my friends, after all, at this point, aren’t they? He wondered to himself as he crunched through the snow back to the main house. Danaria and Kar’gandin were for sure, he decided. Hura’gh probably was, too, and even Gerwin, Mort, and some of the men in the village probably counted. It was only Adin he was unsure about, but he’d bought the guy a present anyway because he hadn’t wanted him to feel left out, even if he was a bit of a dick.

In the same way that Adin could be a pain in the ass, he was also the only one that seemed to want to talk business on such a relaxing day. Danaria was happy to talk about decorations and the upcoming feast. More than anything, she seemed to want to drop hints about what she’d gotten Lucas, but every time she started being cute and precious, her brother did his very best to chase her away so he could discuss the details of how the Torvin’s wished to proceed. 

“We’re not doing that,” was Lucas’s most common answer. “Not until I know what they want it for.”

“But if Count Torvin says—” Adin insisted, or “They’ll be very displeased if things go awry because—”

“One,” Lucas said loudly, “This isn’t exactly a day for work. Why is it that every day I’m trying to get shit done, you want to gossip, but the moment I settle down to hang out and enjoy this picturesque fucking weather, you try to give me a to-do list?”

Adin opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Lucas interrupted him. 

“And two,” Lucas continued. “What in the hell leads you to believe I give a good God damn what that guy wants. I ain’t about to go start shit with him, but he’s going to work on our terms from now on and not the other way around; you got that?”

“I’m still not sure if that’s the wisest way to deal with the Torvin’s,” Adin sighed.

“I get it,” Lucas said. “We’ll figure something out. We’ll throw em a bone or two, but not today. You know perfectly well that nothing is getting done until after the holiday. Even addicts have to rest, so we might as well enjoy it.”

Adin grumbled but relented. He spent the day trying and failing to enjoy the day, and eventually, after a dinner of braised lamb on a bed of roasted vegetables, Lucas sought the privacy of the upper parlor where he could enjoy the snow falling in peace. He even helped himself to a little of the applejack he’d been making for Kar’gandin. There was something about the rich burn of the whiskey compared to the sweet brandy that the nobles here seemed to prefer that sat right with him, especially as he looked out at the snowflakes swirling in the dark and thought about how far he’d come. 

That was when Danaria showed up. He was far from drunk when she sat down on the couch only a few feet from him and started up a conversation with him. With the faint buzz he had, it was harder than usual to keep his eyes on hers instead of the light blue dress that clung tightly to her figure. It was chaste enough to make sure that it showed nothing, right down to the white gloves that she wore, but it was tight enough that he had no trouble imagining everything. 

Still, he pulled his mind out of the gutter and listened to her talk about the preparations that the servants had left to do before the feast in a few nights and everything else. He wanted to tell her, ‘Just let Jeeves handle it,’ but he liked the sound of her voice, so he just nodded along as she went on and on about nothing that mattered too much.

“What about you?” she asked, “have you found presents for everyone close to you?” she asked sweetly.

“Just about,” Lucas nodded. “I’ve got some particularly vicious face paint for Hura;gh, a new pen for your brother, and I’m just about done with—”

“Face paint? Really? How terrible,” Danaria laughed. “That’s not in the winter spirit of giving at all.”

“Well, orcs aren’t much for winter as I understand it, so as far as I’m concerned, it works,” Lucas said. “As to Kar’gandin, well, I didn’t think it wise to replace his favorite pipe, so I’m brewing him up something special.”

“Oh? Another potion?” she asked. “How in character for you.”

“Nah. Booze. Applejack, actually,” he said, handing her his glass, which only had the smallest sip left in it. “Go on, try it.”

She looked at the glass doubtfully and sniffed it before looking at him again. He thought she was about to turn him down. Instead, she suddenly downed the half a shot or less in a single gulp. 

She opened her mouth to speak but instead coughed. “Strong, isn’t it,” Lucas laughed.

“I thought you said you made this from cider,” she said finally. “That is not cider.”

“It was before the cold got to it,” Lucas smiled. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He stood up and walked to his room, where he had a pony keg of cider by the fire. It was still a little immature and wouldn’t be particularly good to drink on its own, but then, he had no plans to drink it as it was. He set down his glass and his flask on the mantle, and then he retrieved the wide metal saucer he used for freezing and explained the nature of frost distillation to Danaria without using any fancy science words that might confuse someone from a fantasy world. 

“You see, hard cider is nothing but a little bit of alcohol and a lot of water, and those freeze at different temperatures,” he said as he opened the window. “So, if you set some out overnight in weather like this, then in the morning, you've got a disk of ice you can throw away and a little bit of booze worth drinking. Nature gives you the chance to make everything better if you just figure out how to use it right.”

For a moment, he started to think about a few of the ingredients in his lab he might want to try frost distillation with. It was possible it might separate them in inappropriate ways, of course, but…

“In everything, huh?” she asked in a tone that completely wrecked his train of thought. “Even making booze?”

“Hey, not all alchemy involves making magic potions and shit. Sometimes it’s just about…” Lucas set the saucer of booze on the windowsill and carefully shut the window.

However, when he turned to continue his conversation with Danaria, he found her suddenly close to him. She was uncomfortably close. Well, she would have been if she hadn’t been a beautiful woman. 

“About bringing the right things together?” she volunteered, trying to finish his thought. 

“Yeah, something like that,” he said before moving to kiss her.

Despite the fact that he had never planned to kiss her, it was a bold one, and after a moment of surprise, she returned it eagerly. What followed was brief but passionate, and after a few seconds, he broke it and pulled away. 

“I shouldn’t,” he said softly. “You’re too young, too innocent…”

“And you’re a villain and a scoundrel,” she breathed. “I couldn’t possibly…”

She never finished the thought. Instead, they kissed again. This time, it was longer and deeper, and as the faint buzz of alcohol that was rushing through his system resonated with his desire, he had trouble seeing which way was up. 

We should not be doing this, he told himself. Even so, he didn’t find his own argument to be a persuasive one, and that chastisement wasn’t enough to convince him to push her away. Instead, she clung to him, and he pulled her tightly to him.

Ch. 71 - Something for Everyone

The next morning was a tense one, even though it should have been anything but. Lucas sat there, smiling as wrapped gifts were plucked from the pile and handed out, but really, his mind was a million miles away as he thought about last night and tried to figure if Gerwin was looking at him more sourly than usual. 

Had the old man seen anything? Lucas wondered.

He was actually grateful that the butler had chosen the moment that he and Danaria had started making out to start walking up the stairs. That meant that the thing that never should have happened certainly didn’t have the chance to go any further than it should. Still, Lucas thought they’d separated an appropriate distance before the old man had reached the upper parlor to allay any suspicion; still, the way he looked at Lucas certainly implied that he knew what had happened even if he hadn’t uttered a word. 

While that feeling might have been Lucas’s guilty conscience, the way that Danara was looking at him certainly wasn’t. She was looking at him like a love struck girl, which, he supposed, she probably was. She was twenty, but caged up in the house like she was while her brother waited to find the best noble to marry her off to, she might as well have been a school girl with her first completely in appropriate crush, and it was targeted right at Lucas. 

That was his fault, of course. He’d gone and kissed her. When she’d kissed him in the middle of their argument about drugs a few months back, it had been because her emotions had overcome her, but this time it had been him that overwhelmed her, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that now. Still, he forced himself to pull away from that thought as Adin unwrapped the small present Lucas had bought for him. 

“Dice!” the man cried out, feigning a disappointed expression that failed to fully suppress his smile. “I thought I told you that cards were the preferred weapon of a nobleman?”

“Well, just in case you ever want to slum it, I got you a very noble set of dice,” Lucas said with a smile. They were expensive, that was for sure. Both of them were made with ivory, and the pips were inset pieces of onyx. They’d been carved by hand, and polished to within an inch of their life. Their balance was almost perfect, too.  

It had been the second most expensive gift he’d purchased, though if he added up all the money he’d handed out to the staff and servants as thanks for their hard work it would have been the third. Kar’gandin and Hura’gh’s gifts had been cheap by comparison. Only Danaria’s hairpin had been more expensive. 

Lucas had paid a jeweler to make a pin of gold and sapphires shaped like a soaring bird, in honor of her secret power. She’d been practically overwhelmed by it when she’d undone the brown butcher paper that had hidden it and given him a hug so hard that it had been almost inappropriate. 

In return he’d gotten a new belt from Adin with a place to hide lock picks in the buckle, and some fine leather gloves that were perfect for the season from Danaria, and a set of delicate brass measuring scales from Kar’gandin. Hura’gh didn’t celebrate this, or any other human holidays. Neither did dwarves as it turned out, “But I thought you could use a better way to measure out the small ingredients down there instead of just guessing, and my cousin had this one for sale cheap, so I thought it was appropriate.”

Lucas could appreciate that logic, even if it was a touch rude to tell someone you got them something because it was on sale. Neither of them care enough to join everyone else for the festivities in the main house though. It was a pragmatic choice, since the Torvins were expected to attend for the feast later that evening unless the weather got worse. He would have gladly ducked out of that too, if he could, but he couldn’t imagine the sort of blizzard he’d need to say he couldn’t make it from the cider house to the main house. 

“Not as appropriate as this, though,” the dwarf laughed, holding up Lucas’s gift. “Ye’ve outdone yerself her boy. It’s so good I could almost believe it was made by dwarves. Ye’ll have te tell me where ye picked it up.”

“No, I couldn’t possibly. It’s an old family recipe,” Lucas said, very seriously, shaking his head before he burst out laughing. “Nah, I’m just fucking with ya. It’s an easy trick. I’ll show you how it’s done one night here real soon. You can show your cousin… or you can keep it to yourself and we can sell it to him by the barrel full.”

“Now yer talkin’” the dwarf said, roaring with an approving laughter.  

Sadly, as much as he might have liked to, he couldn’t stay out here all day, though it did was give him plenty of time to decide what he was going to do about Danaria on the slow walk back to the house. Today, more than usual, it was ful of distractions, and he needed them. He might visit the kitchen to check on the preparations before the cook shooed him away, or play a few games of dice with Adin to pass the time, but all of those activities were overshadowed by Danaria’s presence, and Lucas had no idea what to do. 

On some level he’d been attracted to the woman for months, but he knew that the right thing to do was to leave her at arms reach from his world. That worked of course, until he had one drink too many and reached out to grab her. 

What am I supposed to do now? He wondered. Do I let her down easy? Do I see where this goes? Hell, in this world I’m probably supposed to talk to her brother about a dowry or some shit. 

He didn’t know, but not knowing wasn’t going to make it go away. So, it spent the day hanging over him like an unwelcome guest at their harvest festival celebration. 

The celebration seemed to be something like a combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas, at least the way those were supposed to be celebrated. For the last decade his holiday meals had alternated between fast food and stove top stuffing, but this was the real deal. 

There was a giant turkey, slowly roasting on a spit in the kitchen. A number of smaller pies and dishes were also baking. The whole thing was sort of a, thank-the-gods-the-harvest-was-good hopefully-the-winter-isn’t-too-harsh sort of thing the way it had been explained to him. It was about ending the year on a high note, even if the new year was still a good way off. That made a great deal of sense to him when central heating wasn’t exactly an option. 

Still, it was a nice celebration. He certainly appreciated it. When he’d fallen from the sky into this world a couple of years ago he’d ended up the apprentice to an alcoholic alchemist that was more of a bootlegger than a scientist. Still, Lucas could have appreciated that mindset if the man wasn’t so intent on beating him. So, back then, he really hadn’t had much of a chance to explore the holidays and feasts his neighbors and the upper crust enjoyed. 

Now, though, one prison break and gallons of drugs later he was part of that upper crust, and he had to admit it was kind of nice. It was cushy even, especially sitting on one of the overstuffed couches, watching the snow fall while he sat by the fire. 

This winter, there would be no scrounging for food or firewood. There would just be delicious food, a celebration or two, and all the time in the world to play with his experiments in the lab. Thanks to the harried and feverish efforts of his gatherers, he had all kinds of odds and ends he normally wouldn’t bother to seek out. That meant that he could try all sorts of new recipes. 

Who knows, he thought to himself. Maybe I’ll even find something worth mass-producing that isn’t addictive. That would make for a hell of a New Year's resolution. 

Soon enough his time goofing off and enjoying the festivities was over as their guests started to arrive. This wasn’t intended to be a business meeting, at least in whole. So, there were people from all over that were invited to join them at the house for dinner. That list was a long one, and though the main table had been lengthened in the dining hall, several more tables were laid out in the main hall. 

The gues list included nobles from neighboring families, important people from the villages that owed allegiance to the Parin’s including Lucas’s favorite herbalist and tailor. It also included the more important of the lieutenants, and tradesmen they’d done business with. The year had been a good one for the Parins, and though not everyone in the room knew exactly why that was, it would have been considered very rude to watch a family soar to such heights, and not find a way to give back to those that had played a part in it. 

Lucas spent as much time as possible in the main hall, greeting the those that were considered commoners. It wasn’t even just to avoid his soon to be in-laws, either. He just liked spending time with them. 

All to soon though, he had to abandon the kiddy table and join the important people at the main one. Adin had set it up so that he sat at the head of the table like the patriarch of the family he styled himself with his soon to be wife at his left hand and his father-in-law at his right. He’d set Lucas’s place at the foot of the table, but Lucas didn’t mind that at all. Honestly, since he had everyone at the other end of the table under his thumb already, he kinda felt like he was already at the head of the table. Mostly he was just happy to sit with Danaria and some of their less important neighbors. They made much better company than the Torvin’s, who still found time and reason to scowl at him now and then, even on a day like today. 

Lucas was trying to decide how many little blue candies he should remove from their present before he gave it to them, when the servants finally started to bring in the dishes he’d been smelling for hours. After that, socialization took a back seat to eating in a well planned gourmet ballet. First came the soup and the breads. This was followed by something resembling a green bean casserole, and small meat pies. It was only after that, that the turkey followed; it was so large it had to be wheeled in on a cart, and the way that one wheel squeaked, Lucas could hear that cart rolling up and down the halls for the next hour, making sure everyone was fed before coming back around for seconds. 

As it turned out, the fantasy world had not in fact invented stuffing yet, so Lucas added that to his to-do list, right up there with hot sauce. By the time the desert course arrived he was resolute; he wasn’t just going to make potions and drugs, he was going to fix the gaps in all this delicious food, or he was going to die trying.