Brewing Bad Ch. 136-137

Ch. 136 - Becoming a Better Dancer

Lucas spent the next two days acting like a man in mourning while he schemed. He received no letters or messengers, but he did have to spend a good portion of the day fending off innocuous flirting from the maids. Though they had become more subtle, they were no less persistent, and eventually, he found they were drugging more than just his wine in an effort to turn his head. 

It was never anything quite so obvious as trying to slip into his bed at night, but between the three of them, they managed to bump against him more than clumsiness would ever explain over those days, and somehow, everything they said managed to have a double meaning. 

“Did you want some tea, or do you need something stronger to pick you up this morning,” or “If you want something sweet before bed, be sure to let me know” were common enough examples. On their own, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the tone of their voice spoke volumes to him. Each of them was tuned just enough to be utterly deniable, so he didn’t explode at them again, but the meaning was very clear to him. 

Only the dryad seemed to have zero interest in him. Even better, she had visible disdain toward him, which was why he found himself spending more and more time in the garden just to escape the insufferable sultriness of the house. That annoyed him enough to consider escaping, but that plan ran into the same complications that it always did, and he was forced to endure. 

One, a sparrow pecked at his window often enough that he thought sure it was Danaria’s doing. She has no idea where I am, he reminded himself. Still, he took it as an omen and hoped that his letter had finally reached his tailor at least because that was the only way she would have any idea where he might be. 

Though that gave Lucas hope that Mister Twee might turn up in the next day or two, it was actually someone else who arrived first. The following morning, Sir Milen appeared at the door with a sack of equipment and a letter from someone with enough authority to let him in the door. 

That surprised Lucas, though he supposed it shouldn’t have as he greeted the flamboyant swordsman. This was, after all, exactly the outcome he’d hoped for when he’d sent the letter. 

“My client is woefully out of practice,” the knight insisted when the guard tried to inquire further, “And I must remedy that for hours or days if necessary.”

“What does a dancing instructor need wooden swords for?” the man asked after going through the knight’s bag. 

“I need them to punish Mister Parin,” the man answered haughtily. “He’s been very naughty. Do you know exactly how many months he’d skipped my lessons? I thought he’d completely chickened out, yet here we are.”

The doorman eventually took Sir. Milen’s steel blades, but he obviously lacked the authority to stop the man himself, no matter how irregular this might be. “There he is,” the knight beamed as he walked into the mansion’s entryway and shook Lucas’ hand. “I never thought I’d see you again, and now look at you, a guest of the Prince.”

“Well, considering everything that happened…” Lucas answered noncommittal, trying to give the man a hint.

“Yes, right,” the man agreed, sober for only a moment before he brightened up again. “Tragic, really. Where are we dancing then? The back garden or…”

“There’s a ballroom upstairs,” Lucas said, a little annoyed at Millen’s attitude. He was always a bit of a bon vivant, but this seemed like he didn’t care at all about the tragedy. Lucas didn’t comment on it as they went upstairs, but it did make him look forward to kicking the man’s ass that much more.  

Kicking ass wasn’t in the cards, though, at least not right away. Instead, when they arrived in the ballroom, the swordsman spent equal time complimenting the room, which took up almost the whole floor, and helping Lucas don the padded protection gear. 

“Why aren’t you wearing one?” Lucas asked, annoyed as the other man waxed rhapsodically about the delicate plasterwork on the ceiling tiles. 

“Oh, you won’t be hitting me today, I think,” the man laughed as he stepped back and started to remove his shirt. “I’ve been busy, and you’ve been sitting on your hands for half a year, But…” he let the word linger for a long moment before softly adding, “If you do a good job, I’ve got a missive for you.”

“From who?” Lucas hissed. 

The knight’s only answer was to smile mischievously at him before tossing Lucas a wooden blade. Even after he dropped into a guard pose with his knees slightly bent, he just stood there silently, waiting for Lucas to advance. 

“Really?” Lucas said, twirling his weapon around his hand as a flourish to test the weight of it. “You really aren’t going to—” As he spoke, he strode forward, but he never actually planned on finishing what he was saying. Instead, he lashed out with a flick of his wrist to his opponent's left. The blow was fast, but it had no force behind it. In a real fight, it wouldn’t have been more than a superficial scratch. Still, he wanted to take the other man down a peg, so he did what he could. 

Lucas’ blow never landed, but it got close enough for his opponent to smile. “I really can’t say,” Sir Milen answered as he shifted his blade sideways to cleanly parry the blow inches from his cheek before he launched a complex riposte at Lucas. “I seem to have forgotten, but if you hit me a time or two, that might jog things loose.”

Lucas gave ground with each parry for the next few minutes as his instructor reminded him just how much he’d forgotten over his time in Blackgate. It also did a good job of giving him an appropriate level of humility. The last few days, he’d been daydreaming about slaying Skylara, and now he could barely hold his own against a man who was taking it easy on him. 

No, I’m not even holding my own, Lucas realized as he fended off an intense flurry of blows. He’s just toying with me.

While Lucas managed to keep most of those blows from making contact, the ones that did still stung, even through the quilted fabric. “I see someone hasn’t been keeping up with the practices I left them with,” the knight chided him. 

“Cut me some slack,” Lucas responded, trying not to sound winded. “I haven’t exactly had much access to a sword lately!”

“Sounds like a personal problem,” his instructor countered.

Lucas balked at that, but as he opened his mouth, he let himself get distracted, and then, just like that, Sir Milen disarmed him. One good wrap across Lucas’ knuckles and a quick bump against his pommel, and suddenly, he was flexing his throbbing fingers, and the knight was holding two swords instead of one. 

“I think we must begin again with the basics,” the knight said with a smile as he bowed, holding both weapons.  

For a brief moment, Lucas considered jacking his strength and agility and beating the infuriating man to a pulp, but he resisted. Strength isn’t a substitute for skill, he reminded himself silently. Milen isn’t even that much stronger than you. He’s just done this a lot more than you, and 

Finally, he sighed, but he didn’t disagree, and when the man threw him back his wooden blade, he didn’t lash out again. Instead, he asked, “So, where do you want to start?”

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing more drills than sparing, which disappointed Lucas, but only a little. They might not let Milen come back, he realized quickly. He probably even knows that, so he’s giving me everything I need to practice on my own. That made the whole thing a little less boring, But there were only so many times he could practice the same footwork before he really did feel like the dualist was a dancing instructor. 

Between comments and critiques about Lucas’ sloppy form and imprecise movements, his instructor offered him bits of gossip about town. None of it was about Lucas’ gang or the fire, though the way the man danced around the subject indicated he’d certainly heard about it. Instead, it was about the gangs of the city and some of the Knights of Brass’ recent adventures. 

“The captain has missed you in the small courtyard,” he said after hinting at another heist that had gone better than expected while Lucas practiced his lunges. “When your self-imposed exile is at an end, you’ll have to rejoin us and show us what else you’ve learned. The boys still talk about how you managed to give him just the tip and—”

“Soon,” Lucas grunted. “I’ve got some shit to straighten out, but when I do… I’m going to need some people to help me put the work in.”

“Oh my,” the shirtless warrior answered, “How very interesting. A new venture?”

Lucas hinted at how he was going to be going after bigger game but let the man draw his own conclusions about what that might be. Shortly after that, and three hours into their lesson, they called their first break when the blonde maid brought them refreshments on a tea cart. Her name was Mirin. Despite his best efforts not to know it, he’d managed to pick up the names of all of the maids at this point.

At least this time, the pretty blonde didn’t flirt with him, though, as she served them tea and cake, which was thankfully unadulterated. It wasn’t her discretion he had to thank for that; it was Sir Milen. He flirted shamelessly with the woman the entire time she was there, and eventually, she retreated, almost unnerved by the barrage of compliments. The man was incorrigible. 

“I just love your shoes,” he said when she approached them from the door, but things only escalated from there, leaving her more than a little bewildered as he found an excuse to discuss everything from her haircut to the way she poured the tea.  

At first, Lucas thought he was genuinely trying to put the moves on the woman. Normally, he would have put a stop to that sort of thing, but he kind of liked watching it when the shoe was on the other foot after he’d been treated this way for half a week. 

“You know, if you want to bang the maids, this is probably the easiest house in the city to do it in,” Lucas said after she’d finally excused herself. “I think they get paid to be prostitutes as much as anything.”

“Anyone that works for the Prince is a prostitute,” the man said, answering Lucas in a mocking tone. “As to the woman, she’s pretty enough, but she really isn’t my type. I just didn’t want her to linger. We only have a few hours left before dinner, and we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

The two of them spent another two hours repeating the drills they had this morning, only faster, harder, and more precise. By the end of it, Lucas was soaked in sweat and looking forward to a bath that evening. 

It wasn’t until the maid opened the door and informed him that dinner would be ready soon that the two of them finally started backing things up. As he expected, his instructor left the sword with him. When Lucas tried to give it back, the man just smiled and said, “Nah, you hold on to that. I’ll be back in a few days. You need all the practice you can get.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucas sighed, not entirely disagreeing with the man. He was rusty, it was true, but by the end of the lesson, the rust had certainly started to come off, and he was sure he’d acquit himself better next time they crossed swords, or sticks, or whatever. 

“Hey,” Lucas hissed, trying to keep his voice low enough that no one else could hear as Sir Milen shook his hand and headed for the door. “I thought you said you had a… You know, a thing…”

“I did,” the knight smiled. “And I gave it to you already. I trust you’ll have a response ready before our next lesson.”

That response puzzled Lucas, but he trusted the man and still shook his hand before the knight left him and went downstairs with the maid. “Already left me the message, huh?” he asked himself. “Now, where would he have put it.”

Ch. 137 - Motivation

It didn’t even take Lucas a minute to decide where the message that Sir. Milen had discussed before was. He only had to look down at his sword as he tried to figure out which pocket the man might have stuffed it into before he smiled. 

“Son of a bitch,” he said softly to himself as he realized the simplicity of the plan. 

The weight and the balance of the blade had felt a little off to him from the first moment, but he’d ignored it because it was just a practice sword. Now that he was looking at it, though, he could see a gap where the handle met the hilt. He’d thought it felt cheap, but it was more than that. 

For the moment, though, he resisted the urge to open it. Instead, he went down to his room and poured a pitcher of water into a basin to wash his hands and face. Then, while he was alone, or at least probably alone, he twisted the handle off of the blade and worked the tightly wrapped note free from where it had been hidden. 

Lucas didn’t read it then. He opened it up just to see if it was written in Danaria’s graceful handwriting. He was a little disappointed to see that it was written in Kar’gandin’s crabbed script. The dwarf didn’t sign it, but Lucas had read so many letters and ledgers written by the dwarf that he wasn’t likely to forget the way the man wrote any time soon. 

Once he verified it was just about business and not about his woman, Lucas folded the thing and tucked it into his shirt. He would read it in the bathroom after dinner, just to make it less likely that it was going to be read by anyone unseen. 

That way, I can just destroy it in the water when I’m done, he told himself as he walked downstairs toward the dining room. 

Lucas wasn’t normally one for cloak-and-dagger shit. Even at Blackgate, he hadn’t exactly lived in fear of whoever it was that was watching him. Here, though, for at least for as long as he was stuck in his current circumstances, he was going to have to take it all a bit more seriously. 

Dinner that night was a nut-encrusted fish, and though there were many sides and deserts, the portions were much more reasonable than they’d been for his initial feast. Lucas considered that a small victory, and though he had to skip the narcotic wine and the caramelized pudding spiked with aphrodisiacs, he had an excellent meal. 

While he ate, he chatted with his waitresses, who were the blonde-haired Mirin and the black-haired Ranala. Both were reasonably well-behaved, and when he asked Ranala to have a bath filled for him when dinner was done, she refrained from making any jokes about making sure it was steamy or asking him if he wanted her to wash his back, which he appreciated. 

Mirin, for her part, seemed almost cowed by his instructor's boorish behavior earlier that day and acted nervous all evening. Lucas ignored that. He wanted nothing to do with either woman. Instead, he ate as quickly as possible, and it was only when his bath was drawn and his robe was laid out he stripped, entered the tub, and unfolded the letter to read it. 

‘Lucas, by now, you will have settled in. First, the bad news. Many, or dare I say most, of the manor servants and staff, including Gerwin, are dead. Most of the guards and other laborers lived in the village, so they survived. Even your half-orc friend pulled through. He isn’t as pretty as he used to be, but he bears his scars as a badge of honor. I could go on for a page about how honorable it is to survive a fight with a dragon, but I’ll let him tell you the stories when you rejoin us.’

That last bit made Lucas smile, but only a little. He hadn’t expected Hu’ragh to survive, so that made for a nice surprise. Everything else was sad enough to border on devastating, though. 

Lucas and Gerwin had never been close. The man obviously had never approved of his sort. Still, he’d been good for Danaria, and she would certainly have turned out worse if not for her faithful manservant. That was probably all that had really shielded her from her brother and his bad choices, ultimately. For that, Lucas owed him a debt, and he felt terrible that he’d never be able to repay it. Fortunately, the rest of the letter contained better news. 

‘Your lab was retrieved intact, and we have supplies for a good long while of normal operations, which have already resumed. Likewise, our funds are safe, and construction on your backup location proceeds apace. You just let me know what you want and when you want it, and we’ll be ready for you.’

Lucas had to admit he was grateful for the update. He was almost touched that the dwarf had found a way to reassure him that Danaria was safe without ever mentioning her, too. He didn’t write a response that night, though. 

Tired as he was, he went almost directly to bed once he’d destroyed the paper and secured his doors. Sir Milen wouldn’t be back for at least two days, and that if they even let him in the building, so Lucas had time to formulate a response. 

While falling asleep that night was a blissful experience, waking up the next morning was a painful one. Everything hurt. Everything in every part of his body hurt. “I really got to do this shit more often,” he told himself. 

While Lucas lay there feeling sorry for himself, he flipped open his interface and, on whim, decided to spend six of his remaining 33 points to increase his strength, toughness, and agility by one each. It probably wasn’t the best way to make decisions, but yesterday had been a real wake-up call for him. Without potions, he was kind of useless, and he needed to get better and stronger. That meant he had to get better, of course, but it also meant he had to use this bullshit magic system for more than just alchemy. 

Even with both, I might not be strong enough to face a dragon, he told himself, reflecting as he stared at the ceiling. 

As he did so, he flipped open his achievements and took a look. Fancy Footwork was the achievement he was pinning all of his hopes on right now, and it was showing 46% complete. He was pretty sure when he’d checked it last before everything had gone to shit, it was 44%, so he was making progress. 

It’s just not fast enough, he sighed. 

It was that thought that finally forced him from bed. He rang the bell for tea and breakfast to be brought to his room, and then when he’d eaten and composed himself, he summoned the head maid, Ranala, to let her know what he was changing. 

“Yes, Master?” she said when she appeared in his doorway while he was sitting at his writing desk in his robe. “You summoned me?”

“I did,” Lucas agreed. “I want to make a few changes around here for the duration of my stay.”

“Anything,” she volunteered, 

“No more sweets or wine,” he said. “Light on the bread and pastries, too. From now on, I want meat, leafy greens, and some fruit. Nothing else.”

“W-why?” she asked. 

“Will that be a problem?” he shot back. 

“No, o-of course not, sir. It’s just that… It’s a strange request. You’d be eating like a peasant.” the head maid swallowed hard as she tried to compose herself. “When you are a guest of the Prince, you can have whatever you desire. Why limit yourself?”

“Mourning ritual,” Lucas lied. “It’s important to me. It's this or fast. I’ve been too decadent for too long.”

She nodded, and left, confused. Lucas, on the other hand, kicked himself for not coming up with a better cover story. He needed to do everything he could to get healthy, but he probably didn’t need to announce to the world that he was on the warpath. 

Once he finished beating himself up, he got dressed, and then he started on his response to Kar’gandin. That didn’t take long. He let the dwarf know that he was happy and that the updates sounded good. He apprised him of negotiations with the Prince and that the reparations would take the form of tax forgiveness as opposed to real coin. He also let him know that his contact with the outside world had been very limited and that if they needed to, he would start leaving notes on his windowsill again, though for now, that wasn’t necessary. 

The one thing he didn’t talk about was Danaria. It was too big a risk, even obliquely. He had no way of knowing if a mage was scrying on him or if his weapon would be searched while he slept. So, he kept everything as businesslike as possible.

Once that was done, Lucas finally got to work. Though dressing was another painful exercise for his stiff limbs, he wandered out into the garden and spent some time doing stretches and warm-ups. After that, he worked himself nearly as hard as his instructor did. He didn’t feel any faster or stranger, but he would. He told himself that. 

Every time he got tired, he reminded himself, Skylara is going down, or you are, man. You take it easy; you might as well be letting her win. 

It was true, but more importantly, it was an easy way to unlock the anger that was inside of him, which was the real fuel he needed to take things to the next level. Lucas trained hard on the days he was alone and on the days that Sir. Milen showed up to offer him additional instruction he trained even harder. 

That became the rhythm of Lucas’ life for the next week. Some days, he was in the garden alone, with only a sullen dryad for company, and other days, he was in the ballroom with his trainer as they exchanged ever more vicious blows, and each time, at the end of the lesson they switched swords surreptitiously, allowing Lucas to get and receive notes from the outside world.  

Lucas still hit the man only occasionally, but every day, he could feel himself becoming more confident in his strikes. He wasn’t the only one, either. 

Every day or two, his achievement ticked up by a point as he made more of an effort to stick to the actual strikes the knight was trying to teach him and not just doing whatever worked when the fighting got fierce. First, you learn to do it right, then you learn to do it the way that’s right for you, he reminded himself more than once when he got frustrated. 

Lucas couldn’t remember if that advice had come from the teacher of his wood shop class or his automotive technology class before he’d dropped out of high school. He hadn’t listened to it at the time, but it had been good advice, and he tried to use it now. 

Still, eventually, he started to feel like a caged beast. No matter how hard he trained, he knew he didn’t belong here. A cage with gilded bars was still a cage, and no matter how well they fed him, he wanted out. Fortunately, just as he was getting ready for bed, Ranala came to notify him. Heisenburgle had finally arrived.