“They’re not doing it for everyone. None of our competitors are getting this sort of perk.”
“Which tells you that this is all false. They wouldn’t give us special perks and not the others.”
“Yes they would. For enough gold.”
“They have their own gold. They’re the king and queen, Xarion. They have all the gold in the world. What would they need with the few bits Granny has to offer?” I shook my head, dismissing all of this. “There’s just no way. I mean...” I stopped again, my mind whirling. “A person exploring our product needs to take some care. It’s not lethal, but it is habit forming. They need to know what they are getting into. Stalking the shadows and hunting down the seller means the buyer has to have heard about the product from word of mouth and gotten a caution in the process. There’s an element of danger in that, both finding the seller and exploring the product. They’d know the whole experience came with a certain risk. Selling in the main market, where there are children and random people stopping by to have a gawk...” I shook my head adamantly. “That just can’t be. He’s leaving out some details. He must be.”
“Well... I don’t know.” Xarion shifted his stance, more confident now. “But he did say that they’re packing the product up real nice now.”
“They’ve been doing that for years.”
“Even nicer, though.”
I rolled my eyes. “A nicer package and a bit of gold isn’t going to make the king and queen suddenly decide that our unlawful product is totally fine for common people. That doesn’t make sense. He probably just wanted to impress you all and keep Jennece’s hands on him. I wouldn’t put my faith in what he has to say, and I definitely wouldn’t keep passing it along. As far as how I feel about all this, I sleep just fine at night, as always. We’re giving people the option of escaping their lives for a while. We’re not forcing it on anyone and there are no lasting effects.Meanwhile, the village is no longer poor and the children are safe and getting an education—everyone wins.”
He watched me work for a silent moment, thinking that over.
“It’s not like we’re the only ones doing it, either,” he finally said.
“Granny says we have steep competition, but our product has gotten so much better we’re now beating out the others.”
“Right. And we’re not even outlawed anymore.”
I sighed heavily. “Sure, fine, yeah. If you want to believe that, great.”
His boyish grin worked its way back. “You just don’t like him.”
“Who, Alexander? No, I don’t. That’s not why?—“
“And it isn’tourproduct. It’syourproduct, Red.”
I gave him a flat stare at the name. “I just make it. I don’t grow the ingredients.”
“You create it, refine it?—“
“Okay, okay.” I grappled with a grin and waved him off. “Stop. You’re going to give me an ego.”
“I heard Alexander was busy this morning,” he said. “I heard he paid Razorfang a visit.”
I slowed in working the thistle. I’d figured that had been the case when I’d shown up this morning and he hadn’t been here. He didn’t miss days... unless he physically couldn’t get out of bed.
“How bad?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know the specifics, but Granny wasn’t there to supervise, so ...”
Shit.
I straightened up, squinting into the sun. That wasn’t good news. It meant Alexander had been let off his leash. The rules then were simple: don’t kill or permanently maim. Everything else goes. Granny must’ve beenpissed.
There was nothing for it, though. Raz got out of hand. He must’ve known this would happen when he chose the product over delivering Granny’s pack. He’d been down this road a time or two before—he was willingly playing with fire, and this time he’d gotten burned.
I braced my hands on my lower back and bent back, stretching it out. “Raz needs to lay off the product.”
“Yeah, I heard Alexander had to pull him out of your supply room this morning. Razorfang made a big mess of the place. Broke a bunch of stuff.”
What in the hell had he taken to render him that out of it? He’d never stayed there the whole night before. He must’ve mixed products, because even a double dose wouldn’t have made him that bad.
I poured the powder into a bowl before crossing to the water pump to wash my hands.
