((Quick change, in the Henry's hires interlude, I have changed it so that Lessa charged six stones rather than zero. She is being elevated in the story))
The brewery was quiet in the way a place becomes quiet only after it has proven it does not need to be. It was the day after the city’s day off, the extra one his staff took, and he sincerely hoped they had hobbies.
Preferably that didn’t involve the arena. Though he suspected at least one of them would argue that watching other people fight was, in fact, a hobby.
Alric stood just inside the main hall, leaning against the wall, admiring the new boiler section. The boilers had already been used and tested. They were only running two extra right now, but it was enough to meet demand. The stones were, however, so expensive.
The doors were open to let the air move through, carrying with it the faint smell of grain, wood, and something citrus that had no business lingering this long. Alric clocked the foreign citrus smell immediately.
It was the new cook. He had been told that twice already.
The man had apparently decided that if one was to cook for brewery workers, one might as well ensure the walls remembered it. He seemed to really like using onions.
He glanced toward the small kitchen area, where a pot had been left to cool in a manner that suggested happy brewers rather than neglect. Apparently, his favourite thing was to leave food out for people to grab when passing. This suggest to Alric that at least one worker would discover they were hungry several times in the same hour.
That, at least, was promising. Seren had found him, someone from a successful inn, and thanks to Alric’s recent actions, there was no shortage of hospitality staff.
“You cannot run six boilers and not be famished,” she had said, with the calm certainty of someone who had already decided the matter was settled.
Now there was food. Proper food with intent and flavour. With the faint suggestion that someone involved believed meals should be remembered and slightly less smoked.
He was still deciding how he felt about that. The brewery staff ate better than he did right now, but they worked harder too.
Casks sat where they were meant to sit. The newer germination section, or rather the expansion, had settled into itself, losing that faint look of temporary decisions that new structures always carried. It no longer felt like something that might need to be moved. It belonged.
The boilers stood quiet, which was still wrong to look at.
“Mister Alric?” Hal said, coming from the staff section. He was trailed by Henry.
Alric nodded to them. “Just came to check the new section. Mara been stressed?” he asked, with a grin. Hal scoffed and pointed to the new boilers, then to himself.
Alric stepped closer to one of the newer units, resting a hand lightly against the side. It felt cool under his fingers but he could still feel the ridges from where hammers had struck. Stromni’s work was smoother.
“They working well?” Alric asked, bending to look at the stones.
The stones inside had cost more than the rest of the unit. That was still an irritating thought.
It was perfectly reasonable. Magic, it turned out, priced itself like it expected to be thanked for it. Preferably repeatedly. There was something fundamentally unpleasant about paying that much for something that, if you dropped it, would simply stop being useful out of spite.
“Morg is still my favourite,” Hal said, pointing to the old section.
Alric nodded.
“We have managed to match stones as best we can. Morg got the longest ones but the rest are as close as we can get.” Hal said with a grin, pushing his chest out slightly.
That made Alric grin too. Each other stones lasted slightly different amounts of time, the only solution in the end was to get more of them and try match as best as they could.
“Hail!”
The voice arrived before the man. Alric turned around to see Pavise standing at the doorway.
“Closed,” Alric said, because it seemed necessary to establish that first.
Pavise inclined his head slightly, chuckling. “Only you take two days off a week, you know?”
“Then this is social?” Alric asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go drinking with the behemoth.
Pavise shook his head.
Alric nodded once and walked up to shake hands.
Hal gave a small lift of his hand in greeting, the motion casual enough to suggest familiarity, restrained enough to remember where they were. Henry followed a moment later, a fraction behind, as though confirming that was still the correct thing to do.
Alric glanced between them, then back to Pavise. “So what do you need?”
“I’d like to go for a short walk,” Pavise said.
Alric blinked, intrigued.
Pavise stepped back out toward the street. “And bring your staff. Mine are here too,” he added, gesturing to his entourage.
For a time, they walked without speaking.
The city carried on around them in that post-rest-day rhythm, slower than usual but already building toward its usual pace. Doors opened. Deliveries resumed. People moved with purpose that had not yet fully sharpened. Like office workers before coffee.
“Where are we going?” Alric asked.
“Arena. I think you need to see it,” Pavise said with a shrug.
Alric frowned up at the man. Hal and Henry had fallen into step.
Pavise spoke once the silence had settled properly.
“I explained to you before. Monsters captured alive. Fighters are paid in advance. Enough to settle debts before they enter the ring.”
“Before?” Alric said, raising a brow.
Pavise nodded.
“Not… after?” Alric asked with a deeply sceptical expression.
A small shake of the head.
Alric let that sit for a moment. “How convenient.”
Pavise did not react. He just shrugged.
“The crowds do not stop drinking,” he went on.
Alric huffed a quiet breath. “That part I had assumed.”
“There are not enough suppliers.”
“There are never enough suppliers,” Alric said.
Pavise glanced at him briefly, then ahead again. “If you do not supply it, others will.”
Alric’s gaze shifted, sharper now. “Others already do.”
“In a sense. It opened properly last week. They sold your berry wine. It was very good, by the way,” Pavise said, glancing at Alric as they approached the gate.
That earned him a proper look. Pavise did not elaborate immediately.
“They bought it from taverns,” Pavise added. “Quietly. Nearly all of it.”
Alric exhaled slowly through his nose. “Of course they did.”
“You know what happens if you don’t sell to them?” Pavise said, approaching the city gate.
“No.”
“I’m hoping to show you.”
Pavise smiled at the guards and raised a hand. His whole procession walked through without slowing, which gave Alric pause.
As they exited the gate, he glanced up. Instead of seeing farmland stretching toward the woods, there were not many woods left. Instead stood a massive structure of stone and wood, wide as numerous fields. The sort of size that made ‘numerous’ feel like a polite understatement.
“It’s huge,” Alric said, looking at it.
From this distance, the outer wall showed first, a long, uneven line of stone, broken by timber bracing and sections that looked newer than the rest. It wasn’t uniform. Some stretches sat clean and straight, others bowed slightly where the ground dipped, as though it had been built quickly and corrected where it mattered. The entire building was oval in shape, there were other nearby structures but were dwarfed by the area itself.
Above the wall, the inner structures rose in pieces rather than as a whole. Rooflines cut across each other at odd angles, heavy beams jutting out where they had been extended, patched, or reinforced. Some sections were still bare timber, others already darkened, and a few carried the dull grey of fresh stone that had not yet settled into the rest.
Nearer the front, the main gate stood open, large enough to take wagons without slowing them. The ground before it had been worn down to packed earth, the grass long gone, replaced by ruts and flattened tracks that crossed over each other without pattern. Wagons moved through steadily, one after another, with smaller figures keeping to the edges, stepping aside without needing to be told.
Even from here, it was clear the place had not been finished. It had simply reached the point where stopping would have been more effort than continuing.
“It is. As I was saying, if you don’t sell to them, the city will find a way. You’ll have a smuggling ring on your hands,” Pavise said, in the tone of someone describing weather.
“Smuggling?”
Pavise nodded. “All your staff, your taverns, your buildings. It will reach into all of it. You’d be risking your people.”
Alric opened his mouth to protest, but Pavise shook his head.
“This is for you to decide, brewer. I understand where you are coming from, but this isn’t leaving. That’s why I wanted to show it to you.”
Outside the building stood a heavy cage, reinforced with iron bands where the bars had been forced apart before. Inside it was a massive, buffalo-like creature, its shoulders high and thick with muscle, its hide dark and ridged like worn armour. One side bore the marks of previous fights, deep gouges that had healed badly, leaving the flesh uneven. A thick chain ran from its collar to the back of the cage, not to hold it in place, but to limit how much of it could move at once.
It stood rather than paced, its weight resting slightly to one side, conserving more than recovering. One ear flicked at a sound that didn’t concern it, then stilled again. When they drew closer, it did not turn fully, only shifted its gaze enough to mark them before letting it drift past, as though deciding they were not yet relevant. Which, given the size of it, felt less like dismissal and more like a scheduling issue.
“What even is that thing?” Alric asked pointing to the creature.
“Ironback Ox.” Pavise said simply “Think the arena folk planned to cook it but it didn’t lose.”
“This is just… cruel,” Alric began.
“The monsters are kept better than the prisoners, if I am honest,” Pavise said, gesturing with his chin toward the doors.
“But what choice do they get? A choice made under hunger is not choice,” Alric said, struggling to find the right words.
Pavise listened.
“Choice made under debt is not choice,” Alric continued. “Choice made under threat is not choice. It is compliance that has been given better language.”
Pavise did not interrupt. He did not dismiss it.
“That is true,” he said. “It also doesn’t matter, does it?”
Alric huffed a quiet breath. “I suppose it doesn’t,” he said, looking at the cages and the walls.
Behind them, Hal cleared his throat softly, the sound of someone stepping into a space that had not been offered but had not been denied either.
“It’s not…” he began, then paused, adjusting the thought.
“It’s not about the deaths,” he said.
Alric glanced back at him.
Hal shifted his weight slightly, one hand lifting as if to gesture, then deciding against it halfway through.
“I mean, it happens,” he said. “Everyone knows it happens. But that’s not why you’re there.”
Henry nodded beside him. “You don’t go for that.”
“No one does,” Hal added quickly. “You go for the skill. The way they move. The way they fight.”
“The courage,” Henry added like it was something you could see if you looked at it long enough.
Alric watched them for a moment.
There was no defensiveness there. No attempt to make it kinder than it was. No effort to dress it up into something that would sit better if explained slowly enough.
Just… description.
“You two aren’t against it?” Alric asked, tilting his head.
Both looked away. “Not really, Mister Alric,” Hal said, to which Henry shrugged.
“You know there is gambling, a lodging house that does… you know what, according to the rumors?” Alric asked, not wanting to call it a brothel directly. Mostly because he suspected someone would correct him with a significantly more descriptive word.
Again both shrugged.
“You know, a lot of poor people will come here. If they lose money, it probably means a hungry kid. If they win coin, it probably goes to the beer and the ‘lodging house’,” Alric said.
“That’s not our choice to make, Mister Alric,” Henry said, looking sheepish.
Pavise didn’t look at him. “No, I don’t think that’s quite fair, Alric. We did the same thing with the festival. This just made it bigger. Better organised.”
“No one died though?” Alric asked, glancing sideways.
“They didn’t. But your staff are right too. Not for us to decide,” Pavise said with a shrug.
He glanced sideways. “You could at least pretend to disagree.”
“I could,” Pavise said, “but I’d be lying. And neither of us works like that. You may be half a clerk or something, but you’ve never struck me that way. I respect you too much to lie about this.”
Alric huffed a quiet breath at that and looked ahead again.
“So you’re saying the city just didn’t have a stage for this? It was always this way?”
“It was always this way,” Pavise said.
Alric spoke again, not looking at him. “And you are here because you would prefer that strain lands on me?”
“If you don’t, they will steal it or people will get sick. I know this hurts the taverns and inns. I don’t think there is a way out of it,” Pavise said with a sigh.
Alric frowned at the building. “Why did you come then?”
“Like I said, I respect you. I don’t think they could bribe you. They’d have tried,” Pavise said, looking at the doors.
“Do I really have a choice?” Alric asked with a sigh.
Pavise shook his head. “Only thing I can think of is make it more dear for them.”
Alric considered that for a long moment. No one interrupted him.
“Twenty percent,” Alric finally said.
Pavise nodded.
“Do you have an orphanage or something you support?” Pavise asked.
“Wuh?”
“I won’t accept this. It was in the letter,” he said, holding up the three gold coins.
Alric shook his head.
“Well, if you decide to be their patron, give them this,” Pavise said, holding out the coins to Alric. Which suggested he fully expected the problem to resolve itself once it was no longer his.