Chương 76: Chapter 73 – Dark beer

It was late when the priest finally knocked on the door. He had been expected hours ago, but the guild master had learnt that it did not do to rush someone from the clergy. Men in armour could be hurried if one was very brave, or very stupid. Priests could not. Priests had far too much patience.

"Oh welcome Father, I'm glad you could make it," he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. The guild master of the Innkeepers' Guild gestured to the chair opposite his desk. He moved a few papers aside as the priest settled.

"And you, Reginald. I know the hour is late, but the gods do not keep time as we do," the priest said with a smile that was equally false. There was a dull heaviness to the priest that had nothing to do with age. His eyes moved slowly around the room, taking things in without interest, the look of someone who had already spent too many hours answering questions he did not care about. Some holy men carried authority. This one carried fatigue, which was often more persistent.

"Yes, yes, of course," Reginald replied, trying not to roll his eyes.

"What did you want to see me about, Father?"

"Just to check whether the blessings have helped at all." The priest placed a hand at the back of his neck and leaned over it, stretching with the careful stiffness of someone who had been answering the same questions all day in slightly different rooms.

"Some small improvements. Members say food spoils a little slower, and pests and vermin leave sooner." He waved a hand dismissively.

"One member claims the blessing is why his wife is now pregnant, but it's his ninth child, so who can say?" The priest nodded with a small shrug, adjusting his robes as if preparing to leave. The motion suggested a man who believed the matter settled, or at least sufficiently discussed to be filed under 'Not Urgent' and left for someone else to misplace.

"But before you go, Father, there was something else." Reginald leaned forward slightly, careful to keep his voice controlled.

"Go on."

"I heard a rumour I'm a little worried about. I suspect it's nonsense, but…" He paused, studying the priest's expression.

"Out with it, man."

"I'm just afraid of getting someone in trouble who doesn't deserve it, but… I've been hearing stories about the warehouse brewer. Apparently his beer doesn't turn." Before the priest could ask, Reginald continued.

"Some are calling it dark beer. Unholy, even. They say the warehouse brewer casts dark spells over it." Reginald tried not to make it obvious he was studying the priest's face.

"Of course people say all kinds of things. Some even claim that if you split an ox carcass in summer you'll get a hive of bees out of it."

"I see." The priest's expression remained bored.

"Do you have any of it?"

"Oh, I do. One of my members brought it. Apparently from last year. Said he didn't feel right selling such a thing to customers." Reginald hoped the obvious lie would not be seen through.

"Would you like it sent to the temple?"

"Certainly. Just leave a note for me at the temple. No harm in looking." The tone suggested the temple had looked into stranger matters and generally found they were either nothing at all or someone's cousin with a grudge. Reginald kept up a polite smile. He expected his next question might strain it.

"I understand you've been blessing the taverns as well?"

"Well, yes. When they saw us blessing inns, they approached us as well. There are many pious members among the tavern keepers," the priest said with a faint smile that implied piety was sometimes discovered very suddenly, often in the precise shape of a rival's advantage. The rest of the meeting concluded quickly with little more than small talk. Reginald watched the priest leave through the window.

It had cost a respectable donation to the temple and a somewhat larger one to the bishop, who had slowly explained that spiritual administration was not, in fact, free. He had paid through the teeth to have his remaining members' buildings blessed. He should have been angry that the tavern keepers had quickly adopted the same idea. But he simply wasn't. The head of the tavern keepers' guild left the meeting early, before anyone thought to stop him.

He walked down the street with the quiet sense that he needed to confirm something for himself. Outside, the evening air was warm and still. It was the kind of summer dusk that carried sound farther than it should. Laughter drifted down the street from somewhere ahead, thin at first, then fuller as he walked. The first tavern he passed belonged to the guild.

The lantern above the door was lit and the sign freshly painted, swinging lazily on its chain with the slow patience of a business waiting for customers and prepared, if necessary, to wait all night. Through the open doorway he could see three men at a table and another leaning on the bar. They spoke quietly over their cups. No music. No argument. Just the low murmur of men finishing the day. Respectable, he thought. A fine quality in a daughter and a deeply worrying one in a tavern. He kept walking.

The second tavern was little different. A pair of dockhands sat outside with their boots off, rubbing their feet and sharing a jug between them. Inside, a woman wiped the same stretch of bar again and again with a damp cloth, as if polishing the wood was a magical spell to summon customers. The third tavern had six men inside and a dog under the table. All guild houses. All open. All behaving exactly as they should. None of them were busy.

When he turned the corner, the sound of music reached him properly for the first time. A lute. Played well enough to keep a rhythm, but not well enough to silence conversation. The door stood wide to the street and warm light spilled out across the cobbles. Someone inside laughed loudly enough that a pair of passers-by slowed and glanced toward the noise. The tavern keeper stopped across the street and watched. Some people stood inside, while others sat.

Tankards moved through the crowd in easy arcs from bar to table and back again. A man clapped along with the rhythm of the lute while another tried to sing a line he clearly didn't know. Two women leaned against the wall with their drinks untouched while they argued cheerfully about something neither of them seemed eager to win. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. It looked comfortable. Not rowdy or wild. Just full.

Which, in tavern keeping, was better than respectable in much the same way gold was better than a thoughtful letter. He crossed the street and stepped into the doorway without entering. The smell reached him first. Malt and yeast, sharp enough to carry over the smoke of the lamps and the stew simmering somewhere behind the bar. The brewer's casks were stacked along the wall near the serving counter, marked plainly enough that anyone in the trade would recognize them.

He watched a man drain half a tankard in one pull. The man paused, then lifted it again for another swallow. A laugh from behind him made him turn his head, and he held the empty mug out without looking. Another arrived in his hand almost immediately. The room had the smooth efficiency of a place where thirst was being taken very seriously. A table near the wall had been there long enough that the surface was damp with spilled drink and the sweat of resting arms.

None of the men sitting there seemed in a hurry to leave. That was the strange part. He had seen crowds before. Music drew people. Warm light drew people. A good cook could fill a room better than any brewer. However crowds usually moved. Patrons drank, argued, finished their cups and went home, or stumbled to the next door. A tavern that kept men too long risked trouble. they left by choice or by the general enthusiasm of others throwing them through the doorway, but they left. These stayed.

They drank slowly, talking over one another. Cups were lifted and set down again before they were empty. Some had clearly been there long enough for the evening air to cool, yet no one seemed tired of the drink. A barmaid refilled three tankards from the same cask. The beer poured clear. One of the men took a swallow, smacked his lips thoughtfully, and nodded toward the cask as if confirming something to himself. The tavern keeper stepped back out onto the street. Music mattered, he reminded himself.

Music always mattered. People followed noise and warmth the way dogs followed kitchens. A bard with a decent hand and a full room could keep a place busy even if the beer was thin as soup. Still, he had passed three guild houses before this one. All quiet. All serving the same beer they had served for years. Inside the lively tavern the casks were not the same. He stood there a while longer watching people come and go.

A pair of labourers entered laughing and left a few minutes later with tankards already half empty. Two sailors pushed through the door and immediately began arguing about a song neither of them remembered correctly, which put them in line with most sailors and nearly all songs. No one complained about the drink. No one made the face men usually made when beer had turned. He had heard people describe the brewer's beer before. Light, they said. It sat differently in the belly. Not weak. Just lighter.

He didn't know what that meant exactly. Beer was beer. It filled a man the same way bread did. But watching the room inside, he began to understand the shape of the complaint. Bread filled the stomach. Bread ended hunger. Bread also made a man want to sit still on a bench afterwards and think substantial thoughts, most of them involving more comfortable benches and often naps. Inside the tavern men drank and stayed standing. They drank and laughed. They drank and ordered another without thinking too hard about it.

The tavern keeper turned away from the door and began walking again. A tavern could survive with bread-beer. Most of them had for years. A steady trickle of customers was enough to keep the lamps lit and the cellar turning. Survival was not the problem. He paused at the end of the street and glanced back once more at the warm light spilling from the doorway. Survival, he realized, was not the same thing as mattering. And for the first time in many years, he was no longer sure his guild still did.

There was only one group in the city facing the same problem as he was. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, they say. This was not always true, but it was often true long enough to be useful, which is how most such sayings earned the right to go on being repeated. For now, he would do the only thing that made sense, consolidate assets. He had an idea but not enough coin. He needed a business partner and there was only one other in the same position as himself.

Alric was seated at the desk in his office, bent over a sheet of parchment. The drawing in front of him showed a squat copper vessel with a narrow neck rising from its lid and a pipe curving away from the top. He paused occasionally to adjust a line, then sat back to study the proportions before continuing. Across the room, Seren sat at her own desk nearby, recording figures for the fermentation section. The quiet scratch of charcoal against paper was the only sound between them. A knock came at the door.

Alric looked up to see Henry standing in the doorway.

"There's someone here asking for you," he said.

"For me?" Alric asked. Henry nodded once.

"From the temple." Seren closed the ledger. Alric set the charcoal down beside the parchment and pushed his chair back.

"Well," he said, standing.

"Let's see what they want." They followed Henry down the short corridor toward the brewery doors. The priest was waiting just inside. Their robes were plain and travel-creased. Alric had expected something more interesting. This world never failed to disappoint his expectations. When Alric approached, the priest inclined his head.

"Alric, I presume?"

"That's right."

"I'm Brother Caldus from the temple. We've had a few questions about brewing in this district." He held up a folded sheet of parchment.

"Nothing serious. I was hoping to take a look around." Alric's eyes went to the man's hands first. They were pale and narrow, the fingers stained faintly with ink along the edges where a quill would rest. The nails were clean but uneven, as if trimmed with a knife rather than proper tools. There were no calluses, no old cuts, nothing that suggested work done with tools or rope or stone. The priest's robes were plain temple grey, serviceable rather than ceremonial.

The fabric had been pressed flat by travel and creased again at the elbows and waist as though the man had been sitting most of the morning. A narrow cord at his belt held a small satchel and a wax-sealed notebook. No embroidered sigils, no polished clasps, nothing that marked him as anyone of rank. A clerk, then. Or whatever temples called the people sent out when a matter was too odd to ignore and too small to deserve anyone important.

"I see. Well, I'd love to give you the run of the place, but there are hot liquids everywhere. So perhaps I should show you around," Alric said. He heard Seren move closer behind him. The priest considered this for a moment before his gaze drifted over to the large copper boilers. He turned back and nodded. Alric gestured toward the germination section.

"Alright, so this is the germination section. We take grain and wet it to..."

"Do you use holy water?" the priest interrupted.

"What? No. We use well water."

"And you have no wards here?" the priest asked, gesturing to the space.

"I'm not sure what you..." Alric began.

"Nothing like that, Father," Seren said.

"Mara and I have a statue to Minerval and we make offerings, but nothing out here."

"I see," the priest said, glancing around as his brows knitted together.

"Can I see the next…?" he asked, gesturing toward the copper boilers to make up for lacking words. Alric nodded, slightly perplexed, and led the priest to the boilers. The priest studied the heating stones intently. His frown deepened as they continued through the brewery until finally they reached the cellar.

"How do you have no beer turning?" the priest asked, making no effort to hide his frown.

"Oh, but we do. Over here," Alric said, pleased to finally have a question about brewing. Questions about brewing were much easier to answer than questions about holiness, mostly because brewing had the decency to mean one thing at a time. He led the priest to one of the nearby barrels. A small cloth covered its bung.

"These here are batches that turned. The heat made them spoil too quickly, but we don't throw them out. We let them become vinegar." The priest's frown eased slightly.

"So you do have… some, I suppose," he said, looking at the barrel. He gestured toward several others.

"And these?"

"An experiment," Alric said.

"We're making berry wines." The priest nodded and asked "Are you a believer?" The question caught Alric off guard.

"I would… say so, yes," he replied. Of the gods' existence there was no doubt in Alric's mind. Whether he believed in her was another matter entirely. From somewhere behind him he thought he heard a small sound of surprise, though he could not be certain.

"And you never pray over the beer?" the priest continued.

"No one does?"

"No. We just clean," Alric said. The answer came with the quiet confidence of a man who trusted hot water more than ceremony, and had results to prove it. The priest considered the space for a moment longer, clearly uncertain what to make of it. This was understandable. Priests, like everyone else, were generally happier when miracles looked like miracles and not like sanitation.

"I see. Alright. I won't take any more of your time. Peace be with you, Alric."

"And you too, uh…" Alric searched his memory but had already forgotten the priest's name. The priest did not seem to notice. He had already turned toward the cellar ramp and was making his way back upstairs.