Chapter 6: Brewing Trouble
The bell above the door jangled, a harsh, cheerful sound that made Taichi’s shoulders tense even before he looked up. He knew that footfall—heavy, confident, the slight metallic ring of a man who lived in armor but was currently, inconveniently, out of it.
Yamato stood in the doorway, the late afternoon sun carving him into a silhouette of broad shoulders and stupidly perfect posture. He was grinning, that infuriating, lopsided slash of white. In his hands he cradled a simple clay pot, unglazed and lidded, like it contained the ashes of a beloved pet.
Sora, rolling out dough behind the bar, went still. Taichi could feel her glare boring into the side of his head.
“Hope I’m not interrupting the royal court,” Yamato said, his voice carrying easily over the low murmur of a few early merchants nursing their first pints. He strode in, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He placed the pot on the bar with a deliberate thunk, right between a stack of clean tankards and Taichi’s polishing rag.
Taichi didn’t reach for it.He eyed the pot like it might be wired to explode. “What’s this?A bribe? Because the rent on that stool is due, and last I checked, the Crown mints coin, not crockery.”
Yamato’s grin only widened.He leaned on the bar, crowding into Taichi’s space. The faint, clean scent of soap and steel-cut something through the tavern’s usual haze of woodsmoke and yeast. It was aggressively normal.Taichi hated how aware he was of it. “Call it a tribute.From one artisan to another.”
Sora snorted. It was a soft, derisive sound.Taichi lifted the lid.The smell hit him instantly. It wasn’t the deep, complex aroma of honey and spice and careful fermentation.It was thin. Sharply sour, with an underlying note of something vaguely medicinal, like herbs left to rot in a damp cellar. It was, unmistakably, a failure.His face betrayed him before he could stop it. His nose wrinkled, his lips thinning in an instinctive grimace of profound professional offense.
Yamato’s confident posture faltered.Just for a second. “It’s my first attempt,” he said, the charm in his voice tempered by a thread of genuine uncertainty.“Mead. I followed all the steps in the book. I thought… you know, with the honey from the castle apiaries…”
“You thought it would be easy,” Taichi finished, setting the lid down with a soft click. The pity he might have felt was drowned out by a sharper, more satisfying surge of vindication. “Let me guess.You heated the honey-water too fast. Or you didn’t skim the scum. Or you got impatient and bottled it while it was still cloudy.” He leaned forward, meeting Yamato’s blue eyes.“Brewing isn’t a sword drill. You can’t just bash the ingredients together and hope for the best.It takes patience.Subtlety. Respect for the process.”
The knights at a nearby table had stopped talking, watching the exchange with open interest.Taichi felt his skin prickle. He could smell his own stupid pheromones, that low, traitorous hum of availability, mixing with the sour stench of Yamato’s mistake.It felt like a pathetic metaphor.Yamato absorbed the critique. He didn’t get defensive.Instead, he nodded slowly, his gaze dropping to the offensive pot. Then, to Taichi’s absolute horror, the alpha knight took a step back from the bar.And knelt.
Right there on the worn tavern floor. One knee on the dusty boards, his hands resting on his other thigh, his head bowed slightly. It was a posture of fealty, of knightly oath-swearing.In the context of a half-empty pub, it was absurdly, blindingly dramatic.
“Then teach me.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried in the quieted room with the clarity of a bell. “I, Yamato, knight of the Seventh Crown Battalion, do hereby petition Taichi, master brewer and proprietor of the Ember & Stein, to accept me as his apprentice.I will haul your barrels.I will scrub your vats. I will follow every instruction, no matter how tedious, until my mead is worthy of your praise.” He looked up, and the earnestness in his expression was almost worse than the arrogance. “However long it takes.”
A stunned silence gripped the tavern.The merchants were frozen, tankards halfway to their mouths. From the kitchen doorway, Taichi sensed Sora’s imminent eruption.
Heat flooded Taichi’s face, a scarlet tide burning from his neck to the roots of his messy hair. He wanted the floor to swallow him, or better, to swallow Yamato whole. “Get up,” he hissed, rushing out from behind the bar. He grabbed Yamato by the shoulder of his tunic, trying to haul him upright.The alpha was solid, unmovable stone. “Get off the floor, you ridiculous man!What is wrong with you?”
Yamato didn’t budge. He just looked up, his eyes dancing with a mixture of challenge and something dangerously close to sincerity. “I’m serious.You said I lack subtlety and respect.So teach me. Unless you’re afraid I’ll learn your secrets?”
It was a blatant goad. Taichi knew it. But the eyes of the room were on him, and the blush on his cheeks was a brand of embarrassment, and underneath the sheer, breathtaking annoyance, a flicker of something else sparked. It was the same feeling he’d had when Yamato had stared at the cleaver embedded in the wood: a recognition of a game he hadn’t chosen to play, but now refused to lose.
He stopped trying to pull Yamato up. He straightened, crossing his arms, looking down at the kneeling knight.The power dynamic was insane, performative, and utterly intoxicating.
“Fine,” Taichi said, his voice dropping, losing its hysterical edge for something colder, more deliberate. A slow smile touched his lips, one that didn’t reach his warm brown eyes. “You want an apprenticeship?You get the terms.You work when I say.You touch nothing without my permission. You taste only what I give you to taste. And if you so much as breathe near my primary fermenters, I will use that famous knightly sword of yours to stir the next batch. Understood?”
A slow, answering smile spread across Yamato’s face. It was a look of pure, unadulterated victory.He rose smoothly to his feet, brushing a speck of dust from his knee. The sheer height of him reasserted itself, blocking out the window light. “Understood, Master Brewer.”
The title, in his deep voice, was a parody and a promise.
“Your first task,” Taichi said, turning his back and walking behind the bar. He picked up the clay pot, the sour smell wafting up.“Is to dispose of this… unfortunate experiment. Far away from my establishment. The midden heap out back will suffice.”
He thrust the pot into Yamato’s waiting hands.Their fingers brushed.Taichi snatched his back as if scalded.
“Then,” Taichi continued, forcing his voice steady, reaching for a tankard to polish with unnecessary force, “you can start by washing the entire stack of casks in the storeroom. Dry.By hand. Sora will show you.”
From the kitchen, there was a sound like a knife being driven very deliberately into a cutting board.Thunk.
Yamato bowed his head, the picture of obedient humility. But his eyes, when they met Taichi’s, were blazing with a heat that had nothing to do with humility and everything to do with the hunt. “As you wish.”
He turned and walked out, the failed mead held before him like a sacred offering. The bell jangled again.The tavern remained quiet for a beat longer. Then the murmurs started up, peppered with low chuckles. Taichi kept polishing the same spot on the already-gleaming tankard, his heart pounding a frantic, angry rhythm against his ribs. He had just invited the fox into the henhouse.He had done the very thing Sora had warned him against.
But as the flush on his skin finally began to recede, that spark of reluctant amusement stayed, glowing in the dark pit of his apprehension.Yamato thought this was a path to his bed. Fine.Let him try to earn it through a mountain of suds and monk-like patience. Taichi would see which broke first: the knight’s resolve, or his own damned curiosity.