Speaker 1: The Scum Kings created and written by Mike Daltrey, a
Signal Box Studio production, Episode three, The Captive.
Speaker 2: The third day in this God's Forsaken ditch done the
same as the last, Cold, gray and miserable. The name
we'd claimed the night before felt like a mockery in
the morning light. The scum Kings, we were just scum,
and our kingdom was this muddy hollow, populated by a
wounded Northman, a weeping cook, and a handful of sullen killers.
Dix was bored. I can always tell. He gets a
particular stillness about him, a predatory calm that's far more
unsettling than his usual energy. He spent the morning watching
our prisoner, who was still tied to the ironwood root,
shivering and stained with his own filth. Gix's head was
cocked to one side, like a magpie studying a beetle
before pecking its guts out. He finally slithered over to me,
his movements unnervingly fluid. He crouched down, his painted face
a mask of polite inquiry dre he whispered, a conspiratorial
gleam in his eyes, Our guest, he's looking awfully lonely.
I think he has stories to tell. He just needs
a little hum encouragement to share. I looked from Gix's
hungry face to the pathetic heap of the caravan guard.
The man was a nobody, a farmer with a cheap spear,
hired for a few coppers. The odds of him knowing
anything about his employer's shipping manifests were long, but they
weren't zero right now. A one in one hundred chance
was the best hand we had. Find out what he knows,
I said, my voice, flat roots schedules the strength of
other guards who hired them. I fixed him with a
hard stare, get what you can, don't take all day
about it. A smile stretched Gix's lips, showing the sharpened
points of his teeth. Of course not, We're all busy men.
He sauntered over to the prisoner, pulling a small cloth
wrapped bundle from his pouch as he walked. The guard
flinched as Gicks approached, pressing himself against the tree as
if he could merge with the bark. Gix's interrogation was
not a thing of shouting and breaking bones. It was
a performance. The rest of the crew paid it little
mind or so watched for a moment, his expression purely analytical,
before deciding it was a waste of his time and
returning to the careful maintenance of his gear. Stiggin propped
up against the hollow's wall, grunted and closed his eyes,
interested in sleep more than sport. Brynn was a few
yards away, skinning a pair of squirrels with a practiced
indifference that was its own form of cruelty. Gicks began
by untying the man. He was disarmingly gentle. He even
offered the man a sip of water from his own
water skin, which the guard, shaking, accepted. There now, Gicks cooed,
patting the man's shoulder. We're not animals, are we. He
then unrolled his cloth bundle on the ground. It didn't
contain tongs or hot irons. It contained a feather, a
shard of glass worn smooth by a river, a dead
hornet perfectly preserved, and a single long, rust colored needle.
I just want to play a game, Jick said, his
voice dropping to a confidential whisper. The guard started weeping.
It's a simple game of questions. For every answer I like,
you get a drink of water for every answer I
don't like. He picked up the dead hornet, holding it
between his thumb and forefinger. I show you one of
my treasures up close. Gicks would ask a legitimate question
who was the paymaster? And then a completely nonsensical one,
do you think a song has a color? The combination
designed to shred what was left of the man's sanity.
I watched my face, impassive. I didn't care about the man.
I didn't care about Gigs's sick games. I just wanted
a piece of information, a name, a date, a road,
anything to turn this disaster into something else. But there
was nothing. The guard was exactly what he looked like,
a hired hand from a village called Oakhaven, paid in advance.
He didn't know where the caravan was ultimately headed, only
that his contract ended at the next way station. He
didn't know who owned the goods. He didn't know anything.
He babbled about his wife, his children, the patch of
land he was hoping to buy. He offered Gigs to
everything he had, which was nothing. Finally, after nearly an hour,
Gix's pleasant demeanor soured. The prisoner was broken, sobbing uncontrollably
his answers, just a stream of incoherent please. The toy
was no longer interesting. Gigs stood up, a look of
profound disappointment on his face. He sighed the sound loud
in the quiet camp. Oh, he said, his voice flat
with boredom. That's no fun at all. He looked at
me and gave a slight shape of his head.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 2: I gave him a curt nod and it. Gigs turned
back to the weeping man, who looked up a flicker
of desperate hope in his eyes. Gix's hand moved in
a lazy, almost casual arc. The jagged blade he favored
seemed to leap into his palm, a flash of steel,
a wet, tearing sound. The guard's weeping stopped. He slumped forward,
a red line blossoming across his throat. Gix wiped his
blade clean on the dead man's tunic, his expression that
of a craftsman who's found a flaw in his materials.
He walked away from the body without a second glance.
The scum Kings watched unmoved another body, another failure. We
were exactly where we were an hour ago, just with
more blood on the ground. I looked at the corpse,
than at my crew. Then at the gray, uncaring sky,
another mouth gone, I thought, another body to bury the
grand profits of our new kingdom.
Speaker 1: Signal box