Speaker 1: The Scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey. The
world was the smell of stale, ale dirt and my
own blood. The cold steel at my throat was the
only thing that felt real, a final, sharp truth in
a room full of failure. I could hear stiggins guttural curses,
the sound of his struggle, more like a beast than
a man. I could hear cobs pained whimpers from somewhere
across the room. We were broken. My pride had bought
this for us. My refusal to kneel had led us
straight to the butcher's block. Corvin's man held me fast,
my face just inches from the filthy floorboards. I was
the king of nothing, not even my own body. I
watched as Corvin's men moved with that same terrifying efficiency,
neutralizing what little resistance was left. The fight was over now,
it was just a matter of the price. It was
in that moment of absolute helplessness that I saw a
flicker of movement. It was Kayle. In the chaos, he
had been overlooked, shoved aside, and forgotten. Now he was
on his feet, his face a twisted mask of fury
and something else, a wild, desperate ambition, the resentment he'd
been nursing for me since I'd beaten him down, the
humiliation of this new defeat. It had all boiled over
into a single suicidal act of pride. I saw the
glint of a hidden dagger in his hand. Stay down,
you fool, I tried to rasp, but the blade at
my throat kept the words from forming. He didn't look
at me. His eyes were locked on Corvin, who stood
calmly observing the scene. The master of this little play.
With a hoarse, defiant roar, Kale lunged for the ska.
He never finished the word. He took two steps, he
never made it to a third. One of the enforcers
to Corvin's right moved with a liquid speed I had
never seen before. He didn't even seem to look at Kayle.
It was pure instinct. A pivot of his hips, a
flash of a short, thick blade from its sheath, A
single economical thrust. The blade went between Kayle's ribs with
a sound like a knife punching into a wet sack
of leather. Kayle stopped dead. His defiant roar died in
his throat, replaced by a soft grunt of shocked surprise.
The dagger fell from his nerveless fingers and clattered to
the floor. He looked down at the hilt protruding from
his chest, his eyes wide with a foolish disbelief. Then
he looked up, his gaze, finding mine for a fleeting,
confused second, before his eyes went glassy. He collapsed to
the floor, his protest ending in a pathetic, gurgling sigh.
The silence in the room returned even heavier, now stained
by the fresh blood pooling on the floorboards. Kyle's grand,
defiant gesture had lasted less than a heartbeat. It was pointless,
It was nothing. Corvin hadn't moved, he hadn't flinched. He
didn't even glance down at the body of the man
who had just tried to kill him. Cale's life and
death were so insignificant they didn't warrant his attention. He
looked at me, his calm, analytical gaze meeting my own.
The blade was still pressed against my throat. There is
a clean up fee, too, he said, calmly,