Speaker 1: The Scum Kings, a broad Sword Studio production created and
written by Mike Daltrey.
Speaker 2: Chapter two, The Jester. The boredom is worse than wondering.
If a plank is going snap under your feet. On land,
there is always somewhere to walk. If the camp gets
too loud, you walk into the dark. If the men
are grating on your nerves, you scout ahead. But on
a boat, a boat is a cage that floats. We
are drifting down a wide brown stretch of the river.
The wind slack in the sails. The silence is heavy,
broken only by the creak of the rigging and the
wet slap of the water against the hull. X is vibrating.
That's the only word for it. He's sitting on a
barrel of salted fish, his legs bouncing, his fingers twitching.
He looks like a coiled spring covered in soot. Boredom
for gicks is dangerous. Seen this before in the Gray Tangle,
when the rain didn't stop for three days, he started
carving faces into the trees, faces that look like the
people we'd killed in that tavern in gray Mark, when
we were hiding from the guard. He started playing a
game with a knife and his own fingers that made
even Stiggin leave the room. He needs stimulation, or he turns.
He doesn't turn bad, he doesn't turn profane. He turns
into himself. He hops off the barrel entertainments. He announces
his voice too loud for the quiet river. Since the
wind has decided to nap, the Great Gicks shall provide
the gale. Few of Brin's crew glance over. They're bored
too polishing brass or mending nets. They don't know him yet.
They think he's just the ugly one with the painted face.
Watch closely. Dix shouts. He reaches into his pocket and
pulls out a gold coin. A hand goes to my belt.
It's a Solari, pure gold. Everyone had seen my gold
bars when they pulled me on the ship, and that's
a whole level of tension I have to manage. A
Brenn said, we'll talk about this later. It's a conversation
I'm not looking forward to. But now, Gicks showing off
a coin worth more than the ship shows that we
may just all be wealthy. And being wealthy and showing
off gold on a ship full of mercenaries is a
dangerous thing. Or so catches my eye from the rail.
He sees it too. He shakes his head slightly. Don't
move yet. Dix holds the coin up. It catches the sun,
a bright, dangerous spark. Now you see the wealth. And
now he claps his hand like our own miserable lives.
He laughs and lacks any mirth at all. He opens
them empty gown. He squeals. The scarred woman, the one
who yelled at Stiggand yesterday, snorts impressive, did you eat
it better? Dick's giggles. He waddles over to her. She
instinctively puts a hand on her knife, but he stops
a foot away.
Speaker 3: I didn't eat it, but you can find it. He
points to the front of his trousers. The fabric is
stained and frayed. It's with my other valuables. Go on reach.
He starts to untie his trousers. The woman's face twists
in disgust. Get away from me, you little rat, the
crew grumbles. It's not angry yet, just annoyed. He's being
a pest, a pervert. Thick shrugs, undeterred. Suit yourself, you're
missing out on the one.
Speaker 2: He reaches into his own pants, digging deep, his tongue
poking out of the corner of his mouth. He grunts,
fishing around, and then pulls his hand out. The coin
is between his fingers. Ta dah, he screams, thrusting it
towards her face. The woman recoils by the gods. Dix laughs,
tossing the coin in the air and catching it. He's
losing them, he can feel it. He needs to escalate.
Two sailors walk past, carrying a crate of fresh river
fish destined for the salt barrel. The fish are still thrashing,
their tails, whipping the air. Fresh participants gigs yells. He
dives into the crate. The sailors shout, dropping it. Fish
spill onto the deck, flopping in the slime. Dicks grabs
three of them. They are big, slick and fighting for life.
Up and up and up. He starts to juggle them.
It's actually incredible. The fish are writhing, slippery as oil,
but his hands move in a blur. He keeps them
in the air, a rotating circle of gray scales and
white bellies. The crew stops working. They watch. It's hard
not to The skill required is extraordinary. Look at them fly.
Gicks laughs. His eyes wide and unblinking. They think they're birds.
Even or So is watching now. Jix catches one of
the fish mid air, but he doesn't throw it back up.
He brings it to his face, crunch, the sound like
stepping on dry twigs. A chunk of fish is in
his teeth while without missing a beat, he continues to
juggle blood and fish, guts flying as he does so.
He brings another fish to his face. He bites the
fish's head off. He spits the head onto the deck
and throws the headless body back into the rotation. He
catches the next one rip. He tears a chunk out
of its stomach with his filed teeth. Guts spill out,
pink and gray spraying across his face. He throws it
back up. He's still juggling a headless fish, a torn
apart fish, a whole fish. Bud is flying in an arc,
splattering his chest, his face, the clean deck. He isn't stopping.
He grabs the third fish by the tail and snaps
his head forward, tearing the tail fin off with a
wet tear. He's laughing now. It's a high mannic sound
bubbling through the blood in his mouth. Do you see?
He screams, his mouth full of raw meat. They fly,
they bleed, It's all the same. The crew isn't grumbling anymore.
They are silent. The scarred woman looks at him, and
her hand isn't hovering over her knife anymore. It's gripping
the handle, white knuckled. She looks horrified. I look around
the rest of the crew looks stunned, as if they
are watching a torture session, which in a way they are.
They now realize what we know. He isn't a jester,
he isn't a fool. He's a rabbit animal. We forgot
to chain up dicks.
Speaker 1: I bark.
Speaker 2: He doesn't hear me. He catches the headless carcass and
mashes it into his face, smearing slime and blood into
his eyes. He's lost in the red across the deck
in three strides. I don't reason with him. I grab
his arm and pull hard. The air leaves him in
a whoosh. He flies back toward me, crashing into the chest.
He's thin, I am not. He lets out a grunt.
The fish splat onto the deck around him. He looks
up at me, blinked, the blood out of his eyes.
For a second. I see the murder there. I see
the knife hand twitch, and he sees it's me. Rage vanishes.
He smiles his teeth red tough crowd dre they'd prefer
a bard, I think. I grab him by the collar
and shove him below. I say my voice is low,
but I make sure the crew can hear it. Get
cleaned up now. He wipes his mouth with the back
of his hand. I captain. He winks at the scarred
woman as he shuffles past her towards the hatch. She
takes a step back. I look at the mess on
the deck, the fish heads, the guts, the blood. I
look at Brent, at the tiller. She isn't looking at
the river anymore. She's looking at us. She's seen, she knows.
I think she was trying to pretend a monster like
Gicks could check the fact that he hadn't clearly hits her.
She looks like someone who just realized she invited wolves
into her sheep pen. I kicked the fish head overboard,
back to work, I say. Nobody argues