Speaker 1: The scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey. Stiggins's
victory in the pit bought us more than coin. It
brought us a sliver of status, a name whispered with
a new grudging respect while he nursed his wounds. Or
so Sileina and I knew we had to turn that
name into a weapon. We need to know the shape
of the web before we can cut the strands, or
so it said. We need a spider, And so we
returned to the crooked keg, not to drink, but to hunt.
Selaine chose a dark corner booth, ordered a single cup
of cheap ale, and for two hours she simply watched.
I sat with her, a silent guard, and I saw
her true craft. She wasn't watching the loud drunks or
the obvious thugs. She was watching the quiet ones. Her
eyes tracked the flow of whispers, the subtle exchange of coins,
the nervous glances. She was mapping the secret currents of
the room. After an hour, her focus settled on a
single weasel faced man with shifty eyes. He never stayed
in one place for long. I watched as she watched him.
He'd have a hushed word with one of Silas's known men,
then ten minutes later be sharing a hushed laugh with
a man who wore the tattered red sash of a
different crew. He was a ghost who walked between the factions.
His only loyalty to the coin he collected for his whispers.
He was our man, so Elaine didn't approach him directly.
She waited. When he finally passed our table on his
way to the latrine, she accidentally knocked her copper cup
to the floor. As he bent to pick it up.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. I
hear you have a fine sense of the local climate,
she whispered, her voice barely audible the back booth. Ten
minutes it will be worth your while. The man who
I came to learn was named Finian paled slightly, but
a flicker of greed lit his eyes. He gave a tiny,
almost imperceptible nod, handed her the cup, and scurried on
his way. Selaine had not just found an informant. She
had set her own hook, baited her own trap. Ten
minutes later, he slid into the booth opposite her, and
her quiet war began. He was a man who survived
by selling the secrets of more dangerous men. I had
only ever seen Selaine as a woman of numbers and ledgers,
her world confined to the neat columns of her book.
But here, in this dark corner, she was a different
kind of predator. Her weapons weren't steel, but whispers. We
are new to the Gutters, she began, her voice low,
and even we wished to understand the business climate. Finian
licked his lips nervously. Information is expensive, dangerous. Selaine slid
a single copper coin across the table. It was an
insultingly small amount. We pay for quality, she said, and
we punish poor investments. She let her gaze flicker towards
the tavern's common room, where Stigand was sitting alone at
a table a silent, brooding mountain. The norseman who broke
the breaker last night. He is my partner. He has
very little patience for liars. Finian's eyes widened. He had
seen the fight. Everyone in the Gutters had heard of it.
Celaine was leveraging our one asset with brutal efficiency. She
was dissecting the man, finding his weak points, his fear
of silas, his fear of us, his desperate need for coin,
and pressing on them with surgical precision. She showed him
just enough of Stiggins's winnings to wet greed, but her
tone promised violence if he wasted her time. He began
to talk. He told us everything. He told us of Silas,
his iron grip on the major businesses, his chief, and
for Sir Corvin and his disciplined crew. And then, his
voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, he told us of
the rivals, the Red Hands. He hissed. They were here first,
a proper gang of thugs. Silas tamed them through attrition,
but their fuse is still lit. They hate Silas and
his new ways. There's a truce, but it's about as
strong as a whore's expression of love. One missing payment
and the whole thing comes down. Selaine listened, her face impassive.
When he was done, she pushed a few more coins
across the table. Finian, seeing his chance to curry favor
with the new power in town, decided to give us
a bonus look. He said, leaning and close the Red Hands.
They're bringing in a shipment of northern blades tomorrow night.
Down by the old abandoned tannery at the river's edge,
a secret shipment to arm up for the war. Everyone
knows his coming. Selaine gave him a final coin, and
he scurried away like the rat he was. She turned
back to us, her face showing no emotion. The transaction
was complete. Stigand had won us a name, but Silain,
with a handful of bloody coppers and a quiet threat,
had just bought us a war. She now held the
key to the entire power structure of the Gutters.