Speaker 1: The scum Kings created and written by Mike Daltrey, Episode
thirty six, The Madman's Tail.
Speaker 2: The day before we were to light the spark of
a gang war, we needed to be ghosts. We abandoned
our room and paid a few coppers to disappear into
the anonymous misery of a public flophouse. It was the
lowest rung of the gutters, a large, stinking common room
where the city's dregs came to cough, shiver, and die
on lice ridden straw palettes. The air was thick with
the smell of cheap gin and despair. It was the
perfect place to be forgotten. We sat in a dark
corner or so quietly reviewing the final details of his plan,
the rest of us lost in our own thoughts. The
only sound was the leet rattling chorus of a dozen
consumptive coughs. We were focused on the immediate, gritty reality
of our mission, on survival, on revenge. That's when the
Madman stumbled in. He was a skeleton, draped in the tattered,
filthy robes of a sea acolyte, his eyes burning with
a fever that had long since cooked his sanity. He
shivered uncontrollably, clutching a small, smooth ivory icon in his
fist like it was the only thing anchoring him to
the world. He wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, just
raving to the uncaring shadows gold, he rasped, his voice
of dry crackle. They polished the floors with it. A
secret treasury hidden behind a face of stone, he staggered,
catching himself on a post. I've seen it. The cellars
of wine, deeper than any hell, enough to drown an army. Stigand,
who had been half asleep, perked up at the mention
of wine. What's that? An army of drunks. The acolyte's
feverish eyes landed on us. He saw our weapons, our
hard faces, and mistook us for an opportunity. He lurched
over to our corner, the abbey of the Stern Visage,
he hissed, his breath. Foul, that's the name. A fortress
of gold, disguised as a house of prayer. They cast
me out, killed the others because we knew the secret
or so didn't even look up from the map he
was scratching in the dirt. Pay him no mind, he said,
his voice flat with dismissal fever dreams. A provincial abbey
like that would be lucky to own a single silver cup,
let alone a treasury. It's illogical. The madman was insistent.
He shoved the Ivory icon toward my face. It's real.
I swear it on the visage itself. This is their mark,
their key. His shouting was beginning to draw attention the
one thing we couldn't afford. My patience, already worn thin
by days of servitude and scheming, finally snapped. Shut your mouth,
old man, I snarled, getting to my feet. You'll bring
the watch down on all of us with your noise.
I nodded to Stiggant, get him out of here. Stigin rose,
not with anger, but with a weary sigh. He grabbed
the acolyte by his thin shoulders and began to haul
him toward the door like a sack of garbage. As
he was being dragged away, the man's hand opened slightly.
I saw the flash of ivory in the dim light,
the severe, judgmental face of the carving. For a heartbeat,
the hair on my arms stood up. It was the same,
the same as the icon I had taken from the pilgrim,
the one now tucked deep in my own pack. The
feeling was a cold spike of something familiarity, coincidence. Stiggins
shoved the madman out into the alley, and the door
slammed shut, cutting off his fading curses. I pushed the
thought away. It was just a common religious token, nothing
more a coincidence. We had a real plan, a real
path to coin and power. We had a war to start.
We had no time for ghost stories.