Speaker 1: The Scum Kings, created and written by Mike Daltrey. The
day after the beating was worse than the beating itself.
The pain was a dull, constant reminder of our humiliation.
We spent the day in the squalid little room, licking
our wounds, the silence thick with unspoken shame and simmering resentment.
There was the matter of Kal. We couldn't leave him
in the alley. It was a matter of principle. However
thin our principles had become. We didn't have a shovel.
We used our hands and a broken piece of board
to scrape a shallow hole in a trash heap behind
the flophouse. We rolled Kal's body into it and covered
him with garbage and mud. There were no words said.
It wasn't a burial. It was a disposal, one less
mouth to feed more ghost at our backs. At least
he wasn't lying in an alley and getting pissed on
by drunken passers by. We were back in the room,
the stench of the grave still on our hands. When
the summons came. It wasn't a hardened enforcer who brought it.
It was a street urchin, a grimy girl no older
than ten, who sauntered up to our doors. If she
owned the place e the new dogs, she asked, looking
as over with an unnerving lack of fear. Silas wants
to see ya now. She spat on the floor and
left a command delivered by a child. We had no
choice but to obey. The walk through the gutters was
a different journey. This time our swagger was gone, replaced
by a grim, humbled silence. We were no longer conqueror
sizing up a new hunting ground. We were chastened dogs
being called to heal, And every eye in the twisting
alley seemed to know it. They watched us past, not
with the wary fear of before, but with a kind
of knowing pity. They'd seen it a hundred times. New
crew comes in loud, gets broken by silas, and falls
in line or disappears. I watched my own crew, and
I saw the defeat in every step. Stigand walked with
his eyes on the ground. His shoulders slumped. The shame
of his easy defeat had hollowed him out, leaving a quiet,
brooding giant in the place of the roaring Northman. I
knew Brynn was a coiled spring of tension, her hand
never leaving the hilt of her knife, her feral hatred
for this cage of men sharpened to a razor's edge.
Even Gecks was subdued, his usual manic energy replaced by
a quiet, watchful intensity. He was studying this new ecosystem
of power, his smile gone. We were walking through the
heart of our enemy's territory, and for the first time
we understood just how deep it went. Every alley, every doorway,
every pair of eyes belonged to Silas. We weren't walking
through a city. We were walking through one man's kingdom.
We asked about Silas, and everyone replied with a wordless
finger pointing toward a gambling den in the center of
the gutters Silas. A finger point left or right, a
finger would point. Everyone knew where Silas held court, but
no one wanted to say it. The gambling den was
a squat fortified building with a heavy iron banded door
and two grim faced guards outside. Unlike the crooked keg,
this place had an air of real power. The guard
simply nodded as we approached and opened the door. We
were led through a smoky common room, past tables of
hard faced men playing for stakes far higher than our
entire pathetic fortune, and into a quiet back room. The
room was simple, a heavy wooden table, a few chairs,
a detailed map of the gutter's hanging on one wall.
A man sat behind the table, looking over a ledger.
He wasn't a mountain of muscle like Stigant, or a
scarred killer like Corvin. He was of average build, with sharp,
intelligent features and dark hair neatly tied back. He wore
a simple but well kept tunic. He didn't look up
as we entered. The door closed behind us, the sound
of the latch clicking into place, a final, definitive sound.
We were in the heart of the web. After a long,
deliberate moment, the man finally looked up from his book.
His eyes were dark, calm, and held a terrifying analytical intelligence.
This was not a brute, This was a king, So
Silas said, his voice, quiet but carrying the weight of
absolute authority. You're the ones who have been making so
much noise in my gutter. You will w