"What Was Mine" 11

My guts protested again, backing up further into my mouth.  My cheeks swelled to hold it.  Peyd was quickly closing on me.  I waited, then, when he was close enough, I adopted a fighting stance, reared my head back and, like a spitting cobra, launched a stream of acidic, partially-digested prison stew directly into Head Warden Peyd’s face.

The look of horror in Peyd’s eyes as he was bathed in my puke was a priceless memory I would forever cherish.  He stopped in his tracks, he wiped at his face, he momentarily forgot everything he knew about Stetory’s Rules.  With an accompanying fart, I slammed a boot full-force into the Peyd family jewels.  The man who’d killed General Hoistings in what may or may not have been a fair fight squeaked in pain, and he duck-walked two steps forward before crumbling to his knees.  For added effect, quite unable to control myself by this point, I vomited on his head.

I stepped back, breathing hard, and slapped his sabre hard with the flat of mine.  It flew easily from his limp hand, clattering on stone.  I kicked him over onto his back.  He landed with a splat.  “It’s no easy thing to be splattered with somebody else’s stomach contents, is it, Peyd?” I asked him between heaves and shudders.  I tucked my sword up under his chin.  “How does it feel to be covered in filth?”

Peyd was out of his mind, squirming and wiping.  I dug the sabre-tip sharply into his throat, but didn’t break the skin.  “Stop.  Lay there and soak in it.”

He slowly halted his throes, but was still breathing heavily.  He looked up at me through a mask of vomit and pure hate.  “You disgusting—!” his mouth worked, but he was too enraged to make his words work.  “I have never…!  You foul, repulsive…!”

“Yeah, I’m a piece of shit,” I gasped.  There was drool hanging from my mouth, puke on my chin.  I must have been a sight to make Suelanne reconsider her earlier promise.  “But I’ve got you hanging on my hook, so you’d better watch your mouth.”  He shut up and glared at me with red-hot eyes.  “Who were the people who paid to lock me up for life?”

“If you think I’m going to tell you that—“

“If you don’t, the next person will.  You can save yourself right now.”

“If you kill me, my men—“

“—will throw me a blow-job party.”

He set his jaw.  “I have my sense of duty,” he said quietly.  The stubborn sonofabitch.

“Byson!” I called.

There was a cough from behind me, then, “Uh…yes, Mr. Gunniver?”

“What was that rumor you were trying to tell me earlier?”

“Um.”  Another cough.  “Peyd’s supposed to have knocked up somebody’s daughter…somebody’s young daughter.  It was a scandal, because she was somebody else’s fiancé.  He wanted her to get rid of the child, but she wouldn’t, so they say that somebody pushed her in front of a hansom cab.  It wasn’t going fast, so she lived, but the baby…Anyway.”  He sighed.  “That’s what they say.”

To Peyd: “Is this story true?”  No answer.  I dug the sabre in deeper.  The skin broke, and blood started pooling about the point.  “Is that true?”

“Yesss!” Peyd hissed, now nothing but pure humiliation and hatred.  “It wasn’t a cab, though.  It was…it was one of the new steam-coaches.  And…”

“And what?”

It’s amazing what men will confess when they’re staring down death’s throat.  “And she was my sister,” he whispered. He gave a moan which sounded like the last of his humanity slithering out of his body.

“Peyd,” I said evenly.  “I don’t feel the least bit bad about my decision to kill you.”  His eyes widened.  My sabre sunk another two inches.  He gurgled, thrashed, and then died as I ripped the blade to the side.

I stood back, looked at his bloodied and befouled form, and then raised my head to check out the spectators.  There wasn’t a face to be seen that wasn’t purely terrified at what they’d just witnessed.  I threw the sabre on the ground.  The drama of the moment was undercut by the fact that I picked that exact moment to shit my pants.  “Get him out of here.  Somebody with a strong stomach help drag me to a bed before I fucking collapse.”

I fucking collapsed.