#amatteroffact

“It’s fucking true!  All of it!”

Jaigo threw the copy back at her, “I seriously doubt it.”  The overly heavy, overly bored, overly tired editor of Tonberry’s Lantern leaned back in his chair and lit his cigar, eyeing Spahro.  “As true as the thing about that Sultansworn having two cunts?”

Spahro hissed with all the power of a purebred Miqo’te in a pique, but the Highlander wasn’t impressed by bared teeth or flared tail.  “That was different.  I got paid to write that.”

“And this is how you try to convince me to respect your journalistic integrity?  Admitting you got bribed to write a story slandering one of the personal guard of the Sultana herself?”

Spahro slammed her hand down on his desk, making the ink in his crystal inkpot ripple.  “That’s not the fucking point and you know it.”

He slammed his own hand down and the ink pot tipped completely over, forcing Spahro to retract her hand before it got soaked.  “You don’t get to tell me what the point is, Llorn.”  Jaigo stood and his shadow fell over Spahro like standing before a mountain.  Even though he carried most of his weight in his gut the man was still near seven fulms tall.  “I’m not publishing this.”

Spahro had a reputation for being fearless.  She faked it well.  “Jaigo. A Syndicate second is smuggling Garlean weaponry to a notorious pirate who’s building some kind of super weapon.  He has several of the Sultansworn in his pocket, including a dead one.  One who was killed by a Maelstrom officer in a raid on a criminal warehouse.  I have the whole fucking story in there, backed and verified, multiple corroborating witnesses.  I’ve been working this story for six months.  It’s good.  It’s solid.  It’s fucking important!”

Jaigo huffed once and deflated from a mountain to a hill then slumped into his chair.  “I know, I read it.”

Spahro threw her hands up, “Then why the fuck aren’t you fucking publishing it?!”

“You’re fired.”

“What?”  It wasn’t often that anyone ever left Spahro at a loss for words.  But jaigo just opened his humidore and began fixing himself a cigar.  Frantically her mind started racing, looking for some kind of reasoning behind this.  “What?”

“Fired.  Fuck off.”  He lit the cigar and but his chair under severe stress as he leaned back into it staring at her.

““I’m your most popular fucking reporter!  I sell more papers than the rest of your fucking crew combined!”

“Go shake your ass on Ruby Road.  You’ll make somebody else even more money.  Get the fuck out.”

Spahro slapped her hand into the spilled ink and then swept her arm at him.  An arc of black ink splattered across his clothes, face and cigar.  She bared her fangs, “You went from publishing anything I wrote to telling me no on the biggest story this paper’s ever seen.  What the fuck is going on?”

Jaigo sighed and dropped his cigar into the waste bin by his desk.  “It’s a matter of facts, Llorn.  You should have stuck to bullshite.”  He lit another match, then set it to the collected leaves of paper that had cost her half a year, more than a few friends, jail time and more to write.  He tossed them after the cigar into the bin, then pointed to the door.  “Now go ruin someone else’s life.”