Death After Death PLUS 370-372

Ch. 370 - Off the Beaten Path (part 3)

It was dark well before they reached the little hamlet of Elem Field, and they smelled the smoke of recently torched homes and fields long before it came into view. As they got closer, Simon smelled the scents of roasted meat too, and though he knew some of that would be farm animals, the corpses started appearing after that, showing where the men of the village had ended up, or at least pieces of them. 

While Sir Derinholt had admitted that attacking orcs during the night was a terrible idea, he insisted that waiting for daylight would be even worse. “Not just because of more innocent lives either,” he told Simon. “They can see better than we can in the dark, but right now they’re drunk on victory and completely unafraid, so it’s the best time to sneak up on them.”

Simon didn’t entirely agree with that sentiment, but they put the time to good use discussing exactly how they were going to take advantage of this moment to do a little house cleaning. Though it was Sir Derinholt’s show, they both agreed that picking off targets of opportunity was the best plan. To that end, Simon was planning to rely on his bow where possible. Anyone he could get through the eye or the throat wouldn’t be calling anyone for help, and a shot in the dark was a lot quieter than the clash of steel on steel. 

I just wish I could whisper the words of light amplification, he told himself as they slowed in search of their first target. It was a simple spell, but in moments like this, it made all the difference. 

He didn’t have that advantage in this life, unfortunately. He didn’t even have a magical blade, though he hoped to fix that problem eventually. What he had was a knight whose sword skills were more than a little rusty, but with luck and strategy on their side, that would be enough. 

At least, he thought it would be until they saw the group around the bonfire. There had to be at least eight of them roasting most of a cow on a spit made from a piece of timber. Simon had his doubts then, but they were able to retreat from that group without alerting them, and from there, they found a better target. 

Two orcs wasn’t optimal, but when they found them rooting through a burned-down home looking for something, Sir Derinholt immediately made his play. There was no coordination there; he just drew his blade, snuck up on the nearest one as well as he could in armor, and delivered a vicious two-handed thrust through the creature’s chest. 

The move was awkward but powerful. Simon followed his lead, though he noted that the man would have been screwed if he didn’t. Sir Derinholt had left himself wide open, and when the other orc noticed and opened his mouth to roar before charging, Simon let loose an arrow that actually went into the monster’s large maw, and through its hard palate, dropping him on the spot. 

It was a one-in-a-million shot. He’d hit opponents in the eye, the throat, the heart, and the chest, but never in the mouth before, and he smirked at that, even if it was luck. Did I hit the spine or the brain, he wondered, not that there was time to check. Sir Derinholt didn’t comment either way. He continued on, and Simon joined him; he didn’t need credit. He just needed them to stay undetected for as long as possible. 

That worked for a while. Their next two ambushes were one-on-one, and though one of the orcs was able to bellow loudly enough that Simon feared the worst, no one came running by the time they were done standing over the butchered green corpse. 

“They fight with each other, too, not just humans,” Sir Derinholt reminded him, calming his rising paranoia. His mind screamed that the orcs would find them soon, and with his heart racing, it was impossible to use his sight to get a sneak peek at where the next monster might be hiding. 

Unfortunately, he should have listened to that rising sense of danger and insisted they regroup, because a few minutes later they were attacked, not just by three orcs, but by someone who could wield words of fire. 

“Meiren!” Simon heard the word shouted into the night in a voice so rough it barely qualified as language. He might not have been able to see who had used the word of power, but he knew exactly what would happen next. 

Sir Derinholt was too far away to warn at that moment. So, Simon sheltered behind his opponent instead, holding his shield low to protect his exposed legs. The orc was broader and taller than Simon, and it blunted the flamethrower’s spray, sending fire around both of them. 

It still singed him in places, and left him with the lingering smell of burned hair, but the mage showed no regard for the lives on its side, and catching his opponent on fire gave Simon the opening that he needed to run the orc through. 

“We need to regroup,” Simon called out. “We need to—”

“Keep these monsters off me!” Sir Derinholt interrupted him. “That heathen is mine.”

Simon should have realized that as soon as a truly supernatural threat appeared, they’d be committed. It would have been hard enough to get the knight to retreat under normal circumstances, but now that was impossible, and winning on the current field was just as unlikely. 

What started as four orcs was quickly reduced to three, and only two of those were Simon’s responsibility. That might have been doable, but when two more were drawn by the flames, he was fairly sure that would be the end of the run. Still, he brought down one of the ones he faced before two more showed up to replace it. 

With that, the battle was truly joined. The hulking green warriors roared with battlelust, and the situation became very precarious for Simon. Two men on one orc was a reasonably fair fight, but three orcs on one was a slaughter waiting to happen, and it took everything he had to match them. 

However tough it was for him, though, Sir Derinholt had it harder. The opponent he faced wielded magic, while he had nothing but faith and ferocity to pair against it. It was a bad match.

Simon’s shield caught an ugly hit as he fought defensively. It ate the axe that his enemy was using, but it was trashed in the process. He made lemonade out of those lemons, though, and throat punched the orc that did it with the jagged wooden edge of his shield, losing the object and an opponent in the process. 

That bought him enough breathing room to glance at Sir Derinholt, but what he saw wasn’t good news. He was almost to the warlock, but another orc was closing in on them. 

“Damn it!” Simon cursed before shouting an unheard warning. 

He needed to close the gap and fast, but he still had two opponents, and if he ran, they’d use their longer stride to cut him down. Not for the first time, he considered using a word of power to end this, but he resisted.

There’s always another way, he reminded himself. You can’t use magic for everything. 

As his most recent victim slowly drowned in his own blood, Simon used his staggering form as an obstacle to control the flow of battle. Then, when he fell to his knees, Simon used him as a stepping stool to launch a leaping blow that granted him enough height to sink his sword down through the orc’s collarbone to its heart. 

It was a great blow that cost him his sword, but he accepted that. He could retrieve it later, if there was a later. As he landed, he pulled his dagger and continued the fight. That got him a kick to his ribs that sent him tumbling and gasping, but even that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. 

When Simon’s last opponent loomed over him with a club in an overhead grip, he assumed that Simon was done for. Maybe a farmer or a villager would have been, but he’d died far too many times to give up. Instead of despairing, he just rolled to his feet, narrowly avoiding the skull-crushing blow and hamstringing the prick that had tried to brain him. 

For a moment, Simon thought about leaving him for later, but when he fell to one knee and cried out in pain, his eye socket was too tempting of a sight. So, Simon left all ten inches of steel buried in the orc’s skull before quickly moving to retrieve his sword. It was only when he knelt to retrieve it, though, that he realized the orc hadn't entirely missed. He’d taken some kind of blow to the head; enough to make blood drip down his face, but for the moment the adrenaline kept the pain entirely at bay, and he only felt a little dizzy. 

As he did so, he saw that Sir Derinholt’s opponent was down, but he faced not one new opponent, but two. He wasn’t doing very well either. At this distance, Simon couldn’t see how badly he’d been wounded yet, but from the way he was moving, it was certain that he’d taken a hit or two. 

Even as Simon fought through the two orcs between him and the knight, though he knew it was too late. They’d each brought down several, but the Unspoken’s drive to strike down the fire-wielding warlock had overwhelmed the rational part of his mind that would have told him that retreating and finding a better battleground was the right move. 

The warlock was dead at Sir Derinholt’s feet, but the knight himself was covered in blood, and most of it was red, not green. Still, he stayed standing, staggering backward a step at a time, and parrying what blows he couldn’t side step as he tried to weather the savagery. 

He was unsuccessful, and even as Simon brought their final opponent down, the knight sank to his knees, and then to his ass, before he lay back. He was pale there, and his breaths were quick and shallow. Simon knew neither of those were good signs, but he ignored them as he tried to figure out where exactly the man had been hurt. 

That took longer than it should have because of just how much blood there was, but when he found the source, he knew it was over. Sir Derinholt had nearly been gutted in a jagged wound that went under the bottom edge of his breastplate. If Simon tried to take his armor off to get at it, his guts would almost certainly fall out. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Simon told him automatically, even though it wasn’t true. There was no fixing this without magic, and he immediately started wrestling with the urge to use magic to save the knight’s life. Sir Derinholt would hate him for it, of course, and it would move back his timeline at least a couple of years, but it was better than letting the knight die. “We can fix this, I’ll…”

Simon trailed off and swallowed hard. He knew what he had to say. Hyakk. It was only a single word, but the word of power felt so strange in his mind after such a long time that he paused uncharacteristically. 

“Don’t do it,” the man gasped his final words in Simon’s arms as he bled out. He knew that the White Cloak wasn’t talking about magic, but it was still enough to arrest the word of power before it ever escaped his throat. From those syllables on, Simon was powerless to do anything but listen to the dying man.

“Set your sight aside,” he continued, coughing up blood. “Pretend to be just like everyone else… Find a nice wife and a nice village, like this one. Live a… Live a…” After that, he was gone. 

Simon mourned his death, but only for a few minutes. During that time, his heart hardened as the knight’s body cooled. Then, he picked up his sword and moved back into the night. Sir Derinholt’s corpse could wait until morning. Tonight, he had more orcs to kill. 

Ch. 371 - A Final Resting Place

In the run-up to the showdown with the warlock, Simon’s fear and anxiety had all but erased his sight. In the aftermath, though, when a good man lay dead at his feet, his cold anger erased all of that. He no longer cared if he lived or died as long as he got his vengeance, and that made all the difference.

Fueled by a fatalistic need for vengeance, he moved from fight to fight like a bloodhound. No one could hide from him anymore, not when the world was laid out in a smooth series of events. If he went left, he’d catch two orcs from the front and have a bad time, but if he went right, there would be only one, and Simon could stab it through the ribs before it realized it was even in danger. 

In that bloody predawn hour, it was all so simple, and Simon regretted that he hadn’t been like this the whole night. It seemed so unfair to Sir Derinholt that he couldn’t have been like this from the beginning, but then, except for a few moments in Hepollyon, he’d never really been like this.

Is this brain damage? He wondered. Do I have a concussion? What changed?

Thinking too much about it dulled the effect, so Simon stopped. Instead of worrying about why he could see how all the orcs connected to him, he focused on spilling their blood in the places that his vision said he should. There was no fate, though. Even in that strange fugue state, nothing made him kill them; he just saw the optimal points where he could, if he so desired. 

That time went by in a series of bloody flashes, and by the time dawn lit up the sky in soft blue light, it was over, and Simon had nothing but a throbbing headache, the corpses of nearly two dozen orcs, and a bone-deep sense of exhaustion to show for it. He returned to Sir Derinholt’s body, but no longer had the strength to carry it.

So, like a zombie, he trudged to where the knight had left his horse by the road, and then returned. Even then, though, he still couldn’t lift the body, so he used the reins to drag it to the shade of a tree, which was a slightly more defensible position, and then he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Simon had been up all night, and he’d fought as hard as he had in lifetimes. Somehow, the throbbing pain of his skull didn’t wake him for hours. Neither did orcish weapons or goblin teeth. He was reasonably safe from those during the day. In the end, it was a crow that woke him up. The bird decided that the wound in his head meant he was fair game, and it only just escaped Simon’s wrath as he lashed out, and it squealed away in a cloud of feathers.

Hours had passed, but the day brought no favors with it. There was only pain and flies. At least now he had something resembling strength in his leaden limbs, though, and he was able to load Sir Derinholt’s corpse on the horse and start back the way they’d come.

Normally, Simon could walk for days without complaint, but in the state he was in, he needed to rest often. Was that due to blood loss? Fatigue? Soreness? He wasn’t sure. It was hard to think. It felt like his head was stuffed with cotton.

He slept all alone by the side of the road that night; news of the orcs seemed to have scared everyone away. That was a shame because he could have used a lift. 

The following day, he staggered to the nearest inn under his own power. This was the one that he and Sir Derinholt had stayed before they’d found the survivors of Elem Field, so he needed no introductions, either to the owner or to their ragged and impoverished guests. 

Instead, he was welcomed inside. At first, that was for news, but when everyone found out what a bad way Simon was in, the focus quickly changed to his wounds. Most of Simon’s cuts were superficial. Only the blow to his head was serious, but it was more serious than he knew. 

His hair had been soaked and matted with blood, and when it dried, it became almost a helmet. Even after he took a bath, the second tub filled with blood nearly as quickly as the first, as one of the bar maids tried to help him. The wound turned out not to be as deep as he’d feared. His skull was intact, but it was a scalp wound, and it had bled badly. 

Worse, it hadn’t been cleaned in two days, so it was almost certainly infected, but there was nothing he could do about that now besides rest and let his body fight it. Unfortunately, rest was the last thing on his mind. 

The most he would allow was a brief stay while the wound was stitched and news was spread. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist with a concussion, though, and half of the time the barmaid talked to him just to keep him from falling asleep; the poke of her needle did little in that regard. 

She alternated between telling him how the other survivors of the hamlet had fared, and pressing him for details about the fight. Both of these topics inevitably lead to praise for his heroism, but he did his best to shrug that off. That wasn’t the story he wanted the White Cloaks to find when they came to look into his story. 

“The baron will want to reward you,” she insisted. “You’re a hero!”

“I’m not,” Simon answered reluctantly. He’d started the statement by shaking his head, but the motion had started the room spinning, so he quickly put a stop to it. “The hero is dead outside. Let no one forget the name of Sir Derinholt; I was merely his squire.”

Simon wasn’t able to give them a full version of the tale, true or otherwise. He merely gave them numbers and let his injuries and the corpse of his master fill in the details. 

After his wounds were tended to, Simon spent half a day sleeping and eating broth in shifts in an effort to keep up his strength. He tried to get a mule for the knight’s corpse, or at least a cart, but there were none to spare in this neck of the woods, so he continued on. 

He still felt wretched, but now was not the time to be bogged down. Instead, he continued on his way to the south and east. 

Sir Derinholt’s boy had a reasonably full coin purse, but every inn he stayed at between there and the Broken Tower turned up his nose at the idea of carting around a corpse. Only his story of Sir Derinholt, the orc slayer, and Simon’s angry stitches let him get his way. 

Some of those nights, he talked to the mirror to remind himself of his last stay with the Unspoken, but most nights he merely slept to wake and continue on as the smell of rotting flesh grew ever stronger. Simon wasn’t much better, of course. One of them was a corpse, and the other one would become one if he didn’t take better care of himself. 

After almost a week, it became a race to see whose body would give out first. Would Sir Derinholt’s body became unrecognizable, or would Simon keel over just short of the finish line?

It was an open question, but even so, he was making progress. Slowly, he left the forests behind him as the wide plains opened up before him. It would have been more convenient if this whole thing had happened further south, but even without trying to use his sight, Simon was sure he’d make it. 

He knew this area from a long way off, even without asking the mirror to pop up in a puddle and show him a map. He just aligned himself with the right mountain peak and kept walking, sleeping as little as possible. 

He should have been in bed, but he wanted to get where he was going before his strength left him entirely, and he’d crisscrossed these plains so many times that he probably could have reached the Broken Tower blindfolded. He did not linger for sightseeing or old times' sake, though. That was both because Sir Derinholt’s corpse was rotting a little more every day, and because he had no idea where other versions of himself might be at this point in time. 

It was possible that he could run into himself at any point in half a dozen different lives. So, he kept himself to himself and pressed on, thankful that he’d smashed the Blackheart and spoiled the timeline where he served the White Cloaks in the Black Library. 

Wait, didn’t I skip the Blackheart on purpose that run? He asked himself. He was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything at all in that life that would lock in a level. He’d started as a mapmaker in Darndelle or something, and attracted their attention by accident, hadn’t he?

“Was I really just waiting a whole life to get the timing right to see Elthena?” he said exasperatedly, as much to the corpse and the horse as himself. That he thought they were worthwhile conversational partners meant his fever was getting worse, but even so, he couldn’t imagine why his past self had thought that was an appropriate thing to do. 

“Spending my whole life waiting on a damn woman,” he cursed. “What in the hell was I thinking?”

Simon still wasn’t sure if that would happen. He didn’t think it would, but if it did, it was decades in his future. He could live with that. 

It should only take a couple of years to learn what I need to know. I can be here and gone before past me screws things up, he told himself. 

Still, the doubt lingered, and even when he saw the broken castle on the horizon, he couldn’t be sure if it was any more broken than the last time he’d seen it. It wasn’t until he saw guards manning the gate that he felt confident everything was as he remembered it. The Unspoken still operated out of here; they were still exactly as he remembered. 

“Last chance to change your mind,” he told himself as he kept walking, but there was no way he was changing his mind now. He’d been trying to set up this moment for months, and he couldn’t have scripted it more perfectly. He was the injured squire of a dead Unspoken with a powerful gift. If they didn’t invite him to join like this, then they never would. 

When he arrived at the gate, he was met with a mixture of looks. Some were suspicious. Others were concerned. One of the guards asked about his business, but Simon ignored them all. Instead, he said, “I come bearing the mortal remains of Sir Derinholt. He died in battle, and I nearly followed, but he said he wanted me to… to…” 

Simon passed out before he finished. It wasn’t pure theatre either. He felt himself weakening from the moment he stopped his relentless walk. He spent his strength getting where he wanted to go, and now that he had, it was all used up. 

Ch. 372 - The Order Of Silence

Simon welcomed the throbbing pain as it drew him back to the world, one painful beat of his heart at a time. That pain was evidence of a number of things. The first was that he was alive. He expected that much; he wasn’t in such terrible shape when he arrived that he felt likely to die, but any unexpected nap that didn’t end with him waking up in the cabin once more was a good one. 

It also told him that he was still in the care of the unspoken, and nothing unusual was happening. He’d seen the Grandmaster use healing magic once in another life, so he knew they were capable of it, even if they declared it to be evil. So, if he’d woken up healthy and hale, it would have meant something entirely different than if he’d woken up feverish and in pain. 

He didn’t have any manacles or ropes on him either. He verified that by moving a little in his sick bed. Even better, when he cracked open his eyes, he saw no guards by his bedside. 

I’m not a prisoner then, or at least not one that’s considered very dangerous, he told himself as he took in the infirmary. 

It wasn’t a room he’d spent much time in when he’d been here before. He’d come here briefly on several occasions, most notably in the wake of the grimoire that had devoured some of the other archivists in the Black Library. 

This morning, though, as he slowly took it all in from where he was lying on a cold, hard palette on the floor, he was basically alone. There was one other young man to his left, whose arm was bandaged, but the room was otherwise vacant, without so much as a docent on duty. The clean-shaven face, combined with the bloodless injury, indicated a training accident to Simon, but it was hard to say. 

He took a moment to try to use his sight to glean more insight into the man, as an exercise in focus, but the pain kept his light aura from congealing into anything more informative. That was Simon’s cue to finally turn and look to himself. Up until now, he’d been pleased by what he found, but that ended as he examined himself. He was in worse shape than he’d given himself credit for. 

“I pushed myself too hard,” he whispered as he studied his feverish mind, throbbing bandages, and general sense of fatigue. 

He’d certainly been in worse shape, but the fact that he’d let himself slip so close to death without realizing it was troublesome. If I’d died in my sleep, I would have blamed the Unspoken, but the only one to blame here is me. 

Well, me and the orcs that did this, he corrected himself. The thought of the orcs led to thoughts of Sir Derinholt. It was an unavoidable connection, but not a welcome one, and Simon regretted that he hadn’t found a way to save him. He wasn’t the best of men, but he’d been a hero when it counted, and that was all you could ask of anyone. 

Bringing him back here for burial was the right thing, at least, Simon decided, though he was sure that the man wouldn’t have approved of the reasons he’d done so, or what he was about to do next. 

Swimming in fever, his mind might have swirled through those reminiscences for hours if the voice beside him hadn’t said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure I even want to know what happened to you.”

Simon’s eyes cracked open, and he looked over to find that the young member of the Unspoken was addressing him. Somehow, he’d gone from a sound sleep to noticing that Simon was awake. It was a false note that instantly put him on edge; young squires who took a beating on the training field weren’t known for having sixth senses or subtlety. 

But if I notice that’s a strike against me for the same reason, Simon realized instantly as he played mental chess with the options. That single statement had made it far more likely that the other patient was his guard, or at least an informant, which fit with his first experience with the Whitecloaks. They weren’t all as lackadaisical as the knight he’d spent the last couple of months under. Which means they’re studying me even if they aren’t here. 

He made a mental effort not to stiffen as these thoughts passed through him in rapid fire succession. Instead of acting paranoid or annoyed by the comment, he just let a smile curve one corner of his mouth and said, “It doesn’t matter what happens to me after this. I don’t care if my wounds catch up to me. All that matters is that I helped, Sir Derinholt triumph.”

“Is that your knight then?” the young member of the Unspoken asked. “I hope he came through better than you.”

Simon noted how stiffly the line was delivered. He didn’t need the sight to show him that the squire was a bad liar. He knew who the knight was and Simon’s relation to him. They chose this man for a reason, he cautioned himself as he flinched from imagined pain to cover up the hard eyes he’d almost looked at the snitch with. 

“He’s dead now,” Simon said, trying not to sound bitter, “And if I join him, what does it matter? We saved the village, killed the orcs, and I returned him home. That’s all I care about.”

Pretending to be a heedless, idealistic young man wasn’t so hard. He’d been practicing it for months now. Ignoring the lies and playing it straight was much more challenging as his mind tried to read more than he should in the situation. 

The people observing you have the sight too, to one degree or another, he reminded himself. Blood, pain, and anger only dim that sense. They don’t erase it. 

The man made his perfunctory apologies and introduced himself as Yohan. He even gave Simon the whole back story for how he injured himself in training, even though Simon barely asked about it. He couldn’t be rude to the young man who was perhaps twenty, but he couldn’t escape him exactly either.

Yohan was friendly enough, but the longer they were together, the more certain Simon became that the man was exactly who he thought he was, and that he was meant to realize it. Still, he stubbornly refused to show that last part and was relieved at having to make small talk when an acolyte came in to inspect his wounds later. 

She was an older woman, at least that’s what he thought at first. The old skin, gray hair, and young eyes told him something else, though. She was a whisperer that the Unspoken had all but used up. That thought soured his stomach, but by now his face had become a mask, so it was easy enough to hide. 

She poked and prodded him, asking a number of questions, mostly about where and how much it hurt. These, he told the truth about, and when she lanced a swollen area next to some angry red stitches on his thigh to release a gout of pus, he cried out in pain uncharacteristically. He could have held it back, but that’s not what a real squire would have done. An actual squire would crumple under pressure, he told himself as he watched her clean up the mess and rewrap the wound with a fresh poultice. 

When that was done, she fed both of them bowls of porridge and quizzed him while he ate. “What other symptoms do you have?” she asked, “Dizziness? Ringing in your ears?”

“Besides the pain? Just the fever mostly,” Simon answered honestly. That was enough to earn a snort, but even so, she began to mix a new concoction. Simon was distracted enough by the thought that she’d been robbed of twenty or thirty years of her life, so she could cast the word of nullification very inefficiently that he almost didn’t notice that some of the herbs she was adding to the potion she was making had nothing to do with healing and everything to do with making him sleep. 

So they don’t want to kill me, but they don’t know what to make of me, and I’m certainly not free to go, he decided as he processed everything he knew about his situation so far. That didn’t stop him from taking the medicine or thanking her for it, but it did make Simon wonder what they hoped to gain out of the situation. 

Will I wake up tied up, or do they intend to question me when I’m so drugged up that I can't see straight? He asked himself. 

Simon didn’t try to fight his fatigue after that. He knew it was hopeless and let himself lapse into sleep even before she left the room. 

As he predicted, he was woken up almost immediately by a knight who didn’t give his name to ask more questions. Simon’s tongue was almost as heavy as his eyelids then, and his brain was of limited utility. Still, despite the question, he clung to the same simple story.

“Did you really fight beside one of our knights?”

“Do you know who we really are?”

“How did you find your way here?”

“Who killed him? Did they meet their end?”

“Do you suspect any warlocks were involved?”

Each of these questions was asked more than once, though it was generally rephrased to sound different. That often forced him to stop and think about what his answer should be. 

No matter what they asked, his answer was some version of, “I was squiring under Sir Derinholt, and traveling the countryside. We fought some orcs, and he didn’t make it.” It was simple, and in his borderline intoxicated state, easy enough to remember.  

Whenever he was asked a follow-up that wasn’t covered by that, all he offered was an apology. At one point, when pressed, he mentioned the other knight that they’d met up with at the inn, but that was his only attempt to corroborate his story. The questioning went on and on, and though it was never quite hostile or threatening, it was clear to him they were trying to use duress as a weapon to get at the truth. Finally, after a half hour of badgering, that seemed like enough to leave him alone.

That left him to slumber in the deep, dreamless sleep of the drugged. It was a rough first day with the Unspoken, but that was due to his injuries as much as anything else. Simon expected worse once he recovered, but for now, suspicion was fine; it meant that they weren’t going to try to kill him until they got their answers.