Death After Death PLUS 348-350

Ch. 348 - A New Perspective

Simon didn’t get married in the year that followed, but he wasn’t quite driven out of Rivenwood either by the efforts of women who were trying to change that. What he did do was start making preparations to leave. Rather than adopt another town and put down more roots, he decided that he needed to move on. 

If I keep this up, there will be a Simon living in every town in Brin in another hundred lives, he chastised himself. What will people say?

He couldn’t keep solving levels, but just because it was tempting to carve out a home here didn’t mean it was the best idea. There were lots of other, more effective ways to fill in his blank spots about the world until his sight came back or he died of old age. 

Blank spots. Just the words were funny to him. He’d spent several lives trying to fill in a map so that he’d know where everything was, but now knowing when something was felt far more important to him. A given town might be somewhere for centuries, and a mountain might be there forever, but each would only be really important to history on a specific day or two. 

To that end, since his recent lives had taken him west to Ionia, North to Murin, and east to Charia, he decided to go south to the crossroads city of Darndelle in Montain, and then beyond that to the port town of Abresse. Simon had intended to do that a few lives back, but had been waylaid by other priorities. 

Now, the time had come to fix that mistake. As a harbor town and a thriving trade hub, it would be a great spot to set up for a year or ten and listen to all the news from the travelers that stopped through. It might not be the best place to meditate, but he’d figure something out. 

Since Simon would become known as an herbalist and healer there in a few years, he decided to pose as a scribe and a merchant this trip so as not to accidentally cross paths with himself when that plague ship came ashore. 

Of course, merchants needed capital and goods, and he had neither, but he’d figure that out in due time. That winter, he made himself a new tent and a fine bedroll that would keep him warm on future hunts. He didn’t actually do a lot of hunting, though, when the world thawed.

By then, his focus had shifted, and he spent several months working with the village’s wainwright, Mr. Kobson. The man even offered to take Simon on as an apprentice if he was planning on putting down his sword, but of course, Simon declined that. 

He only wanted to help and learn a bit of carpentry, and after helping the man build a few wheels and wagons for other people, they finally got to work on one for him. It was a process that was more complicated than he would have thought, and it gave him an appreciation for delicate asymmetries. Such things could be tolerated in art, and even in rune design by and large, but in wheels, something was either round or it wasn’t. 

Even when they finished, though, Simon didn’t leave immediately. He wouldn’t do that until the following spring. A set of wheels meant little when he had nothing to fill the back with.  Those would come, though. He could gather a few pelts hunting and plenty of herbs to dry over the course of the winter. Even if he wasn’t going to be a healer this life, he knew an awful lot about them. Those would give him enough cash to get by until he retrieved one of his silver caches to fund the next stage. 

Still, even with those broad strokes, he had many questions about his trip that he hadn’t yet made a final decision on. What should he leave? When should he tell the people who’d taken him in? Should he try to make another printing press in Abresse? 

Most importantly, though, was the last question: should he kill Varten Raithwaite when he stopped in Crowvar to visit the grave that no longer existed? He was deeply conflicted about that and asked himself the question almost every time he started to mentally plan his route south. 

“Varten, at least this Varten has never done anything to harm me,” he would remind himself sometimes. That didn’t help. Just because this snake hadn’t bitten him didn’t mean it wouldn’t as soon as it was given the chance. 

Sometimes Simon leaned toward no, but most of the time his answer was, ‘if given the slightest provocation.’ He might no longer feel rage at the young man, but there was a deep loathing there that would probably never leave him.

As the year passed, Simon put in the work. He planned planks, nailed together frames, and most importantly, he made wheels. These were more complicated than he’d even considered before, and the idea that the metal hoop that went on the outside of the wheel had to be heated so that it would expand enough to be installed on the completed wheel fascinated him. 

There’s probably some lesson there, he told himself before following it up with the question he always asked himself these days when he learned something new. What magical device could I make with this technique?

Most of the time, the answer was nothing, but the idea of a tight press fit like this, well, he was sure he’d find a use for it someday. Joinery wasn’t as interesting as art or even smithing to him. But he did appreciate the precision of it and the limitations of the medium. If you screwed something up in the forge, well, most of the time you could just heat it back up and try again, but with wood working, that piece of lumber would probably have to be used in some other way now, because you could only ever take from the work piece, you couldn’t add to it. 

Not without magic anyway, he thought with minor annoyance. 

Wood was one of the mediums he most wanted to spend more time exploring magically. While he hadn’t quite figured out how to do it in a way that wasn’t totally destructive. The idea that he could simply grow some simple magical implements, or even some hideously complex ones, using trees to do the hard work in some kind of repeatable way never left him. 

Simon doubted he could fix all the ills of the world that way, but healing talismans that quite literally grew on trees, or berries that could cure certain ailments seemed entirely possible, and if he could do that it a way that bred true, well, he didn’t know the first thing about antibiotics, but he imagined that this could replace them on a long term basis. 

All of that was in the future, though, and the most Simon did was doodle on a mirror as he made notes. For now, he focused on tradecraft and traderoutes, and he did a little work for everyone in Rivenwood as he slowly built up the things he needed. A wagon, a horse, barrels, and things to fill them with slowly added up in his name. It became hard to hide the fact that he was leaving once word got around that he was building his own wagon one fine fall day. 

That wasn’t so bad. Attending another goodbye party in his honor was bittersweet. He was getting to hate long goodbyes. That was doubly true when they surprised him with it in the midst of winter, months before he planned to leave, and then he just had to linger awkwardly after that and endure the sad looks that Majoria gave him whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. 

When Simon left Rivenwood the following spring, he was barely a tinkerer, let alone a trader. He was just a man with a wagon, a horse, and a sword. By the time he’d fetched one of his many hidden caches of silver, though, and made his way south, buying and selling as he went, all of that changed. 

A few weeks later, strangers wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference as he got into character and haggled for every copper. Simon didn’t care much about making money, of course, but he did need the funds for his trip south. He didn’t really know what would be in demand so far away, but he recalled that there had been little in the way of sheep in the same way that Ionia had few cows. Montain had sheep too, of course, but there weren’t too many other options in this area. So, he went from town to town, using profits to slowly collect a wagonload of woolen yarn and cloth.

He’d briefly been a cloth merchant in Murin before he’d been forced to flee the city, and spending a winter weaving had given him a better eye for the craftsmanship involved. It was a good synergy, and he went with it. He didn’t even encounter his first bandits until the desert that separated him from all the places he wanted to be.

The Wantari desert was a place he’d only passed through on one or two occasions, but thanks to a certain basilisk, he’d spent a lot of time there. It wasn’t very large if you were going north or south. As long as you didn’t find yourself stuck at any poisoned oases, you could get through it in a couple of days. East to west, though, was another matter. Combined with the Raiden Mountains, it served as an effective boundary between Brin and Ionia to the west, and though Brin continued a little further south to Crowvar and the badlands beyond, this was the effective end of the kingdom, which is why bandits and raiding clans tended to proliferate. 

Simon tried to handle these peacefully. He shared his fire with riders one night at the oasis that had once been poisoned so many lives ago, and paid a toll to men who had no business charging it in the first place for ‘safe passage,’ but only to avoid murdering the smirking man who declared it. On the fourth day, though, when the end of the desert was in sight, and a few scraggy trees were starting to force their way out of the patchy sand, the third group to bar his way decided they’d rather have whatever was in his wagon than anything resembling a toll. 

So, like it or not, Simon had to kill all four of them. The desert was doing such wonderful things for my mindset, too, he thought, remembering to act scared before he lashed out with his boot and kicked the man who was about to drag him down off the buckboard square in the nose with his booted heel. 

After that, everything was violence. Simon regretted not being in his armor or having his shield in easy reach. That cost him a superficial slash and a deeper stab wound, but the men who inflicted those injuries on him did not survive the mistake. 

Simon killed each of them with brutal efficiency, but there was more annoyance than emotion behind it. He didn’t even hate them as he did it; he just pursued it with a ruthless economy of motion. With a magic sword in his hand that could cut through their weapons and armor whenever he found it convenient, they didn’t really stand a chance. Stab, parry, side step, then slit the next one’s throat. The final bandit begged for mercy as he tried to edge back to where they’d left their horses, but Simon didn’t allow that. 

“I would,” he agreed as he raised his sword one final time, “But I doubt you’d extend the same courtesy to the next man you try to rob, now would you?”

The bandit was dead before he had a chance to dispute the charge, but Simon wasn’t in any doubt. He couldn’t read their auras, but he could tell the difference between a good man and a bad one these days. 

Ch. 349 - Return to the Badlands

He hadn’t intended to stop for any length of time until he reached Crowvar, but after he used up what little alcohol that first day sterilizing his wounds more than anesthetizing them, he was forced to take a break. He briefly considered using his vampiric dagger to kill one of the horses he’d taken from the bandits, but decided against that. Killing a bad man was tolerable, but a good horse? Well, that was just stupid. They’d sell for a good price in Darndell. 

Still, if he wasn’t going to do things the easy way, it forced his hand. No matter how much Zen or stoicism he tried to pile on, eventually every bump in the road twisted his guts like a knife. So, he stopped at the first good deadfall he found where firewood would be abundant, and then got himself comfortable and tried not to move around too much until the wound had sealed shut, which took hours and hours. 

Even after that, though, Simon tried not to be too hard on his body. How did I ever get by without healing magic? He asked himself as he tried to keep a philosophical point of view about this setback. 

“Well, at least there aren’t too many critters to speak of out here,” Simon told himself as he tried to find something nice to say about the area. If he went just a little further south, he’d be in centaur country, and he didn’t feel like a fight with those assholes just now. Not only did his bow work still need some practice, but there was no way he could outrun them, anchored as he was to a wagon. 

He wouldn’t starve, though, not even if he had to stay rooted to this spot for a week. He had plenty of beans and flour for fry bread. He’d be okay. 

It shouldn’t take more than a day or two to be back in decent shape, he told himself as he settled down by his small fire and pressed the icon to his bloody wound. As talismans went, it wasn’t a very powerful one, but it would do the job. 

It was only a minor setback, too. 3 days and fifty or sixty pounds of firewood later, he was most of the way back to healed, and he bore a fresh pink scar. In the grand scheme of things, that was a pretty good deal, but it still felt like a compromise. 

“The Unspoken haven’t even figured out healing magic without casting or using words of nullification without speaking,” he said to remind himself that he was well ahead of the curve. “Best not tell them about that last one or they’ll be branding everyone they see with the mark of nullification, too.”

Simon shivered at that thought and was unable to get it out of his head the rest of the day. Even as he rode on south, toward Crowvar, it kept coming back. At first, he just imagined them putting on witches, and then himself, but eventually, he could see a world where they put it on everyone just to be safe, like magic was some kind of original sin. It was a strange dystopia, where babies were branded before they were old enough to talk, so they wouldn’t be corrupted. 

Simon decided then and there that if he ever thought up something half so crazy as a solution, he’d walk to Ionia and throw himself in the volcano. It was the only rational choice. 

Aside from his disturbing imagination, though, Simon experienced no further troubles on the way to his least favorite town. Looking at a distance, he couldn’t help but think that if he and Freya had gone in literally any other direction, their lives would have been so much better.

There was nothing he could do about that now, though. Well, I could figure out how the other me is traveling back in time and then do the same thing, he told himself. It was a terrible idea, but he could see the appeal. He didn’t dwell on that, though. First he sold the spare horses he’d had tethered to his wagon for most of the the last week, and then, after paying for a room at the inn with some of the proceeds and leaving his own horse and wagon to the stableboy, he took a walk outside the decaying city walls of the town and toward the cemetery so that he could visit his wife’s grave. 

It wasn’t there, of course. It was just an empty plot that someone else would occupy eventually, but he visited it every time he went through, just the same, and allowed some of the regret that had built up to escape from the lockbox he kept at the bottom of his soul. This time, he was surprised to find that there wasn’t much left. It was just another mistake deep in his past, and after an hour of reflection, he returned to Crowvar, noting that the walls were in no shape to handle the orcs that would be coming in a decade or so. 

He made a note to try to find a way to drop a few hints about that to those who lived here today and tomorrow. While no one would believe him if he told them that dread day was coming outright, perhaps he could plant a seed to make it a priority for a day in the future. 

He was still thinking about that when he returned to the inn to find that a messenger had delivered something for him. “For me? Are you sure?” Simon asked the owner when the man offered him the small sealed missive. “I only just got here.”

“The Baron is informed whenever anyone of interest comes through the gates,” the jolly man said with a smile. “Apparently, you are of interest."

Simon shrugged at that, not sure what to say as he opened the letter. If it was the baron, then he already knew what it would contain. He was being invited to dinner. 

Simon was surprised by the invitation, but he supposed he shouldn’t have been. Crowvar was off the beaten path, and every previous visit he’d made to the place showed how hungry they were for news. Still, this time Simon didn’t accept the offer. 

The food was probably better at the Baron’s home, but there was a better than even chance he’d end up killing the boy, and he wanted to avoid that if he could. His soul would be cleaner for it, and though he didn’t feel guilty about the bandits he’d killed, he realized that their deaths had probably already set him back on his current journey by months. 

One must not muddy the waters of their soul if they wish to see clearly, Simon reminded himself with one of the Oracle’s proverbs, as he tried to put the young man out of his mind. 

Still, not even that decision spared him. Less than an hour after he’d finished his simple meal in the common room of the Inn and was working on a new beer with an entirely different conversational partner, Varten himself appeared. 

Simon sighed at that, wondering why the universe worked the way it did. Once upon a time, he might have blamed the Goddess for this, but now he knew enough about connections and the vagaries of destiny to know that certain things were connected, and for better or worse, he was probably connected to this awful young man across every life where they both lived now. 

As Varten came in, he took in the room, and for a moment, Simon thought that he’d come here to fight the merchant who had refused to dine at his father’s table. His eyes slid right off Simon, though, and instead his face lit up when he saw someone he was looking for, and he moved to join them instead. 

See, he chastised himself. Not everything is about you. 

In this case, it wasn’t, and Simon was pleasantly surprised by that. Instead of fighting the man, or even watching him with curiosity, Simon tuned him out and continued the conversation he was having with the man next to him at the bar about the current state of the grain trade. 

As the evening went on, Simon had spent the whole night telling himself that he wouldn’t kill Varten. He’d meant it too, enough that he’d largely tuned out the spoiled noble as he sat and drank with his friends by the fire in the inn’s crowded common room. Instead, he reminded himself of the good times he’d spent here with Freya as a cute newly wedded couple before they’d had their own cottage. 

All that changed, though, when the Raithwaite heir tried to convince the barmaid, who clearly wasn’t interested in him, to go home with him. “Common,” he slurred drunkenly. “I’ll pay double. You knoww ihmmm good for it.”

The busty woman was looking for new ways to tell him no without completely alienating someone so powerful, but Simon was less interested in that than the fact that everyone around Varten studiously ignored what was happening. 

It’s their fault he’s going to die, he told himself as he downed the last of his beer, slammed his tankard on the ground, and rose. If someone would just shame him or stop him, that would be enough… 

No one did, though, which was why Simon didn’t walk up to his room where he’d planned to sleep until morning. Instead, he walked over to where the lordling was pulling insistently on the woman’s arm. Varten didn’t even notice his approach before Simon’s blade was out.

Then, he only had the barest time to regard it before he was missing a hand. There was a scream then. For a moment, Simon thought it was from the woman, but it was just Varten letting out a high-pitched squeal. 

“I… My hand!” he cried. “You cut off my fucking hand!”

“I did,” Simon agreed, “Now, apologize to the woman and we can leave it at that.”

He didn’t threaten the young man with his sword. He didn’t even look at him or his bloody stump. Instead, he looked to his friends, trying to decide if they were the sort to be brave or not.

When all of them stayed sitting, Simon started to lean toward them. I suppose that makes sense, he reasoned. If you aren’t going to interfere in the former case, then why would you interfere in the latter?

“Apologize?” the lordling sneered. “To a whore? When my father hears what you’ve done, he’ll—”

Varten never got the chance to finish his statement. Even as he waved his bloody limb at Simon, he plunged his weapon between the boy’s ribs and into his heart. He hadn’t wanted today to go like this, but here he was. 

Maybe there is a fate, he wondered. Maybe it’s his destiny to die, like this, every time. 

Simon reflected on that, and as the bar emptied and people sought to escape the violent scene before they could be blamed for it, Simon contemplated that part. It was an iffy declaration to make, but if he believed it, then he was choosing to believe that it was his destiny to kill Varten over and over again.

Simon wasn’t sure he cared for that conclusion, but he mulled it over as one of the nobles’ friends got to his feet and put his hand on his hilt. He opened up his mouth and seemed to be working up the courage to speak before Simon interrupted. “Varten was a wretch, and you can tell his father I said so. He deserved what he got, but no one else has to die for his mistakes.”

Simon looked at the fop then, who slowly took his hand off his own hilt and backed away. Simon got no thanks or gratitude as he looked around, but then, he didn’t expect any; on some level, he was just as in the wrong as Varten, at least to these people. 

The young noble had only forced himself on a girl, but Simon was a murderer. He mulled over how he felt about that, and how he might have handled the same situation as he went back out to the stables to retrieve his horse. Sleeping here was no longer a good idea, and it was for the best if he was on his way. 

Ch. 350 - A Crossroads

Simon left Crowvar before the word of what happened could get to the watch, and he made a point of telling the guard that he was headed back north to Leipzen as he did so. That must have helped to throw whoever came after him off his trail that night because there were no riders. Even so, he didn’t sleep. He didn’t dwell on what he'd done either.

His heart was at peace. He’d done the right thing; perhaps if it had been someone he didn’t know so well, the right thing would have been to kick his ass, but for a monster like Varten? Well, he’d always thought it was stupid that superheroes locked up super villains so that they could go on to commit the same atrocities over and over again. 

“Maybe I should make a list,” he told himself that night while he let his horse slake its thirst at a stream. “People that need to die every life, no matter what, and store that in the mirror so I don’t forget.” It would be a pretty short list right now, but he was sure that with enough lives it would grow too long for him to remember. 

Despite the fact that people were undoubtedly hunting him, he actually made a quick and relatively painless crossing to Darndelle. If there were riders from Crowvar, they never caught up with him. He did see centaurs on the horizon twice, but whether they saw him or not, they never approached, letting him continue on his way. 

The capital of Montain was smaller than almost every other capital he’d been to. It was only very slightly bigger than the capital of mountainous Charia, but it was still large enough for him to lose himself in, at least a little. Simon didn’t plan on staying long; he knew the unspoken had a very active presence here, and he had no desire to get on their radar just yet. 

Still, he couldn’t breeze through without spending a few days playing tourist, and a few more looking for the right deals before he continued on his way. Mostly during that time, he marveled at how different the character of the city was. With no Blackheart curse, the oppressive aura he’d long since grown used to no longer existed, and that was almost enough to make up for his orphanage, which was no longer there. 

Maybe that’s what I can do with the money I earn this lifetime, he told himself. I can open a new orphanage to replace the one I erased. He couldn’t do anything to replace the son that no longer existed, but this much at least, he could do; it wasn’t quite as ambitious as building a printing press or creating a multigenerational clan, but it was something he’d be able to remember no matter how many lifetimes he put between now and the end of the Pit. 

Simon was relieved that there was no statue of him anymore, at least. He still sketched it from memory, along with the prettiest parts of the central graveyard, out of pure nostalgia. Now that he was moving south, paper was getting cheaper, and he’d purchased himself a fine white journal that would do double duty as both a trading ledger and an art book.

For all the time he’d spent here, this city didn’t evoke nearly so many memories as the last town he’d visited. Darndelle was more about the things he’d done than the memory of having done them. After all, the Black Swarmers were an ugly memory, and the cemetery, well, once he’d figured out the secret of the Blackheart, it had been simple enough.

“Besides reading endless scrolls in an attempt to unravel a riddle, and almost becoming addicted to the lives of others, what did I even do here?” he asked himself before deciding he should leave soon. Darndelle would only ever be a place on the way to somewhere else; it just wasn’t worth lingering in if he didn’t have to. It wasn’t ugly, or even unpleasant; there was just nothing here for him. 

Before he went further south, he made a point to empty his wagon as best he could and pick up loads of sundries that seemed to make more sense. He’d originally considered wool to be his best option, but apparently, Abresse was undergoing a bit of a boom right now. So, Simon sold what he had for the best price he could and bought nails by the pound, along with what hand tools were available, along with the supplies he’d need to reach the coastal city-state. 

There would be no profit in hauling bricks or boards from so far away, but it seemed to be a reasonable choice given the gossip. By his count, he had at least a decade until the plague struck the city, and while he expected to be gone by then, he’d heard that the years before that were good ones by those he treated so long ago, so he prepared for that. 

What he didn’t prepare for was how long the trip from Darndelle to Abresse was. Sure, he knew that on the map, just over a week of travel separated the two places, but as he went south, all of his good luck so far ran out. He found nothing but bad roads, bad weather, and eventually, bad people. 

Simon spent three days at an inn near the ocean cliffs during the worst part of a storm. It was a squall that came off the sea to soak and chill every inch of land that wasn’t covered by a good roof and heated by a warm fire. 

While the Black Dog Inn hardly had a good roof, it was better than the alternative, and he chose to stay in that falling-down place rather than press on. He was in no hurry, but he didn’t much care for the company he was forced to keep, or the prices that the owner charged for meals during those trying days. 

“I can’t get no new supplies until the weather lets up, now can I?” the man asked when another angry customer confronted him about the price of beer. “All I’m doin’ is earning a fair bit for doin’ my part, and that’s all!”

That line, along with other transparent attempts to hide his greed behind a greasy smile, worked pretty well until the third day, but Simon didn’t let it bother him. Instead, he stayed sober and wasted his coppers in an attempt to make friends with those who seemed least likely to rob him or slit his throat while he slept. 

Unlike the owner and the guests who seemed to be related to him in some way, everyone else was decent enough. They were just like him; all they wanted was to be back on the road, and anywhere but here. 

That part went well enough. While he made no real friends, he listened to plenty of talk and found out that only a day or two from here, the roads improved considerably, which cheered him almost as much as the news that there hadn’t been any bandit attacks in the area for months. 

“Sometimes people still go missin’,” the messenger that frequented the area explained hastily, “But the Governor, well, he stung up every thief and cutpurse in and around the city a year or so back, and things have mostly been quiet. Now, if he could only purge the monsters on the trail, merchants wouldn’t need to hire guards at all.”

A couple of the men drinking with them were out-of-work caravan guards, so they groaned at the very idea, but everyone else welcomed it. Simon, for his part, appreciated the proactive approach. If every large city in the region did that, the world would be a much safer place. 

Things continued in that unhappy but not entirely miserable state until the fifth day, when the weather finally started to let up. That morning, he got up early, eager to get on the road, but before he could do so, he noticed that a crate of his goods had gone missing. 

It wasn’t a lot of money, really. It was just tools and cookery. Even if he sold all of it at a good price, it would have only amounted to a few silver coins, but it was the principle of the thing. It was the cherry on the shit sundae that had been his week, and he immediately decided that he was going to get it back. 

Since it was first thing in the morning and no one had left in days, it would be easy enough to find the thief. So, rather than carve a dowsing rod to track them down, he just went inside and made a stink about it to the other early risers who shared his outrage. After a brief check, he wasn’t the only one with something missing, either. Soon enough, he’d rounded up a posse of like-minded men to help him get to the bottom of it. 

The group had the air of a lynch mob about it, but Simon felt like he could keep it under control. He figured that whoever they caught red-handed would get a beating at worst, and that was true, until their growing group reached the inn’s basement and found a treasure trove of thievery, and judging by the blood stains on a few of the items, evidence of at least a couple murders.

Simon’s crate was sitting there in the pile that they’d found behind a row of empty casks, but there were also bolts of cloth, the personal effects of people from at least three different nations based on the languages they wrote in, and a few more grisly trophies. Someone had been busy. 

“Could it be that these are the monsters making people disappear?” one of the other merchants asked. 

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found monsters in human form,” Simon agreed, thinking back to the worst group of bandits he’d purged recently, and their wagon graveyard. 

The innkeeper was barely awake to start breakfast before the group of them arrested him at swordpoint. He protested loudly, "There’s been some kind of mistake here! This is just a misunderstandin'," but the fighting didn’t start until his kin, if they were even related at all, came down the stairs with murder in their eyes and weapons in hand. 

Simon hadn’t been in a lot of bar fights, but something about the murderous nature of this one reminded him of fighting Zombies in Schwarzenbruck so long ago. There was a viciousness to it that he found familiar, and it was as fast as it was bloody.

This time, he managed to avoid killing anyone, but only because he was more interested in answers than he was in vengeance. Killing someone just because they’d ripped him off for a few silver coins would have been petty. 

Still, the innkeeper didn’t know that he didn’t plan to kill anyone, so he played up that part in questioning the fat man, and slowly, one half truth at a time, the situation revealed itself, and the answer explained all the other incongruities. 

If only I could have seen this man’s black soul at first glance, Simon thought as the conversation went on, having more and more sympathy for the woman who had killed him in his sleep in her inn so long ago. She didn’t know what made his aura so black, but she knew it was nothing good, and she’d done what needed to be done. 

It turned out the man wasn’t the innkeeper at all, and the rest of his supposed family weren’t related to him. They were bandits who had gone to ground when Abresse had tried to reinforce law and order. This isolated road house, far from any village, had become a hideout, and they’d let it go to hell as they preyed on the people passing through. 

After that, Simon didn’t need to hear anymore. They begged for mercy, but the only mercy he’d give them would be a good knot that would snap their necks instead of letting them suffer when he hung them. After that, he and the other actual guests hung those corpses up along the roadside, one at a time, as a warning to anyone who might try something like this in the future.