Alright, so first, I apologize for the complications last week. I linked the post to the wrong tier, causing delays and frustration for anyone trying to read their weekly chapters. I mistakenly gave access permissions to the wrong tier. It was completely my mistake.

As recompense, all I can offer are words, so have 4 chapters this week. I may offer bonus chapters to RR/SH one day, but for now, you will be that much further ahead of them. Enjoy!

Ch. 403 - Fresh Eyes

They didn’t get stopped when they reached Ionia, but only because Simon took off his cloak and lied about their purpose in fluent Ionian. That surprised Varten and made the guards skeptical, but they let Simon and his squire pass. He didn’t do it because he wanted his squire to see the sea, although that’s what Simon told him. He did it because he wanted to see the place he’d spent so much time through fresh eyes. 

And I want a little more time away from the Broken Tower before I return lest someone scent the magic on me, he added silently. It was a real possibility, but he had no idea of the likelihood. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry.

During his time in Ionar, he’d viewed the city through the eyes of a healer, an artist, and a teacher. He’d never seen it through the eyes of a witch-hunter, though, and after his most recent encounter, he desperately wanted to know if evil had been lurking beneath the surface throughout his stay. He definitely hadn’t gotten the whole story on the queen’s vizier, or her prophecy, and he was convinced there had to be some kind of magic in the region he simply wasn’t privy to.

If I hadn’t spent a life in Charia with Kayla and Eddek and found a witch that marked the flesh of their victims, I would never have even expected someone could mark their soul directly. That realization stopped Simon in his tracks. He’d just taken it for granted that a witch could do that, but most witches probably couldn’t even see the souls of their victims, let alone mark them. 

The leap of logic stunned him. He’d simply accepted that it was possible, and while of course it had proved to be, the answer was how? If he spoke the words to do it, he’d lose his sight immediately. 

The fae didn’t speak of it, but if it really thought it could judge the truth of a statement, there was probably a related power going on there, he decided. 

Could demons do the same thing then? Did they do the same thing? He had no idea. He could very easily imagine a demonic pact marking a soul, and he didn’t like that idea since he would come back to life again and again with the same mark. Something told him that at least with demons, though, such a thing would be voluntary, unlike the faerie that took whatever amused it.

Why would it have to be a contract, though? He wondered in the quiet moments where they traveled. Demons are evil, selfish monsters. It can’t be a sense of honor or fair play that holds them back. They were good questions, but he had no answers to go with them. 

He didn’t find any great new evil that he imagined either. If it was there, he didn’t find it on this trip. Oh, there were a few people with auras dark enough that they had to be murderers or worse. With his recently blurred vision, Simon couldn’t say for sure what all their crimes were, but he wasn’t here to enforce the law, and if he tried, he doubted that the Queen’s soldiers would see things his way.

Instead of righting wrongs, they stayed just long enough for Varten to see the waves and taste the local cuisine, but that was all. He didn’t think anything he did here would ripple, given how little interaction he’d had with this part of the world ever since he’d erased the whole timeline involving his son, but he wasn’t about to chance things. 

“How do you know so much about this place if you’ve never been here?” Varten asked him one day as Simon was explaining the meaning of a mosaic on the temple of the sea, and got lost in a whole tangent about the cost of blue pigments. 

“They’re called books,” he lied, “And one day you’ll see they’re even more important than a sword in what we do.”

“Is that how you learned to speak their tongue, too?” his squire asked skeptically. “From books?”

Actually, that was a magic potion given to me by a goddess, Simon thought before answering, “I know you can’t understand what they’re saying, but every merchant I talk to complains about my accent. I know the basics, but not the rhythm, and that as much as the way we’re dressed marks us as foreigners.”

He used that point to launch into a whole tirade about recognizing foreigners as prime candidates for heretics and warlocks. While he didn't want to make Varten too xenophobic, he did want the boy to have a sharp eye for what didn't belong. That was usually the first and only warning you'd get before whatever was wrong killed you. After that, they didn’t return to the topic of why Simon knew so much about a place he’d never been, but it was a good reminder that he needed to be more careful with what he showed off. 

In this life, he was a witchhunter, not an artist or any of the other dozen jobs he’d had before. They didn’t linger long after that anyway. As soon as Simon’s vision started to sharpen, they were off again, back toward home. In total, they’d still be gone for a couple of months, but their trip to Ionia itself, and Ionar proper, would be less than two weeks.

In that time, he was preoccupied with thoughts of the soul, and while he never uttered a word to Varten about fae and devils and the fingerprints that both left on the souls of men, it was never far from his mind. Neither was the fact that he’d finally used magic in a new way. It was clumsy and strange, but it was a thrill nonetheless, and he looked forward to a life where he could spend months and years just exploring the new techniques. 

The Oracle had said that using magic in that way dulled the clarity of a person’s soul. She’d been right, too. Speaking a word of power was like filling a pond with silt and waiting for years for the flow of events to carry it away. Making a gesture, though, was like splashing the waters of the soul. You stirred things up, but in months it was all back to normal.

In reality, it probably didn’t matter how much it blinded him. In lives where he needed his sight, he would use almost no magic, and in lives where he was focused on magic, he would use it freely. If anything, he’d use it more than ever. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but he strongly believed that he could use one word verbally while gesturing another simultaneously. The pattern would take time to understand, and he’d essentially have to make his own spellbook, but he was fairly certain that he’d figure it out. 

Such activities would open up a whole world of magical effects. Even before he’d seen his doppelganger string long strings of words of power together, he’d understood you could get more complicated and powerful effects with such techniques. The problem was that in the moment, when every syllable counted, barking a word or a greater word was always a safer choice. 

Not everyone can spend their lives so freely, though, Simon reminded himself. Not everyone can choose power over flexibility. 

Those weren’t thoughts for this lifetime, but they interested him almost as much as the existence of the fae did. If he used the words of distant shaping as he spoke the words of lesser fire, he could probably mimic the effects of a pure word of fire, or even a greater word of fire, but over a much smaller area. 

Did he need to fill a whole room with flames, though? Would it be just as effective to fill an opponent's lungs with them? Force and Lightning offered even more opportunities. He knew how little it would take to disrupt the human heart or mind. With a little practice, he felt confident he could drop someone without leaving a mark on them.

That was a hell of a power, but he’d certainly miss being able to see what a person was guilty of, or where they were about to swing their blade before they did. While magic was powerful, he felt certain that being able to see as deeply as possible into the world around him would help him on more levels. 

It won’t help me bring down the basilisk before that bastard turns me to stone, his mind volunteered. That was true. There was no way he was taking chances there or with anything else with something as flimsy as a magic sword ever again. A wand of greater lightning probably wasn’t even enough to safely deal with that monster, and no wand he knew of was powerful enough to channel a greater word. 

Those worries, at least, were safely in his future, and Simon didn’t let them burden him too much. Instead, he enjoyed his time on the road with his squire as they made the long trip back to the Broken Tower. 

Along the way, they encountered no more goblins, but they did have to make one detour because a bridge they’d used on the way here had been swept away in a flood. That made the two of them stop in a village that was dangerously close to Ordenvale to arbitrate a local mystery where the peasants were convinced that one of their number was poisoning the sheep of their neighbors. 

Simon’s vision might not have been crystal clear yet, but he could see that it wasn’t the case, and he spent a few days there, asking questions and poking around. The answer turned out to be accidental. The innkeeper had a fairly complicated still set up in the woods where he was making spirits to evade the taxes of the local lord, and when he dumped his used-up mash, the grazing animals sometimes found it and sickened. 

It was accidental, and while the families that had been affected were angry at first, the brewer agreed to pay restitution in hard liquor. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but everyone seemed happy with it. The innkeeper tried to pay Simon the same way, to silence him, but that was unnecessary. 

“I’m just glad we solved the mystery before someone did something drastic,” he told the man. “Not every curse means a witch is hiding in the hedges.”

He might be a lawman in a strange way, but he didn’t see taxes as something that he needed to enforce. If it wasn’t something he felt the need to hang the perpetrator for, it wasn’t his problem. Varten at least didn't complain about that. He seemed almost annoyed that Simon stopped to help every person in need.

"That's the job," he explained. "We strike down the rotten souls to save the rest. Always remember, boy, that turning a blind eye to such people is nothing but cruelty to everyone else."

Ch. 404 - You Can Get Used to Anything

The inquisition he expected when he reported the fae never materialized; in fact, the only part of his story that got any scrutiny at all was when he finally had to reveal the witchmark-like symbols he’d seen on their souls. 

He left those out of the initial report for obvious reasons. However, when Master Harrin asked a series of questions about how he’d found the fae in the first place, Simon was forced to bring them up. That got some scrutiny, and he was asked to draw them. He was also given penance for failing to include them in his initial report, and spent three days on only bread and water contemplating the meaning of truth as he drew them. 

That was fine. While his stomach rumbled, Simon worked very hard on those sketches. Still, despite that effort to be as faithful as possible, he made sure that none of them looked quite like words of power. Instead, he made them take on little animalistic shapes and argued that they were foul vermin sent from the vengeful forest. This one was a fish, with a large tail, and that one was a twisted serpent tightening around the neck of an old woman.

The Unspoken Master seemed happy enough with that explanation, and barely commented when Simon explained that he broke the circle with cold iron and was able to escape its tricks. This was hardly the first run-in with the fae that someone in the order had experienced, and when Simon asked, he was given several more tomes that dealt with the subjects to read.

According to those anecdotes, he really was lucky. Being trapped in an eerie ring for years or decades had actually happened, and on several occasions, knights had returned to the Broken Tower long after they’d been given up for dead without having aged a day. 

Might be a useful trick if I could figure out how it was done, Simon noted. 

While it would be a horrible fate for anyone with a family or a life worth living, if he wanted to jump into the far future and see how his choices really affected things, it was a lot more appealing than being turned into a vampire and stuffed in a wall for the best part of a century.

Until now, Simon had treated the existence of faerie folk as myths and legends, but after his brush with them, he treated the topic more seriously. So, while he trained Varten and waited for his next assignment, he covered a lot of that ground. Mostly, it looked like the Unspoken dealt with the fickle creatures with a little prayer and a lot of fire. Using Whisperers was considered to be a waste because “A woman could whisper her whole life away with no idea if the evil spirit was actually purged, or if it just slipped away.”

Simon could believe that. He’d used the word of nullification at point-blank range, but if he’d just wandered the woods hoping to get lucky, it would have been less effective than firing his bow into the underbrush and hoping to bag dinner. 

In fact, in at least two stories, Sisters were seen to scare the fae away even without speaking a word, if only temporarily. The books suggested that both of the women in question were virgins and such spirits could not vex those who were pure in body and soul, but Simon doubted that. It was far more likely that some trace of magic clung to those women, and anyone else who used magic, and the faeries could sense it somehow. 

That was entirely theoretical, because he’d never detected any sort of residue, but then, he’d never been looking for it. Surely if there is, then the Unspoken could see it on me, couldn’t they? 

That was a stupid point to make, at least right now, and he shrugged it off. He hadn’t spoken a word of power in a lifetime. It had been nearly a decade. Still, he wasn’t happy with that answer, and eventually decided there had to be more to it for the fae than the lingering smell of magic. It had also claimed to know the truth of everything he said, but it hadn’t even been right about everything it had labeled a truth or a falsehood. 

Eventually, he put the experience down into the same nebulous region as Icefang. The dragon hadn’t been right about everything either, but it had shown off some bizarre powers Simon would love to copy. If one had the mastery of time that the fae had, and the mastery of space and dimension that dragons had, then how would one not be a god?

Except for the fact that he could still bleed out like anyone else, Simon probably was a god now. Most of his constraints were of his own making, and he was bound by duty far more than the impossible now. Still, that didn’t stop him from fasting, training, or doing all the other chores that kept people from looking at him like he was the chosen one. 

That rumor was definitely going around more after his latest run-in with the fae. Simon still wasn’t sure what he was foretold to do, but he was sure that he wasn’t the guy, and if he wasn't, he wasn’t doing it. Still, he wasn’t accomplishing his main goal of learning about witches, either. If anything, he was teaching the Unspoken about them and any number of other hazards as he came across them. 

I’d definitely check out if not for Varten, he thought now and then when the topic resurfaced. 

While he hadn’t yet figured out a way to defend his soul until he learned more about Helade's reality knot, he had decided that the way to ensure the most protection was with a tattoo or amulet that would kill him the moment someone tried to touch his soul. That would be good enough for now, but he couldn’t exactly run off on his squire. 

He no longer thought of the boy as an estranged enemy, and he’d never think of him as a son like he had with some of his other students, but he was at very least a pet, and Simon had an obligation to take care of him and make him a better man. In that much at least, he was succeeding. 

Though the boy’s questions were occasionally awkward for Simon and his magical studies, Simon much preferred that to the blind ignorance that so many other Whitecloaks displayed. He’d much prefer the questions and the occasional arguments, even if that ended up with Simon being burned at the stake at some point in the future. He could live with that future, and for some reason, he just couldn’t shake the feeling that the boy would be the death of him. 

Maybe I’ll just never see the good in him, Simon wondered as the days passed. 

They were back at the Broken Tower for several months before they were sent out again. This time, they were sent south to Montain, with no specific guidance beyond the usual: do good, and root out evil wherever you find it. 

Up until now, Simon had devoted a lot of time to trying to decide how it was these directions were chosen. This trip was enough for him to decide it was totally random. While the masters occasionally sent him somewhere with a specific destination or complaint, mostly knights just wandered around until they tripped over a situation that needed to be dealt with. 

It felt very primitive to him, and he spent a lot of time in those fruitless weeks in the plains and deserts that separated the two nations, pondering how much more useful it would be if the Grandmaster used some flavor of divination to send his men to the most likely spots. 

Then they wouldn’t be the Whitecloaks anymore, he reminded himself. They’d be some other organization. 

Though he could readily admit that the idea was colored by his view of the Pit thanks to Helades, it wasn’t a bad one. Maybe he’d try that in some life. He could spend years focused on divination, figuring out what was where, and who was going to do what until he charted his own path through the Goddess’s maze. 

While their current assignment involved endless wandering and gave Simon plenty of time to examine the idea from every angle, he couldn’t share any of these ideas with his squire. Still, during their hours in the saddle, he often posed similar ideas as philosophical quandaries to explore them more fully. 

“What would you do if a god granted you the ability to know exactly what outcomes your action would have?” he asked Varten one windy day. “If he were an evil man, but you knew for a fact that it would make the world worse when he died, what would you do?”

Varten had trouble even following the premise. Which was fair, since it was fairly convoluted and his mind had never been exposed to any of these ideas. “Isn’t that what your sight does?” he asked when he finally felt he understood enough to comment. 

“Not exactly,” Simon commented. Before he could get into a more elaborate explanation of what he meant by that, his squire continued.

“Well, I’d just kill everyone that looked evil, and then everyone who was good would be safe,” Varten said, seemingly very pleased with his answer. 

“Ah, but what if the evil man was the strongest warrior in the village?” Simon interjected. 

“I’m stronger than that,” the squire boasted. “I’d—”

“You could kill him, but suppose that if you did, the goblins that live in the nearby forest would eat the villagers once you were gone,” Simon pressed him, trying to make him see the real question. 

Varten tried to explain that he’d simply kill the goblins too, but Simon disallowed that as an answer, even though that was hypocritical since that had been exactly his own answer to his doppelganger. 

“So I have to let bad people live if they’re strong so they can protect weaker good people?” the boy asked, confused. 

Simon shook his head. “I’m just asking which is truly the greater good, killing him, and thus everyone else, or letting him live and know that he will kill at least some of those he protects from other evils?”

The question and others like it led them in circles for days, but then that was the point. It let him see how childish his main position was, but it also let him see how cynical Helades was, and he was sure there was a better way. 

Their mission did too, but in a more literal sense. He and Varten spent three weeks in the field, and the most they did was stumble across an innkeeper who had been stealing from his guests. Simon didn’t string him up for that since he hadn’t actually killed anyone, but he did turn the man in, along with the pile of other people’s possessions he’d stolen. It was too mundane for him to handle, despite how much free time he had, but the world would be better off without a man like that plying strangers with drinks and lightening their pockets. 

It wasn’t the only trip that wasted his time, either. The next two were little better. Simon found no witches or warlocks. He didn’t even find the hint of the fae. He did fight a man, but he was a drunk, not a bandit, and Simon put him on his back with a closed fist instead of a naked blade. They almost fought a band of centaurs, but Varten’s pony hadn’t been able to keep up long enough to close the gap, and the cowards had fled. 

They did eventually encounter a ghost, or something like it, on the way back from their third fruitless mission. Simon saw a spirit flickering at the edge of the woods, and when he followed it, it led him to a burned-out homestead that was long overgrown, with a body in the front yard that had been reduced to skeletal remains. 

Nothing actually tried to attack him, and when he buried it, the spirit faded away. It lacked the details for him to say anything about it, but from the shape of the pelvis, Simon felt pretty certain it was a man. 

Varten saw nothing, but he tried to. He claimed to sometimes see glimpses of something more, but ghosts, it would seem, were still well beyond him. “If I have to bury the guy, at least he should let me see him,” the boy grumbled as he took up the shovel and filled in the pit that Simon had dug. 

He didn’t have much to say on the encounter, but he wrote it down anyway when they returned. Master Harrin didn’t even ask Simon about it, leaving him to wonder if the Unspoken even cared about magic, or just when magic got people killed. That was a fine line, of course, just not the one that Simon would have chosen.

Ch. 405 - Somewhere Familiar   

For the better part of a year, Simon was sent on nothing but wild goose chases. He eventually started asking for something more challenging, but was told, “The gods will challenge you when you are ready to face those challenges, and not before.”

One part of him started believing that he’d slain the last monsters left in Brin, making it safe for everyone. Another, more paranoid part began to worry that they were intentionally wasting his time and sending him places where he was likely to find nothing worth knowing. 

This would have been Sir Derinholt’s perfect assignment, Simon thought wistfully as they traveled from noble manor to inn to pub and back again. He chafed at that, and almost relished the bands of bandits and other ne’er-do-wells they would occasionally stumble across. 

It got so bad that even Varten complained about having nothing to kill. In all that time, they scoured all the unimportant places in southern Brin, only skipping Crowvar for obvious reasons. 

This time, they were sent north to the Capital of Liepzen to investigate a wealthy merchant who had been just a bit too lucky lately. To Simon, the whole thing reeked of politics as soon as he was informed that he was to report to Lord Trantis, who was a count that served the King's brother, the duke. 

Simon didn’t fight the task because there was no easy way to do that, but he was determined to go out of his way not to make waves. Whatever he did or didn’t do at the capital could easily ripple out to the rest of Brin and unlock any number of levels. He was more concerned about that than he was about political backbiting or a stray murder. Even a real warlock probably didn’t rate more than the tangle of causality that was his life now. 

He wouldn’t let a truly black soul slip through his fingers, of course, but he’d regret it later. The last thing he wanted to do was redo one of the early levels again. He wanted to jump through the trap door, kill a village of lizardmen, and then see what Freya’s level really was supposed to be before she screwed it all up, and as soon as Varten got to an age where he became a knight in his own measure he’d do exactly that; Simon just needed to go another decade without fouling anything up. 

When he told Varten, the boy claimed, “My father mentioned Count Trantis on our last trip north. The words were not kind.” 

While Simon’s opinion generally aligned with his charge, he urged him to look on the bright side, and he tried to do the same. He hadn’t been to the capital in many lives because he didn’t want to screw anything up, so this would be an opportunity to learn more about the situation on the ground. 

After all, according to his math, it had been a year or two since the much younger version of himself had done a life transfer to the King and forestalled a war, but according to his future experiences, that wouldn’t last forever. Getting a few more data points on how exactly that process played out would be good information to have. 

If I’m going to risk resetting my progress, I might as well get something out of it, he told himself. 

The first thing he got out of it was actually seeing the city again. He’d been here before, and it hadn’t changed at all, but seeing it was nostalgic, and as he looked at the main gate, he recalled the time he’d died right there trying to overthrow the duke. It made Simon smile, but when his squire asked him what was so funny, Simon just waved it away. 

While not half so impressive as the Murani capital, the city was a respectable place with a stone skyline. It might even be considered grand. It was much nicer than the capital of Charia, Adonan, and while it wasn’t as pretty as Ionia, or even Abresse, it would stand up better in a fight than both of them put together. They were made for trade, and to some extent art, while Leipzen leaned more toward battle and functionality like the clanholds of its mountainous neighbor. 

During Simon’s first visits here, he’d never considered what such details might say about a people, but now he couldn’t unsee them. Everything spoke to him now, from the heraldry of the guards and the men walking along the city wall, to the cobblestone streets and the wagons that traveled them. 

The guards barely acknowledged his existence, extending him carte blanche rather than any obvious preference. That was just the opposite of the commoner’s reactions. Almost to a man, they shied away from Simon’s cloak, condemning him and his squire to isolation on an island of two, no matter how crowded the street or the marketplace. 

Only a few men and women would violate that pattern during their stay. They would instead ask for Simon’s blessing, and the colors that swirled in their aura indicated that they were usually on death's door because of some illness. 

He probably could have saved some of them, even without magic. That was obviously what they wanted his blessing to do, but even though he was tempted to do just that, he didn't. For once he resisted the urge to put on his doctor’s hat. This time he wasn’t going to save anyone, not even if the King himself perished while Simon was in town. 

The best way to blow up your house of cards is to start saving people or killing them, he reminded himself. Each of those lives will ripple out in a thousand ways you will never know. 

Instead of ruining everything on the first day or even trying to finish as soon as possible, Simon started with subtlety. After they secured a room at an inn not far from the waterfront that went by the name of the Broken Oar, which he’d never before set eyes upon, he used conversations instead of blades or accusations to start getting his bearings. 

He didn’t visit Count Trantis or the merchant who had drawn his ire. Instead, he visited other lesser nobles within the city and gauged the lay of the land from innocent-sounding questions over dinner, where Simon was always the guest of honor. While he asked those men about the principals who had brought him here in a round about way, he also asked them about an ever-growing list of names that he learned as he went to muddy the waters. 

After a dozen such meals, he learned many things, but not all of them were relevant to his case. Still, they were details he scribbled away after he was alone in bed in case they should become relevant later.  

He learned that after a brief and unexpected respite gifted to him by the gods a few years before, the King was ailing once more. Neither of those facts surprised Simon since he’d been the one to give him that respite, and knew what the cause was. Age came to everyone on a long enough timeline, even him, on at least one occasion. 

This time, though, the shoe seemed to be on the other foot, and it was the King’s son who was actively drumming up allies to stand against the duke when his father finally keeled over. Some were worried the young man wouldn’t wait that long and might rush things to their proper conclusion himself, but after the way he’d been treated in the previous timelines, Simon couldn’t really blame him. He’d never know he’d been assassinated over and over, but still, he seemed to sense the precariousness of his position and was acting accordingly.

“Maybe he thinks that such forward thinking will forestall a civil war,” Simon suggested one night to the Viscount of Burgundon. The man seemed scandalized by the mere suggestion.

“Gods protect us, such a thing will never come to pass,” the noble said, reaching for his glass of red wine even as he swore the oath. “Such a war would be bloody beyond measure.”

It will be, Simon agreed, wondering if the man he was sitting across from would survive it.  

While royal politics was always interesting to him, he also learned a hundred pieces of gossip he’d never need to know. In fact, it seemed a matter of course for the gentry to throw their neighbors to the wolves in the hopes that service would get them off the hook for whatever sins they imagined Simon had come to their door for. 

He learned that Lord Harlan hadn’t been faithful to any of the three women who had held the distinction of being called Lady Harlan. He learned that Duke Brin’s youngest son might not be his, and that Lady Linderly was fond of drink and the handsome young servants who attended to her every need when her husband was away. 

The scandalized noble who told him that even managed to whisper, “They even say she doesn’t care if it's a footman or a maid who serves her on those nights.”

More than any of that, though, Simon discovered that he loved putting the fear into these pompous, preening men who lorded over their fellows. It wasn't a sadistic thrill; it was more just than that. Despite all of their power and wealth, these men knew that his nebulous authority as a witch hunter could damn them with a single accusation, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.

He promised to investigate the matter, but truthfully, he cared very little who slept with whom, and the most he was ever likely to do was note it down. The only rumors he was really interested in were the paranormal kind, and those were few and far between. He learned about a few old buildings in hushed tones that were said to be haunted, and a section of the trade quarter near the river docks where children went missing, but even when he brought up the merchant he was investigating, Mr. Dekarlo, he was given no leads. 

The most anyone would say about him was that he had “A devil’s luck for sure. He’s a decent trader, but never touch a pair of dice while he’s in the room. You’ll live to regret it.”

He did not bring his squire to most of these meetings, for reasons both social and practical, but he always talked with Varten about them at night when he returned to their inn before he went to bed. That wasn’t just to make him feel included, either. The boy was a noble himself, or at least he had been in another life. 

He’d met some of these people, and heard his father speak about many more of them, and on several occasions he was able to confirm those rumors, though just as often he would say something like, “I’m told that story is older than I am. If it’s true, it hasn’t been true for a decade or more.”

Still, after half a month inside the walls of Leipzen, Simon had found no deep dark secrets. None of the men or women he’d met had overflowed with darkness. Most of them had been a light gray of one sort or another. While he was sure that most of them had servants with blood on their hands, they obviously left the dirty work to the help and didn’t feel bad enough about whatever happened to share those stains with them.

“Well,” Simon said finally one night after paying a visit to the Meleigh family. “I suppose I’m going to have to pay Mr. Dekarlo a visit and see if he really is dabbling in witchcraft.” 

Ch. 406 - Nothing Unusual

When Simon finally arranged a chance meeting with the man, he left his cloak and even his armor in the room. He let his squire come too, but only because having a child with him made him even less conspicuous. Anyone who saw them might think he was just a craftsman or a trader out for a walk with his son.

He had a feeling that the Unspoken would not have approved of such an approach, but then, he didn’t care; as long as he didn’t report encountering a demon or a witch, they didn’t seem to care what he did. They would care even less if he actually brought back coins or the valuables of someone he’d denounced, but he couldn’t be bothered with that. The best he could do was bring back evil grimoires that he didn’t think would cause too much trouble. 

For a semi-secret organization, they loved to show their colors, rubbing their unacknowledged existence in everyone’s faces while simultaneously hiding behind a veil of secrecy. As far as Simon was concerned, it was only their small numbers that kept the mystique alive. There were only a few hundred members of the group, and less that only half of them were knights. When one considered that most of those knights were away from the Broken Tower on any given week, the odds that a given village or city would see one shrank dramatically. Simon didn’t worry too much about that, though. Instead, he enjoyed a view of the city free of the fear he’d been afforded so far. 

It was nice. He was jostled a lot more on the streets than he would have been otherwise, but his physique these days made the other person move instead of him, almost every time. It wasn’t something he flaunted, though it did feel strange to be out without the hard shell of his armor. He’d never cared for platemail in previous lives, but now it had become a part of him. As such, the muscles it took to carry it and fight in it were hardly less imposing. 

What Simon found when he reached the market was hardly impressive. The merchant wasn’t trading forgotten tomes or Murani artifacts from far-flung cities. He wasn’t even selling shady herbal cures. He was just buying and selling grain. It was completely run-of-the-mill stuff. He had wheat, millet, and barley in various quantities and qualities. 

Not only was it the last thing the Unspoken should have worried about, but it wasn’t even a place he could linger without drawing attention unless he wanted to start bidding for bushels. Suddenly, this whole thing felt like a personal vendetta he’d been roped into. The man’s aura wasn’t a particularly bright white; he obviously had his share of vices and misdeeds, but he didn’t seem to be a bad person, and even when Simon stared into the man, he could see no mortal sins or any witchmarks coloring his soul. 

He lingered for a while, letting Varten sample some of the various fruits of the harvest, like ground cherries and goose berries, which didn’t grow anywhere near Crowvar. As he did that, though, he already decided he’d get nothing here. The place was a complete bust. That afternoon, he left Varten at their inn with some ready coin for dinner for a day or two, and he went for a ride to see Count Trantis. 

His squire didn’t like that at all, but Simon would not be bent by his pleading. “You’ll be much safer here,” he insisted. The Broken Oar wasn’t in the best part of town, but then, Leipzin didn’t seem to have any really bad neighborhoods that Simon had seen so far. Those clung outside beyond the city walls.

“Just mind your studies while I'm gone,” he admonished the thirteen-year-old. “If you do all your reading, we’ll find something fun to do as a treat, an outing perhaps.”

That didn’t thrill the boy, but honestly, Simon wasn’t thrilled about leaving him behind either. He’d never leave a thirteen-year-old boy home alone under normal circumstances. They made movies on Earth about all the trouble they’d get into on their own once upon a time. He was pretty sure he’d seen some, though he couldn’t remember any titles. 

Here, the choice wasn’t between no danger and some danger, though. Here he was choosing to leave Varten in a safe city, or dragging him off to the manor of a conniving count. Anything might happen there, and Simon had died to enough ambushes that he always expected them on some level now.

He promised he’d be back the following evening, though, just the same. If he were murdered, well, eventually, Varten would go back to the Broken Tower and tell them what he knew, which would probably give him enough revenge. 

You don’t even have to die, he told himself as he rode out of the gates. Well, you do, but you don’t have to stay dead. You could just wait until today in your next life, then ride back into town, and Varten would be none the wiser. 

While that was true, Simon didn’t think that was very likely. The last time he’d done that, it had been for his son and the woman he wanted to be his wife. Waiting for the best part of a decade for the timing just to keep raising Varten didn’t really rate. 

Still, despite his misgivings, when he reached the manor, he found only fearful, easily intimidated servants, not danger, and as he was brought to the count’s private dining room, a meal was served to Simon while the lord made his excuses with whoever it was he’d been entertaining. By the time he’d finished eating, the noble had joined him and seemed so eager he was practically drooling to find out the fate of the man he’d sicced the Unspoken on. 

“Well, have you disposed of the villain?” were the very first words he asked as soon as he shut the doors and was alone with Simon. 

“I'd be able to do that quicker if I knew what it was he’d done that needed to be dealt with,” Simon answered, pretending to be patient as much as he was pretending to be on this man’s side. 

His tone made it clear that he was used to getting his way, and his murky aura swirled with flickering colors that made him seem tempestuous to say the least. Well, that’s why everyone who works for him is walking on eggshells, Simon thought, realizing this was probably the man’s best behavior.

“Wh-what he’s done?” the noble sputtered.”The man has stolen from me and mine with witchcraft and treachery. He is to pay amends and, at very least, be flogged publicly. Barring that, I expect him to burn for what he’s done!”

“First, if he’s done something worth burning, then no other punishment will be sufficient," Simon answered in a tone cold enough to settle the man. “But that remains to be seen, for now. I require more evidence before passing judgment.”

Simon didn’t like to put on the whole holier-than-thou act, but it was better than dealing with this pompous asshole any other way. Slowly, the details came out. The count explained the way that the merchant traveled to and fro in his lands, buying grain from farmers as he went. Ostensibly, he was paying a good price, or at least a fair enough price for them to agree to, but when taxes were collected, the revenues were so low that the noble felt sure that his people had been bewitched. 

“Why would my farmers, good men from a dozen different villages, simply give away the fruits of their labor for a pittance to a stranger? Magic can be the only explanation!” Count Trantis exclaimed. “He’s bewitched the lot of them!”

Simon asked more questions, and eventually the supporting documents came out. They told a slightly different story. The farmers all claimed they’d made the only deal on offer, and they’d gotten as good a price as anyone else, but tax records for the previous year showed a noticeable drop. It wasn’t quite the apocalyptic change that the count had led Simon to believe, and it definitely wasn’t black magic. 

For a moment, he wondered how it was that Count Trantis had convinced the order to send Simon for such triviality, though he didn’t bother to ask. Rather than exchange any more than he had to with the man, he went back and forth through the ledgers and the written accounts with the books by candlelight until he found a pattern. 

“Your merchant went to each of your villages at the peak of harvest, it looks like,” Simon explained, “And then through some sales tactic or merchant's trick, he convinced everyone there was a glut on the market, and they sold cheaper than they otherwise would have. That’s why they say they were paid a fair price, because they got the same price as everyone else they knew.”

“So he convinced them to take a lower price?” the count asked in a skeptical tone. “That sounds like fraud to me. He should be whipped!”

“Maybe,” Simon answered noncommittally as he flipped through the sales records, “But these people were clearly afraid that the price was going to turn even lower, so they sold while they could.”

The count started to rave about hexes and glamors again, but Simon shut that down. “That’s not magic,” he sighed, “That’s math, or maybe manipulation. He hasn’t cheated you, well, not exactly. He has cheated your people, at least I think he has, but certainly hasn’t hexed you. He just... fooled you.”

The noble purpled, and for a moment, Simon thought the man might strike him, but he didn’t even think about flinching. He might have laughed if the count had done it, but instead the noble thought better of it and stepped back, wringing his hands. 

“I was… I would never… Not to a common charlatan… He must be a warlock. He must be!” Count Trantis insisted. 

Simon walked through the numbers again, offering the count an explanation of how Simon thought the scam worked. Someone had mentioned that the merchant was dangerous with dice, and at this point, Simon felt sure that the only magic he possessed was either a golden tongue made for lying or an uncommon proficiency with statistics or some other exotic math. Simon had been forced to learn geometry for several art projects in Ionar, but since then, his life had been blessedly math-free. Still, looking at the proffered ledgers, he couldn’t be sure exactly what was wrong, but he was pretty sure something wasn't adding up. 

The count categorically refused this analysis and insisted that Simon make an example of him. “The man is a menace!” Count Trantis insisted. 

Simon pretended to listen, since he was sure whatever Whitecloak had actually been dispatched to solve this problem in another timeline would have done that much, but that was it. He was done here, and as soon as he had the opportunity, he made noises about leaving. 

Unfortunately, by that point, the count wouldn’t hear of it and insisted that Simon enjoy his hospitality. That wasn’t because he cared at all about Simon, though. He made that clear when he said, “No one will ever be able to say I haven’t done my utmost to help and support your illustrious order.”

Simon accepted the offer with feigned gratitude. A bath and a bed would be nice. Still, when he woke at sunrise, he left immediately, and when the stable boy tried to stop him, insisting, “My lord will be very vexed if you leave before he can see you off,” Simon barely slowed down.

“Tell him I received a revelation, and am off to see justice done,” he answered the confused man. It was enough of a fig leaf that the noble could believe whatever he wanted, but the only resolution Simon planned to give was to tell Mr. Dekarlo to stop playing games with the count before the man had him killed. 

He delivered that statement after a relaxing half-day ride back to the city, which was a total contrast from the urgent night ride he’d made the day before. Then he’d been worried about being away for too long, but now, well, the case was solved, he was pretty sure, and it wasn’t witchcraft but ego that was to blame.