Death After Death PLUS 351-353

Ch. 351 - A Different Path

Simon went down the coast, stopping in a number of fishing villages on his way to Abresse, but he didn’t quite make it there before he turned around. It wasn’t the condition of the roads, or even the weather, that turned him away, either; it was thoughts of the Black Dog Inn. 

The whole trip, Simon had been trying to decide what he’d do when he got to the wealthy city-state.  Part of him had decided that a lumber mill just upriver from the river that it spanned would be the best choice. His goal this life wasn’t to get rich, though; it was to learn more about the world while he cleared his mind and his soul, and while he was well on his way to do the former, he’d been doing an abysmal job of the latter. 

So, because that decaying, neglected inn called out to him, he turned back and started the other way again. Walking three days away from it and three days back was the waste of a week, but he found the place pretty much as he’d left it. Whether it was because of the still displayed bodies or just its level of disrepair, no one had thought to loot the place or burn it down. 

“Whoever actually owns the place might have relatives, you know,” he told himself as he regarded the place. “They might come and claim it later, after you’ve started to fix it up. Wouldn’t you feel stupid then?”

While Simon acknowledged that was true, he didn’t really care. The idea of hanging out at the wharf or one of the marketplaces in Abresse might be fun for a while, but it seemed to be altogether too hectic for his main goal, which was to regain his sight. If he didn’t want to set down roots anywhere, he’d be tempted to stick around, then an inn half a day from anywhere seemed like a good choice. The fact that it probably had an evil reputation spreading in all directions even as he stood there, well, that just made it a better boulder to roll uphill. 

Simon started by inventorying the remaining provisions and then creating a list of the most urgent repairs that had to be made to keep the weather out. Once all of those were done, even before he traveled up the road in search of a brewer who might help him with his critical beer shortage, Simon started to clean. 

That, more than anything, was the biggest problem with the Black Dog, well, besides its name. We’re going to have to change that soon, he told himself as he opened every window to air out the place and started on the sweeping. It was filthy, and Simon was willing to bet that there’d been no cleaning done since the bandits had done in the original owners. That was the main reason he didn’t cut down their rotting corpses and throw them into the sea. They deserved to suffer as long as he did. 

Their immortal souls have long since reincarnated as goblins or sloths, he reminded himself. Still, they kept him company for now. 

On nice days, he beat rugs in the front yard or mucked out the stables, and during periods of bad weather, he scrubbed floors or sorted supplies as he added more and more items to his ever-growing list of repairs. That wasn’t so bad, though. In a way, it reminded him of the random tasks he was assigned day in and day out in the Oracle’s caldera city. It was very freeing to select some small detail and accomplish it in the rambling building, putting his thoughts in order as he put the rooms in their place. 

The structure was simple, but vast. Outside, there was a low-walled yard, stables, and a small well. Inside the main building, there was a large common room, a small dwelling for the owner's family, kitchens, a large basement, and eight small rooms. Individually, none of those places were very large, but somehow they’d added up whole lifetimes of dirt to be scrubbed away. It was like the more he cleaned, the more he found.

During all that time, he didn’t get any prospective customers, though as long as the corpses of highwaymen were still decorating the road, he didn’t really expect to. That was half the reason he’d left them up. 

His first visitors were mercenaries from Abresse who’d come to check on the story that had reached the city about the Black Dog, and the vermin that ran it. Though he was initially viewed with suspicion as some kind of squatter, after he explained to them that he was the one who had discovered the nefarious plot, their whole attitude changed. Simon had no beer left to offer them, but he let the men inside and gave them bowls of warm split pea soup and fresh-baked bread as he relayed the tale again. 

“So you’re a merchant and you just decided to set up shop?” their leader asked, turning the conversation from the bandits and the building to Simon himself partway through the meal. “That’s quite the switch, isn’t it?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I was getting tired of the road anyway,” Simon answered. “One too many blows to the head will do that.”

As Simon spoke, he gestured to his head and the scars from his orcish encounter, before relating an entirely false story about a bandit attack some years back. “I was bringing a load of building supplies down to your city, but then I ended up here in this empty building and thought repairing it and trying to help those who ply the trade roads might be a bit more relaxing.”

“You won’t get many customers with that name above your door,” one of the mercenaries answered. 

“Nor without beer,” another added. 

Simon nodded and explained to them that he’d start carving a new sign soon. “I plan to go north to one of the villages there and buy a few kegs of beer soon,” he explained. “I just knew that someone would be coming to investigate, and I wanted to make sure you had all of the particulars before I cut the corpses down and opened for business.”

That wasn’t true, but it was close to what they seemed to want to hear, and though they didn’t stay in the inn itself despite Simon’s invitation, they camped in the courtyard that night, and then cut down the corpses before returning home on the trail to the southeast.

The week that followed was filled with resupplying. He journeyed north and east to the villages of Darbin, Geford, and Pebble Bay and had conversations with brewers, millers, and farmers about buying goods from them on a regular basis. Everyone was happy to sell him what he needed, but to a man, all of them were more interested in how he’d come to be the owner of the Black Dog. 

“Well, it’s not the Black Dog anymore,” he explained. “It’s the Wayfarer, and as to how I came into possession of it…” He told them all the same tale, dramatized only slightly to make the men who had squatted there for the best part of the year seem more monstrous. 

The fact that several of those he’d spoken to had actually done business with the place under the new owners after poor old Mister and Missus Medelarono had moved back to the city unexpectedly made them more, not less willing to help Simon with his endeavor, and almost no one tried to rip him off, which was welcome news, because most of his funds were tied up in trade goods he currently had no plans to sell. That was okay too, with the state of the roof and some of the doors, his clumsy carpentry would need all the nails he could get his hands on. 

Simon kept himself busy, but hadn’t even started carving his new sign by the time his first guests arrived a week later. Fortunately, he had enough food and drinks on hand for everyone, but working the bar and the kitchen by himself made for a busy night, though not unpleasantly so. Simon charged a copper penny for a space in the common room and another for a space in the stables. A room was twice that, and another coin besides for the meal. Drinks weren’t much more, though he was willing to let anyone sleep for free if they wanted to help out with firewood, mucking the stables, or doing the dishes, but strangely, no one took him up on that. 

That was fine. In the two days before that group left, Simon made enough profit to make him wonder why he’d ever thought doing the merchant thing was a good idea. Sure, they’d managed to put a dent in his beer supply, but rough math said that every beer he sold was nearly a hundred percent profit. There would probably be some bad barrels and spilled drinks, and other things that reduced that, but even so, it was a good deal. 

The food and rooms had an even better profit margin, since he didn’t have to pay anyone, though an extra pair of hands or two would be welcome. He lost a little money every day he made fresh bread, and no one came to eat it, but that just meant more for him. In this world, fresh food was a luxury that he didn’t always have access to, and he enjoyed it. 

Simon still had no guests more often than he had some, and except for the worst weather days, his inn was never full. Even though he gave the inn a new name, and carved a large set of letters that spelled Wayfairer across an old wagon wheel he’d found in the stables, most people still called the place The Black Dog, and it would take time for that reputation to dissipate. 

“Youh might make more money if you jussst burned the placcce down and built a new ssspot half a day up the road…” one patron suggested drunkenly one day. 

Simon nodded as if he had a point, but he disregarded the idea immediately. While the history of this spot was a problem, it was the location that made it valuable. Half a day and either direction, and there would be other villages with other established lodgings. He’d visited them, and they were certainly nicer than the Wayfarer. 

But not as nice as the Wayfarer could be, he told himself. 

He’d decided to settle here almost on a whim, and the quiet life was definitely doing him some good. So was not wearing a sword on his belt every day. He wasn’t supposed to care about the place too much. He was supposed to be sitting on a rock overlooking the sea and meditating half the time, but he was no longer the sort of person who could do things in a half ass way, and each time he went to a nearby village for more supplies, he asked if anyone was looking for work. 

He didn’t need a cook or even a barmaid, but it would take a lot off his plate and give him more time to rehang doors, fix the moldering thatching on the roof, and all the other tasks he’d need to make his little inn shine. 

Ch. 352 - A Helping Hand

Simon spent weeks doing the big fixes, and months more doing the small ones before the Wayfarer started to look like a proper inn. On quiet days, he split rails to mend the worst sections of the decaying fence, and on busier ones, he cleaned the kitchens or polished one of the lanterns that lit the common rooms at night. From the leaning chimney to the squeaky steps or the rats in the basement, there was always something to do.

The guests didn’t exactly notice the change; how could they? Most of them, he only ever saw the one time they passed through on their way to or from somewhere far away. A few coppers weren’t much, but it was more than most people had. 

Still, even if his guests didn’t notice changes in the inn, it was fair to say that he noticed a change in his guests. Slowly, the harried and the desperate were replaced with a more affluent and well-mannered slice of the population. Simon supposed that meant he could start to raise his prices, but he wasn’t really in this for the money, so he didn’t bother. 

At this point, any profit he made was just invested into supplies to finish one of his many projects or start a small wine cellar. He didn’t need to save for a printing press in this life, but that didn’t mean that he should waste time. 

How much better will one of these bottles be in a hundred years? He wondered as he shelved a few more of the bottles every couple of weeks. He had no idea, but he was looking forward to finding out. He’d chosen a small nook for this project, and whenever it was done, he’d take some bricks and mortar and wall it off so that in some future lifetime he could come back to it. 

Kind of like the gold in the level two dungeon, only this time I’ll actually know where to find it again, he said silently to himself as he beat himself up for still not knowing exactly where that horde was. Sealing that level off before he’d figured out what it was for was a mistake that continued to haunt him. 

Things proceeded smoothly through the summer and into the fall, but his progress started to slow. It was hard to see day by day, or even week by week, but when Simon looked at what he’d planned to do in a month versus what he’d actually gotten done, well, the list spoke for itself. 

By the end of that time, his progress had ground to a halt, though. Not because there wasn’t more to do, but because he ran out of time to do it. The place had customers most days now, not just when big caravans came by or when the weather swept through. On those days, the rooms were very often full, and the common room was so packed he couldn’t keep up with the demand for roasts and stews. 

This was hardly meditation, but it was certainly meditative, and Simon learned to enjoy the busy times almost as much as the quiet times. Twice a bard had even come through and played songs for all to enjoy for a small donation of food and drink. 

Simon got no closer to understanding the spiritual connections of the world in those months, as winter advanced steadily closer. He did grow to appreciate the social bonds that much more, though, and listening to the triumphs and others had an interesting sort of rhythm that wasn’t so different from the weaving he’d done the previous winter. 

Except for the farmers he bought his supplies from, he almost never saw the same person twice, but he saw the same kind of person over and over, and eventually, after enough arrivals, he could just tell who was going to be who. It wasn’t quite reading their auras, but it was a close thing. 

Trouble was the easiest to spot; anyone who was in that category looked at Simon like he was a mark. They also usually drank quite heavily. They were the ones that Simon kept his eyes on the most, but a few stories about the goblins he’d slain in his youth usually kept them from doing anything too hasty. If they were really rowdy, he found an excuse to tell everyone the story of how he’d come to own the Wayfarer and slain the bandits who lived here single-handedly. 

While that wasn’t quite true, enough people still spoke about the bodies that had been left hanging there for months that it felt true. Still, even then, Simon had never been forced to kill someone in this inn, and he aimed to keep it that way. It was good for his soul. 

The other types were easier to figure out. There was the bearer of urgent business; no guessing was required for this one. He’d tell you about it himself, at least broadly speaking. Many were the men who would loudly tell you just how important the secret they dared not share was. 

They were just one face among many. There were also the grifters, the retired soldiers, the men who just wanted to be home with their families, and the young idealists. Women were a minority on the road. He’d see them occasionally, but usually in the company of one or more men. 

Simon had a harder time reading them, though that was as much because of their scarcity as anything. No matter how much he might try to see the threads connecting all these people to each other and their destinies, those glimpses eluded him. Still, he kept at it, abstaining from magic, murder, and any of the negative emotions that weighed him down so much in previous lives. 

That much was easy, outside of the occasional problem guest. There was a joy to be found in serving others, and his cooking became immeasurably better as the number of his guests increased. More than weaving, drawing, or joinery, he felt this was likely to be the art form he specialized in most during this life. 

If anything what he missed were the damn colored robes. That was one thing he never would have expected. In the oracle’s cult his life had been random drudgery as well, that wasn’t so different from this one, but now, he had no signposts to show him that he was improving, and as flimsy as those gray robes were, he found that he missed them now that they were gone. 

Still, he liked to imagine that the shades were getting lighter, slowly but surely, and while not nearly as pale as the snow that piled up on the ground that winter, they would be in time. 

White robes would certainly be preferable to a White Cloak, he reflected, but it wasn’t as if the two offered him the same opportunities. 

If he returned to the Oracle, she might cryptically speak about the real danger of witchcraft, but she wouldn’t offer him any practical tips for fighting it. Her practical tips would end somewhere around, ‘sit this one out.’

Even as the winter passed in what felt like the blink of an eye, Simon was no closer to finding his clarity. He’d made a home and developed a rewarding routine, but it was too easy for him to imagine spending a whole life being trapped by it. 

Even the building is stuck in a rut, he noticed one morning when fetching supplies. 

No, there was no doubt about it, he decided as he looked around the courtyard after things started to thaw. The snows may have hidden it for a while, but things had started to stagnate, and if he didn’t put the work in, he could see the whole place going to shit. 

“My being a trader would have been easier,” Simon whispered to himself as he fetched the water that morning. 

Aranna changed all of that. She came in one day wearing a gray cloak that hid the better part of her beauty. At first, Simon thought she’d come for a room, or to meet someone else, but when he asked her about that, she smiled tightly and introduced herself before saying, “I was told that you were looking for help with this place.”

“Absolutely,” Simon said before he started to explain the situation. “It pays five—”

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, so he wasn’t about to give her a full interview or anything. Worst case, he could always fire her if she didn’t work out, but she was certainly pretty enough to be a barmaid and would almost certainly bring in more business. 

“I’ll do it,” she said, agreeing before he could explain anything. “I’m sure the pay is fine. I just… this would be a good place for me. All I ask is that you don’t ask me about my, uhmmm… circumstances.”

Simon answered, nodding at that as he wondered what that meant and tried to read between the lines. She seemed too young to be a runaway, and too sweet to be real trouble, so he didn’t have an immediate answer to her strange behavior, so he was hardly going to turn her away. 

Even though whoever might still be out looking for him for how he’d gutted Varten never found him, Simon still had enough of a past across most of his lifetimes that he could respect the desire for privacy. While it did raise questions, he left them alone for now; he could always ask later if something came of it.

Instead of worrying about who she was, he focused on what she could do, which was plenty. Aranna couldn’t cook, but other than that, she seemed reasonably well-rounded and didn’t balk at drinking or serving. She even handled rowdy customers well enough that he didn’t need to get involved, deepening the mystery. 

What kind of life has she led to develop these particular skills? Simon wondered often as not as he tried and failed to remain disinterested. 

She was a real help to him, so he tried not to pry, but still, he couldn’t escape from the thought completely. It shadowed her in even the simplest acts, like churning butter and sweeping. Simon thought far more about what dark secrets she might have than the way she filled out her dress. 

More than either of those things, though, he was actually able to start getting real work done around his inn. With her there to man the counter, answer questions, and fetch drinks, he had all the time in the world to work on failing masonry and broken furniture. 

Even if he looked past his barmaid’s beauty, the same could not be true for everyone. His patrons certainly noticed, and she quickly became as much a draw as the location. Within her first month there, he’d had to break one man’s nose and toss him out on his ear to go sleep in the barn when the drunk wouldn’t shut up about “the things I’d do to her.” Simon was hardly a white knight, but his equanimity could only go so far. 

Aranna didn’t like that, of course. Her dusky eyes lit up with anger whenever she caught him defending her. “You’ve been more than fair to me, Simon,” she said, “But I can take care of myself.”

While he didn’t doubt that, it made him more interested in her than anything. That contradiction was almost enough to make him lust after her, though he resisted that urge, too. While he didn’t need to get involved in whatever troubles she’d run away from, he certainly didn’t need to get involved with a woman, and certainly not one who was as beautiful as his barmaid was. That would only lead to trouble.

Ch. 353 - The Quiet Life

In Simon’s first year as an Innkeeper, he managed to turn a dump into something livable, but it didn’t start to become a home until that second year. It wasn’t just Aranna, either. Her dark beauty and diffident personality became an important part of his life, sure. There were even a few moments when one of them had drunk a bit too much, where he might have become more than just her employer. 

Those became less frequent as his little inn family grew. In time, as money became less important than time so that Simon could return to some experimentation, it multiplied. First, he found a cook named Bessa. She was older than he was in this life, but not so ancient that she had more than a sprinkling of gray in her hair. She came from Abresse, but before that, somewhere across the sea. She didn’t talk about that much, though, with her subtle accent, Simon wished that she would. 

Eventually, he adopted a young man as well. He was the sole survivor of a caravan that had been shattered by a troll that had wandered out of the woods in an attempt to make a home in a seaside cave a few hours east. 

Simon had heard rumors of it, but before he could do more than think about how to handle it, the monster had dashed a caravan to pieces, shattering more than one family in the process. So, when Leon had shown up bloody on his doorstep, there was little for Simon to do beyond bandage the boy and seek his bloody revenge. 

Fortunately, being a year out of practice didn’t matter nearly as much as having a pony keg full of lamp oil and a flaming arrow. Simon led the thing on a merry chase through the trees, and when it was fully doused, he lit it up, lingering long enough to behead the monster and wait for sunrise so he could make sure that the burned pieces of its corpse still turned to stone. 

Simon couldn’t replace the boy's parents, but he did pay for a proper burial once that was done, and even after he offered to send him back to wherever he’d come from, Leon insisted on staying. Simon supposed that was fine too. He was a child of privilege, but if he didn’t want to leave the side of the man who’d slain the monster that had eaten his parents, then he put him to work as a stable boy, which was something they’d sorely needed.

Simon offered to pay the boy, but Leon refused. “I owe you a debt I can never repay,” the boy explained. Simon didn’t see it that way, though, and still saved two copper coins a week in his name that would eventually go toward getting him a real internship somewhere, or perhaps even some land of his own. 

After the Wayfarer had a staff of four, it was less profitable than it had been as a one-man show, but it gave Simon infinitely more time. In the evenings, he’d still man the bar on busy nights, but the rest of the time he divided evenly between improving the building and his own studies. Often as not, when he worked on the building, he’d have Leon with him too, as a helper, which made that time even more efficient. 

He had his own room now, and he could, within reason, afford all the paper he wanted, so he devoted significant study to the Dreaming Orb, and runes from other circles and places that he did not yet understand. 

He ultimately stored all of these researches in his mirror, of course, but something about holding a quill and sketching them out on paper made him feel more in tune with them. Slowly, he tried to put them together like some kind of alphabet or periodic table. Progress on that was slow, but there was a logical progression to the curves and the shapes when placed in certain orders. He didn’t know if those orders actually meant anything, or if they existed only in his mind, but he felt like they should. 

Just a few more pieces of the puzzle, he told himself regularly. If I could just learn another word or two, I’m sure I could solve it. 

They were happy times, and things might have continued like that indefinitely, as far as Simon was concerned. Simon was staying magic-free, and his experience points said everything was going in the right direction as they rose steadily. 

Then, one day, Leon came running inside and blurted out. “The man who just came here says the rest of his group will arrive shortly.”

Simon was about to ask why that mattered at all. While not quite empty, the Wayfarer had plenty of space. However, before he could get any words out, Leon finally delivered the lead he’d buried. “He had a white cloak, and said that they’re witch hunters!”

“A white cloak? You’re sure?” Simon asked. “You’re sure about that?”

The boy nodded without hesitation, making Simon curse. He had no way of knowing why they were here, but they surely meant trouble. He was half tempted to believe they were just passing through and on their way somewhere else until he glanced at his lovely barmaid and saw that she looked like she’d seen a ghost. 

“Are they here for you?” he asked in a whisper as he moved close to her.

“I… They might be. I’m not sure,” she answered nervously. 

“Damn it,” Simon sighed. He wasn’t about to give up one of his own, but he was absolutely not looking to pick a fight. 

“We’ve got to get you out of sight,” he said, taking her by the elbow and escorting her down the stairs.

“When they come in, be nice and stall them,” he told Bessa. “If they ask about Aranna, just tell them you haven’t seen her in days…”

The cook nodded, but even as she did so, she protested. “Men like that? They’ll know I’m lying.”

“I’ll do the lying,” Simon called out behind him. “You just keep them busy.” 

As he finished his statement, he took Aranna below into the darkened cellar. Normally, he would stop to light a torch, but there wasn’t time for that just now. Instead, he went by memory, taking her further from the light and toward the little wine cellar he’d built in one corner.

When Simon had started the project, he’d intended to brick it up when he was done with it, but thanks to all the help he’d had recently, he’d built a shelf as a false door to the shelf behind it instead. He’d done it just to practice some clever carpentry, but now, it made the perfect hidey hole that was just big enough for one scared woman. 

“You’ll be safe here,” he explained, “I’ll be back soon with food and news. I promise.”

His words did little to mollify her. Simon could see it in her face. She thought that he was going to sell her out. Maybe the average guy would have done that, but then Simon was hardly average. What he was, was in a hurry, and he rushed back toward the stairs, and in the common room in time to apologize for his tardiness and take over for his cook before she melted down under the pressure. 

“What can I help you gentlemen with?” Simon asked, trying to split the difference between respect and fear, even though he felt neither. 

The guard captain introduced himself as Lord Wallace before explaining, “We’re looking for someone. A young woman. Dark hair, dark eyes. She sometimes goes by the name Aria or Arianya. We heard a rumor that she might be in your employ.”

Simon looked at the two armed men behind him, and then out the window at the half a dozen men in the yard. There was nothing about this group that shouted that they were whitecloaks, but Simon could see it the same way Leon could. No, he could see it better; he knew what all their tokens and secret signs looked like. 

“Listen,” he said, raising his hands to make it clear he had nothing to hide. “I don’t want no trouble, and I’d give up Aranna if I had her, but… well, she left a few days ago. She just took off and headed north. She didn’t say why.”

“Did she now?” the Lord asked with undisguised suspicion as he stepped closer to Simon. “You wouldn’t be trying to hide her from me, now would you?”

Simon shook his head. “She was a good barmaid, and I’d like to know what she’s done, but I’m not one to fight ten on one, even for my own mother.”

That was a lie. He’d fight a hundred on one, or even a thousand on one, for the right woman. He would have summoned an ocean of fire against an army that threatened Freya if only he'd known how, and he almost had for Elthena at one point, but those instincts would do him no favors here. So he did his best to pretend to be a coward. It was a distasteful role for him, but he had at least one ancient lifetime of experience to draw upon there. 

“Well then, you won’t mind if we search the premises for her, now will you?” the man said with the barest hint of a smile. 

“Search all you want,” Simon said, “But be respectful of the other guests and gentle on the furnishings. If you damage something, you’ll be paying for it.”

The commander’s smirk widened at Simon’s attempt to play the cowardly moneygrubber, making him wonder what the other man could see. Simon knew from experience that the sight was muddied by violence and dark thoughts, so he doubted many members of the Unspoken had the ability to see more than light and dark, but it was something to worry about. 

Otherwise, he wasn’t too worried, at least about Aranna. They wouldn’t find where he’d hidden her. It was remotely possible they’d find some of his research notes in his room if they were searched hard enough; he made a note to burn those later. For now, though, he didn’t think they’d be looking through anything too small to hide someone in. 

The white cloaks kept up their search for over an hour before they decided that she, in fact, wasn’t there. They went through every room and asked everyone present, but got no more than what Simon had already told them. 

“See,” he answered. “I told you. She up and left without even taking all her things.”

“No matter,” the commander answered with a shrug. “We will have dinner, and then use a token of finding to locate her with one of her discarded dresses.” He went on to explain that such things only worked on someone who had recently been there, and that things would be so much easier if they might just use it to follow people to the world’s end, but Simon shook his head, pretending not to understand any of it. 

“Magic?” Simon breathed, feigning fear. “But I thought that—”

“A blessed object, nothing more,” the man reassured him. “Our order has many tools given to us by the gods to aid us in our task. No one's soul will be damaged by helping us hunt down a wayward soul.”

“I’ll help you however I can,” Simon lied, even as his mind raced. 

While he took their order, he slowly put together a plan, and as soon as he retreated to the kitchen, he pulled his stableboy aside. “Listen, take my horse, saddle it up and ride it north to the forest, then let it go,” he told him. “Then hurry back. Be back by morning. I want nothing else suspicious here.”

“Why? It’s a good horse,” the boy protested. 

“Because if they’re looking for Ara… as they look for the woman they’re hunting, she’ll have needed some way to escape, and the answer is that she took my horse.”

“I see,” the boy answered, moving to obey Simon, even though it was obvious that he didn’t. He didn’t need to understand, though; he owed Simon too much to question him.