Death After Death-Chapter 359 - Unraveling Her Threads

Aranna was quieter when they left than she had been when they arrived. That concerned Simon, but only a little. Still, he made no effort to force the issue. Instead, he enjoyed the sound of songbirds until she had something to say.

As the din of the city died away behind them, and the other small groups on the road in front of them began to spread out, forming their own bubble of quiet conversation, Simon was not surprised to find that he missed more than just the birdsong.

Though he had learned a great deal from their time in Abresse, what he’d learned more than anything was that the more powerful his sight was, the harder it was to be around so many people. The difference between being around thousands of people instead of hundreds was more than an order of magnitude worse.

Even as the presence of so many shouting, discordant souls deafened him, he couldn’t get through a bowl of soup without a glimpse that was deeper into someone's personal life than he ever wanted to see. Maybe I’m just not cut out for cities like this, he thought to himself as he went.

White cloaks went to cities, of course. He’d met them in several large communities. The difference, he supposed, was that they did a lot more killing than he tried to do these days. Negative emotions and murder didn’t screw up his vision nearly as bad as casting a spell, but they definitely had an effect, so it was probably easier to move among the people you were protecting if you couldn’t see every little detail of the things they were most ashamed of.

Out here, though, he didn’t have to worry about people. Beyond his brightening glow and his companions' little storm cloud of trauma, there were only the colors of nature mingling together. On quiet mornings, when the campfire was cold and Aranna was still curled in her bedroll, Simon could sit there and see the web of life extending out in all directions. It was so vivid, as it stretched from the ants to the oaks through a hundred intermediaries, that he was surprised that the morning dew wasn’t clinging to it the way it did to everything else.

Sometimes he got carried away in those silences, exploring the subtle currents of the world. In those moments, Simon often wished he could see someone else cast a spell to understand how it impacted all the currents that he would never be able to see if he used his powers. The only thing that occurred to him more often was a fervent wish that he had the ability to paint the beauty that he could see in those flashes, as everything blended together into a watercolor mosaic of color and meaning, but even if he spent three more lifetimes as an artist, he doubted he’d be able to.

There’s no harm in trying, though, he thought. Maybe that’s what I’ll do for the rest of this life. Become a hermit artist that gets mentioned in the history books hundreds of years from now.

Those moments were fragile soap bubbles of solitude, though, and it only took a word from his companion to shatter them. “Are we getting closer?” “When will we make camp for the night?” “What are you thinking about?”

Any of those statements was enough to bring him back to the present as the two of them walked along the road together, not that he minded. He needed someone to anchor him, or he might drift away entirely.

They were not yet close to their next goal, but they were getting closer every day. Simon could feel that, even if he didn’t know where it was leading him. It wove around bends and through fields. It didn’t follow the roads of the area, so they occasionally had to backtrack when it reached terrain that was too steep or crossed rivers that had no fords.

Still, eventually, almost a week later, they found the end of the strand at the ruins of a large farmstead. It had been abandoned long enough that the fields had gone wild, and trees were starting to grow up in them, but few clues about the place remained.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t what either of them hoped it would be. “It’s your father's,” he said, pointing to the small grave. The headstone was simple and featureless, but Simon could feel the details of the spiritual bond now that they’d arrived.

“Can you say how, or when?” She asked haltingly as she lay one hand on the gravestone.

Simon shook his head. “Years ago, but probably not decades. As to how, I see no trace.”

“At least it was long ago, then,” she said, mostly to herself as she sat down next to the grave. “I would hate it if we’d only missed him by a few days.”

Sitting there, she spent the next couple of hours by her father’s grave telling him everything that had happened in her life so far. Well, maybe not everything. Simon tried to give her some privacy, but even from hundreds of feet away, the conversation reached him as he investigated the ruins of the nearby buildings.

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He noted that she left out the worst bits, but she went on at length about her time at the Wayfarer and how happy she was there. That made him smile, and when she was done, because of the lateness of the day, they camped against the wall of a collapsed building, using its half-rotten, but still dry beams as firewood.

Aranna didn’t talk much about it or express disappointment that night. Instead, she just asked him to hold her and stared into the fire. Then, in the morning, after they’d eaten the last of their now stale bread with a little porridge, she asked, “Who are we off to next? My mother? I’m not sure I could handle seeing her grave so soon.”

“I think the fact that they aren’t buried together is a good sign, actually,” Simon said, trying to be optimistic. “If she were dead, wouldn’t it make sense that something terrible happened, and they’d died together?”

He had no way of proving that, but it mollified her, and they set out again. This time, they reached their destination in only a couple of days, but it still took longer than he would have thought. Every day they seemed close, and every day it was like their target moved a little further away.

It turned out there was a good reason for that. What they found, though, wasn’t a settlement, or even a farm; it was a small caravan. Even if Simon hadn’t been able to see the darkness that clung to it before they reached it, he would have known what it was they sold just based on the smell. For a moment, his heart sank as he worried he was about to break Aranna’s heart wide open by letting her see her mother like this, but it turned out that the thread that connected her to this place didn’t lead to one of the slave filled wagons. It led to one of the men around the campfire.

Simon only needed to look at him for a moment to figure out the connection. The man had dark smoke for a soul and had done nearly every vile thing one could do. Though Simon supposed that was to be expected for a slave master.

“Is this where we’re stopping for the night?” Aranna asked, confused. Normally, they avoided other groups on the road unless they were looking for news or directions.

“Aranna, I’d like you to meet someone,” he said as they walked toward the knot of men. “This is the man who stole your life and sold your family into bondage.”

Her eyes flashed with shock, but before she could respond, the man closest to them noticed their presence and said, “So, who’s this pretty bit, then? Are you buying or selling? I’d give you a good price for the girl. She—”

Aranna snarled and drew her knife, but Simon was faster and kicked the man in the chest before he stepped over his gasping body to stand in front of the aging leader of this little crew. The man’s eyes flashed with anger, but he was a canny sort and didn’t react immediately. Instead, he smiled an oily smile and said, “Peace, friend. My associate didn’t mean to disrespect your woman. If you’ve come here to buy someone new, you’re in luck. We’ve got plenty of pretty faces in stock.”

“I’ve come for your head,” Simon answered matter-of-factly. “Well, she has. I’d tell you why, but you wouldn’t care.”

Simon watched the surprise from his words ripple through the group. Only Aranna wasn’t surprised; she might not have said as much, but he could see it was true. The graying slave monger sneered at that, but Simon stepped past him to regard his men.

“You can die with him, or you can flee,” Simon said, drawing his weapon as the commotion his pronouncement caused intensified.

Everyone who hadn’t drawn their weapons in that first moment did then, but they didn’t move. Instead, they regarded Simon warily. He made for a strange warrior. He wasn’t wearing armor, and he didn’t seem especially fit. There wasn’t a single detail about him that told anyone why they should be afraid of them, and yet they hesitated.

Simon showed them that was the right answer seconds later when the closest two raised their weapons to attack. Those decisions were like two drops of still water on the pool of tension that was this scene, and as they rippled through him, he moved.

He’d never fought anyone like this from a moment of stillness, and he moved even as they made the decision to act. The men had only just started to act themselves when Simon struck. He disarmed the first man, sending his sword flying, and then cut the tendons on the hand of the second man, crippling him and forcing him to drop his sword in a single fluid motion that happened before anyone could react. He could have killed both men just as easily, but he chose not to, and instead stood there with his sword inches from the neck of a third man, who had been trying to decide whether or not to attack.

He decided against it. In fact, all of them did. Even the one that clutched at his bleeding wrist backed away at that. They didn’t know quite what had happened, but it was clear that they were completely unmatched. So, they left their boss to his own fate and retreated.

When that was done, Simon lowered his blade and asked, “Well, do you want his head or shall we torture him first?”

“Torture?” the slaver and the woman asked in entirely different tones.

Simon shrugged. “I’d advise against it, but only for the damage it will do to your own soul.”

I’d advise against the murder, too, but I know you won’t listen to that, he said silently. Nor should she have to. No one would ever be able to tell him that he shouldn’t kill Varten, and have him take it seriously, and he’d already killed that hateful man several times now.

Aranna thought about it for a few more seconds while the man begged for his life, but she still slit his throat with her knife and then watched him bleed out. For a soul that dark, Simon wasn’t going to shed a tear. The man deserved death and whatever torments he found in the afterlife. Simon still didn’t know a lot about hell, but he knew enough that he was sure he didn’t want to end up there.