Death After Death-Chapter 372 - The Order Of Silence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you know who we really are?”

“How did you find your way here?”

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

“Do you suspect any warlocks were involved?”

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

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

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

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