Death After Death

Chapter 137: Duties and Demands

When all was said and done, almost a season later, just as the heat of summer was starting to set in, they finally arrived in Crowvar once more. As an errand for the domain, it probably had not been worth that much time. However, Simon had learned enough that he really didn’t mind. It wasn’t like time held real value for him, especially not on a level without an exit.

Still, as they got close enough to the city to make out the details, he was pleased to see that his other hard work had paid off. The walls of the town were no longer ragged. Though still blackened in some places, they had been finished, and the effect was bigger than he would have thought. It looked like a proper walled city again, though he knew that was a trick of distance as much as anything.

The way they had come did not allow him a chance to inspect the roads he’d commissioned, but he could do that another day. It was not urgent. So, as they walked back, everything was going about as they expected until they saw signs of mourning on the populace coming in and out of the gate.

A quick conversation with the gate guards cleared that up. The young Baron had sickened and died weeks before from a high fever. Simon had no love for the Raithewait bloodline, but he wasn’t so cruel as to feel anything but saddened by such a young child. Still, given who his father was, Simon didn’t feel guilty that he hadn’t been on hand to use magic to save the lad. He probably would have broken down and done just that, despite himself.

Now, there was no chance, though. There was just a grieving widow who looked at him with ice in her eyes and a fresh grave not so far from where he’d once buried Freya.

Adonnia didn’t seem like a bad person, beyond the identity of her deceased husband. She was a pretty, young, blond woman who had probably even been sweet before Varten had gotten his claws into her, not that it mattered to Simon. He was content to give her the run on the now largely empty Raithewait Manor at the center of Crowvar while he dealt with more important issues that had piled up since his departure.

As it turned out, though, the death of the Baron’s heir wasn’t even the most important thing that had happened in his absence. The Captain of the guard was the first to inform him that there had almost been a palace coup while Simon had been away.

“I thought for sure it was going to happen too,” the man said, giving Simon a list of names that showed who was on which side of the issue. “But when little Varten junior died, the plans collapsed.”

“Because there was no longer anyone to rally around?” Simon asked.

“That too,” the Guard Captain nodded. “Really, though, it was that she was the driving force behind the effort as well, and when he sickened, it all just sort of unraveled.”

Simon nodded, reviewing the list. It was all pretty straightforward. Those who thought it was a bad idea were merchants and anyone with a martial background who had to deal with the real world and understood what Simon had been fighting so hard for. Those who had been on the side of barring him from the city and declaring him an outlaw, on the other hand, were largely the nobility and those who had enjoyed a life of privilege.

As easy as it was to draw a line between those groups, it was harder to decide how to punish them. In the days that followed he could see the guilty filled with tension as they waited for the other shoe to drop, but he’d already killed a handful of nobles after the poisoning, and doing so again would make him appear to be a tyrant, whether he was right or wrong.

As he thought back to the statue of him in Darndelle and the mention that Simon was a name that was cursed in the north reminded him that he had no wish to hear stories around a campfire on some future level about Simon the Bloody Baron. So, he bided his time, and on his second week home, he brought all of them together in the main hall and gave each of them a choice.

“Despite all my hard work to make this town a place worth living, you still fight me every step of the way,” he said wearily. There were a few denials with varying degrees of volume and sincerity, but Simon continued, talking over them. “I left to purge the orcs and return to find out that you sought to lock me out of Crowvar, even after I treated the last group that plotted against me so harshly? What am I to do with you all?”

There were a few protestations of innocence then, along with some tears and an apology. Adonnia said nothing, though. She just stood there gazing at him with the same cold stare she always did.

“Each of you will be given a choice,” Simon said finally. “You can admit your guilt and pay a fine based on who you are and the wealth you possess, or tonight, you will make the journey out to where the trade road is being rebuilt, and you will work there until it is complete. I do not care if your debt is paid in coins or sweat, but your evil acts will reward the good people of Crowvar, one way or the other.”

The main hall had not been quiet throughout the preceding minutes, but as Simon completed his statement, it erupted in outrage. In retrospect, the finely dressed people in this room probably would have been less upset to find out that they were being executed than that they were going to be put to work digging ditches and hauling gravel.

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He didn’t care, though. Let them be outraged, he thought, as he left the room without another word.

The guards stationed at the doors let him by, but they were under strict orders not to let anyone else out of the room until they’d signed the confession and agreed to pay the fine that amounted to ten percent of their wealth, as it had been estimated by the barony’s tax collector.

Simon didn’t really care which way they chose. He was quite sure that most of the high-born lords and ladies in that room would refuse, sure that he was bluffing. They would be quite surprised come nightfall.

Only Adonnia Raithwait would be spared. He’d love to see her confess, of course, but he doubted that she would. She was just there to make her reconsider such acts in the future.

Simon spent the rest of the day reviewing correspondence and reports from far-flung villages about local monster and bandit activity but found them to be remarkably light, given the nice weather they’d been having. “Maybe we’re making a difference after all,” he said to himself, feeling good about what he was doing for the first time in a while.

Maybe I don’t need to do every level, he thought to himself. Maybe I just need one life running every city in the world, and then the future levels will solve themselves. That wasn’t likely, of course, but it was amusing.

That night, eight remaining holdouts were taken from the main hall in manacles and brought home so they could change into the most practical clothes they owned before they were loaded into wagons and taken out to the worksites in the west. Six confessed their guilt and agreed to pay restitution, which Simon would use to finance further irrigation projects and increase ranching activities.

He watched them leave out the window of an inn that was just across the street from the gate to the inner fortress with a smile on his face. That was when there was a knock at his door. For Simon, that timing was just enough to raise the hackles on the back of his neck.

“Come in!” he yelled, knowing it might be anyone.

At that moment, he expected anyone from the Captain of the Guard to a Warlock or an assassin to enter the door. Instead, it was Lady Raithewait who opened it.

“How dare you treat me like that,” she said in a tone just quiet enough not to be called yelling. “I am the wife and the mother of Barons, and I will not be treated this way by the likes of you.”

She didn’t even bother to close the door or approach him. Simon wasn’t surprised. She made no secret about how she felt about him.

“They’re lucky I didn’t execute them,” he said dismissively. “All of you are. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“You made an enemy of every person in that room today,” She continued. “You’re already so paranoid that you don’t even eat the food that the cooks prepare, and now this? Are you blind or stupid?”

Simon put down the papers he’d been pretending to read to ignore her and looked at the woman straight in the face. “Adonnia… every person in that room was my enemy already, and nothing I did changed that. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me to be here, but since you and your friends think these petty power games are more important than taking care of your people… well, I’m stuck here until that gets solved.”

“You think you hold a monopoly on caring about Crowvar, do you?” she spat.

“I think that if your dead husband and his dead father had done a better job, this would be a thriving trade city instead of a dying pitstop,” Simon said with a little more anger than he intended. “And I think that if it was that city, there would have been a healer worth a damn who might have saved your son from his fever last month.”

It was cruel, but he felt like the only way she would understand was to compare her suffering to the people’s well-being. The way she purpled with rage after that made it clear he’d miscalculated and twisted the knife a little too far.

Adonnia said nothing to that. She simply stormed off, leaving him feeling a little bad. Mentally, Simon added a note to prioritize some sort of clinic for the town. It wasn’t his job to save everybody, of course, but he’d learned a lot about herbs in Abresse, and the knowledge should be passed on.

Simon spent the next several weeks improving what he could until a messenger party sent by the King arrived to derail things. The man thanked Simon for all his hard work but said, "In order to ensure regional stability, you will either have to step aside for a new Baron, or you will need to marry the widow of the old one and produce a new heir. The King does not care which option you choose, only that things are decided quickly." Simon laughed at those choices.

“I wouldn’t marry that woman if she were the last one in the world,” he said once his gales of laughter had finally been reduced to a chuckle.

“So then you’ll step aside peacefully?” the fop that had been assigned this duty asked. Really, his whole party had been a little too pampered and preening for Simon’s tastes, but he supposed that was normal in the capital.

“Why? Because the King will make war against me if I don't? Because I’m a commoner and couldn’t possibly be allowed to be in charge?” Simon asked. “Listen, I don’t care who rules Crowvar. I just want someone to do a good job, but I’m not stepping down just because… Ghhhh—”

As soon as he said he would not comply, the garrote slipped around his neck, cutting off both his ability to breathe and speak. Simon gasped like a fish on shore as he stood and moved to break free from his attacker. He elbowed the man more than once, but his assailant's grip neither broke nor slackened. Simon tried to break the man’s nose with a reverse headbutt, but the man stayed just out of reach. He even drew his knife, but the man who sat across him grabbed Simon’s wrist in an iron grip before he could do much.

If anything, that was the strangest part, he thought as his vision began to gray and the wire dug deeper into his throat. The courtier that he’d been speaking to was a spindly weasel, and there was no way he could be this strong.

“Pity,” the courtier said. “A soul with this many shadows… we could have found a place for you, I think.” It was a strange line, but before Simon could even fully digest it, he was dead, and instead of fighting for his life, he was once more staring at the ceiling of his cabin.