The shouting and acrimony vanished almost as soon as the drinking started, which amused Simon greatly. If these people could just get this level of unity when fighting monsters and other kingdoms, they’d have it made, he decided as hostility dissipated into hospitality.

While he knew almost nothing of the specifics, even without magic, he could see the fault lines that divided this place. Every valley and every clan worked together amongst themselves freely enough but fought fiercely with one another for resources. As the night went on, that was the most common refrain in the stories he heard pieces of. Ionar specialized in mosaics and marble statues, but here, in Charia, it was intergenerational grudges that were a work of art.

People hated each other’s brothers and grandfathers in a long chain of intergenerational stories that went back for decades and decades, and as long as the beer and mead were flowing, they seemed happy to attack each other with jokes and insults instead of swords and knives.

Simon didn’t need Eddek to explain any of this to him, though the boy often tried to anyway. Simon didn’t make him stop, either. If the boy wanted to believe his strange accent made him less than fluent, well, so much the better for Simon.

The problem wasn’t with any of the clans, though, or even the king, as he saw it. It was that these mountains were hard places to live in so many ways. Not only because they were difficult to traverse, and less fertile than the neighboring plains of Brin or even the arid region of Montain to the south. Even if the mountains weren’t lousy with monsters those would have been serious issues, but the fact that an ogre could just wander out of some dark cave or that goblins might just eat your flock one night made it all that much worse.

“I could spend a lifetime just trying to untangle all of this,” Simon sighed as he surveyed the scene half drunk himself and tried to figure out where he’d even start.

“Well, I’m sure you have better things to do,” Eddek volunteered, reminding Simon that the young man was still there. “But if you would at least stay until I can notify my father as to what happened, and he can send more men, I would appreciate it.”

“I plan to,” Simon answered. “I may well stay longer than that. I’ve never been here before, and I’d love to take some time to explore the city.”

“Well, my father will see that you’re well rewarded, and—” Eddek started to say before Simon cut him off.

“I don’t need coin,” Simon declared, well aware that the Eddek clan would have a hard time affording even a modest sum; whatever problems they had would only be made worse by losing a dozen retainers and two wagons already. “All I want is knowledge. So, instead of worrying about how much your dad will be able to pay me, why don’t you pay me in that, instead, huh? Maybe stop holding so much back because you think it will reflect poorly on your people.”

“But I don’t know anything,” Eddek admitted. “That’s why I’m here, to read the great epics and learn sums and everything else.”

“You may not know about the world of books,” Simon agreed, “But you can read, so you can do that on your own, from anywhere in the world, if you so desire. What you know is harder to learn. You know which clans wear which colors and who hates who. You know allies from enemies at a glance. These are the things I wish to learn.”

“But why?” Eddek asked, “What does it matter if the Drizolts hate the Farrins but are friends with the Marrins? Everybody knows that stuff.”

“As with most things in life, it's who you know that matters most,” Simon explained. “The world turns on such things, and if I ever want to understand how it all fits together and why…”

His words tapered off as he realized he’d been about to say far too much. …why the world changes when you die and when you don’t? I’d really like to know why that is. He continued the thought in his own mind, but it would have been a crazy thing to say. Instead of elaborating, he took a long pull from his drinking horn before adding, “I just want to understand better, and you’re going to help me. It will be fun.”

Eddek didn’t see why Simon cared but spent a good portion of the night pointing out other clans and matching names with colors and symbols for him. Simon would never learn all of this in one night, of course, but he made for a fun guessing game.

Eddek served another purpose, too. His mere presence kept away the worst of the trouble. He was just important enough that no one tried to pick a fight with Simon, even though he could see they wanted to, in their own way. Angry men settled for insults, combative warriors settled for boasting, and women with lust in their eyes settled for a bit of drunken flirtation before moving on and leaving him in peace.

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It was good that he spent so much time with Eddek because, in the days that followed, Simon almost didn’t see him at all. Once the festivities were done, his time was nearly monopolized by the Greldens, leaving him and Kayala to clean Eddek hall for day after day. There was a lot of damage. Part of the roof was even rotted. Simon lacked the skills to repair that properly and patched it with hot pitch, but that would need to be addressed by someone within a couple years, or the whole damn roof might cave in.

Still, for now, it didn’t matter, and room by room, they cleaned what they could. Simon did the heavy lifting while Kayla beat rugs with brooms and swept. It was a satisfying job. After two days, they could cook meals in the nearly abandoned kitchen, and after five, it was no longer the worst place he’d ever slept outside of a goblin cave.

“Do you really think we can do all of this?” the serving girl asked him from time to time, but Simon just shrugged. “With enough time, you can do anything. You could pick up the whole city, stone by stone, and carry it somewhere else if you lived forever.”

That made her laugh, which was fair. It was a funny image. However, more and more, that was his outlook. He could do literally anything; he just didn’t know what he should be doing exactly. He now had caches of weapons and treasure hidden around the countryside. He had the ability to make magical weapons with only a few words. The question was increasingly becoming, what should I do with all of that when the time comes?

Much like the leaky roof, Simon didn’t have the skills to fix it right, but if he knew where the most damage was being done over the course of history. If he knew what small leaks would eventually lead to major failures, then he could patch them as best he could.

That probably means I need to spend at least a few years in the capital of every kingdom sometime soon so that I can better chart the course of history.

Simon already had copious notes on that subject from several lives. Most of that was dated and unreliable information that had already been edited or censored by the White Cloaks in Brin; he was going to have to read and learn more widely in places like this if he wanted to compare different versions of history in order to tease out the truth. There was an objective truth, of course, but the only place he was likely to find it was reading between the lines.

While getting the house ready for Eddek to live in and finding a cook and a stable boy who wanted to work for him was somewhat challenging, finding resources to read was fairly easy. Once Eddek started learning at his academy, he came home with more scrolls than he would probably ever be able to read.

Simon, though, had no such difficulties. He would spend whole evenings reading the things, even after he helped Eddek. He often did so in his room, in front of a silvered mirror that he would use to check his notes and record new ones in his ever-expanding web of knowledge. While Eddek often needed only enough superficial information to placate his instructors, Simon would devour the entire thing, line by line. The more boring a scroll was, the more likely that was to be true.

Simon didn’t need to read a fifth version of an epic poem or a foundation myth when the other four already agreed on almost every detail. He was far more interested in detailed histories of lesser figures and heraldic volumes on patents and lineages. In dry, neglected volumes on obscure subjects he often found information that connected several dots into a larger pattern.

During this period, Simon left the running of the household to Kayla, who did a good job. Her only really bad habit was constantly seeking Simon’s approval, which started to annoy Eddek. The boy obviously had a crush on her. Simon couldn’t be bothered with any of those concerns, at least not until the boy started to come home with signs of bullying.

He attempted to hide them, which was precisely what Simon told the boy not to do, though, to his credit, he did come clean as soon as Simon said something. “It’s just some boys at school,” Eddek said. “It’s like… what did you call it? A pecking order thing.”

Simon did recall using that term when the boy was explaining the relative superiority of the clans, but the banality of it didn’t make him any less angry about the situation. He could barely remember the details of his life on Earth anymore. Hundreds of years of time in the Pit had all but drowned it. He recalled images and some people. He knew that he’d dealt with bullies in school, though, even if he couldn’t remember who they were or even what that school had looked like any longer.

“This is unacceptable,” Simon answered immediately, slamming his hand on the table hard enough to startle poor Eddek as some barely understood surge of ancient dread ran through him at the word.

“I… I tried to fight back,” Eddek swore. “I did, but there’s not much I can do when three of them decide to ‘teach me a lesson for being disrespectful,’ now, is there?”

Is this what future Kayla meant by being awful? Simon wondered. Should I teach him how to fight well enough that they’ll leave him be?

As those thoughts and more raced through Simon’s mind, he didn’t say any of them. Instead, he simply hugged the kid, surprising both of them before he reassured him that it wasn’t his fault.

While Simon would definitely teach Eddek to fight, in this case, it wouldn’t really help things because he knew full well the boy wouldn’t do it. If he won, then things would only escalate into a series of spiraling grudges that might make his father or even his clan’s life that much harder. Simon needed a way to stop that spiral of revenge before it started. Fortunately, he knew a way to do that, and the next day, when Eddek was at school, probably being abused, Simon did something the boy wouldn’t expect, let alone approve of. He made his way to the hall of clan Himar, the largest of the three clans whose scions were bullying his charge.