Chapter 174: Haystacks and Needles
After that encounter, Simon waited for the other shoe to drop for weeks. Even as he did, he still went through the motions, and carried on with business as usual. Well, he did his best to, at least. For a while, he was still jumping at his own shadows whenever a scroll fell off a shelf or a beggar he hadn’t noticed accosted him on the street for a few coppers.
That’s probably a good thing, though, he tried to convince himself. If I’m being watched, this is the sort of behavior that they’d want to see. It would take a much harder man than Ennis to shake off that kind of unexpected visit.
Even after the fear began fading, though, the confusion and curiosity lingered. He took measures to protect himself anyway. He’d been staying at the inn for too long. He’d grown used to its easy meals and the habit of coming home to a place that was already warm.
If people were watching him, though, and he was supposed to be afraid, or worse, hiding something, he should be making it harder for them. So, he used some of his growing savings to rent a small place that was closer to the library on the rickety third floor of an old building, and he made a point to be seen carrying notes home almost every night.
“Let them worry about what I might have found,” he told himself the next time he thought he was being followed.
Simon was sure that the more interesting he made himself to the white coats, the more likely he was to get a second visit from them. However, as the weeks passed and his cryptic notes swelled, that certainty began to wane.
He’d started doing all sorts of paranoid things like leaving small stones by the doors and shutters as well as leaving papers in very specific orders. Despite all of those efforts, he’d never once come back to find that any of those things had been disturbed.
While he was initially annoyed that they’d intruded on his life on that first visit, slowly but surely, he grew more annoyed that they didn’t seem to be watching him after that. If I can’t cast spells, then there's no need to keep tabs on me, huh? He thought to himself as he continued his research. In that area, at least, he was making progress.
The haystacks were fairly obvious, at least. They were the city library that he’d spent so much time in over the last year, along with a few of the private collections he’d gained access to over that time.