“Is someone coming to kill you?” Malea asked through the phone line.

“Why would you assume such a thing?” Anduron asked her back.

“Because you are listening intently. For one. You know all the other reasons.”

“I am. And I do.”

He’d just been relaxing during an uneventful evening, feet upon his desk, passing the time with a conversation through this newfangled device. He didn’t care for the way it mangled voices, rendering them tinny and dead, but the winds of change could only be navigated, not resisted.

“There is someone here,” he told her, and cocked one long, pointy ear towards the window behind him. “Down on the street. A man, I believe. A human. He came on foot, but stopped for a while across the street, as the building came into view.”

Listening was a skill. Yes, his people had a gift of sharp senses, but gifts weren’t worth that much if not honed. And he hadn’t been satisfied until he could be called observant even among elves.

Malea had stopped with the comments. She wasn’t a fool, and she cared. At least a little.

“If it is an assassin, then someone made a poor choice,” he went on, as his mind continued analysing what his ears were telling him. “But poor choices are no rarity in this sprawl of brick and concrete.”

The window was covered by sturdy blinds, and the only light was a little electric lamp on the other side of the room, specifically to avoid a Window Shower. He’s always had mixed feelings on the window in the door, but he was only renting the office, so all he could do was have faith in the frosted glass and low lighting. Anyone who wanted him dead would have to actually open the door first.

“Well, he has made up his mind,” Anduron said, as the person opened the lobby door. “We had better cut this short.”

“Let me know if you die,” Malea told him.

“I will, I will. So long.”

He put the receiver down on the big lump of plastic and metal that was its home, and swept the cord up on the table and out of the way. Apparently the man downstairs needed to shore his courage up a bit more, so Anduron used the gifted time to do some quick tidying up. Cut out newspaper articles piled on top of one another in a mess of different shapes and sizes, flashing the city’s problems before his eyes like a depressing flipbook of the city’s sins.

Trials in the near past and future, reports on murders and robberies, opinion pieces on poverty and species relations, and other complaints all flashed before him. A few remained behind in his mind, like afterimages; the reason he was more wary than usual. It didn’t seem like coincidence that the last bit of fragile paper to top the stack was the whole thing yelling in his face.

“KENTON SENTENCED TO LIFE!” the headline announced, in letters so big the entire thing almost matched the article itself.

It had, of course, been the closest thing to a certainty the city’s courts allowed for. Everyone had known the trial was the man’s swan song. Including, surely, Kenton himself. And he’d had weeks to stew in the fact. And potentially to act on it, as best he could from a cell.

The man from the street had finally entered and was now coming up, with steps that seemed loud to Anduron’s elven ears. And though there were other offices in the building, his was the only one open at this hour.

He opened a drawer, stuck the articles inside, and took out a knife. It was a big, deadly thing, far above what the law allowed in the streets. But here, in his office, he would take whatever precautions he felt were necessary.

He put it on the desk and hid it under his fedora.

A faint silhouette appeared in the frosted window, stopped there, and Anduron took the initiative.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

Anduron pressed the button he’d had installed on the underside of his desk, and the door unlocked.

“Come in.”

The door opened. In came a familiar figure: Human indeed, a young adult in a brown jacket and a dull green cap. He was thin; the jacket didn’t quite fit, and his eyes somehow simultaneously looked too big and too small for his head.

“Hello Marcus,” Anduron said. His unease lost some intensity, but mostly just shifted to different concerns.

“Hello.”

The man, who still tended to come off as a boy, cleared his throat with an air of awkwardness, and closed the door behind him.

“Is this a social call or a business one?” Anduron asked.

“I don’t think I can afford your rates,” Marcus replied. “I just… uh, wanted to talk.”

Anduron kept his eyes on Marcus, but his ears open to the rest of the world. Marcus was far from the first person he’d expect to bring trouble his way, but he wasn’t the last one either.

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“Have a seat,” Anduron told him, and pointed at the chair opposite his own.

The man-boy shuffled over and gripped the chair’s back, as if for support. Anduron took note of his breathing, pupils and steadiness, looking for hints that he was using again, but concluded with a fair amount of certainty that he wasn’t. Rather, he was in the throes of fear. Or some other major agitation, like guilt.

With some reluctance, he did sit.

“How are you, Anduron?” Marcus asked after some dead air.

“I am well enough. Healthy.”

“There is word about you on the streets. A rumour. About you and Eben Kenton.”

“I have a policy of not discussing my cases, Marcus. I’ve told you that.”

“Right. I know. I’m just saying it. You should… be careful.”

“I am,” Anduron assured him, without sparing his fedora the tiniest glance.

“Good. That’s good. I haven’t seen you in some time, so I only know what I hear.”

He had one of those specific neighbourhood accents that had come into being in the last thirty years or so. It still felt a bit strange to Anduron how quickly humans developed such things. Devices were one thing, but language itself?

“Meanwhile, I have heard nothing of you,” Anduron told him, instead of needling him over something he couldn’t help.

“Do you consider that a good thing or a bad thing?” Marcus asked. There was an edge of bitterness to the words that seemed to trigger regret as soon they were said, but he didn’t apologise for it.

Anduron took a breath.

“Marcus, I cannot fully explain to you what long acquaintance with humans is like to an elf, as your people have no exact equivalent. One might even call it… unnatural to us. But some call it ‘knowing the thread’. I knew your grandfather, when this city was little more than an idea. I knew your mother all her life. And now there is you.”

He tapped a finger on the desk a few times, as Marcus averted his gaze.

“The current strand of the thread. I have tried being a friend to the thread, to you. I do not think anyone can argue otherwise.”

“No,” Marcus admitted, but still wouldn’t quite look at him. “No, you have. Been, I mean.”

“You have made it difficult at times. But friendships worth the title should be able to weather such things. Provided there is hope for the future. Sometimes you have given me hope, and sometimes you have taken it away. Y-”

“I know I’ve made mistakes!”

It wasn’t a yell, but spoken with a force that came from the soul. Marcus grimaced and waved a hand, as if to ward off his own thoughts.

“I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made things difficult for people who mean me well. I know it. But I have hurt no one more than myself. I-”

He finally looked back at Anduron and forced out a chuckle.

“Do you still think I stole your scarf that one time?”

Anduron smiled with a corner of his mouth, for an instant.

“I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. But Marcus… I have watched enough humans go through their lifespans to understand that you are near the point where you will have to decide what kind of person you will be.”

He pointed at him.

“And now here you are. And unless I am going blind, you are in trouble once again. If you are a victim, I will aid you, for the sake of the thread. If you brought trouble your own way, with yet more bad decisions, then I will have to consider things thoroughly, depending on an honest admission from you, Marcus. I have had clients try to feed me half-truths, and expect me to save them from their own sins. It is not a role I will be duped into.”

Marcus didn’t like Anduron’s little speech, but rather than get angry he just got sad.

“And what if it is both?”

“Then, as I said, I will consider things.”

Marcus sighed, with more fear in it than weariness.

“I have this new job,” he said softly. “And…”

He finally looked up for more than an instant, and held Anduron’s gaze.

“Anduron, I truly did mean well. I just… just wanted to work. To earn a living and just stay out of all the nonsense. But how do you throw a pebble in this town without hitting someone’s shit?”

“It can be hard,” Anduron admitted. “Keep talking.”

“I-”

Something gave. Anduron saw it. All the hesitation Marcus had had to fight to get this far apparently tripped him on the final stretch.

He stood.

“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t do this. Just… do my job. Keep my head down. I am sorry, Anduron. I am sorry to… bother you.”

“It was a boring evening,” Anduron assured him. “But are you certain?”

“No. But not tonight. I’ll think about what I should do.”

It didn’t seem like a good plan to Anduron, considering Marcus’s habit of bad decisions. But he also knew the young human could only take so much pushing before reflexively pushing back.

“Over the phone, perhaps,” he suggested instead. “No few of my clients feel safer opening up a dialogue that way.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said, as he went around the chair and to the door. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”

He stopped with his fingers on the knob. After yet more hesitation, he turned to look into Anduron’s eyes again.

“I’m sorry. Just that. For… everything.”

Anduron nodded slowly.

“Simply try to do better,” he replied.

Marcus nodded limply and went out the door, taking his mystery with him for now. Anduron put his feet up on the table and started wondering what it was, and whether to look into the matter on his own. Marcus, the latest part of his particular thread Anduron had let himself get tangled in, walked down the hallway and to the stairs. There was the familiar little creak of the top step, and he started moving down.

He wouldn’t have a sudden change of courage, Anduron knew. Once committed to running from a problem, Marcus did, at least for a while.

“What is it, Marcus?” Anduron whispered to himself, as he let his eyes unfocus to give more attention to his ears. “What is it this time, and what do you want a private investigator to do about it?”

Marcus hit the downstairs landing with a bit of a thump, and his footsteps started getting drowned out by an approaching car and its battered, chuttering engine. It would take him only moments to vanish into the city and its night-time ambiance, and leave Anduron alone with his thoughts.

The thought occurred to follow him at a distance, and see if his newest problems were clear enough that simple surveillance would give them away. It was that or pick up the receiver and start with phone calls.

The deciding moment neared, and Anduron’s gut reaction would have to make the pick. The car thundered down the street, as Marcus crossed it, and then screeched to a sudden, violent halt. Two doors were flung open.

And in a quick hail of bullets, Marcus died.