Anduron kept a low profile over the three days that followed. It wasn’t his first time, and he knew how to get by without visiting his home or typical haunts, while also keeping his fingers on the city’s pulse.

There was, in the end, no mention of a murder outside of his office, and no hint that the law or the press had connected him to the night’s other acts of violence. Those who knew kept quiet.

The fourth day saw Marcus’s funeral. It was a somewhat lonely affair. He’d had no siblings, and not much of a talent for making friends. A few cousins attended, as well as a few other people Anduron vaguely recognised as acquaintances of the young human. And then there were him and Malea.

The two of them shared an umbrella, a bit off to themselves during the ceremony. Malea had footed the bill to afford him the plot next to his mother, and Anduron’s thoughts tended to drift away from the present and its rather boring priest, and to Marcus’s mother and grandfather. The thread, as Anduron had known it. Now ended.

The priest finished, and was the first to leave. The rest drifted away. Some looked genuinely sad, and muttered among themselves, but all looked eager to get away from the rain. Away from the sadness of this event.

And so Anduron and Malea found themselves alone, in an old cemetery that was nevertheless taking forever to fill up.

“Do you have anything to say?” Malea asked him after they’d stood in silence for a while.

“Anything formal?” he asked. “No. I have said my prayers. I would just be repeating myself.”

“Hm.”

Malea reached under the veil she’d worn for the occasion, to dab at her eye.

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“Run the story by me again, in basic points.”

“Becker had learned necromancy, and no doubt meant to use it to aid his underworld ambitions. He made a deal with Hayes, so he could get corpses without the trouble of having to murder people or rob graves. I think he may also have had plans in place to cash in on Kenton’s supposed bounty on my head.”

The mention of it silenced Anduron’s tongue for a moment. He still did not know if there was any reality to that story. And if false, it might survive for a very long time on the lips of the city’s bad men.

“In the meantime, Marcus found out about what Hayes and Becker were doing, and his conscience troubled him enough that he came to me about it. But Hayes somehow knew of his plans, and told Becker, who dispatched his hit squad. Marcus lost his nerve and left the office without actually spilling his beans, which was when the killers spotted him. They assumed I knew, and when they failed to silence me they contacted their boss, who then dispatched the sending. And so I unravelled the whole thing.”

“Evil destroys itself,” Malea said.

“It does.”

“Although it takes its toll as it does so.”

She sighed, and gazed down into the hole, soon to be filled by the gravediggers.

“Do you think he would have told you about the whole thing, had he had a little more time?” Malea asked.

“I think he might have,” Anduron admitted. “Marcus’s good and bad swung back and forth like a pendulum. The good brought him to my office, and the bad, his lack of courage, drove him back out of it. The return swing might have pushed him those final few inches. If he had had a little more time.”

She sighed again.

“Well, we will never know for certain. But the thread is ended. The tally is complete. And I… I choose to believe that the good in Marcus, the final strand, outweighed the bad. I choose to believe that, ultimately, he was a worthy person.”

Anduron thought of the scarf that even now rested in his pocket, almost like a guilty secret, though he himself had nothing to be ashamed of. The scarf he’d accused Marcus of stealing during an earlier visit. The scarf that had let Becker direct a sending Anduron’s way.

“Yes,” he said, and gave her shoulder a soft rub. “The dead man’s tally is done.”