Lyro moved toward the sound and found a crowd. Two carriages had locked wheels in the middle of the road, zebras tangled and pulling against each other while the drivers shouted from their seats.
One of the animals had gone sideways and was refusing to move, which had brought everything behind it to a stop, while the carriages themselves seemed to have caved in with some broken windows and wheels .
A small audience had gathered along the edges of the street, watching with the particular interest people reserved for accidents and since this was particularly strange one.
Lyro slowed and pulled his hat lower. The colour in his eyes bled out slowly, turning faintly hazy beneath the shadow of his brim.
He swept his gaze across the street without moving his head.
"There are signs of spirit interference"
The traces were faint ones, already dissipating at the edges.
He let his eyes settle back to normal and turned his attention to the crowd instead.
"Heard it before that one , a loud bang of some sort ," a man nearby was saying to the person beside him. "Earlier this morning. Came from Beningham Styles, I think."
"The tailor shop?"
"That's the one."
The second man shook his head slowly. "Hope nothing carries over to the Galeo Festival. Last thing this district needs right now with everything else going on."
A police carriage rolled up from the far end of the street. Then a second one behind it.
Lyro watched them pull to a stop. Officers stepped down and began moving through the crowd with the particular efficiency . He tracked them without turning his head.
Then he pulled his hat down another fraction and walked away from the crowd without hurrying, hands in his pockets, in the opposite direction from Beningham Street.
He had a reasonable idea of what had happened. The traces were consistent with a firearm discharge, which narrowed things down considerably given how tightly the Syndicate controlled distribution in this district.
There was really only one person in the area carrying something like that.
Lyro sighed through his nose and kept walking.
"That man is going to be a headache."
---
The police station held all of them.
The workers from Beningham Styles sat together in a side room, separated from the captured men who had been taken somewhere further back. Percy was brought somewhere else entirely.
A smaller room with one table, two chairs, and a lamp burning slightly too bright for the space.
The officer who came in was somewhere in his fifties with a composed expression and the unhurried movements of a man who had conducted enough of these to stop finding them interesting. He set Percy's revolver and holster on the table between them and sat down.
He looked at Percy for a moment before speaking.
"Walk me through it."
Percy considered the table. The others had almost certainly been questioned already. Whatever they had said was sitting in a notebook on this man's person right now, and the last thing Percy needed was contradicting it with something he invented.
"I shot him in self defense," Percy said. "He had a blade to Miss Silia's throat. I had a clear angle and I took it."
The officer nodded once, slowly. "And the others confirmed as much." He leaned forward slightly and folded his hands on the table. "That's not what I'm asking, Mr. Valemont."
"What I'm asking," the man said snorting, "is how a tailor on Beningham Street is sitting across from me with a revolver. "
Percy held the man's gaze for a moment. Then he reached into his coat and placed the badge on the table between them.
The officer looked down at it. His eye brow rising , a bit disinterested . But as he saw it ckearly .
"A Union Law Syndicate badge!"
He looked back up at Percy. Then down at the badge again.
"A tailor with a Union Law Syndicate badge? "
"I had been doing this job for twenty three years and could count on one hand the number of times i had seen one of those up close."
He kept his face where it was and thought it through for a while .
"An under cover agent ? Yes ! That has to be it"
The Syndicate ran them occasionally, everyone at his rank knew that much even if nobody said it out loud.
A man fitting himself as an ordinary citizen in an ordinary workplace, watching something, waiting for something.
"And I just dragged him into a police station.
In front of witnesses."
The Syndicate did not forget things like that.
And probably give their department a hard time using their authority.
"Shitt!! No way im gonna be dragged into this"
He picked up his notebook, wrote three words, and closed it.
"Ahem."
---
A few minutes later a confused Percy walked out of the station into the cool afternoon air and stood on the front step .
"What the ??"
Percy looked at the revolver inside the holster strapped to his coat , it was returned to him immediately and was released right after .
There had been no further questions or paperwork pressed into his hands. Just the revolver, a short nod, and showed him the door.
Percy stared at the badge sitting in his other palm.
"That much authority from this little badge "
"Isn't this like too over powered?"
He pocketed it and came down the steps.
One of the younger officers near the entrance mentioned Beatrix when Percy asked. She had been the one to report it, apparently, filing the initial account before anyone had thought to take her details.
That was how the police had arrived as quickly as they had. But she wasn't listed as a suspect, had no reason to be held, and had left before anyone looked for her a second time.
When Percy asked where she had gone, the officer simply shook his head. Percy did the same and turned toward home.
His shoulder still ached faintly from where he had braced against the counter. Silia had looked steady when he last saw her, which was something.
"Now what fo i tell them tomorrow?" he sighed
Percy shrugged the thought smiling
"
well wing it i guess " He abruptly stopped walking entirely.
The sensation arrived once again without any fucking warning.
He stood in the middle of the pavement with people moving around him on both sides, his hand already moving toward the inside of his coat, and did not reach for the revolver.
Because the sensation was not coming from the alley to his left, or the street ahead, or the crowd behind him.
It was coming from directly above.
"Fuuucck"