Miss Gracy folded the last bolt of cloth into the cupboard . "Percy, how are you planning to celebrate the Galeo Festival this year?" she asked, voice low, almost idle.
Ronan kept his hands busy straightening a rack of needles. He hadn't expected the question. "Hm… haven't really thought about it yet. Maybe I'll just walk around the festival or something."
She clicked her tongue once, a small dry sound. "Everyone walks around the festival. I meant afterward."
"Afterward?"
"Yes." She slid the sewing box shut. The latch caught with a dull snap. "We were thinking of a small gathering here. Just the shop workers. Nothing fancy."
Before Ronan could shape an answer, Fronto's voice drifted from the cutting table. "So he's joining too?"
Miss Gracy shrugged. "He still hasn't said."
Fronto glanced over, one eyebrow lifted. "What, already got a girl lined up?"
Ronan shook his head, the motion small. "No."
"Then you're coming," Fronto said, like the matter had already been settled.
Miss Gracy smiled without looking up. Ronan let out a breath that barely moved his shoulders. "Alright."
The rest of the evening passed in the usual quiet shuffle of brooms and locked drawers. When the lamps were doused, Ronan stepped out into the street and climbed into the first public carriage that slowed for him.
The leather seat still held the day's warmth. He leaned against the frame and watched the cobblestones slide past.
Galeo Festival. The name sat in his mind like an old coin, worn smooth. Percy's memories said the whole town took part, not just one square.
Musicians wandered between districts, vendors dragged their carts along, and people followed the noise wherever it led. The story behind it was older than most street names.
A man named Galeo Bereham had supposedly fought creatures that slipped through the cracks at night. He died. Then, according to the tale, he came back—not whole, not alive, just a presence that still walked the alleys.
Because no one knew where his bones lay, the town celebrated everywhere at once, so the wandering soul could at least hear laughter once a year.
Ronan listened to the carriage wheels grind over a loose stone. For a place that told stories about dead men returning, the people here treated the legend like weather—
something that happened whether you believed it or not. After the alley, after the red eyes, he wasn't so quick to call any of it harmless talk.
The carriage rolled on. Then a figure crossed the edge of the lamplight up ahead. Ronan's gaze caught on the slope of the shoulders, the way the man's coat hung open at the collar. Harris.
The same man who had shown Percy how to stretch a bar of soap into charcoal paste. He moved like someone whose thoughts were somewhere else, drifting toward a narrow side street that barely counted as an alley.
Ronan frowned. Harris lived on the north side. And at this hour he should have been inside the Shrewsbury Drunkard, same as every other evening Percy could remember.
The carriage kept moving, but the feeling that something was off refused to fade. It sat behind Ronan's ribs, light but insistent.
Follow him.
The thought arrived without warning. Ronan didn't examine it. He leaned forward and told the driver to stop. Coins changed hands. His boots hit the ground, and he turned into the alley before the carriage had fully pulled away.
Harris was already gone from sight. Ronan quickened his pace, boots scuffing against uneven stone.
At the first turn he slowed, listened, then edged forward until he could see the man's back again. Enough distance. Not enough to lose him.
They walked for several minutes. The buildings grew older, the windows darker. Harris stopped at a sagging house whose front step had cracked in two.
Weeds had claimed the drainage channel. No lantern burned by the door. He knocked once, the sound flat.
Ronan's thoughts cleared like water settling after a stone. What am I doing here? This wasn't Percy's habit, and it wasn't his either. The wrongness pressed against the back of his neck. He took a step back, ready to leave the way he'd come.
Fifteen paces away, a man stood watching him.
Ronan's breath stopped. The stranger looked ordinary until he didn't. His outline wavered, edges blurring like heat over a roof.
Ronan turned and ran the other direction, straight past Harris. Footsteps followed, too light for their speed.
He reached the half-open door and drove his boot against it. Wood slammed inward. A man inside stumbled, eyes wide. Ronan didn't slow.
The man's hand was already moving toward his coat. Ronan kicked once, felt teeth give, and the revolver that had been halfway drawn clattered against the floorboards. He snatched it, kept moving, and took the stairs two at a time.
The upper room was small and smelled of rust and old cloth. One window. He swept a gas lamp off the table, swung it hard. Glass burst outward. Cold air poured in.
He climbed through, dropped, and landed crooked. Pain flared up both shins, but he stayed upright. Shouts rose behind him. He tightened his grip on the revolver and ran into the dark between houses, the sound of skimishes getting louder .
Ronan expected the two sides might clash behind him. The hazy figure chasing and the people inside the house could buy him seconds if they weren't already working together.
Either way, it didn't change what he had to do. He ran harder than he had in years, legs pumping steady because the body carrying him belonged to Percy. On Earth his own joints would have protested after the first block.
Here the muscles were still youthful thus resilient , and he meant to use every bit of that edge while it lasted.
The streets twisted without pattern. No map in his head matched the turns he took. One wrong choice and he'd hit a wall or a boarded gate with nowhere left to go. He didn't slow to check.
When a gap opened between two buildings he jumped, boots scraping brick on the far side. A rusted ladder hung from the next roof; he grabbed it without thinking and hauled himself up, revolver tucked tight against his ribs so it wouldn't slip.
Breath came fast but steady. The air tasted of soot and damp stone. He crossed another roof, dropped to a lower ledge, then sprinted along a narrow walkway that might once have been a drainage channel. Every choice was a guess.