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You awkwardly kneel down, thankful for the protection for your knees that the apron provides, then you strain your ears as hard as you can. In turns, the vague sounds become crisper and clearer - definitely footsteps. Two sets on two floors. Both approaching, both heavy, both clanking. Both Guards. The grains of salt between the Wand of Head-Knocking's handle and your hand feel as huge and as coarse as salt has ever been. More and more footfalls, louder and louder, closer and closer. Light begins to seep under the crack of the floor, illuminating the stairs down - though at the moment, it is as if you have no eyes to see it. The set of footfalls that you judge to be on the first floor with you stops for second, and the seeping of light underneath the door becomes a torrent, then the footfalls resume louder than before. Now there is nothing but a thin, unlocked wooden door between you. You desperately fight the urge to curl up, to tense - for the fear that shifting your already awkward and mildly precarious position will engender some squeaking clarion cry from the planks underneath you. Both sets of the footfalls draw closer; the nearer slows, the further quickens.
"Where the Hell are you?"
Flushing with an instinctual, primitive panic, you tell yourself that this cannot, this must not be directed at you. It was enough to make you jump out of your own hide; now your entire body is beset with racking chills, and now you have no choice but to tense to throttle dead any convulsions or shivers. Blessedly, the wood underneath you is mute - or at the least, has nothing to say about your trespass here.
"Coming, coming."
Much more distant, and quiet. From the second floor, no doubt.
"What are they using, the Hell?"
Still the distant party, still garbled and mumbled. Considering unwieldiness of that sentence, you think it likely that you have misheard much of it. The tone, though is clear; confusion.
"The mustering-carillonneurs have been taken by the sheds. Did you lock him in?"
That was much closer, and much clearer. This tone is authoritative, even when asking a question.
"Aye. Where who?".
Now you know you are mishearing things; unfortunately, the harder to hear Guard is now coming down the stairs and as can be expected is raising a real ruckus - making it hard to hear the Guard right outside your door.
"The Belly, then the leeward."
You are certain that he said the Belly; the garrison and gaol carved from an 'abscess' in the Mount. The leeward though ... that is a sailing term, you know that, but the way it was said - if it was said - made it sound like a place.
"Then the barracks?"
