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You immediately self-sequestering your little finger. As you try not to gag on the overpowering taste of salt, before your beaming eyes the Mystery melts and Estranged water, with Strange-Stains just visible, gushes out of the lock. Careful to keep clear of the puddle forming at your feet, you push the door open. The way into the archive of the Clerking house is now clear! You rise to you feet - and immediately your head begins to spin. You have the presence of mind to back-peddle, to make sure you don't step on the puddle trying to find your balance - but that is a very thin white belly of a very fat black cloud. You are not sure if this lightheadedness is from too much casting over the course of the day, or the drink ... actually, it probably is the cast. All told, there was a tall mug of worth of wine on that table. And you are a big gi - a big woman, damn it! But either the casting or the wine, it ... it doesn't matter. You have already drunk the wine, and if you need to cast, you need to cast. Just something else you are going to need to deal with. If only father had left some of his picks behind ...
Before you move on, you should probably top off your decanter with the wash-basin. You ended up using less than half, so you won't need everything out of the basin – with a touch of white luck, so long as there is something left in the basin whatever you take can and will be overlooked. But even before that, you should decide if you are going to wipe up the remains of the working material, before it starts leaking through the floor or whatever. The linen sheet from Aldoin's house that you have fashioned into a sling over your shoulder is not doing anything for you at the moment, you could use that to sop it up … or you could fetch something from the dormitory, from amongst the bondsman's possessions. Or you could just leave it – that is an choice, one you took with the remains of the working material left on the front door. Though if you were anyone to judge, you would say water <span class="mu-i">inside</span> of a house is much harder to handwave away. Would the water be dried by the time that the bondsman or the fresh Guards arrive? It must be close to the Hour of Change by now … how long would they leave a house like this unwatched?
Maker's Mercy, what would happen if the Guards came back while you were in archive, and it turns out there <span class="mu-i">isn't</span> a second stair? You might as well be a beast or a brute in a paddock. In that case, you would want the door closed and locked - just like they left it, right? Or at least closed, but still unlocked, so you can move through it. There would be no reason to leave it open though ... unless it was gimmicked to lock itself again once closed! It - oh, come off it. If that was the case, there would be a lot more to the lock then there is - and it would be a huge pain for anyone working in this house.
