Quoted By:
You know that you should be able to make you way into the gallery well enough without a lit candle - but you certainly cannot hope to read any of the posters that you know to be nailed to this door. You cannot even make them out in this darkness, but when you run your knuckles over the door, you can feel the thin, cheap paper, hear it rustle in the near total silence of the vestibule. Struck suddenly with the concern that you might dislodge one by accident, you whip your hand away, as if you had touched a hot cauldron, causing more rustling by the rapid wake of its departure. Gripping your Wand of Head-Knocking tight, your eyes fall upon your apron and its bulging pockets in the darkness, which you can just barely make out the shape of - though you can feel the heft of as it weighs on you quite acutely. There certainly is a temptation to light a candle now; after all, you only glanced at the posters earlier. You could have easily overlooked one describing you. Come to think of it, what if one of them is for father?
For a moment, the pocket that holds the snap-sparker and the candle almost seems to get heavier - but then that moment passes. No, you ... you heard the crier. Everything that would be on a bounty poster would be in his spiel - and if you recall it correctly, you heard everything he had to say about you. As for father ... if Aldoin was in fact your father's mark, and not one of his professional friends, then that means that the Port Authority is still in the dark about the knock-down. So there could be no poster. If the actual knock-down was somewhere else, and things just ... wound up happening at Aldoin's house, then that might be another story. Then again, if there were posters here for him - or for you, for that matter - then it stands to reason that they would have them elsewhere.
That settles it - the candle will remain unlit for now. Cautiously, you tug at the handles of the door, only putting serious force behind your pulls once you are satisfied that the door will not squeak. You open it up enough to allow yourself inside, then you gather up your decanter from where you placed it between you feet and slip through the door into the gallery. Once you are inside, you ascertain that there is no one inside in the gallery, nor is there any light to speak of, then you delicately close the door with your foot and start to slowly and deliberately grope your way towards where you recall the desks being, careful not to trip over anything. It takes longer than you would have liked, but eventually you manage to get to a desk. Again you reach for a candle - and again, you stop yourself. Beyond this gallery, and the knowledge that there is someone upstairs and a Guard outside, you really don't know the lay of the land here.
> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Press on, and make sure that you are alone on the first floor before lighting anything.
> No more delays, no more false starts, no more half-measures. Light the damned candle.
