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Your breath catching in your throat, you break the dubious concealment of the gallery doorway, and creep out into the hallway, heading for the closer of the two doors to your right. Once again, you find yourself in thanksgiving for your battered, creased and suspicious-smelling footwraps; when you bought them earlier today, it was not with the intention of ever wearing them - they were to be rags, wipes and bandages. But you cannot imagine doing this in any of your other footwear; not the boots that you were issued with your Spotted Cloak, not the ones that you pinched off of the mortal coil of the Comptroller and certainly not the fraying Oilers, which squeak like six-dozen live mice being ground to grist in a mill. These footwraps - questionable as they may be - allow you to properly tiptoe and mince-step your way through the darkness towards your goal. It is admittedly slow going, but you manage to reach the door before you completely lose your mind. Alternating glances at the top of the stairs and the door at the opposite end of the hall, you draw yourself square with the door, then once you are certain enough that no one is coming, you devote the whole of your attention on the keyhole before you. As you might have expected, you cannot see anything through it - but tellingly, there is no light visible underneath this door. You try the handle - and to your alarm find that the door pushes into the room the moment you put weight on it. You scramble to catch the damned thing, and once you get a grip on it, you have to force yourself to not slam it shut.
Figuring that if there was someone on the other side of the door then you are already good as made, you slip yourself inside with your heart beating as if it was about to batter it way through your ribs. With the door closed behind you, you stand stock still in the darkness and silence, trembling. No one challenges you of course, because of course the room is empty. But what if it wasn't? Maker's Mercy, you could have died! Really and truly; the only way out of here that you know is locked right now. If you had been seen and pursued... oh, you need to stop thinking about this, otherwise you burn more time and make yourself sick to boot. Just ... don't be so hasty, so indelicate. This isn't Aldoin's house, you cannot afford to make mistakes here - even if they end up being harmless. Trying to not dwell overlong on what just happened - and what might have happened on account of it - you turn your attention to peering into the room you have found yourself in. There is some light that filters through a pair of shuttered windows along one wall, but beyond that, there are no sources of light in here. Your adjusting eyes find that the small room is dominated by an uncommonly large desk, with a brace of plain wooden stools in front of it and a handsomely upholstered chair behind it.
