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You take a deep breath, and tip the parasol up over your head as you step out onto the sidewalk, then from there, out into the street, as your parasol's shield is simply too large for you to comfortably walk on the sidewalks. Your bundle is under your right arm - as your left arm is too sore from the Socketing Needle - and you are holding the parasol in both hands, as you expected you might have to do. The thick fabric of the shield casts a dark shadow over you as rain patters down, unseen.
You know what you have to do here, but ... Pattern's Peace, do you ever wish there were another way. Though there simply isn't. Every minute already counted, but now they count <span class="mu-i">dearly</span>, and by detouring around the carriage by means of thoroughfares alone you will be placed even further into account. Likewise, detouring around the carriage through the side-streets and alleys off of Spinster's means that you risk complications - or rather, further complications - which is simply another means of losing more time. Not to mention, as much attention as your dress will draw on the main streets, you will look all the more out of place in the alleys, which means you are much more likely to be remembered, which could prove to be damning.
So instead, you are going to have to walk by the carriage and the milling Cleansers.
You take another deep breath.
You have successfully managed to slip by the Inquisition once - under the nose of the Master Abbot of Scrimshaw Mount, no less - so walking by some Cleansers that aren't on duty ... or, not on any <span class="mu-i">serious</span> duty, shouldn't be too hard, right? One would certainly hope so ... and yet, there are a lot of things that shouldn't be hard for you, but somehow, they seem to get almost hopelessly difficult when you least expect it and in ways that you couldn't - or at least <span class="mu-i">didn't</span> - predict. Still, there is a prediction that you are sure of; with the rain not letting up, fewer and fewer people remain on the street, and if you tarry too much longer, it is going to be just you and the Cleansers on the street.
You start walking up the street.
Almost immediately your nerve starts to falter, and you take a hitch into your step. You are well aware that you have to keep moving though - and borne out of the fear of running out of time and the desire to be done and gone with this damned street, you somehow find it in yourself to pick up your pace, as anyone might do while they are being rained on.
But once the first Cleanser, the only one of the bunch who is still standing idle under the eave of a store turns to look at you, it is damned hard to keep that spring in your step. And once all of them do, some slowing down in their labors as they do, it is damned hard to keep walking. But again you manage. And one by one, the Cleansers, turn their attention away from you, even the idle one and towards the carriage - which now that you are closer actually looks like more of a coach.
