Astrid goes still and rigid, like a deer spotted in the woods, hearing that voice ringing out like they’re right behind her — but they’re over Barrow’s crystal. Okay. She’s got a little bit of time.

Giving up on doing this by hand, she grabs a hunting dagger and digs it into the mortar. Narrower, this does the trick for prying loose the brick; she pulls out the papers, tries briefly to skim them, but the Trade runes swim in front of her face and she can’t make sense of it, not under such rushed conditions, so she shoves them into a hidden sewn pocket for later reading.

Is it more or less suspicious if she joins Barrow now? Should she let him talk his way out of it alone? But if they decide to take a peek and see her aimlessly skulking back here, that for sure seems worse.

An idea hits. She hasn’t got a dick so this is a little harder, but she unbuttons her belt and unlaces her trousers and shoves them down. A flash of utilitarian underwear, bony hips, bare thighs and ass, and —

Hunkering down beside the alleyway’s garbage and weeds and maybe a scurrying rat or two, she hunkers down into a squat and starts to take a piss. Loudly.

“Sorry! So many beers! Couldn’t hold it anymore!” she shouts back to the mouth of the alley, as if to her friend standing on very reasonable watch.

Public urination’s probably less of a crime than intercepting secret spy dead-drops from the Ambassadoria, so…