a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.

utside his room (larger now, with a larger window that looks out over the city and the sky hung just over its shoulder) it is dark, and hushed. He is not used to seeing the smear of the milky way when he looks up. There is no canopy to shield him from the prying eyes of the moon. It makes him feel terribly small, more than he already is.

He pens the note at his desk, the new, longer one already stacked high with books he carried to the city from the library and his notes on them. Andras has been thinking of this through the long winter and the far longer spring. Every time he sets out to write, every time he dips his quill (one of his own feathers; black as the night sky above and thin as razor wire) in the pot of ink someone calls his name through the door.

Amid the upheaval, he is a man of many faces and not nearly as many talents: lawkeeper and diplomat, sword and reaching branch. He holds onto the word Warden like it is the only thing he knows, through assignments where he should at least make an attempt at smiling, but instead flowers out from behind his glasses. It is the only thing he knows. It is the only thing he knows except-- 

--well, this is why he writes. There is a moment of striking peace. The pen scratches the paper and it is all he can hear that is not the faint wind outside, or his magic, crackling off his skin with the mounting tension in his grip.

The first page says only:

Pilate,

It's time we talked,

but the more he looks at it, scrubbing his face with the palm of one wing, the more he finds it lacking. It shouldn't be so hard, to be tolerable and charming and open. It shouldn't be so hard to be anything other than a row of grinning teeth and the distant crack of an approaching storm. There are softer animals in the world. There are gentle ones. Even deer have their spears when they need them.

Andras stares at the page, mouth pressed into a tight line. He does not know how to be a deer. He only knows how to be a dog. Loving Pilate--is that what he's doing?--isn't so hard. It's a remarkably easy, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other ordeal, and he has always found it easier, just to walk, any say nothing.

Pilate is not the same sort of man. Not at all. Andras would have him no other way. He crumples his first, impossibly short draft, sets it on the ground next to the desk, and begins again:

Prince Pilate,

I figured, once in my life, I'd do the favor of giving your fair notice before dropping in. I'll be in Solterra soon, to see you. I think we should talk. Think of your favorite place. I'll take you there.

Yours,
Andras, Delumine Emissary

The pen shakes as he drops it back into the pot, clumsily enough that it globs once on the red wood on the desk, and ties it to the leg of an owl, summoned hours ago, that had been waiting, staring at him with eyes full of the same smeared milky way as the window. His eyes follow it out as it goes, a shrinking white speck above the orange glow of a city about to bed down for the night. He only waits long enough for it to return, some time later, empty-handed, before he is flying, too.

ANDRAS, emissary of DELUMINE