The city cracks open like an egg, spilling light and sound that ratchets his jaw another degree tighter.
Andras was made for Delumine, for its gray fog and tall trees and the uncanny hush of a country in mourning from the day it was born to the day it dies. He is made for the churchlike silence of the library, light falling in slanted yellow shafts on the knotted wood floor. Solterra is busy, the sort of frantic buzzing that comes with a market state: the mulling of crowds, exchanging of goods, the dark hoods of cons and pickpockets that leer at him from their corners and canopies.
The shadow of the gate falls across his back in a long, blue-gray block that is at once warm and not warm enough. Andras' teeth hurt. His knees ache. The breath he had held splits itself between his nose and his teeth, a wet hiss.
A guard shuts the gate behind him, creaking like a sunken ship.
Andras wonders why he feels like an animal in a cage, desperate to get out the second the door closes. His heart is just starting to lift a hand to rattle the bars when a voice says, 'Warden.'
A bolt of blue light crackles across the wings folded neatly over his back. The voice is a sound he would know sleeping, a sound he would know if he did not know his own name.
It can't be this easy.
It can't be this easy.
Andras knows that to tilt his head back, turn his throat to the sun and catch the light on the rim of his glasses is a death sentence, or at least something close. Lately everything feels like death after death after death, so it would come as no surprise. He chooses not to recognize the buoyant something that rises to meet the sudden, crushing panic that grips him. It all feels very cliche, on his figurative knees in the street, aching up at the balcony with his heart in his throat. It's easier to look at him, this far away. It's easier to breathe, to think.
And he thinks, Oriens help me.
"Andras." he offers, finally. "Let me in."
Andras was made for Delumine, for its gray fog and tall trees and the uncanny hush of a country in mourning from the day it was born to the day it dies. He is made for the churchlike silence of the library, light falling in slanted yellow shafts on the knotted wood floor. Solterra is busy, the sort of frantic buzzing that comes with a market state: the mulling of crowds, exchanging of goods, the dark hoods of cons and pickpockets that leer at him from their corners and canopies.
The shadow of the gate falls across his back in a long, blue-gray block that is at once warm and not warm enough. Andras' teeth hurt. His knees ache. The breath he had held splits itself between his nose and his teeth, a wet hiss.
A guard shuts the gate behind him, creaking like a sunken ship.
Andras wonders why he feels like an animal in a cage, desperate to get out the second the door closes. His heart is just starting to lift a hand to rattle the bars when a voice says, 'Warden.'
A bolt of blue light crackles across the wings folded neatly over his back. The voice is a sound he would know sleeping, a sound he would know if he did not know his own name.
It can't be this easy.
It can't be this easy.
Andras knows that to tilt his head back, turn his throat to the sun and catch the light on the rim of his glasses is a death sentence, or at least something close. Lately everything feels like death after death after death, so it would come as no surprise. He chooses not to recognize the buoyant something that rises to meet the sudden, crushing panic that grips him. It all feels very cliche, on his figurative knees in the street, aching up at the balcony with his heart in his throat. It's easier to look at him, this far away. It's easier to breathe, to think.
And he thinks, Oriens help me.
"Andras." he offers, finally. "Let me in."
sleep like dead men, wake up like dead men
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
