[P] i wish i found some chords in an order that is new

[Adonai]

brother, my cup is empty and I haven't got a penny for to buy no more whiskey

❦

I

n retrospect, the warning had been there in the electricity. 

"What do you want?" Pilate's visitor spits, and there is enough of a pause between his question and my answer that I see the guard, sweat running down his back in rivulets, angle his helmeted gaze carefully towards me. 

I know then that this will be their entertainment tonight. Though our servants feast upon larger helpings of hearsay than their counterparts do in the other Great Houses, this particular script has all the makings of a delicacy rarely seen and rarer still indulged. Pilate will hear of it tonight, embellished to extravagance. I picture his anger and hold it to my chest like a silk-swaddled gift.

My gaze is glancing when I look at Andras, (Andras the Warden of Delumine, Andras the scholar, Andras the soldier—my brother suspects, I think, but he does not know just how much I still know) at the little whorl of white on his lip, sharp as a gash against the black. If by his insolence he had meant to anger me, then he has done everything that is the opposite. 

"He really hasn't told you anything about us," I say lightly, as if he had said 'Greetings, Prince, and how do you do' instead of spitting like Pilate's snakes. 

Pilate has told you everything and nothing at once, and you are here either because you have had enough of him or because my brother has finally gotten you to love him enough to find out.

My lyre, baked by the sun, burns its shadow into my back. He is too easy to read and then some. It is refreshing and discomfiting—it reminds me of Mernatius—it is refreshing because it is discomfiting. 

I have been imprisoned in my room for too long, to think so much about so little. If nothing else, it is this realisation that finally elicits from me a glancing blow of anger. A wobbly note startles forth from my lyre as I set my shoulders back and jerk a nod towards the gates. The morning sun has crested the olive trees, half of the way to noon, and I imagine the stacks of papers stretched like an ocean in front of Pilate waning to salt by the second. 

"Let him in."

The sands shift with a warning hiss as the massive iron gates shudder upwards. I step back, slitting my eyes against the sun and debris; wordlessly, the guard moves in front of me. 

"Stand down," I say, quietly, though he hears me still over the grinding of the gates. Startled, he turns to look at me. In my cold gaze he finds his answer: today, everything is mine. Do not try to take anything from me. "He will be my guest."

And I have no intention of bringing him to my brother.

@Andras