He stands beneath the oak-bush and waits the lame feet of salvation;

A falcon's wings are just a blur of white on white in the middling twilight; snow has yet to melt in the hollow depths of shadow between the trees and crunches beneath his feet as he crosses to the middle of the clearing, but still the hopeful crocuses can be seen already rearing their heads up from the frost-crusted soil. They are small and bound to be trampled underfoot should less cautious hunters come this way, but they are survivors, and one year's blossoms battered down to the soil again means nothing to them. Nor do they mean anything to the falconer and his bird; just scenery, like the snow and the trees but a little brighter and more fragrant.

It isn't true hunting yet, this expedition back deep into royal lands where they're unlikely to be disturbed--he has a gamekeeper's privilege and a duty to keep the poachers out, something he executes with ruthless efficiency when the situation arises--just stretching wings cramped by the winter fast melting away into spring (white into gold), pent up in the mews for far too long. Just stretching, the two of them, which means a long walk for one and a ride for the other, though the bird is hardly allowed to rest her wings for long. There is not hunting, but there is the rote motion (muscle memory) of casting off and the flurry of wingbeats, flying out a hundred meters or more as measured by the critical eye, called back to the fist in a broad circle by a high chirp of a whistle.

There is a rhythm to it, a rhyme--walk thirty steps, launch the falcon with a brief motion of one hand, watch her circle out and back again in the time it takes to make another ten steps through the brittle snow, catch with the proferred fist, repeat. Falconers have done this for as long as man has partnered with the birds; what is strange in this instance is the gyrfalcon, a tenth of a king's ransom, wears no jesses and her falconer no gauntlet. An implicit trust between them: He will suffer the pain and blood drawn by her talons with inhuman patience and suffer her to fly without leashing, and she will always return to him when he calls, never to watch the retreating silhouette, the bird gone feral and cutting through the endless blue field of sky with sickle-wings, grown tired of the tenuous pact with mankind.

at night he remembers freedom and flies in a dream,

Man has never succeeded in bending the raptor to his will in all the years they've hunted together. Wolves to dogs was easy by comparison, wildcats to mousers a farce. One cannot tame or break a bird of prey; she will not bear it, and even the unsteady rapport forged on food and cautious arms-length trust is too often broken. Given the choice between freedom and a full belly, the wolf will take food and submit; the hawk would rather starve than condescend to that level.

He stops at the far edge of the clearing, lofting the bird up to the nearest convenient branch and looking back over his shoulder, breath clouding the air with its lingering, biting chill. He notices that no more than he does the scratches and blood from knuckles to wrist of his left; these are insults to the meat (stubborn meat, insensate meat) and not the man and so the pain does not reach him. Given a detached inventory of his mental state, he's also too wound up inside to notice or care, shaking a patter of crimson droplets to the snow beneath his feet as one might get rid of a tickling insect, a spray of water. Crimson blotches (white into red) blossom around the toes of his boots; he's too busy staring back into the gloom of the way they came to notice, studying it for tell-tales, clues that might give up someone following them.

the dawns ruin it.

It's stupid to think anyone would, though. Given a random sample of the castle's population, nine of ten of them would say they wouldn't mind if the master of hawks (too young for that title, too damn young) simply disappeared on one of his peregrinations, never to be seen again. If pressed, the remaining ten percent would say that they really didn't know anything about the man who ruled the mews with terror and an iron will, venom and blows and absolute mastery of the creatures entrusted to him, bird or human. But of those ten percent, most hadn't been around long and wouldn't be around much longer, mayflies in the court or men and women between work--in short, no one who mattered.

Not that anyone matters to this falconer; there are only two creatures who can command the whims of his heart, and one of them sits on a branch above him, preening his blood from her talons, the other--

I'm going to try to protect you from yourself.

--is somewhere else, avoiding dealing with what he doesn't have the stomach to address directly for as long as he can. Until something forces his hand, which looks increasingly likely as time wears on. (An animal caught in a trap will sooner gnaw off one of its own limbs than starve; how strange to stop by a forgotten trapline in spring and find winter's wreckage in the splintered bones of paw and wrist, as of a fox setting itself free. Animals have it easy though, don't they?)

He is careful when he lashes out at the nearest tree in a blind rage that it's not the one the falcon is perched in. She's seen all of this before; it hardly interests now that her partner is interested in trading the skin of his knuckles for fistfuls of birchbark, so long as he doesn't bother her with this peculiar madness. Winter-wasted twigs and delicate curls of heartwood raked up by talons every bit as terrifying as the bird's rain down, peppering his hair and cloak and the ground beneath his feet, the only noise beyond the sussurrus of rustling and clattering of broken branches is the quiet hiss of breath between clenched teeth, predator-breathing, only a hair above a snarl.

When simply hitting the tree loses its novelty he stops where he is, catching his breath a moment before digging his claws in once more, leaning in to rest his head against the ruined furrowed patch he's torn open (and the tree won't make it through this spring, either) with eyes tight-shut, as if depriving them of the stream of images of the outside world would starve the clamoring voices inside his head to death. Fool! Why do you even keep trying? He's made it clear whose side he's on--and it isn't yours.

"He just needs to be brought around," the falconer mumbles to the tree-trunk, working his claws in further as he does. "One more try can't hurt. I know he's still in there, somewhere--sleeping--"

You don't really believe that. Of course he can't believe that, he doesn't have anything to prove it with! Your Rubedo is dead and gone. It's been fourteen years. You're not going to convince him, you know. He's as much of a stubborn idiot as his brother is. He'll listen. When he's out of options, he always comes back to us. To Me. Stupid bastards! He never realizes when he's hit the absolute bottom, just keeps clawing at bedrock as if that will get him somewhere! You're forgetting--

You've listened to Us in the past, Albedo. Why aren't you relying on Our judgment now?

"Because you're wrong about him!" Freeing his hands he shoves back from the tree, fingers curled to fists in front of his face. "Don't you get it? You're wrong--you don't know him like I do! Rubedo--my Rubedo is there, no one, no one, can take him from me! Not her, not Sakura, not anyone else, dead or living! He'll come back to me--because he must. He just..."

"We're equals. I'm not yours, and neither is my life." That doesn't sound like he has any intention of coming back, to Us.

And he won't kill you, either. He's said as much. I have to admit, I'm impressed by his tenacity--he's been used, he used you, betrayed, he lied to you, threw you aside; your trust meant nothing to your precious Rubedo, broken, people shy away from you; you're a monster, sick, sick, SICK--they don't want to be infected, and left for dead, he never looked for you, not once in fourteen years, and he still believes that "his" Rubedo, something that never existed in the first place, will come back for him.

"You're wrong," he snarls at the empty evening air, eyes the color of dusk darker still for the poor light, as he casts about for the unseen source of the voices. They're not there (as usual) except for the spectral flicker out of the corner of one eye, just on the edge of his vision. He knows better than to chase them, but straightens and turns anyway, trying to catch a glimpse of it, reaching out with one open hand to grab, strangle--

Nothing.

The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those that ask mercy,

Face it: He threw you into Hell. And now he won't turn you lose from it. Some merciful, loving brother. The falconer and the hunter both understand the world's idea of mercy: A quick death, a release from suffering before it can begin. He's given mercy to his charges before, birds too wounded in body or that intangible spirit that animates them to ever recover. Prolonged suffering is something he reserves for his toys, for those who deserve to suffer. Can Rubedo be the same? Did he--is this some kind of punishment? (Not my Rubedo. He wouldn't do that.)

"He told me he didn't hate me." His voice is a husk of itself now, a rasp bare of the usual life and emotion fever-bright that usually burns in it. Even the fanatic can find the end of his rope. Actions speak louder than words. He doesn't hate you BUT he wants to keep you around--

A brief flicker of light in the maelstrom inside his skull makes the falconer look up suddenly, grasping at it like a drowning man at straws. "It's a test. He just doesn't know I can't-- That--" Suicide is a sin, Albedo. If you take your life, who will We have to do Our work on this earth? A coward, like his brother-- "SHUT UP!" --not enough of a man to just get himself killed, once and for all! "I said SHUT UP!" Whatever he pretends to feel on the matter, he must agree with both of you bastards; he can't even find a way to DIE.

No. You just want Rubedo to be the one to do the job. If he breathes in the last breath from your lungs, then you can be together, ad infinitum, spirits united-- The reward for service to Me, restructuring the fallen world to be in My image-- "GOD DAMMIT, I TOLD YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

The silence that follows is deafening, a physical force, almost. He wavers on his feet, glassy-eyed, dazed with the impact of it.

not often to the arrogant.

It takes Simeon intruding with a grumble of displeasure and hunger to snap him back to reality. He shakes himself all over, recovering with the vitality of the young. The momentary lacuna in the noise, the period of sound-shadow where nothing can intrude, won't last very long, and meanwhile he's got a falcon to feed before it gets too dark for either of them to see. Already other thoughts are creeping into the temporary vacuum, doubts nibbling mouse-wise on his confidence as he calls his bird to him with a whistle, only to cast her off again as quickly to wait on. Deliberation returns to his movements; they'll need to get a ways from the clearing to startle out anything that hadn't run from the shouting and the scent of blood.

Hunting is another familiar rhythm--kicking up brush, disturbing rabbit runs, looking for something stupid enough to dart out in the open where his partner can get at it. It's only as it's starting to verge on true dark, last-light bleeding from the sky, that a startled rabbit bolts in a flat-out panic from its scrape. The falcon needs no urging; instinct tells her very clearly what to do in this situation and the hunt ends as it began with a splash of blood and a shrill scream, and over it all the rustle of wings, the bird standing astride her kill with wings spread out to hide it from thieves.

Of which he is not, but if he understands only one thing in this world that he knows so little of, it's the moods of birds; and so he stops at a respectful distance from her. They are not unalike, creatures meant to live in a pair at most, the idea of society and being bent to its warped rules repugnant in the extreme. What makes him mad in the eyes of his own kind is what they recognize in him: pitiless killer, opportunist, bound to respect only those who can earn it by right of their ferocity. His hand dips to the game-bag at his side and comes back with the real "prize" of the hunt--a coin-sized scrap of meat, a pittance compared to a fresh kill, but it's not really important how much food is there, just that the exchange is signatory of the trust there: Come back to me and I promise I'll take care of you.

The irony is utterly lost on him.

"Simeon," he calls to her as a man might a friend, a lover. It doesn't take that much to get her attention, but she's hungry and she's restless and she'll be damned if she doesn't hesitate, thinking over the dilemma that always faces a trained falcon.

He whistles once and lapses into a wait for her, displaying a patience few would suspect of him, dead-still, silent, eyes on his bird, one hand outstretched. It doesn't take more than a few seconds for her to decide, but that is a very long time for a creature that lives at speeds still unmeasurable to man; but still, she flies back to him, talons leaving fresh scores even as she accepts the token with fragile decorum. He knows better than to stretch her patience any further than it has been; field-dressing the rabbit is a trivial task, and she receives the lion's share of the viscera; heart, head, lungs, and liver.

"If," he ventures to her, as she's eating the last of her meal from his fingers, "he would just say--that he would-- No, ha! No!"

She turns one black eye on him at the exclamation, curious long enough to be distracted from swallowing the last speck of liver. "--No, it's a stupid thing to think. He's the hero of this one; they aren't like the rest of us, that have to kill and scrabble to survive--god likes them, can you believe that...? Perhaps," and he sobers here, finding the ever-present rag and scrubbing the blood, human and animal, from his fingers, "it's because they're bound to come home sooner; or is it the other way around? He brings his favorite toys back into his clutches the faster for having let them slip away from him..."

By now the falcon has lost interest, turned to feaking and preening, movements dull-edged with sleep. It's dark; she's eaten and flown hard. When do they get to go home? At this presumed question, Albedo laughs ruefully, gathering up the spoils of the hunt, his gear, and his bird. (The anger is still there, the slighted, petulant, childlike hurt. It gnaws at the edges, chewing, chewing around the equally childlike rapture at having one thing in the world that would never turn on him, eating up the good and swallowing it into the black abyss of the bad, and bit by bit the whispers begin to return to it...) "No, I didn't think you cared. You'd just peck out his eyes and have done with it if you were me.

"...heh. Do you think he'd forgive me that one? Or will I--"

He takes a breath, lets that thought trail off, and begins the walk back home.

Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

Physical Location: Away from the main castle complex, verging on the gardens. Far enough that nobles out on their evening constitutionals wouldn't be troubled by the sounds of birds shrieking for their dinners, but not so far it would take an undue hike to get there. The mews itself is a free-standing building, small by the standards of the castle; it is protected by the same fortifications as the rest of the complex, being on the inside of it.

Description:
Outside-- A single-story low-slung stone building, the mews is perhaps surprisingly open for being built in snow country. There are several actual windows around the outside walls, though they are ordinarily covered with oilcloth to prevent drafts, especially in winter. Similarly, the outside door (which is typically locked and bolted both from within and without) actually opens on to a vestibule with another door at the end, to prevent drafts from sneaking in with anyone who happens to enter. There are no accessory structures, such as living quarters; the master falconer and his apprentices, with the exception of the youngest and senior apprentices on punishment duty, have quarters within the castle itself.

Inside-- Once past the inside door, the mews themselves are as spacious within as the look from outside would imply. Except for one area cordoned off with netting--for free-flight exercises in inclement weather--there are no interior walls to partition the space off. The floors are covered liberally with sand (raked and partially replaced frequently, in order to deal with mutes, castings, and the other remains of the birds' meals) to both preserve warmth against the chill of the stone floors and to maintain a certain level of hygiene.

Birds are ordinarily kept leashed to their perches and hooded when not being fed, weighed, or exercised. Perches--which would be up to a grown man's chest--are fixed to the floor and weighted, kept separated by more than twice the length of the birds' leashes to avoid them attacking each other. There's a fireplace near the door is always kept burning and well-stocked during winter, and usually during the summer as well--extreme humidity being a hazard to the birds, especially the gyrs. Someone clever (and well-advised of Roman practices) in the mists of Narborough Castle's prehistory has figured out a flue system that means a great deal of waste heat from the fire is actually funneled through the walls and beneath the floor, keeping the entire room at approximately the same temperature.

The small but steady compliment of falconer-apprentices that the royal mews boasts means that the room and equipment can be kept as clean of debris and chalk as could reasonably be expected. The master of the mews expects a certain degree of fastidiousness that might almost be considered unreasonable, though it does keep things livable.

Equipment--lures, jesses, leashes, and the like, as well as partly cured hides for making the same--is kept on the inner wall near the free-flight area. There's a small work table over there as well, which has a compliment of leather-working tools (and little bits of miscellaneous equipment, such as files for coping the birds' talons and beaks) spread out over the top. Mounted above and beside all of this is a slate and a bag of chalk; the slate is, just from glancing at it, used to keep track of the conditions of the birds--their names are written out each on individual lines, and benchmarks like weight, recent hunts, and accounts of ill health or behavior are listed out along the lines. From the diversity of handwriting (some of it VERY bad, with awful spelling to boot), it's not just the master falconer keeping the slate updated.

Residents:
Humans-- Albedo Piazzolla is current master of the mews, and while he is known for his sharp tongue and brutal handling of his human charges, it cannot be argued that he is an excellent falconer and actually largely capable of passing on his knowledge of the birds he works with. While it isn't unknown for the apprentices to be seen with bruises or fresh scrapes that can't logically be explained by the birds, he has yet to actually kill anyone...despite threatening occasionally...

Working under him are another full falconer (who was passed over for the spot of master by dint of the fact he has a serious drinking problem and can't seem to keep out of debt), two senior apprentices, and a small horde of junior apprentices. On good days, the mews is generally as happy as anywhere else in the castle (under the circumstances); under bad days, it exists in an unnatural, terrified silence broken periodically by violence (though always, always, ALWAYS directed at the human residents, never the birds).

Even given this, Albedo is tremendously protective of all the other residents of the mews--human and avian alike. Though it often takes on overtones of an abusive, "only I'm allowed to hurt them" relationship, he does look after his people--in a ferocious, anti-social fashion.

Birds-- While there is some seasonal variation, especially as birds are acquired as branchers or passagers or are lost during hunts, there are usually around fifteen birds in residence. Most of these are a mix of smaller birds--hobbies, kestrels, and the like--with one or two goshawks, and three prize gyrfalcons (one a silver tiercel, and two white females), and strangest of all, an adult golden eagle. The eagle (female) is named Dinah, and is getting on in years--making her lazy, though she's periodically rousted out in spring and taken out to chase after stupid young foxes and deer. Of note, one of the white gyrs is Albedo's "personal" bird (something of a scandal, given that they're extremely precious and typically reserved for kings--but she refuses and has been known to attack any other handler); her name is Simeon, and she has a ferocity and ill temper that more than matches her master's.