a caelo usque ad centrum

[OOC] {song}

2007-03-22T12:05:00Z

Fly little bird, fly to me, fly little bird, won’t you try?
Try little bird, lie to me, lie little bird, won’t you fly?

Cuckoos lay eggs inside other birds’ houses;
That’s how their children grow strong.
Wise parents know when to grant their young freedom --
Who says the cuckoos are wrong?
My mother was human, but father wore feathers;
He hasn’t been seen since he flew.
And I am the child of their very strange union,
And I have been left here with you.

Cuckoos are cunning and cuckoos are clever;
That’s how they’ve lasted so long.
Cuckoos can hide, never showing a feather --
Who says the cuckoos are wrong?
I’ve learned to be careful and never take chances;
I’ve learned to conceal what is true,
For I am a cuckoo -- yes, just like my father --
And I have been left here with you.

I’m the voice in your head, I’m the cuckoo beside you,
The angel you dread and the demon inside you,
You’ll dance to my tune when it’s my hand that guides you,
Singing ‘cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo to you too,’
You’ll sing ‘cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo to you too,’ oh,

Fly little bird...

Come, let me see all your dreams and desires --
It’s not like you’ll hide them for long.
A crack in the eggshell is all I’ll require,
And I can crack you for a song.
The patterns are simple, the rules are complex,
And one and one’s not always two.
But I am the shadow you see on your doorstep,
And I have been left here with you.

False truths, true lies, what a surprise;
Let me tell you what to do. I’m the cuckoo calling you.
Think once. Think twice. Take my advice;
There’s no way to run or hide when the thing you fear’s inside.

I’m the voice in your head, I’m the cuckoo beside you,
The angel you dread and the demon inside you,
You’ll dance to my tune when it’s my hand that guides you,
Singing ‘cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo to you too,’
You’ll sing ‘cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo to you too,’ now --

Fly little bird, fly to me, fly little bird, won’t you try?
Try little bird, lie to me, lie little bird, won’t you fly?
Fly little bird, fly to me, fly little bird, won’t you try?
Try little bird, lie to me, lie little bird, won’t you fly?
Fly little bird, fly to me, fly little bird, won’t you try?
Try little bird, lie to me, lie little bird, won’t you fly?

[IC] {vignette}

2007-03-13T09:16:31Z

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.

[OOC] The Mews

2007-01-23T08:39:49Z

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.

[OOC] Extended Background

2007-01-23T06:30:56Z

Character: Albedo Piazzolla
Series: Xenosaga
Age: 26
Character Type: Royal falconer - master of hawks; agent of the Church

Allegiance: Publicly, he hasn't taken sides, making the diplomatic move of declaring loyalty to the royal family in general, not one of the princes in fine; privately, he's entirely the Church's creature.

Background: Born in the distant city of Vartas, Albedo was driven out of his home at a very young age by a conflict in that region instantiated by the Church. As was often the case in these situations--and given he had in his possession a part of the Song of Nebilim, an enigmatic document that the Church had been trying to take in the first place--the child eventually found his way back into the care of the Church, but not before his mind had been (irreparably) broken by things he'd witnessed during the fighting.

His life prior to the conflict had not been any less turbulent, though it was far less violent; the third son (the younger of twins) of the local ruler, Dmitri Yuriev, Albedo and his siblings were labeled as "monsters" by the populace, in part due to rumors of their father using forbidden alchemy on their mother during her pregnancies in order to make the children more "perfect". Whether Yuriev actually did such a thing is left up to the imagination, though it can be said that his children have always been a little unearthly. Albedo and his older twin Rubedo, especially, shared a bond so close it seemed as if one knew what the other was thinking, almost as if there was one soul in two bodies. For this, and for the adulterous union Yuriev had forced in order to sire his children on what was then another man's wife, the family was cast out from the Church--one step leading up to the eventual conflict that destroyed the family.

Albedo was twelve when the conflict broke out, and scarcely older when a bishop of the local diocese found him badly wounded and talking to himself as he staggered away from the burning city. Thoroughly mad by that time, but possessing several qualities--ruthlessness and an iron will among them--he was deemed useful to the Church and placed under the care of the Knights of Ormus, a secret militant society well equipped for dealing with wild children. In the two years he was under their direct care, Albedo learned rudimentary skills of fighting and assassination he would later hone to a fine point in years to come. He also began to develop a keen eye for the ways of other people, sharpening his (un)natural perception of others' emotions and motivations.

When the boy was fourteen, a spot for an apprenticeship with Narborough's master falconer made itself available. Thinking ahead to a time when the kingdom might suffer internal strife due to the king's refusal to name an heir, the Church--more the Ormus, really--maneuvered Albedo into position to take the spot and act as their agent inside the workings of the royal family. While his antisocial tendencies led him to terrorizing the other apprentices, he proved a star pupil in many other ways--he seemed to have an instinctive understanding for the minds of the birds, and more, he healed well and quickly from the abuses they inflicted with little concern for his own pain. So despite all the problems he caused, his master kept him on and trained him for nearly twelve years--time in which the boy, then young man, used to thoroughly cow his fellow apprentices and the master himself.

Easily securing a spot as favorite apprentice, Albedo then only had to bide his time and push at his master until something shattered... And the older man committed suicide, leaving Albedo to step into the role as Narborough's master of the mews. There he lives something of a double life--openly professing to support the royal family (insult them as he might) and working with the birds for much of his time, and reporting to the Church and keeping his combat abilities and fearsome strength sharp for the rest. Not that he has much else to do--the very air of palpable insanity around him tends to drive off most anyone human who gets close to him, if his sarcastic and cutting demeanor doesn't.

Sample RP/Third Person: Working with the kestrels and the hobbies always had a way of trying Albedo's patience.

It wasn't the birds themselves that did it; no, the small hawks, while fierce, were no different than their larger cousins in terms of what they needed and wanted. As one predator to another, Albedo had very little to fear from them and much to teach--and they were every bit as intelligent as the gyr and the saker, so long as you didn't expect miracles from them.

No, what bothered him was the waste that would be made of them. Little birds, for little girls and women and young snot-nosed noblemen who were learning the art as a way to show off for their young snot-nosed noble friends. Those of the little birds that didn't have the wits to make a break for it when they were first taken out were doomed to very short lives as overweight, unhealthy house-pets that would be lucky to survive the first time they footed the wrong lord's lady. Once more, humankind had found a brilliant way to make creatures who had a better idea of how the world worked suffer for their pleasure. And while Albedo was not above a little other-suffering for the sake of entertainment, even he had his limits.

The falconer was all but twitching with ill-concealed rage by the time the last of the small birds had been put up; his usual grin was brittle and dangerous. The apprentices knew better than to get in his way, or do more than nod (doing no better job at concealing their fear) at a barked order. If one of them hesitated at the wrong moment, or sent one of the birds to bating and rousing, he was summarily knocked into the nearest wall with a fierce backhand slap. Perfection was demanded, and perfection they'd deliver, and they had no illusions about their odds of survival if they failed. Somehow they managed their duties without a fatality (as they always did--but none of them were statisticians enough to realize Albedo hadn't killed anyone yet despite repeated threats...), and one by one they scurried off to other pursuits with hardly a backward glance.

As was his custom, Albedo was the last to leave, stopping only to see that the mews were secured before donning his cloak and stepping out into the cold winter air. He drew in a deep breath of it, feeling the chill somewhere in the center of his chest--before chuckling to himself, breath a puff of white in the cold. "We were all young and dumb once, children," he muttered in the direction his apprentices had run off to--though they couldn't, wouldn't be around to hear him. "The trick is growing out of both of them at the same time. There's something you don't see everyday in these parts--or hardly at all..."

He trailed off, stepping down into the snow and raising his head as a hound might on scenting the wind at--something caught just at the edge of his hearing. Find a woman, said the Holy Spirit caged in his skull. Find one and punish her for the failings of her sex. Then return her to Me.

This prompted another laugh from Albedo, this one softer and brittle as ice. "So soon? I just got off work, boss."

Do it. Now.

"You make it so hard to argue with you."

I Am that I Am. My Word is law, today, yesterday, and tomorrow. I...

The falconer tuned out mentally as the voice droned on, eyes fluttering closed as his smile became a little more honest. On the other hand, it might be nice to set his irritation to rights by taking it out on the real perpetrators--wouldn't it? Yes, not a bad idea.

He'd just need to stop back home for the knives first.

Extended Background: Had it not been for the rapid and total disintegration of the local government in one of Narborough's southern neighbors, Albedo--then a boy of twelve--would have been perfectly content to languish in obscurity as the third child of the noble Yuriev family, once-rulers of the city of Vartas. His family history--replete with unsubstantiated rumors of adultery, forbidden alchemy practiced on the unborn (most namely, Albedo and his siblings, older and younger), excommunications, and murder--was turbulent enough without any help on his part, or that of his beloved twin brother.

Unfortunately, such was not to be. An incident sparked in one of the northern countries quickly grew to embroil the kingdoms to the west through the heavy involvement of the Church, bringing with it widespread chaos. Families were torn apart, the nobility were overthrown, and infrastructure rapidly collapsed. Certain branches of the Church would not be denied in their pursuit of what they believed to be heretical knowledge--the Song of Nebilim, a Gnostic document rumored to be more than merely the musings of a dead religion--and when the Yuriev patriarch (who was already on very poor terms with them due to the circumstances of his wife's death) got in their way in pursuit of the same knowledge, he was cut down. (Whether or not this was a serious loss to his children is lost to the murk of history--he was rumored to be a cruel man in person, more interested in the utility of his offspring as tools rather than as people.)

Not unexpectedly, the children scattered. One was killed in the fighting, another disappeared outright, two were absorbed by communities surrounding Vartas, and Albedo... Badly wounded in both mind and body by events during the fighting, he nevertheless managed to depart the city on his own (he'd always been a quick healer) with a portion of the same manuscript that had caused all the trouble in his possession. It was in this half-delirious state he was discovered by a bishop of the Church--one who, having been heavily involved in the upheaval, was well aware of what he'd found. Despite the circumstances of his birth, and his father's status as an apostate, the Church saw fit to "pardon" Albedo (on those grounds, at least) and--with some small amount of friction and politicking between several different factions within the organization--remanded him to the care of a supernumerary to one of their martial orders (the Knights of Ormus), a man named Margulis.

Albedo--due in no small part to the mental illness that had gotten a firm hold in him--rapidly proved unsuited to life in the church. This was no particular surprise to anyone, even the child himself--though he had a number of other traits (intelligence, ruthlessness, and an iron will among them) that could make him very useful to the Church--or, rather, certain elements within it--under the right set of circumstances. It was merely a matter of finding those circumstances...

One of the benefits of being an organization concerned more with eternity than the day-to-day affairs of mortals is that it gives you a certain long view of current events. Even before Prince Clement's birth, there were certain among the Church (and the laity) who had begun to murmur about a potential power struggle, should Narborough's king die and fail to name an heir. Some of those who paid particular heed to the rumors were among the Ormus, who--taking the poor example of the Knights Templar as a warning--were quite interested in securing themselves a temporal as well as a spiritual foothold on this earth, and Narborough looked like an excellent place to begin just such a move. Meetings were convened, plans were put into motion, and pieces moved into position.

Albedo (then fourteen) was just another of those pieces in the Ormus's long-term plans for political power in the region. It had happened that Narborough's master falconer had recently lost an adult apprentice to a shameful affair with a woman far beneath his station--and more, that said master falconer was a very pious man who, so long as it did not contradict the will of his king, was very very interested in keeping on the right side of the Church. It was almost shamefully easy to convince him to take on a poor orphan the Church had been sheltering and give him a better life than he would have had ordinarily, fending for himself and running wild on the streets.

While something of a leap of faith on the part of the kid's handlers among the Knights of Ormus, the move was a calculated risk--it was an open secret that Albedo meant very little to the people who were nominally entrusted with his care, and he'd responded by developing a similar lack of concern about them... And consequently a near-sociopathy that led him to disdain most human company. So either he'd succeed at the job he'd been sent to do, or he'd fail miserably and most likely get himself permanently removed as a thorn from the Church's side. Both situations were desirable.

As it happened, the same traits of personality that made him ill-adapted to living with other people made Albedo infinitely better suited to dealing with hawks. It was something of a rapport between predators who very much did not want to be in the situation they were forced to deal with--and it worked. Despite his backbiting, resistance toward authority, and bullying of other apprentices, the teenager easily netted the position of his master's favored successor, in large part because he honestly knew what he was doing without having to be lectured about it repeatedly. (It still helped that he was a good healer and seemed to have the devil's own luck in cheating serious injury--where other apprentices lost eyes or appendages to being footed or savaged, he got off comparatively light with the occasional deep score.)

Even given the stiff workload of an apprentice, he still managed to sneak in time to learn other important lessons--mostly about the people around him, how they acted, what they wanted, and how they betrayed what they wouldn't show on their faces with a move or a gesture. Bullying escalated to more sophisticated psychological torture as Albedo learned to pick apart normal human relationships from the position of a disinterested outsider; new apprentices were regularly warned that if he could pick up on their fear, the birds certainly could, and neither were safe to be around if you happened to look like an easy target. Meanwhile, the master of the mews began to look more and more haggard from the effort of containing this low-level war where no one respectable could see it. He was beginning to regret his promises to the Church, but his own sense of honor and unwillingness to act until it was far too late meant that he had very few options when he finally did decide to do something. There were no other apprentices he could nominate to the position, because Albedo had very neatly dominated it, and had no qualms about sabotaging his competitors to maintain his position.

It's this position that he held up until very recently--within a few months before the king's death, in fact. Something finally snapped under all the stress in the mews, and with it, so did the master falconer. He was found hung by his own hand one fine summer afternoon. Of course, all of his apprentices were suitably grieved by the events--but it was fortunate indeed that there was a fully-trained replacement just waiting to take over and make the transition as smooth as possible...