Some part of Mort wants to speak, like regular, functional people do. The problem with chronic depression, Mort finds, is the inconveniently massive amounts of inertia required to do any action whatsoever. So Mort seats himself in Isra'fil's office, and takes a deep breath... and then another... and another... 

Finally, after much chewing of his tongue and swatting at his comb, Mort speaks. 

"I'm Mort ibn Hytham, of the Makhlab clan, of Al-Tahliq Industries. Sure, you've been holed up here, away from the homeland for whatever amount of time, but you must still know my family.

More silence, and rapid blinking, before he speaks.

"You must also know of the many other families. You must know that, under our custom, especially in the south, that power was, sure, centralized in the capital and doled out by some governor, but real power, real influence, the birds who really made things happen... well, that came down to the clans, dinnit? And things were fine. A tiff here or there, but it was good, under the peace, even you know that."

Mort licked the inside of his beak. Scratched the floor. Twitched. Then, as though suddenly remembering he was in the middle of a conversation,

"Well, now all this awful business has happened. All the birds I know are dead. If there's any trace of my clan left, they've been scattered into the wind, eh? And so are the other clans. Now," Mort picks his beak with a talon, "say we succeed, however damn improbable it is, at all this. Then what? I'm no heroin' type. I'm Makhlab. I know my place. And old habits die hard. If this all works out, and that's a big, honking 'if', then I'm gonna need to be guaranteed my clan's hegemony over the south. Don't tell me you're horrified that I'm still thinkin' about that. It's clan law. Blood first. And if there's a future out there, then it's a Makhlab future. 

"So, yes, I'm going to want to find surviving relatives and soldiers. I want to re-establish some semblance of order. There. I'm honest. And I'd rather do it sooner than later. What sort of stuff do you know about liberating our land could be beneficial to my hodge-podge party?"