An Avan sat quietly in the garden. The moonlight over head shining down through the reaching boughs of naked, ancient oaks. In the dappled rays of silver blue light the last patches of a winter's snow glow a soft azure. Abutting against the blue shine of snow in a late evening's moonlight was the warm golden light of a small fire as the hooded figure of the bird-man hunched over it. Clutched between his beak was a long pipe, from which he puffed laconically as he stared into the fire.

	On the still cool mid-seasonal night the bells of the city of Hemden rang in low tones, chiming the hours. Their slow trembling rings rolling across the low hills and above the smoking roof tops of the city hidden just beyond the walls of the great garden. One, two, three the Avan counting, puffing in time to the rings. Four, five, six, the fire light from the castle keep a few yards off glowed comfortably in the cool night air signaling a place more comfortable than the chilly night air. Seven, eight, he paid a moment's thought at the last ring to credit the clock work skill of the Arkron. He was young still when such time keeping was new and in a distant way it still sounded different and odd. At this time the bells of the city would be silent, ringing out only to signal the beginning of some occasion in the city; a meeting of a guild, a party by a grandee, the arrival of news. Now the code of the bells had long changed.

	He took a long draw from the pipe, and removed it from his beak. Taping the tip against his hands he held the smoke in his mouth, not fixing to breath at all as he felt the hot, abrasive, and numbing mixture at the beak of his throat before he finally let go and simply breathed it out in a cloud. His mind drifted off to other matters as he looked into the fire and he sat that way for some time with his cloak hanging heavily off his shoulders. He knew he should not be out at this hour but there was no one to tell him otherwise. After all, he had wandered and soldiered before; he was no stranger to all of this. And when men bowed back at your words, what reason was there to abide by their common sense.

	Earlier that afternoon a carrier crow had arrived with a message at its talons. The hefty letter delivered the missive promptly and to the point. The Emperor was dead, his son was soon to inherit, and the forty-nine year old Avan found himself contemplating history. The last rebellion had been his father's affair to manage, he had only watched from the safety of castle chambers or palace dining halls. Not often though not rarely was he taken to the side of battle to watch the ranks close in on each other and battle fought against one another. He had sometimes been taken out in his father's retinue and stood to watch at the edge of wooded lines or atop hills as battles were fought and the opposing forces herald's and civil men met and discussed the battle itself, taking the technical details and doing the mid-fight diplomacy. After all, someone would need to call the victor. The holy men were there too, as were the soldier wives and bed maids and all the non-fighting hangers-on who looked on with something other than terror, but excitement. He recalled the tension of the spectators not as something terrible but as something fun and enjoyable, games were played and bets exchanged. He was young at the time, he could not have known the terror of the actual battle at play below.

	“Ye'ea wanderin' again.” a voice said, but the Avan did not take notice. He continued to think to himself as he drew circles with the mouth piece of the pipe on his hand, tracing across the grey downy feathers that grew thin and patchy there like a barren field tilled up and ready to plant but with the weeds crawling back to reclaim it fast before the farmer can assemble his equipment, there had been a hard rain there. The imagination recalled the smell of fresh tilled earth and a recently departed spring rain. Perhaps there was a thunderstorm, it smelled electric. It smelled like sex.

	“P'haps if you stayed on track.” the voice said, sounding nearer now. Again, the Avan did not pay attention. Or he pretended not to. He returned to the letter: the Emperor was dead. That was not what concerned him in the least. Monarchs came and went, they died and their sons inherited or someone assembled a small army and blocked their ascent, naming themselves the new king. If the one to-be was not well liked, there would be no fight; it would pass under threat of noble violence. And this was entirely the concern at heart. Though unfounded, he had a keen eye for rumor and stories and the gossip of the day had not stopped: some lords and named have not given up on the dream of the 3rd Rebellion. Though, there had been successions since.

	“Now yea'ea in the patch.” said the voice again, clearer and the Avan finally acknowledged him.

	“When'll I get rid of you?” he asked in a low tone, his voice cracking as he coughed.

	“Don'think you will. The two o' us: we're going to the grave together I thinks.” the voice said and a figured seated itself just out of the fire's light. It took on the appearance of a large Avan, hooded and robed. Its features however silhouetted in the dim moon light. From under the hood though rose what appeared to be protrusions, like horns from the head. But it's long crooked beak lent a profile like a hawk or eagle, lithe and dangerous.

	“I thought you hated smoking.” the Avan remarked, his voice cold.

	“Ay, th'stench is fucking terrible and it disagree with me somewhat. But you let your pipe go cold, m'friend.”

	The Avan looked down. The smoldering embers in his pipe did indeed go cold and looking around he noticed the night had taken on a darker air. How long he had let it go was beyond him. Last he knew it was eight in the evening. He had not heard the chimes again so it must not have gotten later. Looking up he cast his view to the sky. He did not want to look at the shadow seated at the edge of light across from him. He did not want to acknowledge what he credited as his world.

	The stars above were sharp and crisp in the night sky. The moon taking on a full glow as it hung high in the night sky. The brilliant band of lights that made up the sky offered a different aural spectacle from that of a small fire.

	“Yea by t'way may want to check the fire.” the shaded figure remarked and the Avan looked down and found the fire too was fading unhealthily. He grabbed at a few small twigs and threw them on and the tongues of flame took on renewed health. Raising his hands to the fire he warmed his palms and brought feeling back into them as he wrapped himself closer with the cloak.

	“Now, I do be knowing that y'have somethin' on yea mind.” the figure said, reaching up with a hand and scratching the side of his face. The tremble of his voice sounding like a smile, “Y'mind catching me up? Y'be looking perplexed all day I noticed. Chance per something put y'on the spoil?”

	The Avan looked down at the pipe in his hands, turning it over, careful not to turn out the mix. With a surrendered sigh he turned it over and tapped it out onto the snow and began drawing it across the back of his hand again. “This be'in the letter then.” the figure said, with a lift of the head, “The one in the pocket.”

	The Avan knew he had no business knowing this but was long surrendered to it. “It is.” he said simply.

	“Long live the Emperor.” the hooded figure said with a cackle, “Long may he reign.”

	“Indeed.”

	“So, tell me when t'last emperor died. That was...” the hooded figured trailed off, letting a raised hand wave through the air. The Avan felt his eyes burrowing upon him and it made him feel colder. He tossed a few more sticks on the fire.

	“Thirty years ago, just about.” the Avan said.

	“Ah, I see it then s'clear's the moon. Ay, yes. That do be well.”

	“Why does this matter to you?” The Avan asked aggresively.

	“Because I be'feeling you have yea'self some doubts. Like last time?”

	“Mhmm.” the Avan grunted.

	“Well yea'be-knowing me: better to stick to the friends y'know than you don't. The Arkronians have been good to you. S'far.”

	The Avan didn't answer that remark. He tapped the pipe against the back of his hand as he ran it up and down his arm. He felt it catch the small feathers that grew there as it traced along the bare skin. His silence was not indecipherable to the figure seated nearby who laughed.

	“Doubt is strong.” he said, “maybe it is mere hubris on their part. Will'ea least 'tend the crowning.”

	“I don't have a choice on that part.” the Avan said.

	“Nae, 'couse you don't. If'ean you did though?”

	“Would not matter. A gesture is a gesture. A friend is a friend. The blood runs, and it runs good.”

	“But to whoms't? The Arkronians as a race, or the Imperial House?” a moment of silence passed, made as punctuation and emphasis on the point to be made: “Here'in lies t'true problem.”

	The Avan nodded. Slight and solemn. “Then t'is is as'it will be always. Go happily. I am cold.”

	Finally the figure rose, after what felt like a long conversation to the Avan. Snow and branches crunched under his footfalls as it disappeared into the woods and the Avan looked down to find the fire had smoldered into embers. He snapped into reality as he heard distantly the bells of the city solemnly ring out ten times. He looked back at his castle and saw many of the lights had died. Some torches and lanterns smoldered, as he believed to be out of courtesy to him by the guards, who knew their lord had eloped somewhere off into the garden somewhere.

	It was best that he had not entirely wandered into the country.

[h1]Hemden, Kingdom of Cor[/h1]

	A siren's choir of birds erupted with the break of dawn as in the city below the bells were into ringing their short morning songs. The breaking early spring sun, while it brought limited warmth did awaken the lives of the sleeping city below as its rays touched on the windows of the homes below. Looming high over the city atop a steep hill rose the ancient castle of Hem's rock. Its twelve tightly clustered towers crowned with flowing banners as a ringed series of walls did more than just defend the keep itself, but contain within it an entire court society that had evolved and grew up there. Containing a synthesis of the magisterial court politics of Arkron and the stubbornly old ways of the ancient Avan kings. It was at once self-interested in keeping itself contained and to create its own aristocratic high society, as within the walls large townhouses and mansions of prominent if landless nobility settled close nearby, within reach of the king and his court and protected by its walls so they need not suffer commoners. Yet, this attitude closely at odds with an unsettled feeling that saw the oldest and most native of the castles sufferers to wander out into the city and interconnect the popular customs with that of the court, cursing it to never achieve true segregation.

	As the city awoke an early traffic begun as servants and the many petty hangers on of the court flirted through the gates. The daily flow of the newest fashions and trinkets began early so as to make as much time with the court's women and men, many of whom would demand time as well as offer generosity to them. This would not entirely be the sole traffic today. For deeper in the keep the nucleus of royal politics was rising to the day. They had in that day, a purpose. Couriers were dispatched to make the necessary orders.

	The city of Hemden was situated at the far end of a wide river, where a plethora of fanning smaller rivers and streams from the mountains and further trickled and rolled into the center of the country to meet at the vast lake on whose shores the city straddled, and over which it stepped widely over six streams and rivers that teemed with all manners of canoe and barge. Canals dug centuries ago only spread the access to the water, and entire neighborhoods were built up to access to these canals. The earliest of errand workers strode the waters in flat bottom boats to make daily deliveries of morning bread and eggs to the middling commoners and merchants who stayed in their warm homes during such cold mornings. During this time of year, the heat of the sun broke the chill of the night and waters warm still from the following early spring dead bled off white mist that filled the streets in the morning light. Opposite from the great castle at the banks of the lake docked an ocean going fleet, the river and lake being well deep and wide enough to accept many ships into it. The lake, and the city of Hemden served as, and was recognized readily as being the most peaceable port in the realm from any storm, and the winter gales that barreled north from over Rhaetia did not turn the waters of the lake as much as they did the waters of the open ocean where the winds threw up waves large enough to swallow entire ships before pushing it all northwards to drench and flood the Swiftpaw in great frozen torrents of wave and rain. And it was to the prized docks the castle men went for a boat was needed and there they kept the royal corvettes moored.

	“What will'in they expect of us?” a young Avan asked. His face was strained with an unusual uncertainty. It was not his first time of being in the capital. But this was an entirely new experience for him.

	The young prince Henry Peace Fear The Gods Coarsecrane was tall and handsome for his species. And speaking to his father the commonalities were not hard to overlook. With a bright red cap of feathers that ran from their face over and across their heads to their backs they resembled woodpeckers with wide expressive orange beaks. Although William Walker Coarscrane bore a dainty snood that lay right to left across his own.

	Smoking a pipe, William looked over at his son with an impassive look. Despite having disappeared into the shadows of the gardens the previous night and stayed there until long after much of the watch themselves turned in he had not gotten much sleep. But if he was bothered by it it did not show. Piercing green eyes shone with mirror clarity as he looked through the haze of smoke to Henry Peace. He shrugged.

	“How do we know t'new emperor is not an honorable man? Honor before all, that is what'ya used to say. Aye?”

	“They be.” William said in a low voice, looking away. They stood at an arcade of windows that looked out from the keep. The red rooftops of the royal village that had come to exist around the castle shone with misty morning dew as the city beyond was enveloped in a rolling white haze.

	“By chance: have you met the Emperor to be? Rakon-Da?”

	“Ney.”

	“You've 'eard of 'im?”

	“Aye, son.”

	“What about him?”

	“I 'ear he's a bright young man.”

	“So t'realm is in good hands?”

	“I'd assume so.” said William, breathing out a thick cloud of smoke. He looked about himself, searching the corners of the hall and by the ceiling. Some days he felt odd about the castle. This was one of his days. He looked ahead to the boat ride, to escape the keep and its indolent residents. “We should see if t'good cook has made anythin' fer us before we lift and leave. It'll be a timely voyage, but one we shall make. Have you packed yea'things?”

	“Yes.” Henry bowed, “You lead.”

	“Thanks.” William mumbled. His belly all the same however did not grumble in hunger.