Azuriel spectates from his catty perch, talons poised on the tips of each other, as the group shares a toast.  The points of his eyes puncture Masina's visage as she speaks, twisting with a malicious mirth like onyx daggers in a virgin wound.<br/><br/>She winces, and his keen voice takes on the tone of cat claws on slate.<strong>"Good wind's all well and good to drink to.  But don't drink too much in your state - best remember that bad wind is made to be broken."</strong><br/><br/>He cocks his head like a falcon, conversing with an indignantly screaming eagle that hangs in pink marble from the ceiling, talking over Masina.<strong>"Reminds me of an Assyrian con man I once knew.  Used to gather bronzes from the marks - slack-jawed villagers and the like - by insisting he could make it rain, then proving it to them by summoning the sound of thunder with no more than a bronze horn, a bag of beans and the most agile ring-piece this side of the Theban brothels.</strong><br/><br/><strong>"No tribe holds the hilltop.  Hilltop is held by a pig shed, an inn and some locals who are scientifically proving, beyond all doubt's murky shade, that breeding with one's sister is not - again, <em>not </em> - the route to divinity."</strong>His hands flip up, wrists together, either mimicing his friend the eagle that he speaks to or shrugging on the behalf of his shoulders.<br/><br/><strong>"I would tell you that no more than thirty people live up there, but I would be incorrect, as surely one of those troglodytes doesn't really count as a whole person.  Not in the spiritual, empirical, each-to-their-own-dram-of-Promethean-fire sense of a person.  Though that's up to debate, I suppose."</strong><br/><br/>He exhales in theatrical weariness.  An instant later, he's moved without seeming to turn his head.  His eyes are already scratching hash marks in Masina's, all wild black demand.<br/><br/><strong>"Did I answer your question?  No tribe.  Yes."</strong>