Even a Dog Is Left Alone at Mealtime
The head maid stood on the threshold of death, forced to choose between two paths.
Lady Hoian...
In truth, it would not have mattered to her who the traitor was. The killing had been done for all to see, a spectacle meant to seize order through fear. Even so, when it came to fear, Lilith stood a cut above. The maid knew it in her own flesh. Had anyone felt that enormous hand close around their throat? No? Then they had best keep their mouths shut.
Poison? Of course it would hurt. But Lilith would be worse than that, if she was anything—never kinder.
"The truth is—! L-Lilith has changed!"
The head maid blurted it out without warning.
"Hm? And what is that supposed to mean?"
Go and tell that wench who calls herself Hoian: the price for trying to kill this seat will be paid in full.
Those were the words Lilith had ordered her to carry to Lady Hoian. To deliver them unchanged would be madness. Let this pass as it stood, and she would be dead long before she ever managed to assassinate Lilith. Better, then, to twist the message just enough to set the two of them at each other's throats.
"It's... her personality changed overnight. Her body was enormous to begin with, and she used that body to threaten me!"
"What?"
Lady Hoian let out an empty laugh, too dumbfounded for anything else. It was nonsense, pure and simple. For a moment she wondered whether the head maid had lost her mind. And yet a maid had been killed before her very eyes. Having seen that, the woman had no reason to lie. Who would stake their life on a falsehood of this sort? Or had Lilith become something more frightening than she herself was? That was more absurd still.
Which meant that everything the head maid had said was true.
"A story ought to have at least some tether to reality..."
Should she simply kill the head maid as well? Or step in herself? Either way, it was too dangerous. Far too many eyes were watching.
"Well, breakfast will be served soon enough. I can see for myself then. Whatever else happens, you will have Lilith at the morning meal."
"Yes, my lady."
"...So it's morning."
A maid had come to Lilith's room to tell her she was to attend breakfast. Did she truly have to eat? This body was in no state to take anything in. If it needed anything at all, it was water. Burning away the fat that flooded her would take more than inner energy; the external arts had to be forged as well. She was already at her limit simply trying to haul the bulk of it around, and now they wanted breakfast. As this body stood, food would only make the obesity worse. It would never make it better.
"A thorough waste of time."
She would have preferred to refuse, but this was a rule of House Tiribi: barring some extraordinary matter, meals were to be taken together. Until now Lilith had missed every one of them, pleading ill health.
"Very well. The body has mended, so I ought to attend. Understood. Go and see to your work."
The dining table was enormous, crowded from end to end with lavish dishes.
The scent of the food here is rather mild.
What had meals been like in the Central Plains? She had never been obsessed with flavor. Days of true hunger could be counted on her fingers, and so long as a thing filled the stomach, even tough jerky had been enough. She sniffed. From the moment she came down the stairs, a sweet fragrance had risen to meet her. Was this a different order of cooking entirely from the Central Plains, where they drowned every dish in fierce spice? Mildly interesting.
Nine chairs stood around the table. Duke Briton occupied a splendid, towering seat, while his wives and children sat in ordinary ones. Set well apart from the rest was a shabby little chair.
That is where Lilith used to sit.
At her entrance, every gaze but the duke's swept over Lilith at least once—looks reserved for insects. Two of them held outright loathing. One belonged to Lady Hoian, the duke's second wife. The other belonged to Lady Narien, Lilith's own mother.
To bare killing intent at this seat so openly... They are mad to die.
The trouble was that both of them had let it show. And one of them is Lilith's mother. How very ironic. The reason hardly mattered, nor did the person. Anyone who stood in her path would be cut down, every last one of them—even if that someone was Lilith's mother.
"I am late."
The Heavenly Demon took her seat. Quite the bed of thorns. She could feel it. Not one of them was glad to see Lilith.
No. That was not it. They were staring because Lilith's uncouth manner of speech had startled them. Out of nowhere she had produced an Eastern cadence no one in the room had ever heard—and not merely Eastern, but the speech of an old man who looked all of eighty.
So the talk was true. Lilith really has changed.
Lady Hoian turned the thought over as she cut her steak. A single glance had been enough. She had seen that confident stride. On any ordinary day the girl would have come down unable even to lift her face, trembling the whole way. More than that, she was not stammering. In place of a stammer, as if she had picked up something strange from who knew where, she spoke in a manner no one wanted anything to do with.
"Manner of speech aside, a voice that sure of itself is pleasant to hear."
A thick, low baritone. The whole table startled. Who would have imagined Duke Briton offering Lilith a word of praise? That same duke, so unbound that he spared his family not a single thought—what wind had blown him into compliments?
"Is that so. You have my thanks."
Lilith's reply threw cold water over the moment. The voice was beautiful and clear, yet it fell in hard, exact strokes, thick with discipline. One might almost have called it the voice of a sturdy man.
Someone sputtered a laugh.
"You're not a man. Why force your voice down like that? Putting on a strong front? Trying to hide what a coward you are?"
Lady Hoian mimed a retch. It was open provocation, but the Heavenly Demon gave her no answer. She was not worth one. The more immediate problem was that the fork and knife in front of her made no sense at all.
They expect me to slice up and eat a scrap of meat this small? I am not some beggar whelp of the Beggars' Sect.
The fork was unfamiliar. The knife, at least, resembled a sword. It seems sharp, and yet it isn't. A serrated edge... This will be the easier of the two.
She drove the knife into the dead center of the steak. It looked like a straight stab, but the blade had gone in at a slant, the better to seat it deep. Lifted that way, the meat would not slide off. The balance would hold. Then Lilith opened that enormous mouth as wide as it would go, so wide that the uvula at the back of her throat showed bare.
One bite. She simply bit down once. Two-thirds of the steak tore free, and her mouth was packed with meat. She chewed. The flesh was tender, and yet there was pleasure in the work of the jaw; just when it threatened to turn tough, it melted on the tongue. Indeed. A remarkable flavor. Had she ever praised a taste this highly? The food deserved it. Not even noodles from a master artisan's hands had come this far. Juices ran with every chew.
This—! What is this savor of meat, this scent of flame!
She swallowed the entire piece impaled on the knife, and when she opened her eyes she understood that something had gone wrong. Everyone at the table was staring at her.
How awkward. Did I eat that greedily?
I begin to see why Lilith was obese. Before food this perfect in both scent and taste, holding back one's appetite was a skill in its own right. The fat on this body had not gathered for nothing. Searching Lilith's memories, she found a girl who had used the relief of mental strain as an excuse to devour whatever was set in front of her. Of course it had come to this. The Heavenly Demon shook her head at the sheer scale of the gluttony. Even so, if one could eat food of this quality without limit, the excess was not entirely beyond understanding.
Serna, Lady Hoian's daughter, pulled a sour face. However hearty an eater Lilith had always been, she had never demolished a meal with so little grace. Had she forgotten how to use a fork and knife? Had the pain dulled her wits? Or was this a protest, staged where everyone could see? She was even eating vegetables she would not normally let touch her lips. Whatever else was true, she was not in her right mind.
"...Hm?"
The stares prickled hard enough to sting her scalp. The Heavenly Demon did her best to ignore them and eat on, but being watched like some curious beast was enough to make her set the knife down.
"Is this the first time you have seen a person eat?"
Every face had gone slack, appetite dead where it sat.
...The table manners in this place are utterly wretched.
But the wretched manners belonged to none other than the Heavenly Demon. She was like a beast. She had not torn the food apart with her hands, and that was the only mercy; the meal itself was filthy. Even a commoner with no manners drilled into them would not eat like that. Where was the girl who could empty dozens of bowls and still cut one piece at a time, lifting each on a fork? In her place was someone who stabbed several chunks at once upon a single knife and crammed them into her mouth.
"You... are you a barbarian? And you still call yourself a young lady? That you bear the name Tiribi at all offends me!"
Had Lilith been the one to hear it, the words would have struck hard. They refused to acknowledge her as family at all. The Heavenly Demon paid them no mind. She had no particular regard for whatever great meaning or power the name Tiribi was supposed to carry. Before the Heavenly Demon, every human was equal in the end.