Mother Lives Inside You
White isn't even an animal ruled by an Authority. If she were, she would have submitted to Shirca as well. Then is it connected to the Authority Bariya possesses?
The young cat beastkin had survived the hyenas' pursuit. She had put Tyreen to sleep and slipped out of this mansion in secret. And now she had brought White to her knees. If all of that was bound up with an Authority—then it was a dangerous power. Baden's face grew grave.
Hyenas who coveted an Authority would never give the child up. They would try to take her back by any means necessary.
I need to speak with Sabrina. The younger the bearer, the harder an Authority was to control. Even Shirca had needed a considerable span of time before he could command his perfectly, and Bariya, barely ten years old, would be no different. She needed to be taught properly.
The trouble was that Bariya still did not trust them. He would have to choose his words with great care, so the child would not misunderstand and think they lusted after her Authority the way the hyenas had—and the worry of it was no small thing.
The moment Bariya went parading through the grounds on White's back, the entire mansion was turned on its head.
"What am I looking at right now?"
"The little lady is riding White...?"
"That White—the one who fought a blood-duel with the Knight Commander—is meekly carrying the little lady?!"
Pad, pad. White, who did not let a single footfall sound, picked her way with exquisite care, and the sight only stunned them further. This was the brute who had always thundered along on purpose, demanding that everyone clear the road! To think she could walk so tamely!
"Someone go fetch the Knight Commander. If he sees this, he'll weep tears of joy."
At those words, one of the knights shot off. Soon Rowin Denebian, Knight Commander of the Caliph family, came running, took in the scene, and clapped a hand over his mouth.
"I was certain I'd never see White behaving herself, not even if I were born again...!"
The Knight Commander stared up at Bariya seated atop White, lost in admiration.
"Just who is that little cat lady? What has she been, to tame White?"
"That's what I want to know. I couldn't imagine why the young lord had suddenly brought home some kitten."
"And that's not all—that young lady struck the young lord across the face six times! Sir Jake Gillian and I saw it with our own eyes!"
The knight who had witnessed the moment Shirca found Bariya and brought her home declared it outright, and tears welled in the Knight Commander's eyes.
"A baby cat beastkin who can best not only White, but the young lord himself!"
"She is truly extraordinary. The God who took pity on us has sent a blessing down upon this house."
Everyone, Rowin included—he who had suffered more than most at the hands of Shirca and White—gazed at Bariya with warm satisfaction.
To Bariya, the whole scene felt deeply strange. Not a single person was so much as glancing at Baden, who followed along behind her.
"Is that really all right?"
"Does it bother you?"
"Not me. Shouldn't it be the family head who's bothered?"
What was there in any of it to bother her? If anything, she was pleased they had recognized her for the magnificent leopard cat beastkin she was. In the hyena family she and her mother had always lived alone together in a narrow room. The only people they ever faced were those who looked down on them both, so the bright, laughing air of this mansion felt strange to Bariya—and interesting, too.
"So long as they don't challenge our authority, we prefer to leave the retainers their freedom. If each of them simply tends to their own work, I don't care in the slightest what they do, or what they chatter about."
"Talk like that isn't a challenge to your authority?"
"They're only stating the facts."
Bariya looked at the retainers again. Knights, servants, maids—every one of them, without distinction, was laughing and talking with a bright face. It was utterly different from the Mariner family, forever solemn and strict in its discipline. There, the family head's word was law itself. One must never disgrace the family head, nor those who inherited the family head's blood, nor speak of them carelessly.
I was the exception, even among that bloodline. Darius Mariner, the family head's eldest son. A man, and therefore without the right of succession—yet still a direct descendant who had inherited the family head's blood. But though Bariya was his daughter, she had never been acknowledged as blood of the house.
"...This is a good place."
Here, though, she did not have to watch anyone's mood. There was no need to hide what she was, and no need to flinch every time someone passed by. Everyone could mingle together and laugh.
"Then I shall have to try, so that it may become even better from now on."
Baden stroked Bariya's head. She thought she would not be able to forget that tenderness, nor the smiling faces around them, for a very long time.
Before she knew it, a week had passed since Bariya made her contract with the Caliph family and came to stay.
Her days fell into a very steady rhythm. She rose at her leisure in the morning, ate, played at hunting with Shirca, and took lunch with Sabrina. She read in the library until evening, ate her dinner, read again, and then went to sleep.
Perhaps because it was the first time in her life she had lived so regularly, she already felt healthier, though it had been only a week. And today, Bariya decided to carry out the plan she had been putting off.
A week of grueling effort had at last corrected her pronunciation, and she spoke to Baden, who was already waiting for her in the library.
"Today I'd like to read by myself."
They had always shared the library until now, but she did not want to show anyone the book she meant to read today.
"All right. I'll tell them no one is to come in until you leave the library, so don't worry. Read in comfort."
Her nerves proved unnecessary. Baden nodded without the slightest hesitation, and before she could even ask, he arranged things so she might read at ease.
"Thank you."
He stroked the head of Bariya, who had bobbed a little bow, and left the library at once.
In truth, Bariya enjoyed reading with Baden, too. No matter how noisily she let her mouth run, reading aloud, he had never once given her a warning look. Rather, he fussed terribly over whether her throat might be dry, or her stomach empty.
But I can't put it off any longer.
She hurried to the bookcase she had memorized beforehand.
"One, two, three, four, five."
The books that held what she wanted occupied no fewer than five whole bookcases. She had expected as much, but there were even more than she had thought. From those within reach, she drew the volume that looked the most promising.
A record of the sacred beings born of Nature.
Divine Beasts. It was exactly the book Bariya had been looking for.
Beastkin are born of the union between beastkin and beastkin, but a Divine Beast is born by receiving the sacred energy of Nature. Every Divine Beast comes into the world in the form of an animal, yet upon maturing may take human shape, and from that moment the naked eye can no longer tell a Divine Beast from a beastkin.
It was just as she had heard from her mother. A Divine Beast could recognize another Divine Beast. But unless a Divine Beast chose to speak, beastkin might pass right by and never know whether they had met a Divine Beast or an ordinary beastkin. A Divine Beast was a child born directly of Nature. She had been told it was Nature's own will, the better to keep a precious child safe from danger.
Every Divine Beast possesses an Authority, and that Authority alone is the only means of distinguishing a Divine Beast from a beastkin.
There are beastkin who inherit a Divine Beast's blood and manifest an Authority resembling one, but a beastkin's Authority is nothing more than a lesser shadow of the Authority a Divine Beast holds.
A beastkin's Authority can never overcome a Divine Beast's.
Some of it she already knew. Some of it she was seeing for the first time.
A child born directly of a Divine Beast possesses gifts far stronger and more exceptional than those of other beastkin.
This, however, applies only to a beastkin born from a Divine Beast's own womb. It does not apply to a beastkin who merely has a Divine Beast for a father.
What she had only dimly guessed began, the further she read, to settle into certainty. At last Bariya understood why Darius had tormented her mother so cruelly, and why he had flown into such a rage when she was born not a hyena, but a leopard cat beastkin like her mother.
Bariya's mother, Claire Bell, had been a leopard cat Divine Beast.
Lusting after an Authority, Darius had spent an astronomical fortune searching for a Divine Beast, and in the end he found Claire, living alone in the wild. At first he played the part of a tender gentleman. Claire, ignorant of what lay beneath, came to the Mariners, bound her life to his, and bore Bariya.
The tragedy began then. Not the hyena beastkin Darius had wanted, but a leopard cat beastkin who took after Claire—and, though born of a Divine Beast mother, a child whose Authority was ambiguous at best. The moment Darius saw her, he changed and showed his true colors. Claire was driven from the fine room where she had stayed into a tucked-away chamber without so much as a window. Every path of escape was sealed, and she was left to live with no one but Bariya.
Claire had meant to endure until Bariya grew at least strong enough to withstand the hyenas' pursuit. But on the day Darius first raised a hand against his daughter, she could bear it no longer. In the end she staked her life on escape. And so that Bariya would never again be taken by the hyena beastkin, she gave everything over to her daughter, and died.
The Authority of Transfer—a power that could pass to one chosen person not only strength, knowledge, and memory, but even a Divine Beast's Authority, and life itself.
Claire used her Authority on Bariya for the first time in her life. Having truly handed over everything, she left not so much as a fragment of a body behind. She crumbled into dust and vanished from the world.
And Bariya, carrying all that her mother had been, fled alone. Thanks to her mother, she evaded the hyenas' relentless reach for three whole years.
Even now, she could not forget that moment—the warm glow, so like her mother, filling her from head to toe.