The Empty Place in the Portrait
A shrill ringing filled her ears, and every scene crawled past in slow motion.
Poison burst from the attacker's entire body and swallowed Shirca. Shock flashed across his face, and in the same instant his arm shot out to shield Bariya.
And then—
Mother.
A worried gaze, turned on a mother who had already lost a son once.
"Shirca!"
At the sight of her boy vanishing into a cloud of pitch-black poison mist, Sabrina screamed and ran toward them. She was so frantic she never spared a thought for the chance that she herself might be poisoned.
My son.
The only blood she had left. Terror closed over her—the fear that the hyenas had once again driven her child to the brink of death. Rage and shock were about to strip away the last of Sabrina's reason when—
Fwat!
"...Huh?"
A light breeze stirred, and the black poison mist vanished in an instant.
"Cough, cough. What the—?"
Jake, Bariya, and Shirca—all three of whom had been buried in the poison—looked perfectly unharmed. Far from poisoned, they coughed and batted at the air as if someone had merely dumped flour over their heads.
"What just happened? We were definitely..."
"Ghk! Young Master, look at him!"
Jake, who had been shielding Bariya with his whole body, nearly leapt out of his skin. The attacker who had sprayed them lay dead, his entire body melted away.
"So it really was poison, then?"
Whatever it was, it was clearly no ordinary toxin. So why were they this untouched?
"Shirca."
Shirca had been frowning down at the attacker. At the sound of his name he turned, and in the next breath Sabrina seized him in a crushing embrace.
"I'm all right, Mother. Astonishingly, I'm completely fine."
Shirca smiled bitterly and held her in return. He could still see the look on her face in the instant the poison had swallowed him. He never wanted to see it a second time. He would not let his mother live through the loss of a child twice.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
It was not something Shirca ought to apologize for, but Sabrina had no presence of mind left to say so. Shirca was safe. She could think of nothing else.
"Th-then how are we actually all right?"
The moment the poison had covered him, Jake had been certain he was dead. Yet when he came back to himself, the mist was gone without a trace, the man who had sprayed it was a corpse, and they were unharmed.
"Doesn't seem like the poison was fake, either..."
He was glancing around in bewilderment when a small cough broke from the child in his arms.
"Cough."
"Aigoo, my lady, you must have been so sca— huh?"
Fussing over her, Jake looked Bariya over and went white. The child's face was screwed tight, and she was laboring for every breath.
"My lady! Don't tell me the poison—!"
At his cry, Shirca and Sabrina came back to themselves and looked at Bariya. Anyone could see the child was in a bad way, and every face turned grave.
"Could it be a poison meant to do even greater harm to the little one?"
They had been told that if they wanted the antidote, they were to go to the Mariners and hand Bariya over. At so contemptible a scheme, fury surged through Shirca.
"...No. She isn't poisoned."
Sabrina shook her head. Bariya showed not a trace of the symptoms peculiar to poisoning. What she did show was labored breath, a mild fever enough to draw a sweat, and above all a pheromone whose strange, sharp scent stung the nose.
"Little one, did you use your Authority?"
Authority Fever. It was the classic symptom that appeared when a young beastkin overused an Authority they had not yet learned to control.
"Don't tell me you were the one who got rid of the poison?"
Sabrina's voice trembled. Still gasping, Bariya flung her eyes open.
"No!"
Sabrina, Shirca, and Jake all startled. Bariya's eyes, once a soft brown, were shining a deep amber. She seemed not to notice that they had turned the beautiful color of jewels, and she went on denying it.
"I—I don't know. I don't have anything like an Authority. I didn't do it."
Both fists clenched hard, Bariya had her teeth set. Desperation and fear showed through the force of her denial, and only then did Sabrina understand her own mistake. This was a child they already suspected had been locked away by the hyenas because of an Authority, and she had asked her that. Nearly losing Shirca had left her nowhere near herself as well.
"All right. I understand."
She pressed no further and simply nodded.
"I'm just so glad you're safe too, little one."
All she did was carefully stroke the child, who was trembling, wound tight with fear—so that she would not be afraid anymore.
"We're going back to the manor."
It was Bariya who was startled by that.
"Little one, the poison isn't what's hurting you, is it?"
"My lady, you really are all right?"
Even Shirca and Jake asked only whether she was well.
"...Yeah."
When Bariya nodded, the two of them exhaled as if that settled it. At the sight, she let the strength slip from the fists she had been clenching. She had been terrified her Authority had been found out, terrified she might have to leave the Caliphs this very night—and yet all three of them looked so utterly unconcerned that the fear felt almost foolish. The tension drained out of her on its own.
The Authority activated by itself.
The instant the poison mist had covered her, she had known by instinct. It was not simple poison. It was a beastkin's pheromone, one that carried toxicity. The moment she recognized it, the Authority meant to protect her had stirred of its own accord.
Pheromone Manipulation.
A formidable power that could forcibly control not only her own pheromones, but those of another as well. That was the Authority Bariya possessed. Call it poison if you liked—so long as its foundation was pheromone, it could not threaten her. Because it was a special Authority, her mother had begged her again and again never to let anyone else know of it. Even her birth father, Darius Mariner, did not know. It was also why, even knowing the Caliphs were different from the hyenas, she still wanted to hide it however she could.
But how does a hyena have a Poison Pheromone?
It was exceedingly rare for a pheromone itself to turn toxic. As a rule, venom only seeped into fangs, nails, or claws. Hyenas were not even poisonous animals to begin with—so how had that one carried a Poison Pheromone, and a toxin vicious enough to destroy even its own bearer? Bariya looked at the attacker, melted down by his own poison, with uneasy eyes.
Fortunately, the Authority Fever had fully subsided by the time they reached the manor.
"Little one, there's somewhere I need you to come with me."
She had meant to bolt straight for her room, but Shirca caught her.
"Does it have to be right now? Can't we go later?"
"No. It'll only take a moment, so give me a little of your time."
She considered making a run for it, but though the fever had ebbed, the exhaustion had not. Even if she fled, she would be caught in no time. In the end she gave in and let herself be held, and Shirca patted her back.
"You had a bad fright today, didn't you? I'm sorry. I promised I wouldn't let you get hurt, and then I let this happen."
"Why are you the one apologizing? Those people came after me."
If not for her, Shirca and Jake would never have been in danger, and Sabrina would never have been shaken like that.
"So I should be the one to say sorry..."
"No. We've been fighting the hyenas for a very long time, since before you ever came. The ones today weren't hunting you alone."
Shirca stepped into a room. Tyreen had shown her around the manor once, so Bariya knew where they were: the gallery where the portraits of the Caliph direct line, generation after generation, were kept. She had thought there was no particular need to look, and though she had been told of the room, she had never actually gone inside.
"This is our family portrait. It was painted on the day I turned eighteen."
"Whoa."
Looking at the painting hung farthest out, Bariya couldn't help the exclamation. The brushwork was astonishingly alive. Baden's unusually keen eyes, Sabrina's cold presence, and Shirca's easy expression had all been caught with uncanny precision. Seen this way, they were truly no ordinary family.
"What do you feel, looking at it?"
He probably wasn't fishing for praise of the painter's skill. Bariya studied the portrait again. It was an ordinary arrangement: Baden and Sabrina seated in front, Shirca standing behind them. But one thing was strange.
"That spot's way too empty."
With Shirca standing behind Sabrina, the space behind Baden felt far too bare. She didn't know much about painting, but didn't people usually stand in the middle?
"You have a good eye. We left it empty on purpose. That place belongs to someone else."
"Who?"
"My older brother."
At words she had never expected from him, Bariya's eyes went wide.
"A brother...?"
"Yes. A brother who died before I was even born. Our parents' first child—the eldest son who would have been heir to the Caliphs, if he had lived."
Shirca showed her a single framed portrait that had been resting on the table. It was a child of about two, with bright blond hair like Baden's and blue eyes like Sabrina's.
"Rabin Caliph. Murdered before he was even three. The wound our family has never stopped nursing."
"And the reason we hate the hyena beastkin."
Shirca's face was twisted with pain.
"The ones who killed the brother I never even got to see—they're the very bastards I could tear to pieces and still not be satisfied."