The Honored Guest
Beastkin society was broadly divided into herbivores and carnivores.
Save for the New Year Assembly, attended only by beastkin houses of renown, or the council where the clan heads gathered, the two kinds rarely met. They did not mix if they could help it. As a rule they lived in clearly divided territories, each wielding power inside their own domain.
In the lands of the carnivores, three houses stood above all the rest: the lion clan of Leotel, the hyena clan of Mariner, and last of all the tiger clan of Caliph.
Which was why more than a few beastkin had their eyes on the seat beside Shirca — next head of the Caliphs, a beautiful young man who already possessed an Authority. Not only the Caliph retainer houses with daughters long past marrying age, but every predatory house on friendly terms with the Caliphs had been scheming without rest to seize the place of his fiancée. The most aggressive of them all was House Glosa.
"Lady Obli Glosa is truly beautiful today."
"She was always beautiful, but today she shines even more. And look at that dress. Those are diamonds, aren't they?"
Obli, famed as the greatest beauty among the tiger beastkin, had bloomed more splendidly than anyone else tonight. Smooth, fair skin; hair like spun gold; blue eyes like jewels; and an elegant white dress that set all of it off. Diamonds woven one by one into the delicate lace cast a soft light every time she moved. Many could not tear their gaze from her.
"But isn't it a bit much? This isn't an ordinary banquet. A white dress, at the very gathering where the Caliphs are introducing an honored guest?"
The looks were not entirely kind. This hall already had its protagonist decided, and a white that demanded every eye did not suit the occasion.
"Even if she's lost her senses over the fiancée's seat, this is too far."
"The Glosa family head grows more shameless by the day."
Most of the crowd sneered at the father and daughter who had no sense of the room.
"……Father. I told you. This is too much."
Obli had to take the reproachful stares with her whole body. The dress born of her father's greed only made her shrink, and arriving last on purpose — so that every eye would find her — only deepened the shame.
"Spare me the useless talk. Words like those will vanish the moment you marry the Young Patriarch. Tonight, think of nothing but catching his eye!"
But her father, as if greed had swallowed every last scrap of reason, did not hear her even in passing. He squared his shoulders with perfect assurance, and the more he did, the lower sank the head of Obli, who at least still knew what shame was.
The head of the Caliph clan, Lord Baden Caliph, and Lady Sabrina Caliph are entering!
Unable to flee because of her father, forced to stand in the middle of the banquet hall, Obli jerked her head up. A door beside the dais opened, and Baden and Sabrina appeared side by side. Moonlight Hall stirred all at once.
"Lady Caliph is attending as well!"
"She has never shown her face except at the Patriarch's birthday banquet and the Young Patriarch's."
At the appearance of someone no one had expected, people traded quick glances. The Caliphs' honored guest must be no ordinary person. And their guess proved entirely right.
Young Patriarch Shirca Caliph is entering with the honored guest!
Shirca appeared next. At the word that he was entering together with someone, people truly believed he had brought a fiancée. Some even swept Obli and Calvin, head of House Glosa, with looks that were little short of mockery — until they found the little girl cradled in Shirca's arms.
Luscious honey-gold hair, clear eyes, a gaze tilted faintly upward, a stubborn mouth, and a deep blue dress that suited her slender frame to perfection. She was far younger than anyone had expected, and the crowd faltered. The Caliph bloodline looked down on them all from the dais with perfectly calm faces.
Baden's declaration startled them all over again. In other words, she stood on equal footing with the Caliph direct line. Who in the world was she, that the Caliphs themselves — of all people — would accord her such treatment?
Before the astonished crowd, Bariya, the Caliphs' honored guest, looked down at them from Shirca's arms and spoke, clear and steady.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I am Bariya Bell, and I will be living with the Caliphs. I hope you will treat me kindly."
It was an introduction so short it amounted to little more than a name, and that only left people more desperate to know. As if she understood that perfectly well, Bariya smiled once, entirely at her ease.
"No matter how I look at it, you're made for the stage, little one."
Having come down from the dais, Shirca burst out laughing with Bariya still in his arms.
"You didn't even tremble. You laughed at them instead. Impressive."
"I wasn't laughing at them. I just smiled."
Bariya protested, but it did no good. Honestly, to anyone watching, it had looked exactly like a sneer that said she was the one who mattered most.
"You weren't scared?"
"Not at all. Honestly, I surprised myself a little."
She meant it. From the moment she was born, she and her mother had been shut in a back room because she had disappointed the Mariners. When they fled, of course they had lived in hiding, avoiding every eye. She had spent her whole life where no one would notice her. Standing before so many people was the first time in her life, and she was so utterly unbothered by it that Bariya herself felt dazed.
Once, she would have been afraid of her Authority being found out. She had no such fear now.
Was Shirca right? Am I really made for the stage?
Whether it was because she had grown so used to living in hiding, or because she had simply been born this way, she couldn't tell.
Honestly, it feels good.
Settled in Shirca's arms — a place that had already become familiar — Bariya looked once around the banquet hall. There was the scent of tiger beastkin, and scents she was smelling for the first time. One thing was certain: not a single person failed to look at her. Some with envy. Some bright with curiosity. And someone else with eyes steeped in hatred.
Huh? Hatred?
What was that? Something strange had slipped in among the rest. There were a great many people, but finding that familiar look — the one she had often received from her own father — was not particularly difficult. A middle-aged man with faded blond hair and green eyes. From a spot not far from the dais where they stood, he was glaring at her with fierce, bulging eyes.
Why, seriously?
Tch.
She didn't even know the reason, and she hadn't done anything wrong enough to earn a look like that. Why should she be the one to look away? Bariya glared right back.
"Ha!"
The man let out an incredulous bark of laughter. If anyone had the right to be incredulous, it was Bariya.
"Little one? What's wrong?"
Shirca, noticing, asked.
"I'm in a staring contest."
At that he turned his head in puzzlement, found Calvin Glosa glaring at Bariya, and clicked his tongue.
"Want me to throw him out?"
"No. I'll win."
She knew it by instinct. He was a tiger beastkin, yes, but he was an opponent she could beat even with her own strength.
Set beside the Caliphs, a tiger like that is nothing but chaff.
Honestly, White was probably stronger than he was.
"But why is he glaring at me? If I'd done something wrong, I wouldn't even feel wronged."
"Because of greed."
Greed? Puzzled, Bariya soon noticed the young woman standing beside the man, her face dark — the pretty beastkin who, at Madame Renouage's atelier, had sent Shirca a look full of longing.
"Oh. Because she wants to marry you?"
Shirca nodded at the conclusion Bariya reached in a single breath.
"It isn't only that father and daughter. Most of the people in this hall are after the place of my mate."
"I don't know why anyone would want that, and I understand even less what it has to do with me that they're glaring like that."
"Because they're idiots."
Sabrina, who had been drinking wine, cut in.
"Mother."
Shirca tried to stop her, but Sabrina only shrugged.
"Better to say it than hide it. Then the little one can be ready. She's clever."
"That's right. I am clever. The Patriarch said so too."
"He did."
Baden, who had been standing with solemn dignity, nodded. At some point the quiet hours they had spent only reading together in the library had turned into Bariya's study time. It had begun when she came across something she didn't understand in a book and asked Baden. He was a good teacher, and she was a passionate student.
"Our little blessing picks things up remarkably fast."
By now she had been forcibly accustomed to that baffling nickname as well. First little one, and now little blessing. The Caliphs, it seemed, had no gift for names.
"Anyway, the reason those people are wary of you is this."
Sabrina snorted and went on.
"They're terrified that you — the Caliphs' honored guest — might snatch the empty seat of Shirca's fiancée."
At a remark so dreadful she had never even imagined it, Bariya's eyes went wide. And before she knew it, instinct tore a single word out of her.
"Blech!"
Shirca was wounded.