The Name Absent from the Tree
The Aldros family was the first house in beastkin society to wed a Divine Beast and awaken an Authority.
They had inherited the blood of the ibis, wisest of the Divine Beasts, and so their Authorities had always been bound to the mind. Then one among them manifested the Eye of Truth, the power to tell falsehood from truth, and from that day the family took charge of the laws and the records of all beastkin society.
Orteyl Aldros, the present head of the house, was famed for a gift that let her take the measure of beastkin society entire without ever rising from her seat. Her Eye of Truth could pass even into paper. Break a contract written on a sheet steeped in her power, and the lie would be known in the same instant. The contract the Caliphs had made with Bariya was written on just such a page.
"My second son has found our youngest daughter. The news was too urgent to set aside, so I had no choice but to take it. Forgive me."
"Youngest daughter? I was given to understand that Caliph had only a youngest son."
Orteyl rubbed the rim of her glasses, a habit of hers whenever she sank into thought.
"......I see. You mean the honored guest you presented not long ago."
When word first reached her that Caliph had introduced a girl of ten as an honored guest, Orteyl had doubted her own ears. That Caliph—the man who had lost his eldest son and come to trust no beastkin at all?
"I did wonder what brought you all the way to Aldros so suddenly. Have you resolved to adopt the child?"
What sort of child could move a Caliph so deeply scarred to take her in?
"That is the wish of the three of us. All that remains is the little one's consent."
The blankness eased from Baden's face. Orteyl had never imagined she would see him soften in a room where Sabrina was nowhere to be found.
And what is this—little one?
She had heard the child looked seven or eight. Not even his by blood, and already he overflowed with the helpless devotion of a father utterly lost to his daughter.
"You have not even obtained her consent, and already you have come to me?"
When a child was born into a ruling house, a simple notice was enough to enter the birth in the records. Adoption was another matter. It required a host of procedures, which was why one came in person—and Baden was hardly a man who did not know that, without the party's own permission, an adoption could not proceed.
"There is something I must confirm before that."
His face closed again, as though it had never opened. He was a man who seldom showed what he felt, and yet in a single day she was seeing so many faces of him.
"I wish to see the Mariner family tree."
That, she had not expected. This time it was Orteyl's expression that hardened.
"Surely the child is not a daughter of the Mariners."
"She is."
Pain lanced through her skull, and Orteyl pressed her fingers hard to her temple. So this was why a man who scarcely ever left his estate had come so far.
"You mean to adopt the daughter of the Mariners, a house you have stood against for years? Head of Caliph, I cannot permit it. I trust you know the reason as well as I do."
The Caliphs were famous for being warlike and fierce, yet in truth they were profoundly rational. The reputation had arisen only because reason deserted them the moment the Mariners were involved, and nothing but instinct remained. And now he would adopt a Mariner's daughter. She could not allow it. There was every chance he meant to use the child as a pretext for revenge.
"I know very well what you fear. But, Head of Aldros, the child we mean to adopt does not wish to return to the Mariners. No. She left that place of her own will and took our hands."
Bariya had first come to the Caliphs because Sirka had taken her, but Baden left that unsaid. It was not a lie in any case, and so the Eye of Truth Orteyl bore would name it true.
"......Why on earth would a daughter of the Mariners?"
Just as he had expected, once she knew the words for truth, confusion crossed her face.
"I did not know at first either. Only that the Mariners were hunting her, and that she loathed them. It was only recently that I finally learned the child's secret."
"Is it something I am permitted to hear?"
"You will aid me only once you know that what I say is true. That child is a beastkin born between a Mariner and a Divine Beast. She is also one in whom an Authority has awakened."
Orteyl shot to her feet. The pheromone of a woman forever rational and calm shuddered violently, and yet however many times she shut her eyes and opened them again, her Authority insisted that Baden spoke the truth.
"A Divine Beast? The Mariners bore a child with a Divine Beast......?"
"......If even the head of Aldros does not know of this, then the child was never formally entered on the family tree after all."
Elation flooded Baden's eyes. This was precisely why he had left the search for Bariya to his family and come to Aldros alone.
"She is the daughter of Darius Mariner. Not long ago he came to us himself and demanded we hand her over, and the threats he used were beneath contempt."
"Ha......"
Orteyl clutched her head and sank back onto the sofa.
Darius Mariner. Eldest son of the Mariner house. As far as she knew, he was—
Still unmarried.
She had never heard so much as a rumor of a marriage, and yet he had secretly had a child by a Divine Beast? The girl was no infant. Why had the Mariners kept silent? She knew perfectly well how long they had hungered for an Authority. The moment a Divine Beast's child was born, they ought to have entered her into the house at once, for registration was indispensable if one was to be properly recognized as kin of a ruling family.
"......Ah."
Of course. Now she understood.
"The child is not a hyena beastkin."
Hyenas clung to bloodline with a peculiar ferocity. Only strong hyena women mattered; the weak, and the males, were not acknowledged at all. So however much she might be a Divine Beast's daughter, Velodic, head of the Mariners, would never register a beastkin who was not a hyena.
"What is more, the child said she had lost her mother. And from the way she spoke of wanting revenge upon the Mariners, it is likely they abused both mother and daughter."
"How dare they!"
Orteyl clenched her fist. Divine Beasts were sacred beings, to be revered by every beastkin alive, and the Mariners had dared to treat one with cruelty? The head of Aldros—the first among beastkin to wed a Divine Beast and awaken an Authority—could never abide it.
"We would never abuse her merely because Mariner blood runs in her veins. Abuse? Hardly. If anything, we are the ones who owe that child a debt beyond measure."
Baden let out a long breath. How fortunate that Sirka had found the little one. Had no word of her discovery reached him before his business at Aldros was finished, he too would have taken his true form, as Sabrina had, and gone tearing across the land in search of the child. He could no longer imagine a Caliph without Bariya.
"She saved us. Now it is our turn to be the fence that shelters her."
Baden clenched both fists. Ever since his eldest son had died and his wife had begun to wander beyond the estate, he had lived as a man emptied of will—and now his eyes shone as if that hollow self had never been. So long as Orteyl's Authority declared every word of it true, she had no further reason to oppose him.
"The child's name?"
"Bariya Bell. Bell, I am told, is her mother's surname."
"......It is certainly a name I have never heard. Nor does she appear on the Mariner family tree. Bring me the child's own consent, and I will permit the adoption."
"Then—!"
"On one condition. I must meet the child myself."
The circumstances demanded that she sit with the girl and speak to her face to face. Baden was a man worthy of trust, but she knew too well what lay between Caliph and Mariner. She would have to confirm it twice, and then a third time.
"Of course. The moment I have her consent, I will bring her with me."
"You know the New Year Assembly is nearly upon us, I trust? It would be best if you came before then."
The New Year Assembly was the greatest festival in beastkin society, a banquet at which every ruling house gathered in neutral territory. If he meant to proclaim there that the child had formally become direct kin of Caliph, the matter had to be settled first.
"I will do what I can. Should the little one refuse, there will be nothing we can do."
Baden's smile was bitter. Orteyl, who did not know that Bariya had put every last Caliph to sleep and left them, found the remark strange.
"Head of Caliph."
She called after him just as he was about to go.
"......I still have not found proof that the Mariners committed that foul act."
A foul act: proof that the Mariners had murdered Rabin, eldest son of Caliph. After losing his son, Baden had asked Orteyl to learn whether it had been their doing, and her eye had declared the Mariners innocent.
To the grief of Caliph.