The House That Bowed to None
Not even the Caliphs knew what poison the hyenas had used that day. They could only guess. The assassin who wielded it had shouted that anyone wanting the antidote should come to Mariner, and from that they supposed it must be some toxin the place kept under special guard.
And yet—what? That poison is the same as the one this tiger carries? How could such a thing be possible?
"I could purge it then only because the poison was a pheromone. If it had been an ordinary toxin, I couldn't have done it."
At Bariya's explanation, the three of them finally grasped the truth of that day, and a heavy breath broke from them as one. In the same moment a chill settled through their chests. If that poison had not been a pheromone, everyone standing there would have died.
"I don't really know why this child has a Poison Pheromone, or why it happens to be the very same poison the hyenas had. So I think we ought to keep him until we find out."
More than that, as Bariya saw it, this tiger could not control his Poison Pheromone at all. She had known as much the moment she first found him in the prison, flinging poison in every direction.
Selling a dangerous child just because he's a curiosity—and the one trying to buy him is the heir of a head family, no less!
The world had truly gone mad. Bariya, blessed with an exceedingly ordinary way of thinking, could not understand those perverts in the slightest. She did not want to.
"It's a mercy our little one saved him. I was just about to make her promise not to do anything dangerous."
Shirca let out a sigh. If Bariya had not rescued this tiger, and he had slipped at last into the Leotel family's hands, what then? What if they had gone so far as to join hands with Mariner? The thought alone was dreadful.
"I was confident! And just in case, I asked Obli to get word to the Caliphs. I cleaned up the aftermath perfectly, too."
Yes. That was precisely why no one could find another word to say.
"As our little one says, the Caliphs will protect this tiger. The Poison Pheromone must be investigated as well, but the Caliph physicians are not versed in poisons, so we will have to seek out someone who can help."
Sabrina nodded at how swiftly Shirca had drawn the matter together. Baden, though, sat sunk in thought, his eyes on Blackie.
"Father? What's the matter?"
The look on his face was far from ordinary. When Shirca asked, every gaze turned toward him.
"......I have never seen a tiger beastkin with a Poison Pheromone. I have never even seen a tiger beastkin whose fur comes this close to black. There isn't so much as a record of one."
"I know. That's why none of this makes any sense."
Sabrina nodded. She, too, had been turning over where an investigation like this was even meant to begin.
"There is, however, exactly one place. One tiger family that even the Caliphs do not truly know."
At Baden's words, Sabrina's face went rigid, and Shirca's with it.
Shirca spoke in haste.
"To be honest, that place crossed my mind as well...... But there is no chance a child this young escaped from there and is wandering about alone."
"No. Our little one's beast form is far younger than her true age, too. That one may be older than we think."
"That may be so, but......"
"As things stand, it is the only place with any real likelihood."
Bariya, who had been listening in silence, asked,
"Where is that?"
Baden looked straight into the child's eyes—gold that had fully settled into place—and answered.
The Rendel family.
"They are the only family of tiger beastkin that neither recognizes the Caliphs as head, nor follows them."
Even the proud Frost acknowledged the Caliphs as head family, but Rendel alone held themselves supreme. Because of it, generations ago, the heads of the houses had fought with the seat of leadership itself at stake. The Caliphs won. Rendel, declaring they could not so much as accept defeat, shut themselves away inside their own house. Not even the Caliphs could breach that thick barrier, and in the end they gave up. So, for hundreds of years, Rendel lived utterly alone, exchanging words with no one.
They still did.
Baden explained this to Bariya, and as he spoke he glanced at Blackie. If the child truly was a beastkin, he would understand their words, and he ought to show some reaction.
"......"
But Blackie gave no reaction at all to the name Rendel. Strain as they might, not a heartbeat shifted, nor a single breath.
Either he had nothing to do with Rendel, or he did not know that Rendel was where he came from. If the child was young, that was entirely possible.
"For now, I'll have to go to Rendel."
"They'll only screech again that they won't let anyone in. I have no wish to watch that spectacle, so you go by yourself."
"Very well."
"Have the two of you ever been to Rendel?"
Shirca had not once in his life so much as drawn near Rendel's domain. Rendel lay at the opposite end of the world from the Caliphs, the most remote reach even within tiger territory. After Rabin Caliph's death, Sabrina—obsessively fixed upon Shirca's safety—would never have allowed him to go so far. And even if he had gone, Rendel would not have let him in.
"Ah. Only once. Right after I married Sabrina......"
Baden glanced at her. As if she had been waiting for it, Sabrina flared.
"I was the head's wife by then, so I had my pretext. I went to grind those Rendel whelps' noses into the dirt."
One could have guessed as much. With a temperament like hers, she was never going to leave them be. She must have wanted, while the chance was in her hand, to set Rendel properly beneath her heel.
"I quit halfway through, though."
"What happened?"
Shirca and Bariya turned toward Sabrina as one, ears pricked, faces alight with fascination. She looked at the two children with open fondness.
"I'm sorry to you both, since you're dying to hear it—but nothing happened. I never even got near those bastards."
The thick barrier they had heaped around their territory was nothing to Sabrina, who bore the Authority of Physical Enhancement. But when she stood atop it, they screamed that if she forced her way any closer they would bring the castle down and die together, and she had no choice but to stop. Collapse or not, she herself would have walked away unhurt. Baden, unlike her, might have been harmed. More than anything, the sight of them cackling about dying all in a heap would not have looked sane to any eye. Conquer madmen like that, and what was one supposed to do with them?
After that, she let her interest in Rendel go out entirely.
"Even so, I am curious. Whether that black creature truly has any tie to Rendel—and if he does, how in the world he ever got out."
What did it mean, after all, for a place to be closed? It was hard to get in, and harder still to leave. And so neither Baden nor Sabrina knew what was unfolding inside Rendel.
"Then let us go to Aldros, finish our little one's adoption, return to the Caliphs, and from there arrange the journey to Rendel."
"Couldn't we go straight to Rendel?"
"To reach Rendel, we'd have to pass back through Caliph territory anyway. Set out the moment we return and we'll be exhausted, so let's rest a while and then leave."
Baden's explanation was gentle, and Bariya nodded.
A rush of footsteps came hammering toward the sitting room where they sat. Bariya had only just shot to her feet—
Graaah!
The door slammed open, and White, enormous, came bounding through.
"White!"
Bariya's face broke into a bright smile. She meant to share the joy of their reunion.
Krrng?
White, a breath away from leaping into her arms, stopped dead. Shock had struck her face blank.
"White? What's wrong? Didn't you come to hug me?"
Bariya, puzzled, started to lift her arms, and only then remembered that she was still holding Blackie. White's eyes were shaking violently, locked on that very tiger.
"Ah, so this one is—"
Graaah!
White cut her off with a great roar, then dropped flat to the floor and began to wail.
Huuung—keuuung, graaah!
Bariya froze in astonishment. Sabrina, Baden, and Shirca could only stare, dumbfounded.
"I've kept that one since she was a cub, and I've never seen her cry so pitifully."
White had never wept even in front of Sabrina, and yet here she was, sobbing over nothing more than another tiger resting in Bariya's arms.
Kheuheung! Keheung-heung!
She howled as if demanding they throw that unidentified mottled tiger away this instant.
"White, he isn't here instead of you...... Oh, how am I supposed to explain this?"
Cold sweat poured off Bariya as she tried to soothe her, but so long as Blackie remained in her arms, those tears were not about to stop.
"Krrng."
Blackie himself, nestled in Bariya's arms through all the uproar, did nothing but snort.