The Only Father
"Hngh?"
Baden looked one breath away from tears, and Bariya's mouth fell open.
"I know you like me, but honestly. How are you already crying over a single 'Dad'?"
The man already had a son. Anyone watching would have thought this was the first time in his life he had ever been called Father.
"This is a problem. If you're going to cry every time I say Dad, I'd better just not say it."
"No!"
Baden jerked his head up and blinked hard and fast.
"I was only startled because it was the first time. I can hold it in. Really."
"Is it that shocking that I called you Dad?"
"......Honestly, I didn't think you'd say it so soon. And, well... your birth father..."
"Is trash."
Bariya nodded.
The bluntness caught Orteyl off guard. What on earth had Darius Mariner done, that his own daughter could call him trash without so much as a flinch?
"But I've never once called that good-for-nothing Father. I don't even think of him as one."
Bariya shrugged.
"You, Clan Head, are better than that man by more than I could ever measure. You're my only legal father now, so of course I'm going to call you Dad."
The time she had spent with Baden was very short, and yet in that brief span she had learned more from him than Darius could have taught her in a lifetime. All Darius had ever shown her was how to exploit, how to rage, how to curse, and how to swear revenge. Baden had taught her the common sense every beastkin was meant to know, and he had gladly given her whatever knowledge she wanted to learn. Where Darius had flinched from even touching her, Baden had hoisted her onto his shoulders and carried her about, lest her legs grow sore. Whenever he found a moment he gathered her close and stroked her hair, never shy about showing his affection. Stop any passerby and ask, and a hundred out of a hundred would have wanted to know whether Baden was her real father.
"We're a real family now, aren't we? Right, Dad?"
"......Your father will do right by you, daughter."
At the sight of Bariya's bright smile, Baden could no longer hide the feeling welling up in him, and he pulled the child tight against his chest.
His voice had gone damp again. Bariya laughed, bright and ringing, and hugged the broadest back in the world in return.
"If you cry, I won't call you that."
"I'm not crying. I mean it."
She could feel him secretly wiping his eyes behind her, but she pretended not to notice. He was only like this because he liked her so much. How could she mind?
"Seeing the two of you so close does put my mind at ease."
Orteyl smiled, warmed by a father and daughter who could not hide their joy at becoming family. And yet a chill slid through his chest all the same.
"......Young lady. Might you tell me, precisely, what was done to you in Mariner?"
At Orteyl's question, Baden's tears vanished at once. Wariness surged up in him, and before he knew it he had scooped Bariya up and settled her on his knee.
Orteyl glanced at the man gone rigid with tension, then went on.
"I heard from the Caliph clan head that you are the daughter of a Divine Beast. But I have never once heard that Mariner contracted a marriage with a Divine Beast, nor that a daughter was born of such a union."
"Mom and that man were never married. And to think even the Aldros clan head, who oversees the law, didn't know. They really did bury it completely."
Bariya's mouth twisted.
Orteyl was startled. The scorn on her face resembled Sabrina to an astonishing degree. They shared no blood, and yet the likeness was uncanny.
"A great deal happened in Mariner. Enough that Mom had to flee with me while I was still little, and enough that she had to stake her life to keep me alive."
"Such a thing......"
"But I won't tell you the details."
That left Orteyl at a loss.
"Why not? I am charged with the rules and laws of beastkin society. The authority to punish is mine as well. So if you only wished it, young lady......"
"The Eye of Truth is fully recognized as legal evidence. If I told you, Clan Head, you could punish Mariner. I know that."
Orteyl's lips parted, then closed.
He had been thinking it for some time: the child was clever past all belief for a girl of ten. Speaking with her felt less like speaking to a child than to an adult already trained as a proper heir. Even allowing that she was a Divine Beast's daughter, her intelligence seemed far beyond her years.
As if to prove it, Bariya looked him straight in the eye and went on.
"So what punishment would Mariner actually receive?"
"......Pardon?"
"Would every last one of them rot in prison for life? Would they all be executed? Of course not. A handful would go to prison at most, and even they wouldn't stay long."
No—more likely, not even that. Mariner was a ruling house, and everyone who had tormented her belonged to the direct line.
"That isn't nearly enough for me. The victim wants a harsher punishment, so why does the law get to decide it however it likes? The law never protected me or Mom when we were hurting."
"That is......"
"Oh, I'm not blaming you, Clan Head. They hid it on purpose. How were you supposed to know?"
They had concealed bringing a Divine Beast into the house, and concealed the daughter born between them. Aldros or not, how could anyone have known? She understood that.
"So you'll have to understand that I mean to punish Mariner myself."
Neither Bariya nor the Caliphs, who had lost a child to Mariner, wanted those people to serve a few years and walk free. The name Mariner, erased from the world entirely—only that could heal what they had suffered.
"But, young lady, the law is not so simple as......"
The words were far too heavy to be coming from a girl of ten, and Orteyl began to answer. Bariya cut him off, firm.
"However much Aldros may oversee the laws of beastkin society, I understand you cannot intervene in territorial disputes between predators."
The law mattered, of course. But what took precedence over it was a beastkin's instinct. Territory was the most important thing a beastkin possessed, and so the right to tear apart, without mercy, any enemy who trespassed upon it belonged to each domain. Even if that right bloomed into open territorial war, Aldros could not stop it. Beastkin had never granted Aldros authority that far.
Bariya was pointing exactly at that gap.
"I'm a Caliph now. To lay a hand on me is for Mariner to trespass on Caliph territory. Looked at broadly, this is nothing other than a territorial dispute."
She was smiling brightly, and Orteyl found he had nothing left to say. Predators had exploited this blind spot more than once or twice before. Never, though, had a girl of ten stood before the Aldros clan head and coolly announced that she meant to use the loophole.
Orteyl turned a dazed look on Baden.
"Did the Caliph clan head teach her this?"
Did you put an ugly workaround like this into a child's head?
"All I taught my daughter was the common sense any beastkin ought to know. Those Mariner bastards—ahem. They never even gave her that much."
"Then......?"
"Everything beyond that, she worked out herself. Tell our girl one thing, and she understands ten. She's that clever."
Baden gazed at Bariya with open adoration.
To look so fondly upon a daughter who meant to slaughter every hyena under the name of a territorial dispute—Orteyl understood, then, why Caliph and Bariya had become family. They shared no blood, and yet their minds were wired exactly alike, true family through and through. Perhaps he ought to summon the Butten clan head and have a paternity test done.
"My daughter's will is Caliph's will. The Aldros clan head would do well to remember that. I trust, of course, that there will be no interference."
Baden's gaze on Orteyl was sharp. They had been old friends for a long time, but where Mariner was concerned he allowed himself not an inch of flexibility. Knowing that stubbornness, Orteyl could only nod.
Word of this will reach Mariner's ears soon enough. In the end, war between Caliph and Mariner cannot be avoided.
How would Mariner react once they learned of Bariya's adoption? Velodic, Mariner's clan head, was a man even Orteyl could not predict. He only hoped no other beastkin would be caught in the harm.
Shirca had something important that absolutely had to be finished before his new youngest sister came home.
Time was painfully short, and he was busy enough that he scarcely had a moment to breathe—but receiving a precious guest was one duty he did not neglect.
"It's been a while, Miss Glosa."
The moment he stepped into the drawing room, the one who had arrived ahead of him rose at once.
Obli Glosa. The person who had helped more than anyone in the search for Bariya.