moment.

Chapter 8: The Thought Behind the Thought

On their first day off in a long time, Maomao's suspicion that there was something going on turned to certainty. She wanted to know how things were going in the pleasure district, so she slipped out of the dormitory and headed for the Verdigris House.

She discovered more or less what the letters had insisted: that everything was fine. In the middle of the day, the place felt relaxed; an apprentice was sweeping by the front door and an obnoxious brat was playing with Maomao the cat.

"Freckles!" Chou-u exclaimed when he saw Maomao. He came charging over to her, still holding the cat, who fought and struggled and kicked Chou-u in the stomach until she managed to slip away from him, then sought shelter behind Maomao (the person). So at least she still remembered her.

Maomao plucked the creature up and ushered her over the fence, where she ran off. That was one fickle furball. Maomao hoped the cat would bring her some rare herbs as a thank you.

"Why don't you ever come home?" Chou-u demanded.

"Because I'm working. I don't have much choice." Chou-u looked like he was about to cling onto her, so she stuck a hand against his head to hold him back.

Hm? Was it just her, or had he gotten taller? And his skin was more tan, maybe because he was outside playing every day. His front teeth had even straightened out, making him look markedly less dumb.

"Is Sazen around?" Maomao asked, glancing about in search of the apprentice apothecary.

"Yeah. He's with the one-eyed guy right now." So Kokuyou was here too.

Maomao made her way to the apothecary shop, which occupied a space rented from the Verdigris House, greeting familiar courtesans in passing as she went. She could hear voices from inside.

"That's right. You need to make sure you grind it to a very fine powder. If you get the amount even slightly wrong when you

make the pills, they won't be as effective."

"Okay..."

Sazen was pulverizing something, Kokuyou giving him diligent instructions. It was great that they were doing their jobs, but when she got a look at the two of them in the shop, her opinion quickly soured.

It was hot, which explained why all the doors and windows were open, but that caused problems of its own: several courtesans grinned as they watched the two men hard at work in these close quarters. Kokuyou could be downright attractive as long as he kept the scars on his face covered, and while Sazen's appearance was unremarkable, he couldn't be called ugly.

Those ladies are rotten to the core, Maomao thought. There were plenty of women out there with an enthusiasm for malemale love. The Verdigris House didn't trade in male-male prostitution, so Maomao was sure the women were enjoying this.

She marched up to the two men, who seemed to have no idea that they were the source of such entertainment. "Looks like everything is going well here," she said.

"Aw, yeah, we're doing great!" Kokuyou replied, sounding

every bit the dumbass he usually was.

"Uh, I think it's been pretty tough," Sazen said. He could barely keep the resentment off his face.

"I'm so glad you're not having any problems."

"Hey, aren't you listening to me?!" Sazen wailed. Well, wasn't he the one who'd written to her that everything was fine? Or had the old lady forced him to say that? Maomao knew that asking him about it would only get him started on a litany of complaints, so she decided to ignore him. Sazen could be so stubborn.

Maomao looked around the shop to make sure everything was in order, taking a quick survey to see if anything was out of stock —or if there was anything there that shouldn't have been.

"What are these?" she asked. There was something resting on the medicine cabinet, and they weren't medicine. In fact, she had never seen anything quite like them. They looked a bit like thin rice crackers. Some sort of snack, maybe?

"Oh, those. That's my latest experiment!" Kokuyou said, taking one of the crackers and sprinkling some crushed medicine over it. "People can take their medicine by sprinkling it on one of these and eating it. Or they can soften it up in water and then put it inside!"

"Huh. That's novel." Maomao was legitimately impressed. An old saw had it that the best medicine for the body was the worst on the tongue, and one reason some people avoided medications was sheer bad flavor. Maomao sometimes got people to take their medicine by advising them to mix it with honey, but honey itself was a luxury item. If there was a way for people to take medicine without it ever touching their tongue, no one would have to worry about the taste. "Aren't these a little large to swallow, though?"

"Yes. Yes, they are. Can't recommend them for children or the elderly. They might choke." He shook a pitcher of water as if to emphasize it was available. "I hear people take medicine this way all the time in the west. They say the people there have more saliva than we do."

"Really? You're very knowledgeable..." Maomao's eyes were starting to shine. Kokuyou could look like a real dumbass, but he did actually know a thing or two about medicine. He certainly had strong basics; she could tell that from listening to him instruct Sazen. "Where did you learn your medicine, anyway, Kokuyou?" she asked. "You can't possibly be entirely self-taught?"

"Ha ha ha! The person who took me under their wing, they came from a western country. Golden hair, thick fur all over their face and body."

"Were they from Shaoh?"

"Hrm, farther west than that, I think," he said.

That was enough to intrigue Maomao. "Do you speak their language?"

"Just a tiny bit."

"And where is this person who raised you?" She'd like to meet them if she could.

"Oh, they're gone now. This is what got 'em," Kokuyou said, pointing to his smallpox scars.

"I see..." She was sorry to hear it. It wasn't uncommon for doctors to contract an illness and die—in fact, it happened all the time. They spent more time with sick people than anyone else.

Sazen, who'd been completely left out of the entire conversation, nudged Maomao. "Uh, I'm sorry to interrupt when you're having such a nice chat," he said, "but they're asking for you." He pointed outside, where she saw the madam and Lahan waiting.

As so often, Maomao found herself in a private room designed for private conversations. The madam always provided accommodations in line with the potential for profit she saw in a visitor; it was one of her more amusing traits. Today the snacks she provided were on the high side of average. (Incidentally, when Lahan's "father" visited, she put out only tepid water in a chipped teacup. At least she no longer chased him away with a broom.)

"I heard you were off today, so I thought you might be here.

My good luck, here you are!"

"Good luck, sure. I know you checked before you came," Maomao said. Lahan would never have done something like this without making the proper preparations. "But anyway, forget the

niceties and get to the point, if you would. I'm busy."

"Busy what? Chatting?"

"Maybe. But talking with you always just feels like a waste of time."

"Tone! Tone! I am your honored elder brother, and you should speak to me as such."

Maomao was tired of this banter; she was eager to move things along. "I know why you're here. It's about that thing you wanted with the medical assistants, right?"

"How nice that we're on the same page," Lahan said. He was a very careful man. No doubt he'd looked into Yao's and En'en's backgrounds, acquainted himself with their personalities, and had seen no cause for concern. Yet he still wasn't willing to trust them with the true heart of the matter. "I still have questions about the examination you're to perform on the Shaoh shrine maiden." "Such as?" Maomao asked.

"Such as, supposing the shrine maiden isn't the shrine maiden?

If you get my drift." She did not.

"Don't act all coy. Just tell me what's going on." Maomao picked up a steamed bun and bit it in half. The filling was sweet and sticky. She tsk'ed and put the remaining half on Lahan's plate. Maomao didn't much care for sweet things, but unfortunately for her, the madam didn't much care what she didn't much care for. She was out to please Lahan.

"You heard what the consort said—only a woman who hasn't menstruated can be shrine maiden."

"Yes, I heard her, but there are women who go their entire lives without menarche." It was unusual, but by no means unheard of.

Lahan, however, said, "Yes, but has such a woman ever had a child?"

That stopped Maomao cold. She frowned in surprise.

"That would turn everything on its head, wouldn't it?" Lahan said.

"When was this?" Maomao asked.

"There was a time when the shrine maiden was feeling indisposed and left the capital of Shaoh in order to recuperate elsewhere. That was about twenty years ago, and she returned from her convalescence only a few years back. Right when Consort Aylin was serving as apprentice shrine maiden." Apprentice shrine maiden...

Maomao assumed that if Aylin had been an apprentice, she had been preparing to become the actual shrine maiden. Meaning that if the current shrine maiden hadn't been there, Aylin could well have filled the position herself by now.

Maomao tried to remember when it was that the painter had seen the beautiful, pale woman. There weren't that many people who fit his description, but a traveling painter wouldn't ordinarily have been able to lay eyes on someone as august as Shaoh's shrine maiden. If she were away recuperating in the countryside, though—then it might make sense. And if, during her recovery, the shrine maiden had borne a child...

"What are the chances of a pale woman giving birth to a pale daughter?" Lahan asked.

"Higher than one being born to a non-albino parent, I would assume," Maomao said. If the father were also albino, a pale child could be almost guaranteed, but even if it were only the mother, it was a distinct possibility. If the shrine maiden had indeed given birth to a child, that would give rise to a whole host of questions.

"You're suggesting this child was the White Lady?"

Lahan grinned. The expression was unsettling on his face. "I can't say for certain, but it would make sense, wouldn't it? We have the White Lady under lock and key at the moment, but one thing she won't do is tell us whose orders she was acting on. Although Consort Aylin is more than happy to claim that it was her fellow emissary, Ayla."

Everyone seemed weirdly fixated on the White Lady. "You're saying Lady Aylin saw this baby when it was born?"

"Maybe that's why she's turned to us."

The White Lady, for whatever reason, had been running amok in a foreign country—Shaoh wouldn't find that any more politically congenial than Li did. Some people, however, might be personally pleased by it.

"Just to be certain, the political enemy who chased Lady Aylin out of her home—it's not this shrine maiden, is it? If it were, that would explain a few things itself," Maomao said.

Aylin claimed that Ayla was behind everything, but what if she herself was the one pulling the White Lady's strings, stirring up trouble in neighboring nations in order to bring down the pale shrine maiden whose position she begrudged? Ensuring that the shrine maiden wouldn't be in the way when, sooner rather than later, Shaoh had to rely on Li for help?

Maybe Maomao was being asked to find out whether the White Lady was the shrine maiden's daughter because such knowledge in itself would be a powerful trump card.

She shook her head. Maybe I'm just overthinking things. But why, then, was she being asked to investigate this?

"For the time being, I'm acting on the assumption that Consort Aylin is telling the truth," Lahan said. "I don't think she's hostile toward the shrine maiden, but she does want to find out whether the woman is hiding anything. Quite simply, she may be thinking that when the truth comes out, it will provide leverage she can use to get the shrine maiden on her side. She claims Ayla unleashed the White Lady in order to undermine the shrine maiden, so she may well feel that the enemy of her enemy is her friend."

"It's amazing how easily such unsavory things roll off your tongue."

Governments, however, were not monolithic; they could, one might say, be trilithic or even quadrilithic. The politically ousted Aylin might be willing to use any available means to get her revenge.

She certainly didn't seem that way when she was here last year, though...

The two emissaries had come dressed in matching outfits, looking practically like twin sisters. Could so much have happened in just a year?

"Are you sure you're not just helping Lady Aylin because you have a soft spot for pretty women?" Maomao asked.

"What a thing to accuse your honored elder brother of!" She decided to ignore that. She didn't have time for this.

In politics, you never knew who might become your enemy or when. Perhaps Aylin had entered the rear palace because she knew Li had apprehended the White Lady. If she succeeded in bringing the shrine maiden into her fold, did she mean to go back to Shaoh?

This is all so complicated. There were so many questions, so much room for doubt. Would she really share the truth about the White Lady so readily with someone from another country, even if it was to get the shrine maiden on her side? Didn't it stand to become a major headache for Shaoh? I guess she has her own

reasons.

Even Maomao, who was not a political animal, understood one thing: Li couldn't just go executing the White Lady. That had to be her starting point for everything.

Lahan, thankfully, appeared to realize what she was thinking. "You don't seem to see what I'm getting at. Let me put it this way: if the White Lady is the shrine maiden's daughter, then as long as we have her in our custody, we have leverage over the shrine maiden—and we have a check on Ayla, who chased Aylin out of Shaoh."

The White Lady was the key to the current international situation. Maomao frowned.

"You understand why I can't speak of this to anyone else." Presumably meaning Yao and En'en.

"That's no excuse for dragging me into it," Maomao said. She had half a mind to break his stupid spectacles.

"I was really worried about what I would do if you didn't pass our test. I guess I would have had to go to the 'Sui' noble, but given her position, the hassle involved would have been unimaginable."

Maomao guessed he was referring to Suirei. Making use of someone who was no longer supposed to exist would require a false identity. They could claim she was the daughter of some bureaucrat or other easily enough, but her real origins could still come back to haunt them—not to mention that she'd been a regular visitor to the medical office in the past. Everyone would be surprised, at best, if a woman who had died were to come back to life.

Maomao was concerned about what "status" she would be given as a result of this most recent test. She had urged them from the first simply to treat her as Luomen's adopted daughter. Now that he was a proper member of the medical staff, there should be no problem.

"So, what, you want me to go to Shaoh this time? It was hard enough getting to the western capital and back." Maomao had practically lost track of how long the round trip had taken.

"That's one thing you don't have to worry about," Lahan said, munching on the other half of Maomao's discarded bun. "The maiden is coming here."

"She's what?!" Maomao nearly yelled, startling Lahan so badly that he choked on the bun and had to swig some tea. "What do you mean, coming here? If she's sick, you can't make her travel all that way!" She rubbed her temples.

Lahan wiped some tea away from his mouth with his hand, then held out the hand imperiously to stop her. "That's politics. Li is as much a factor in Shaoh's thinking as Shaoh is in ours. Naturally they would want a presence at a major ceremony."

"Major ceremony?"

"Haven't you heard? With Empress Gyokuyou now His Majesty's legal wife and her son next in line for the succession, her family is to be officially granted a name. From Shaoh's perspective, that would mean a strong clan with direct ties to the Imperial family right on their border. They wouldn't want to come off looking second-best."

"Right."

He was talking about the young prince's formal debut, an occasion significant enough that emissaries from other countries would be present.

His Majesty's other sons have been too short-lived, Maomao reflected. All of them had died before such a ceremony could be held. Then again, the current prince was less than a year old. There may have been political considerations in presenting him this early.

"I grant the journey's not a short one however you make it, but Shaoh has a major sea route. If you can go with the seasonal wind, it's much faster than making the trip by land," Lahan said.

"I'm still not sure." If anything were to happen to the shrine maiden while she was abroad, it was easy—and worrying—to imagine responsibility being foisted on the host country. Hosting foreign dignitaries always carried such risks; the dignitaries' political enemies might even see such moments as opportunities. If things went well, however, it would result in stronger ties with Shaoh.

"I know you might not want to do this, but you have to. That's why I'm here, asking."

Maomao fell into a sullen silence, sipping her cold tea. She'd heard enough that she could no longer pretend to ignore the situation.

"Incidentally, this was Master Jinshi's idea."

That bastard, Maomao thought. The words came dangerously close to making it out of her mouth, but she somehow forced them back down. With his social status being what it was, Jinshi couldn't personally involve himself in just anything, but Maomao wished he would spare a thought for those he troubled in his stead.

"I assume I'll be compensated for this work," Maomao said.

"Leave the negotiating to me." Lahan thumped his chest, the light glinting off his spectacles. If nothing else, Maomao knew she could trust him with this.

Chapter 9: Empress

And so the consort became an empress. Gyokuyou was now formally married to His Majesty, and it was important she made that clear to those around her. In battle, you could minimize casualties if you had an overwhelming strength advantage. If a consort of a similar rank to Gyokuyou had given birth to a son at the same time she had, there could have been a bloodbath. But it was Gyokuyou who had risen to become Empress because she had given birth to her child before Lihua had produced her own male heir.

Lihua's family lineage made her more than qualified to be Empress, but though she had borne a son before, she hadn't been elevated to that rank. Not without reason.

For one thing, there was no telling how long her child would live. But the lineage was itself something of a problem.

The Emperor seemed to be trying to avoid marrying someone who was too closely related to him, for in the past, that was precisely what had weakened the Imperial bloodline and allowed a single disease to kill off its members one after another. Lihua had every right to be Empress, yet her ancestry, over which she had no control, stood in her way.

Perhaps there was one more reason as well: a need to cozy up to Gyokuyou's family with an eye toward future diplomacy.

Whatever had gotten her there, Empress Gyokuyou now towered in status even over others who lived "above the clouds" in the Imperial court. People who didn't already know her personally might well be expected to cower in her presence, and did.

"Hee hee hee! I hope you like my snacks." It had been almost six months since Maomao had heard the dulcet tones of the preparer of these not-too-sweet treats: Yinghua, a lady-in-waiting who was eminently competent but also had a quick ear for rumors and gossip. Maomao was glad to see Yinghua treated her the same way she always had, even if Maomao didn't dare do anything so foolish as speak to her. The chief lady-in-waiting, Hongniang, was watching them both closely. However, the minder soon stepped out.

Suppose I could have one? Maomao wondered.

Not everyone in the room had the wherewithal for such frivolous pondering. Beside Maomao, Yao was frozen like a block of ice. En'en kept a poker face, but the little glances she kept stealing at Yao suggested she was worried about her. Once the women had become accustomed to making medical visits to the consorts in the rear palace, they had finally been called upon to be part of a visit to Empress Gyokuyou herself.

Gyokuyou had no doubt been looking forward to this. She had, after all, personally recommended Maomao to take the medical assistants' exam. She regarded Maomao's visit as one of her alltoo-few pleasures, and was treating it as something of a tea party.

"Uh, where, ahem, is Dr. Kan?" Yao asked Yinghua. Dr. Kan— that referred to Maomao's father, whose full name was Kan Luomen.

"He went to examine the young prince," Yinghua replied. "Since you're all here, Lady Lingli and the ladies-in-waiting will all get checkups as well. There's nothing to do in the meantime, so Lady Gyokuyou suggested tea." Hongniang must have gone to keep an eye on the exams.

Princess Lingli had gotten big since Maomao had seen her last. When they'd arrived at the palace, the child who had been just a toddler before came running to see the visitors. She seemed to have her mother's willful streak. Sadly, she didn't remember Maomao, but she pegged the newcomers as playmates and followed them everywhere until Hongniang pried her away. The princess had looked quite dejected. Maomao figured they hadn't seen the last of her.

At least she's healthy. They both are. Empress Gyokuyou sat across from Maomao, eyes sparkling, eager for any hint of an amusing, titillating, or generally interesting story. Which,

unfortunately, I don't have, and if I did, I probably couldn't talk about it. Well, she did have some tales to tell about the

commander of the military, but she preferred not to speak of him and chose to keep them to herself.

Yinghua sat herself down with them, saying, "I'd love to hear some kind of juicy story. Don't you have anything?"

Always with the wheedling! Maomao thought. If she could have conjured up some engaging anecdote on demand, people might have considered her a better conversationalist, but unfortunately, chitchat was not her strong suit.

Someone most unexpected volunteered, however: En'en. "I have a story, though I don't know if it's exactly the kind you want to hear."

"Ooh, really?"

"It's about something that happened long ago. If that's all right?"

"I can't wait to hear it," Gyokuyou said, full of curiosity. En'en, normally so reticent, began to tell the tale.

Long ago, there were two chefs who found themselves pitting their cooking skills against each other, not just as a matter of pride, but to earn a place as the head chef of a rich man's household. One of the chefs had been born and raised in that land, while the other was a young up-and-comer from another place. Let us call them Chef and Young Chef.

The competition involved cooking the master's favorite foods: eggs and dumplings. He also loved mushrooms, so some expensive ones were prepared for the chefs to use. Both the competitors were seasoned cooks; they could show their skill in even the plainest of dishes.

By all rights, there should have been little difference between them. For Young Chef, however, things didn't go well. The eggs came out especially poorly, in no shape to be presented to the master. Young Chef at least managed to whip up some dumplings, but when the master tried them he flew into a rage and threatened to have Young Chef killed on the spot.

Young Chef was completely befuddled. The food had been prepared using only the ingredients that had been provided, which should have been identical to those the other chef was using.

What in the world had gone wrong?

It's not a story so much as...a riddle, Maomao thought. She glanced at En'en and realized she viewed this as some kind of test.

"Do you know why the dishes came out so wrong?" she asked with a glance in Maomao's direction. This situation felt oddly familiar.

"Young Chef didn't simply make a mistake in the recipe?" Yinghua asked. She still seemed the most domestic-minded of them, just as she had when Maomao had lived and worked at the

Jade Pavilion. "Being young, after all."

"Yes, but still a first-rate chef. Otherwise they wouldn't have been summoned from so far away." While En'en gave this explanation, her mistress Yao sat quietly, intensely focused on the ripples in her tea.

This must have been one serious mistake. If the dumplings had produced such a furious reaction, they were talking about a screwup on the level of mixing up salt and sugar. Maybe the chef's

sense of taste was impaired? No, that didn't seem likely. Maomao thought it was more probable that something had been wrong with the flavor from the start.

"A few questions," she said, raising her hand.

"Go ahead," En'en replied.

"What sort of water was used for the cooking?"

"Isn't water just water? You wouldn't deliberately use seawater or something, would you?" Yinghua objected.

Maomao would have shaken her head, but En'en did it first. "It wasn't seawater. However, fresh water was very valuable in this place, so it was common to use salt water for anything that wasn't going to be drunk. The water there was hard anyway, and the place was a producer of rock salt, so it was common to add that."

"Meaning that a chef who didn't know the qualities of the local water intimately could end up cooking with salt water without realizing it," Maomao said. That earned her a nod from En'en, while Yinghua clapped her hands as if it suddenly made sense to her. She did some cooking around the Jade Pavilion herself, and she seemed to have realized what must have happened.

Empress Gyokuyou, though, continued to look perplexed. "Would it really be that bad to boil your dumplings with salt water?" she asked.

It was Maomao who answered. "You pluck dumplings out of the water as soon as they're heated through. They float to the top; that's how you know they're done." The presence of salt in the water would change things. It would make the water heavier, meaning that the dumplings would float before they were fully cooked.

"So the dumplings were undercooked?"

"Yes, ma'am," Maomao said. En'en nodded. Apparently Maomao had the right answer.

"What about the eggs, then? Salt water wouldn't have anything to do with that, would it?" Yinghua said.

"If we knew exactly which egg dish was cooked and exactly which ingredients were used, I believe we could answer that question too," Maomao said.

"What do you think they cooked, then, and what do you think they used?" En'en replied.

"I'm going to guess steamed egg custard and hen-of-thewoods mushroom." Hen-of-the-woods was a luxury ingredient in some places. It was the first thing Maomao had thought of when En'en mentioned mushrooms. "Its pleasant texture is part of what makes it enjoyable to eat, so I assume Young Chef wanted to avoid overcooking it. However, raw hen-of-the-woods can be used to soften meat. Presumably the egg didn't set correctly." "Oh!" Yinghua's eyes sparkled with interest.

"That's exactly right," En'en said, going so far as to raise an eyebrow. She remained mostly expressionless, but it seemed to take the wind out of her sails how readily Maomao had answered her.

For some time now En'en had been more talkative than normal; by contrast, Yao had fallen silent. She was looking at the ground, almost as if she were embarrassed.

"Well, what happened to them? What happened to Young

Chef?" Yinghua asked.

"Oh, don't worry. They were rescued by another fine personage. They didn't become the chef at that rich man's mansion, but did find work at another household, one that was home to someone who wished to eat decent egg custard. Most fortunately, this young lady happened to be the daughter of someone with whom Young Chef was acquainted."

"Well, that's good to hear," Empress Gyokuyou laughed.

"Yes, milady. It so happened that Young Chef had a little sister, and thanks to this turn of events they were both saved from having nowhere to go." The corners of En'en's mouth crept up.

Wow, so she can smile? The expression was a kind one, and it seemed to be directed at the bashful Yao. I see. Maomao thought she understood why En'en had chosen to tell this particular story. Maomao's choosing to keep her peace about it and feign ignorance was her own form of kindness.

The chat seemed as pleasant to Empress Gyokuyou as it did anxiety-inducing to Yao and the others. After En'en's story, there was a bit of friendly gossiping, until Maomao's old man returned amidst a clamor: Hongniang was there holding the crown prince, with Princess Lingli beside her.

"The child is the picture of health," Luomen announced.

"That's wonderful to hear," said Gyokuyou, looking deeply relieved. The infant's teeth were already coming in; gleams of white could be seen when he opened his mouth.

"I have some concerns about weaning him," Luomen told Hongniang and the Empress. People's bodies tolerated things differently. You couldn't give babies honey, and fish or wheat could cause an allergic reaction. "When you introduce new foods into the Prince's diet, do it little by little, and only one new food at a time." Start the child on several new foods at once, and it would be impossible to tell what the problem was if he had a bad reaction.

This is the Emperor's own son we're dealing with, Maomao thought. Commoners, particularly those who lived in the poorer quarters, didn't worry about giving a baby the wrong food—they often had no food to give it at all.

Yao and En'en listened attentively to what Luomen was saying.

Incidentally, the quack doctor was also taking notes.

"Will it be safe for the prince to appear at his presentation?" Gyokuyou asked, a note of worry in her voice.

"Truthfully, I wouldn't recommend keeping him in an unfamiliar setting for very long. Children find it tiring." He might burst out crying when everyone was supposed to be quiet, or need his diaper changed. He could get hungry.

Two years earlier, Princess Lingli had come to one of the garden parties, and it had been a challenging experience. They'd had to put warm stones in her cradle to help keep her from catching a cold. This presentation would be even longer than that. "I'll tell His Majesty I think our boy shouldn't stay very long," Gyokuyou said.

"Thank you for understanding, ma'am," Luomen replied.

Maomao could see why the Empress might be concerned. Her son was only one of the Emperor's children; there was Princess Lingli too—and Consort Lihua's son. He had a claim to the throne as well. While Maomao didn't believe Lihua would do the unthinkable, others with a lust for power might not be so scrupulous. Lihua couldn't control everyone who might be tempted to make an attempt on the prince's life. There could be others whom she neither knew about nor could influence plotting harm to the crown prince.

In the past, there had been a palace lady who had attempted to poison one of the consorts. She'd done it out of love for her own mistress and entirely without the consort's knowledge or consent. Her plot had failed. Any who wished for Consort Lihua to be the mother of the nation would see the current crown prince as an obstacle to be removed.

Yes, there were many dangers.

Speaking of potential dangers... It had been some time since Maomao had seen Jinshi last, but where did he stand in all of this? He has his own claim to the succession.

Jinshi would come after the crown prince and Consort Lihua's child. Normally, an infant would not have been named crown prince; he would have been given more time to grow and to be observed by those around him. Jinshi, however, showed a complete disinterest in being emperor; he had been openly pleased by the birth of the prince and had even hoped to be reduced to the status of a common advisor. That, though, was not his decision to make.

So how will this all work out? Maomao wondered, gazing at the prince's hand, as red and as delicate as a maple leaf.

"It's over already? When will you be coming back?" asked Empress Gyokuyou, who wanted to keep chatting. Hongniang stood silently beside her.

They were just about to leave the Empress's residence when footsteps came pounding up behind them. It was Yinghua.

"Stop that, it's unseemly," Hongniang said. She was constraining herself to a quiet reprimand because the doctors were present, but Maomao knew that Yinghua would be in for a taste of her knuckle later.

"I believe you left something here. Would you be so kind as to come and get it?" Yinghua said, tugging on Maomao's wrist. She was grinning.

As soon as they were out of sight of the others, she let Maomao go.

"Did I really leave something?" Maomao asked.

"Oh, of course not. I just made that up," Yinghua said. "Unless maybe this counts." She pressed something into Maomao's palm: a hair stick with a jade ornament. Gyokuyou's symbol. Maomao had gotten a necklace of the same material back when she served at the Jade Pavilion.

"Lady Gyokuyou had them made for all her ladies-in-waiting when she became Empress. I got one too!"

"That's nice, but I'm not one of her ladies."

"She had an extra one made for you, hoping you might come back. She asked me to give it to you just now. She said it would be a waste to leave it lying around."

If that was true, then it would be rude not to accept her gift. However, Maomao knew now that there was significance in accepting a hair stick.

"Lady Gyokuyou wishes you would keep working for her. You can come back anytime you feel like it," Yinghua said.

Easier said than done, Maomao thought. It was a tremendous opportunity, not the kind that came along every day, and on some level it was a shame to have to turn her down. Maomao believed that life working for Empress Gyokuyou would be pleasant, in its own way. But I'm just not fit. Not only in terms of social status; Maomao's personality would be something of a square peg in the round hole of the Empress's lifestyle.

"Oh, that's right. People would ask questions if the hair stick were the only thing I gave you." Yinghua gave Maomao three paper packages that smelled faintly of butter. "Share these with the other girls, all right? Sorry, I know you like savory stuff better."

So she even had an appropriate gift ready. Maomao took the snacks and made her way back to the front entryway, where the others were waiting.

Chapter 10: Covert Ops

The damp, stagnant air was disgusting, the humidity making his hair cling to his neck. Jinshi sat in his office and regarded the pile of paperwork with a mounting desire to flee.

There was little more depressing than doing administrative busywork during the hot, rainy season. Jinshi brushed the hair off the back of his neck, sat up in his chair, and flipped some pages. The characters were running a little; maybe someone had handled the paper with sweaty hands. He heaved a sigh and picked up the cup of tea, served cold, sitting on the corner of his desk.

He let the tea ripple in the cup. When had it appeared there? He had the sense it had been left when he'd gone to the bathroom a few minutes ago.

"Who put this tea here?" he asked the official in the office with him. Gaoshun had gone back to the Emperor and was no longer there. Basen would return when he had fully recovered. In the meantime, Jinshi was making use of a bureaucrat with a particular gift for paperwork.

"A court lady brought it while you were away from your seat, sir."

Jinshi was only human; nature sometimes called even on him. But for someone, a lady of the outer court no less, to wait for that exact moment to bring him tea, that was strange. A guard was posted at the door to his office at all times—except when Jinshi left the office, such as to use the toilet. Then the guard accompanied him. Perhaps the woman had known.

Jinshi's office was typically off-limits to court ladies. Back when he had been pretending to be a eunuch, there had been actual fights among the women about who got to bring him his tea. Even after he had left the rear palace, women would sometimes sneak bits of their hair or nails into his snacks as a love charm, or simply charge in when he was alone and tear off their clothes. Nothing but trouble. The bureaucrat who had been assigned to him might have been good at paperwork, but it seemed he wasn't acquainted with the specifics of Jinshi's situation.

Jinshi opened a drawer of his desk and took out an item wrapped in cloth. With measured movements, he unwrapped it to reveal a silver spoon, which he held with the cloth and used to stir the tea.

The shining silver promptly turned cloudy. Jinshi was at least grateful his assailant had used a nice, obvious poison.

The blood drained from the official's face as he watched. In fact, Jinshi wanted him to see this, in order to judge his reaction.

At least the man understood what the besmirched silver signified.

It seemed he really hadn't known about the poison.

Jinshi handed the spoon to the guard at the door, who didn't so much as blink as he rewrapped the utensil and placed it in the folds of his robes. His relief would come soon. He would probably hand the spoon on after that.

"Can you describe the woman who brought this?" Jinshi asked the bureaucrat.

"W-Well," the man began. He was all out of sorts and failed to give much useful information. She was "young." Not very tall. At least it proved one thing: that the man was dedicated to his job. He'd been so focused on his paperwork that he hadn't taken special note of the woman who had walked in. Jinshi observed, incidentally, that there was a cup of tea on the bureaucrat's desk as well—half empty.

Sigh. Very well. Jinshi took out another spoon and stirred the official's tea, but this spoon showed no reaction. "You're safe," he said. An unmistakable look of relief passed over the man's face before he shrank back, obviously chagrined.

Jinshi wasn't in any mood to reprimand him. He just wanted someone to take care of the paperwork. This man seemed good enough at his task, and on top of that, he never looked at Jinshi like he had any funny business in mind. All Jinshi needed was for the guy to do a decent job until Basen got back.

"Put it out of your mind. There's more work to do," Jinshi said. He set the poisoned tea on a corner of his desk and went back to his papers. His assistant, still pale as the grave, returned to his desk.

Jinshi tried not to let the other man notice as he heaved a sigh.

His days were restless, tense. He'd lost track of how long it had been since he'd quit pretending to be a eunuch. Months. Being part of the court proper meant much, much more work, and he seemed to get less sleep every day. He'd at least been escaping into town to take a breather every ten days or so, but there was none of that anymore.

Jinshi had finished his work for the day and was sitting on a couch in his room. He'd had his dinner and taken his bath, so now all that was left was to go to bed. But he didn't feel like sleeping, not after what had happened that afternoon.

"How about some nice fruit, Master Jinshi?" His everconsiderate lady-in-waiting, Suiren, brought him some pear slices, each on its own little skewer.

"Give," he said. Perhaps it sounded a mite childish, but this was his milk mother, a woman who had known him since before he'd been weaned. It was just the two of them; she wouldn't be upset.

He put a piece of pear in his mouth, savoring the crunch and the light, sweet flavor. The juice was cool and refreshing as it went down his throat. He thought about asking for a cup of wine, but decided that tonight, he would be satisfied with this.

"You must be so tired. You haven't been into town lately, even on your days off. Your work is taking all your time and energy," Suiren said.

"Yes, well, that's what happens when the work is endless.

Going forward, I think I may need more assistants."

"And more ladies-in-waiting, I might add."

Jinshi's milk mother was on the cusp of old age, and she sometimes remarked how the years weighed upon her. He would have liked to hire some ladies-in-waiting, but his circumstances being what they were, it wasn't easy.

"Ah, how I wish Maomao would come back!" Suiren said.

You and me both, Jinshi thought, but he only shook his head. He knew it wasn't possible. "I'm sure she knows you'd just work her like a dog again."

"Well, what's the point of hiring someone who can't do her

job?" Suiren replied, her voice as sweet as her words were harsh. She could be very soft on Jinshi, but word was that every lady-inwaiting who served under her considered her a monster. "I must say, the amount of work I do every day is too much for these old bones," she went on, accompanied by a demonstrative rubbing of her shoulders. "Oh, if only you would hurry up and take a consort,

Master Jinshi, even just one, my life might be a little easier..."

Jinshi could only give a dry smile. "Don't you worry that if I picked the wrong lady, your work would only increase?"

"No, indeed. It would make hiring new ladies-in-waiting so much simpler. It's because they covet the position of your wife that they come after you with such fervor. Not that I imagine those types would vanish, but we could cut down on them significantly." She sounded like she was talking about garden pests.

When Suiren began speaking of consorts, there was only one person Jinshi thought of. He knew she considered the whole idea nothing but trouble. It might have been one thing had she been the cloistered daughter of some well-to-do family, but for someone who had the means to support herself already and live her own life, being Jinshi's consort could only be suffocating.

"Young master," Suiren said sadly, observing Jinshi's grim countenance. "Before I served you, I served His Majesty. I wasn't perhaps as close to him as I am to you, but I knew him."

"I can imagine."

"His first consort, Lady Ah-Duo, had quite a rough time! I know she was subject to harassment from a great many women."

Jinshi thought of the handsome lady who dressed in men's clothes and was now in seclusion. It was hard to picture her the object of mean-spirited pranks.

"They could be terribly cruel. It was so bad that I wondered if I should try to intervene, until suddenly I discovered they had all fallen into line with her."

Jinshi didn't reply. So Ah-Duo had always been Ah-Duo.

"At first, when His Majesty sought Lady Ah-Duo, I thought it must be some kind of joke. She was his milk sibling, practically one of the boys. They still played games of tag until who knows when." Yes, Jinshi had heard people say that if she'd been born a man, Ah-Duo would have been the Emperor's right hand. "With all possible respect to Empress Gyokuyou, I must say His Majesty was deeply disappointed to realize that the one he truly wanted by his side was in no position to be there."

"What are you getting at?" Jinshi finally said.

"Oh, nothing. Just the ramblings of an old woman. I simply hoped you might choose a path that would leave you without regrets." With that, Suiren picked up the plate, which had a lone slice of pear still on it, and left the room.

"Without regrets," Jinshi mumbled. That would not be easy.

Chapter 11: Before the Celebration

It was high summer, and there was a festive atmosphere in the capital. Visitors from foreign parts meant money flowed freely. Events and happenings would naturally build until there was a spontaneous, unofficial party in swing.

Celebrations were not inherently bad. They made everyone lively and happy, in the court as much as beyond it. And how did that liveliness manifest itself within the palace walls?

"Overwork." Such was the one-word verdict the physician rendered on the pale-faced bureaucrat. The man had bags under his eyes and a thousand-yard stare. "Be sure you get some sleep.

You'll work yourself to death, literally."

Sleep was so important. People thought they could go without it for a day or two, but it would catch up with them—come back to haunt them—as they got older. At one point, Jinshi had been getting dangerously little sleep himself. Every time he came to the pleasure quarter, Maomao had made him take a nap.

Setting up shop in the capital meant getting the bureaucracy's permission. Street stalls might appear on a whim, but a proper storefront demanded permits, for tax purposes if nothing else. If you were caught evading the necessary red tape, the best you could hope for was a heavy fine—you might even be thrown in prison.

Festivals always attracted crowds. Foreigners were coming, which meant trade goods would be more readily available, and plenty of people had come to the capital hoping to get their hands on some. All of which meant the civil officials were doing paperwork morning, noon, and night.

The soldiers had been busy as well. The frequency of the freak strategist's visits declined, for which Maomao was grateful. Then again, it might have been more accurate to say that after the food-poisoning incident, his subordinates had set up something of a dragnet for him.

More people meant more potential for crime, and it was the soldiers' job to shore up public safety. Between the fact that they could simply allocate training time to work instead and the fact that they were generally muscle-brains, there was much less collapsing among the soldiers than among the unfortunate bureaucrats. There were, however, more injuries.

"Hfff! Can't you be a little more careful?!" demanded a soldier as Yao daubed some medicine on a cut a good three sun long.

It's just a flesh wound, Maomao thought. The soldier had sustained it, he said, when he'd confronted a man who'd opened a stall without a permit and was selling dodgy medicines. When they'd tried to shut down his shop, he'd pulled a knife on them.

"I'm sorry," Yao said steadily, although Maomao could see her lips purse. She didn't look angry so much as like she was holding back tears.

En'en discreetly went to help out. She offered the soldier a cup. "This should numb the pain," she said, although Maomao was fairly confident she'd simply picked up a cup of cold barley tea.

The physicians still only rarely let the young women handle patients, but they thought quite highly of En'en's small, thoughtful touches like that. Complaints about the medical office had allegedly diminished.

And what was Maomao doing? She was busily making medicines. The doctors had felt that she could at least be entrusted with preparing simple balms, and if she suppressed her desire to work on more exotic concoctions, it wasn't so bad. It was the right place for her: she had neither the attitude nor, compared to the other two, the looks to be dealing with patients.

"Maomao, balm?" Since the incident with the cookies, En'en had taken to speaking to Maomao in a distinctly more informal tone. Her change in attitude had prompted Yao to start talking to Maomao a little more herself, so maybe En'en had done it in order to change her mistress's childish behavior. Maybe.

"Balm, here you go," Maomao said. As she was about to hand the stuff over, she glanced at the patient. It was the whiny soldier. An awful lot of noise he made for a pretty minor injury. Without a word, Maomao grabbed some balm she had in the folds of her robes, swapping it for the medicine she'd been about to give to En'en.

The perfect chance. Such an animated patient would be the perfect opportunity to test out her new salve.

Maomao was startled by a voice from behind her: "What do you think you're doing?" She looked back to find an elderly physician glowering at her. "You just swapped those medicines, didn't you?"

"Why, whatever do you mean, sir?" she asked. She was trying to sound as innocent as she could, but the physician grabbed her experimental medicine. Still glaring at her, he swiped a finger through it.

"This has something in it. Something unusual mixed in."

"I reiterate, sir, whatever do you mean?"

This time Maomao's attempt at deflection only earned her a knuckle to the head.

"For your information, Luomen asked us to be especially strict with you." It would be hard for her to wriggle out of this with someone who knew her father. This doctor was the strictest in the medical office, and he already suspected her of having gotten her position because of her family connections. "What did you put in this?"

After a moment Maomao responded, "A little bit of frog." She'd heard frog oil was supposed to be good and wanted to try it, but it had proven hard to get oil from frogs, and in the end she'd only been able to make what the doctor was currently holding in his hand. "I've heard they use frog oil as a medicine in foreign countries."

"Have you, now? I certainly haven't."

In fact, neither had Maomao. She'd simply thought it might be possible it would have some sort of effect. She'd been careful to choose a nontoxic frog, and had confirmed there were no obvious ill effects by testing it on herself. She wasn't savage enough to subject someone else to a concoction she hadn't even checked for toxicity.

"In any case, I'm confiscating this."

"What? No!"

Thus she found her medicine taken away. And after she'd

spent her day off scrounging around in the rice paddies!

"Did you say...frog?" Yao asked, her face pale. It looked like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You would put frogs in medicine? There must be something wrong with you!"

Maomao dug in one ear with her finger and ignored her. She must have been over the line, for En'en nudged her with her elbow. So she said, "I can understand you might not be acquainted with such things, but they're quite a typical meal among the common people."

Yao looked even more disbelieving than before. She turned to En'en as if to ask whether that could possibly be true.

"She's right, milady. Frogs are frequently eaten. You might also be interested to know that sometimes people try to pass off sliced snake meat as fish."

Whatever color was left in Yao's face drained away at the mention of snakes.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure no snakes end up on your table," En'en assured her.

"I would be perfectly happy to see them on my table," Maomao offered. The profusion of tiny bones could make them some work to eat, but all you had to do was fry them up and it was fine. If the smell bothered you, some fragrant or medicinal herbs could take care of it. In fact, Maomao had a few skewers of dried snake meat with her as a nice little snack in case she started to get peckish. She took one from her bag and held it out to Yao in silent invitation, but Yao only shook her head and turned limply to the wall. Maomao shrugged and put the skewer back.

"No slacking, ladies!" snapped the doctor, and the three women abandoned their chat and got back to work.

Maomao and the others had lunch at a nearby dining hall. The food was free and you could even get seconds, but if you didn't want what they were serving, you had to bring your own meal or snack.

The court ladies ate separately from the men. Usually, Yao acted all but indifferent toward Maomao, but at meal times she edged a little closer on account of the atmosphere in the dining area.

Whether it be the rear palace or the pleasure quarter, there was a side of women that only came out with other women. When the ladies were off in their own corner of the dining hall, where the men wouldn't see or hear them, that was when the talk really started.

"I give up. I just can't abide soldiers. He gets paid well, but he's so busy, and so much of his money goes to all the food he needs. He doesn't even treat me to a decent meal!"

"Ugh, that's awful. But civil officials aren't so great either. That one who chatted me up the other day? Remember him? Well, it was nice of him to ask, but—ugh. I just don't think I have anything to talk about with a man who's made his way in life by organizing shelf after shelf of moldy books! I can't even accept his hair stick. It's so old-fashioned, I wouldn't be caught dead with it!"

"Oh, take it. I know you—you're just going to pawn it anyway."

Many of the court ladies came from high-ranking families, but their personalities weren't always as good as their upbringings. It was something of a difficult reality for a genuinely prim and proper young lady.

Maomao usually chose a seat in a corner of the dining area, and wherever she went, Yao would dart after her. She knew that if Maomao was there, the crueler ladies, especially those who were hostile to the newly minted medical assistants, would keep their distance.

I just tried to give them fair warning, Maomao thought, but now they wouldn't get anywhere near her. It was like the Crystal Pavilion all over again.

So what had happened? There had been a court lady who'd decided to launch a preemptive strike against what she took to be the naive young medical assistants. She'd approached them with a train of hangers-on, in fact looking much like Yao had at the beginning. But where Yao had obviously been passionate about her work, this woman gave the impression that she was mostly at the palace in hopes of landing a mate. The way she seemed to have a different male dining companion at every meal, it was almost as if she took pride in being a woman of easy virtue.

Maomao couldn't help but notice a rash around the woman's mouth. "It seems you have a substantial number of partners," she'd said. "Are you aware of the risks of illness?" She was just making sure.

"I wouldn't be with a man who was sick!" the woman had said, whereupon Maomao had told her about how sexually transmitted diseases could be present but dormant, and how even if her partner wasn't sick, one of his other partners might be, and the illness could still be passed to her. She wasn't the only one who could sleep around, after all. Finally, Maomao had explained that several sexually transmitted diseases could be communicated at once.

"Have you been feeling tired?" she'd asked. "Any swelling or soreness in your private areas? Or bleeding, for that matter?"

As Maomao had proceeded with her questioning, the woman had grown paler and paler and finally vacated the scene. Maybe, Maomao reflected, it had been a misjudgment to handle her the same way as she did the courtesans at the Verdigris House. But if the woman wasn't treated promptly, her nose might rot and fall off.

Maomao had been talking to the woman very much in earnest, but meanwhile Yao's face had been bright red. En'en must not have known much about sexually transmitted diseases, for she had been taking copious notes.

Now, to return to the present moment. Today's meal was congee, soup, and one of several side dishes. Choice of sides was free, but show up too late and they might be out of your favorite. We mentioned the small quantities of food, but that was because in general, full meals were served only in the morning and evening. The afternoon service was essentially a large snack.

For her side dish, Maomao took steamed chicken with cold vegetables. Meat dishes were popular and always went to the early birds. The other two women took the same thing.

"Just so you know, I'm not copying you," Yao said.

I didn't say you were, Maomao thought. In its own way, her behavior was sort of charming, and ever since she'd had that realization, Maomao had started to develop an affection for the other court lady. She was an awful lot easier to deal with than a sycophant who kept her true intentions hidden.

The other side dishes included fish and something vinegared. The fish did look a bit like snake meat, if you squinted; maybe that was why Yao hadn't wanted it. Call her twisted, but the realization made Maomao want to tweak the young woman just a bit. They set up camp in their usual corner, but whereas Maomao normally ate in silence, today she said, "They say some sort of foreign dignitary is coming, right?" It had been all the talk recently. "Did you know that in the desert, snakes and lizards are considered important sources of nutrients? They eat them all the time there."

Food culture differs from place to place, as one would discover quickly by going west—and indeed as Maomao had learned firsthand on her trip to the western capital. She hadn't gotten to do any sightseeing as such, but there had been a lot of strange offerings at the street-side food stalls. Suirei, with her aversion to snakes and insects, had been at her wits' end, Maomao recalled with a warm glow.

"Maomao," En'en said, giving her a discouraging look.

Yao's spoon was frozen in midair. "I'm not hungry anymore," she said, putting the spoon down. It looked like Maomao had gone a bit too far.

"Lady Yao, you need your food," En'en said.

"I might have some appetite for a snack," Yao replied, still looking a little miffed. En'en thought about it for a second, then produced a cloth packet she unwrapped to reveal a bamboo cylinder—a canteen. The cafeteria servings were never enough for Yao's voracious appetite, and En'en was always prepared with a supplement.

"You can have this after you finish your meal," she said, glancing Yao's way. Yao grumbled but started in on her congee again.

She knows how to handle her, Maomao thought. As for what was in the canteen, En'en got a bowl and emptied the contents into it, revealing something sweet-smelling, translucent, and moist.

"That's your snack?" Maomao said. Yao really was rich—this was a luxurious treat. The perfect summer dessert. It even showed up in Empress Gyokuyou's evening meals every once in a while.

"It's Lady Yao's favorite," En'en said. She accompanied the remark with a finger to her lips, correctly guessing that Maomao knew what the dessert was.

Here I thought she was looking out for Yao! It was cruel, what she was doing. Was this, too, in the interest of helping Yao grow?

"Mmm! It's a little warm, but it's still good," said Yao, digging into her jiggling snack with gusto.

The name of the dish? Hasma. The nature of the ingredients? Frogs' reproductive organs. For Yao's sake, Maomao decided not to say anything.

Chapter 12: Child of a Foreign Land

"Rather lively today, isn't it?" Luomen said, although he seemed perfectly relaxed. He wasn't wearing his white doctor's outfit today; he was in men's clothing, although his pudgy silhouette and warm expression still gave him the appearance of an old lady. He made his way slowly but steadily along the thoroughfare, leaning on his cane.

"Careful not to trip," Maomao said, keeping a watchful eye out as she walked at his side. Roads weren't normally a problem for him, but this one was particularly busy, made even more so by the festival atmosphere. For an old man missing a kneecap, a stray bump from a passerby could be enough to send him sprawling.

"Oh, I'm fine."

"I'm sure you are. Just humor me."

Normally Maomao might have spoken more bluntly to her father, but today she tried to mind her manners. There were other people present. Namely Yao and En'en, along with the doctor who was forever getting angry at Maomao. A soldier was with them too, as a bodyguard.

What brought them outside the palace confines? A shopping trip. Only Yao had gone last time, but today all three of the girls were along. That was partly because there wasn't too much to carry, and partly because the medical office was too busy to spare all its doctors. The last shopping trip had demonstrated how tricky things could get with no physicians present.

There was arguably one more reason as well: the person they would be purchasing medicine from was a foreigner. Maomao's father was the most accomplished in the foreign tongue among the medical staff, while Maomao, En'en, and the other doctor each knew at least a little. On this trip, Yao was just along for the ride.

"We should have taken a carriage," Maomao grumbled.

"A carriage? With all these people around? We would only have been a nuisance," Luomen said. He sounded cheerful, but Maomao thought it was cruel to make an injured old man walk all this way.

Other than that, she was very happy with the situation. She got to be with her father and see some uncommon medicine.

Exciting!

"Don't do anything unless we tell you to," said the other doctor —call him Scary Doctor—glaring at Maomao. (Hey, she knew how to behave herself in public.) She'd long had the feeling that he was keeping an eye on her, and since the incident with the frogbased salve the other day, his surveillance had only become more intense. Incidentally, she had finally started to remember his name just recently. It was Dr. Liu.

"Sorry about this," Luomen said, but he didn't contradict the other man. He was going to defer to Dr. Liu.

Yao seemed to have a little more respect for Maomao's father than before. As ever, En'en was doing whatever she could to help Yao, and the young mistress had recently been quite personable.

She was just sheltered.

Yao was trying to look nonchalant, but Maomao saw her eyes dart to the storefronts from time to time. She looked antsy, ready to run; she didn't seem used to the volume of people. En'en was watching just as closely as Maomao, and although her face remained impassive, there was something hidden behind that deliberately blank expression. Her eyes sparkled like she'd spotted a baby squirrel and was enjoying the sight. Maybe Yao had been brought along this time because the doctors figured she hadn't gotten used to going shopping the first time.

Think she's really cut out for this? Maomao wondered. En'en was diligently minding Yao. If I had to guess, I would say she's

enjoying it. Well, that was better than having to force her kicking and screaming.

While Yao was busy being distracted as they passed a candy crafter, the group arrived at their destination. It was a luxurious restaurant—one Maomao had made use of before. It was amply supplied with private rooms where its typically rich clientele could have private conversations.

Awfully convenient, those rooms...

Foreign products, even just medicine, were valuable. If you weren't careful when you went to pick them up, you could find yourself robbed on the way home. That explained the bodyguard too.

It being the middle of the day, there were quite a few female customers. At lunchtime, the restaurant sold light snacks, and the fresh steamed buns looked enticing.

"This way, please." A server showed them to their room, where a foreign man with light hair waited. He was very hairy, except for his chin; he wore a thick mustache but no beard.

Luomen entered the room, but when Maomao and the others started to follow, the foreigner held up a hand. He and Luomen conferred. The group was too far away to hear what they were saying, but Maomao saw her father shake his head and look back at them. "He says only three people may enter."

"What?"

Three people? That meant Maomao and the other two assistants would have to wait outside. Obviously the two doctors would be essential, and they would want the bodyguard with them just in case.

"In fact, he thinks we shouldn't have brought women at all," Dr. Liu said. "I guess we should have had you accompany us when we were dealing with someone else." Maomao's shoulders slumped. Was she going to be condemned to wait in the hallway the entire time? Then Dr. Liu handed her a piece of paper. "I'm sure you know how to handle a shopping trip. Could you pick up some other items for us while we're doing this?"

The paper contained a detailed list—of the preferred sweets and treats of the doctors who hadn't been able to join them. The list was quite extensive, and Dr. Liu accompanied it with a substantial amount of change.

"If there's money left over, you can buy what you like with it.

Craft candies, say. Be back here in a couple of hours."

"Yes, sir," Maomao said. Dr. Liu did nothing but get angry at her, yet he didn't neglect to provide for candy for them. He hadn't failed to notice Yao taking in the street stalls.

"You do know how to handle money, don't you?" Yao asked Maomao, perhaps annoyed that she had been entrusted with the cash.

Does she realize what she's saying? Yao was as good as announcing that she herself hadn't known how to use money until recently. She seemed quite proud of her newly acquired knowledge. Maybe they were hoping to teach her a thing or two

about shopping by bringing her along, Maomao thought. Behind her, En'en's eyes were shining, as if to say Isn't my mistress the

cutest?

Maomao knew that hanging on to the money would only earn her more grumbling, but she wasn't entirely comfortable giving it to Yao. By process of elimination, she handed the list and the cash to En'en. Yao still seemed less than pleased, but she wasn't going to fight En'en having the purse strings.

"How about we start with the steamed buns?" En'en suggested. She had the money, so it was only natural that she dictate the agenda. When Maomao stole a peek and saw the name of the shop, though, she frowned. "Something the matter?" En'en asked.

"That place is always sold out by lunchtime," she said, pointing in the direction of the store.

"You heard her, Lady Yao." Ah, En'en really was quick on the uptake.

"What? Heard what?" Yao was still clueless as Maomao grabbed one of her hands and En'en grabbed the other. They both started to pull.

"If they sell out, we're the ones who'll get in trouble!" En'en said.

Yao flinched. "Let's hurry, then!"

Hand in hand in hand, the three of them sprinted for the buns for all they were worth.

If they'd pictured a pleasant afternoon wandering the main street together, they were much mistaken. At last they stood in the shade of a willow tree, Maomao and Yao and En'en, their breath heaving.

"Doctors must earn a pretty nice salary," Maomao said, her

tone more than a little bitter as she looked at the mountain of treats in pretty packages. "There's a lot of fresh-made stuff here. Think they'll be able to eat it all before it goes stale?" They'd been to what felt like every place in town. Dr. Liu had said they could spend whatever was left over—but was there anything left over?

Yao wheezed; she wasn't used to running and was so spent she couldn't speak. En'en, ever attentive, bought her some juice from a nearby shop.

All the snacks they had been instructed to purchase had come from well-known establishments; Maomao recognized a number of the treats served at the Verdigris House as well. Dr. Liu had probably given Maomao the money because he knew she would be acquainted with many of the stores.

"I really think this should be enough," En'en said, scanning the piece of paper. There was one more name on the list.

"Oh, that place." Maomao's shoulders slumped. It wasn't exactly close, and she didn't feel like walking that far. "They've probably still got stock, and we've got an hour yet..."

She glanced at Yao, who appeared rejuvenated by the juice.

"I'm good to go," she said.

Maomao and En'en looked at each other, both cocking their heads, wondering what to do.

"May I ask what you're doing, En'en? You two seem to...signal each other a lot these days," Yao said.

"I simply wouldn't want you to overexert yourself, Lady Yao," En'en said.

"Well, that's too bad, because I'm going. I'm going, and that's final!"

"Very well." En'en's remained unfazed, but inside she was no doubt marveling at how adorable her mistress was when she was trying to put on a brave face. From behind, Maomao could see that En'en's shapely tush was quivering with delight.

Maomao guided them along. "The shop's on a side street a little off the main road..." It was a nuisance having her arms full of packages. Then again, Yao, still trying to prove she was up to these kinds of things, had insisted on carrying more of the baggage than anyone. At least Maomao had it better than her.

I do admire her refusal to be beaten, she thought. There were

plenty of people out there who were content to lord it over others simply because they happened to have been born well. At least Yao wasn't like that. Maomao suspected it was the same facet of her personality that had driven her to apply to become a medical assistant when she took the court ladies' exam.

Strictly speaking, the shop for which they were heading was not a snack place. It was more a supplier of exotic ingredients. Any physician who mixed up medicines could also do a little cooking, and this place specialized in unusual condiments and flavorings.

The town felt very different once they got off the main road. They saw more commoners' dwellings as they wove their way between shops. A cat yawned in the shade of a tree, while small children in bibs tried to get its attention with a bobbing foxtail. There were women doing laundry in the canal, and a dog tied up watching a chicken in a cage who seemed likely to be that evening's dinner.

"Th-This is where the shop is?" Yao asked, uneasy. In answer, Maomao pointed at a small sign. It bore the name of the last place on their list. Yao was visibly relieved. "They should set up shop somewhere more, you know...reputable."

"The closer you are to the main street, the higher the taxes," Maomao said. The better your location, the more people went by your shop—and the more money the tax man figured he could squeeze out of you. "Come on, let's wrap up this list," she said. She started for the store, but suddenly En'en stopped. "What's wrong?" Maomao asked.

En'en pointed to the far side of the canal, where they saw a gaggle of children surrounding a little girl. Maomao wondered if they were playing a game, but no, it didn't quite seem like it. What was going on here? While she was still trying to figure it out, she saw someone go running across the small bridge over the canal—it was Yao.

"What are you doing?" she yelled, startling the children. "You're bullying that poor girl!" Her shouting sent the kids scattering.

She's so...how do I put this? Young, Maomao thought, but trotted after her just the same. There was only one child standing in front of Yao now: the girl who'd been surrounded by the others.

The victim of the bullying, if Yao was right.

"Huh?" Yao said, puzzled. "Do you see this girl?"

Maomao looked the child in the face, and she was puzzled too.

"It looks like she's from a foreign land," En'en said. The girl's clothes were in typical Li style, but her facial features weren't the typical Li look. Maomao took her to be somewhat less than ten years old. Her hair and eyes were dark, but her skin was fairer and ruddier than their own. She had a lovely face, with perfectly positioned eyes and pronounced eyebrows.

Her skin reminds me of Empress Gyokuyou's.

She might be of mixed parentage, then, but Maomao could see why En'en had assumed she was foreign-born: there were markings around her eyes. That was extremely unusual in Li, since here tattoos were normally imposed on criminals. Few people would voluntarily get them (making Maomao and her freckles a notable exception to the rule). This wasn't the mark of any crime, however. It looked more like a ward or charm. A red, vine-like pattern.

"Are you all right?" Yao asked, but the girl only looked at her with a confused expression. Yao was dismayed. "I guess you don't understand me," she said. If only they could get a word out of her —but the child didn't say a thing.

"I don't think she can talk!" said one of the kids Yao had sent running. "She looked like she was lost, so we asked her where she was from, but she wouldn't say a word! We all tried asking her together, but I don't think she has a voice." With that, the child ran off again.

"Um..." Yao had been so willing to jump right in, but now she seemed at a loss for what to do.

Don't look at me, Maomao thought. They were confronted with a mute child who was from another country, so they couldn't have communicated even if she could speak.

"What do we do?" Yao asked.

That's what I'd like to know!

Human beings are creatures that communicate using language. Being deprived of that ability is inconvenient to say the least, as Maomao and the others were discovering.

Yao crouched in front of the little girl. "Okay, uh... Your name! What's your name?" she ventured. The girl continued to stare back, sweet but uncomprehending. She said nothing, but she appeared to be listening to Yao, trying to understand her—so apparently she could hear.

If she could say something, we might at least be able to figure out what country she's from... But no such luck; the child made

not a peep.

Having gotten herself into this, Yao was bent on at least figuring out where the child was from, but she was looking less and less hopeful. She stole the occasional glance back at Maomao and En'en, but En'en only watched, making no move to help her mistress. She could stand to lend a hand, Maomao thought. Early on, she'd taken En'en to be Yao's faithful servant, but over time she had come to see it was more complex than that. Yes, Yao was very important to En'en, and yes, En'en served her impeccably, but...

There's something a little...twisted about it. Such was

Maomao's conclusion. Sometimes when someone was just too adorable, it left you wanting to tease them a bit—but it wasn't quite that either. However you described it, it left En'en watching with distinct gratification as Yao flailed.

They were going to run out of time if this went on much longer, so Maomao was about to step in and try to help—but she was preempted by En'en. "Lady Yao, I don't think she speaks our language. Let me try instead," she said.

"Yes, please!" Yao said, relieved. She was obviously grateful for the help. Maybe she wouldn't have felt quite so glad if she'd realized En'en had been savoring the sight of her struggle until that moment.

Ignorance is what, again? Maomao thought, watching the two of them from under lidded eyes.

En'en asked the child her name in a foreign language. Of course, there were a lot of foreign languages. Maomao spoke a smattering of Shaohnese, and could read and write a few simple words in the tongues of places farther west, but she was selftaught and had no confidence in her pronunciation. En'en, by her own admission, didn't speak much more than Maomao, so it was slow work talking to the girl. Her efforts, however, made the child's eyes widen; she started to bounce up and down.

Something, whatever it was, had gotten through.

"She must be from Shaoh," En'en said. Aylin had golden hair and blue eyes, but that wasn't true of everyone from the region. Dark hair and eye colors were more likely to be passed down from parents to children, making it only natural that black and brown be the most common.

"I guess she understood you...but we still don't know her name," Yao said. The little girl still hadn't spoken a word. She did, however, touch her throat and proceed to make an x shape with her hands in front of her neck.

"I think she means she can't speak," Maomao said. Then she ventured a few words in Shaohnese: You can't talk? The girl made a circle with her hands this time, a sign of approval.

Maomao picked up a branch that was lying on the ground and scratched a few characters in the dust to demonstrate what she had in mind. Then she gave the branch to the girl. Can you write your name? she asked.

The girl shook her head. Instead she drew a picture—some kind of flower, although exactly what kind was hard to tell.

"Doesn't look like she knows how to write either," Maomao remarked.

"So what do we do?" Yao asked.

"You tell me," Maomao said. Yao was the one who'd gone barreling into the situation. Now she looked like she felt awkward indeed.

The girl continued drawing busily. "What's this?" Maomao said.

The picture seemed to depict some sort of patterned vessel.

"Do you think it's food?" Yao volunteered.

"I wonder what it's supposed to signify," En'en said. The girl tapped the picture with her stick.

"Maybe she's looking for whatever it is," Yao said. When En'en communicated the question to the child in her stilted Shaohnese, she was rewarded with a big circle. The girl held out her hand to them. In her palm was a single small piece of gold.

"Whoa, whoa!" Maomao said. There wasn't much of it, but it was gold. Not the sort of thing to go around showing to just anybody. She pressed the girl's hand closed again. "I guess she's

got money and wants to go shopping." "Sounds right to me," En'en said.

"Yeah," Yao agreed.

"But so far we have no idea what she wants to go shopping for," Maomao said. She looked at the picture and asked, You want a vessel like this?

The girl shook her head. This would have been easier if she was a better artist. Maybe at least as good as Chou-u, Maomao thought. She dismissed the idea. That sort of thinking wasn't going to get them anywhere. The girl's picture was actually pretty good, considering how young she was.

"I think it looks like food of some kind. Any clues as to what?" Maomao said. But they weren't making any headway.

The little girl looked toward the canal, where the children Yao had scattered had started playing down by the water. They were fishing something up—crayfish, Maomao realized. They could be quite tasty if you cleaned the mud off and cooked them. The girl, however, was shaking her head as if to say that crayfish were not her objective.

"I don't think we can do any more good here. Why don't we take her back with us? The medical officers speak better Shaohnese than we do," Maomao said.

"That's true," agreed Yao, who was all out of ideas. "Come on, let's go together," she said and took the girl's hand.

The child looked confused, so Maomao explained, We'll take you to people who can talk better than us.

The girl shook her head again. She was obviously eager to communicate something, but with her unable to speak, it just wasn't getting across. She could only scratch pictures in the dirt.

"Does that look like a steamed bun to you?" En'en said.

"Now that you mention it, it sort of does."

It was hard to tell; the picture was just kind of a circle. Maomao and the others cocked their heads and peered at it. The girl cocked her head, too, as if she was saying, You still don't

understand?

"Maybe it's a fruit," Maomao said.

"Yeah, like an apple?" said Yao. It was true that the circle had what looked like a stem and leaf attached to it. The other items sort of looked like fruits and snacks if you thought of them that way.

"Wait..." En'en said. Do you want a snack?

The girl waved her arms vigorously. This appeared to be the right answer.

Maomao spread out the cloth bundles, showing the girl the various treats they'd purchased that afternoon. But the child shook her head at each one.

"I think we've got pretty much everything you can buy," Maomao said. Baked treats, steamed treats, sweet things, savory things—it had been a long list. "About the only thing in town we

haven't gotten yet is from that last place on the list."

She pointed at the shop and the girl began to bounce.

"Huh?" They couldn't be sure they were on the right track, but they managed to communicate that they were going to go to a shop selling treats. The girl started bouncing even faster. "Does she want us to take her with us?" That seemed to be the message. There was something she wanted at that shop.

Maomao and the rest of the little troop crossed the bridge and headed for the place in question, a folk-house-style building with a sign outside. It was shut up tight, and looked dark and somehow sad. The little girl must not have known that this was the place; she couldn't read the sign, after all.

"This place sells snacks?" asked a deeply skeptical Yao.

"Strictly speaking, it's not a snack shop. It's a pretty...interesting place," Maomao said.

She opened the door with a clatter. They discovered there was another customer there, along with the pudgy shop owner. The customer seemed to be a woman—but a very tall one, with noticeably tanned skin. Maomao wasn't good at guessing foreigners' ages, but she took the woman to be at least in her midthirties.

Is she a foreigner? Maomao wondered.

"Jazgul!" the woman said.

Jazgul? Maomao didn't know what the word meant. The little girl, however, went rushing over to the woman.

My goodness! Wherever did you go? the woman asked in Shaohnese. Jazgul, it appeared, was the girl's name. It seemed much harder to pronounce than a name like Aylin, even though both were from the same language.

"So is that her guardian? Maybe her mother or something?" Maomao said.

"Seems like a safe guess... Even though they don't look much alike," En'en said. All three of them felt spent. Is this what all that stress had been for?

Jazgul was communicating something to the woman, pointing at Maomao and the others.

"Perhaps it is you who saw Jazgul safely here?" the woman asked them. She had an accent, but she was perfectly understandable.

"She was by the canal over there. She seemed to want snacks," Yao said.

"Ah. So that's what happened." In short, Jazgul's companion had been here, but they'd gotten separated, and the girl hadn't known which shop was which. Ironic, that it was so close. "I must

apologize. This child was adamant on going out there."

While the woman chatted, the shopkeeper rifled through the shelves, looking for whatever she had ordered.

"Oh, I know this place," En'en said when she saw the logo on some wrapping paper. The paper wasn't very high quality, but it was good enough for its purpose.

"What's the story?" Maomao said.

"Nothing, really. I just realized this place has dealings with the mansion." Presumably meaning Yao's home.

"Here we are. This's all we've got in stock at the moment. That all right?" the shopkeeper said.

"Hngh?!" Yao exclaimed when she saw what he was holding: a bundle of frogs, stretched, dried, and packed together like a little bouquet. Maybe the girl had seen the kids catching crayfish and gotten excited, thinking they were after frogs. Hence her disappointment.

There are so many different kinds of frogs, though, Maomao thought. If these were being used for some fancy person's snack, they wouldn't be like a frog you could just pick up off the street. Frogs... The word teased at something in a corner of Maomao's memory, a decent-sized thing that one might call a frog. She shook her head. It had been such a shock that it still came unbidden into her mind at times.

"Wh-What are those for?" Yao asked.

Probably a nice, cool summer snack, Maomao thought. The fat on the reproductive organs in certain female frogs that lived out in the countryside was gooey and delicious—as Yao should have known very well. I guess she's better off being in the dark.

And there you had it.

"So outlanders really do eat snakes and frogs," Yao whispered to En'en.

"Yes, so it would seem," En'en replied, innocent as a dove.

As far as Maomao was concerned, though, there was a problem with what the "outlanders" were buying at that moment. "Um..." she started. The frogs were one thing, but they'd also bought up the store's supply of pomegranates (candied with rock sugar) and dried figs. "Is it possible we could ask you to leave just a few figs for us?" That was one of the items on their list.

"Oh, I am sorry. How many do you need?" the woman said.

Maomao named a quantity, and the woman gladly agreed.

"Figs are in season now. We can get 'em for you whenever you want. Pomegranates... Well, maybe it's a little early yet," the shopkeeper said.

"Thank you very much," the woman said. Jazgul bowed her head politely as well.

Maomao squinted at the woman's purchases. Kind of wish I could ask about them. She didn't, though—both because it would

be sticking her nose where it might not be welcome, and because she wasn't sure they shared enough language to make the conversation possible.

The woman bundled up her items, then stood in front of Maomao and the others. "Please accept this small token," she said, and held out white pieces of cloth, one for each of them.

"For taking such care of Jazgul."

Then the foreign customers left the shop. Maomao touched the fabric—and exclaimed, "Excuse me!"

Before she could pursue the woman, though, the shopkeeper said, "Your items are ready." By the time they had collected their purchases and left the shop, the two foreigners were nowhere to be seen.

"What's got you so worked up?" Yao asked.

"This cloth," Maomao said, giving it a gentle flap. It looked plain and white, but the corners were worked with elaborate embroidery of grass and trees. "It's cool to the touch. I would assume it's silk."

"Yes, it is. What about it?" Easy for the girl from the lap of luxury to say.

Maomao spread her hands and shook her head in a gesture of exasperation. "Lady Yao. A piece of silk is a very generous reward for something as simple as helping a lost child. At least to us ordinary people."

"Y-Yes, of course! I knew that."

All right, Yao was pretty cute. En'en was flashing Maomao a thumbs-up from where Yao couldn't see.

So these outlanders could buy up a store's stock and handed out silk like candy. We're dealing with some rich folk here. Maomao sighed, thinking maybe she should have sucked up to them a little more.

At that moment, a bell rang signaling the hour.

"Th-The time!" all three of them exclaimed. It was long past

when they were supposed to be back. They ended up running as fast as they could...again.

Chapter 13: Lady-in-Waiting to His Majesty's Younger Brother

For days after their shopping expedition, Maomao found herself doing the same thing day in and day out: washing and disinfecting bandages. The medical assistants were all getting pretty tired of it when a message happened to arrive. Specifically, a message for En'en.

"Just for me?" she asked.

"I wonder what it could possibly be," said a most intrigued Yao, taking a peek. Out of the three of them she was the most fully

developed, but her behavior, including her bouts of unabashed curiosity, reflected her age more than her looks did.

"It would appear to be notice of a new assignment," En'en said. When they saw what it said, all three of them scowled.

They looked at the physician who had brought the notice. "Well, you all saw it. En'en's going to have other work to do for a while."

En'en scowled hardest of all. "I'm sorry, sir, but I must say I'm loath to be separated from Lady Yao."

"This assignment comes from someone you don't say no to," the physician replied. His tone was still friendly, but there was clearly no room for argument.

What was written in this disturbing notice?

"So...she's ordered to serve the Emperor's esteemed younger brother? At least, for a while?" Yao said, taking the paper and reading it over again. So she was going to be babysitting Jinshi.

"May I ask something, sir? Why me? If this is about our exams,

Lady Yao achieved better marks than I did."

Yeah, because you deliberately flubbed it, Maomao thought, but she was decent enough to resist the impulse to say it out loud.

"And I hardly think my family background makes me suited to this service," En'en continued. Yao came from good stock, but En'en was a commoner. Normally, one would have expected the royal family's ladies-in-waiting to come from halfway respectable households. Maomao, though, thought she had an inkling as to why En'en had been chosen.

"If anything, I think he's avoiding ladies whose status is too high," the doctor said, looking somehow pleased to know this. "Pick someone of high status, and there's every chance she'll just be angling to make him her husband."

Jinshi was twenty, a year older than Maomao, and he looked older still. Certainly a reasonable age to find himself a wife or consort. Indeed, it was starting to seem odd that he hadn't.

"With that face of his, the wrong person could make his life a living nightmare," the doctor said.

As Maomao had suspected, then. En'en could be warped in her own particular ways, but she was unstintingly devoted to her mistress. She wouldn't pull anything outrageous with Jinshi. She was so dedicated to Yao, in fact, that it was written plainly on her face that she had no interest in taking up this position. How rude of her.

"Word is that Maomao was in the running..." The physician glanced outside, where a freak with a monocle was pressed up against the window. Evidently he was back from his hiatus. Everyone seemed to be used to him by now. "...but some highly ranked individual insisted she wasn't fit for the position, so she

was dropped from consideration."

Just as the freak was staring his hardest, two of his subordinates came up from behind and peeled him away from the window, dragging him off. Maomao wished he wouldn't come back, but she knew better than to hope for more than a few minutes' respite.

"They want you there tomorrow. I know it's sudden," the physician said.

En'en didn't respond. Even her face remained impassive, but she somehow still managed to give off an aura of absolute disgust with the idea. She glanced at Yao, looking for help, but Yao simply said, "If it's a matter of family background, there's not much we can say." Maomao had thought she might be jealous, but she was surprisingly willing to come around when confronted with that logic. Maybe it was because she knew just how good En'en was at her job. "They could send you just about anywhere, En'en. I hope it goes really well," she said and flashed the other woman a brilliant smile. Maomao briefly thought that it might be her little way of getting En'en back for leading her around by the nose all the time, but it didn't seem so. Yao was truly giving her blessing to this personnel transfer, completely oblivious to how En'en felt or what she was hoping for. Classically naive, Yao was.

En'en scowled again. If her mistress had interceded at this moment, it might have saved her, but Yao had simply given her the old so-long-good-luck. What else could En'en do?

"Best of luck out there, then," the physician said, clapping her on the shoulder. En'en gave him a dejected nod.

"It's a lot busier around here with one less pair of hands," Yao said as she organized medicine in some drawers. She'd already been talking to Maomao more, and the pace had really picked up now that En'en was gone.

"Definitely," Maomao said. "En'en worked hard." She was going through medicines and sorting them into piles. Once in a while they got something unusual, but today it was all just topping off supplies of ordinary drugs.

"I hope she's okay... I'd like to think she wouldn't be rude to

His Majesty's younger brother."

"I'm sure she's fine."

"Yeah... You're right. This is En'en we're talking about. I'm sure it's okay."

What I meant was, he won't have her executed for being a little rude to him... Maomao had been thinking less about En'en and more about Jinshi's personality. He was never too eager to punish people. There were times when his hands were tied and he had to do it, but Maomao seriously doubted En'en would do anything awful enough to put herself in that position. Long as she

doesn't actively try to murder him.

Maomao, meanwhile, would keep doing her work as normal.

Jinshi's office was more populated than usual. He held his paperwork in one hand as he looked at the civil officials, soldiers, and court ladies being introduced to him. Normally, someone of Jinshi's rank wouldn't have bothered to meet every single new person who was given a job. It had been his own idea to make sure he saw each of them.

"We'll be getting quite busy, but I'm confident you'll work hard," he said to them and smiled. He wasn't out to sow goodwill, or even to make his subordinates feel at ease.

Not a single other person there was smiling. To smile at someone could leave the other person with a good impression— but for Jinshi, it could also be a harbinger of disaster. On his very first day as a "eunuch" in the rear palace, one of the other eunuchs had greeted him with a smile. Gaoshun had looked away for an instant, and Jinshi had found himself dragged into the underbrush. The men around there might have been without their most important possession, but that wasn't enough to completely rob them of their sex drive. The man had wanted to make Jinshi his toy. Jinshi wasn't sure how it had started, but it had been clear he was in danger.

"Funny. I never got to where I could look back on that and laugh," he muttered to himself. He'd punched the eunuch and run, but he'd learned that such relationships weren't uncommon among the men of the rear palace, who referred to their lovers as "brothers-in-law." He didn't want to think about it. Sadly for all involved, Jinshi had no interest in such things.

"Is something the matter, Master Jinshi?" asked Basen, who had at last recovered from his injuries. From what Jinshi heard, he'd continued his daily military training unabated despite his body being in tatters. Gaoshun seemed in disbelief at his own son's durability.

"It's nothing," Jinshi said. The new personnel all appeared to be safe. He'd been somewhat unnerved when he'd heard that they simply had to hire a young lady-in-waiting, but so far all seemed well. And now Suiren would stop chiding him every time he was in his room.

He couldn't be too cautious, especially in light of the recent attempted poisoning. He had to keep a sharp eye on things. Jinshi himself had hoped to bring a certain long-standing acquaintance of his on board, but instead he'd ended up with one of that acquaintance's colleagues. That is to say, one of the court ladies from the medical office.

Since the position was new, the test had been made particularly difficult, and one by one the women with no aptitude for medicine had been weeded out. That assured him that at least this young woman knew what she was doing.

Everyone would have plenty to do soon enough, what with the prince's presentation coming up. Jinshi needed to get back to work himself, so he told them to be on their way.

Once the crowd was gone, Jinshi heaved a sigh. Only Basen was in the room with him, and he would let the gesture go.

"Would you like me to prepare a drink for you, Master Jinshi?"

"No, I don't need anything. What about you? Are you feeling better?"

"I sincerely apologize, sir, but my morning runs are still only two li. I'll have them back to normal in no time." That sounded like more than enough to Jinshi. He marveled at Basen's physical capacities.

Basen's work had piled up during his absence, and now he was playing catch-up. He had no gift for paperwork, but he was doing his damnedest, which pleased Jinshi.

"Master Jinshi," Basen said, holding up a piece of paper. "What do you wish to do about the Shaoh shrine maiden living in the villa?"

Politics could be a very special kind of pain in the neck. Things that could have been easily communicated orally had to be announced in painstakingly detailed memos. The shrine maiden had arrived at the villa days ago, and now the papers about the matter were arriving? As for the shrine maiden, Jinshi had gone to give his formal greetings, but that was all. He'd been under the impression someone else was dealing with the matter, so imagine his surprise when it landed in his lap.

"It's my problem now, is it?" He looked at the mountain of paperwork and sighed again. What else was there to do? Rear palace-related matters were still coming to him, and it seemed to be falling to him (so he felt) to fill the hole left by the absence of the Shi Clan. "Do you suppose they all hate me?" he asked.

"No, sir. If anything, I should think they adore you."

"I wish you wouldn't say that with such a straight face."

"No? I think they all came here out of a genuine desire to meet you, sir."

The worst part was, there wasn't a hint of malice in Basen's voice.

The reason court ladies weren't allowed in his office was that so many of them would "drop" their papers just to have an excuse to drag out their time there. In fact, the occasional male bureaucrat tried the same thing, such that these days, anyone who dropped their papers in Jinshi's office was thereafter barred from entering. Jinshi didn't actually consider it a black mark on the perpetrators, but to outsiders it was impossible not to think that there was something strange going on in there. Some people got the idea that Jinshi's office was a place where the slightest slip would be severely punished.

Despite all of this, the quantity of paperwork never seemed to lessen.

"In any case, the Shaoh shrine maiden. Yes. The physicians haven't yet been to see her, have they?" Jinshi asked.

"No, sir. The plan is for Medical Officer Kan and the new medical assistants to be the ones to examine her."

This woman was a foreign dignitary, a shrine maiden. They couldn't blithely subject her to examination by men, even if she was here for medical treatment. They would send the eunuch Kan Luomen—Maomao's father, Lakan's uncle. The court ladies would be the ones doing the actual examination, with Luomen making the diagnosis based on what they told him. A roundabout method at best.

Roundabout, but necessary. It was what the Shaohnese delegation had asked for. Jinshi had just appropriated one of the medical assistants for himself, leaving only two of them, but at least Maomao would be there. He expected her and Luomen to work well together.

"All right. Find out everyone's schedules and tell the medical office to set up an examination. Ideally, one that accommodates the shrine maiden's needs and availability as much as possible." "Yes, sir." Basen quickly wrote down the orders and passed them to a messenger who waited outside the office.

"Is there anything else?" Jinshi asked. He wanted to get the weightiest matters out of the way first. The nettlesome annoyances that seemed to keep coming back to haunt him could wait.

"Nothing to speak of, sir. Oh! Except..."

"Yes?"

Basen looked uncomfortable. "We've already received a request for transfer." He held out the written request, which Jinshi took and studied. It was written in a very accomplished hand. It must have come from one of the people he'd met earlier. "A court lady named En'en requests to be transferred back to the medical office."

"She was one of the medical assistants?"

Birds of a feather, as they said. A somewhat unusual job could attract somewhat unusual people. Jinshi wasn't eager to have too many young ladies-in-waiting around him, so once the other women had learned the ropes, he thought it distinctly possible that they would be able to get along with one less person. If this En'en could simply hold out until then, she might very well get her wish.

"On what basis did we hire En'en?" he asked.

"She's diligent about every aspect of her work and excellent at supporting those around her. She's also been a lady-in-waiting since she was ten years old, so she already knows what she's doing in that regard. She's a quick learner, but shows no desire to advance herself in the world—which I suppose is both a strength and a weakness."

"Yes, that does sound promising."

"She also... Well, this isn't precisely about her capabilities..." Basen sounded awkward; he couldn't quite bring himself to look at the paper directly.

"Yes? Out with it."

"Sir. There's an additional note here. It's not that she's uncomfortable around men or even specifically dislikes them..." He hesitated ever so briefly before saying, "But she's shown a certain preference for women."

A preference for women! Meaning she was romantically interested in other women despite being a woman herself.

"She stays!" Jinshi exclaimed, flinging the transfer request aside.

"M-Master Jinshi!"

"She's the perfect fit. I'm not letting this one get away!" He was grinning broadly as they went back to work.

Chapter 14: Meeting the Shrine Maiden

Close to Ah-Duo's villa near the court was another, similar building whose main purpose was to house foreign visitors. At the moment, the shrine maiden from Shaoh and her entourage were staying there. That was where Maomao, Yao, Luomen, and several bodyguards went to perform her examination. Maomao recognized the guards—they were eunuchs she knew from the rear palace. With the shrine maiden present, the villa was on some level a place where men were not allowed, hence the emasculated escorts.

"What an odd place," Yao commented. Although it was near the court, it was in the opposite direction from Yao and Maomao's dormitory, so they'd never had a chance to take a good look at it. Maomao had glanced at it a few times when she was going to AhDuo's villa, but only now did she see that Yao was right. It did seem strange.

Maybe the style could be characterized as foreign. The architecture didn't seem Shaohnese so much as it seemed to come from somewhere farther west. Maomao had never seen such a building herself, but there had been pictures of one in a book she'd borrowed long ago. The construction used wood and occasionally brick, and the tops of the window frames were in the shape of crescent moons. The use of glass in a few places only emphasized the luxury of the place. The garden contained rose arches that must have been magnificent when the flowers bloomed.

The servants' uniforms were equally striking, although the servants themselves all had dark eyes and hair that suggested they were people from Li. Guess you can't hire foreigners to

attend on a foreign dignitary. If one of them turned out to be a

covert operative, it would be on your head. Maomao was sure that even the mud-covered middle-aged lady tending to the garden had been thoroughly vetted.

They entered the building and were met by a woman whose appearance screamed foreigner. She was tall, with light-brown hair, while her eyes were an olive color, straddling the line between light and yellowish green.

"We have been waiting for you," she said with the unique

Shaohnese lilt. "Please, come inside."

She led them within, where they discovered that the interior of the building was much more elaborate than the exterior. There were flagstones beneath their feet, while many of the stone pillars around the building were decorated with carvings. A number of display pieces stood here and there. They looked imported; if a commoner were to knock one over, they could work their entire lives and never pay it back, Maomao suspected.

As they went deeper and deeper into the building, it got darker and darker. Curtains had been pulled over the windows, blocking the light from outside.

Right. She's albino... That is to say, someone with white hair, pale skin, and red eyes. Some were said to have blue eyes, or a few streaks of gold in their hair, but all of them were sensitive to sunlight. Maomao's old man had told her that albino people lacked the stuff that normally gave people their skin color, so the sun was harsher on them than on most people. To compensate for the blocked windows, there were candles placed along the ground at regular intervals, burning even here in the middle of the day.

"This way, please," the woman said. "I sincerely apologize, but we must ask the men to wait here."

"We understand, of course," Luomen said, and he and the guards stopped at the entryway.

Maomao and Yao proceeded into the room. It was dim and full of the smell of incense. An orange light flickered, revealing a silhouette on a canopied bed.

"I've brought them, milady."

A woman who appeared to be an attendant stood by the bed. She had dark skin and looked somehow familiar. Maomao was tilting her head, trying to figure out who it was, when Yao exclaimed, "Oh!"

Maomao gave her a nudge, but at the same moment, she

realized why the woman looked so familiar. She was the one who'd been with the young girl, Jazgul, the other day. The embroidered cloth she'd given them as a thank-you had led Maomao to assume she was a rich woman—but she never would have guessed that she was the shrine maiden's attendant.

So the shrine maiden eats frogs too, huh? She'd thought for sure that the shrine maiden avoided meat and fish on the basis that one wasn't supposed to take a life. When she'd heard the woman was sick, Maomao had guessed it might be due to malnutrition from not eating meat, but she seemed to have been wrong about that.

The tanned woman appeared to remember them too, for she looked startled—but only for a moment. She soon collected herself, her face impassive once more. Maomao and Yao were here on business. None of them could take time for personal reminiscences while they were on official duty.

"If you would," the attendant said, her accent thick. She pulled aside the curtain, revealing a beautiful woman who was indeed albino. She looked young for someone who was supposed to be in her forties. Maomao thought she seemed rather tall, though it was hard to tell while she was lying down. She also had a slight paunch, although her hands were long enough that she didn't look overweight.

If she were a little younger and a little slimmer... Maomao thought. Well, then she would have looked exactly like the foreign woman the painter had spotted. And then there was... Yes, they

do resemble each other.

Meaning the shrine maiden and the White Lady.

Maomao also had her secret mission, entrusted to her by Lahan. He wants to know if this "shrine maiden" really has the qualifications to be a shrine maiden, or if...

Or if her "qualifications" had gone long ago, when she had borne the White Lady.

I'll have to see if there's any sign she's given birth. The quickest way would be to simply peek between her legs, but that was off the table. There was rude and there was rude. There's

another way, though. During pregnancy, the belly expanded rapidly over the course of nine months. It got so big it could almost burst, only to deflate as soon as the child was born. This resulted in stretch marks, which occurred because the skin couldn't always grow fast enough to keep up with the rapid expansion of the belly during pregnancy, causing it to physically break.

Empress Gyokuyou and Consort Lihua both managed to avoid them, though...

Typically, birth resulted in stretch marks. It wasn't a guarantee, but it was one bit of evidence Maomao could use. I'm hoping

she'll at least let me look at her belly.

Maomao bowed and approached the bed. She and Yao had already discussed their respective responsibilities. Maomao would do the actual examination while Yao took notes. Yao had wanted to do the exam herself, but one of the physicians said that Maomao took more accurate pulses, and Yao had to acquiesce.

Even if she hated knowing that she wasn't doing as well as Maomao.

Maomao was starting to understand the many reasons En'en found Yao so adorable. She was almost unbearably earnest and open, and when someone disagreed with her she could be by turns obnoxious and inspiring. Just as she'd accepted Jinshi's selection of En'en as one of his ladies-in-waiting, she was good enough to admit that Maomao outstripped her in medical abilities.

They'd already seen a written report detailing the nature of the shrine maiden's complaint and what treatments had previously been tried. Maomao and her old man had discussed it together and come up with a number of possible diagnoses.

"I'd like to start by taking your pulse, milady, if I may?" Maomao said, speaking slowly and distinctly.

"Please do," the shrine maiden said, holding out her hand. Maomao found it soft to the touch. The pale skin made it easy to see where the veins were. She placed three fingers against the maiden's wrist. She could feel the woman's heartbeat against her fingertips, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, and she measured how many beats there were in a set period of time. She gestured to Yao, using her fingers to communicate the number, which Yao recorded with a portable writing set.

"Are you feeling nervous? Your pulse is a bit fast," Maomao

said.

The question must have escaped the shrine maiden, for she gave Maomao a questioning look. The woman beside them said a

few words in Shaohnese, whereupon the shrine maiden smiled and said, "Yes, a little."

The number wasn't abnormal, in any case, so Maomao saw no cause for alarm. She said, "May I touch your face, ma'am? I'd like to examine your eyes and tongue."

"Please, go ahead."

Maomao put her hands on the shrine maiden's cheeks. She had laugh lines, but otherwise her skin was firm and beautiful. Maomao pulled down the skin under the woman's eyes so that she could see the eyeball better. Then she had her open her mouth and stick out her tongue.

We were lucky, in a way, Maomao thought. She was thinking of their encounter with the girl Jazgul the other day. Pomegranates

and hasma...

The items the attendant had bought that day were medicinal in nature. Yet the report they'd been given hadn't said anything about that—implying the medicine was simply part of the shrine maiden's regular diet. Maomao glanced at the woman standing beside the bed. All her surprise had vanished; now, she looked as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Maybe she wasn't making medicine at all. Maybe it was a complete coincidence.

Taking too much medicine could have a deleterious effect on the body. "Pardon me, but could I trouble you to write down in detail the shrine maiden's favorite foods?" Maomao said.

"Very well," the attendant said. She made some quick notes, but unfortunately they were in Shaohnese. Maomao didn't know all of the words. She would have to translate them later and then consider them. Anyway, it was her father who would give the final diagnosis; she hoped he might be able to read the list better than she could.

"Would you be so kind as to remove your overgarment?"

"Certainly," the shrine maiden said and began to shrug off her clothing. Knowing the exam was coming, she'd gotten sleepwear that closed in the front. Maomao could now clearly see her breasts and belly button.

"May I conduct a physical examination?" Maomao asked.

"Go ahead."

Maomao began to tap on the shrine maiden's body, listening for subtle differences in the sound. Meanwhile, she looked at the woman's belly. No stretch marks. The shrine maiden's paunch would have made stretch marks less likely—but there was also the possibility that their entire hypothesis was wrong. That she had never borne a child at all. What would make Maomao think that?

Her breasts are small for the amount of meat on her bones.

When menarche didn't come, a person could wind up half yin and half yang, neither exactly a man nor exactly a woman. That might explain the size of her chest, but maybe her breasts had simply always been small. It was impossible to know for sure whether the shrine maiden had given birth or not. Whether she was ill and how likewise depended on whether her monthly visitor had ever even come.

Maomao's eyebrow twitched as she conducted the exam; it was frustrating not to know exactly what she was working with. The examination was not making things clearer. And yet, she felt a creeping suspicion. I must be missing something. Something was wrong, but she couldn't tell what—and she hadn't figured it out by the time the examination was over.

I wish I could have inspected her bottom half, she thought, but she knew that was too much to ask. Just having gotten a look at the shrine maiden's bare chest was an achievement for her very first exam. Even some of the consorts in the rear palace resisted the idea of strangers touching them.

"You can put your clothes back on," Maomao said. She knew she was never going to figure it all out in one visit; the world simply didn't work that way. Continuing to press wouldn't get her anywhere. Better to go back and tell her father what she had learned. "I'm going to discuss things with the physician based on what I've seen and heard here," she said.

"Understood," the attendant said, helping the shrine maiden back into her overgarment. Maomao and Yao left the room.

Once they were safely in a carriage and headed home, Yao exclaimed, "G-Gosh, was I nervous!" She suddenly realized she'd spoken aloud and scrambled to look like she hadn't said anything, but it was too late. If En'en had been there, she would have been making an isn't my mistress cute when she blurts something out face. But she wasn't there. Instead, Maomao studied Yao closely.

The results of the first examination, in Maomao's mind, could only be called inconclusive. Especially when she couldn't even consult with her father then and there, but had to wait until they left the villa.

There's got to be a better way. The woman had come all the way from a foreign country, taking a whole sea voyage just to get treatment here, so Maomao assumed she believed the doctors in Li could help her. Yet now that she was here, a real doctor wasn't even allowed to look at her.

"How'd it go?" her father asked, but Maomao had a sense that the gentle, pleasant, and endlessly affable man already knew the answer. Hence she dove right in.

"Do you believe the honored shrine maiden is really sick?" she asked.

"What do you mean? She came all the way from Shaoh, didn't she?" Yao said.

"Yes, a long, difficult voyage. I suspect she is ill, but I have my doubts about whether it's something she needed to come all the way to Li to cure," Maomao said, careful to speak politely to her father when in Yao's presence.

"And what do you think is the nature of her indisposition?" Luomen asked.

Maomao consulted Yao's notes as she replied. "She reports fatigue and sleeplessness, lack of physical stamina, and weight gain. And one other thing that concerns me more than anything else." The shrine maiden supposedly had a broken bone that refused to heal, the pinky finger of her left hand. It wasn't a hindrance to her daily life, but it couldn't make things any easier for her.

Maomao concluded: "I think her female qi is decreasing, leading to these problems. It's not unusual as women grow older." In fact, it was quite a common ailment when the monthly visitor stopped coming. With the drop in female qi, body and mind could both suffer. For one thing, the bones frequently grew fragile. Forty was somewhat young for the visitor to cease arriving, but hardly unheard of. If it had never come to begin with, it might make the shrine maiden that much more prone to such problems.

"I see, I see. All right, let's assume you're correct, Maomao. You know different countries have different ways of treating illnesses. Perhaps they really believed they couldn't help the shrine maiden in Shaoh and sent her to Li instead. Do you have any evidence that it's otherwise?"

"I do." Maomao produced the sheet of paper detailing the shrine maiden's diet. "She wasn't given any medicine specifically for augmenting her female qi—but she wouldn't have needed it. The food she's been eating would have been more than enough to compensate."

"You mean all that stuff the woman was buying at the shop?" Yao said, catching on. The attendant had made a substantial number of purchases, including many things that could treat women's health concerns. The shrine maiden knew perfectly well how to treat her own condition, yet she had come all the way to Li. There had to be politics involved.

"May I take it the two of you are of one mind on this?" Luomen asked Yao.

"I don't have as much medical knowledge as Maomao does, but I also saw the honored shrine maiden's attendant buying a lot of medicine the other day, so I have no objections." She looked somewhat pained at having to admit her own ignorance in medical matters. She was willing to be honest about it, though, which had a charm of its own. Maomao was virtually becoming a second En'en.

So she knows it was medicine. Did that mean she was also aware that her hasma snacks were medicinal? Maybe one day Maomao would ask.

Luomen, meanwhile, looked troubled. That was typical for him; at this moment, though, he looked somewhat more troubled than

usual. "I would simply remind you of one thing." "Yes, sir?" Maomao and Yao each said.

"When we do our work, people's lives hang in the balance." Of course, they both knew that. "However we treat the shrine maiden, we must not risk life and limb doing so."

"Yes, sir. I should have thought that was obvious..." Yao said, mystified.

"Under no circumstances are the shrine maiden or her people to hear what we just spoke of. We need only find and administer the appropriate treatment."

Even if it happened to be what those people were already doing.

Yao doesn't look happy about this. Understandably so. She had to be wondering why they would do the same thing the shrine maiden's attendant was already doing. Wouldn't that be tantamount to admitting they were incompetent? But knowing

when to play the fool is an important skill too.

Her father had said they must not risk "life and limb," but she suspected he wasn't referring to the shrine maiden's so much as their own. With the rank odor of politics floating around, inadvertently telling the truth could indeed put their lives in danger. Perhaps a difficult concept for a young lady still not disabused of her innocence about the world.

If En'en were here, I'm sure she could find a good way to communicate it to Yao... Unfortunately, En'en was away on assignment.

"Say, we're almost there," Maomao said to Yao in a bid to change the subject. Getting from the villa to the court took even longer than getting to the medical office once they'd arrived, so it could be a tiring trip. "Once we get to the office, how about we look for some medicine? Something you can only find in our country. If it helps even a little, that should do the trick."

"Right... Sure," Yao said. She was smart enough to know that making a fuss just then wouldn't gain anything. To Maomao's relief, she did the mature thing and stayed calm.

Once they got back to their office, Luomen immediately went to get the papers in order and make their report. With his permission, Maomao and Yao went to the room where the medicines were kept and started looking for something that might help. They decided to check everything, although they knew some medicines wouldn't work on account of the shrine maiden's constitution while others had already been tried.

They took out the medicines one by one, Maomao working from memory while Yao consulted a book. Although they had permission to be there, they had rather monopolized the medicine storage room. Eventually one of the doctors stuck his head in and snapped, "What's going on in here? There's medicine everywhere!

What are you looking f—Yikes!"

It was Luomen's old acquaintance, one of the doctors who had come to consult about the status of Consort Lishu's virginity. He sometimes paid the medical office a friendly visit.

"Is something the matter? Do any of these combinations concern you?" Maomao asked, peering at him.

"Er, no, I just thought... For a second I was afraid...that they were sending me back there."

"Where?"

"You know, there." The man pointed to the northern quarter of the court. "The rear palace!"

"What would make you think that? I grant these are all treatments for women's health concerns, but this has nothing to do with the rear palace." Maomao let her eyes drift over the assembled medicines.

"Ah, women's complaints... Yes, I see. It's just that I mostly deal with men here at court. When I saw these particular

ingredients laid out, I panicked a little."

The man seemed to have some sort of traumatic memory of the rear palace. It reminded Maomao that in the past, doctors who weren't eunuchs had been permitted to come and go there. "That's right, you were a physician at the rear palace some time ago, weren't you? I've heard," Maomao said. "Did something happen there?"

"Nothing much. Just a bad memory. You take this, and this, and some of these..." He began plucking ingredients out of Maomao and Yao's collection. "Mix them together, and they become a special fake-eunuch medicine."

"Fake-eunuch medicine?" Maomao and Yao asked in unison.

"It's a fairly straightforward matter. Sometimes a man who isn't a eunuch needs to enter the rear palace, but that can lead to...problems. They didn't force you to become a eunuch, but

they made you take this medicine, which suppresses male functions."

"Ahh." Now Maomao understood. She'd always wondered how it was that Gaoshun had gone in and out of the rear palace with no problems. (Jinshi was another matter.) He'd probably been taking this medicine. "I admit, it looks like it would taste rather unpleasant."

"The worst." The doctor was clearly speaking from experience. "And it can start to have strange side effects as you become accustomed to it."

"I knew it must have side effects!"

"Goodness, does it. Any medicine taken to excess can be harmful. That's why I worried when I saw that stuff."

It was clear enough why he had been so disturbed. Maomao wanted to ask him exactly what the side effects were, but the man showed himself out of the room before she could get the words out.

"I feel like En'en would know what to do in this situation," Yao said.

"I agree. It is sort of her forte."

"What with all this talk of side effects... Do you think we should write a letter to her and ask for her opinion?"

"I think that's an excellent idea. And En'en would be happy to hear from you." She was probably on the verge of going through withdrawal from young mistress deficiency. Her absence, though, had gotten Maomao and Yao to talk more, so that was some compensation.

Maomao's thoughts wandered back to what combination of medicines they should use.

Chapter 15: "Mom"

They went to examine the shrine maiden several more times. On the way home from one such visit, the scene outside the carriage looked as lively as a New Year's celebration.

"It almost would have been faster to walk," Yao said. Maomao, who knew her father had a bad leg, stayed quiet.

Luomen smiled awkwardly. "My apologies. I can't go too far on this leg, you see." Yao looked mortified, but it was too late. She was lucky it had been Luomen. He would take her slip in good humor; any other important personage might well have been offended.

It wasn't clear yet if there was much point to the examinations they were conducting, but the little crew had at least been able to be of some help. Not Maomao's medicinal selections, sadly, but rather in terms of life advice. They'd been able to tell the shrine maiden to make sure she drank plenty of water. In Shaoh, water was too precious to drink much of. Besides, the shrine maiden couldn't exactly excuse herself to use the facilities just any old time, so she wasn't in the habit of drinking water frequently. When she started to get more fluids, she happily reported that she was having fewer headaches.

She was also pleased, she mentioned in passing, to be able to take more walks. As an albino, she'd only been able to go out at night in Shaoh, but the sunlight was less intense and rain more frequent in Li. During spells of bad weather, she would get an umbrella and take a constitutional.

I guess I'm glad she's enjoying herself, Maomao thought, but she was almost beginning to wonder if the shrine maiden had come to Li for a simple vacation.

Not that the woman had nothing to fill her hours, of course. She received occasional visitors. Some of them were important people, but there were also those who simply wanted to exchange a few words with the foreign shrine maiden "for the experience." Much like the White Lady before her, this foreign shrine maiden seemed to attract people intrigued by the color of her skin.

"She said someone who visited her today wanted their fortune told," Maomao said.

"Prognostication certainly is something a shrine maiden sometimes does, but it's a bit of a rude request. She is, after all, a foreign dignitary," Luomen said. Maomao agreed entirely. Not to mention that, publicly at least, she was here for medical treatment. Going to someone in that position and asking them to tell your fortune smacked of a certain lack of empathy, but sadly, many people seemed to be that way.

"They say her fortunes are accurate, but I question living your life based on things like that—letting baseless predictions dictate your future," Maomao said. That was what bothered her. There was no reason to believe fortune-telling worked. If the shrine maiden's predictions had any validity at all, it probably just showed that she had a gift for reading people.

"I know you prefer things to be clear-cut, Maomao," Luomen said.

"You don't like fortune-telling?" Yao broke in.

"Doesn't it make you feel funny?" Maomao asked. She knew not everything in the world was black and white, but in her view, most of life's "mysteries" simply represented a limitation of one's own knowledge or information. There was always something real behind them. "I mean, scorching tortoise shells and letting that tell you where to locate your capital city? Pretty dubious method."

"I daresay it's surprisingly rational, in fact," her father countered. "Using parts of the local wildlife can give you a sense of how well the animals are eating. In other words, whether the land is abundant. Call it fortune-telling, attribute it to the gods or an immortal—if that's what it takes to get people to believe it.

Perhaps that's where what we call politics began."

I see, Maomao thought. She could accept that. Yao was likewise listening intently.

"There's only one problem. A ritual might have meant something when it was first performed, but if you forget why it began or lose the knowledge of what it means, only the form remains. That, girls, is dangerous." Luomen looked sad. "I once went to a village where, when there was a bad harvest, they would sacrifice all the infants born that year, burying them in the ground. But one year that failed to improve the crop, so they made more sacrifices, until there was hardly anyone left in the village. That was when I happened to pass through the place on my travels."

I think I see where this is going. Her father had known much hardship, and by this point in the story, Maomao had a good idea of what he was getting at.

"When they tied me up and threw me in a hole, I thought for sure I was going to die. My good luck that my traveling companion showed up a little later and found me, or I might be nourishing the worms there to this very day."

Yao was speechless at the composure with which Luomen conveyed this grim tale. As perceptive as he was, he was a bit numb to stories of his own misfortune. (Suffice to say he hadn't

chosen to become a eunuch.)

"We might regard human sacrifice as absurd, but sometime in the past it was effective. In this particular village, they had a habit of planting the same crop in the fields each year. They used fertilizer, but there was a nutrient missing—something produced in the human body."

That logic, of course, only held if monocropping was the actual problem. When Maomao's father had visited the village, though, an insect-borne disease had been the cause of the poor harvest; the sacrifices had been entirely in vain.

"Sometimes people continue to do things simply because they worked in the past. Take a place that promotes good harvests with human sacrifices—the harvest happens to improve because the sacrifices were buried in bare earth. Over time, however, the gods or immortals come into it and it becomes a ritual. The divine is a powerful and convenient excuse."

Perhaps the shrine maiden of Shaoh had become sacred through a similar process.

Their chat brought them to the door of the medical office. Maomao would have liked to hear more from her father, but that would be all for now. She helped him out of the carriage. There were reports to write. Always reports.

They discovered quite a commotion as they entered the office.

What was going on?

"Thank goodness you're here!" said a doctor who came over to them looking very distressed.

"What's the matter?" Luomen asked.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?! I can't believe he would show up when you were both out. We told him you weren't here, but he insisted he would wait until you got back! We didn't know what to do!"

Maomao and her father looked at each other. There was a short list of people who could cause consternation like this.

"I guess I'd better handle this," Luomen said and walked into the medical office. Inside, no surprise, was the monocled freak, reclining on a couch he'd had brought for himself.

"Uncle! I thought you'd never get here!" the freak said, grinning.

"Come now, Lakan! We've talked about bringing your furniture into people's offices uninvited. As well as throwing your snack wrappers on the floor—they belong in the trash can. And don't come crying to me if your teeth rot from drinking nothing but juice! You aren't drinking straight from the container, are you?" Luomen bent over and began picking up wrappers.

"H-He looks like an old grandma," said Yao, and even those in the office not of refined upbringing probably agreed with her.

The apprentice physicians and the freak's subordinates scampered to join Luomen at his task. Maomao should probably have helped, too, but if she got anywhere near them the commotion would just start again. Not to mention she simply didn't feel like it. Instead, she observed from behind a post.

"Uncle! Where's Maomao? She's close, isn't she!" the freak said, his nose twitching like a dog's.

Maomao couldn't stop herself from mumbling, "Ugh..."

"Maybe you could do something about your...your face, Maomao? It's terrifying," Yao said. If she said so, then. Maomao massaged her mouth and eyebrows until they relaxed somewhat.

She couldn't keep her cheeks from twitching, though.

"Maomao! Give me Maomao!" the freak was shouting.

"Come on, now. I warned you that if you made a fuss there

would be lots of carrots in your dinner. It's carrot congee tonight," Luomen said. If people didn't think he seemed like an old lady already, they would now. Several people were holding their stomachs, overcome with mirth. The rest were looking around, not knowing what to do.

"I want egg in my congee, Uncle! I mean—no! Where's

Maomao? I have a legitimate reason to be here today!"

"That's somewhat hard to believe, with you lying around on a couch you brought yourself, getting snack debris everywhere," Luomen said. He opened a drawer, took out a toothbrush, and gave it to the freak strategist. The message seemed to be: brush

your teeth. "You can start by telling me what your 'reason' is. I

know you lose all sense of proportion when it comes to Maomao.

If I agree with why you're here, we can go from there."

The strategist, shoving the toothbrush in his mouth, nodded eagerly. Maomao picked up a basket of used bandages in the hallway. She trusted her father to handle things. If she was lucky, the two of them would finish their little chat while she was still doing the laundry.

It was perhaps an hour later, when she'd gotten through the washing and was beginning to hang the bandages to dry, that they called for her. Her father arrived looking tired.

"What did he want?" asked not Maomao, but Yao.

"Something rather surprising, I must say," Luomen replied.

"Yes?"

"The prince's presentation will be soon, and Lakan wants

Maomao to be his food taster at the dinner."

Does he really plan to be there? Maomao thought. Lahan claimed there was hardly a garden party or get-together that the strategist bothered to attend. That included, she was given to understand, the last Imperial garden party she'd been a food taster at.

"Why?" Maomao asked. She knew perfectly well that there must be plenty of people out there with grudges against him, so that explained the need. But to think that he would ask for her personally! Not that he seemed to object whenever anyone else asked Maomao to check their food for poison.

"If he'd asked for you to be his lady-in-waiting, that might be one thing, but a food taster? That's a harder request to turn down. No one is going to object to him having his own taster, particularly after the incident with the food poisoning. How would you like to handle this?"

"Is that really a question?" Maomao said. When her father said the request was "hard to turn down," it was as good as telling her they couldn't say no. Her old man had always been a soft touch, anyway. After what had just happened, people had started calling him "Mom," not that it mattered to Maomao. Not that it mattered at all.

"May I ask something?" Yao said, raising her hand. Luomen nodded. "Weren't Maomao and I supposed to attend the shrine maiden at the banquet?"

"Yes, that was the intention. She'll have to get by with only one of you." Whether that would be Maomao or Yao had yet to be determined. The shrine maiden was to have two food tasters, one from Shaoh and another from Li; given her status and all the attendants, guards, and others around her, the one from Li was fortunate simply to be able to be anywhere near her.

"All right. You go with him, then, Maomao. It'll be simplest if I take care of the shrine maiden."

Yao was firm, but Maomao said, "H-Hold on, don't I have a say in this?" She was, frankly, frightened of what En'en might do if she let Yao taste food for poison. Besides, she wanted to do it.

"He asked for you specifically, so I think you should accept. Anyway, just think of what would happen if you attended the shrine maiden and Grand Commandant Kan was lurking around."

To that, Maomao could say nothing. Her father was silent as well. The strategist's impetuous behavior was, for the most part, politely ignored by his compatriots, but they wouldn't want him acting like that around a foreign dignitary. Especially one whom not even castrated men were allowed to come into contact with.

"Maomao..." Luomen said, patting her shoulder.

"You can leave the shrine maiden to me," Yao said, patting the other shoulder.

"A-Are you sure we can't reconsider?" Maomao asked, waving her hands and looking at them.

"I'm afraid we simply can't refuse this request, Maomao. Considering the implications for the shrine maiden, you have to attend Lakan. We wouldn't want an international incident."

"C-C'mon, pops, you must still have a trick up your sleeve..."

Giving her another pat on the shoulder, Luomen said, "I'm afraid not."

Chapter 16: The Dinner

Time does not always flow at the same rate. Pleasant times are all too brief, while difficult stretches drag on and on. The days before the banquet went as quick as a flash, for time is likewise swift when something unpleasant looms.

Maomao was emphatic that until the day of the event, she didn't want to go to the strategist's place unless absolutely necessary. Yao, meanwhile, was positively excited to have been entrusted to handle a job all by herself. She stayed at the shrine maiden's villa for several days prior to the banquet, as requested by the shrine maiden herself, in order to get familiar with the kind of food she ate on a daily basis. Although the particulars of her diet had been carefully enumerated and reviewed, the woman wanted to be sure there would be no mistakes.

Maomao had been keen to sample the foreign food. She placed the blame squarely on the freak strategist for making her miss this chance.

Yao had never been a food taster before, so before she moved to the villa Maomao showed her the ropes. Yao was an eager student, taking plenty of notes. Maomao was confident she had gotten it all.

On the day of the banquet, they had to report for work an hour earlier than usual. Ugh. I don't want to do this. How many times had Maomao had that thought? She'd lost count. She forced herself to change clothes, leaving her room only at the last possible moment. Even then, she didn't go out of her way to look enthused about it.

"Oh, Maomao."

"Well! Haven't seen you for a while."

Who should she meet in the hallway but En'en? The other woman hadn't been sleeping in their dormitory since being assigned as Jinshi's lady-in-waiting, but had a different place to stay. She was clearly fatigued, however, her gaze vacant, her lips dry. She swayed slightly as she walked, like a ghost.

Suffering from a lack of Yao? Maomao wondered.

"Maomao... Where's the young mistress?"

"Oh, uh, Yao? She's not here..."

At the news, En'en looked like a star had fallen out of the sky and hit her clean on the head. She stumbled over and leaned against the wall, gradually sliding down to the floor. She looked like she was melting, or like a snail that had been sprinkled with salt.

"Are you all right?" said Maomao. She clearly wasn't, but it seemed polite to ask.

"Y-Young mistress..." was all En'en said.

She really is smitten. Maomao poked En'en a couple of times, unsure what to do. She didn't want to go to work, but being late for personal reasons wouldn't look good, so she couldn't hang around here forever. "What are you up to? Don't you have to work? I'm assuming you're supposed to be with a certain someone all day today."

En'en made a gurgling sound. "This was the only chance I had to slip away. The Moon Prince has a chief lady-in-waiting with eyes in the back of her head..."

"Ahh." Maomao could sympathize.

The "Moon Prince" was Jinshi—he had a name, but as the Emperor's younger brother, more or less only other members of the Imperial family were permitted to use it. Everyone else called him by a sobriquet. As for his chief lady-in-waiting, she was an aging woman named Suiren, and she was a taskmaster. Even En'en couldn't get away from her.

"Won't she be angry if you don't hurry back?"

"Yes, I suppose you're right... It's okay. I just wanted to be able to smell her from up close. To put up her hair properly. I just don't want to do some guy's hair, even if it is smooth and silken."

So Jinshi is "some guy," huh? Yet further testament to En'en's devotion to her mistress. If En'en was being trusted to do Jinshi's hair, though, that meant Suiren must like her a lot. As a point of interest, once Maomao had gotten settled in Jinshi's service, she had been asked to do his hair on several occasions but had always refused on the grounds that she had never done such a thing before.

En'en heaved herself to her feet. She was still swaying as she began to walk away. Then she turned back toward Maomao as if she'd remembered something. "I never got to give you my answer to your letter...because of you-know-who."

Send too many letters and they might start to think you were a spy. Being here like this was plenty suspicious already; if anyone started asking questions, Maomao would have to testify on En'en's behalf.

"Thank you for taking the trouble," Maomao said, accepting the letter from En'en. (This was the reply to the letter asking about how to deal with the shrine maiden's condition, as En'en had seemed likely to have a good idea how to treat women's illnesses.)

Maomao opened the letter to find her response was quite detailed. It mostly described treatments she was already familiar with, but also a few applications that surprised her. She was impressed.

Then she noticed one line in the middle of the letter. "Hey, this here..." She caught hold of En'en, who was once again stumbling her way back to work. "This part about hasma, is this true?"

After a second, En'en said, "Yes, it is."

"And you still let Yao eat it?" (Yes, Maomao knew it was supposed to make a woman bigger.)

"I want Lady Yao to be beautiful," En'en said. For a second the glow returned to her face, but she soon looked dead inside once more.

Maomao headed off to her own assignment, now with fresh pangs of sympathy for Yao.

Maomao didn't know exactly what would happen prior to the dinner. There was going to be some kind of ceremony, but it had a lot of steps, and to be perfectly honest, she didn't know what they all were. It took place in a separate area where only those directly involved were allowed. Maomao and others in her position simply had to wait, and she was most annoyed to have had to report for work an hour early if they were only going to make her stand around.

She considered going to gaze at the cabinets full of medicine, but then one of the doctors called for her. To her dismay, he needed a go-between.

"Take this over to the consorts," he said. Banquets, garden parties, and similar events were some of the few opportunities the flowers of the rear palace had to go outside. It would be inappropriate to send a man as a messenger—and without Yao or En'en around, there was no one to go but Maomao.

When she looked at what she'd been given, she discovered sticks of incense. The medical office kept them on hand because, in fact, they had medicinal applications. The smoke helped keep bugs at bay, while the aroma had a calming effect on people.

"They want it to keep the mosquitoes away. The normal stuff was too smoky, I guess," the doctor said. Normally, incense would be much too luxurious to use simply to stop some insects; it was typical to burn tree branches that had insect-repellent qualities. Even ordinary smoke would help somewhat, but it would certainly be, well, smoky.

"I wonder which august lady could have made such a demand," Maomao said.

"Ahh, it was the new one. You know, the foreigner."

That surprised Maomao somewhat. We haven't made a proper report to her yet—about the shrine maiden's secret. Did she really bear a baby girl? It seemed she might go home before they ever learned the truth.

"Being from Shaoh, I guess it doesn't matter if she's new here. She gets to be at the banquet anyway. Whatever, give some of the incense to all the consorts, and make sure you do it in the right order." The doctor gave Maomao a list of all the consorts in attendance and showed her a map of where they each were in their building. Empress Gyokuyou was in attendance, of course, as was High Consort Lihua. Aylin was one of three middle consorts present. Scary company if you made a mistake about the proper order in which to distribute the incense.

I have to say, though, Shaoh's power politics don't make much sense to me, Maomao thought as she went on her errand. Aylin's a political refugee, and Ayla is her political enemy, yet Aylin wants to get leverage over the shrine maiden in order to force the shrine

maiden to help her. That, at least, was Maomao's best

understanding of the situation. She was curious, but she knew that sticking her nose in was a good way to lose her head. The most she could do was stay quiet, listen carefully, and try to bail out if things started to get too dangerous.

Each of the consorts had been given her own room in which to rest and prepare. Only Empress Gyokuyou was waiting in an entirely different place. Maomao surmised that it would be proper to give the incense to Consort Lihua first, but she seemed likely to want to have a long conversation. Instead, Maomao waited outside Lihua's room for any ladies-in-waiting she knew to go by. Lihua's less helpful ladies had all been let go, but the ones who were left still looked at Maomao with a distinct fear in their eyes, and she wished they would stop.

So she distributed the incense one person after another until she arrived at Aylin's room. There, she took a sniff. That's odd. Even from outside, she could already smell incense within. She knocked on the door.

"Please, come in," said Aylin. Her voice was unmistakable. Maomao opened the door to discover she was alone, with no ladies or attendants. She was pressing something to her chest. As Maomao got closer, the smell grew somewhat more noticeable.

"I've brought your mosquito repellent," she said.

"My thanks. Would you be so kind as to leave it there? My lady-in-waiting just stepped out."

Needed to use the toilet, perhaps? The consort's lady was there as much to watch her as to wait on her, but she must have thought it was safe to leave Aylin alone for a moment. The room had a single small window and only one door, and there was a guard outside.

"I'll be on my way, then," Maomao said, and was about to leave when Aylin took her sleeve. "Y-Yes?" said Maomao.

"You've been to see the honored shrine maiden, haven't you?

How does she look?"

Hoo boy. How am I supposed to answer that? Maomao thought, but it only took her a second to decide to simply tell the truth. "She shows no sign of fatigue from her journey. As for her illness, we're examining her as thoroughly as we can. You need not worry yourself on that account."

It was such a banal answer that even Maomao could have chuckled. The consort might act solicitous, but Maomao knew perfectly well that she was trying to put her finger on the shrine maiden's weakness. She's a fine actor. If Maomao hadn't been privy to Aylin's secret request, she might well have been convinced that the woman was really worried. Her pallor isn't very

good...

"Is it possible you're feeling indisposed yourself, milady?" Maomao asked. She hadn't quite meant to. It was an occupational hazard.

Aylin's eyes widened. "Goodness, do I look ill? I admit I've been somewhat nervous with this banquet coming."

"If you've no particular complaint, well and good," Maomao said. She had no reason to press further.

"Yes. All's well," Aylin said, but she almost seemed to be talking to herself, and there was a distant look in her eyes. Only for a second, though; she quickly focused again on Maomao. "Thank you. I'd heard that among all the court ladies, you were exceptional. I hope for much from you."

No pressure, then. Aylin leaned forward, and the smell grew stronger again.

Seriously, what is that? Maomao wondered. She was still wondering as she left Aylin's room. That clinging scent...

The smell wasn't the only thing that seemed to hang in the air. Questions about Shaoh nagged at her. She thought she had several of the clues she needed, but it wasn't enough yet to reach an answer. There were still a few more pieces of this puzzle to be found.

I'm sure my old man would have figured it out ages ago. She sighed in dismay at her own inexperience and made her way back to the medical office.

In theory, a formal dinner should be a pleasant activity passed in ease and relaxation. Not so in high society.

The middle of the room was dominated by a single long table with chairs along either side and another table at the head. The Emperor and Empress sat at the far end, along with Jinshi and the shrine maiden, their invited guest. She wore a veil to protect her from the sun.

There were dignitaries from other countries attending the formal dinner as well, but most of them were from vassal states, and they were treated like it. Most of the rest of the crowd lined the long table. Seating order was much the same as it had been at the garden parties, the difference being that this time they were indoors and had chairs to sit on.

Maomao stood by the wall, making an I hope this will be over soon face. She could see that most of the food tasters were attending the Emperor, the guests, and the consorts. The really important people.

He doesn't need his own food taster, she thought, watching the freak strategist from behind and resisting the urge to vomit. He was of medium build, slightly hunched. Other than his monocle, he was a plain man with little to distinguish him from anyone else you might meet. Strange to think he was a commander of the nation's army.

For the most part, even that title was as much honorary as anything. His official station was Grand Commandant, but Maomao didn't know what that entailed. All she knew was that his seat indicated that it was a position of quite high status indeed.

If he thought he'd need a food taster, why did he even bother to come?

The faces of those around the strategist suggested they were thinking the same thing. For when the old fart got bored, he would distract himself by playing little pranks on people nearby. That was why no one complained when he missed garden parties and other important functions; having him there was no better.

The freak appeared to get bored very quickly on this occasion and started whispering to the man beside him, who looked like a soldier. Maomao glowered at him and tugged on a cloth she was holding. The cloth was attached to a string which was tied around the freak's ankle. Each time she pulled on it, he flinched in his seat. He would look back, an expression of bliss would cross his face, and he would sit up straight again. Maomao had heard of leading someone around by the nose, but leading them around by the ankle—that was new to her.

It made her skin crawl to have him keep glancing at her, but that was how the game was going to be played today. Lahan, the skinflint, hadn't wanted to pay for someone else to babysit the strategist at the formal dinner; he told Maomao to do it on top of her food tasting duties. Not that she cared what he wanted, but her old man had added his personal request, and even said he would give her some unusual medicine in exchange, something from abroad.

So it was that they had ended up putting a string on the freak's ankle like mice putting a bell on a cat. Maomao couldn't shake the sense that people were giving them strange looks, but she contented herself with the assumption that the looks were for the freak. Since nobody was audacious enough to say anything, she didn't let it bother her.

Somehow, food is never actually the first order of business at a formal dinner. Other things always have to happen before you can eat. Unlike the outdoor garden party, there were no wild sword dances, but they did get to hear some nice music. It sounded vaguely "foreign." Maybe the musicians were trying to make the performance sound Shaohnese.

"This song was written about the shrine maiden," she was informed by Lahan, who sidled up to her. "Consort Aylin wrote it herself. With a modicum of help from a professional songwriter, but still. Not a bad piece of work."

"The consort wrote this?" Maomao said and glanced toward Aylin. The foreign woman sat among the other middle consorts, smiling as she listened to the music.

"I know things may be complicated between them now, but I believe the consort is grateful to the shrine maiden," Lahan said. "Consort Aylin says that when she was an apprentice, the shrine maiden ensured she received a proper education. You may know some women in Shaoh find themselves married off even earlier than they do here."

Yes, Maomao had heard something like that, rumors that the people of the sand sometimes took brides who were barely ten years old.

"And a girl with no education can't even run away from the marriage she's sent into."

"True enough."

It happened in Li as well: women unable to escape their husbands, no matter how cruel they were, for if they left their marriages, there would be no work that they could do. Eventually someone would hoodwink them and sell them to a brothel.

Maomao believed ignorance was a sin. Yet she knew that knowledge wasn't given equally to all. If her old man hadn't educated her himself, she would have wound up serving patrons in the Verdigris House. Likewise, Aylin had received an education from the shrine maiden. She could have simply viewed it as her due, but instead she was grateful for it. And she still finds herself

trying to exploit the shrine maiden's weaknesses. I guess gratitude doesn't make the world any less cruel. Maomao sighed.

It appeared the strategist had no interest in the music, for he had pulled a book about Go from the folds of his robe and started reading. Maomao tugged the string again. He would be lucky if the Emperor didn't see fit to put the next string around his neck.

Then some self-important person gave a self-important speech, and finally the food started. En'en stood just behind Jinshi. He might have wished Suiren were attending him instead, but this was probably her doing: she'd seen that most of the ladies-inwaiting were young things, and taken that as her cue to let En'en do the job.

At least it means En'en's getting along all right, Maomao thought. She couldn't pretend to be completely disinterested. En'en, meanwhile, kept stealing glances to one side—specifically, the side on which the shrine maiden sat. For as Jinshi had En'en to attend him, the shrine maiden had Yao. Yao looked pale.

Nerves, maybe.

The sight of Yao somewhat brightened En'en's deathly pallor of that morning, but she still needed more of her young mistress. She was looking around, clearly hoping the formal dinner would end soon. She was worried about Yao's bad color.

Maomao couldn't help being amused by the thought that they'd tested and trained to become medical assistants, yet all three of them were standing here as food tasters, a station normally occupied by the lowborn and the expendable. Yao at least was from better stock than that; Maomao was surprised— one might even say worried—that her parents hadn't interceded to prevent this assignment.

At least I got to teach her the basics, she thought. No matter how well you knew what you were doing, though, things could and eventually would go pear-shaped as a food taster. A new poison would show up, or you'd ingest some slow-acting toxin. I

guess everyone goes when it's their time. It was as simple as that. If Maomao was going to die, she hoped she could do it sampling some new kind of poison. Especially if she lasted long enough to savor its effects before expiring. Maybe that was being greedy. But a girl could dream.

The first course arrived. Maomao took the small plate with the food taster's sample on it. She could feel the strategist watching her. She just hoped the tasting would be uneventful so they could get on with the meal.

They did indeed get on with things, and the formal dinner was soon over. Next would be the banquet. This perplexed and annoyed Maomao, who had no idea what the difference was. The latter evidently meant moving somewhere else and involved fewer people. Yao and En'en would be on duty again, but Maomao was done for the day. An excellent reason to leave the room and divest herself of her strategist.

As she was about to do just that, though, there was a crash. She turned to discover a court lady collapsed on the ground. It was Yao.

"Mistress!" En'en cried, diving for her. She tried to prop Yao up. Maomao threw her string away and went over. Yao was pitched forward, the floor covered with vomit. Other court ladies nearby started screaming. Someone was shrieking about the insolence of retching in front of so many extremely important people. Which was to say, someone was not seeing the real problem here.

"Mistress! Mistress!" En'en yelled, shaking Yao's shoulders and slapping her cheeks.

"Make sure none of it is still in her mouth!" Maomao commanded. "If it lodges in her throat, she could suffocate!"

"Right," said En'en, getting herself under control enough to plunge a finger into Yao's mouth. The other woman appeared to be breathing, but she was trembling and holding her stomach, and her pupils were dilated.

If Yao's collapsed... Then what had happened to the shrine maiden? A crowd had already formed around her. The other woman who had been on tasting duty for her with Yao was white as a sheet and not looking very steady on her feet. She moved away, her hands pressed to her mouth, and the shrine maiden left as well.

So they were poisoned too. Maomao laid a blanket over the trembling Yao. En'en kept wailing "Mistress, Mistress!" She was as pale as any of the poisoned women. "Water! Saltwater! And...

And...!"

Maomao pulled En'en off of Yao. They didn't know what kind of poison they were dealing with, so the best they could do was to try to empty the contents of her stomach. Maomao shoved a finger down Yao's throat, trying to induce further vomiting, but then an old man hobbled up. "Maomao, En'en. Let me handle this."

It was her old man, carrying a carafe and a bucket. He also had another blanket, which he used to support Yao's hips. If there was stomach pain and vomiting, there was a good chance diarrhea would be present as well. The blanket was his little kindness, a way of making it less obvious if she fouled herself.

"You need to tend to the shrine maiden," Luomen said. "I can take care of Yao." He tugged on the string Maomao had abandoned, drawing the attention of the freak strategist, who'd been simply standing. "Bring me some charcoal, would you? Powdered in a mortar, if possible. And get some rooms ready, somewhere we can examine these young ladies and the shrine maiden. I trust you can do that much, Lakan."

"Yes, of course, Uncle. I'll prepare them right away." It was the strategist who answered, but it was his subordinates who jumped into action. It was faster to have the strategist give the orders than Luomen trying to get people to listen to him himself.

"Take care of Yao, Pops," Maomao said, and then she made her way over to the shrine maiden.

Chapter 17: The Suspect

The shrine maiden and the other women were quickly moved to their sickrooms. The shrine maiden and the second food taster were vomiting copiously. It was crucial to give them saltwater to make sure their stomachs were completely empty, and they were also given powdered charcoal and laxatives. Not the most pleasant-tasting stuff, but necessary to clear them out.

Maomao's father still couldn't examine the shrine maiden, so the responsibility fell to Maomao. Not only did she want everything out of their stomachs, she wanted to clear the guts as well. If the laxatives didn't work, she was prepared to put medicine directly into their anuses in order to induce the purging she needed, but she doubted either of them was eager for that. Thankfully the laxatives did their job.

Both the shrine maiden and the second food taster were in a better way than Yao. Symptoms of poisoning they might have, but at least they were still conscious. Yao was in dire shape, and En'en, entirely forgetting whom she supposedly served now, was with her constantly. Jinshi wasn't a monster. Maomao assumed he would let En'en be.

The day after the banquet, when the shrine maiden's condition had stabilized somewhat, Jinshi paid Maomao a visit. He was dressed even more plainly than usual, but his sparkliness remained. The now-recovered Basen was with him. Maomao was still wearing her outfit from the day before; she hadn't even had a chance to bathe. This, however, was not the time to worry about such things.

"How is the shrine maiden?" Jinshi asked.

"Calmer. Her case wasn't as serious as Yao's or the other woman who was tasting her food." One of the apprentice physicians was reporting every detail of Yao's progress to her, and she in turn told him how the shrine maiden was faring. If anything happened to the maiden, it could become an international incident. They couldn't allow things to get any worse. No doubt the same concern was what had brought Jinshi here so promptly.

"Yao—yes, that was her name. The one En'en refers to as her mistress."

"You seem to have grown quite fond of En'en, but perhaps you could give her back to us one of these days? I'm afraid she may die from lack of Yao."

En'en must have been beside herself with Yao in such a state. As for Maomao, she was feeling composed enough by now to crack a joke. Gallows humor? Maybe. Impertinent? Some might say. But that was how you got by.

"You're not worried about your colleague?"

"I'm worried. I'm not that cold-blooded. But my job at this moment is to care for the shrine maiden. Besides, my father is looking after Yao." Maomao had faith he would find a way to help her. And En'en knew a thing or two about medicine, so if she kept herself together she could be a pretty effective nurse. No need for Maomao to bring more work on herself. In any case, Li's international relations rode on the shrine maiden's health. It was paramount that nothing happen to her.

"If I may ask, did they figure out who poisoned the shrine maiden?" No one but the maiden and those with her had gotten ill, which meant that even if the women survived, it remained a clear attempt on the shrine maiden's life. The sooner they could find and punish the culprit, the better.

Jinshi looked pained, then he glanced at Basen. The other man made a rather odd expression himself, but took something wrapped in cloth from the folds of his robes. It turned out to be a small bottle. Maomao opened the lid to discover some kind of powder.

"What's this?" she asked, taking a sniff. The odor was familiar. She'd smelled it very recently, in fact. She gasped when she realized what it was and reached for the bottle, but Basen wrapped it up again.

"I take it you know something," Jinshi said.

"Is that incense powder?" she asked.

"Yes, it is."

Incense powder was made from plant material, including

shikimi. It was intensely poisonous, and caused vomiting, stomach pains, and diarrhea.

"Dr. Kan informed me that it's poisonous," Jinshi said.

"He's right. Its effects are exactly the ones we saw yesterday." Symptoms could occur at any time within several hours after ingesting the poison.

Jinshi studied Maomao's face. "This particular bottle was found in the possession of Consort Aylin."

I knew it. She'd smelled that odor when she'd been distributing the mosquito-repellent incense. It had been in Consort Aylin's room.

Yao, the shrine maiden, and the shrine maiden's other food taster had all been poisoned, but Yao was in by far the worst shape. Her symptoms would abate, only to come back. Now, three days after the incident, she was in much better condition, but they still couldn't relax.

Maomao took over Yao's place at the shrine maiden's villa, staying there to minister to the maiden and her servant. Their symptoms were minor enough that Maomao's presence was more precautionary than anything. The question of who had planted the poison was far more pressing.

And it looks like Aylin's involved again.

Why would a woman from Shaoh poison the Shaohnese shrine maiden? Hadn't she been trying to get the shrine maiden to help her? Or had this been her real goal from the moment she entered the rear palace? Didn't she supposedly feel indebted to the woman she had just allegedly tried to murder?

For the moment, she's a suspect, Maomao thought. There was evidence against her: the incense powder that had been found in her robes. One of her ladies-in-waiting had discovered it while helping her change and reported it.

Maomao knew some facts. For example, that Aylin had obtained a large quantity of the poisonous incense powder prior to the banquet. And that at the banquet, she'd been seated by her compatriot, the shrine maiden. What's more, Maomao knew Aylin wasn't watched at every moment. After all, she'd been alone when Maomao had come with the incense, not even a lady-inwaiting in attendance upon her. Perhaps she'd bided her time at the banquet, waiting for an opportune moment to poison the food.

The possibility couldn't be ruled out. The witness testimony and the circumstantial evidence were considered enough to justify questioning Aylin personally.

We have to find the perpetrator as soon as we can. Before it became a diplomatic problem. But what if the culprit is someone

from the same country?

That would be awfully convenient for Li. The attempted murder of the shrine maiden could be passed off as a civil dispute between Shaohnese visitors. Yes, if Aylin were responsible, that would make everything very simple.

I wonder what Lahan would do. The image of the numbers(and looks-)obsessed little man floated through her mind. This had all begun when he and Aylin had discussed either sending food to Shaoh or giving her political asylum. Lahan was too clever to let himself be caught in the fallout of this incident, but it couldn't be any fun for him regardless.

There must be more to this, Maomao thought. There were too many questions, too many things that didn't fit. She didn't like it at all.

On the morning of the fifth day, the shrine maiden's attendant informed Maomao, "The honored shrine maiden is quite fine now.

You may go."

"I'm not sure she looks well yet, myself," Maomao responded.

"The trouble is of the heart. How could she feel well, given who is involved?"

Fair enough. It would be a bitter pill to be nearly assassinated in a distant country, and to know that the would-be killer was from your own homeland. "I understand. An acquaintance of hers, yes?"

"Yes," the other woman said after a second. "For she might have become the next shrine maiden, once." Sounds like my information is solid.

"She and her cousin Ayla both lived with the honored shrine maiden until the age of twelve." The attendant sighed as if to say How could this have happened? Maomao wondered as well, but it wasn't her place to ask too many questions.

Instead she simply said, "Thank you."

A carriage was waiting for Maomao when she left the shrine maiden's villa. She climbed aboard and found her father inside. "Is Yao all right?" she asked.

"For the moment. En'en's watching her. She'll let me know if the young lady takes a turn for the worse."

Maomao had heard that Yao had briefly been stable, only to worsen and then stabilize again. Clearly, her condition still demanded caution, which meant that if her father was here, there must be a reason.

So it proved. Looking out the window, the old man said, "We won't be going back to the medical office. We'll go right past it." Past the medical office—that meant into the part of the court where the important people dwelt. Maomao could think of one reason they might be going there.

"Is this about the dinner?" she asked. Maomao and her father had been taking care of those who had been poisoned at the event. With Aylin under suspicion, it was hardly surprising the authorities should want to speak to Maomao and Luomen. The carriage trundled past the medical office and toward its destination: Jinshi's palace.

"Please, come in." Suiren greeted them, polite as ever, although Maomao thought she caught a fleeting hint of a grin when the silver-haired woman looked at her. A cunning old thing, she was. Maomao bowed her head in return. Suiren took them to a room where Jinshi, Basen, and Lahan waited. The bespectacled little man wore a noticeable grimace; these events had weakened him.

"I assume you know why we've called you here," Jinshi said. His color wasn't very good—overworking himself again, Maomao suspected. Before she went home, she would have to get him to take a nap. By force if necessary.

"Does it have to do with Consort Aylin?" Maomao asked.

"Indeed. We'd like to begin by hearing from Sir Luomen." He obviously wasn't going to waste time on pleasantries.

"I'm afraid I can only speak to what happened with Yao, the medical assistant."

That's not true, Maomao thought. Well... It was and it wasn't. Her father was a very careful person. What he meant was that he could only speak with confidence about what had happened to Yao. All else would be assumption, and Luomen didn't like to speculate.

"Her symptoms were severe, including stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. At one point they appeared to stabilize, only to worsen again. However, at the moment, they've improved."

This all aligned with what Maomao had heard: the symptoms were precisely those of incense powder poisoning. The seriousness of their presentation, however, and the way they had gotten worse after subsiding once, puzzled her. Incense powder included shikimi, which was highly toxic—enough that it could potentially kill a person. The berries were especially poisonous, but incense powder was produced by grinding up only the skin of the fruit and the leaves.

I'm sure she would have noticed if she'd eaten enough of it to get that sick. Maomao had given Yao some pointers on how to

look for poison in food, including sniffing it for any unusual odors. Then again, Yao's color hadn't been good before the meal. Maybe her nose had been stuffed up.

Her father's next words turned Maomao's suspicion into certainty. "I suspect we're dealing with a mycotoxin—something from a mushroom or fungus. Not shikimi poison."

Luomen's audience was dumbfounded; what he was saying went against all their assumptions. No doubt they'd brought him here to seal the case against Aylin. They must have thought they had all the evidence they needed.

"I see!" Maomao said. It made sense to her now. Many fungal toxins were much more potent than shikimi, although they produced similar symptoms. And Yao wouldn't have recognized the smell or flavor of most toxic mushrooms.

While everyone else was busy being shocked, Lahan leaned forward. "Are you suggesting Consort Aylin was framed? Tell me, Uncle!" There was an unmistakable note of giddiness in his voice, and with good reason. If someone he had brought to Li committed a crime like this, some of the responsibility would have to fall on him. This entire situation was outside even Lahan's calculations.

"I'm saying only that we aren't dealing with poisonous incense powder here," Luomen replied. His roundabout way of talking was obviously frustrating his audience.

"May I interject?" Maomao said, hoping to move things along with her own observations. She laid out the facts, trying to be as objective as possible so she wouldn't be carried away by what her father had said. "The shrine maiden and the other food taster displayed very similar symptoms—stomach pain and vomiting. Theirs were much less severe than Yao's, however, and cleared up in about three days. I have some doubts about the hypothesis that a mycotoxin was involved here. Specifically, I think the shrine maiden and her attendant ingested too little of it to have the observed effects, and I believe the onset of symptoms was too rapid."

The symptoms did make her think of the toxic Amanita virosa mushroom, which was extremely poisonous, but slow-acting. The terrible thing was that by the time the effects of the toxin began to show, it had already been absorbed by the body, which was why it could seem to be cured only for the symptoms to recur. Maomao didn't question her father's treatment of Yao, but if it was true that there was a poisonous fungus involved, then the case had to be considered more serious than an episode of shikimi poisoning.

It had occurred to Maomao that they might be dealing with a poisonous mushroom, but she had dismissed the possibility on the basis that, if that were the case, it should have taken about six hours for symptoms to appear. The three women had shown signs of poisoning far sooner than that.

I'm sure my old man must know that, she thought. So why would he say such a thing? He must have a reason. Could it be...

What if they consumed the mushrooms before the food tasting?

Before she knew what she was doing, Maomao slammed her hands down on the table. The conversation in the shrine maiden's villa! How could she not have noticed?

"Master Jinshi!" she said.

"What is it?"

"Did you tell the shrine maiden that Consort Aylin was suspected of poisoning her?"

"I don't want to tell her anything until we're certain. It would only create unnecessary anxiety."

Yes. Yes, of course. And yet the attendant at the villa had spoken of it:

"The trouble is of the heart. How could she feel well, given who is involved?"

"She might have become the next shrine maiden, once."

Maomao had assumed from that exchange that the shrine maiden already knew who the suspect was. Maomao herself was aware, so she hadn't thought twice about the shrine maiden knowing as well. But how did she know?

Now Maomao saw why Yao's case had been so severe, but those of the shrine maiden and her attendant had been so much lighter. She could explain the delay in the onset of symptoms.

"Dad," she began, giving him a serious look, "would it be all right if I engaged in some speculation?"

He seemed uncomfortable. "You'll have to be prepared to be held accountable for whatever you say." Once the words were out of her mouth, she wouldn't be able to take them back.

"Sometimes one must speak all the same," she said. Her father was silent at that; Maomao took it as tacit permission.

"Sounds like you have something for us," Jinshi said.

"Yes, sir. Although it's only one possibility." Perhaps making that explicit would give her an escape route if she needed it. Or perhaps she simply wasn't willing to speak with absolute confidence. "I believe it was not Consort Aylin who planted the poison."

"Why so?" Jinshi was never going to simply take her word for it. He wanted reasons. Lahan and Basen were likewise watching her.

"If we accept what my old man—ahem, what Dr. Kan suggested, that the case involves a poisonous mushroom, it becomes difficult to sustain the belief that Consort Aylin tainted the food."

Considering the time symptoms took to appear, the victims would have to have consumed A. virosa long before the banquet. Aylin had been under guard since the moment she left the rear palace; even when her lady-in-waiting had left her alone, she hadn't been able to leave her room, and she'd had no confederates to help her. She couldn't have poisoned the food before the banquet.

"So who did, then?"

"If the food was indeed poisoned, sir, it would have to have happened at the villa."

Yao had been living with the shrine maiden for days prior to the banquet, eating the same food she did. It made the most sense to assume Yao had been exposed to the poison while still at the residence, and that narrowed down the list of possible perpetrators.

"I believe it was one of the shrine maiden's attendants. In other words, she poisoned herself."

This drew fresh consternation from the listeners—all except Luomen, who remained impassive. He'd probably come to the same conclusion, but he had stayed true to his unwillingness to speculate.

If the poisoning had been, in essence, a show, it would also explain why the shrine maiden and her attendant had suffered less severe symptoms than Yao. Yao would have been the only one to seriously consume the poison; the other two would have taken only enough to put on a convincing "performance," or might have used a different, less serious toxin.

The same line of reasoning could explain why the attendant had known who the alleged perpetrator was without being told—if this had all been done with the intention of pinning the crime on Aylin. She and the shrine maiden had known each other long enough that the maiden would be aware of her old friend's propensity for incense powder. Poisonous incense powder.

Maomao understood why her father insisted on not working on assumptions, but some things could push even Maomao over the edge. They had to drag Yao into this! They'd callously used her. The seriousness of Yao's symptoms would lend credence to the idea of an attempted poisoning. Yao could be a little condescending, but at heart she was a decent young lady, dedicated to her studies. Maomao was no En'en, but this was enough to make the bile well up in her throat.

She belatedly noticed the numbness in her hands, and it made her stop and ask herself whether she was speaking rationally. Luomen was still silent, while Jinshi was practically slack-jawed.

"I have a question," said Basen, speaking for the first time. He was quick to react in situations like this. "Why would the shrine maiden want to entrap Consort Aylin?"

"I believe I have an idea," Lahan said, raising his hand. "Consort Aylin told me she thought the shrine maiden might have borne a child—and that it might have been the White Lady. I asked Maomao to see if she could tell whether the shrine maiden had given birth."

If it transpired that the shrine maiden was no longer qualified for her office, then she could be stripped of that office. Indeed, she might very well be punished.

"The shrine maiden, the mother of the White Lady? That would be explosive," Jinshi said. It would mean that Aylin had sought political asylum not only because of her enemies in the government, but because she knew something about the shrine maiden's secret. It would also explain why the shrine maiden had followed her to Li.

"But if this was all to keep Consort Aylin quiet..." Maomao said. Lahan's suggestion should have seemed perfectly reasonable, yet something about it nagged at her. She looked at her father. He only sat there, silent, neither affirming nor denying anything.

Chapter 18: A Man and a Woman Play the Game

"You're not going home with Sir Luomen?" Jinshi asked Maomao. She'd stayed behind and was boiling some water.

"You seem awfully pale, Master Jinshi. How many days since you last got a proper sleep?"

A question for a question. She mixed some herbs that would help him get to sleep into the water and passed him a cup. Lahan had left with Luomen, while Basen had gone to see both of them off.

"I've been sleeping every night," Jinshi retorted.

"Let's try a different question. How many total hours have you slept in the last several days?"

Jinshi started counting on his fingers. He didn't look likely to get through an entire hand. He scowled and drank the tea.

"Early morning tomorrow?" she asked.

"No, for once things are relatively quiet. In fact, today is the first day I've been able to come back to my palace in some time." So he really was working hard.

"Lady Suiren must be worried about you."

"And you're not?" Jinshi said, the cup still at his lips. He loosened the chest of his robe, prompting Maomao to look around for some sleepwear. Suiren entered at exactly that moment— thankfully—but no sooner had she handed Maomao a set of nightwear than she showed herself out again. Wants me to help

him change, huh?

She'd done it before, back when she'd been serving in Jinshi's residence, but she had never liked it. Quite frankly, Maomao thought he could stand to dress himself, while Jinshi held the fundamental conviction that he should be assisted in all things. Never the twain would meet. When it came down to it, however, one of them was of far higher status than the other, and it was Maomao who had to bend.

She put the sleepwear on him at almost the same moment as he sent his cloak fluttering to the ground. She tossed the belt around his waist, tied it loosely, and then collected the garment off the floor. "You make En'en do this for you too?" she grumbled.

"No, it happens I don't."

"But you have her tie up your hair." Maomao considered that part and parcel of helping him change.

"That I do, but always under Suiren's supervision."

"Always?"

"To forestall the possibility of a swift stab from behind."

"She—" would never, Maomao began to say, but she stopped. In a state of extreme Yao deprivation, there was no telling what En'en might do.

"Suiren can be overprotective. She's never even left us alone in a room together."

Yet here were Jinshi and Maomao in exactly that situation.

Maomao said nothing.

"Suiren thinks quite highly of you," said Jinshi.

"That's not my fault." Being high in Suiren's esteem carried no benefits for Maomao. Indeed, she was hard-pressed to think of a single good thing that might come of it. She took the empty teacup and was about to leave, but Jinshi caught her wrist.

"You're always trying to put me off," he said.

"I can't imagine what you mean, sir."

Staying in this room was dangerous. She wanted to get out while the getting was good, but he wouldn't let go of her.

"Suiren feels quite urgently that I should take a consort of my own," he said. "She claims it would mean less work for me."

"I'm sure she's right." Maomao was intent on acting as if the matter didn't concern her. That, however, could only aggravate Jinshi.

"You know what I'm trying to say. How can you act so indifferent? Are you that desperate to avoid me?" "Y—"

She slapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late.

"Were you about to blurt out yes?"

"Pay it no mind, sir."

Jinshi glowered at her. He was getting dark bags under his

eyes. He should stop wasting time with me and get some sleep. He was obviously exhausted, and she wished she could order him to go to bed. But Jinshi was still talking.

"I can see why Sir Luomen looks so harassed all the time. I can practically even understand how our honored strategist must feel!"

Maomao's ears started ringing. Jinshi was tired; she knew that. He had nowhere to vent his frustrations, and he had a great many frustrations to vent, and on top of that he was suffering from lack of sleep. Any other time, he might have taken more care. Might have known not to say what he said. Yet said it he had.

Strangely, it wasn't the mention of the strategist that upset Maomao the most. It was the name Luomen that kept reverberating in her mind. Today she'd had that rarest of things, a difference of opinion with her father. Jinshi had seized on it.

Maybe he wasn't the only one who was tired. Maomao hadn't been sleeping so well herself. And at last she exploded.

"You're forever telling me I need to use my words, Master Jinshi, but are you in any position to criticize? Everything you say to me, everything you do, it's like it's calculated to save you from ever having to actually say what you mean! To make me figure it all out! You know, you remind me of someone. You act exactly like a man who used to come by our brothel all the time. He was in love with one of the girls, but he would never just come out and say it. He thought it should be obvious from the way he acted. He was so sure he had a good thing going with this woman that he never sent her so much as a letter. I remember how forlorn he looked when someone else swooped in and snatched her away! He kept coming to the brothel after that—to get drunk and whine to the ladies. Well, in my opinion, he could have avoided all that heartbreak if he'd told the woman how he felt. Clearly, unequivocally, so that she knew where they stood. It was the least he could have done!"

Everything came out in a torrent. She felt like she'd said it all in one breath. It was strange, she thought, to hear so many words come out of her own mouth. She was mystified. Jinshi was no less startled, but the shock soon left his face, replaced by something else. He got up off the bed and stared down at Maomao.

Shit. Now I've done it. She'd given him a piece of her mind, and he was about to give her one back.

"So I should be clear, should I? Unequivocal? I should say what I mean? If I did, would you actually listen to me? Is that what you're telling me? I'm going to hold you to that! Right this minute. I'll say it all. Don't plug your ears—listen to me!" He grabbed her hands as she was in the process of trying to put her fingers in her ears.

He took a breath. He was looking at Maomao, but somehow he seemed almost embarrassed.

Finally he managed, "Now listen to me, y—I mean, Maomao!

Listen close! I am going to make you my wife!"

He'd said it. He'd actually said it. To her, it sounded like a death sentence. All his vagueness, all his ambiguity had actually been a show of kindness to Maomao. For with her social status, the words once spoken were as good as a command. She couldn't fight them, couldn't contravene what he wished.

Jinshi was blushing, but Maomao was completely pale. "I wish there were an immortal here who could turn back time," she mumbled.

"Your internal monologue is showing," Jinshi snapped. He couldn't quite bring himself to meet her eyes, yet he hadn't let go of her wrists. A profoundly uncomfortable feeling hung between them. At length, he sighed. "Be that as it may, you're right that with things as they stand, making you my wife could only harm you. Neither of us wants that."

He took a sip from the pitcher by the bedside in an effort to bring down the flush.

"For you, I will remove every obstacle that keeps us apart. One day. Just know that." With that, Jinshi buried himself under the covers. "I won't let what you fear come to pass. I swear it."

Soon she heard him breathing evenly in sleep. What I fear... Maomao pictured Empress Gyokuyou. I don't think Master Jinshi knows, she thought. She didn't think he was aware of the secret of his own birth. What about Empress Gyokuyou? Does she know?

And what did His Majesty want for Jinshi? What about Ah-Duo?

It's never good to know too much.

When Jinshi discovered the truth, would he still try to find a

way to make things palatable to Maomao? She wasn't the only one concerned. Could he concoct circumstances that would stave off talk from everyone around them?

No... Even he couldn't do that. It was difficult, if not impossible, to manufacture a situation that pleased everyone, and it only got harder the further you went up the social ladder.

Maomao shook her head and made to leave the room. At the doorway, she ran into Suiren, who was smiling and for some inexplicable reason giving her a thumbs-up. All Maomao could do was glare at the old lady as she went by.

Chapter 19: The Truth Behind the Truth

For several days, there was no word from Jinshi. Maomao didn't believe her speculations were beyond questioning, but neither did she think it had been a mistake to contradict her old man. The case of the attempted poisoning of the shrine maiden carried on, however, and Aylin remained the prime suspect.

When questioned, Aylin confessed. Her motive (she claimed) was that she hadn't wanted to come to Li, but had been driven to it, and she bore a grudge against the shrine maiden, who was one of those responsible for her flight. After all, Aylin might have become shrine maiden herself—she had been raised for it—if the current occupant of the office hadn't remained for so many years.

To confess openly to an antipathy toward not only the shrine maiden but Li itself, she must have been truly desperate. All she'd

have to do is add the Emperor's name to that list to make herself the most hated woman in Li. As it was, the story seemed to be that a shiftless foreigner had attacked the shrine maiden out of personal animus. That was simple enough. And convenient.

"Bullshit..." The word was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. Lahan was giving her the lowdown. This wasn't something that could be handled by messenger, so he'd summoned her on the pretext that he needed some kind of medicine.

"You're telling me," he replied as he downed some stomach medication. Maomao was somewhat surprised to realize, belatedly, that even he could have an upset stomach sometimes. "I think this is as fishy as you do. The consort told me herself how much she respects the shrine maiden. And now she hates her enough to try to kill her?" He shook his head and sighed deeply. "Speaking of which, how's that young woman? Yao or whatever it is?" As the one at least partly responsible for the entire affair, Lahan felt guilty about what had happened to her.

"She escaped with her life, but I think there may be aftereffects."

Yao had gotten much better under Luomen and En'en's ministrations. She wasn't completely recovered, though, not to mention she was distraught to learn she had ingested poison without realizing it. Maomao didn't blame her, as poisonous mushrooms could be surprisingly delicious, and she had been about to say so when her father had gently stopped her. He seemed to think it might not be as reassuring as she imagined.

Maomao visited the shrine maiden daily to see how she was doing, but to be quite blunt, she wasn't sure whether the woman was acting or not. If she was only pretending to be ill, then there was no need for Maomao to pelt her with questions about her condition—indeed, doing so could make her an accomplice in the framing of Aylin. So she'd had ample opportunity to talk to the shrine maiden, but no right to ask the questions she really wanted to.

The biggest issue was that everything Maomao had said was ultimately speculation, with no specific evidence to back it up. If it was true that the shrine maiden had come all this way simply to make Aylin take a fall, then what was the weakness Aylin was so intent on leveraging? Wasn't this entire endeavor too risky?

"I wonder what she has on the shrine maiden," Maomao mused.

"I was so sure they were good friends. Notwithstanding the consort's attempts to exploit that vulnerability. She never seemed like she had a grudge against the shrine maiden. She seemed to genuinely respect her."

Lahan leaned his elbows on the table and took a drink of water. "You need to take it with food or it'll upset your stomach," Maomao said, remembering. With some annoyance, Lahan fetched a snack from the shelf. A bun filled with potato paste. When Maomao asked if they didn't have any meat buns around, she was curtly informed that they did not. Boo.

"Anyway, if they were such good friends, I don't think we would be in this situation right now," Maomao said.

"I'm still convinced that Consort Aylin has deep respect for the shrine maiden. If the charges were spurious, why would she offer the testimony that she did?"

"True enough," Maomao admitted.

"I've told her that if she has anything to say in her own defense, I'm more than open to hearing her out, but instead she goes and incriminates herself..." Was he really convinced by the charges against her? "She's quite the actor." She had spoken ill of the shrine maiden yet also confessed to the crime, essentially taking the guilt upon herself.

"Exactly how much did you hear about the relationship between Aylin and the shrine maiden?" Maomao asked.

"Just what I told you. Mistress Aylin was one of the potential future shrine maidens, and spent almost five years as an apprentice with the current one. Typically, apprentices live in the shrine maiden's palace for their entire tenure, until their 'monthly time' is upon them and they lose the right to be shrine maiden. Usually, a marriage is found for them once they leave the maiden's palace, but Consort Aylin was staunchly against that arrangement. Instead, she and her cousin sought sanctuary with their grandfather. He was a practical man, and saw how much use could be made of the education they'd received from the shrine maiden."

That was how they had ended up as emissaries. Maomao had wondered how a couple of women had come to travel to a foreign country in such a capacity all by themselves, but it sounded like it hadn't been an easy path. Yet if Aylin had learned of the shrine maiden's baby, or at least guessed at its existence, during her time as an apprentice...

"Wouldn't you normally expose what you knew sooner?" Maomao said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean about the infant. Her suspicion that the shrine maiden had borne a child." What if she hadn't been looking to find the shrine maiden's weakness—but had merely been curious? "If she's known about this child ever since she was an apprentice, why bring it to light now?"

"A fair point." Maybe it was Lahan's fondness for a pretty face that had created this blind spot for him. He straightened his glasses, then crossed his arms and closed his eyes. "How about this, then? What if investigating whether the shrine maiden had a child was only a pretext?" "So you think so too?"

Lahan had some...less than ideal qualities, but he was intelligent. When he put his mind to something, he could be very quick to figure it out. "Suppose that was a bluff. A cover for something even bigger. Suppose this bigger thing is the reason we're in this situation now."

"I admit, it would connect a lot of dots." The question then became what "something even bigger" was. Maomao and Lahan both made thoughtful noises. "If my old man were here..." Maomao began.

"I grant my honored uncle appears to know something. But there's every chance he would refuse to tell us if he did."

Luomen had looked all along like something about the situation bothered him. Had he come to some realization that still eluded Maomao? Maybe he had a guess—but as long as it remained a guess, he was unlikely to speak of it. Maomao felt herself getting angry again.

"If my honored uncle could only have examined the shrine maiden himself, we might have learned something..."

"Gee, sorry for being so inexperienced," Maomao snapped. But she agreed something was strange. Surely it should be all right for a eunuch to touch the shrine maiden, even if he was, or had once been, a man. She was silent for a long moment.

"What's the matter?" Lahan asked.

She only mumbled, "Eunuch..." She pressed her hand to her forehead. She felt like she had the scattered pieces of an answer. She tried to call to mind what she knew. She took out the notes from the folds of her robes. She'd recorded details of her exams of the shrine maiden. She'd tucked En'en's letter in beside it as well.

"What's that?" Lahan asked.

"A list of foods the shrine maiden eats frequently. They all treat women's disorders—that is to say, they increase female qi. This is a list of their applications."

The list included the ingredients the friendly medical official had said he'd been compelled to take on his visits to the rear palace. At first Maomao had thought he was so shaken by the memory because they tasted terrible, but when she saw the effects, she had to give a sympathetic smile.

"I think you could use some of this stuff, Maomao," Lahan ribbed her as he looked down the list.

"Yeah, sure. Pop quiz: what are the characteristics of a eunuch?"

"You know, you could stand to be a little more respectful to your older brother. Bah, anyway. A eunuch's male qi dwindles. His hair becomes thinner and his voice gets higher."

"Yes, and he becomes more likely to put on weight as he gets older, at which point he can seem to age very rapidly. You can see it in my own father. But there's another thing." Lahan looked at her, most curious what it might be. "If a boy is castrated before his development into a man begins, his voice never changes, and his body hair never comes in. Because he lacks the male qi that motivates growth, his arms and legs can become

disproportionately long."

"I've never exactly taken a long, hard look at the shrine maiden. Are you implying..."

"She's somewhat tall for a woman, and her limbs are rather long. She's begun to acquire a bit of a paunch the last few years. And as it happens, there's a sickness that affects eunuchs that causes symptoms quite similar to those of a woman whose qi is decreasing."

The details all fit.

"Hold on. I know even you can tell the difference between a castrated man and an actual woman. You got a good look at her chest, at least! Wait..." Lahan had evidently remembered what was written on the list of medicines.

"Yes, and it was present and accounted for." Maomao took out the notes again, feeling that same rush of anger. En'en's letter enumerated the effects of various medicines—including hasma.

Hasma: Excellent for good skin and general beauty. Stamina booster; high in nutritional value. Overuse, however, can cause the chest to become enlarged.

This was one of the things En'en was feeding Yao. It would certainly explain the extent of her development—in fact, Maomao recalled En'en bragging about exactly that. Perhaps this was what had made the old physician smile with such pain. Too much of it could cause even a man to develop an ample chest, and that was no joke.

"The chest is obviously the first thing you look at when trying to distinguish between a man and a woman. The position of the bellybutton should have tipped me off." The shrine maiden's paunch had made it hard to judge, even if Maomao did wonder about it. If even Maomao, who was quite familiar with the naked bodies of both men and women, hadn't connected the dots, how much harder would it be for Yao and En'en? The reason eunuchs weren't allowed near the shrine maiden was because they were even more physically like "her" than the average woman. The secret might have gotten out.

This had been the plan all along.

"I want you to investigate whether the shrine maiden has borne a child." At the moment of that request, Maomao hadn't

imagined the shrine maiden was a castrated man.

Shit! The wool had been pulled completely over her eyes. The strange look Maomao's father had given her when she'd first reported the shrine maiden's notable physical characteristics— maybe it was because the possibility had occurred to him even then. If he'd been able to look at the shrine maiden himself, he would almost certainly have discovered the truth.

"Is this the secret the shrine maiden's been so desperate to hide?" Lahan said. It would certainly be the kind of vulnerability an opportunist could readily exploit. "But wait... If it is, why come all the way to another country to try to silence a woman who's already become a consort at a foreign court? And why do it in such a convoluted way?"

The shrine maiden was not a woman: if that hypothesis was correct, what other apparent realities might it undermine? Was the "shrine maiden" trying to pin the affair on Aylin—or for that matter, was Aylin trying to take the blame on herself? If so, why?

She gained nothing by it—but Li did.

"On that point," Maomao said. "Consider what would happen if the shrine maiden's killer had been one of our own people."

"It would be a matter of national face," said Lahan. "It could

even mean war. Makes me pretty grateful that Mistress Aylin confessed to everything herself."

"So it's no problem for us if she's the culprit?"

"I wouldn't say no problem, but it's unlikely to start an international conflict. It will unquestionably put us on the back foot with Shaoh, however."

So Shaoh would find itself in an advantageous position vis-à-vis one of its biggest neighbors, and without a war. It made Maomao's head spin, but she knew she had to stay calm and think things through. Start with the shrine maiden's gender.

"What would happen if Shaoh found out their shrine maiden was a man?" she asked.

"What would happen if we found out our Emperor was a woman?" Lahan replied.

Maomao realized her question was ridiculous—it seemed like a contradiction in terms. Li had never in its history had an empress as sole ruler. Yes, the former emperor's mother was sometimes referred to as the empress regnant, but that was something closer to a nickname, not a title proper. If she'd attempted to take the throne by pretending to be a man, not only would she have been punished, but trust in the government would have been deeply shaken.

"It's said that the government of Shaoh has two pillars, the shrine maiden and the king," said Lahan. "I'm sure there are those who would be happy to see that reduced to one pillar, but in any case, the authority of the next shrine maiden would be at rock bottom—if there even was a next shrine maiden. All the advances so diligently made during the era of the current shrine maiden would be undone."

The current shrine maiden's long tenure had allowed women to express their opinions more freely in Shaoh. If it was discovered that the "maiden" was a man, it would uproot all that had been achieved. What must Aylin feel about that? Aylin, who thanks to the education the shrine maiden gave her was able to avoid a marriage she didn't want and even become an emissary despite being a woman?

"Whoever the shrine maiden's enemies are, the king or his associates, they would have figured her out sooner or later. So instead she did something unprecedented—she took a trip," Maomao said. She wasn't sure, just trying the idea out. "The whole point of which was to prevent her enemies from discovering the truth, by—"

She stopped. The shrine maiden had gone somewhere she wouldn't be discovered, somewhere they couldn't reach her. So she would leave behind no evidence. No doubts. Maomao pressed a hand to her forehead. She gritted her teeth. This couldn't mean what she thought it did—could it? Yet the dawning realization was the one that made the most sense in light of everything the shrine maiden had done.

Finally she gave voice to her awful suspicion. "By committing suicide."

Chapter 20: Mushroom Congee

The breeze was damp. So much cooler than the climate she came from—she couldn't seem to get used to the feeling of it on her skin. The sun was less intense here, though. Even indoors, she could tell. She could take slightly longer walks than normal, and that made her happy.

She thought back over the adventures she'd had these past months. Before, she'd spent all her time in her residence, being worshipped. She was accustomed by now to people venerating her, but it could get boring. She'd been prepared to hand over the position to anyone who wanted it—yet her own existence prevented any chance of that happening. Shrine maiden, they called her, and had for so long that she no longer remembered her own name. If she abdicated her seat now, she wouldn't even know what to call herself.

And now, it was all finally coming to an end. This languid stretch of time had been the last postponement.

Her room was darkened by an array of curtains. There was a rustle of cloth in the dimness. She wondered for a second what it was, but then she saw a girl peeking out at her. Her name was Jazgul. It meant "flower of spring." The girl, born without a voice, had been brought to her about a year before.

Perhaps it would have been uncouth to ask by what path she had come to be with the shrine maiden. She was quite pretty in her own way, but her long limbs betrayed malnutrition. She couldn't read or write, but she could hear, and she understood what was said to her. As for the lack of accomplishments, that was in fact just what the shrine maiden had needed.

The shrine maiden beckoned to Jazgul, who came to her happily. There were no visitors today. For some days now the shrine maiden had been sick in bed, unable to entertain Jazgul.

Now she felt she had to make up for it.

She smiled at Jazgul as the girl approached her. She slid off the bed and brought her a few items from one side of the room. They included some pigment. The shrine maiden dipped her finger in the red stuff and daubed it on Jazgul's forehead, fringing the tattoo on her face to emphasize it. Jazgul simply stood and let her work, clearly pleased. Perhaps it was her lack of learning, or the fact that she made no conversation, but she seemed even younger than she looked.

Once she had painted Jazgul's face, the shrine maiden took out several sheets of sheepskin paper, set up some dye, and gave Jazgul the feather of a waterfowl. "What kind of dream did you dream today?" she asked.

Jazgul began an unsteady illustration. Unable to either speak or write, these crude pictures were her only means of communication. When she was drawing, she became quite absorbed in what she was doing. But she couldn't stay in the shrine maiden's room. Indeed, it would soon be time to eat.

"Go back to your room," the shrine maiden said, collecting the paper and dye and giving them to Jazgul. The paper was too unwieldy for the girl to hold, though, and she dropped some of it. As she scrambled to pick it up, she looked up at the shrine maiden, silently begging to stay with her, but there were things even the shrine maiden could not change. She patted Jazgul's head, even more gently than usual. "You can't stay with me forever. I know you can draw pictures on your own."

Jazgul nodded, and the shrine maiden smiled. A few moments after the child left the room, the attendant with tanned skin entered. The shrine maiden called her "oracle." The word meant something very similar to "shrine maiden," and like the shrine maiden, the oracle, too, had forgotten her own name. It had been nearly twenty years now since she had taken over from the last oracle.

The shrine maiden remembered something the last oracle had said to her: that the word for "shrine maiden" was a homophone for another word, one that meant "child of the gods." It was appropriate that one called an oracle should serve the child of the gods, for was it not the duty of an oracle to hear the gods' voices?

Somewhere along the line, the "child of the gods" had become the "shrine maiden." Was it because only women had been chosen for the position? Or because only women had been left? She didn't know. She did, though, feel that it was right and proper that she herself should be "shrine maiden." She had been discovered by the previous oracle when she was very young. Indeed, she had lived in the shrine maiden's palace since before she could remember.

She'd been told she was special. Her white hair and white skin and red eyes. The lack of color in her body, they said, enabled her to hear the gods' voices more clearly. Her every movement came to be taken as prophecy, read and interpreted by the oracle. Everyone knew that the prognostications of a pale shrine maiden would come true. She was the one person even the king dared not look in the eye; she was hardly even human, but sat amidst the shadows of her palace, enthroned like a god.

A shrine maiden did not need learning. Her very being was supreme. Throughout the ages, the oracles had never given the shrine maidens anything resembling an education. Yet that was what the previous oracle had done for this shrine maiden. Perhaps she'd just been a little...different. She'd taught the shrine maiden to read and write, given her letters.

None of which changed the fact that the shrine maiden knew nothing of the wider world.

She knew the shrine maiden could no longer occupy her office once she began menstruating, but what she did not know was what would happen to her after she had been dethroned. Unable to imagine what fate might await her, she turned ten, then fifteen.

Menses arrived at a different moment from person to person, and she had heard that there had been shrine maidens in the past to whom it never came. So she didn't question her own lack of menstruation, but simply continued as shrine maiden. Yet she couldn't help noticing that there were other things about her body that set her apart. For one thing, she didn't develop as women did. Her chest never grew, though her arms and legs kept getting longer. Even someone as sheltered as she was knew about the differences between men and women. When she asked the oracle, she was told, "You are special." After that, though, she found she was given new and unfamiliar foods to eat. Her chest began to swell, but still her blood never came.

The months and years passed with her still ignorant, still not comprehending. Her fame as shrine maiden increased, and so did the number of those who sought her auguries. She was told that while divining, she could do whatever she wished but must not speak. The oracle would say everything on her behalf.

The oracle who had told her all this, done all this for her, finally met her end when the shrine maiden was twenty years old. It had simply been her time, but having never seen anyone die, the shrine maiden hadn't fully understood. The ailing old oracle had been replaced by this new one—her granddaughter. Before she passed, the old oracle told the shrine maiden why her menses had never begun, why her body didn't behave like a woman's.

The shrine maiden, she said, had been born in a small village, a rare place of lush greenery among the parched lands of Shaoh. It had been established as a haven where shrine maidens who had left their office could retire, and many of the villagers had the blood of generations of shrine maidens in their veins. Some of those maidens must have been pale as well. It was there that the current shrine maiden had been born—a man.

It had seemed ludicrous when the oracle had revealed the truth. Like a bad joke. But the oracle just kept talking in her withered, crackly voice. She said the king at that time was a bad king. Shaoh flourished as a crossroads of trade, but he had outrageous ideas about making war on other lands. His advisers tried to talk him out of them, but he was young and headstrong and would not listen.

The shrine maiden was the other pillar, the one who could check the king. But the shrine maiden at that time had lacked the necessary force of will, and at her age she seemed soon to retire anyway. If a new shrine maiden arose, she might be able to stand against the king. Especially if she were that most sacred thing, a pale maiden.

So the oracle used the shrine maiden to cut the foolish king off at the knees. She made the shrine maiden not a man. He was castrated at the same time as the male goat kids.

Now a woman, the shrine maiden was presented to the king. It seemed she cried at the unaccustomed surroundings—little is unusual about a squalling infant, but the oracle used the moment to pronounce the king unfit.

The revelations seemed to invalidate the shrine maiden's entire life. In the space of an instant, her twenty years in the office were made a lie. She'd always believed she was special, but now she knew she was nothing but a pawn, used to unseat the king. She wished she could upbraid the dying oracle, vent her fury and shame. The shrine maiden, however, had been so sheltered from the world that she didn't even know what words to use at a moment like that. What good would it have done her, anyway? Even the modest knowledge she had, the oracle had given her in an attempt to salve her own conscience.

Upon the death of the previous oracle, the shrine maiden had gone to live near the village where she'd been born on the pretext of "recovering." The now-deceased oracle had been brilliant in her own way. She'd used her puppet, the shrine maiden, to the fullest and stabilized the nation's politics. Her granddaughter, now the oracle herself, was almost as capable as her grandmother, but she lacked experience. Perhaps it would be fair to say that they had fled until she gained the necessary insight.

There was an unspoken understanding that upon the accession of a new oracle, the shrine maiden would change as well. Several young ladies of excellent background had been sent to the shrine maiden to become apprentices, and she educated them, just as the oracle had done for her. Perhaps she was simply trying to atone for deceiving them, but at least it served to broaden their future prospects.

She knew she could have handed the shrine maiden's seat over to one of them at any time, yet she couldn't help but cling to the office. She had, after all, been created to be shrine maiden. She didn't even have a name to call her own.

Aylin was friendly toward her, but many of the young women saw the shrine maiden as nothing but an obstacle. Ayla was among her enemies—she looked like Aylin's twin, yet the two women could hardly have been more different. About the time the shrine maiden knew she couldn't pretend to be recuperating forever, a messenger came from her village. A child had been born. It was brought to her wrapped in white swaddling clothes, its skin pale enough to see the blood vessels beneath.

"Honored shrine maiden," said a familiar voice, startling her out of her reverie. The oracle was standing before her. The shrine maiden must have been completely lost in her reminiscences. "Are you quite sure about this?" the oracle asked. In front of the shrine maiden was a bowl of rice gruel. Ah, yes. She'd been about to eat.

"It will raise suspicions if I delay any longer," the shrine maiden said brusquely.

The oracle said nothing, but her expression darkened. How could she make that face when she knew everything? She clenched her fists and looked at the ground, refusing to meet the shrine maiden's eyes.

"I'll take my meal alone. You go wait elsewhere." The shrine maiden smiled. She had to smile. "I know I can trust you with all that comes after."

She was about to bring the spoon to her lips when she became aware of a commotion outside. Frowning, she and the oracle looked at each other—and then the door burst open.

Please excuse me! cried a diminutive woman in the Li language. Quite a request for someone bursting into a dignitary's room. The shrine maiden knew her, though—she was one of the medical assistants, the one who'd examined her before. But she wasn't supposed to be here today.

"H-How dare you be so rude!" the oracle said, attempting to block her way, but the young lady darted around her and made her way over to the shrine maiden. What had happened to the guards?!

"Rude, not me. This. My job!" She spoke haltingly in Shaohnese. She took advantage of the shrine maiden's astonishment to snatch the spoon from her. She stuck it into her own mouth and swallowed. The shrine maiden and the oracle both went white, but the court lady only smiled—in fact, she closed her eyes in bliss. Still grinning, she looked at the shrine

maiden. "Very tasty. Mushroom congee." She looked downright triumphant.

Chapter 21: The Shrine Maiden's Confession

Maomao took another spoonful before the shrine maiden's attendant grabbed the congee away. "Wh-What do you think you

are doing?!" she demanded.

"Simple. I'm tasting for poison," Maomao replied, switching back to her own language. The attendant had done it first— clearly, Maomao's Shaohnese wasn't up to snuff. Frankly, she was glad to be conducting this conversation in her native tongue. "Give me that congee, please. I'm not done checking it. Or do you intend to let the honored shrine maiden eat the rest?"

The attendant stayed silent, which Maomao took as grounds to continue.

"I must say I'm impressed, even though I probably shouldn't be. The way you got your hands on that poison without leaving a trace."

"You have no proof!" The attendant scowled, but only for a second; she promptly regained her unflappable demeanor. Naturally—anyone who could be involved in such a far-reaching plot would have to be a good actor. The shrine maiden likewise appeared unfazed.

Makes sense, Maomao thought. She was never going to just conveniently burst out with a confession.

"If you'd be so kind as to wait a moment, then?" Maomao said. "If the congee was poisoned, I should start showing symptoms any moment now. Since I'm not sure how sudden or intense the poison's effects might be, please let me have the rest." She reached out, but the attendant made no move to give it to her. "There was only one piece of mushroom in the bite I had! That's not nearly a fatal dose! Come on, give it!"

"You cannot be serious. If you think it's poisoned, spit it out!"

"I'll do no such thing," Maomao said. She produced some notes from the folds of her robe.

"What is that?" the attendant asked.

"The notes kept by a court woman named Yao—the one who was tasting the honored shrine maiden's food for poison. She's a very diligent student, and one of the things I taught her was that if a food smelled funny, she shouldn't eat it. If Consort Aylin had poisoned the food with her incense powder, Yao would have smelled it. She may not be very experienced, but she wouldn't make such a fundamental mistake."

The notes contained several days' worth of detailed observations from before the dinner.

"She made a careful record of what the honored shrine maiden ate. For breakfast the day of the formal dinner, it seems she had a congee much like this one."

The notes read: Morning. Congee w/ mushrooms.

"I'm sure you were well aware of the effects of the poison. That you timed it so they would appear immediately after the dinner. And might I venture that you were feeling a touch of guilt? You used just such an amount that with proper care, Yao could still be saved."

Yao was in much better shape now. There was no telling if there might be lingering damage to her internal organs, but at least she was no longer in immediate danger of her life. En'en was feeling very reassured as well.

"I'm afraid you are not making any sense. The criminal has already confessed to the crime, has she not?"

"Yes, she confessed. May I assume that it was today that you received word that the culprit had been found and dealt with? That's why Her Maidenship felt confident enough to go ahead and kill herself."

Insofar as Aylin had to take the fall, the shrine maiden could only commit suicide after the consort's guilt was assured. Maybe that was why she'd chosen a poison that could reappear in a second "wave." Even better for her, if she were to die after Aylin had been confirmed as the criminal, her death would likely be covered up. Nobody wanted Li accidentally stumbling on the true culprit.

Maomao looked at the women. Calm, cold. I don't think they'd try to shut me up here and now... Lahan was waiting at the shrine maiden's villa. They'd sent a messenger for Maomao's father, and she expected them soon. It wouldn't be easy for them to shut my

mouth...but having their plans undone at this stage can't be a welcome prospect for them.

She understood. She knew that there was nothing for her to gain by doing this. The threatening tone she'd taken with them hadn't actually been about revealing their plans, but was simply an opening gambit, a way to get them to listen to her.

"Honored shrine maiden. I believe you and Consort Aylin know each other well, do you not?" Maomao said.

"Yes," replied the shrine maiden. "For once, long ago, she might have become my successor." A look of sorrow passed over her face.

I thought so.

Aylin had been trying to protect the shrine maiden. Would she have done that if the shrine maiden had really been attempting to pin the whole thing on her? Knowing the relationship between them, it seemed possible that this had been their plan ever since Aylin had arrived at the rear palace.

"This will mean the gallows for her, you know," Maomao said.

The shrine maiden flinched at that. Compared to her attendant, she left something to be desired as a performer. If Maomao was hoping to get one of them to crack, the shrine maiden seemed her best target.

"I don't know how you do things in Shaoh, but in Li, murder— even attempted murder—is punishable by death. She dedicated her life to you. Are you simply going to let them kill her?" Neither of the other women said anything.

"You are, then? Consort Aylin, the woman you educated so that she could have a future. Now you yourself are going to pluck that future away from her?"

Still Maomao got no reaction. No use. I figured. As she was trying to decide what to say next, however, the shrine maiden's head drooped where she was sitting on the bed and she let out a sort of moan.

"H-Honored shrine maiden," her attendant said.

"What was I supposed to do?" the shrine maiden said. The words carried none of the force of her office; they sounded pleading. Gossamer, as if the breeze might blow them away. When the shrine maiden began to speak again, it was in Shaohnese. Maomao struggled to keep up. From the moment I was born, my life has been twisted, and all I could do was follow the path that had been laid out for me. I had nothing, nothing but being the shrine maiden. So I thought I could at least be the shrine maiden to the bitter end.

"Honored shrine maiden!" the attendant said, shaking her, but she continued her confession in fluent Shaohnese peppered with the occasional word in the Li language. It was substantially as Maomao had guessed. The royal faction in Shaoh viewed the shrine maiden, by this time quite powerful, as an obstacle, and sought to dislodge her from her office. Perhaps she could have endured that, but they also intended to give her away in marriage once she was deposed. A touch of panic was understandable.

"I suppose that they wished to drag the shrine maiden back down to earth," she said in the Li tongue, her accent thick. "That child did hate me so. Ayla..." Ayla... Maomao thought.

The other emissary. So not everything Aylin said had been a fabrication. She'd skillfully woven in some facts as well. Perhaps Ayla's jealousy of the shrine maiden's position was what had fostered her resentment of albino people. It would explain why she had used the White Lady the way she had.

It wasn't clear if the royal faction had some sense of who the shrine maiden truly was, or if they simply hoped to degrade the sacred woman by making her a common bride after removing her from office. Either way, simply instating a new shrine maiden would dramatically reduce the power of the office.

Maomao hadn't specifically said that the shrine maiden was in fact a man, but from the context, they likely understood that she knew. Emotions were high, and perhaps it was a slip of the tongue, Maomao felt no inclination to draw attention to it.

"It was Aylin who first spoke to me of it," the shrine maiden said. Aylin and Ayla were like sisters, and Aylin had revealed that she had discovered what the other woman was thinking. Her plan to use the White Lady.

"For to her, the shrine maiden was something special," the attendant added. Aylin was well versed in Li's ways. She knew, for example, that if the shrine maiden were to die outside Shaoh's borders, her remains would be sent back to her homeland—and that burial was the custom in Li, with burning of bodies reserved for criminals. A simple cultural difference. In Shaoh, they believed that cremating the shrine maiden returned her to the sun, whence she had come.

And if all they want are some shards of bone, Aylin need only return some pieces that don't reveal the shrine maiden's gender.

The shrine maiden's death would leave Li with a debt to repay to Shaoh, even if the killer was another Shaohnese. Yet Shaoh, for its part, would be free of the troublesome shrine maiden. The king would be quite pleased with that.

"Wouldn't it all be just the same, as long as you were gone?" Maomao asked the shrine maiden.

"No," she replied. "I may go, but there will be another shrine maiden."

So that's it. Another young woman yet to reach menstruation would be found and set up as shrine maiden, and the attendant, who would return from Li, would be the power behind her.

"The next shrine maiden is far more capable than I. That is why I can surrender the office to her."

Maomao wondered what made the current shrine maiden so sure that her successor was more suited than a person of more than forty years' age and experience. She kept her doubts to herself.

"There will be no trouble without me."

This time Maomao couldn't restrain herself. "Are you really sure about that?" she asked. "That's only if everything goes the way you predict. Have you considered what might happen if His

Majesty learns of your plan and becomes angry?"

Everything the shrine maiden had spoken of so far benefited Shaoh and only Shaoh. Li, which would be left holding the bag, gained nothing. Not even with Aylin and the shrine maiden both sacrificing themselves. The shrine maiden was thinking of the good of her country—but she would achieve it at the expense of another.

"What did you intend to do if Yao died?" To that question, at

least, Maomao wanted an answer. She smacked Yao's notes. What had Yao done wrong? Could they tell her?

"W-Well... Well..."

Both other women clearly felt guilty. They had known they couldn't use too weak a poison, or it might not work. In order to make the shrine maiden's demise plausible, they had to demonstrate that there was a potent toxin involved. Yes, they had tried to attenuate it, but one wrong move could have resulted in Yao's death.

"Was your plan for Shaoh to reap all the benefit, and Li to bear all the cost? If that's the case, I will not stay silent about this," Maomao said.

"Even if I die?" the shrine maiden asked at length.

"I hate when people think everything's over just because they're dead!" It was as good as refusing to face the consequences of whatever you had done. Maomao felt better having been able to say what she had most wanted to say.

Abruptly, she found herself thinking about a cheerful young woman who had loved insects. A young woman who had vanished into the snow and never been found. Maomao occasionally peeked into the shops, wondering if one day she might stumble upon the hair stick she'd given that girl.

"How can you be certain, honored shrine maiden, that Shaoh won't begin making demands of Li after you're gone?"

"I thought perhaps you might bend to a few of Shaoh's wishes."

"Like what? For food?"

"That would be one thing, yes. And I thought... Perhaps you might be induced to hand over the pale woman, the one I believe you're holding in custody."

"You mean...the White Lady?"

The White Lady couldn't be the shrine maiden's daughter. It wasn't possible. Come to think of it, Aylin had hinted at the same thing right from the start. So what was the relationship between the two of them? At the very least, it seemed the White Lady was likely from Shaoh, given that Ayla had been using her.

"By all rights, that girl should have been brought up as the next shrine maiden," the shrine maiden said. The White Lady had been born in the shrine maidens' village; she and the present occupant of the office had a blood connection. Even granted that albino children seemed to be born more frequently than average in that line, still something distinguished her. "If I had simply vacated my office and given it over to her, none of this would have happened. But because I felt I had to cling to my place, I sent the pale infant back to her home."

Somehow, it had led to the child traveling to another country and stirring up trouble, until she ended up treated like a common criminal.

"I was afraid that if it became known that there was another albino child to take up the shrine maiden's mantle, there would only be more strife. So I asked for her to be raised in secret. But then..."

"Then she became a pawn in someone else's game."

"Yes. Used by Ayla, who wanted to destroy me. About five years ago, I heard that the girl had been taken away." The shrine maiden gazed at the ground, deeply distraught. The child had been unable to become shrine maiden, and there had been nowhere else for her to go.

"Wow. You really caused our country nothing but trouble," Maomao said.

"Watch your mouth!" the attendant said, her composure vanishing in an instant of fury. The shrine maiden, however, restrained her. They seemed to balance each other, one growing calmer the more emotional the other got. They acted like partners who had known and worked with each other for a very long time.

"I only tell you the truth," the shrine maiden said.

"I know. But consider spending the rest of your life making amends for what you've done." It was the only thing Maomao could say, the only suggestion that had occurred to her even after a great deal of thought. If this didn't reach the shrine maiden, there would be nothing more she could do. She looked directly at the woman. "Die for me. For real this time."

Chapter 22: The Future Shrine Maiden

The bones clattered as they were placed in the ceramic jar. It could fit only a few shards, barely enough to fill both palms.

Hair white as a decorative tassel was held back with a woven blue hairband.

The nameless girl whose bones were now in the jar had surely never dreamed that she would go on to be venerated in a far country. She would never have envisioned the crowds of people attending the departure of her remains, couldn't have imagined the songs of peace and rest sung for her repose as her bones went on their way.

As she left the scene, Maomao touched the black sash she was wearing, a sign of loss—but no more than a sign.

After all that had happened, the shrine maiden died as planned. Not only Maomao, but even her father had been present to inspect the body. Had it been any other physician, Maomao had intended to have the shrine maiden take the drug that made one truly die for a brief period.

But my old man would never be fooled. She felt bad for threatening the shrine maiden, but she also knew that her father was a very soft touch where people's lives were concerned. She made him something like her coconspirator. As for the real shrine maiden...

"Is this place acceptable to you, shrine maiden?" asked Jinshi. He wasn't sure what to call her now that she was no longer in office, but settled on continuing to use her former title. Since she no longer occupied her sacred position, men like Jinshi could now approach her.

They were in a room with layers of curtains, specially prepared to shield her from the sunlight. "Yes, it's quite tranquil," she said. "I'm glad to hear that. I would be happy to change any of the furnishings if they don't meet your needs," said a handsome person in men's clothing from behind Jinshi—Ah-Duo. Her villa was fast becoming a haven for people like the shrine maiden who couldn't appear in public. The Emperor still visited Ah-Duo from time to time, for although she was no longer a consort, she was far sharper and more thoughtful than the average bumbling bureaucrat. Then again, perhaps His Majesty simply wanted a friend with whom to share a drink.

They had every reason to keep the shrine maiden in such a place. She hadn't wished to give up her office while within Shaoh's borders. Instead, she had traveled abroad to die and let her body disappear. Political asylum had been out of the question for her; her authority as shrine maiden would have plummeted. Perhaps she had sought death because she felt there was no more she could do in her position.

But that's not true.

Did she realize how valuable she could be by continuing to occupy the top of her hierarchy, even here in a foreign country? Even once she had publicly stepped off the stage? All that she knew, all the information she had gleaned over decades, was a priceless resource. Perhaps it felt to her like she was betraying the land where she had lived so many years—but she was not in a position to say so at this moment.

"You'll honor the terms of our agreement?" Jinshi said, polite but firm.

"Of course. Have you not two hostages against me?" the shrine maiden replied. She was thinking of the White Lady and Aylin, both under arrest as criminals. Considering what they had done, it would have been and would still be perfectly ordinary to behead them at any moment. "I do request your aid to Shaoh, however." An audacious thing to say.

"If what you share with us makes it worth our while." Jinshi gave her his most luminous smile. It might not work on the shrine maiden, who was in some way beyond gender, but it somehow looked blinding even in her dim chamber.

There was no foul and fair in politics, only things that ended well or not. Situations like this one were hardly uncommon.

Maomao began to follow Jinshi as he left the room, but she turned back when the shrine maiden said, "Ah, may I have a moment?" She was holding some sort of scroll. "Take this." She gave it not to Jinshi, but to Maomao, who opened it, wondering what it could be. It was a simple roll of several sheets of sheepskin parchment, each covered with crude drawings.

"A child's scribbles?" Maomao asked before she could stop herself.

"Yes," the shrine maiden said. Maomao tried to remember whether there had been any children around—and her eyes widened as she remembered. There was. One. The girl with no speech who had been with the attendant that day. Jazgul or something like that. Maomao remembered how she and her friends had sweated to find the child's guardian. I haven't seen

her around the villa, though...

Maomao looked at Jazgul's pictures, wondering what significance they held. "Hrm?" she grunted. One of the images, drawn in dyes, showed two people wearing white clothes. Young women, Maomao thought. One of them had bandages wrapped around her arm. "Is this...me?" she asked.

"It is."

If Jazgul had drawn her and Yao, Maomao supposed she was obliged to accept the picture. It was strange, though—when they'd met Jazgul, En'en had been with them. And none of them had been wearing their medical-assistant outfits. As she puzzled over this mystery, Maomao noticed some numbers on the back of the parchment. Probably a date, but written in numerals she didn't recognize.

"So...what is this?" she asked.

"Jazgul drew it before we left Shaoh."

"Before you left?" But that didn't make any sense. That would have been long before she'd met Maomao and the others. Was the shrine maiden making some kind of joke?

For once, the shrine maiden appeared amused. "Did I not tell you that when I was gone, there would be another shrine

maiden? That day, the day she got lost, Jazgul was

uncharacteristically demanding. She insisted on going out. To meet you, I'm sure."

"I... I highly doubt that." Maomao only believed things for which there was concrete evidence. The shrine maiden must be joking; she was sure of it. She rolled up the first parchment. The second sheet depicted a shining figure who looked like the shrine maiden, along with a slim figure and another scrawled illustration of Maomao. Precisely the people in this room at this moment.

Maomao didn't say anything but only gazed at the parchment. "There's one more. Study it closely when you have the time," the shrine maiden advised.

Maomao stood, almost befuddled; she didn't know what to say.

The shrine maiden continued, "I wish for you to know that I, too, had it, once upon a time. The shrine maidens of Shaoh lack something, but there is something else they possess instead. I have no color in my skin, and Jazgul has no voice. Although I am afraid my abilities vanished from the moment I learned the truth about who I was." The shrine maiden was evidently a quick learner, for she'd become much more fluent in the local language during her brief stay.

Maomao was still standing dumbstruck when Jinshi came back into the room. "What's keeping you? Let's go," he said.

"Right... Of course," Maomao said and followed after him. Jinshi gave her a curious look but went ahead. He must not have heard what the shrine maiden had said.

The shrine maiden... Who is she, really? Maomao wondered. There had to be some sort of logical explanation, but if so, Maomao didn't know what it was. She was still thinking about it as she climbed into the carriage. Maybe the pictures were a coincidence; maybe the shrine maiden was straining to make them fit the circumstances.

Sitting in the carriage, Maomao turned to the final sheet of parchment, but it was as perplexing as the rest.

"What's that supposed to be?" Jinshi asked.

"Beats me," she said.

The "picture" consisted only of a line across the page, the space above which had been scribbled black.

Epilogue

The cicadas had fallen quiet, replaced by crickets. Maybe they're playing cricket sumo in town, Maomao thought. It was a simple entertainment in which the bugs were made to fight each other. As with cockfighting, betting was common. At the moment, however, Maomao was in a room in a house on the outskirts of the capital, somewhat removed from the bustle at the heart of the city. She was looking at Yao, who was lying on a bed. This was her house.

"I'd really like to get back to work as soon as I can," Yao said, gazing outside. She was wearing nightclothes. It had been more than two weeks since the poisoning. She'd been in and out of consciousness for a while, but now she seemed to have recovered.

"I'm sure that would make En'en very happy," Maomao said. En'en was working at that moment—not for Jinshi anymore; she'd returned to the medical office. Maomao suspected, though, that she still wasn't focusing very well. She'd nominally been dismissed from Jinshi's service for failure to attend to her duties. She'd spent all her time at Yao's side instead, but Maomao gathered that Yao had finally chased her out.

"I really thought I could get along without her," Yao said, more to herself than to Maomao.

"I don't think anyone could have prevented what happened," Maomao said.

"Not even you, Maomao?"

She went quiet at that. She had a habit of putting any interesting-looking poisonous objects into her mouth, and yes, she'd experienced Amanita virosa before, although she'd thrown it up before it had been absorbed by her digestive tract.

(Incidentally, she'd done the same after sampling the mushroom congee in the shrine maiden's chambers, duly putting a finger down her throat before she could digest what she'd eaten. She must not have gotten quite all of it, for she'd had a mild case of vomiting later.)

The old lady sure went nuts on me that time. The madam had been merciless, drawing on all her experience helping the courtesans with abortions. Maomao had thought she might cough up her own stomach. So yes, she was familiar with the flavor and culinary qualities of mushrooms. She might even have noticed the poisonous fungus, if it hadn't been too finely chopped.

"I guess I really just don't know what I'm doing yet," Yao said, brushing aside her bangs. She'd lost a great deal of weight on account of the poison, but her chest was still plenty healthy.

Maomao passed her some of the medicinal tea her old man had given her. Now that Yao was out of the woods, she was being treated at her own home—but Maomao looked around that home with some surprise. It was a gorgeous house, true enough, but it felt lonely somehow. Even the servants who had come to greet her had seemed few in number considering the size of the mansion.

"I'm sorry I couldn't show you more hospitality," Yao said.

This was probably where Maomao was supposed to say something like "Oh, not at all," but she never had been good at social niceties.

"This used to be our second home," Yao went on. "But my uncle took the main house out from under us."

"I see," Maomao said. So that was why she was living somewhere so out of the way. Maomao had known Yao came from a good family, but now she thought she had some sense of why the young woman showed such ambition, such a desire to become a medical assistant.

"I tried to give En'en a push, but she came back. I don't think she can hope to get anywhere in the world serving me."

Yao's father was dead, and although she had an inheritance, her uncle was the successor to the headship of the family. In Li, it was expected that women would obey men. Now that he was head of the house, Yao's future lay in her uncle's hands. If he made a marriage match for her, she would be obliged to accept it.

Which explains why she's so eager to learn a trade. It was one way for the self-possessed young woman to resist her destiny. "Such a shame En'en threw it away. I gather the Moon Prince was quite fond of her."

"Yes, so it seems."

Maomao thought she had at least some sense of what Jinshi had liked about En'en. He could be a distinctly strange person (not that she was one to talk), and he seemed more comfortable with people who had only exactly as much to do with him as necessary, rather than fawning or becoming overly involved. Maomao was a little worried about what Jinshi might decide to do next, but she figured they were safe for a while.

"I was so sure En'en would do an excellent job no matter where she went," Yao said.

"One might say her true value only reveals itself when she's with you, Yao," Maomao replied. Indeed, sometimes it revealed itself a little too much. It could be scary. Especially when it came to Yao's chest—there was no denying that En'en had supplied all the necessary nutrients at every turn.

I definitely need a chart of what she's been feeding her, thought Maomao. She unconsciously began to flex her fingers.

"Yes... That was exactly why I wanted to give her a chance to get away. But I see now it's hopeless. Not just for me—if En'en really needs me that much, who am I to turn her down?"

Maomao suspected these sentimental turns were one of the things that drew En'en to Yao. She would quite enjoy discovering how En'en might react should Yao ever go to be someone's wife.

"Hopeless," Yao repeated fondly. Then she looked at Maomao. "And I think you've been doing some work that you haven't been telling us about."

"Whatever do you mean?" Maomao said. She did feel guilty trying to play dumb. True, Yao had survived her poisoning, but Maomao had specifically allowed the criminal who had done it to live. Meanwhile, publicly, Yao was believed to have failed as a food taster and to have been indirectly responsible for the death of a very important person, a stain on her reputation she would have to live with.

And she gets nothing out of it.

"They're treating me too well," Yao said. "I screwed up, I made a mess of everything, and still they're being decent to me, allowing me to continue to work. I'm not such a child as to think the world is that kind to people." Maomao caught her breath.

"No, you don't have to say anything. Pretend I'm talking to myself. You can just sip your tea and stare off into the distance." She went on, the words coming easily. "I do believe those around me are kind enough not to simply dispose of me—but it also shows that they don't believe I'm on their level. I know it might not be wise to say that out loud, and maybe the fact that I am is just more proof that I still have a lot of growing up to do, but I need to get it off my chest. Yes... Even if I'm just saying it to myself."

In other words, she understood, even if only dimly, that the case had not ended in the way the public had been told. No doubt Yao wasn't the only one who had her suspicions—but pretending nothing had happened was the smartest thing to do, and everyone was keeping their mouths shut.

"If En'en found out, though, I don't know what she might do. I can accept it, but she might not listen to me. So I just hope you'll be careful that she never learns the truth." En'en might indeed question what had happened with the shrine maiden. If she ever discovered who the true perpetrator of the poisoning was, and that they were still alive, she might decide to take revenge in Yao's place. "I would hate for En'en to do something rash, something that might stop her from finding a better place in the world. That's all."

See? Sentimental.

Those above them had determined that this matter was closed, so in Maomao's mind it was over. She wouldn't want to stir the pot. "I'm afraid my ears aren't very good, so I didn't hear most of what you were saying. Yes?"

"My, it must be difficult to have such poor hearing," Yao replied, a touch teasingly. She informed Maomao that she would return to her duties in a few days.

Maomao left the mansion. She had the day off, so there was no carriage waiting for her. The walk home was a bit of a long one, but she would make it. Children ran around, carrying little cages with bugs in them. The festival atmosphere had subsided, replaced by a comfortable laziness. For the townspeople, the death of the foreign shrine maiden was but a passing concern. The last energy of the festival would soon be overtaken once more by the rhythms of daily life.

Maomao took a sniff of the air. It was turning cold. She set off for home.