Chapter 12: Bad Cooking

A few meager snowflakes drifted from a leaden sky.

"I thought it was getting colder. Look—it's snowing," said Yao, breathing on fingers red from doing the laundry. If En'en had seen her hands in that state, she would have been ready with the bandages in no time flat.

"And to think, it was clear last night," Maomao said. She thought back to how lovely the stars had looked in the sky. In winter, chill and clarity were intertwined. Her old man had told her it was because without any clouds in the sky, the heat the air accumulated during the day quickly escaped. "The garden party's going to be rough going if it doesn't warm up a little."

"Yeah." They both acted like it didn't concern them. They picked up the bucket of washing and headed back to the medical office. Today was, in fact, the very day of the garden party—and sadly, it indeed didn't involve Maomao this year. Several of the physicians had been assigned to attend at the banquet, but that was all.

"Hey, do you see that? Looks like quite a crowd," Yao said.

They could see a stream of people, soldiers and bureaucrats alike —many more bureaucrats than one ordinarily saw in this part of the palace.

Maomao clapped her hands when she realized they all appeared to be heading for the toilets. "They must be attending the garden party. They're all taking advantage of one last chance to do their business before the banquet starts. You can't leave during the meal."

"Don't you think we're a little far from the party, though?"

"Only the bigwigs get to use the closest place." Maomao knew because she'd experienced it herself a couple of years earlier. Not having a readily accessible toilet had been a real trial.

"Including His Majesty?"

"I'm pretty sure they build a new one specifically for His

Majesty's use." You couldn't have the Emperor doing his business in any old restroom where who knew who had done who knew what. That was both the privilege and the curse of standing at the top of the nation's hierarchy.

Yao abruptly halted.

"Something wrong?" Maomao asked.

"Maomao... Let's not go this way," Yao said, grabbing Maomao's hand.

"It's the fastest route, though."

"There's someone I don't want to see over there."

She sent off in a new direction, away from the milling officials. So there was someone among the soldiers and secretaries trooping to the toilets that she wanted to avoid. Maomao certainly sympathized with the desire not to run into a particular person.

I wonder who it could be, though. Who might Yao know among the officialdom? Her uncle—her current guardian— perhaps. Or maybe it was one of the potential prospects her uncle had tried to set her up with. Knowing the answer wouldn't have done Maomao any specific good, so she obediently followed Yao away.

No sooner had they gotten back to the medical office than

En'en homed in on Yao. "Young mistress!"

"En'en," Yao said slowly, "I'm a little cold." Her cheeks and ears were indeed red, and En'en was quick to bring a blanket and some hot ginger tea. She allowed Maomao to have what was left of the tea, but she wasn't as generous with the honey as she had been with Yao. Maomao breathed on her cup, then took a sip, feeling the warmth spread through her. The drink had a lovely aroma; En'en must have grated tangerine zest into it.

The medical office was kept warm for any injured or sick people who arrived, but that had the unfortunate side effect of making the occupants somewhat drowsy. More than once, Maomao had seen soldiers who'd ducked into the medical office to escape training on cold winter days dragged back out by their commanding officers.

The highest-ranking physicians were out today on account of the garden party, leaving only a younger doctor, who was comparatively easy on Maomao and the others. Everyone felt that with the cats away, the mice should take a little time to play.

"Ahh, that warmed me up. Let's get back to work, then," Yao said.

En'en replied, "Young mistress, you should stay here today. Let me and Maomao handle the outdoor work."

Hey, I want to be inside too, Maomao thought.

"I couldn't do that," Yao said. Then she studied En'en for a second. "I know that look. My uncle's been here, hasn't he?" So Maomao had guessed right.

"Young mistress..."

"How was it? He didn't cause too much trouble, did he?"

"N-No, mistress. He looked like he was ready to wait for you, though..."

En'en glanced back at the young doctor sitting at the desk. He stood and came over to them with a stern look. "I made sure to explain to him that this is a place for the sick and the injured, not just a waiting area. And I pointed out that if he stuck around, he would never make it to the garden party in time—that got him out of here."

"I see. Thank you very much," Yao said with a grateful dip of her head. En'en gritted her teeth and gave the doctor a jealous look.

She doesn't have to worry. He wasn't trying to impress Yao—he was hoping to get to her. Nonetheless, En'en, who lived her life for her "young mistress," seemed intent on treating every man around the young lady as if he were a caterpillar.

Maomao transferred the laundered bandages to a stewpot and got ready to boil them. She would have liked to just hang around a little while longer, but finishing the task at hand came first.

"Maomao," En'en said, and Maomao looked over at her. "I found you some kindling."

She passed Maomao a hinged board with cloth stretched over it. When opened, it revealed a man's portrait.

"He never gives up, does he?" Yao groaned, even as she went to the brazier to get a coal to start the oven. It was clear now why Yao's uncle had stopped by. The portrait was obviously of a potential suitor, but it was impossible to tell how much it had been dressed up. The guy looked like he could have been an actor.

The young doctor kept shooting looks at Maomao and Yao as if begging them to hurry up and leave. He seemed to think being alone with En'en might give him a chance to get to know her better, but Maomao highly doubted it. The other young doctors had already given up on her—and of course on Yao, whom she watched like a hawk—long ago. This guy was too thick to get it. (One might add that Maomao seemed not to have been a part of their calculations from the first.)

I wonder if he was actually able to talk to her at all when it was just the two of them, Maomao thought. It was a simple

question—but this doctor proved resolute. Even as she and Yao were leaving the office, Maomao could hear him saying, "Shall we continue our conversation, En'en? Maybe you could bring it up with Yao later too."

There was no response, but if the guy could get Yao involved somehow, En'en would put up with at least a little of his chitchat.

I'm sure she doesn't see him as anything but a conversation generator at best, though. As she headed for the oven outside, Maomao reflected anew on how formidable En'en could be.

By afternoon the bandages had been boiled and dried. Maomao walked along, rubbing her hands together, looking forward to some lunch when she got back to the medical office. The garden party must have been on recess, because she could see a crowd gathering at the toilets again.

"You don't need to use the bathroom, Yao?" she asked.

"N-No, I'm fine. What about you, Maomao?"

"I went a little while ago."

Yao looked betrayed. Maomao, seeing that the toilets looked likely to get busy, had prudently relieved herself while Yao was doing the drying. "Sure you don't want to go, Yao?" she asked again.

"Yes, I'm sure!"

The bathrooms were of course separated into men's and women's facilities, but with so many members of the opposite sex around, using them probably still required some courage. One could even see a few guys who just couldn't hold it any longer ducking into the ladies' restroom. The court ladies who were trying to use it looked positively disturbed.

"You've been to one of the garden parties, haven't you,

Maomao?"

"Did En'en tell you that?"

"Uh-huh."

Maomao reflected afresh on En'en's prowess at learning things.

"What's it like?" Yao asked.

"Cold. It's not the stuff dreams are made of, if that's what you're thinking."

The party had looked pleasant enough, but for Maomao, who had been there purely as a serving woman, it had been a battle with the cold. Especially with Princess Lingli there—she'd still been an infant at the time and couldn't be allowed to catch a chill. Maybe receiving a hair stick was sort of dreamy stuff, but Maomao was sure En'en must be keeping a close watch on them from somewhere unseen. And then there was the food. The need to check it for poison left everyone there ignorant of what the meal was really supposed to taste like. They sat sipping soup that had long since gone cold.

There's hardly even any chance to put poison in anything, Maomao thought. Poisoning food was, in fact, a risky business. If you were going to do it, you had better be ready for the consequences. Some people, though, were willing to pay the price —which was why Maomao herself had once tasted tainted soup.

Argh! I wish I could have some more of that...

"Maomao, is that, uh...a smile?" Yao asked, studying her closely.

"Oh! Pardon me." She'd found herself lost in the memory of that soup. You might assume a poison would be bitter or nauseating, but in fact many perfectly palatable things were poisonous. Like blowfish, or certain mushrooms.

As they passed the toilets, they heard a distinct "Hrgh!" of someone vomiting. They looked over and saw some men gathered around a well, rinsing their mouths out with water. Their physiques implied that they were soldiers, although they were wearing slightly nicer uniforms than usual: even the military men got dressed up for a garden party. As it happened, Maomao thought she recognized one of them.

"Do you think something's the matter?" Yao said.

"If you're curious, we could ask them."

"Huh? No, I—" Yao said, but Maomao was already heading for the well. Specifically, she was approaching one of the beefy men who looked like a big dog.

"Haven't seen you for a while, sir," she said.

"Oh! Hullo, miss," said Lihaku, looking perfectly friendly. He'd been at the garden party two years before as well; it wasn't such a surprise to see him here now.

"Is something wrong? I thought I heard vomiting."

"Ahh. Thanks for asking. It's no big deal. The food was just, uh, not quite good. Huh, guys?" Lihaku said, turning to his companions.

"Not quite good? That stuff was awful," one of them said. "And they serve that in the palace? The old bastard at the mess hall cooks better!"

"That soup! I knew it would be cold, but this was something else. There was too much of something in there, whatever it was.

You think His Majesty's was as bad as ours?"

"Naw. He got something different. No way the Emperor would eat the same stuff as us."

"Yeah, I guess not!" The soldiers started laughing.

"The food was bad?" Maomao said. She knew the kinds of things they served at these parties. It might end up cold, but the food itself should have been top quality. Unless they really did serve something so different to the officialdom. "May I ask what was served? You said this was the soup?"

If the chef served a dubious meal to the Emperor or the high officials, he might soon lose his job, or even his head. But if the foul flavor was due to something that got in without his knowing it, that would be another kind of problem.

"It was just so salty," Lihaku said. "Maybe they were going for southern-style cuisine, you know, something different. They served these patterned eggs. It sure looked good." Upon taking a bite, though, the men had discovered the eggs were desperately salty, and the soup almost nauseatingly so.

"You said the eggs were 'patterned'?" Maomao asked. Like tea eggs? Making a tea egg involved cracking the shell of a boiled egg and steeping it in tea, resulting in a spiderweb pattern on the surface. After that, you could simply eat it. Maybe they'd been served at the garden party because they looked sort of fancy.

"We managed to force them down, but we were worried the rest of the meal would taste terrible too."

"Yeah! But nobody else seemed bothered. Our commander was even smacking his lips, all 'My, that was good!' Maybe his tongue stopped working."

The soldiers had continued eating, afraid that maybe they were the ones whose sense of taste had gone haywire. When they each got here and discovered there were other people who'd thought the meal tasted funny, they realized maybe something really was wrong.

"How long has it been since you all ate the soup?" Maomao asked.

"Hmm. Maybe an hour?" Lihaku said. "I had to fight the urge to throw up the whole time. I rushed here as soon as the recess was announced." He and everyone else there had obviously been sweating.

"An hour? Hmm. You look like you're in decent health."

"What's that mean? You're not seriously thinking it might have been poisoned, are you? Hey, look at us. We're fit as fiddles!"

"It depends on the poison. Certain kinds take longer to start working than others," Yao interjected. There was a touch of real emotion in her voice, the sound of someone who knew what she was talking about from firsthand experience.

"G-Geez, don't say that. You're awfully frightening for such a pretty lady, you know that?" Lihaku said, frowning.

"If you have any further symptoms, come to the medical office," Maomao said. "I'll give you some medicine that will make you vomit your insides out."

"But I need my insides to stay inside me!"

Maomao and Yao headed back to the office, leaving the palefaced Lihaku behind them.

"What do you think's going on, Maomao?" Yao asked.

"My first thought would be that the salt clumped together. Normally it dissolves in soup, but it looks like maybe those men back there got a bit too much in their bowls." Perhaps the chef had used particularly large chunks of salt, or maybe some had been added late in the cooking process. Whatever the case, she would simply have to wait and see if they showed up at the medical office feeling worse.

"I see..." Yao didn't look completely convinced, but for the moment she decided to go with Maomao's hypothesis.

Everyone else was busy with the garden party, but for Maomao and Yao, this was a chance to go home early, and they were going to enjoy it. Today, they just had to clean up the medical office and then they were done for the day.

"Ahh, this was a nice, easy day. I only hope tomorrow will be so relaxed," the young doctor was saying to En'en. "If you've got some time after this, perhaps we might go to dinner, or—"

"You haven't written up the daily report," she replied, placing some paper firmly in front of the doctor. "Dr. Liu will be back any minute, so you'd better get writing." Then she took out an overgarment and put it on Yao. "It's cold out, young mistress. You must make sure you stay warm."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," said Yao, who also had a scarf piled around her neck.

Maomao pulled on a cotton jacket and planted herself in front of the young doctor. His name, incidentally, was Li, but as there were two other Li's in the office, calling him that wasn't very efficient. His personal name was Tianyu, not that Maomao or her companions had ever used it. "Please feel free to call me Tianyu. Don't be shy," he'd said at their first meeting—which was precisely why none of the young ladies ever had. Maomao, Yao, and En'en might each have had their own motivations for this obstinacy, but the end result was the same.

"See you tomorrow," Maomao said to Tianyu.

"See you tomorrow," Yao echoed.

"What would you like for dinner, young mistress?" said En'en.

Completely ignoring him. He must have talked her ear off today. Tianyu was waving to them as they left, but En'en didn't so much as glance at him. Meanwhile, Maomao was thinking at Yao: Say pork! Pork, pork, pork! A good, fatty food would be perfect on a cold day like this. As soon as they left the office, a cold wind began to nip at their ears.

"Let's see... I think chicken sounds nice. Something crunchy on the outside!" Yao said. Maomao's telepathy had failed to reach her. But chicken was a good consolation prize.

"All right. Then we'll need something clean and sharp to go with it," Maomao said, inserting herself into the conversation.

"Good point. I wouldn't mind some raw fish and vegetables," Yao said.

En'en looked at Maomao. With her lips she said, "Okay, then, Maomao. We don't have enough vegetables—do you think you could buy some?" But her eyes communicated: Those who don't

work, don't eat.

That was that, then. Maomao shrugged and nodded, but inside, she was trembling with fear.

Chapter 13: The Hair Stick Thief

The chicken did indeed turn out crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. Just the memory of it was enough to make Maomao salivate.

That was one delicious dinner, she thought, letting her mind wander over the previous day's meal as she did her work. She powdered some herbs in a mortar and swallowed her drool.

Maomao thought of herself as a halfway decent cook, but she had to admit she couldn't hold a candle to En'en in the kitchen. En'en had mentioned something in passing once about her older brother being a professional chef, but she was no slouch herself when it came to preparing food. The chicken skin had been grilled to perfection, hiding light-pink meat beneath. When Maomao had bitten into it, warm juices exploded in her mouth. It had been seasoned with salt and a crunchy black powder that seemed to be, of all things, pepper! En'en didn't hold back when it came to feeding Yao; Maomao had to think most of her wages went to food. And with Maomao getting in on so many of their meals recently, it couldn't be getting any cheaper.

Maomao paused. When she thought of it that way, she realized that maybe she should at least be contributing some food money. This was sure better than eating at some crappy diner somewhere; maybe she could at least cover ingredients.

"Hmm, all right," she said, nodding to herself.

Yao appeared beside her. "What are you nodding about? Dr.

Liu's been calling for you."

"Oh, I see," she said, cleaning up the mortar and herbs.

"I can do that. Just get going. What did you do, anyway?"

"Nothing yet."

Nothing at all—so far. Yao's expression suggested that the question was intended as her equivalent of a joke—if a somewhat pointed one. Maomao was substantially more experienced as an apothecary than either Yao or En'en, so she was often given assignments the other two weren't. She was frequently sent out to collect ingredients, for example. The disparity in their tasks pained Yao—hence her barbed humor.

She's really softened since we first met, though, Maomao thought. Had Yao changed, or did Maomao simply see her differently now?

She went to the room where the doctor was waiting. "You needed me, Dr. Liu?"

"Mm. Here." He handed her a letter, sealed in wax with a familiar seal.

Empress Gyokuyou...

There were probably other ways to get a letter to her, at least under normal circumstances. The fact that it was in Dr. Liu's hands implied it was something urgent.

"You're wanted at her palace immediately," he said. The letter said much the same; it contained no details.

"Very well," she said. "I'll find Luomen and—"

"No. Just you."

She didn't understand. A eunuch like her old man should have been perfectly qualified to examine the Empress. Why her alone?

"I can see you have questions—but you know who sent this letter and you know what she wants. There's nothing I can add. Don't waste time; get going." Dr. Liu seemed to have some qualms of his own, but this was the Empress they were dealing with. Even a chief physician couldn't argue with her.

"Yes, sir," Maomao said, and then, as instructed, she went.

She was taken from the medical office to Gyokuyou's palace by carriage. She wouldn't be leaving the palace grounds, but it would have been unseemly for her to simply walk between the outer and inner courts. She passed through a series of gates, and finally arrived at the Empress's pavilion.

Gyokuyou's residence in the rear palace had been perfectly sumptuous, but it was dwarfed by her current dwelling. The Empress's home must have been at least three times the size of the Precious Consort's. Maomao got out of the carriage and stood at the door, which was opened for her by a slim, pretty woman.

Haku-u, Maomao thought. They'd served together at the Jade Pavilion, if only briefly. She was one of three ladies-in-waiting who had come from Gyokuyou's hometown, a trio of sisters each separated by a year. They looked a lot like each other, so they wore differently colored accessories to help people tell them apart. The white hair tie this young woman wore reminded people that she was Haku-u, whose name meant "white feather." The others were Seki-u and Koku-u, although Maomao hadn't had much to do with any of them except the youngest, Seki-u.

"It's been a while," Haku-u said. Maomao was typically greeted by Yinghua and her companions, and she hadn't seen Haku-u or her sisters the last time she'd been here on rounds. "We've been waiting for you. Please, come this way." She took the tone one might use with a stranger. Unlike Yinghua's garrulous trio, the three sisters were more taciturn—or perhaps one might say more mature. Maomao got the message, in any case: No need for

pleasantries. Just come in.

Maomao was used to Yinghua, Guiyuan, and Ailan hovering around when she arrived, but today it was quiet. "Has something happened?" she asked. She'd been suspicious from the moment she'd been called here alone.

Haku-u only showed Maomao to the reception room and said, "Here. You can ask Her Majesty yourself." Then she left.

Maomao entered the room to find Gyokuyou sitting on a couch, Hongniang standing beside her. Maomao offered a slow, respectful bow.

"It's been quite some time," Gyokuyou said, nodding at her in return.

"Yes, ma'am. I regret that it's been so long."

In point of fact, it had only been a month or so since the medical exam; not all that long.

"Do you have any inkling as to why I summoned you?" the Empress asked. Maomao shook her head. Gyokuyou sounded more subdued than usual; the mischievous twinkle in her eye was missing.

That look on her face, Maomao thought. She remembered that look. It was the same one she'd had the very first time Maomao had seen her, confronting Consort Lihua over the mysterious illness that had threatened both their children. A look of anxiety. "Beating around the bush will serve no one. Better to explain things at once. Don't you agree, Hongniang?" Gyokuyou said, and looked at her chief lady-in-waiting.

Hongniang placed something wrapped in cloth on the table. She undid the wrapping to reveal a hair stick worked in silver with an intriguing design: a charm that resembled a lantern or a basket hung off the end. It was intricately sculpted, the work of a true master.

But there are some dark splotches, Maomao observed. Silver was quick to corrode, and the blotches made the hair stick half as lovely as it should have been. The sculpting itself was spectacular, yet when you looked at the thing as a whole, it somehow seemed lacking—mismatched or inconsistent. Like it was missing something, some crucial piece.

It's not really...nice enough for an empress to wear. Maomao gave the hair stick a quizzical look. "What's this, milady?"

"This is what I was wearing at the garden party," Gyokuyou replied.

"You were, ma'am?" Maomao furrowed her brow. Gyokuyou had been wearing this in public? That seemed unlikely. Not least because Hongniang would never have allowed it.

"I know what you're thinking. No, the Empress would never have worn it to the party had it looked like this," Hongniang interjected.

Should've figured. If even Maomao could tell that the accessory lacked something, then the far more perceptive—and far less quiescent—Hongniang would never have stayed quiet about it. Maomao wondered what outfit Gyokuyou had been wearing to complement this accessory.

"We had the craftsman make this on rather short notice, but it was a fine piece of work. It has these dark patches now, but it was flawless when we got it. And there used to be a decoration in that charm. Something about half the size of the little basket."

"A decoration?" Maomao asked. Perhaps some sort of gemstone. Certainly it would look striking there. Perhaps it would even make a tinkling sound like a bell when the Empress walked. "If I may say so, it doesn't appear to be there anymore." The mesh of the basket was fine enough that she doubted the stone had simply fallen out.

"I wore this with my first outfit at the garden party," Gyokuyou said. "I left my seat just before noon to change clothes, and that was when I discovered it was missing."

Maomao didn't say anything immediately. There hadn't been a change of clothing during the garden party at the rear palace. Regardless, there weren't that many people who could have approached the high ladies. Perhaps only their attendants.

"Might one of the ladies-in-waiting around you have had sticky fingers?" Maomao ventured. Not one of Empress Gyokuyou's own servants, of course, but perhaps one of the women who had come to serve the meal.

Gyokuyou shook her head, but it was Hongniang who spoke up. "Quite frankly, we would be less worried if it had simply been stolen. But this hair stick was among some gifts that were offered to Her Majesty today."

If they were very lucky, that meant simply that the thief had had an attack of conscience and decided to return it. But then, the thief herself would need to be quite lucky to be able to tuck the item in among tribute intended for the Empress.

Not likely, huh?

Which meant it was a threat. I can get close to you, it said. I can even sneak things into your palace.

As a consort in the rear palace, Gyokuyou had been the target of more than one attempted poisoning by other women. Now she was the mother of the Crown Prince and lived in her own palace. That should have taken her further from danger, but then this happened...

"You can come back anytime you feel like it."

It was an offer Maomao had been given more than once, an invitation to come back and work for Gyokuyou again. She realized now, belatedly, that it wasn't just personal familiarity that had moved the Empress to make the suggestion.

"Maomao... Do you think you might be able to find the culprit?" Empress Gyokuyou asked. There was a smile on her face, but it was uneasy, and her hands shook visibly.

Maomao had always taken Gyokuyou for such a carefree

person. In the rear palace, any woman who possessed His Majesty's Imperial affections was subject to brutal reprisals from her compatriots, yet Gyokuyou had never stopped smiling. She maintained a childlike curiosity about the world which, combined with her personal toughness, had made Maomao assume she would be perfectly fine without her.

But maybe I was wrong. She might be the Empress, the mother of the nation, but she was still a human being.

Maomao was in a room in the Empress's palace, looking at the hair stick. It was already late by the time they finished their conversation, so she'd been ordered to stay the night. She was told that her dormitory had been informed. Meanwhile, she was served dinner in her room.

She was still a little surprised. Her dorm was less than thirty minutes away. Staying out all night was one thing—but an outsider staying the night at the Empress's palace, that had to be a real nightmare.

I guess she won't feel safe until she finds out what's behind this hair stick. Still, had there really been no one but Maomao to whom the Empress could entrust this matter? Or was it something else?

Maomao sat down on the bed in the room that had been prepared for her and folded her arms. Splotched silver...

Silver corroded easily; it was quick to cloud up if you didn't take proper care of it. It had to be polished constantly.

Nonetheless, the nobility liked using silver tableware—or perhaps more accurately, they had to use it. For silver also fogged when exposed to arsenic. Arsenic had no flavor, no smell, not even any color, but thanks to this unique property of silver, it was easy to detect. One might say people in high places couldn't afford not to use it.

Had Empress Gyokuyou been exposed to arsenic in some way, then? No, not likely: her mood notwithstanding, she seemed in fine physical health. She showed no signs of having been poisoned. But then what had happened to the hair stick?

Maybe it corroded after it was stolen? Suppose someone had tried to poison the Empress and failed, so they'd stolen the hair stick instead to blackmail her. No, Maomao decided. Too complicated. If there was some intention here, Maomao couldn't fathom what it was. What could the thief be after?

There was something else that bothered her too: "There's no sign that it was broken open." Hongniang had said there was supposed to be a large crystal inside, but it was now nowhere to be found.

A crystal...

Maomao gave the hair stick a gentle shake. It wasn't as if she expected the stone to fall out from some hidden crack—but to her surprise, a small, white granule landed on her skirt. "What's this?" She picked it up and squinted at it. She tried sniffing it. Silently, she got some water and a hand rag, then placed the particle on her tongue. "Hey. This is—" She'd just caught the taste of it when there was a knock at the door.

"Maomao? Do you have a second?" It was Yinghua, of all people.

"Yes? What's the matter?"

Normally, Yinghua might have shown up to chat or gossip, but today she didn't look in the mood. Maomao was glad to see her, though—there was something she wanted to ask.

"A-About the hair stick..." Yinghua said. She looked uncomfortable, but for Maomao, her timing was perfect.

"The 'crystal' that was mounted in this hair stick. Is there any chance..." She thought back to something she'd made when she'd served at the Jade Pavilion. "Was it a salt crystal?"

White lumps, salty to the taste. She'd made a few of notable size while she'd been at the Jade Pavilion, and she'd given some of those that had come out best to then-Consort Gyokuyou. If you didn't know what they were made of, you'd have sworn they were real crystal. She'd kept them secret from Hongniang, so the chief lady-in-waiting didn't know about them.

Yinghua looked surprised for a second, but then she nodded.

"Very nice, Maomao. I'm impressed you figured it out."

"So I guessed right." She picked up the hair stick with the cloth and gave it a shake. "What I don't understand is, why mount a chunk of salt in a hair stick? It was only ever going to break apart and fall out." She'd warned Gyokuyou when she gave her the salt crystals that they would melt if they were kept anywhere too humid. Maomao had given the lady some charcoal to act as a desiccant—but salt was salt, no matter how pretty it looked.

"Lady Gyokuyou's just been so bored lately. She thought she could at least entertain herself at the garden party."

So Empress Gyokuyou had been the mastermind behind this.

Naturally, she hadn't told her upstanding chief lady-in-waiting.

Maomao could see why Yinghua seemed uncomfortable.

"What did she plan to do if the crystal broke during the garden party?" These were events where the women appraised each other from the hairs on their heads to the tips of their toes. Back when she had been at the rear palace, a great many middle and lower consorts had imitated whatever Gyokuyou did in an effort to earn the Emperor's interest. No doubt many still would. An empty ornament on her hair stick would be humiliating.

"That's why she planned to change clothes. She figured it would last the hour before she swapped outfits."

The hair stick's lantern shape was striking and unique; it would draw everyone's attention. They would all be asking what that stone was in the ornament. Particularly the women helping out with the banquet: it wasn't only within the rear palace that ladies sought to gain His Majesty's affections. Perhaps Gyokuyou had enjoyed baffling the people around her, knowing that they were pondering what kind of stone she had used and where she'd found it. Or perhaps she savored the thrill of not quite knowing what she would do if the "stone" broke while she was still in this distinguished and vicious company. It was very much, well, Gyokuyou-ish, Maomao had to admit—but it was also dangerous.

Could it have been the lady-in-waiting assigned to keep watch on the hair sticks who took it? Maomao asked herself. It was

certainly possible. If all the woman had done was take it, then have a change of heart or an attack of fear and return it, really, it would be a relief. But the hair stick wasn't such a simple thing to return.

"Would you mind if I asked you what the environs were like at the garden party?" Maomao said to Yinghua.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"I mean the seating arrangement, for example, and how things were behind the scenes."

"I see." Yinghua left the room and came back with paper and some writing utensils. Then she sketched a quick diagram of the banquet. "This is the center of the feast, where His Majesty was. To his left was the Lady Empress Dowager and Master Jin—I mean, the Moon Prince. Lady Gyokuyou was to his right. Master Gyokuen was a little ways away—he's still technically just a local governor, so he was given a place equivalent to a prime minister's."

A local governor—in other words, someone who ruled one of the provinces. In essence, Gyokuen was in charge of the entirety of Li's western reaches, centered around the western capital. (So, a little bit of that studying had stuck with Maomao.) The Prime Minister's seat was currently vacant; there had been some expectation that Jinshi would take it now that Shishou no longer occupied it, but he had been given a different rank.

The seating arrangement was reasonable enough, considering that one of the major objectives of this party was to give Gyokuen his name. Which, of course, would be accompanied by a promotion in prominence.

"And where did Lady Gyokuyou change clothes?"

"The banquet was close to her palace this time, so she just went there." There was a bathroom there, too, so it was easier on the ladies than before. "That made it a bit of a hike from the kitchen, though. I know the food always goes cold, but it must have been especially bad having to carry food for so many people so far."

Maomao knew that the food always cooled off during the time it took to check it for poison. She always thought it was a waste, those fine flavors disappearing with the chill.

"They put a big pot here, by the palace," Yinghua said, making a mark on her map.

Maomao studied it for a second. "Was there a guard by it?"

"I don't think so. It was probably the food for people without seats." The food for the people who needed their meals to be checked for poison would be staged elsewhere.

"And the hair stick disappeared while that pot was present?"

"Yes, that's right. Right in the middle of the meal. I was sent off to handle something, so I left Lady Gyokuyou for a little while, but when I came back everyone was all in a tizzy about the hair stick."

Ahh, so that's what's going on here. Maomao looked at the hair stick. It made sense now. She knew where the discolorations had come from.

"You look like you've got an idea, Maomao."

"Do I?"

"You totally do! What is it? Tell me!"

That was a tricky request. She couldn't prove it yet; so far, it was all assumptions. "I don't have enough information." "Sure you do! Tell me!" Yinghua pressed.

Maomao groaned, but she knew that continuing to refuse wouldn't make Yinghua any less vehement.

"All right, all right," she relented. "But I want to check one more thing first."

"What is it? I want to know what's going on! Right away!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait. I don't want to say the wrong thing and confuse the Empress."

Yinghua puffed out her cheeks, but was forced to accept that.

"Do you know who was in the palace during that time? It doesn't matter if you're not sure about everyone who was there.

Just let me know who you're aware of." "Okay, well..."

She started giving names, and Maomao wrote them all down.

It might be misleading to say she had solved the mystery, but she had a good idea where the hair stick had disappeared to.

That poses a problem of its own, though.

Between the information Yinghua had given her and Maomao's own guesses, things were pointing in a very fishy direction. She wanted to set Empress Gyokuyou's mind at ease, but she wasn't sure if she should tell her the whole truth. She worried that that might only upset her more.

How do I tell her? Maomao was just mulling over the question when there was a knock at her door. Who is it this time? She opened the door to find Haku-u. "What's the matter?" Maomao asked.

"It's a little chilly. I thought you might be cold, so I brought

you an extra blanket," Haku-u said.

"Thank you very much. I'll take it from here."

"No. Today, you're a guest." Haku-u showed herself to be every bit as diligent as she looked, coming in and making sure the blanket was arranged just so on Maomao's bed. Maomao stood by the window and watched, feeling a little funny. She glanced out between the window slats and saw it was snowing. "I guess it really is cold," she said.

Next, Haku-u added some coals to the brazier. "Would you like any incense?" she asked.

"No, thank you."

Haku-u was clearly very good at her job, but Maomao didn't feel there was any special need for her to do everything for her. As she recalled, Gyokuyou had known Haku-u since her youth in the western capital. She hadn't been here very long, but Yinghua and the other women Maomao had known since her time in the Jade Pavilion seemed to respect her.

She could've sent someone a little lower down the ladder.

"Certainly not. You're far too important a visitor. We wouldn't risk anything being done less than properly," said Haku-u. Oops. Had Maomao said that out loud? She squeezed her mouth shut to stop anything else getting out of it.

These people don't quite make sense to me, Maomao thought. Other than Seki-u, the youngest, Maomao had no real sense of what the sisters were like as people. She'd seen them teasing their little sister—but only a bit. Maomao silently watched Haku-u work for another moment, then took out the notes she'd made during her chat with Yinghua. She was glad she'd kept them close; she wouldn't have wanted Haku-u asking any questions if she'd noticed them.

Maomao resolved to go to sleep early tonight, but her heart was racing.

Sleep isn't very restorative when you have something on your mind. Maomao rubbed her tired eyes and sat up. She was glad Haku-u had brought the extra blanket; her breath fogged in the morning air and her ears were red. When she opened the window, she found snow had accumulated on the ground outside.

She shivered as she changed into her day clothes, and no sooner had she gotten dressed than she heard a voice from the hallway.

"Maomao! Let's have breakfast!" It was Yinghua, bright and early.

Maomao decided to take her up on that. Guiyuan and Ailan were at breakfast as well. Guiyuan didn't seem to have changed much, except perhaps she was a little plumper than before; she was still gentle and easygoing. Ailan appeared to have continued growing, for Maomao had to look up even higher than usual to meet her eyes. It was enough to inspire jealousy in the verticallychallenged Maomao. Still, she couldn't help smiling a little to be back among such familiar faces.

"Breakfast is extra special today," Yinghua announced. "There's dried abalone!"

"Wow!" the others chorused; even Maomao was moved to applaud. Maybe she'd swiped it from the leftover ingredients for Empress Gyokuyou's dinner last night.

The soup was simple, with good stock and only the faintest hint of salt. With the abalone in it, though, it proved highly edible. The rice was likewise the best stuff, demonstrating that when a woman became Empress, her ladies' diets benefited accordingly.

As the four of them chatted, Maomao looked around. Prompted by her restless demeanor, Guiyuan asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing really. Don't the others have breakfast, though?" She didn't see the -u siblings, or the other new ladies-in-waiting that Gyokuyou must have accumulated upon being made Empress.

"Oh! Miss Haku-u and her sisters eat in another room, and the other ladies-in-waiting don't eat in the palace at all."

"Yeah," Ailan added. "It's too bad. This would be a good chance to get to know them. They're always so serious at work."

I think it's more that you three are a bit lax... Still, that made it easy to be around them.

Yinghua and her cohort had served Gyokuyou a long time, since her days as a consort in the rear palace, but Haku-u's acquaintance with the Empress went even further back, which must have been why Guiyuan felt obliged to refer to her respectfully. Haku-u might not rank as high as Hongniang, the chief lady-in-waiting, in their eyes, but Maomao got the sense that she still stood above Yinghua and the others.

Maybe even more so than the last time I was here. Yinghua and her friends had been known to push back against other consorts' ladies-in-waiting—but really only if they spoke ill of Gyokuyou. Haku-u and her sisters were companions and colleagues, and Maomao doubted Yinghua or the other girls felt any real hostility toward them.

Speaking of Yinghua, she asked, "So, Maomao. Do you know who the culprit is yet?"

"It's a little tricky," Maomao said. A neat way to dodge the question. The other girls looked deflated.

"If you haven't figured it out yet, Maomao, you could come back here," Yinghua suggested. "We probably can't convince them to let us have you just to make medicines and stuff, but if there was some sort of reason..."

"That's right," Guiyuan added. "We've got lots more rooms than we did in the Jade Pavilion. And plenty of stoves!"

"I'll bet you could get your hands on some imported medicines here," offered Ailan.

Imported medicines! Maomao very nearly jumped at that opportunity. No! Bad Maomao!

She took a sip of her tea to calm herself. "I'm learning my craft from my father and the other doctors right now. I can't just switch jobs. Imagine what a burden it would put on the people I'm working with."

She freely admitted that the idea of serving Empress Gyokuyou had its attractions. But joining the great lady's staff would bring problems of its own.

Like that freak.

What if the monocled strategist started lurking around the Empress's palace? In his own mind, he would just be trying to see Maomao, but that wasn't what scandalized onlookers would see.

It was inconceivable that Empress Gyokuyou didn't know about the relationship between Maomao and the strategist by now, wasn't it? Specifically, that it's all a delusion on his part, and we're

complete strangers.

To be quite blunt, Maomao wondered if there hadn't been some mistake; if she wasn't the offspring of some other patron of the Verdigris House. At least, so she liked to think. Although she knew the chances were slim.

Things would have been so much easier if Gyokuyou had simply viewed Maomao as a pawn to be used, but she had genuine regard for Maomao's abilities. I can't just ignore her. Not to mention that the gazes of Yinghua, Guiyuan, and Ailan were practically burning a hole in Maomao at that moment.

She was just trying to decide how she could get out of this situation when a young woman with a red hairband came in. She looked a lot like Haku-u, but her face revealed that she was somewhat younger—about Maomao's age. She was the youngest of the three sisters, and the only one Maomao had any real acquaintance with. She used to deliver Xiaolan's letters to her.

"What's up, Seki-u?" Yinghua asked.

"Empress Gyokuyou is asking for Maomao," she answered without elaboration. Maomao finished her breakfast and picked up her bowl.

"Don't worry, I'll get it. Just leave it there," Guiyuan said, so Maomao did.

"Can't wait to hear when you'll be joining us!" Yinghua called, all three of the young women waving encouragingly. Maomao offered a bow in return, then went to see the Empress.

In Gyokuyou's room Maomao found not only Hongniang and Haku-u, but the prince and princess as well. The princess was setting a panoply of toys around the Crown Prince, who was mostly ignoring them. Maybe she thought they were playing together.

When Haku-u saw that Maomao had come, she picked up the Crown Prince. "Seki-u, the princess," she said.

"Yes, of course," Seki-u replied, taking Lingli by the hand.

"Play more!" the princess said. She must have been about three years old now, and was obviously learning to talk. She didn't seem to remember Maomao, though, studying her face as if seeing her for the first time. Maomao was a little disappointed by that, but it was what it was. She gave the princess a friendly wave.

Haku-u was about to leave with the prince in her arms when Maomao impulsively grabbed her sleeve. "What is it?" Haku-u said, her expression betraying her displeasure at this show of impropriety.

"Could you remain here?" Maomao asked.

"To what end?"

"I'd like you to hear this conversation."

Haku-u's expression didn't change, but Hongniang stepped into the hallway and waved down Ailan, who happened to be passing by. "Watch the child, please," she said, taking the prince from Haku-u and giving him to Ailan. The child burbled and pulled on Ailan's hair; she carted him off with a strained smile on her face. "Do you have something in mind, Maomao?" Empress

Gyokuyou asked. Neither she nor Hongniang said anything about Haku-u's continued presence. They figured it would be quicker simply to forge ahead with the discussion.

"This," she said, and held out the Empress's hair stick.

"You've figured out who was behind its disappearance?" Gyokuyou asked.

"I'm afraid not, ma'am. But I believe I can explain why it became blemished and why the stone inside disappeared."

"You mean it?"

"Yes, ma'am." Maomao took out the diagram Yinghua had drawn the night before. "You retired to your palace to change outfits, correct? And it was while you were doing so that you realized that the hair stick was missing."

"That's right. Unfortunately, there was no time to look for it. I had to get changed."

I thought so. The commotion hadn't occurred at the time the hair stick disappeared.

"Did you think perhaps you had simply dropped it, rather than that it had been stolen?"

"Yes, I was in such a hurry. A branch brushed my head as I went by. I thought maybe it fell out then."

"Would that have been around here?" Maomao asked, pointing to a spot on the diagram.

"Yes, right there. There was a stand right in my way, and as I tried to go around it the branch caught me."

A platform: in other words, the stewpot, Maomao suspected.

She glanced over at Haku-u, but the other woman's expression remained unchanged. Maybe I'm wrong about this, she thought, but either way, having Haku-u there would make things quicker.

"To make a long story short, I believe the hair stick wasn't stolen—I think it simply fell," she said.

"What do you mean?" Gyokuyou asked.

"Precisely that. Milady, the cause of your distress is that you believe the hair stick was stolen, then sent back to you as a threat." The hair stick was discolored, the stone placed in it missing, as if to say: This is what I'll do to you. Any noble who saw clouded silver would immediately think of poison.

"Wouldn't you feel much better if you knew that neither of those things was intentional?"

"I suppose..."

"Furthermore, milady, am I wrong in thinking you have some idea what happened to the stone?"

Empress Gyokuyou twirled some hair around a fingertip. Her eyes brimmed with emotion.

"Get to the point, please! What happened to the stone that was in the hair stick?" Hongniang demanded, finally unable to wait any longer.

"Empress... Have you any more of those stones?" Maomao said.

"I guess I have to come clean eventually," Gyokuyou said, resigned. She stood and fetched a small box from a corner of the room. She opened it to reveal a translucent, many-faceted crystal.

"May I use this?" Maomao asked.

"You were the one who gave it to me."

Maomao picked up the stone in one hand and a carafe of water in the other. "Could somebody please get me a vessel?" Haku-u brought a bowl. Maomao put the stone in the bowl and then filled it with water.

"It's...melting?" Hongniang said.

"Perhaps you'd like to try a sip. Although I warn you, you may cringe. Because that's salt."

"Salt?!" Hongniang really hadn't known. If she had, she never would have allowed the Empress to use the faux crystal in her hair stick. "L-Lady Gyokuyou! What's going on?" she exclaimed. "H-Hee hee... Well, it was so very pretty. And nobody noticed, did they?" A mischievous smile came over the Empress's face. It suited her much better than grim anxiety.

"I never knew salt could take on such a fine form," Haku-u said, observing the dissolving crystal.

"It often doesn't. I chose the ones that had crystallized in the most appealing shapes. You put some salt in boiling water, not too much, so it can all dissolve. Then you let it cool. You have to put something small in it to form a core, and then you let everything evaporate. As you repeat the process, the crystal gradually gets bigger. I suppose the important thing to note is that silk is the ideal material for the thread from which you hang it."

"Maomao... You even made that while you were in the Jade Pavilion?" Hongniang asked.

Maomao didn't say anything. She couldn't get mad at Maomao now, could she? The statute of limitations had to be up.

"All right, so the 'stone' dissolved. It's gone," Hongniang said.

"But what about the discolored silver?"

"A great many things can cause silver to grow cloudy," Maomao said, drawing a small circle in a corner of the diagram. "Eggs, for example."

"Eggs?" The other three women looked at her, puzzled.

"That's right. You know the smell a rotten egg gives off?"

All three of them shook their heads. It was the maids who took out the garbage—they had probably never smelled the odor of rot before. Maomao decided to try a different analogy.

"How about boiled eggs? You know how those smell, yes?" "Ah, that I know," Gyokuyou said.

"It's a rather unique aroma, but there's another place you can smell the same thing—at certain hot springs."

"Oh! I know what you mean," the Empress said. She must have bathed in a hot spring before. Maybe there were one or two of them on the journey from the western capital to this city.

"Certain substances in those springs contain sulfur. So do boiled eggs—if you eat them with silverware, the utensils can become discolored."

"Yes, of course," Hongniang said, looking like she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it before. She had a good guess now why the hair stick had darkened—for she knew what had been served at the garden party.

"The hair stick dropped into a pot containing boiled eggs," Maomao said. "The salt crystal dissolved in the water, while the eggs discolored the silver."

It probably also explained why Lihaku had found the soup so unbearably salty.

"But how did the hair stick end up in the pot?" Gyokuyou wondered. "Do you suppose it simply fell in there by chance?"

"I'm afraid I don't know. It could have been coincidence, or someone could have put it in there."

"Why in the world would they do that?" Haku-u asked, squinting at Maomao.

"Suppose someone is preparing a meal when they find an ornate hair stick. Then, a lady-in-waiting appears asking if they've seen just such a hair stick anywhere. What do you think they would do?"

Would they immediately hold it up and say, "Is this what you're looking for?" Or might they try to play dumb? Or a third possibility...

"They might panic and try to hide it somewhere," Maomao said.

"You're suggesting that before they knew what they were doing, they'd thrown it into the cookpot in front of them?" Haku-u said.

"Yes," Maomao said, although she felt somewhat guilty about the vague nature of her hypothetical situation. "So the hair stick ends up in the pot, whether intentionally or accidentally. But when it's taken out, the silver is clouded and the stone is gone." Hardly a state in which it could simply be returned.

"Just a moment. If one of the servants found it—well, wouldn't it be quite difficult for them to give it back?" Hongniang asked.

"Indeed it would."

So they came to the matter of how the hair stick had made its way back to the Empress.

"I don't believe a mere servant could have hidden the hair stick among a delivery of gifts to you. They must have had help." And this was when the hair stick, which had seemed simply lost, came to look like a threat.

Maomao couldn't be sure about what had happened—but she had her suspicions. This was why she'd had Haku-u stay in the room. But although she'd been keeping a close eye on the other woman, she'd seen nothing unusual in her look or behavior. Maybe her poker face was just that good—or maybe she really didn't know.

What if one of the ladies-in-waiting, someone who served the Empress, had found the hair stick near the palace? Someone in that position could easily have tucked the hair stick into a delivery. Maomao was virtually certain that it was one of Gyokuyou's own ladies who had returned the hair stick, even though she must have known the distress it would cause to get the accessory back in such a state.

Hongniang would have reported the matter directly to Gyokuyou; she knew the Empress well enough to know that she wouldn't need to fear some arbitrary punishment. The same for

Yinghua, Guiyuan, and Ailan. The three all knew about the salt "crystal"; they would have been able to explain what had happened, and would have had no reason to hide anything.

But what about Haku-u? Given her position, one might have expected her to simply be honest and report the hair stick to Gyokuyou. She knew the Empress was gracious, that she would be unlikely to mete out harsh punishment over one ruined hair stick. There had to be some reason she had chosen not to come forward.

"It's almost as if one of the ladies-in-waiting deliberately returned the hair stick without saying anything in order to make the Empress think she was being threatened," Maomao said.

"Wh-What do you mean?" Hongniang asked, disturbed.

"Exactly what I said. Empress Gyokuyou is a kind and cheerful woman. Personally, I like her very much. But I could see someone thinking that she's too soft to survive in this den of iniquity." Maomao looked at Haku-u. She'd considered the possibility that some other palace serving woman had been involved, but when she looked at Yinghua's list of people who had been around the Empress during the garden party, she'd seen no names she didn't recognize. It had been only the "classic" four women and the trio of sisters.

"Ahh. I see what this is about," said Empress Gyokuyou, a touch of frustration in her voice. She slowly turned to Haku-u. "It was a warning to make me mind my behavior so that those around me might not take me too lightly." She'd said precisely what was on Maomao's mind. The Empress seemed to have her own idea of who the culprit was.

"You didn't do it, did you, Haku-u? And I know Seki-u wouldn't dare," Gyokuyou said. "Which leaves..."

"Koku-u," Haku-u said, no emotion in her voice as she spoke her sister's name.

"Koku-u? But why?" said Hongniang. She sounded surprised, but Gyokuyou looked as if everything made sense to her.

"I think it must have to do with the letter I received the other day," she said. "Koku-u was the one who brought it to me." "Oh!" exclaimed Haku-u.

Letter? Had someone sent the Empress something threatening? Maybe it came from a political enemy, Maomao thought. She briefly entertained the possibility that it had been Consort Lihua, who also had a young son. But she quickly thought, No, not her. Then perhaps the former heir apparent, His Majesty's younger brother Jinshi. Yeah, not likely.

But then... What about Haku-u and her sisters? No one would accuse them of being less than devoted to Empress Gyokuyou, but one thing set them apart from her longer-serving ladies.

"If I may ask a question of Lady Haku-u," Maomao said. "Did you think, perhaps, that it was Master Jinshi who had stolen and then returned the hair stick?"

After a grudging pause Haku-u said, "Well, doesn't that seem like the obvious thing?"

"Haku-u, I told you that he of all people would never do such a thing." Gyokuyou had a sad smile on her face. She knew very well that he had no interest in being part of the succession. Hongniang as well as Yinghua and the others were likewise familiar enough with Jinshi to know that he wouldn't make threats like that. Maomao was fully aware that Jinshi saw his own status as nothing more than a burden. All of which was why she'd deliberately approached Haku-u with her supposition.

"You think that the way she acts, it's only a matter of time before some unsavory person insinuates themselves with Lady Gyokuyou," Maomao said.

"I'm sorry, but yes, I do," Haku-u said, and it was hard to miss that she was looking at Maomao. Hongniang looked scandalized.

Really? That's where she's taking this? Maomao thought, a little uncomfortable.

"Lady Gyokuyou needs to realize that there are enemies all around her," Haku-u said.

"I do understand that," Gyokuyou said. "But it's no reason to show my fangs even to my friends. Say, Haku-u... Is this something you heard from your father?"

"No, ma'am. I thought of it on my own." She turned her almond-shaped eyes on the Empress. "But are you saying that even Master Gyoku-ou can be trusted?"

Gyoku-ou? That was a new name to Maomao, although she assumed he was a relative of Gyokuyou's.

"What was in that letter he sent you?" Haku-u pressed.

"I see. Koku-u must have secretly read it," Gyokuyou said. Her head drooped.

So Koku-u stole a look at...a letter? What's going on here? It was all over Maomao's head, but this Gyoku-ou was evidently someone to watch out for.

"He's my older brother. He didn't write anything out of line," said the Empress. Maomao was aware of Gyokuyou's older brother, and knew that he was in charge of the lands to the west while their father was here in the capital. The eccentric strategist's former aide, Rikuson, had been sent westward for Gyoku-ou's benefit. But it looked like there was something going on here.

"Are you so sure he's no villain?" asked Haku-u. "Surely you know who it was that continually came up with reasons not to send you new serving women as the number of your ladies-inwaiting dwindled one by one."

That startled Maomao, but Haku-u wasn't finished. "If we hadn't come, milady, you wouldn't be able to live as befits your station!" There was force in her voice, nothing like her usual detached demeanor.

Maybe I should excuse myself? Maomao thought. This had

nothing to do with her, and it might have been best for her to leave—but try as she might, she couldn't find an appropriate way to orchestrate her exit.

"If you won't tell me what's in the letter, Empress Gyokuyou, then I'll guess. Before I left the western capital myself, I learned that Master Gyoku-ou had adopted a young foreign woman. It's been over a year now—more than long enough for her to acquire the refinements expected of a well-bred young lady."

"Haku-u!"

"Lady Hongniang, I will not go about furtively, as Koku-u did. I'll speak my mind. I don't care if Master Gyoku-ou is Master's Gyokuen's son or Lady Gyokuyou's older brother; I don't trust him! He's trying to send a young woman who looks exactly like Lady Gyokuyou to the rear palace. Why? Well, imagine if she gained the affections of both His Majesty and the Crown Prince— and then something happened to our mistress."

It was pure speculation, what she had said—and yet it was by no means outside the realm of possibility.

"My father would never allow it," Gyokuyou said.

"Master Gyokuen is certainly more than intelligent enough to see through Master Gyoku-ou's feeble scheming," Haku-u said.

Hongniang looked relieved. "There's no problem, then."

"His perspicacity is the problem. Master Gyokuen will certainly back whoever he thinks will bring him the greatest benefit," Hakuu said, her voice hollow. "Just as he did when he destroyed the Yi clan."

The Yi clan!

They had formerly been one of the named clans, and had ruled over the western reaches—until they'd incurred the wrath of the empress regnant and been annihilated.

"We owe you so much, Lady Gyokuyou, and one reason we serve you here is in order to protect you. Master Gyokuen is not my—our—ruler, nor is his son." There was a fire in Haku-u's eyes as she spoke.

I wonder what she's seen in her life, Maomao thought, but she could only imagine. It wasn't her place to press or pry.

"Please, be careful of Master Gyoku-ou. I'm begging you. I'm asking you with all my heart..." Haku-u's gaze went slowly to Maomao. "...Please, surround yourself with people you trust. You never know what may happen."

Gyokuyou and Hongniang likewise looked at Maomao, who said, "Wh-Why is everyone...?" She had a bad feeling about this that wouldn't go away.

"Maomao... I do hope you'll consider it," Gyokuyou said, her eyes like a puppy's.

"You wouldn't want to see Lady Gyokuyou get poisoned, would you?" Hongniang asked with a slight smile.

"The world is a rough place, but there are people who would never betray a trust," Haku-u added. Was she in on this?

Maomao pointedly avoided all three of their gazes, but she could feel they almost had her cornered.

Chapter 14: The Go Contest (Part One)

Maomao gave the bandages a mighty thwack. The autumn breeze caught the drying white strips of cloth and they fluttered against the cloudless blue sky. The weather seemed the exact opposite of the clouds that darkened Maomao's heart.

She'd felt she couldn't simply walk away from Empress Gyokuyou's palace on a note like that. She'd been saved by a message from Dr. Liu. He could be hard on his subordinates, but he also looked out for them.

Maomao hadn't realized the Empress was so cornered—and not by some obvious political enemy, but by a member of her own family.

Her older brother...

She'd heard that the Empress was the daughter of a concubine. Gyokuen was an old man, so Gyokuyou's half-brother Gyoku-ou must have been considerably older than she was. Complicated family relations were hardly unusual among the nobility, and it seemed Gyokuyou was no exception.

I wonder what happens after this. From what Haku-u had said, Gyokuen had his own games he was playing. He would be Empress Gyokuyou's ally only so long as there was something in it for him—so what would happen if she lost the Emperor's affections? Or for that matter, what if something should happen to the Crown Prince?

Even if you're not interested in power, there are times when you need it to survive, Maomao thought. She sighed as she

plunged her hands into the freezing water. It was so cold, it felt like her fingertips were going to fall off. And the weather would only get colder, so working with water would become more unpleasant still. En'en, with her intense devotion to her young mistress, had been plying Yao with balm to keep her skin from chapping.

As she peered at the blue sky, Maomao had a thought. I wonder what that picture was about. The eerie image drawn by the little girl, Jazgul.

That reminded her that the shrine maiden from the west was still living in Li. How was she doing? Well enough, no doubt, with the former consort Ah-Duo to look after her. Yet though she had indeed once been one of the Emperor's ladies, Ah-Duo, Maomao reflected, seemed destined to take all the country's dark secrets upon herself. Her home was a haven for the surviving Shi clan children, as well as Suirei, who, though unrecognized, was the granddaughter of the former emperor and the niece of the current one. And now the shrine maiden of Shaoh, who was supposed to be dead, was there too.

Ah-Duo, the beauty in men's clothing, took all of this in her stride, but how must it appear to those around her? Well, in one sense, it didn't. All these things were done in complete secrecy, and wouldn't be discovered so easily. But there were plenty of people with sharp noses in the court. I hope none of them catch

her scent.

With that thought in her mind, Maomao poured the last of the water from the bucket into a canal.

"There isn't a full day's work to do here," Dr. Liu groaned. It was an hour when the medical office would normally have been crawling with injured soldiers, but today it was deserted.

"What can we do? Everyone's playing hooky—starting with the head honcho himself," said the young doctor, Tianyu. He wore a sarcastic smile, but he looked disappointed. In his hand he held a Go book. "But even more of the civil officials are cutting work today. I hear there were some real brawls about who would get to take today off. At least the soldiers can pretend they're going over to keep an eye on things."

Maomao knew Tianyu himself had been desperate to get the day off, but he'd ended up here at work. A minimum staff was always needed in the medical offices, so physicians found it harder than most to take vacations.

"Seeing as there's pretty much nothing to do, I could probably just go home, couldn't I?" Tianyu asked, but that sort of wheedling wouldn't fly with Dr. Liu.

"Since we've finally got some time on our hands, we should use it to mix up some medicines, replenish our supply." The elderly doctor had a nasty grin on his face; he was enjoying turning the screws.

Maomao's eyes lit up at the mention of making medicines.

"What should we make, sir?" she said.

"Er, ahem. Yes. I'm sorry to take the wind out of your sails when you've finally found some enthusiasm, but..." He held out a cloth-wrapped package. "I need you to deliver this for me." Maomao immediately scowled.

"I know that look. You're thinking, Who does this geezer think he is?"

"Perish the thought, sir," she said dutifully.

"Sir, perhaps I could make that delivery..." Tianyu ventured. "No, you couldn't."

Well. No room for argument. If this was something Maomao needed to handle personally, she feared to know what exactly it might entail.

"I want you to take it here," Dr. Liu said, taking out a map of the capital and pointing to a public square near the theater where the White Lady had performed her wonders.

"Here, sir?"

"Not your favorite place, I take it. It's obvious from the look on your face."

It certainly wasn't—because at that moment, that particular square was hosting a major event. Namely, one related to Go. It was all too easy to guess who would be there. Maomao didn't know what strings he'd had to pull to get such a prime location, and for two days, no less—this must be quite a large tournament.

"I assume Dr. Kan will be there. He wasn't assigned to it, but he volunteered to take point."

Maomao thought she could see what Dr. Liu was getting at. He tried to set up a bulwark for me.

There was no telling what the freak strategist might try, but having Maomao's old man there would help diffuse the situation. Chances were, Maomao was being sent for much the same reason.

"There are a lot of people there, which means someone is going to feel unwell, whether from playing Go or whatever. This isn't the sort of thing the medical office would usually involve itself in, but don't you agree that moments like this are the time to offer a helping hand?" Dr. Liu said, but it sounded rehearsed. She smelled Lahan, who had actually organized the tournament. He knew her old man wouldn't say no, and that he could get to Maomao by using Dr. Liu, a superior whom she couldn't refuse.

That no-good...

En'en was interested in Go, so she and Yao had taken the day off, while Maomao was stuck here.

"This is your job, now. I trust you can do it professionally," Dr. Liu pressed. All Maomao could do was nod. Nod, and ignore the fact that Tianyu was looking at her, green with envy.

She didn't have to look at the map to figure out where to go— she just had to follow the flood of people carrying Go books. Game boards were set up here, there, and everywhere in the square, attracting crowds of people of all kinds—young and old, men and women alike. A cloth had been hung, the flimsiest excuse for a wind block, and there were only wooden boxes on which to put the boards. A poor show. And holding an event like this outside so close to the end of the year—it was practically begging for people to catch cold.

Still...

With so many people around, even this paltry excuse for a venue started to look rather fine, and indeed was suffused with a surprising warmth. Main-street restaurants and drinking establishments had established outposts here in the square. Children begged their mothers to buy them treats. Hot ginger water and wine were being distributed to keep people warm, although the wine had been heated to take the alcohol out of it.

We've seen too many drunks make trouble at festivals.

It wasn't just Go-related paraphernalia, either—Shogi pieces, card games, and even Mah-jongg tiles could be seen around, perhaps at the instigation of the event organizers. There were even shops selling ornaments and personal accessories, so even people with no interest in the game of Go packed themselves into the square.

That's a very Lahan-esque idea, Maomao thought. He did love the mercantile trade. She was sure he was charging the shops for the prime location.

Maomao threaded her way through the crowd until she saw some familiar faces. "Yao! En'en!"

There they were. Yao was rubbing salve into a child's skinned knee, while En'en administered some medicinal tea to a shivering elderly person.

"Maomao? What happened to working?" Yao asked, giving her a look that made it clear she assumed Maomao had skipped out on the medical office.

"Dr. Liu sent me here on an errand. And anyway, what happened to not working?"

"Oh. It's thanks to your, uh, 'older brother,'" Yao replied. That immediately put a scowl on Maomao's face. "Dr. Kan wasn't supposed to work today, either, but he got roped in. And then your older brother said it was too much for Dr. Kan to handle alone and that he wanted us to help too."

"You should've just told him no." She felt bad for her old man, but Yao and En'en were supposed to be off today. They weren't obliged to work like the rest of the medical office. Lahan should have just hired some of the city doctors instead of making her dad and the girls do everything, anyway. And now he was using Maomao too. It was just like that skinflint. "You should send him a bill," Maomao said, suddenly of a mind to wring a few pennies out of the tousle-haired man with his round spectacles.

"Oh, I don't mind. I'm not that interested in Go," Yao said. She finished treating the child's wound and sent him on his way with a

"There we are."

"Thanks, miss!" the kid said.

Oh hoh. Maomao noticed the little smile on Yao's face as she waved goodbye to the child. The smile disappeared abruptly when Yao noticed Maomao looking at her. En'en shot Maomao a little thumbs-up as if to say: See? Isn't my mistress cute? She seemed to be enjoying herself, even if she didn't get to play Go.

"If you're on an errand, I assume you're looking for Dr. Kan?

He's over there," she said, pointing to the theater where the White Lady had held her performances. It was a large building and used to hold events frequently, but it had been shuttered for some time. "I think the original plan was to hold the entire contest in there. But...well, you see." The boards scattered around the square spoke to how many entrants there had been.

"Nice that it's such a success, I guess, but there's clearly more than the permitted number of people here," Maomao agreed. Good for them that the square had been there to spill out into, but it presented any number of problems. She assumed there would be people getting injured and feeling sick. If only they'd held the contest in a warmer season.

The elderly person En'en had been tending to seemed to be feeling better; they gave a gap-toothed grin and looked intent on going back to play more Go, so En'en placed a handkerchief around their neck. The weather was clear but dry. If someone got a parched throat and started coughing, a cold could spread like wildfire.

Maomao's father, of course, was well aware of that. People trotted back and forth among the players carrying cups and large bottles. Anytime one of the players raised their hand, someone would pour from a bottle into one of the cups and give it to them. Maomao presumed it was hot yuzu water or ginger water— something good for the throat. Blankets were being handed out to anyone who was shivering. There was even a fire for those whom even the blankets couldn't keep warm. Her old man had done everything he could.

"Say, Maomao." En'en came over and whispered in her ear. "Dr. Kan isn't the only one over there. Grand Commandant Kan is as well." Maomao didn't say anything to that, but looked at her delivery with an expression of intense disgust. En'en said, "I wish I could say I'd take it over for you, but honestly, I sort of need you to deliver it."

"Why is that?"

"Because when everything's over, En'en gets to play a game against the grand commandant," Yao said.

"That's right. It's a real honor!"

In other words, Maomao should keep her mouth shut and go see the freak strategist.

"I can't believe I get the privilege for free," En'en said.

"What do you mean, free?"

"Usually it would cost ten silver pieces, but we were told that if we helped out we could have a game for free."

I think nothing is about what it's worth, isn't it? Maomao thought. Why would anyone pay that kind of money?

"I'm not sure we could afford it on our salaries otherwise," Yao said.

Your desserts aren't a lot cheaper... The snack she ate every day to improve her beauty, health—and bust—was no cheap eat. Did she realize how much it cost each month? Someone's probably making sure she doesn't, Maomao reflected. Very in

character for En'en.

"Let's keep our thoughts to ourselves," said En'en. (This seemed to be aimed at Maomao.) "If you win three games in the square out here, you can proceed into the theater, and if you win three games in there, you earn the right to challenge the grand commandant himself."

"So it's not just pay to play? Even if you played as fast as possible, winning six games would take a while," Maomao said, giving En'en a puzzled look.

"That's right—you have to battle your way to the privilege. As far as time, the tournament goes through tomorrow. I'm not sure I could have managed to win six games, so if I can get a teaching game from him I'll consider myself very lucky."

How condescending could he get? Maomao wondered. Not to mention that tomorrow, the second day of the tournament, she herself was supposed to be off duty.

I can guarantee I'll be called in, though. With a distinct "Ugh," she made for the theater.

Chapter 15: The Go Contest (Interlude)

"There, that should do it." Maamei finished some work and stopped to stretch. The Moon Prince's office was far neater and more orderly than it had been before they'd redistributed the mountain of paperwork to the people whose actual jobs the assignments were.

Only one other person was in the office with Maamei: her younger brother, Baryou, who occupied a sectioned-off corner of the room.

"Ryou, think you'll be able to wrap things up?" She could take such an informal tone since it was just the two of them. Then again, she would have comported herself exactly the same even if the Moon Prince had been present.

"Yes, I should be able to finish the rest today," Baryou said. His face, pale as an unripe gourd, peeked over the divider. He never spoke or even showed himself except in front of those he was closest to. Now he said, "Something in here is not like the others." He passed Maamei a sheet of paper. "I think perhaps it concerns our dear Kan."

"Kan?" The surname alone wasn't enough for Maamei to follow.

"The man of La. Grand Commandant Kan."

"Ah, the eccentric strategist. Don't be coy; say what you mean."

Her brother might not be much for human company, but he had a perfectly firm grasp of who worked where and what their names were. He had a sharp mind, but a frail body and psychological constitution. Maamei was all too aware that a sound body, firm mind, and robust capability rarely met in one person. If Baryou could have been mixed together with her other younger brother, it would have been perfect.

"If it's no special hurry, let's take it to him later," she said.

"Are you quite sure?"

"I don't think it would serve any purpose even if we took it over this minute." Maamei plucked a piece of paper from the folds of her robe. On it was written Go Tournament and the details thereof.

"Ahh, that was today?" Baryou said. He had some interest in Go, but lacked the courage to go somewhere there would be so many people. Even if he'd attended the tournament, he would probably have gotten dizzy in the crowd and simply collapsed.

"He's one of the prime movers. I doubt he's doing any other work."

"You're certain it will be all right?" Baryou asked in a concerned tone as he disappeared once more behind his screen. Maamei could hear him shuffling through papers; evidently he wouldn't take this as cause to slow down.

"All right or not, he brought it on himself."

Kan Lakan, the so-called eccentric strategist, and the Moon

Prince did not seem to get along very well. Perhaps that was why Lakan had been the chief culprit among those foisting their work on this office. Pushing it right back on him had been Maamei's main job recently.

"I must say, I'm surprised," she said. "I never expected him to actually do the work we sent back his way." Yes, the bargain had been that the strategist could have his tournament venue in exchange for doing the work, but considering who they were dealing with, she'd assumed he might find some way to weasel out of it. "And here I had another plan cooked up in case he didn't play along." Her strategy to have his every meal changed to carrot congee—in other words, simple harassment—was all for nothing. It was worth noting that the intelligence regarding Lakan's distaste for carrots had come from his adopted son.

"They say he's been sleeping half as much as normal. Grand Commandant Kan, I mean," Baryou said.

"What, really? I hadn't heard that."

"Sir Lahan was here while you were out, sister. I heard him speaking quite volubly to Master Jinshi."

"Whose side do you suppose he's on?" she said before she could stop herself. Lahan had, after all, given her information as well. "I hope the commandant's health isn't in danger." It had been quite some time since they'd started sending him his work.

"I'm given to understand it's not a problem. He may sleep half as much as normal, but he was sleeping half of each day to begin with."

"Like a baby, he!"

Baryou's face appeared again, reproving her for such a disrespectful way of talking. Maamei, for her part, had two children, and would have been very happy to have a child who slept so much. Incidentally, the Moon Prince had finally gotten his own sleep up to six hours a night. It spoke to how overworked he'd been.

The desire to help his own tournament succeed had made the commandant more malleable. And he had been told that permission for such an event would certainly not be given if there were piles of work lying around. Thus, for some days now he'd been at it like a man possessed, so that the military camp was, for the moment, busier than usual. As a result, the Moon Prince was able to go home early from the office and even, wonder of wonders, take off today and tomorrow—his first vacation in months.

"I daresay it is odd, though."

"What's odd, Ryou?" Maamei straightened some papers against the desk as she spoke.

"I mean, why a Go tournament? I was under the impression

Grand Commandant Kan was more partial to Shogi."

"But he's a strong Go player as well, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is. So strong that it's said only the Sage can beat him. But still..." Baryou lapsed into thought for a moment. "At Shogi, no one at all can best him. He's a monster at the game."

"A monster?" Maamei asked. Baryou made it sound like the commandant walked another plane entirely.

"I believe the grand commandant sees a world we do not. One multifaceted and strange and full of wonders. Perhaps that's why he can't tell people apart—we're simply made of stuff too simple for him."

"You sound like you know him quite well." Maamei peeked around the barricade at her brother. He was ensconced in paperwork, which he continued to attend to even as they talked.

"The civil service is rife with such people. Those who see a world the rest of us aren't privy to. Sir Lahan might be the archetypal example. I was practically ordinary in that company."

"If you're ordinary, what in the world am I?"

"A sister, a wife, a mother. That's what you are."

"Perfectly common, wouldn't you say?"

She might be hard at work now, but she had children at home. It was all right; they were fond of their nursemaid, and had been weaned. Her husband was a soldier. At the moment, he was either hard at work himself, or sneaking a peek at the Go tournament; it wasn't clear. He was a good enough man to have granted Maamei permission to return to work, so she wouldn't press him on how he spent his days.

"The common is quite difficult... I envy you," Baryou said with a long exhalation. He took a piece of cut bamboo filled with tea and took a sip. The bamboo container was his choice; a tea cup was too likely to spill. He preferred his canteen. "That's why I don't understand."

Maamei was about to ask what it was he didn't understand, but she stopped herself.

"Why would someone who's not human have any interest in a tournament?" Baryou turned back to his work, looking for all the world like the matter genuinely made no sense to him. Maamei decided to take her cue from him and get back to what she was doing.

"I've something else to attend to, so you'll be on your own. Is that all right? If you need anything, tell the guard outside," she said.

"I know, sister. I know."

Maamei left the office, though she didn't feel quite right doing it.

It would have been nice to say that with the paperwork safely delivered to its respective departments, Maamei's work was done, but she had one more task to attend to.

She headed for the Moon Prince's personal pavilion, passing through a series of gates as she drew near the inner court. Each time she showed her permission and entered.

The comparatively sparse pavilion initially looked somewhat plain for the residence of the Emperor's younger brother, but only the finest materials had been used; any bureaucrat who thought this place was too simple as good as proclaimed himself to be a man of new riches, blind to true wealth.

The guard at the pavilion let Maamei in as soon as he saw who she was. As she entered she was greeted by a pleasant, sweet aroma. She followed it to the kitchen, where she found an older woman with some baked treats in a square container.

"Welcome," said the Moon Prince's attendant, Suiren, with a smile.

"You must pardon the intrusion," Maamei replied politely, and looked at the snacks. "These look delicious."

"I should say so. They came out well, but I've made a number already and they're not piping hot anymore. I've got some I made a few days ago as well—I was about to do a taste test to see which is the most delicious."

"I've come at an excellent time, then." Call it a perk of the job. Speaking of the job, though, Maamei mustn't forget why she was there. She supposed it would be wrong to wonder whether she could take a few treats as a little gift for her children, but at the thought of how overjoyed they would be by the snacks, her own face softened into a smile.

"Something on your mind?" Suiren asked.

"Oh, no. I was simply observing that you have some that are steamed and some that are baked."

"That's right. The steamed ones retained their shape better, but the baked treats do smell nicer." Some of the treats were golden brown; they appeared to have been put in a mooncake mold and baked.

Suiren cut one carefully with a knife and offered some to Maamei. It was full of dried fruit, but the texture was somewhat different from mooncake.

"And here's this one," Suiren said, passing her one of the steamed treats as well. This one was light and fluffy, but it came at a cost in fragrance.

"Do you suppose you could bake them, but almost as if you

were steaming them?" Maamei asked.

"I had the same thought. Yes, that would be perfect." Suiren took the treats in the square container, cut them, and gave some to Maamei.

"I think I prefer this one," the younger woman said; she could hardly keep a smile off her face. It was soft and fluffy, but it had walnuts that gave it a pleasing crunch, while the sweetness of jujubes and raisins filtered through. Maamei could smell butter in it, and there was another fragrance too.

"Now try this one; it's been sitting for three days," Suiren said, passing Maamei a piece of something else. She put it in her mouth and discovered that the flavor of the fruit had permeated the entire dough. There was a sweet sauce drizzled over the treat, perhaps to keep it from drying out, and it was thick and delicious.

"Do you think I might take some of this home to my children?" Maamei asked. Horrified, her hand flew to her mouth, but the words were out before she could stop them.

"For your children? You can't have those, I'm afraid. But take as much as you like of these." Suiren opened a drawer to reveal a whole array of different treats, each made a slightly different way. How many snacks had she made? "What you're trying now is something I'm going to serve to the little master tomorrow. But do come back another time and get more."

"Y-Yes, of course..." With a touch of disappointment, Maamei put the rest of her treat into her mouth. It looked like she'd been summoned here today purely for this taste test.

"I was at a loss as to which was best, but now I'm sure. Thank you," Suiren said.

"My pleasure. But this is all the work you needed done today?"

"It is. You should take a rest every once in a while. I know your children don't take much minding, but if they don't see you now and again they'll forget who you are!"

That stung. Maamei liked her work, but of course she adored her children.

"Is the Moon Prince here, may I ask?" she said. If he was present, she felt she should pay her respects before leaving, but Suiren shook her head.

"He's spent the entire day with the tutor, studying. Please don't disturb him. Don't worry—I know he has a busy day tomorrow. I'll make sure he goes to bed early."

"Oh. I was sure he must have gone to see the Go tournament." Maamei knew the Moon Prince was devoted to learning, though, so the revelation didn't strike her as particularly strange.

"Ah, yes, of course. He hasn't been yet. But I've something more important to ask you about. Maamei, would you consider becoming the little master's lady-in-waiting? I know what a diligent worker you must be, since he comes home early each day."

"Lady-in-waiting? I'm sorry, but I'm not so sure... I do have children to care for."

Becoming an attendant to the Moon Prince would mean spending all her time in Suiren's company—and her own mother, who had been one of the Moon Prince's nursemaid's along with Suiren, had told her enough stories about the woman to make her think twice. As things stood, Suiren treated Maamei with professional politeness, but if Maamei started working for her directly, she could turn truly fearsome.

"No? That's a shame. I'll just have to find someone else, then," Suiren said, although she didn't sound that disappointed about it. In fact, she already seemed to know who that someone else should be.

Suiren wrapped up the treats for Maamei, and the younger woman showed herself out of the pavilion. An appetizing scent wafted from the package, but it seemed somehow lacking compared to what she'd tasted a few minutes before. She puzzled over it as she looked up at the sky. "Looks like another clear day tomorrow," she said, wondering if the Go tournament had been a success. Then she looked back at the treats, and when she pictured the joy on her children's faces, she couldn't help but smile.

Chapter 16: The Go Contest (Part Two)

I want to go home, Maomao thought as she stirred a mixture of honey, ginger, and fresh-squeezed tangerine juice. She was at the same place she'd been the day before, the Go tournament, in a corner of the theater, making drinks as fast as she could.

She'd been on duty yesterday; she was supposed to be off today. What about her plans to hunker down in the dormitory and read the medical treatises Dr. Liu had lent her?

And to be here, of all places! Yao and En'en were there too; like Maomao the day before, they had been sent over by Dr. Liu, although since En'en enjoyed Go, she seemed to be having a good time. Maomao wished she could be working with the two of them, but her father had told her, "I need you over here," and assigned her to the theater. Need we mention the reason?

Maomao seethed as she remembered when she'd been dragged in here yesterday. When the old fart spotted her, he set up a ruckus, just like he always did. Let's say that it had fallen to Maomao's father to talk him down and leave it at that.

There was a panoply of Go boards set up in the theater. In the spectator seating, people who had been victorious outside faced off with each other, and those who continued to win could ascend to the stage. Only a few people had made it up there the day before, so the freak strategist's matches had been separate. More people were reaching that coveted platform today, and at that moment the freak was taking on three people at once.

One might expect that to be confusing, but it was very much in character for the strategist. He could hardly get by in day-to-day life, but he sent his opponents away from their boards one after another with their heads bowed. He would occasionally shoot little glances in Maomao's direction between moves, but she ignored him.

"Everything ready, Maomao?" asked Yao, coming over with a kettle.

"Yeah, here. I need more tangerines, though; I'm all out." She poured the honeyed drink into the kettle.

"Sure thing."

"Also..."

"Yes?"

"I'd like to sit somewhere else." She felt bad staying inside while Yao and En'en had to rush in and out constantly.

"Oh, it's okay. It's no problem." Yao pounded her bountiful chest as if to say: Just leave everything to us! "I'm more worried about our snack supply. Is it holding up?" As the girls went around to see if anyone was feeling unwell, they also handed out snacks to the participants. The entrance fee seemed to have been calculated to cover the cost.

"I'm not sure, but I expect it'll run out in a hurry," Maomao said with a look in the direction of the freak strategist. He had a mountain of mooncakes and bean buns beside him. Playing board games took a lot of brainpower, which made a person want sweets. That seemed to be one of the justifications for handing out snacks, but Maomao sensed Lahan's hand in this plan: the buns and mooncakes were both filled with sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes weren't widely available in the public markets.

This was presumably part of his plan to spread them around. They were sweet enough that by including them in a recipe, you could reduce the amount of sugar you needed, making the overall cost of ingredients cheaper.

It wasn't just the tournament participants who could enjoy the treats either—stalls had been set up to hawk them to other visitors, who could buy them if the flavor appealed to them. He had been very thorough.

"How are things outside?" Maomao asked.

"No real problems. A few fights broke out when people kept losing, and some kids have fallen down because of the crowds and hurt themselves."

"Fights?" That was to be expected. You couldn't have this many people in one place without a bit of commotion.

"It didn't get worse than a few bruises. The soldiers are all hanging around here, so they broke them up right away. I guess that sort of counts as working." Yao didn't look very impressed. She took the full kettle and said, "Sweets and tangerines, then, right?"

"Yes, please." Maomao watched her go.

"'Scuse meee! Miss? I won!" someone called from the entrance. Maomao went over to check them in, thinking to herself, They could at least hire one receptionist! As for Lahan, who had delegated all this work, he was nowhere to be seen.

Maomao collected the name tags of the new guy's defeated opponents. In this tournament, when you won, your opponent gave you a tag with their name on it. Collect three such tags, and you could enter the main tournament venue. Not all victories were equal, however. Some people simply kept working over weaker opponents. That wasn't technically against the rules; when Lahan had been asked about it, he'd said, "If they paid the entry fee, I don't care."

Doesn't really matter. If they aren't that good themselves, they'll find out in here. If you lost, you had to go back out to the square and start again. Maomao gave the newcomer a fresh tag, a drink, and a mooncake. "There's someone waiting for a game in the seats to the right. You can go ahead and start playing against them."

You didn't get to pick your opponents. The guy in front of Maomao looked less than thrilled about it, but he sucked it up and went over to the seating area. If he'd breathed one word of complaint, Maomao would have had him out of that theater on the spot: her father as well as several of the freak's people were stationed around, just to make sure the eccentric didn't get up to anything.

"Excuse me," said a man hesitantly approaching Maomao. "Do you think I could ask for more mooncakes?"

He wasn't a participant—he was the freak's minion, a man who had recently replaced Rikuson as the strategist's aide. He was of average height and build; he didn't look very soldierly. This was the same man who had been at his wits' end when the strategist had managed to poison himself with his own juice. Rikuson had been a pretty-boy but could be firm when push came to shove; this guy looked far easier to push around.

"All right," Maomao said, although her expression was one of exasperated disbelief: had he already gone through his entire supply? She brought out some buns, making it obvious what a chore it was. "Here you go."

"Er, n-no, I..." The minion appeared to be trying to come out with something very hard to say. "Perhaps...you could bring them to Master Lakan yourself?"

Maomao was absolutely silent.

One look at her inspired him to backpedal. "S-Sorry! You're obviously very busy! I'll take them myself." At least he was quick on the uptake.

"Maomao..." someone behind her said sadly. She found her father standing there. "Don't make that face."

"What face?" She brought her hands to her face and found that her temples were tense, her lips twisted back hideously. "Oh.

Sorry," she said to the subordinate.

Her father, meanwhile, looked toward the infamous old fart.

"Has Lakan been feeling unwell?" he asked.

"You can tell?" The minion looked at him. "In joyous anticipation of this tournament, he's been—very uncharacteristically, I must say; most strangely; a veritably unbelievable tale it is, yes—but Master Lakan has been working relentlessly."

Maomao was quiet. Just how little work did the bastard normally do?

"He normally arrives at the office sometime around noon, then shows himself out again before the sun sets, but recently he's been at his desk as much as anyone else—and he hasn't even been napping!"

"The boy is indeed working hard, then. He typically sleeps away half the day," Luomen remarked. So what it came down to was that the freak was finally shouldering a normal workload.

Maomao's old man continued to look fixedly in the strategist's direction. Evidently the freak was looking fatigued, not that Maomao could see it. He got so into his games of Go that it was hard to tell.

"I suppose it's back to work tomorrow, but might I ask you to be so kind as to afford him some time to sleep? When he doesn't get enough rest, his powers of judgment decline precipitously," Luomen said.

"Judgment? Doesn't he usually just flail around?" Maomao grumbled, provoking a melancholy droop of the eyebrows from her old man. He'd always had a soft spot for that freak.

"I'm going to go check on things outside, Maomao," he said.

"Got it. I'll call you if anything comes up." Or flag down the nearest soldier. Maomao assumed she and her old man were here because Lahan had calculated that they would serve as a useful bulwark against the freak strategist. The fart was behaving himself at the moment, and Luomen evidently thought it was more important to see if anyone outside was feeling poorly. "Go slow all right? There's a lot of people out there."

"I'll be fine." Easy to say—but her old man had a bad knee and walked with a cane. She munched on a mooncake and fretted about whether he would trip and fall in the crowd.

"They should've provided rice crackers too," she said. The mooncake was tasty enough, but it was too sweet. Maomao went back to mixing up honeyed drinks, still cherishing a wish for salt.

It was afternoon, and the numbers stood at: three people who had gotten sick from focusing too intensely on their games, two who had started fights over allegations of cheating, and one child who had fallen down when he bumped into a gawking bystander. The number of people in the theater waxed, waned, and waxed again. Some of them showed up two or three separate times.

"Sure he's not cheating?" Maomao hissed to Lahan after she admitted one man for the fourth time.

"Nothing of the sort," replied Lahan, who, as the organizer of all this festivity, was looking quite pleased with himself.

Because you're raking it in, I'm sure. The entry fee was a pittance, but he must have other ways of recovering his investment. Maomao scowled at the tousle-haired man with his round glasses. "And here you're making me work for free."

"No, you'll be getting compensation. I've confirmed that we're in the black." So she'd guessed right about the source of his good mood. "That man you just admitted is a professional. Winning three games against amateur opponents is the work of a moment for him. Though he's been reduced to playing in the corner of a pub to earn his drinking money."

"Hm." Maomao demonstrated the extent of her disinterest by checking their remaining stock of buns and teacups.

"You could afford to act a little more engaged in a conversation, you know. Couldn't you muster a 'Wow, really?!' or 'You know everything, don't you!'? Maybe 'That's my honored older brother for you!' Where's the love?"

"You really think you'd feel flattered if I said any of those things?"

"Point taken. I would feel thoroughly mocked."

Which, as far as Maomao was concerned, meant that it was better not to engage in fatuous flattery in the first place. "It hardly matters. I don't think you're the type to let your guard down enough for anyone to insinuate themselves with you that way."

"A most perceptive little sister, you are."

Maomao ignored him. He'd come out of his mother with his mouth open—she knew if she tried to argue, he might never shut up.

Lahan, evidently disappointed by the lack of further grist for his chatter, spread his arms and shrugged his shoulders. "His racket might be winning wagers on Go games now, but he was once an instructor of the highest degree," he said. In the past tense—as Maomao had somehow expected.

"Let me guess. Some worthless old coot made mincemeat of him and he lost his job."

"Right on the money. Evidently some bigwig who wanted to take my honored father down a peg induced the instructor to play a game against him, with the result that the man lost miserably."

"What a shame for him." It had to be demoralizing, fighting your way up so many times only to be beaten back down. If it really cost ten silver pieces to challenge the strategist, Maomao feared the man would go bankrupt.

Quite suddenly, she was struck by a bad feeling. "I don't suppose it's possible that the horde of challengers in this tournament is made up largely or entirely of people with grudges against the old fart?" That would explain the need for extensive security.

"You're half right. Someone might make a run at him at any time—that's why the guards never rest—but as long as they don't stab him straight through the heart and kill him in one blow, my honored uncle should be able to do something to save him."

"Of all the stupid, trivial reasons to summon my father!" She slammed her foot down on Lahan's toes.

"Ow! Ow ow ow ow! Stop that!"

Realizing that another injury would simply increase her workload, Maomao relented. "And what's the other half?" she asked.

Lahan held his foot gingerly and made a show of rubbing his abused toes as he said, "Only the Go Sage stands any realistic chance of victory against my father in this game. If any other player could beat him, even if they had to use this tournament to

do it, it would certainly get my father's attention."

"Get his attention. Yes."

They were dealing with a man who saw other people's faces as nothing more than Go stones. Even the thought that he might remember someone was more than enough to play upon.

"Well, that rumor took on a life of its own," Lahan said, his already narrow eyes narrowing even further behind his glasses. "Until people were telling each other that if you could defeat Kan Lakan at a game of Go, he would grant any one request you asked."

Maomao's jaw hung open and she couldn't seem to get it to shut. "I've never heard anything so absurd in my life! Who the hell got that idea? And where the hell did they get it?"

"One wonders." Lahan didn't quite meet her eyes, leaving Maomao with a near certainty that he was the source of the rumor. Given that it was his money tied up in this venture, it seemed he was prepared to do anything he could to recoup his investment.

"And just look at all the greedy schlubs who believed that story," Maomao grumbled. At just that moment, a new competitor came in.

"Is this where I check in?" the newcomer said, and their voice was like heavenly music drifting down from above.

Very silently, Maomao looked up and found a man wearing a stuffy-looking mask. The corners of his eyes were crinkled in a smile. On the reception table in front of her he'd laid his opponents' tags, proof of victory in three games. Lahan gave the man a careful look. He presumably knew who it was—and seemed to think the mask was a shame.

"Here. Your participation prize." Maomao gave him tea and a mooncake, but she couldn't shake a sense of unease. She remembered what he'd said the last time they'd spoken.

"I'll take the tea, but I'll pass on the snack. My attendant will bring some for me; just bring it by later."

"All right," Maomao said after a beat. It was all she could say, knowing whom she was speaking to. "Then please line up over there and wait for a game."

Lahan was positively beaming. If there was a pretty face around, he didn't care if it belonged to a man or a woman. "You're right. Greedy schlubs, and gullible too." He looked at her as if to say, How about that? He looked so pleased with himself, in fact, that she felt compelled to stomp on his toes again.

In his first game in the theater, the masked man, a.k.a. Jinshi, found himself matched against a plump middle-aged man, who gave his masked opponent uneasy looks throughout the game.

Jinshi won easily.

"I'd heard he wasn't bad, but it turns out he's very good," Lahan commented.

"You think?" Maomao said. She'd served Jinshi for a time, but she didn't recall him playing that much Go. He was an accomplished enough person to know the basics of the game, maybe a little better than average. "You sure that guy he was playing against didn't just suck?" Jinshi had won so handily that one could almost have suspected the middle-aged guy of getting here by foul means.

"Yes, perhaps. A lucky draw," Lahan said.

Jinshi bowed politely over the board, then headed to his next opponent.

"You're not going to punish the guy for cheating?" Maomao asked.

"If he wants to come back, he'll have to pay the entrance fee again. Why would I drive off a cash cow?"

Maomao didn't say anything to that. Lahan was hopeless.

"Oh, I'm joking," he said. "However he got here, if he coughs up the coin, he can face my father. Where's the problem?"

"I thought they had to win before you squeezed even more money out of them."

"Teaching games are a different matter from a proper match. Although it's an open question whether my father understands what it means to teach. Don't worry, I'll make sure En'en gets her game another day." Lahan was taking quick glances in the strategist's direction.

"Another day? I thought it was supposed to be later today, after this was all done."

"Yes, well. I think he might be reaching his limit. My guess is that he'll go right to sleep as soon as the tournament is over." Lahan began working his mental abacus.

Maomao's old man had said that the freak slept away half of every day, but to drop off the minute his work was done? A child could stay awake better than that. Maomao had heard about an illness that caused sufferers to fall asleep unexpectedly, but that didn't seem to be what was going on with the old fart.

Meanwhile, Lahan was muttering to himself. "If we tell those who have already paid that he'll visit another day—no, that we'll bring him to them individually—that would be a problem. There has to be some way to knock him out, then wake him up again...

No, that won't work..."

"Blinded by the gleam of money, eh?" Maomao gave him an exasperated look, then turned to watch Jinshi, who had found his next opponent. "He won't beat that one," she said: it was the pro from earlier.

She kept one eye on their match, wondering absently what had moved him to take part in this tournament. A crowd was gathering around the board; a man in a mask aroused curiosity.

Maomao knew a thing or two about Shogi, but not so much about Go, so she contented herself with doing check-in and keeping an eye out for anyone feeling poorly. I wish people would tidy up after themselves before they go, she thought, spotting crumbs on a number of the seats. She was just cleaning them up when there came a disappointed groan from the spectators surrounding Jinshi. Much of the crowd consisted of other players who had given up any hope of victory in the tournament.

Maomao went over to Lahan, who had worked his way in among them. "What happened?" she asked.

"He played a decent game, but this was just the wrong opponent. He's got him on the run now." In other words, Jinshi had lost.

"I see," Maomao said, nodding. About what she'd expected.

"No hope of an upset?"

"It's conceivable, but unlikely so long as his opponent doesn't make any serious mistakes. And I don't think this is someone who's likely to make enough of a rookie error to exploit..."

Just as Lahan said that, there was a buzz in the crowd. The mask, so out of place here, came off. Lustrous black hair danced in the air, accompanied by the wafting aroma of perfume worked into elegant robes. It was like a heavenly nymph descending from the clouds, robes fluttering... A risible analogy, but inescapable— because it was true.

Haven't seen that for a while, Maomao thought, observing a sight she'd witnessed ad nauseam in the rear palace: Jinshi at his sparkliest. There was a collective intake of breath; people wanted to gasp or exclaim, but the sounds caught in their throats. The figure before them was like a dweller in the heavenly realm, normally seen only in picture scrolls.

He was so lovely that at first glance one might have mistaken him for a woman, but the lump in his throat and his broad shoulders gave him away. There was a modicum of disappointment to be detected amidst the breathless amazement: on Jinshi's right cheek was a scar that would never fade, like a scratch on an otherwise flawless gem.

Jinshi's beauty had been exceptional even among the many and varied flowers of the rear palace. Here, it was more than enough to stun the onlookers into silence.

I'd forgotten his looks were enough to be downright hazardous to the health. When Jinshi placed a stone on the board with a firm, clear click, he looked the quintessence of a man playing Go.

The crowd reacted to each move with an appreciative "Ahh!" Maomao wasn't sure what had inspired Jinshi to take off his mask, but it clearly threw his opponent off his game. The other man had been well in control until that moment, but now his face was pale.

Had Jinshi turned the game around? Maomao wondered. No, not as such; not yet. But if it was true that Jinshi's opponent had once taught Go to the nobility, then he would know something about the inhabitants of the royal palace. Perhaps he had met Jinshi, or perhaps he simply suspected, by reputation, who the man with the scar on his right cheek was.

There's a chance for victory there.

The crowd in general didn't seem to have realized who this gorgeous character was. Rumors about the Emperor's younger brother receiving a scar on his right cheek had made the rounds of the populace, yes, but they didn't suspect that he would be here, now, playing Go.

There were a few besides Jinshi's opponent who recognized him, though, and to a person, their faces were busy changing colors, flushing or paling. But none of them could say anything; their mouths worked open and shut like fish.

As long as he doesn't make a serious mistake, huh? Maomao thought, but then Jinshi's opponent did just that.

Face bloodless and fingers slick with sweat, the man lowered his head. "I've lost," he said. He was shaking—because of the mistake, or because of the fear that he had unknowingly offended Jinshi?

I feel kind of bad for him, Maomao thought, but she could only offer him her silent sympathy.

Why had Jinshi been wearing that mask? If he wasn't going to keep it on, why not just go without it? Surely he hadn't worn it specifically so that he could reveal himself and rattle his opponent at an opportune moment?

That's a dirty trick, Maomao thought—but Jinshi had won his second game. A win was a win; he hadn't broken any rules.

Dirty his tactics may have been, but Maomao was reminded that Jinshi had always been willing to stoop to such levels. He'd milked that face of his for all it was worth in the rear palace, convincing palace ladies and eunuchs to bend over backward for him. Why should he scoff at such methods just because he had a little worldly power now?

He's really here to win, Maomao realized. Was he that desperate for a game with the freak strategist? Maomao gave him a look: he hadn't seriously bought into Lahan's rumor, had he?

She suddenly felt a shiver down her spine. She turned to discover a bestubbled old fart looking in their direction from the stage. It was the strategist.

"Step away, Maomao, if you'd be so kind. My honored father can't concentrate on his game," Lahan said.

"Sure."

"But he has learned to distinguish the Moon Prince."

"You mean he couldn't before?!"

"I guess it's the scar that gives him away."

It was some burden, not being able to tell people apart.

Maomao went back to the waiting area, cleaning implements in hand. There was another young man at the reception desk, fresh from his victories outside, so she gave him tea and a snack. He could hardly have been more than twenty years old, and the naivete was written on his face. Maomao could see him clench his fist, his eyes wide and sparkling: he clearly believed his triumph had only just begun.

I feel sorry for this guy, Maomao thought. He had no way of knowing that his next game would be against someone roughly his own age, blindingly bright, who would break him like a brittle piece of kindling and send him home with his spirit in tatters.

Chapter 17: Freak vs. Perv

This looks oddly familiar, Maomao thought as people crowded in to watch the pair on the stage: Jinshi and the man with the monocle. Between them, only a Go board.

Maomao had once faced the freak in a best-of-five contest of Shogi, which she had managed to win through sheer duplicity. But this? He's got no chance.

What did that mean? Had Jinshi really wanted nothing more than to play a game of Go against the freak? The application of a sufficient amount of silver would have solved that problem. That implied that at the very least, he wanted a proper match against Mr. Monocle, not a teaching game.

Until shortly prior, the freak had had several opponents lined up across from him, but when Jinshi appeared, they took the hint and vacated their seats.

Who knew how word had spread, but even outside the theater people were pressing forward, trying to get a look at what was going on. They probably would have liked to come inside, but several off-duty soldiers idling about had blocked the entrance, and the would-be onlookers went away glumly.

Look who's the star of the show, thought Maomao. This seemed likely to be the day's final match. Keeping one eye on the game from the safe distance of the reception desk, Maomao started counting up their supply of buns. Even if someone showed up now, they wouldn't have a game to play, so she figured it was safe to clean up. Maybe she could take the remaining treats with her for a snack at the medical office. No point letting them go to waste.

That was when she heard someone say, "Excuse me?" She looked up and found herself meeting the gaze of a woman with piercing eyes.

"I'm afraid we're done for the day," Maomao said. Maybe she hadn't technically been told that the tournament was over, but the woman didn't appear to be a participant anyway. She had someone familiar with her.

"Are you a friend of Master Basen's?" Maomao asked.

"She's my older sister," Basen said brusquely. The woman gave his head a shove.

Wow. No mercy.

Basen's forehead smacked the edge of the desk so loudly that Maomao expected to see a dent when he got up.

"I thank you for all you've done for the Emperor's younger brother, foolish though he may be," the woman said. "My name is Maamei." She smiled genially, but there was still a whiff of something predatory in the expression. She could smile all she liked, but her actions (such as smashing her brother's head into a desk) spoke louder than her words. If she was Basen's older sister, that would make her Gaoshun's daughter, and it seemed she was just as Maomao had been told—a personality as severe as her beauty.

So this is the woman who infamously dismissed her own father out of hand. She didn't remind Maomao much of either Basen or Gaoshun; perhaps she took after her mother.

"I've come to deliver something the Moon Prince left in my keeping." Maamei handed Maomao a package from which wafted a sweet aroma.

Hoh! What have we here? The nose-tickling fragrance was almost too much to resist. Even Maomao, with her distinct preference for savory treats, wished she could try a bite of whatever was in there. Jinshi had said something about snacks coming by later—so this was what he'd meant.

Maomao looked at Maamei. She was Basen's sister, and Basen himself was right there, so there was every likelihood the snacks were safe. Professionally, though, she wasn't sure she could simply let Jinshi eat them in good conscience. "May I check the contents? Just to be safe?" she asked.

It's certainly not that I just want to try some. She had no choice; she began to reach for one of the snacks.

"If you wish to check them for poison, be my guest. Lady

Suiren made them specially herself, so I can vouch for the flavor."

If they were really from Suiren, then all the more reason to

trust them. The old lady, with all her wiles, was a chef to be reckoned with.

"If I may, then." Maomao opened the package. She found palm-sized baked treats each individually wrapped in oil paper. She took one of them out. The smell only intensified as she removed the packaging. The aromas of fruit and butter were prominent.

The dough was fluffy; it seemed like it could crumble in your hand. It wasn't packed full like a mooncake—this was a snack that would sit lightly in the stomach.

"Huh!" The first bite made her blink in surprise. Maomao might have preferred savory things, but she knew her way around sweets as well. The flavor of raisins permeated the entire pillowy creation, accompanied by the pleasant crack of walnuts. But there was also another flavor, something unexpected, tucked among the rest; that was what really put this treat above and beyond.

Before she knew what she was doing, Maomao found herself reaching for another one. "No! Not for me," she told herself, shaking her head. Then to Maamei, "That's Lady Suiren's work all right. I doubt there are many chefs in the palace itself who could come up with the likes of that." Maomao had tasted food at the Verdigris House and royal consorts' tea parties, and it was fair to say her palate was somewhat jaded, but this was enough to wring praise even from her. This dessert would not have been out of place on any table in the world.

"I very much agree. I managed to wheedle a few out of her— my children were very happy indeed." Maamei smiled, and there was a hint of pride in the expression.

"They're all right, sure, but are they really that good?" Basen interjected.

"Those with uncultured taste buds should stay quiet," Maamei said.

"You do seem like you'd be the unimaginative type when it comes to flavor, Master Basen," Maomao added. Basen looked a bit put out. Maomao turned to Maamei: "You may go right ahead and take these to Master Jinshi," she said, hoping to get Maamei to do it for her so she wouldn't have to get anywhere near the freak.

Maamei, however, replied, "I couldn't. Surely they wouldn't want any unauthorized personnel going up on the stage. I think

you should take them."

"Perhaps Master Basen, then," Maomao countered. He was Jinshi's personal assistant; surely that would be okay.

"It would be my pl—" Basen began, but he was interrupted by the dull thump of his own head hitting the desk again, courtesy of Maamei. That would be two dents, then.

"You take them, if you would be so kind," Maamei reiterated.

"By special request of Master Jinshi himself."

"Very well," Maomao said finally. She took a plate and put one of the treats on it, albeit without much enthusiasm. The plate went on a tray and the tray went in her hands up to the stage. As she pressed her way through people whom she'd seen only at a distance until that moment, she found that there were two others onstage besides Jinshi and the old fart. One of them was Lahan, who unlike Maomao understood the niceties of Go. He was staring intently at the board, sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he watched.

The other man she didn't recognize. He was in late middle age and dressed sharply; his outfit suggested a member of high society, but he didn't seem like a bureaucrat. Cultured dilettante,

maybe, she thought—he exuded the aura of someone who walked

not in the ways of vulgar and worldly men.

Several off-duty soldiers surrounded the stage, acting as impromptu guards, no doubt to keep the crowd from interfering with the game. Maomao went up to one of them and told him to call Lahan over.

"What do you want?" Lahan snapped.

"I've brought snacks for Master Jinshi. Incidentally, how's the game going?" She couldn't see it very well from the reception desk—and she wouldn't have understood it if she could.

"Can't say yet. Master Jinshi's comported himself well enough; he's stuck to joseki. Since he's holding the black stones and there's no komi, I suppose he technically has the advantage. So far..."

"So far?" Maomao repeated. Lahan sounded partial to Jinshi to her ears.

"It's in the middle game that my honored father turns truly frightening. He comes at you like a storm, with plays you won't find in any joseki pattern. Komi or no, he could very well turn this game on its head."

Maomao thought she understood, if only in vague terms. The freak strategist was not the kind who got by on his profound knowledge of tactics; rather, he acted on instinct, flashes of inspiration that often, for reasons that eluded her, seemed to be exactly the right thing to do.

"Having said that," Lahan said, looking puzzled, "my father's play seems slower than usual."

"Hm," Maomao said. She didn't care. Whichever of them came out on top had nothing to do with her. It might even be more interesting if Jinshi won. Spectators were always more raucous when the underdog prevailed. It continued to bother her, however, that she still had no idea why Jinshi was even playing in this tournament.

"Who's the other guy?" Maomao asked.

"That personage is the Go Sage. His Majesty's own tutor in the game," Lahan said. Maomao recalled that he was the one person in the nation generally held to be a better Go player than the freak.

"Whatever," she said. "Just take this to Master Jinshi, all right?" She tried to shove the tray of snacks into Lahan's hands, but he refused to take them.

"You were asked to do it. Take them yourself. Put them down anywhere there's room. Just not too close to the bowls—I'd hate to see someone reach for a stone and pick up a snack. Or vice versa."

"Fine," Maomao grumbled, and ascended the stage with a studiously neutral expression. The crowd stirred at her arrival, but when they saw the tray full of treats, they decided she was just a server and of no interest. The freak alone grinned widely when he glanced in her direction; she paid as much attention to him as the spectators did to her.

Anywhere there's room, huh? she thought. Easier said than done. The stage was occupied by a Go board and two players, bowls placed by their dominant hands—the right for Jinshi, the left for the freak. The result was that both bowls were on the same side. Maybe she should put the snacks by the freak's right hand and Jinshi's left.

She found, though, that there was already a large plate heaped with buns and mooncakes. He'd even taken over what should have been the space for Jinshi's refreshments. Maomao didn't say anything. Even if she shoved the pile of snacks aside, there would be nowhere to set down these new baked goods. Left with scant choice, she put them on the other side, between the bowls. Equidistant from each of the players, in hopes that they wouldn't mistake the treats for playing pieces.

The instant she set the tray down, a hand reached out, took the snack, and in the same motion returned it to a stubbled mouth, into which the treat disappeared in an act that was as much absorption as eating.

Maomao continued to say nothing, and to feel nothing but disbelief and maybe some disgust. The freak strategist had helped himself to Jinshi's food without so much as a second thought.

He chewed, swallowed, and then licked the grease off his fingers. He followed this up with a look at Maomao like he wished he could have more, but there was nothing she could do for him.

"Maomao," Jinshi called. The strategist's face squinched into a scowl at that. Jinshi had lately, at long last, begun to call her by her name, but something felt odd about it this time. "If you would bring more snacks," he said.

"Yes, sir," she said, eventually. She planned to put everything that was left on a plate, although she had a strong suspicion they would all end up in the strategist's mouth. She'd been hoping there might be at least one left over that she could appropriate, but it seemed it was not to be. Maybe Suiren would let her in on the recipe someday. She shuffled back off the stage, wishing the game would hurry up and be over.

After the hubbub of the theater, it seemed awfully quiet outside. There was a chill in the air; the sun was on its way toward the horizon and soon it would be dark. The competitors had packed up their Go boards, and the vendors had closed up shop. Only in the theater did the fervor for the game remain, and then only in the form of Jinshi and the freak's one-on-one showdown.

Wonder if they've all been laying bets on it, Maomao thought, wishing that she could have put some small change on Jinshi—the decided dark horse—if they were.

Both siblings, Basen and Maamei, had been in the audience when she left, but when she got back she found only the younger brother. Maamei had slipped out on the grounds that her children were waiting for her.

Maomao also found Yao and En'en, who'd finished much of the cleanup and were watching the game. En'en's eyes were sparkling. Maomao had to admit that seeing so many people so involved in something that interested her so little did make her feel left out.

The audience watched with bated breath—and then a cheer went up from the crowd.

Is the game over? If it was, then she wanted to hurry up and go home. She turned toward the stage—but found the two combatants glued to the board just like before. She glanced around, then went over to Yao and En'en. "Is the game done?" she asked.

"Not yet," Yao said.

"It's not—but there might be a forfeit coming soon," En'en said. She pointed at the wall of the theater, where there was a big piece of paper with a Go board drawn on it. Beside it, Lahan wielded a brush, drawing in the stones as they were played. A nice way of making the game easy to see from a distance. Funny he never seemed so considerate in other matters.

"Let me guess. The challenger?" Maomao said.

"No... The Moon Prince looks like he might win!" En'en said with a shake of her head. She sounded spiteful about it, maybe because Jinshi had dared to pry her away from Yao. It proved that there were people in this country who despised Jinshi for entirely nonpolitical reasons. "I think Master Lakan's last move was a critical mistake." She looked like she couldn't believe it. Maomao, for her part, would endure the utterance of the loathed name.

"How so?" she asked.

"Master Lakan always chooses high-risk strategies. It's like running across a tightrope—it might be the shortest distance between two points, but if he loses, it's never by a hair. It's because his foot slipped. It's when he makes a move there's no coming back from."

"Does any of this make any sense to you, Maomao?" Yao asked.

"Not a bit," Maomao replied. Yao didn't seem much more interested in Go than she was—but she was interested in looking at Jinshi. There was a faint flush in her cheeks, but she muttered, "No, no, stay focused." For the moment, it seemed, she intended to live for her work. En'en looked at Jinshi with even more venom than before.

"Let me put it this way," she said. "Master Lakan selfdestructed."

"Ah! That makes sense," Maomao said. She could easily imagine the freak strategist doing that.

"To turn this around, he's going to have to make even riskier, more aggressive plays... But he seems to be feeling really poorly today."

Maomao paused. En'en was right: the strategist's face was pale, and he looked lethargic, maybe sleepy.

"He's been working hard for once in his life," Maomao remarked. Jinshi had, it seemed, given him a great deal to do in order to procure his tournament. "And I gather he's been sleeping a lot less than usual." Granted he normally slept more than the average person, but she remembered all the times she'd told Jinshi, pulling another all-nighter, that lack of sleep was bad for decision-making. "And he's been playing Go for two straight days." Including, at times, against three or four opponents at once. That much thinking would certainly tax a person's brain.

And there was one final factor.

"Maybe those snacks have something to do with it," Maomao said, thinking about the treats Maamei had given her. The soft, rich dough; the fragrant dried-fruit filling. They'd been delicious. But it wasn't simple culinary virtue that had enabled them to overcome even Maomao's usual aversion to sweets.

I know what the "secret ingredient" was. A little distilled alcohol.

There'd been just a hint of it amidst the smell of butter. Most of

it would have burned off in the cooking process, but some would have been absorbed by the fruit, where it would remain. It wouldn't knock the strategist out, perhaps, but he was a cheap enough date that it would make him a little tipsy.

Don't tell me, Maomao thought. Had Jinshi planned this? If he had, then Lahan's instructions not to put the snacks too close to the bowls were cast in a new light. Had he been angling to get her to put them within arm's reach of the freak? He would have known that if Maomao brought treats, the strategist would horn in on them.

Maomao put a hand to her forehead. They'd well and truly used her. True, it hadn't done her any harm, but it still pissed her off.

How'd he get Lahan on his side? Behind his luscious looks, Jinshi was starting to seem rotten to the core. To say nothing of the question of how ready Lahan was to sell out his own family members. I'd better get at least one good medicine out of this.

She couldn't help wondering why Jinshi was so desperate to win. What would have caused him to lay such elaborate plans? With the freak strategist involved, though... She suddenly got a very depressing idea.

No... But if not, why else would he drag so many people into his little scheme?

Maomao was still thinking when she heard the click of the strategist's stone on the board. I guess this game is as good as

over.

She was stewing, in a bleak mood, when someone flung open the door to the theater. Footsteps pounded as a self-importantlooking man in late middle age raced into the building, dodging past the guards who tried to stop him at the entrance. "Dr. Kan!" he shouted. "Is Dr. Kan here?!"

The yelling was indecorous, but behind the newcomer Maomao saw two faces she recognized. Or rather, one face, because it was the same face.

"I know them..." It was two of the three brothers she'd helped investigate.

Her father, who was sitting on a chair beside the stage, stood up. "What's the matter?" Leaning on his cane, he began to make his way forward. The newcomers evidently felt he wasn't moving fast enough, though, because they pushed through the crowd to meet him in the middle. Maomao wanted to go over to him, but when she saw the soldiers standing nearby, she stopped.

"This is your fault! My son... My son!"

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Luomen said. "What's happened?" True, the man was lacking one of his sons. What had happened to the third boy?

"This!" The man put something wrapped in cloth on the table— then opened it to reveal two human fingers.

The crowd started screaming. The man, meanwhile, was still yelling: "I order you to find my son! If he dies, I'll hold you responsible!"

Chapter 18: The Fingers' Owner

The enraged interloper was the father of the notorious triplets; his name was Bowen. The characters meant something like "the cultured specialist," but he was far from the calm, composed person his name suggested. His tirade was so disruptive, in fact, that the competitors were forced to abandon their game. Bowen seemed cognizant of Jinshi and the freak, but he felt his situation was more important.

"These are your son's fingers?" Luomen asked. The spectators had been sent home after all the commotion, and now only the event staff remained. Maomao couldn't imagine the freak would normally have tolerated such an interruption to his game. Maybe he really was feeling unwell. Somewhere along the line, he'd fallen asleep with his face on the board.

His aide was currently tending to him in a corner of the theater. He looked at Maomao as if begging her to come and look after the strategist in her father's place, but she gave him a glare that kept him quiet. Instead, En'en and Yao took over the strategist's care. It was arguable whether they were "involved" in the event or not, but nonetheless, there they were. Unfortunately, that meant Maomao couldn't very well slip away either.

Yao looked like she might swoon at the sight of the fingers on the table. She was getting used to dealing with injuries, but severed bits were still hard for her. Between the interruption and the condition the freak was in, the conclusion of the game seemed likely to be postponed.

"Don't worry, I recorded the state of the board," Lahan said to

Jinshi. "We'll continue when things have calmed down somewhat." Jinshi didn't look entirely comfortable with that. He'd been on the cusp of victory, even if he had been forced to exploit his looks and do every merciless thing he could to get there.

Then again, even the freak probably can't come back from a deficit like that. Lahan seemed to be angling for his "honored

father" to lose. He was the kind who would sell his blood father and grandfather, so what was one adoptive parent to him, if the price was right? Maybe I should be looking into this, Maomao thought—but no. It seemed likely to be a very long story.

She was more concerned with Bowen, who was still laying into her father; his own sons were restraining him.

"Perhaps you could explain what exactly is going on," Jinshi said. The three intruders were obviously out of place, and if Bowen was going to turn violent, he could hardly be surprised if he was held back. Jinshi was sitting at the board, brought up short by this turn of events. His game was going for naught, and he looked like he was struggling to make sense of it. "Let's hear it," he said. "You may as well have thrown a bucket of cold water on me. I assume you have a good reason?" There was an uncharacteristic tremor of anger in his voice.

Hard to blame him, after all the prep he did for this.

Despite his own fury, Bowen retained enough of his faculties not to defy Jinshi. He was struggling to speak, though, so one of his sons spoke up from behind him.

"We can't find my older brother. We can't find er ge!"

Er ge: that is, "second brother," the middle of the three sons.

He'd been the one recently accused of assaulting a young woman. Since this man spoke of the second son as his older brother, he must have been the youngest son.

"No one's seen him for three days. And then this morning, this package arrived at the house," said the other son, who by process of elimination must have been the eldest. He opened the package again. The fingers belonged to a grown man—the absent second son, if what they were suggesting was true. The oldest had a red scratch on his palm—had he been hurt?

"Let me inspect those," Luomen said.

"Who the hell are you?!" Bowen demanded, but Jinshi growled, "Shut up and let him look." He gave Bowen a glare that silenced him.

Maomao wasn't precisely involved here, but she knew the circumstances. The same was true of Yao and En'en. But there was someone else there as well. And I'm not sure about letting him stick around.

It was the so-called Go Sage who'd been observing Jinshi's game. He sat on his chair, looking supremely disinterested. He appeared so far above it all, in fact, that Bowen and his sons said nothing to him. Perhaps they wished to—there were probably a great many things they would like to get off their chests—but with Jinshi watching, they knew they had to collect themselves and explain.

Bowen took a deep breath and took up the story. "Thanks to you, my son was arrested. Worse, people came out of the

woodwork with accusations about things he'd supposedly done to them in the past."

Well, whose fault was that? The two remaining sons each looked away. No doubt they'd endeavored to pin some of their own wrongdoings on the middle son. Bowen should take his complaints to the freak strategist—he was the one who'd dragged Maomao's old man into this. Or maybe he'd wanted to, but lost his nerve, and decided to take it out on Luomen instead.

Personally, I'd be a lot more scared of picking a fight with my old man.

Bowen was a father worried for his son, but all this paternal anxiety had come a little late. He'd always excused and protected his boys from the consequences of their debauchery. Had he not realized the lesson he was teaching them?

"And you think one of them abducted him?" Luomen asked.

"What else could it be?!" Bowen demanded, pounding the table.

"Do you have any idea who might have done it?"

"How should I know? Is it my job to watch my son every damn minute?"

Maybe it should be, Maomao thought. She looked at the fingers. The severed ends were already turning black. We might

have been able to reattach those if they were still fresh...

Then again, she found herself wondering if they'd been cut off after their owner's death. She'd heard that the way a human body behaved when it was butchered differed depending on whether the person was alive or dead. She assumed her father could tell— and she thought his mournful expression as he looked at the fingers told the story.

There was something else too.

The nails have changed color. The nail bed had taken on a blue-black cast.

Quietly, Maomao tugged on Yao's and En'en's sleeves.

"What is it?" Yao asked.

"I just thought maybe we should at least serve tea. Help me out?"

"Oh, good idea."

They didn't really need three people to make tea, but Maomao knew that if she asked Yao, En'en would inevitably come along, and if she asked En'en, Yao would pout at being left out, so three people it was.

"Do we even have tea? I just remember a lot of ginger water," Yao said.

"We have some, but I think maybe something a bit higher quality is called for," En'en said with a glance at Jinshi. She knew who he was, so she wouldn't serve anything less than fit. She had no special affection for him, but she was a capable enough lady of the court to show the proper respect.

"Is he going to stay here?" Yao asked, looking at Jinshi too.

"Sticking his nose into random matters is sort of his hobby, so I think we're stuck with him," En'en said. She truly was merciless. But even as Maomao thought what a callous thing that was to say, she remembered the many times she'd made similar remarks.

"We've got plenty of juice. Carafes full, all for Master Lakan. I'm not sure they're meant for any of the players or spectators, though."

"Juice?" Maomao scratched her chin. That might be perfect, actually. "Any grape juice?"

"Yes, I think so. Probably good stuff too—it was in a lovely glass bottle," said En'en, peeking behind the stage.

"Let's go with that, then." Maomao went to the backstage green room.

"Uh, should we ask for permission first?" said Yao.

"You said he's got plenty. He won't miss one bottle. Especially not since he's sleeping."

"Well, if Maomao says it's all right, I think we can trust her," said En'en, and with her agreement they began searching through the many gifts and goodies for their chosen libation.

When they got back with a cup for each person, they found the discussion continuing to go nowhere. Bowen was still yelling, and Luomen was still listening silently. Jinshi didn't appear to be doing anything at all; he was just sitting there, but from the way he played absently with the bowl of Go stones, he seemed to be thinking about his next move.

The Go Sage continued to wear an inscrutable expression. Maomao still didn't know why he was there. Lahan was there, too, but he was hustling to wrap up from the tournament. Not just to clean up the actual venue, but trying to figure out what to write to all those who had reserved teaching games with the strategist (and had already paid for the privilege).

"Here you are." Yao and En'en were passing out the drinks.

"Is this alcohol?" Lahan asked, suspicious, but then he gave the drink an exploratory sniff and realized it was just juice. He couldn't hold his liquor any better than the freak strategist. The cups they'd used were really for wine, so they couldn't blame him for wondering.

En'en went over to give a cup to Bowen's eldest son—but the next thing they all knew, the cup was flying through the air. Red liquid splattered everywhere, the metal cup rattling as it hit the ground.

"Brother!" said the youngest son, a pained expression on his face. En'en didn't so much as flinch, even though she was now drenched with juice. Thank goodness that wasn't Yao, Maomao thought—the idea of what En'en would have done was fearsome to contemplate. She would certainly not have been the unmoved person she was now. Of course, she would never have put the young mistress within range of a known womanizer to begin with.

"Please pardon me," she said evenly. "I didn't realize it wouldn't be to your tastes." She began cleaning up. Maomao pointedly gave cups to Bowen and his other son. I knew it, she thought as she did so: the wrinkles in her father's face had grown deeper, and his brow drooped sadly. He would never fail to notice something that had occurred to her.

Luomen exhaled quietly and stood up from his chair. "Do you dislike grape wine so much?" he asked the eldest son.

"No," the man replied, but it took him a beat too long to answer; he sounded uncomfortable.

"I know it's your favorite," Bowen said, giving him a curious look, but then he went on, "But that's not important now. Find my son! Or else I'll—"

"There's no need for threats. I already know where your son is." Luomen shook his head and looked up.

"Wh-Where?! Tell me!"

"The boy you've lost—it's your second son, yes?"

"That's right!"

Even Maomao began to feel her mood growing heavier. As much fuss as Bowen was making, he really did believe his child was missing. But he was failing to understand one crucial thing.

He can't actually tell his own sons apart!

Luomen pointed at the eldest son, the one who had slapped the wine cup away. "You had best come clean now. How long do you think you can carry on pretending to be your older brother before someone notices?"

Both remaining brothers paled.

Maomao searched her memories. It had been a little more than a month ago that they'd interviewed the three brothers. She'd been busy writing things down, but she recalled that the eldest brother's complexion had been poor and that he occasionally twitched, reflexively clenching and unclenching his fist. She hadn't given it much thought at the time; she'd simply assumed he was in ill health.

"What is going on here?" Bowen looked at his boys, genuinely uncomprehending.

"It was your eldest son who disappeared. I think you should ask these two for the details," Luomen said.

"That's preposterous! You think you can get out of this by talking nonsense?" He rose and made to grab Maomao's father, but a soldier intervened and stopped him.

"He's right! What you're saying is ridiculous!" shouted the youngest son, but his face was twitching.

Before she could stop herself, Maomao stepped forward. "Far from it. It's the truth—as you both know better than anyone." Then she thought, Shit, now I've done it, and tried to take half a step back.

"Perhaps you could explain what you're both talking about so that even one with my limited understanding can grasp it," said Jinshi, finally rejoining the conversation. Beside him, the Go Sage nodded. Jinshi had probably figured nothing would get resolved without his intervention. Certainly, it made everyone stop and collect themselves.

"My profound apologies. I never expected you to be here, Moon Prince," Bowen said.

"Well, I am. And you've interrupted my game. But so be it; the best thing for my curiosity at this moment would be to find out exactly what's going on. I understand what you're trying to say, but I'm going to need you to be quiet for a moment. This conversation isn't getting anywhere like this. And you two, behind him, don't get any ideas about slipping away." On that point, Jinshi was very clear. "Luomen. If you find yourself hesitant to speak, perhaps you'd allow your apprentice to do so? She's quite

capable, and I believe she has arrived at the solution." Maomao couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"And as a good teacher, you'll of course correct her answers if she's mistaken," Jinshi added.

"Maomao..." Her old man gave her a look that communicated that she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to.

I could just leave this to him. But her father was a kind man, too kind. He would feel an excess of sympathy for the suspects— even if they were two worthless brothers. Luomen was quickwitted, and might come up with some sort of mitigating circumstance that Maomao hadn't even thought of, something that would excuse the brothers from what they'd done. Or perhaps he would simply refuse to tell Bowen the truth. Just as he'd done in the case of the Shaonese shrine maiden...

Maomao stepped forward. "Very well."

Pondering where to begin, she turned and looked at the fingers. Their owner was already dead. Whether of natural causes, or murder—well, perhaps that would be the place to start.

"I'd like to draw your attention to the fingernails," she said.

They were discolored, and several white lines were visible.

Severed fingers, however, are not a pleasant thing to contemplate, even for grown-ups. Yao appeared agonized, but she looked.

"The nails' coloration indicates contact with poison," Maomao continued. "Arsenic or lead, most likely."

Just like the owner of the makeup shop.

"Lead," Maomao repeated, and looked at Bowen. "Your eldest son had a penchant for grape wine, yes?" "Yes... I can't deny it," Bowen said.

"And might I speculate that his tastes tended...cheap?"

She thought back to the notes she had taken at her father's request. The oldest son had spoken of going somewhere cheap to drink. And there was lots of cheap, delicious wine making the rounds of the city just then. Maomao had hoped to get a taste for herself, although sadly, she hadn't been able to.

If I'd taken a sip when I had the chance...

Well, she might have put the pieces together.

Grape wine grew bitter if stored for too long. The same fermentation process that produced alcohol, if allowed to continue indefinitely, simply resulted in vinegar. Wine brought from afar, over long distances and long times, could turn sour—but the stuff going around the markets was sweet.

Maomao looked at Jinshi. "Wine mixed with lead becomes sweet, yes?" he said.

"That's right, sir." He clearly remembered their conversation.

From this point, Maomao would have to speculate. Her father wouldn't be pleased, but she didn't think he would contradict her either. "Over the last several months, caravans have been bringing copious amounts of grape wine from the west. With such quantities, some of it will inevitably have gone bad." "What are you getting at? Get to the point!" Bowen said.

"I thought I told you to be quiet," Jinshi snapped.

Maomao didn't want to skip straight to her conclusion—she wanted to lay out how she'd gotten there. "The bad stuff would be bitter—unsaleable. The dealers, who bought it on the cheap, would try to find some way to move the product. And what if there happened to be a ready supply of something that would make the alcohol sweet on hand?"

Maomao looked at her audience. Her father knew the answer, but chose not to say anything. En'en probably saw what Maomao was driving at as well, but she was busy studying Yao, who was deep in thought.

It was Jinshi who responded. "We're ahead of that problem. The dealers who were using the makeup powder to sweeten their wine have been arrested. The only supply left should be whatever made it to market before they were taken in."

"Prompt work, sir."

He issued the ban, so of course he would connect the dots.

By mixing the lead into the wine, the wine would get sweeter. The merchants could combine two things that they couldn't sell to make something they could: cheap, tasty wine that delighted customers. Clients might have been less pleased had they realized they were being poisoned.

If they drank enough of it, the poison would begin to show in their fingernails. The eldest son had seemed out of sorts when Maomao had seen him. If he'd continued drinking the stuff after that, it could only have made things worse. The middle son, meanwhile, had been the picture of health, and as far as Maomao remembered, his fingers had shown no signs of imbibing the poisonous wine. Even if her recollection wasn't quite perfect, her old man certainly would have remembered.

"Human fingernails grow at a rate of roughly three millimeters a month. When I recorded his testimony, this young man's fingernails must already have been showing those white streaks," Maomao said.

She looked at her father. He looked uneasy, but nonetheless spoke. "One of the three young men we spoke to hid his fingers.

The others showed no irregularities in their fingers or nails."

"Was there something irregular about the second son's fingers?" Jinshi asked.

"No," Luomen replied. "Hence, we can at least conclude that the severed fingers do not belong to him." That much, he said unequivocally. The fingers were something he could be certain about.

"Your eldest son seems to have been in considerable ill health these past months. My understanding is that he was frequently absent from work." This interjection came from Lahan, who had evidently looked into the soldiers' backgrounds at some point.

"It's always possible the fingers belong to some entirely unrelated individual, but given the circumstances, I think it's reasonable to suppose that they're your elder brother's," Maomao said, looking at the two men who shared his face. "Perhaps someone mistook him for the second son and kidnapped him? In which case, why not simply tell them that they had the wrong man?" She gave them an exaggerated expression of puzzlement.

The two men said nothing, but looked at each other while avoiding Maomao's gaze.

"Are you ready to admit that you're behind this?" she said at length.

"Them?! You think they did this?!" Bowen exclaimed. At least he was easy to read.

"I do. Which raises the question, what did they stand to gain from staging such a spectacle? Perhaps it has something to do with their involvement in their own brother's death."

At that, everyone started talking at once. Only Luomen was quiet, looking gravely at the remaining two triplets.

"Wh-What are you talking about? You're not making any sense!" said the alleged eldest son, probably in reality the middle boy. He was trying to feign ignorance—because he knew that if he admitted Maomao was right, it would all be over. Bowen continued to look at him with disbelief.

"I have a question," someone said. It was the Go Sage, raising his hand for attention.

"Yes?" No one else said anything, so Maomao called on him like a teacher in a classroom.

"If one triplet started impersonating another, is it plausible that the third triplet wouldn't notice?"

"Excellent question. No matter how alike the three of them may look, I don't think they could deceive each other as to who was who. Even if they could confuse their own father..." That was a swipe at Bowen.

Of course, the truth would probably have come out eventually —sometime. No matter how much three people might look like each other, it didn't mean they were identical in every way.

"May I take it, then, that the youngest brother was aware that the middle brother had become the oldest brother?"

"I'd say so." Maomao kept one eye on the brothers. They seemed to want to object, but couldn't find the words.

"Why?"

I think you know the answer to that, Maomao thought. One didn't get to be a Go master by being stupid. The answer to his question was easy enough to explain to the others. She suspected it had all been deliberate.

"Because if the second son disappeared, all their sins could be expunged. Yes?" She looked at the eldest brother—no, the middle brother. He glared at her, but there was nothing he could say; he just clenched his fists.

"Is... Is this true?" Bowen looked at the boys.

"Can you really not tell? Can you really not discern one of your sons from the others?" Maomao said.

Bowen stared at them fixedly, silently.

"Maomao..." Luomen said.

"My apologies," she said and stepped back.

"In that case, the remaining two brothers must know where their oldest is," Jinshi said. At his remark, they found themselves compelled to speak: such was the power of his beauty.

"Wh-What happened to our brother..." It was the third son who spoke. "I... I didn't do it! It was er ge!"

"Wha?! Traitor!" The second son grabbed the third by the collar.

"This is all your fault!" cried the youngest brother. "It was your mistake—grabbing some girl! Why couldn't you have picked someone who couldn't make trouble for us?!"

"You're one to talk! You can't find a mark who doesn't become a problem for us!"

Talk about your sibling rivalries.

"I take this to mean the two of you killed your oldest brother," Maomao said.

"Not me! He killed him!"

"No, he did it!"

It was impossible to tell who was accusing whom, anyway.

Luomen, meanwhile, was staring at the fingers again; he had noticed another detail. In addition to the white lines, there was dirt under the nails. Maomao gave the fingers a questioning look. At first, they simply seemed dirty, but on closer inspection, she could see it was skin under the nails.

"I don't think there's any more talking your way out of this." Maomao took the hand of the second son. He had a red scratch running the length of his palm, all the way to his wrist. As if someone had scratched him with their nails.

"I... I didn't kill him! He fell on his own!" the second brother said, his face contorted. He was staring at the spilled grape juice.

"The wine—it was the wine! There's been something wrong with da ge..." the third son hesitantly explained.

Between the two of them, the story came out: the eldest brother had been unwell lately, and in poor humor to boot.

"He would suddenly fly into a rage or start shouting. But he wouldn't stop drinking."

Sometimes toxicity could manifest as instability in the personality. The state of the fingernails suggested advanced lead poisoning.

"Let da ge do what he wanted, I thought. It was nothing to do with me. But he set up such a racket that I grabbed my brother and we went to see our elder brother in his annex."

Their elder brother was in his room, throwing a fit. When the other two came in, he sprang at them.

"I shoved him away before I knew what was happening, but he came at me again." That was when he'd gotten the scratch on his palm. "I was trying to keep him off me... That's all I was doing!"

The man's brother had fallen backward and hit his head on a table.

"What in blazes?!" Bowen demanded, grabbing his second son.

"Do you realize what you've done?!"

"What I've done? This is because you left us to fend for ourselves!"

Neither man precisely sounded laudable.

"I was going to call someone. But er ge, he said..." The third son looked at the second.

Let's tell everyone I died. And I'll become our elder brother.

They would need proof to make it happen. They buried the

body, keeping only the fingers, which they cut off. All they had to do was write a threatening letter; any number of suspects would suggest themselves to investigators. The entire matter would be cloaked in confusion.

And so they did just that, cutting off their brother's fingers and sending the letter to their own household.

But they had to pick the fingers to send. Maybe it didn't matter —whether they'd sent his head or his feet, it would have been possible to spot the symptoms. Perhaps not if they'd chosen his ears.

They would have been found out eventually. They must really have felt their backs were against the wall. Maomao knew this was where she should feel compelled to pray for the repose of the deceased, but in this particular case, she couldn't let go of the feeling that he'd reaped what he'd sown. Her father, though, was gazing at the fingers, still distinctly grieved.

"You both are a disgrace! An embarrassment!" Bowen yelled.

"No more than you!" said the second son, pounding the table. "When you realized you couldn't protect all of us, you decided to pin everything on me! But da ge was the worst of us! And you! You're no better! Who gave you an alibi every time you got handsy with Father's concubines?!"

So that's why the youngest son went along with this, Maomao realized.

"Is this true?!" Bowen demanded, rounding on the third boy.

"Oh, it's true!" the second son continued. "Our three-year-old sister you lavish so much love on? She's his child! Oh, how you've doted on your 'first daughter'—but she's your first grandchild!"

"Er ge! You swore not to speak of that!"

"Is this true?! I want answers!"

This is absurd, thought Maomao, and in all likelihood the others were thinking the same thing. To cut off a guy's fingers

after he's dead... Maomao was of the belief that once someone

was dead, he was dead; he wouldn't know what happened to his former body. Still, the sight of those fingers brought home what a reprehensible story this was.

He's not the one I feel the sorriest for, though.

That would be one particular nobleman, who was now looking quite frustrated, having made extensive preparations, used every means fair and foul to achieve his goal, and might even have done it, had his game not been interrupted.

Chapter 19: The Go Sage

Jinshi heaved a sigh and looked at the Go board, populated by all its stones. He recalled what his Go instructor had said the other day.

"I have to say, I think it's probably impossible." The man was the Emperor's own Go instructor, and in spite of appearances could be quite blunt. "You can't even beat me, not once. You've got no hope against him." Impassive, the Go Sage snapped a white stone onto the board.

"Grk," was the only sound Jinshi made. What else could he say? He'd thought he'd played a pretty good game, but with one move the Sage had unraveled all of it.

He'd known perfectly well it might turn out this way: he was a jack-of-all-trades, able to do most things to some extent. But at best, he was only somewhat better than average at them. He didn't excel in anything. Gifted he might be, but he was not a genius.

Still, it was better than doing nothing.

"You've got your joseki patterns down pat, I'll give you that. But get away from the prescribed sequence, and you've got no more imagination than the average player. You panic when confronted with a move you've never seen before."

"You don't pull your punches, do you?"

"I seem to recall that was what you wanted." The Sage took a bite of one of the buns Suiren had made for them. The snack might have seemed at odds with the elegance associated with the game of Go, but apparently a sweet treat was considered de rigueur among players. Thinking naturally caused a craving for sweets—or anyway, that was the logic by which a certain eccentric strategist justified his constant consumption of such treats.

For days now, ever since the Emperor had agreed to lend

Jinshi his instructor, he'd spent every day after work feverishly studying Go.

Talentless.

Simplistic moves.

The dull play style of the overachiever.

Yes, the instructor had been perfectly merciless. Jinshi had said when they started that he didn't wish the Sage to spare his feelings, and the man had taken him at his word. When Jinshi asked whether the Sage was so cruel to all his students, he replied, "I choose opponents who can't punish me for what I say." He was very careful.

He also knew how to motivate a person: "You expect to beat that freak playing like that?"

Jinshi picked up a black stone and placed it on the board, unsure even as he did so whether it was the right move.

He was working with the Go Sage because he'd heard he was the only man who could beat the freak strategist (a.k.a. Lakan) at the game.

"So. You're convinced I can't win?"

"Completely convinced. You're much too forthcoming, Moon Prince. Far too much of a straight shooter." Somehow, coming from the Go Sage, this didn't sound complimentary.

"Be that as it may, I must find some way to best him."

"And I have come here to try to teach you how to do that. But it's absolutely hopeless." The Go Sage munched on another bun.

"Give me any chance, any way to win—even one time out of a hundred."

"When Lakan is at his best, even I'm lucky to beat him one out of two games. If I'm at my very best as well."

"I'm afraid I don't take your meaning..."

The Go Sage was better at the game than Lakan; that's why he was called the Go Sage.

"Oh, I think you do. Let me ask you this, Prince: do you think you could defeat a bear bare-handed?"

"Obviously not."

"How about a wolf?"

"If circumstances favored me, perhaps... But it would be difficult."

"A dog, then."

"I think I could manage, more or less."

It was a lesson that had been driven home for him while hunting: humans were surprisingly weak for their size. It was the use of tools that enabled them to survive; without equipment, even a stray dog might prove too much for an unarmed man.

"What would you need to be victorious?" the Go Sage asked. He placed a stone, earning another groan from Jinshi: his instructor had seen clear through him yet again.

"To emerge unharmed? A gun might seem ideal, but I'm not sure I could hit the creature. I think I'd prefer a sword, something I'm used to. Or perhaps a dagger, and gauntlets to protect my arms."

With a sword, he would be able to hold his own, at least in a confined space. On an open field, it would be much harder. He would lure the animal somewhere its agility couldn't help it—then he would let it get a mouthful of his forearm armor, while he went for the throat.

"Your looks may be refined, but I see you're willing to use messy tactics if need be."

"It wouldn't be my preference. I'm simply not that skilled with the sword," Jinshi replied. Basen, he would be able to do a better job. He could probably face down that bear, Jinshi figured—but even he would come out of such an encounter gravely injured.

"Hmm. In that case, I have a stratagem that might just work for you."

"Stratagem?"

"Oh, it's nothing special. Just a way of tilting the odds in your favor." The Go Sage leered, and for an instant the calm, cultured aspect he presented to the world vanished entirely. "You wouldn't have to break any rules. For the rules don't apply to what happens off the board."

Jinshi swallowed heavily.

The Go Sage was unequivocal: "If this method doesn't work, you will never beat Sir Lakan so long as you live."

"I've lost..."

No matter how many times he counted and recounted the

territory on the board, the captured stones, he couldn't make his numbers greater than his opponent's. The difference was only two points—but it might as well have been a thousand.

He had pulled out a seemingly unassailable lead in the middle game. His territory had been secure, and it hadn't seemed possible that the tide should turn. Nor had Jinshi made any obviously poor plays—and yet the honorable personage munching away at his snacks had proceeded to close the gap with blinding speed.

Basen and some bodyguards were standing nearby. It was several days after the Go tournament. Jinshi had been working away in his office when the monocled strategist had appeared with no warning.

"Let's continue," he'd said. Had he been simply shirking work, Jinshi might have turned him down, but it was lunchtime.

A Go board and stones were waiting at an open-air pavilion near the office, the board already arranged in the state it had been in when their game had been so rudely interrupted. A few onlookers watched from a distance, but Jinshi had no reason to send them away or to refuse this game.

Many a time since their standoff at the theater, he had considered what he might do to consolidate his advantage and seize victory. He couldn't believe he could lose after holding such a commanding lead.

"Impossible..." Basen had said, astonished. Impossible: yes, that was the only word for it. What must it be like in that man's head?

The Go Sage's words rang in his ears: "You will never beat Sir

Lakan so long as you live."

Why had Jinshi's instructor compared his opponent not to a man, but to a beast? Jinshi felt a pang of regret. A bear, a wolf, a dog: Lakan was none of these. He was a monster unto himself, a fact Jinshi had failed to appreciate.

Lakan adjusted his monocle, chugged some juice, and looked in all-around perfect health. He was getting enough sleep, and wasn't currently exhausted by a relentless series of Go games. There was no alcohol in either his drink or his snacks, so his head was clear.

Jinshi felt unutterably low. He'd used the dirtiest of dirty tricks and he'd still lost. He wasn't interested in putting on airs, but this simply made him feel too pathetic. If there hadn't been an audience, he would have slumped face-first onto the board and groaned.

Jinshi marshaled his remaining dignity and tried to look unruffled. If there was one quality he felt he could boast of, it was the thick skin he'd developed during his time in the rear palace.

He had to keep his chin up. He had to act like someone who could take his licks with aplomb.

He was about to raise his head when a finger appeared on the board.

"This move, in the endgame. You should've played it over here," Lakan said.

Jinshi looked at him, stunned. The freak was scratching his stubbly chin and continuing to point. "And this, here. Then white would've had nowhere to go..."

He was mumbling, making it hard to hear him, but he was unmistakably explicating Jinshi's errors.

"Master Lakan, doing an analysis?" said the strategist's aide wonderingly.

"An analysis?" The words sparked a hubbub among the onlookers.

"My honored adoptive father very rarely performs such postmortems," said Lahan, who had appeared rather out of thin air. He must have come running when he heard the game was going to be continued, because he was slightly out of breath. "It must mean, Moon Prince, that you have his attention." He emphasized those last words pointedly.

"Now, why'd I make this move? Hrm..." The freak seemed to be involved less in an analysis and more in a personal reflection on the game. He seemed to be talking about his crucial error; he didn't understand why he had done it.

He remembered every move of the game, even though his brain had been addled with tiredness and fatigue and alcohol.

Jinshi could only laugh.

"In any event, that was fun," the freak said, coming over to

Jinshi. "I don't know what you're after, but your means were fascinating."

And then, leaving the game board where it stood, he walked away, swinging his bottle.

Jinshi watched him go, dumbfounded. The crowd began to disperse. A few of the onlookers seemed to want to approach Jinshi, but Basen and the other bodyguards looked like they would be having none of it.

Only Lahan remained by Jinshi, just sort of standing around. Basen wasn't best pleased by his presence, but he allowed it. He'd rarely, if ever, spoken to Lahan, but it didn't seem like they would get along very well.

"I can only apologize that my help wasn't enough," Lahan said.

"At least my father seemed satisfied, I suppose."

"Satisfied," Jinshi echoed. "With my pitiful strategy?" He gave a sarcastic smile; he had a sense he was being mocked.

"The specifics of your plan don't matter to him. If he says it was interesting to him, then it was."

Jinshi didn't quite follow. Lahan sounded like him—maybe it was his blood relation to the strategist, or maybe those with such unique talents inherently understood each other.

Jinshi finally decided to voice a question that had been bothering him. "Why did Sir Lakan want to hold a Go tournament at all? To be quite honest, I should think that he would play Go as and when he wanted, whether or not there was money involved." "Yes, and so I suppose he would, left to his own devices." Lahan pulled out a book—the strategist's Go book that had started this entire craze. "This book contains a great many records of games played between my honored father and a certain woman. Some of them are as much as twenty years old—the sequences of moves were still there in my father's memory. This from a man who can't remember who he saw yesterday! These games are priceless to him...and there shall be no more of them. This is all that's left."

"Ah..."

Jinshi had a reasonable idea of who the "woman" was: a courtesan from the Verdigris House, and Maomao's mother. The year before, Lahan had purchased her at great expense, but in spring of this year, she had died.

"There will never be another quite like her. I think my father understands that... But perhaps he was hoping that, inspired by these records of past games, someone who played something like her might appear."

"So he was trying to resurrect the past?"

"I think not. If anything, I believe he was trying to build a bridge to the future. Or perhaps my honored father doesn't think that far ahead." Lahan scratched the back of his neck, suddenly uncomfortable. "I do wish he would do postgame analyses of his other matches, as he did with yours. What if the people who paid for teaching games ask for their money back?"

"Teaching... Meaning?" Jinshi said. He did recall hearing that one could pay for the privilege of playing a game against the strategist—although most of those games had been postponed on account of Lakan's indisposition.

"We've spent the last several days trying to mop up those teaching games. Ugh, I don't mind telling you, accommodating everyone's schedules has been a nightmare. In fact, he was just playing a game against someone else, and when it was over he suddenly disappeared. Where should I find him but here?" Hence the earlier shortness of breath.

"If I might venture a question?" Lahan said.

"Yes? What?"

"Was it the Go Sage who put that little ploy in your head,

Master Jinshi?"

It wasn't really a question. The Sage had been at the tournament; Lahan probably knew perfectly well what had happened.

"I was borrowing time that was rightfully the Emperor's for my instruction," Jinshi said.

"Ah. Well, that makes sense, then," Lahan said and nodded. "My father often complains that there are only ever savory snacks on hand during his games with the Sage."

"Ah," said Jinshi. So the man really didn't want to go barehanded against a bear either.

"Now, then, I believe I'll be on my way... Ah, one more thing," Lahan said, and smirked a little. "Those treats you brought the other day. My honored father seems to be quite taken with them. He'd like to know how to make them—without alcohol, ideally.

Also, I know how he acts, but my father does hate to be in debt."

"He doesn't look it."

"It's true. Even if he may forget the debts he owes," Lahan said, quietly, pregnantly. Then he trotted off.

"That looked like quite a conversation. Is everything all right?" Basen asked, coming over to Jinshi looking somewhat disturbed.

"All right? We were simply chatting about the weather. Ask

Suiren to write up the recipe for those snacks, would you?"

"Er, y-yes, sir."

"Without the alcohol. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

Jinshi left the pavilion behind and Basen followed him, puzzled.

They found something at Jinshi's office when they returned.

"What have we here?" Jinshi asked. Basen took off the cloth covering the object to reveal a Go board of the kind used in formulating military strategy. It was a simpler version of something in the strategist's office—but when he saw the arrangement on it, Jinshi raised an eyebrow.

"Doesn't like to owe favors, eh?" he muttered.

Jinshi had been a staunch advocate of the strengthening of the army because he foresaw trouble to Li's north and west.

Baryou poked his head out from his corner of the room. "A fine job he did of rearranging things, no? He's addressed everything you were worried about, Master Jinshi."

"I was hoping he might feel he owed me a little more than this."

Maamei entered the room with a sheaf of papers and immediately lit into Jinshi. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, but we still have work to do—the work left over from your little break. I do hope you'll hurry up and finish it. There are a great many ceremonies to be held at the end of the year, so I suggest you operate on the assumption that you won't be able to take any more vacations."

"Yes, I know." Jinshi smiled bitterly and resolved to do his work. There was certainly plenty of it. "Maamei," he said.

"Yes, sir?"

Jinshi recalled that there was one other matter he still had to attend to.

"I'd like to ask you to deliver three letters for me." He opened a drawer in his desk.

"Yes, sir. To whom?" She gave him a questioning look, and the questions only multiplied when she saw the addresses on the letters.

"As soon as possible, if you would—but in as much secrecy as you can. And have a carriage readied."

"Yes, sir." She was deft enough to see that this was not a matter she should pursue too closely. Instead she simply took the letters and left the room.

"I suppose it may be too soon, but so be it," Jinshi said. He had no special talents, and if he dawdled, he would be too late.

He needed to make his move before that.

Still, he really—

"...really would have liked to have him in my debt." Jinshi let out a long sigh and sat back at his desk.

Chapter 20: Check

It was the middle of the night, and Maomao was rattling along in a carriage. A letter had arrived for her after she finished work for the day—it was from Jinshi, and had been brought very discreetly.

I wonder what he wants.

His summons had never yet been good news for her, and she didn't have high hopes for that changing. But she was in no position to turn him down.

The last place they'd seen each other was the Go tournament. Much as she hated to admit it, having the freak strategist there had actually been comforting; she knew Jinshi couldn't pull anything in his presence. But now...

Wonder where I'm going.

A ride in a carriage usually meant she was traveling to the residence of someone important—Ah-Duo's villa, Empress Gyokuyou's palace, Jinshi's pavilion. But they were going the opposite direction from Jinshi's chambers now.

The more lavish the buildings around her got, the more profusely and unpleasantly Maomao began to sweat.

When the carriage reached its destination and she was invited to disembark, Suiren was waiting for her. "It's been quite a while," she remarked.

"Yes, ma'am," said Maomao.

"You'll have to excuse the lack of ceremony, but I'd like you to come inside and undress."

Maomao said nothing, just shuffled reluctantly into the building. One's body had to be searched upon entrance to the rear palace—was this something similar?

"Master Jinshi summoned me," Maomao remarked at length.

"Yes, and if it were only the young master, we wouldn't have to go through this silliness," Suiren replied. In other words, there was someone else here.

Suiren took Maomao's robe from her. From the folds she extracted a writing kit, a pad of paper, some medicine, and bandages, one after another, until she looked downright exasperated. "Do you always carry all this with you?" she asked.

"I left my sewing kit at home," replied Maomao. Meanwhile, she took off even her undergarment, leaving her scrawny body exposed to the cold air. She got goosebumps.

"What are you, a squirrel? Open your mouth; I'd better check your cheeks."

As if it wasn't bad enough to have to strip naked, now Suiren was peering around inside her mouth.

"Your teeth are very straight, Maomao," the old lady-in-waiting observed approvingly.

"Hank hoo hery huch," said Maomao.

"And your skin is so smooth. But perhaps you could remove this?" Suiren peeled back the bandage on Maomao's left arm. Since Yao had forbidden her from hurting herself, it was in comparatively good shape.

"Why was I called here?" Maomao asked.

"Oh? You can't tell me you have no idea. I wonder if you're prepared." She sounded teasing, but that actually set Maomao's mind at ease.

"Is His Majesty present today?" All this effort to make sure she was unarmed suggested someone of considerable importance would be there. The searches in the rear palace had been rather simpler, but then, there had always been guards around there. She was given to understand that several were posted outside the room whenever the Emperor made a night visit to one of his consorts.

"It's no fun teasing you, Maomao. Don't you wonder if you were called here for a tryst?"

I can't say it didn't cross my mind. For all his faults, though, Jinshi typically went by the book. She wanted to think he wouldn't do anything quite so abrupt. Anyway, if that's where this was

headed, I would at least get a bath, not just fresh clothes.

She passed her arms through the sleeves, then wiped away her freckles, dusting her cheeks with white powder. When she was done changing, she was brought to a door guarded by soldiers who bowed as she entered. There was another hall beyond the door, and beyond that, a room. Dim light shone by her feet, illuminating a single path, almost like it lit the way to some other world.

The room was warm inside; Maomao could hear the crackling of a brazier mingled with the chatting and laughter of three nobles.

"I've brought her, sir," Suiren said; then she bowed and showed herself out.

Maomao was speechless when she saw who was there. Jinshi and the Emperor, she had expected. But not Empress Gyokuyou.

The space was actually two adjoining rooms, with the sliding door between them open. The second room appeared to be a bedchamber, while the one in which the three august personages sat was equipped with a couch and table as well as a desk. They were remarkable furnishings, and a striking aroma drifted through the room.

What is that smell? Maomao wondered. It seemed familiar, but she couldn't place it. This being a room full of nobles, she hoped she could assume it was nothing dangerous.

"A most interesting company you've gathered, Moon Prince. Whatever do you have in mind?" Gyokuyou said, hiding her mouth with her sleeve as she laughed.

"I agree, and I wonder the same thing," the Emperor said jovially. "With her here, I'm sure it's something very intriguing indeed."

It feels downright...domestic here. What's going on?

No matter how you sliced it, Maomao was out of place in this room. Was she here simply to kick back and relax with the three of them? There were no ladies-in-waiting or guards that she could see, not even Gaoshun or Hongniang.

Keeping her head bowed, she puzzled over what she should do. Was she here to amuse the high folk? What ridiculous antics would she be put to?

Let me see if I can remember any good jokes from the pleasure quarter... No—Gyokuyou might enjoy them very much,

but they seemed likely to fall flat with Jinshi. Those jokes tended not to turn out well for the men involved. Best keep them to herself.

If I'd known what was going on, I could have come better prepared. Maybe brought one of my "night visit" manuals.

No, that wouldn't do either. The Emperor enjoyed those books, but she couldn't be displaying them in front of Gyokuyou. And anyway, Suiren would have found and confiscated them during her search.

She was still wondering what she should do, what she could do, if there might be some entertaining little act she could perform—when she saw something that made her doubt her own eyes.

On a tray was a sprinkling of sand, upon which a branch and a stone had been placed almost carelessly. It seemed meant to evoke a garden—a little something to delight the visitors. But it was the materials of that "garden" that had Maomao's attention.

Velvet antler, long gu, and...is that bear gall?!

Velvet antler was the antler of a deer; long gu, or "dragon's bone," referred to large, fossilized bones; and bear gall was exactly what it said—the gallbladder of a bear. All were medical ingredients of the most expensive kind. The antler was arranged to look like a tree branch, while the long gu were presented like rocks. Only the bear gall was just sort of...there, smack in the middle of everything. Had it been placed there specifically so that Maomao would notice it?

Are they mocking me? she thought. Surely they would have known that such a prize would never escape her notice, no matter how casually it was placed. She feared she might start to drool as she gazed at the medicines.

"Whatever do you have in mind here?" Empress Gyokuyou asked. "Is Maomao going to solve a fascinating mystery for us?" Her eyes were sparkling. Maomao had wondered if everything would be all right between them considering what had happened earlier, but judging by Gyokuyou's current appearance, it looked like everything was fine. She suspected it might be different among the serving women: Hongniang might cut her some slack, but Haku-u and her sisters were most likely less than pleased.

These were people who were skeptical even of Gyokuyou's half-brother. They couldn't have been happy that she was meeting personally with Jinshi, even if His Majesty was present.

Maomao kept one eye on Gyokuyou, but she let her gaze wander the room—and she soon found more medicinal goodies. The ink stone on the desk was actually donkey-hide gelatin, a dark lump of gelatinous glue. Among the tea leaves, she spotted mint and cinnamon. The unique odor wafting around the room must have been a combination of all these various medicaments.

"No, Maomao's role is yet to come. First, might I ask you to listen to what I have to say?" Jinshi smiled broadly and stirred the large brazier that stood by the far wall.

"I can do that!" Maomao said, her eyes sparkling. She was wondering if there might be something in the brazier as well.

"No, not today. I'm the one who summoned you here. And now I order you to have a seat," Jinshi said. He gestured to one end of the couch, and Maomao had no choice but to sit. The upholstered seat was stuffed with cotton, and it, combined with the warm room, made her awfully sleepy.

No! Gotta stay awake, she thought, giving her head a gentle shake and taking a breath. If a fire was left burning too long, the air in the room could get bad and make it hard to breathe. There were no guards in the room, and no windows either. Perfect for a secret conference. At least there were a few vents to allow air to circulate.

Maomao wondered, though, what this rich collection before her could mean. In fact, she questioned their presence, considering she had been subjected to such a thorough search. Too much medicine could be poisonous, and almost anything could be dangerous, depending how you used it.

Those white strips over there—is that poria? she wondered.

They sat in a bowl with chrysanthemum petals scattered on top.

The medicines were displayed so conspicuously—could she take this to mean that they would be given to her later?

"So what is this mysterious thing you wish to say to us?" the Emperor asked, stroking his beard and narrowing his eyes. It was a probing expression, but there was a hint of kindness as well.

There was wine, with appropriate accompaniments, on the table. Maomao's eyes lingered on the alcohol, but it didn't appear there would be any need for her to taste it; the nobles were already pouring for each other.

Drugs are good... But I like wine too.

"Would you like some?" asked Empress Gyokuyou, who had observed Maomao studying the drinks. "This wine is very good. Isn't it, Majesty?" The Empress had weaned her child and could now enjoy some alcohol.

Yes! thought Maomao. Strictly speaking, her social position should have prevented her from drinking anything in this company. But if a superior invited her to a tipple, it would have been unconscionable to refuse. Yes, she had no choice but to imbibe.

"Indeed," the Emperor said. "This seems like good, true grape wine." The qualification suggested that talk of the poisonous wine had reached even the Imperial ears.

"I could never serve you anything poisonous, Your Majesty," Jinshi said. "I need you to live a good, long time." He gave his glass drinking vessel a gentle shake. So Maomao wasn't going to get any wine after all. Jinshi was seated and had taken off his outer robe. Maybe he was warm from the fire and the wine. "Are you sure there's no cup for Maomao, Moon Prince?" Gyokuyou asked. Maomao looked at her with shining eyes.

"No, Maomao can't drink yet. She'll have work to do later."

Maomao's spirits plummeted. She turned a withering look on Jinshi, but he hardly seemed to notice.

"What work? I feel sorry for her, the only one left out of the drinking," the Emperor said.

That's right, you tell him! And order him to give me that medicine! Maomao clenched her fists triumphantly. But still Jinshi showed no sign of getting an extra cup. Instead he said, "I have need of her, if I am to make my request to you about the future of the throne."

"Now, now. All night you've been treating me like some doddering old man."

"By no means, sir. But does Your Majesty share our former ruler's credulity about mystical medicines that can prolong the life

span or even confer immortality? May I presume not?" Hey, they might exist!

Maomao was not pleased. True, no such medicine had yet

been discovered—even the panoply of ingredients in this room couldn't make one immortal.

Ugh, what's he driving at? I wish he would hurry up and get to the point...

"I very much need Your Majesty to survive for at least another twenty years," Jinshi said. The number was so precise.

"Moon Prince... You seem to have some very specific idea in mind," Gyokuyou said. She couldn't help being somewhat unnerved. The Emperor was currently in his mid-thirties, and was the picture of health. No reason he shouldn't remain hale and hearty for quite some time.

"And what, may I ask, happens in twenty years?" The slightest edge had entered His Majesty's voice. Maomao tensed in spite of herself. One couldn't allow oneself to forget that this lushly facialhaired man stood at the very top of the nation's hierarchy.

"That is when the Crown Prince will assume his royal title, and I can finally relax," Jinshi said.

It was Gyokuyou who spoke. "The Crown Prince?" she asked.

"Yes, milady. At ten years old, he will still be a child. At fifteen, he will formally enter adulthood, but it would be hard to have full confidence in him at that time. By twenty... Well, he'll still be rather young, it's true, but if we ensure that he's surrounded by good people before then, there would be no problem."

What was Jinshi talking about? Maomao felt herself break out in goosebumps despite the pleasantly warm room. She might even have gone pale, had she not spotted some caterpillar fungus and mu dan pi.

The Emperor set down his drink and narrowed his eyes. He no longer looked in such a good mood. "Perhaps you'd care to tell us what you base this scenario on." It wasn't really a suggestion, and that was what made it so scary.

If you just called me here to listen to unsettling conversations, please let me go home...with souvenirs. Maomao wished she could plug her ears and hide in a corner of the room. Empress Gyokuyou was not looking much at ease, either. She probably hadn't expected such an unpleasant topic in this company.

"My basis is this: if anything were to happen to Your Majesty at this moment, the court would expect and urge me to take the throne." Jinshi took a box, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, from the folds of his robes. Inside was a single golden pearl, about the size of a thumbnail, its surface flawless.

Pearls of such a size were extremely rare, especially in such fine condition. Even a layperson like Maomao could tell that a jewel like this would fetch a price that would make your eyes jump out of your head. Even the price of zhen zhu, a medical ingredient obtained by pulverizing pearls of lower quality, could do that.

"A rather rich accompaniment to send with the portrait of a potential match, don't you think?" Jinshi asked.

"I won't ask who sent it. I know you're too much of a gentleman to tell anyway," the Emperor said.

"Perhaps, but I imagine you can guess, Your Majesty."

You could probably count on one hand the number of people who could and would send the Emperor's younger brother a massive pearl in hopes that he would marry their daughter.

And if anyone with those sorts of resources is trying to forge a connection with Jinshi...

It would have to be either someone who stood to increase their own power from the match, or someone who sought to exercise indirect power through Jinshi. If the latter, success would put them on even footing with Empress Gyokuyou.

"And one more thing." This time Jinshi took out a spoon—it was silver, but the metal was clouded. "There has been poison in my tea at my office. And during one ritual, someone shot an arrow at me."

Did those things happen? Maomao thought. If they hadn't reached her ears, then Jinshi must have ordered everyone who knew about the matters to be silent. There were those who wished to make Jinshi an ally, yes, but there were others who saw him as an obstacle. Such was the world of politics.

"Would you happen to know anything about any of this, Empress Gyokuyou?" asked Jinshi.

"No, nothing," Gyokuyou replied, sounding faintly dismayed. No one believed the Empress herself was responsible for the attempts on Jinshi's life—but there was always the possibility that one of her relatives was acting without her knowledge. That must have accounted for the tremor in her voice. And if some member of her family was involved, then her father Gyokuen seemed likely to have some part in the matter.

"Your Majesty, you well know that I have absolutely no interest in being emperor," Jinshi said, but the ruler did not nod at his words. "Otherwise, why would I have spent six years pretending to be a eunuch in the rear palace?"

Maomao couldn't stop herself; she covered her ears, but Jinshi, smiling, took her wrists and pried her hands away, placing them on her knees instead. He obviously wanted her to hear whatever he was going to say.

"I take no pleasure in such complicated matters," Jinshi continued. "You have two sons, Your Majesty. Sir Gyokuen has received his name. Perhaps you would take this opportunity to grant me a name as well."

Grant him a name? Maomao cocked her head. She looked from one of them to the other, trying to figure out what this might mean, and then her eyes met Gyokuyou's.

"To be granted a name is to become a servant of the Emperor. In other words, to leave the royal family," she explained. She still looked pale, and her words seemed to be less in deference to Maomao's ignorance than a way of asking Jinshi whether she had understood him correctly.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. No. Wait.

Maybe it was complex and, frankly, annoying, the maneuvering one had to do as a member of the Imperial line—but it couldn't be as simple as just asking to be let out of the family. For one thing, how many men were there in the Imperial family as it stood? The former emperor's siblings had all died of disease. There might be maternal relatives Maomao didn't know about, but as far as she was aware, the full complement of Imperial males included only the Emperor, Jinshi, Empress Gyokuyou's son, and another son born to Consort Lihua. Just four people—and the Emperor's sons were still infants. A baby might die at any time—you simply didn't know. No matter how diligently you cared for them, no matter how carefully you raised them, they might be felled by illness one day, just like that.

He'll never get his wish. If even Maomao knew it, surely the

fact was not lost on the Emperor.

There was a clatter so loud it shook the large table, and Maomao felt her hair stand on end. Some meat buns rolled off a plate. The source of the shaking? The Emperor, who had pounded

the table with his fist. His expression, usually genial, if noncommittal, was a mask of anger.

Please don't!

Defying the Emperor could mean forfeiting one's life. But he was normally in such jovial spirits when Maomao met him that she had begun to lose her awe of him, just a tiny bit. Now she felt her heart race. She looked around the room, hoping that one of the herbs might be something that could calm an angry disposition.

Gyokuyou's face had gone white; perhaps this was the first time she, too, was seeing the Emperor in a fit of true anger.

Only Jinshi appeared unmoved.

"You promised, did you not? Or do you intend to renege, Your

Majesty?"

"Think carefully. Is this the time or the place to say such things?"

"It is. If I don't settle this matter swiftly, I'll lose my chance to escape."

Don't pour oil on the fire! Maomao thought, as she felt herself start to sweat. She looked from Jinshi to the Emperor and back again, her eyes only occasionally wandering to the bezoar in the corner of the room. I wish I could look at that bezoar all day.

Sadly, her modest dream was crushed.

"Will you not make me an ordinary person?" Jinshi asked.

A thwack filled the room.

Jinshi sat down, face toward the ground. The Emperor's fist was trembling.

In spite of herself, Maomao went over to Jinshi and forced his mouth open. No broken teeth, just a split lip. Still, he'd taken a fully committed punch to the face. There would be swelling soon. Maomao wanted to check His Majesty's hand as well, but she dared not get near him.

"Is this why you insisted the apothecary not drink?" the Emperor asked, somehow managing not to shout. Gyokuyou gripped his wrist.

The room was intended for private conferences. The guards wouldn't come running just because somebody slammed a table. Gyokuyou couldn't shout, not even had she wanted to. If she cried for help, the Emperor himself might have stopped her.

"You needn't worry, Empress," Jinshi said.

The hell she needn't! Maomao thought as she wiped the blood from Jinshi's lip with a handkerchief. Had they called her here just so she could watch two brothers fight? If so, she wished they would have left her and Empress Gyokuyou out of it.

"I knew what I was walking into here. I'm prepared for much more than a bloody lip." Jinshi stood, removing another layer of clothing and walking step by step over to the brazier. "Rest assured, Empress Gyokuyou: your enemy I shall never be."

Jinshi smiled and loosened his belt, revealing his midriff, his belly button. No sooner had the belt come loose than he was picking up a poker from the fire. And then he did something none of them had expected, something none of them had even imagined.

There was a collective gasp and the stench of burning flesh. Even the stouthearted Gyokuyou swooned, and Maomao rushed over to catch her. The Emperor looked on aghast; he didn't even try to cover his open mouth.

Jinshi fought the pain, forcing himself to smile. He returned the poker to the fire.

Maomao rested Empress Gyokuyou on a couch, then stared at Jinshi's abdomen. He'd avoided his stomach, but on his flank, just above his pelvis, there was a burn. She recognized the shape: it was the crest Empress Gyokuyou had been given.

He won't have damaged his internal organs. But—

But such a deep burn would leave a scar that would never heal.

I can't believe he had that ready to go.

"Now, Empress Gyokuyou, I can never defy you. Even if His Majesty should depart this world, I cannot and will not threaten the Crown Prince."

Maomao recalled a case she'd been faced with in the western capital: a bride who had faked her own suicide for fear of terrible abuse by her husband. The women of her family had long endured being branded like livestock.

To mark someone like a possession was as good as to make them your slave.

The Emperor didn't say anything. His face, which had been contorted with rage moments earlier, was now blank, stupefied. He couldn't have dreamed that Jinshi, the Imperial younger brother, would brand himself a slave.

There was only one thing for Maomao to do. The extremely high temperature of the burn prevented much bleeding, but it was still red and swollen. She doused her handkerchief in cold water and pressed it against Jinshi's side. She looked around the room, searching desperately for oil and beeswax, and anything that could treat a burn. Angry that she had no tools to work with, she took an expensive-looking bowl off the shelf and started crushing the oil and beeswax together. She didn't care if the bowl broke or the spoon shattered. She didn't have time to care.

It might have been quicker to leave the room and ask somebody to get burn medicine, but that would expose Jinshi's injury. Even though they had a room full of witnesses who knew that the brand was self-inflicted, it could only be dangerous for anyone in the wider world to be aware of the mark.

"You damned masochist!" Maomao grumbled as she prepared the oil-and-beeswax concoction. Nobody rebuked her. She was probably just saying what they were all thinking—perhaps including Jinshi.

Maomao heard a distinct thump, and discovered that it was the Emperor sitting down on the couch. "Did you really hate it that much? The idea of becoming emperor?" he mumbled.

"I always said I did, didn't I?" Jinshi replied, grimacing. "If you still insist on my remaining in the line of succession, I'll just have to make a nice, big wound in my left cheek too."

Maomao immediately clapped her hands onto the sides of

Jinshi's face, but he smiled: "That was a joke."

She let go of his cheeks, but she couldn't let down her guard.

There was no telling what he might do.

Empress Gyokuyou was woozy, but still conscious. Jinshi looked at her. "Empress, I know you were hoping Maomao could be your serving woman forever, but perhaps I could ask you to relinquish that dream. Now that I have this mark, I can't let just anyone see my body."

Well, whose fault is that? The salve was ready; Maomao rubbed some on Jinshi's skin.

"I can't even ask my lady-in-waiting to help me change my clothes now, let alone allow a doctor to see me. And above all..." He got to his feet, wrapping one arm around Maomao's torso and pulling her with him. The cloth that had been cooling his midriff slid off.

"W-Wait! Master Jinshi!" Maomao tried to fight him, but with his wound right there, she couldn't struggle too hard.

"My wife will have to be a woman I can trust implicitly."

That made Maomao go pale in a hurry. She looked up; from her place in the crook of Jinshi's arm, she could see he was wearing a fine smile.

"Is—Is that what you were really after?" Gyokuyou asked, scowling.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Jinshi replied, feigning ignorance even though Maomao was still tucked under his arm.

Maomao reached out toward the Empress, desperate for help. Gyokuyou, however, only gave her a pitying look and shook her head. "Maomao, I think you're half responsible for this." How the hell do you figure?!

She wanted to protest her innocence, to say this had nothing to do with her. But Jinshi placed a hand over her mouth, silencing her. "And if you are responsible, then I must ask that you live up to that responsibility," he said.

So there would be no help from Empress Gyokuyou. Maomao looked to the Emperor. He stared vacantly back at her and Jinshi.

"Zui..." he said. "Is this the path you've chosen?"

"It is."

"And you won't regret it?"

"I won't."

There was a sadness, a loneliness, in the Emperor's eyes. For a moment it looked like the befacial-haired ruler was going to say something else, but then he spared an instant's glance at Gyokuyou and swallowed it. Instead he said, "I'm going back. My guards will get cold if they have to stand out there all night." The room was warm, but it was a winter's eve. "I'll let your people know that you'll be spending the night here tonight."

"My profound thanks for Your Majesty's consideration." Jinshi bowed deeply. His lip was still swollen, and Maomao hadn't finished attending to his burn yet.

"I'll go with you," Gyokuyou said, rising. She looked so tired— Maomao wished she would be able to get some rest, but that seemed unlikely this night.

Wait... Hold on a second. If the two august personages departed, that would leave her alone with Jinshi.

Her mouth hung open and she stared at him.

"You may drink after you've tended to my wound," he said.

Sure, now he told her!

Maomao was desperate to leave the room with the Emperor and Empress, but she couldn't let Jinshi's injury go untreated. She hung there, stuck between a rock and a hard place, and also between Jinshi's torso and his underarm, when he finally took his hand away from her mouth. He reached for the long gu on the shelf. "I wasn't sure what would be useful, but I tried to collect as much medicine as I could," he said.

Maomao didn't say anything, but she felt her heartbeat quicken in spite of herself.

"You may use it freely. Any of it, as much as you like."

The momentary distraction prevented her from seeing Gyokuyou leave the room, her sleeves swinging. Jinshi seemed in remarkably high spirits for having been hit in the face and then inflicting a serious burn on himself.

"M-Master Jinshi. Let me finish treating you, quickly."

"The night is long still. We can take our time."

"No, I want to get this over with!"

Jinshi pursed his lips, and he still didn't let her go. "What does have you so displeased?"

"Displeased? I hardly know what's going on! Who presses a

brand into their own side?!" "A damned masochist, that's who." His words, not mine!

He was turning the tables on her. His color was surprisingly good, though he must still have been in pain. Nothing about this made any sense. Then Jinshi moved toward the inner room.

"Where are we going?" Maomao asked.

"I'd like to get some sleep after I have been treated."

"Then let me finish treating you. Here."

"No, you can do it while I'm lying down."

Maomao wanted to turn violent but knew she still couldn't— meanwhile, this monster of bodily endurance loped into the inner chamber.

"Or don't you wish to accompany me into the bedroom?"

Now she really had nothing to say. She heard the teasing in his tone and glanced away from him.

Then she heard a long exhalation, and Jinshi said, "You don't have to worry. I understand." Then he stroked her bangs.

"Anyhow, I'm told I'm only decently sized..."

Maomao almost choked. Jinshi's smile had never looked more wicked. Maomao, completely forgetting about Jinshi's injury, struggled mightily now, and who could blame her?

Even if it did cause her to miss what Jinshi said next, a quiet murmur: "I never did earn that favor I wanted."

Epilogue

Back at her residence, Gyokuyou didn't even take a bath; she collapsed straight into bed.

"Oh, but I'm tired..."

She wished she could ask someone what in the world had happened today. Some of it might have been downright funny under other circumstances, but any humor was far outweighed by shock.

Part of her certainly sympathized with Maomao, and at the same time, part of her was jealous.

She wished she could just bury herself under the covers and go to sleep. But she was the mother of two children. She had to talk to Hongniang, find out how the young ones were doing. And she couldn't go to bed without removing her makeup either.

"Better get to it, then." She sat up, trying to convince herself to feel better—but her efforts were undercut by something right in front of her eyes. A pillar, emblazoned with her assigned crest.

Was it true that Jinshi would never defy her from this day forth? It was not a pronouncement to be made lightly—and in front of the Emperor, no less.

Gyokuyou regarded Jinshi like a younger brother—but then, her only memories of her blood siblings were of them tormenting her. As Gyokuen's daughter, she'd been sent to the rear palace, seemingly nothing but a political tool—yet she discovered that she had far more agency than she might have expected. There were too many interesting things in the palace to spend her life acting like a doll.

Of course, there were things there that made her angry or upset. But that was no different from the western capital. No human alive could say their life consisted entirely of pleasures. There would always occasionally be things you didn't like; you just had to roll with them.

There was, however, a limit to what could be endured. Humans are creatures of profound appetites. If you were constantly negotiating and negotiating again with someone who refused to curb their demands—well, what happened?

"You only lose out, in the end," Gyokuyou said to herself.

If you were lucky.

"You can only be destroyed."

And the other person might not even mean you ill. They might simply believe they're doing the right thing.

Gyokuyou's half-brother Gyoku-ou was such a person, a man who believed he was doing the right thing. He was convinced that everything that he believed was just was indeed so, and he was merciless toward those he saw as mistaken.

Which, from his perspective, included Gyokuyou.

If he thought she was wrong, or even evil, then why was he suddenly trying to bring her into his fold?

Gyokuyou opened a drawer and took out Gyoku-ou's letter. She blew on it once, her breath quick and sharp, then dropped it on the floor.

Let her be evil, then. She could live with that. But what of her children? The boy, Gyoku-ou might try to bring onto his side as well. But the girl...

Everyone said Gyokuyou had the same girlish heart she'd possessed all her life. But it wasn't true. Gyokuyou was no longer the headstrong child she'd been in the western capital.

"And I won't let you get away with this."

Slowly, deliberately, she ground her brother's letter under her shoe.

Which of them would be crushed underfoot in the days to come? They would see. He would see. She was no longer the girl who could do nothing but smile.