Chapter 11: The Dissection
The weather had begun to get warmer and the butterbur had blown its edible buds when Maomao and the apprentice physicians were brought to a dark, dank spot.
"Finally time for the real deal, huh?" Tianyu said flippantly. He was the only one who had the wherewithal to act unintimidated; the other apprentices were all pale-faced. Once in a while they would shoot Maomao looks that said, What are you doing here? but they refrained from actually saying anything. Maomao had weathered plenty of these looks while they dissected animals together. She wasn't about to let it bother her now.
Well, it wasn't quite true that no one said anything.
"Someone's getting very special treatment," remarked Tianyu. As frivolous as he might seem, he had an iron nerve. When they had been dissecting livestock, he'd been the calmest of them all. He might not take to classroom learning as readily as the other students, but his composure made him a more gifted practitioner than the others. Indeed, he was very good.
"If you want to call it that," Maomao replied.
"Ooh. I'm jealous."
Maomao was starting to think Tianyu couldn't stay calm unless he was talking to someone. Most of the other apprentices were too nervous during the practical work to talk to anyone, let alone Maomao, but Tianyu seemed to prattle at her relentlessly.
"If my treatment's really so special, maybe I could get one of those white coats."
"Ooh, don't think that's possible, Niang-niang."
It's Maomao! Was he doing this on purpose? Whatever; it would be too much work to set him straight, so she let it be.
To be fair, she could see where Tianyu was coming from. Special treatment, huh? Guess I can't really blame anyone for accusing me of that. Under normal circumstances, Maomao would
never have walked this dim, dank hallway in the doctors'
company. As to where the hallway led—it was the room where executed criminals were placed in repose. The doctors were using a special passageway so that no one would see them go there.
It was not, however, the first time Maomao had used it. No, that had been when she'd gone to see whether Suirei was really dead. Suirei, who was now living with the former consort Ah-Duo.
Kind of wish she could've learned surgery too.
Once, on the way to the western capital, she'd helped Maomao treat some injured guards, and had proven unflappable even though the treatment had involved, among other things, amputating a human arm. She would've done great here.
I guess the circumstances of her birth would have made it impossible, Maomao thought. While it wasn't officially
acknowledged, Suirei was the former emperor's granddaughter. She was also a member of the exterminated Shi clan, so although her life had been spared, she was fated to remain in the shadows as long as she lived.
Such a waste. There was nothing Maomao could do but lament it. Anything else was far beyond her power. One might think, then, that perhaps Suirei should have stayed dead—but that would be an affront. One could not forget that there was another girl who had staged a once-in-a-lifetime performance so that Suirei could live.
"So, who's backing your participation here?" Tianyu asked.
Very direct.
"Are you accusing me of nepotism?" Maomao asked—the same thing of which she had been suspected when she'd first joined the staff at the medical office.
"No. I think it's something bigger than that. Men's intuition." This son of a...
How could Tianyu act so frothy and yet be so perceptive? It would be bad for everyone if he sniffed out Jinshi's involvement here.
"I'm telling En'en," Maomao said instead.
"She's not here, so how could you tell her?" Tianyu replied. So much for throwing him off the subject—but it bought her exactly enough time. They had arrived at their destination.
"Here," Dr. Liu said, pointing to a door at the end of the
hallway. It opened with a great, heavy creaking, unleashing a fresh blast of damp, humid air.
I smell alcohol, thought Maomao. It should have been a comfort to her—she loved spirits—but she just wasn't in the mood to drink at that moment. Lying on a cot in the middle of the room was a man, face up and completely naked. Bruises from a rope marked his neck. He was a criminal, executed by hanging, and the smell of alcohol was probably because the body had been wiped down.
"We'll put on smocks, but try not to get them dirty if you can help it," Dr. Liu said. Maomao took the apron she was given and put it on. She was also handed a white bandanna, not to tie back her hair, but to put over her face, covering everything below the eyes. Dr. Liu continued, "I'm going to do the cutting. You're going to watch me, and you're going to burn every organ, every layer of tissue, into your memory." He was already holding a dissecting knife. "I want you to remember every single thing you see here." His tone was downright threatening.
They had been warned ahead of time not to take any notes. The very fact that Dr. Liu was here, teaching them this, was supposedly something that could not happen. The only thing they could take with them from this place was whatever they could remember.
So it comes down to a conflict between public morals and medical progress. The physicians' compromise was not to do
anything too openly.
The small, sharp knife slid easily into the body's portly abdomen. It wasn't enough to make blood spurt, but at the same time, the flesh wasn't stiff; Dr. Liu appeared to have chosen a body in which the rigor mortis had worn off. He laid open the corpse and began showing them the internal organs, which were much easier to see than they had been on the freshly slaughtered livestock. Working with an actual human corpse, however, hit a little close to home. The students were by now accustomed to working with animals, but even so a couple of them put their hands to their mouths.
"This is the heart, here. Under no circumstances should you cut the large blood vessels connected to it," Dr. Liu told them.
Then he continued through the organs. "The stomach, the small intestine, the large intestine. These comprise the digestive tract. You should recognize them; we've made enough sausages from intestines."
They'd done it on his orders, in fact; he'd told them their animals were not to be wasted. The sausages had been delicious, but it looked like a few of the apprentices might never be able to eat another one again.
"Here are the reproductive organs. I'll call you the moment they execute a female prisoner. The reproductive organs take a substantially different form in women, needless to say." By this point in her life Maomao, of course, was neither surprised nor scandalized by the sight of male genitalia. "Can anyone tell me what disease this man suffered from?" Dr. Liu asked them.
Not sure how we're supposed to tell, Maomao thought. The man had been dead for days, meaning the color of his skin was no longer a reliable guide to his condition. She thought she could make out some splotches, and although this was her first time seeing the internal organs of a human up close, she thought she could make a guess.
No one else seemed willing to answer, so she ventured, "Was it a disease of the liver, sir?" Maomao wasn't eager to stand out too much, but somebody had to answer or they would be stuck here forever.
"What's your basis for suggesting that?" Dr. Liu asked.
"I can't shake the sense that the color of his liver is poor compared to the animals we've worked with. There are also some yellow discolorations on his skin, and jaundice is a good indicator of liver problems."
Yao had the same symptom.
"Passing marks for you. This man got drunk and turned violent. He picked a fight with another customer at the bar and ended up killing him. His own mother tried to stop him, and he killed her too. As a matter of fact, he'd just been released from prison for a previous offense, and he was out of second chances." Hence the hanging.
"As would be more obvious if we could line this up against a healthy liver, this one is noticeably inflamed. Excessive alcohol use is typically the culprit, but sometimes it can be contaminated by the blood, so be careful not to get any cuts or injuries on your hands while working with something like this. The poison can get into your body through the wound and make you sick."
Dr. Liu's tone was so intimidating that even Tianyu didn't have a smart remark. In fact, his eyes were wide; he studied the organ intently. He seemed to show an unanticipated serious streak when they were actually at work.
Maomao looked much like him: she was staring hard at the dissected body, taking it all in, making sure she didn't miss a word the doctor said, intimidating or not.
When their "special class" was over, the students changed and headed for the bathhouse. They went to one right next to a temple—one imagined that the bathhouse had started as a place for clergy to purify themselves, but by now the establishment demanded secular currency.
The baths were divided by gender, not mixed, and here in the middle of the day the place wasn't very busy, but nonetheless the changing room felt cramped. Even so, the closely packed shelves probably had room for fifteen sets of clothes. There were a number of bathhouses in the capital, and if this wasn't the most lavish, it was clean and well-maintained.
"Phew..." The water was good and hot, and the other bathers were few and far between—in Maomao's mind, this was paradise.
The students had been told they could go home after they washed up, so she would take the time to clean her hair today. She washed off the clinging feel of the dampness and the dark. It mattered so much to have these moments when you could simply soak in the bath and think about nothing.
It sucks that we couldn't write anything down, she thought. But if they did, their notes would constitute forbidden books in their own right.
Today they had only observed, but in the future Maomao and the others would be expected to do the dissection themselves. Maomao had been surprised by how calm and rational she had remained in the presence of a corpse. Maybe it's because I'd never seen him before. Because he was a criminal. Because I
could tell myself it was his own fault he died.
Would she have been able to do the same if it had been someone she knew? Or perhaps it helped that they were cutting not into a live person, but only something that had formerly been a person.
Maomao thought of Luomen's hidden book. He'd said that it was his teacher on the last page. She hadn't looked very old, though, not in his drawings. I can't imagine how he felt when he
was making those illustrations. What must Luomen's teacher have
meant to him?
Just as Maomao was letting out another sigh, some young women came into the bath.
"Think they'd take me?" one of them said.
"Sure! Definitely," the other replied.
Maomao listened, wondering what they were talking about.
"I heard they haven't put out a call in a long time, though. You know, for ladies for the rear palace?"
"That's exactly it! They must be getting low on numbers. Now's your chance!"
A call for ladies for the rear palace? Maomao frowned thoughtfully. Hadn't Jinshi said that Gyoku-ou's daughter, Empress Gyokuyou's niece, was going to enter the palace? Even if they had found a way to postpone it. So they do ask for volunteers.
Such a young woman couldn't have exclusively ladies-inwaiting from the western capital around her; and anyway, she was the child of someone very important and influential.
"Everyone talks about the Crown Prince, but the Emperor only has two sons right now. Plenty of chances to find your place.
Can't have too many sons, right?"
Wow! This young lady had ambition. She was planning not only to enter the rear palace as a palace woman, but to become the Emperor's bedmate and even a mother of the nation.
If you're gonna dream, dream big.
Even if, Maomao figured, things would end up very differently from what the woman expected. She nodded her head, causing droplets of water to fall from her sopping bangs. That reminds
me. She knew they would be leaving for the western capital
before this new consort arrived, but she still hadn't heard an exact date. For that matter, she didn't even know who else would be coming with them.
I'll ask him next time, she thought, and then she heaved herself out of the bath and headed for the changing room.
Chapter 12: The Secret of the Numbers
Jinshi gave a great stretch, his just reward for finishing a chunk of his work. He was alone in his office. No, that wasn't quite true —from behind a screen came the sound of someone shuffling papers. Who? Baryou, he of the social anxiety disorder.
Jinshi was almost done with his work, but there was something he wanted to ask Baryou.
"Baryou, may I ask you something?"
"Yes, sir, what is it?" came a thin voice from behind the screen.
"How'd the love start?"
"Hrm? How'd what love start?"
"If I said Chue, would you understand?"
Love might sound like an odd thing to be talking about, but despite his screen and retiring attitude, Baryou was in fact a married man. A man married, in fact, to someone who had recently entered service as one of Jinshi's ladies-in-waiting: Chue. Jinshi's main condition when choosing his attendants was that they never spare him so much as an amorous glance. Chue certainly met that requirement.
"Yes, she hardly seems human, does she?" Baryou replied.
Another statement that seemed apt to invite misunderstanding. "Erm, isn't she your wife? You have children, don't you?"
Jinshi had to admit, it was difficult to see how a woman with such a forceful personality ever worked with Baryou. The curiosity had driven him to ask about their love story, but he didn't quite expect the answer he got.
"It was a bit of scheming on the part of my mother and my older sister Maamei. They looked at me, and they looked at Basen, and they picked the surest way of continuing the family line."
Jinshi was struck dumb.
"I accepted, on the condition that they would handle all the child-rearing, and so the marriage was decided. We only see each other face-to-face once every two weeks, and we don't talk much,
but I must say, I think we get along rather well."
"Yes... I mean, if you say so..."
The Ba brothers seemed to be polar opposites of each other. Jinshi could see how one might consider the exceptionally frail Baryou a better choice than the exceptionally powerful Basen. It was a political marriage through and through.
"They pointed out that there's no telling how long I might live, and ordered me to hurry up and produce some heirs. They even wanted me to put it ahead of taking the civil service exam."
Baryou had passed the civil service exam two years earlier, which implied that he had taken it only after conceiving children.
"She's certainly...unique, but with Suiren to keep her in line, she's been quite a trustworthy helper," Jinshi said. It actually reminded him of when Maomao had been working under him.
"She comes from the Mi clan, albeit a subsidiary line."
That would explain much. As the Ma clan provided bodyguards for the Imperial family, the Mi clan produced an information network that served the Emperor and his kin directly. They both guarded the royal family, one in the light, one from the shadows. It made sense that they might sometimes marry their members to each other in order to strengthen the bonds between them.
"I see it's not easy being you," Jinshi remarked.
"I daresay you have far more troubles than I, Master Jinshi. In terms of both your looks and your rank. As for me, my sister told me to simply lie down quietly at night and my wife would take care of the rest."
Once again, Jinshi had no answer. Baryou had said something rather impudent, and followed it up with something Jinshi distinctly felt he shouldn't have heard. How easy life would be if Jinshi could accept a political marriage as readily as Baryou.
Their chat was interrupted by the sound of someone coming down the hallway; the hall outside Jinshi's office was specifically designed to make footsteps echo audibly.
"Ah, speaking of my sister, there she is now," Baryou said.
Then he added, "If you ever find yourself unsure how to handle
Chue, just ask her."
The footsteps came from a woman's shoes, and because Jinshi went out of his way to keep most court ladies at arm's length (fewer problems that way), it was natural to assume it was Maamei approaching.
"Thank you, but forget about Chue," Jinshi replied. He'd simply been curious about how love took root—unfortunately, the inquiry hadn't gained him any useful insight.
There was a knock on the door, and indeed, Maamei appeared, with paperwork in one hand and tea supplies in the other.
"Hello, I'm back... What's with you two?" she asked when she saw them both staring at her.
Jinshi had no intention of asking her about Chue at that moment; if he wasn't careful, there was even a chance that Maamei would get the wrong idea, and he would never live it down. Baryou and Basen weren't the only ones who found themselves cowed by this formidable woman. Instead he tried to think of some way to distract her.
"You're trying to think of some way to distract me, aren't you?" Maamei said, fixing him with a glare.
"Who, me? No, no. I was just wondering if we had an answer yet regarding what I asked you about."
What he had asked her about was the tie attached to Gyokuou's recent letter. Flummoxed by the sheet of numbers, Jinshi had called in an expert.
"Ah, you mean Master Lahan. I happen to have a letter from him right here."
When you thought of numbers, you thought of Lahan. It had been the obvious solution, and in this case, it appeared it had also been the right one. Jinshi opened the letter, which indeed detailed the truth behind the numbers.
"May I see it?" Maamei asked, coming over. Jinshi placed the letter on the desk. Even Baryou was apparently intrigued enough to emerge from behind his screen. "What is this? An account ledger?" Maamei said.
"So it would seem," replied Jinshi.
Lahan had sent them a copy of some sort of ledger—it appeared to be related to taxes levied on crops. Some percentage of the taxes collected in the western capital were sent to the national center. The tie seemed to have been made of several battered pages, presumably records from the same area covering several years.
"Perhaps this is it," said Maamei.
It looked to be from the first half of the previous year. The western capital didn't produce many crops, but there were some. Wheat and grapes, cotton and sugar beets, for example. Sheep's wool was another major export of the region.
As Maamei indicated, the records matched up with the mysterious numbers they'd been sent. The numbers, between two and four digits, showed harvest quantities; multiply them by the tax rate to get the amount of tax collected.
"Hm? Look here—the numbers are different." Maamei's finger had stopped over the data for wheat. There, and there alone, the number in the ledger was bigger. "If the numbers are different, it implies someone doctored the ledger. But this doesn't make any sense..."
"I agree. I don't understand," said Jinshi. If the number in the ledger had been smaller, it would have been simple. The impropriety would be exposed. "But the number they reported was bigger." Meaning someone had reported more than had actually been harvested. Naturally, that would mean more taxes would be collected. "They're deliberately paying too much in taxes?"
Jinshi couldn't fathom why they would do that. It could only harm them.
It might not make sense to him, but it seemed Lahan had decided that the numbers they had been sent pertained to taxes levied on the harvest.
"That's very nice of them to pay more than they owe, but it sure smells fishy," Maamei said.
"Is wheat the only number they doctored?" Baryou asked,
looking through the several years of registers. "It seems all the harvests were smaller than average last year."
"If this message or whatever it is is to be believed, wheat was particularly scarce," Jinshi said, squinting at the rows of figures. The western capital region had been warned to take precautions against insect plague; if they were seeking to hide the true state of things, this would be one way to do it.
"When is wheat harvested?" Jinshi asked.
"Well, there's winter wheat and there's spring wheat, so it depends, but the first half of the year would be the winter wheat harvest, at the beginning of summer," replied Baryou.
Meaning it was long after Jinshi had left the area, and even after the Empress's father Gyokuen had come to the capital.
"I'm impressed he was able to spot that in all this," Maamei said, all admiration for Lahan's work. It was true that noticing the discrepancy in the numbers was an impressive feat, even if the numbers were ones that he dealt with in his work.
"He said something about that in his last letter," Baryou said and rifled through his papers. "'The registers we were sent
included the seal of an acquaintance of mine. I remember it.'"
"An acquaintance's seal?" Lahan's letter went on to give a name that Jinshi recognized as well. He thought back to the people who had accompanied him to the western capital the year before. There had been Maomao and Ah-Duo, as well as Lahan— energetic and memorable people all—but there had been one who was more detached.
"Rikuson... He was Grand Commandant Kan's aide, wasn't he?" Baryou said.
"Yes, I believe I've heard that name before," Maamei said.
Rikuson: the eccentric strategist's right-hand man. The one who had danced with Maomao at the banquet in the western capital. Currently, he was serving as Gyoku-ou's aide at Gyokuen's request.
"And did you hear anything specific about him, Maamei?" Jinshi asked. All he really knew about Rikuson was his job title. He didn't even know what the man was like. All he knew was that he'd seen a side of Rikuson that he didn't like much, and it was hard to get away from that bad first impression.
"About Master Rikuson? Let me see... I'm afraid everything I know about him is hearsay," Maamei replied as she prepared the tea. "He was a civil official before he served Master Lakan, but my understanding is that he didn't get there by passing the civil service examinations. He had connections. He comes from a merchant family, and his gentle disposition always gave him a certain popularity with the court ladies." Perhaps that was also where Maamei had got her information.
"Who were these connections?"
"I'm afraid I'm not sure. I can look into it if you'd like."
"It's no rush. But I would be glad to know before I leave for the western capital."
Maamei, clever Maamei, placed tea snacks in front of Jinshi and then began jotting a letter. No doubt she would find out about Rikuson, and quickly. When she was done writing, she flapped the page to dry the ink and then tucked it into the folds of her robes.
"Erm... Couldn't we simply ask Sir Lahan directly?" Baryou asked with a hesitance that implied he felt he might be out of line to suggest it.
Jinshi frowned. "Sir Lahan has already done me several favors.
Including this one."
"I see..."
"If I'm to incur yet another debt, I would rather not go to him as a blank slate. Better to have some knowledge, and pay only for what I can't get myself. Yes?"
"Y-Yes, of course."
Lahan was no paragon, but he didn't go in for dirty dealings— he would have considered them unbeautiful. All the same, the fewer favors Jinshi owed, the fewer weaknesses he had that could be exploited, the better.
"I'll leave the rest of the paperwork here," Maamei said, setting it down alongside the tea. Her less than subtle way of telling him to get back to work.
"Good, thank you. I'll trade you for this—have a look at it, if you would." Jinshi handed her something; she wasn't the only one who could fling paperwork around.
Maamei's usually narrow eyes became quite wide indeed, and
she swept them over the paper several times, making sure she was reading it right. "Is this true?" she asked. "And this when there's no need for you to go to the western capital yourself,
Master Jinshi."
"Not another word. I'm well aware of the danger." Foreign nations and natural disasters would not be his only enemies.
"May I ask what you're planning to do if someone makes an attempt on your life in some far-off country?" said Maamei. That was the point of greatest concern to her.
"I'll be traveling with picked physicians and warriors for exactly that reason."
"Yes, I heard you ordered Dr. Liu to get us more capable doctors. What about your bodyguard, then?"
"As far as the soldiers..."
"The soldiers are exactly what I'm concerned about! Are you sure you'll be safe with...with whom you've chosen?"
Jinshi tugged at his hair; Maamei gave a look that showed she thought that was uncivilized.
"Chosen," Jinshi echoed. "That implies I had a choice."
"I'm saying—!"
"Well, now!" piped up Baryou, glancing at the papers from beside Maamei. "Is he really going with you? Master Lakan?"
"Yes, I've asked Sir Lakan to come with me."
"You've what?" Maamei's face contorted in a way Jinshi wouldn't have thought possible. Such open disgust wasn't typical for her. "May I ask what you're thinking? He'll go on a rampage! This is terrible! The moment you turn your back, you'll find his blade in it!"
"I know. I know."
"And your guards—they're all Master Lakan's men through and through! They can kill you and make it look like an accident!"
"Does he really hate me that much?" Jinshi had been under the impression that the strategist had possessed a modicum of newfound respect for him since the Go tournament.
"Who's going to hold his reins? That's what I want to know. You can bring Master Lakan, but you certainly can't keep him under control. Then again, if Master Luomen were among the physicians..."
Ah, Maamei. She knew how the game was played.
"Not Sir Luomen, I can't ask him to come. His age won't permit such a lengthy journey. Especially not with his bad leg. In any event, he would be an absolute last resort."
In fact, this had all been settled long ago. After what Jinshi had done, he had to go to the western capital.
"Who, then?" Maamei asked, but then she stopped. "You can't mean..."
Her intuition was excellent; there was no need to explain. If Lahan couldn't come and Luomen couldn't either, that only left so many people. One, in particular—simultaneously the best and the worst.
"You're talking about Maomao." Maamei's face twitched.
Jinshi offered her a wan smile, but he couldn't meet her eyes.
Chapter 13: Gyoku-ou
The quill in Rikuson's hand ran swiftly over the parchment. How many of these signatures had he affixed by now, in the compressed form so conducive to quick writing? He occasionally compared his version to the original just to make sure his hadn't changed.
Back in the capital, all he'd had to do was press a chop to a piece of paper; it didn't tire his hand out the way this did. He took a moment to shake out his wrist and regarded the paper.
"Master Rikuson. If you would handle these as well?" A functionary arrived with more paperwork. He was the fifth such bureaucrat to come here; from his minimal accent, Rikuson assumed he came from Kaou Province. His earlobes were somewhat large, a shape traditionally associated with blessing. His left shoulder also leaned slightly lower than the right; maybe he had a habit of carrying everything on the right side.
"Thank you. You can put it here," Rikuson said.
"Yes, sir."
This new stuff was, well, busywork. Or at least, the governor viewed it as such.
Most of the population of I-sei Province was concentrated in the cities along the trade routes that linked the east and the west. This "busywork" involved petitions from peasants living in the rural reaches far from the main trade routes. In villages, not cities. Hamlets. Most of them were farmers of some description, livestock herders or grape growers—things that could survive the arid climate. Some of them wanted irrigation canals built; others complained that increasingly frequent nighttime bandit attacks saw them bereft of their livestock. The wheat harvest had been terrible as of late, and there were several petitions asking for someone to come and look.
"Ha ha ha!" Rikuson was laughing out loud before he knew it, earning him a mistrustful look from the departing bureaucrat.
It must have been more than six months since he'd come here from the Imperial city. He had been sent here, allegedly, because they wanted someone who understood the politics of the capital, and yet all he'd been given to do was make-work like this. The only thing that had changed in all this time was that Rikuson had gotten better at it, quicker at going through it, which only meant that he was given more and more of it to do.
"I almost get the feeling they don't trust me," he grumbled to the empty room, the office he had been assigned. He worked his right hand again—he was starting to feel tendonitis coming on— and looked over the papers once more. Even he could detect patterns when given enough paperwork to look at day in and day out. After all, he had (he liked to think) more talents than simply a photographic memory.
"I make sure to report everything to him, and yet here we are."
It was Gyoku-ou who sent all this work to him. If Rikuson spotted something but didn't report it, he might well be cut loose sometime later when something needed to be cleaned up. He had the distinct sense that was why he had really been summoned here.
Gyoku-ou was the current, if ostensibly temporary, ruler of the western capital. If Gyokuen, who had gone to the central region, decided not to come back, then his eldest son—Gyoku-ou—would succeed him. Gyokuen had several other children, but none as strong-willed as Gyoku-ou.
"Pardon me." Another bureaucrat appeared with more paperwork. Not more petitions, but papers Rikuson had sent to his superiors that were being sent back. This particular bureaucrat served directly under Gyoku-ou, and Rikuson had seen him exactly twice before. The first time was when they had taken their trip to the western capital last year, and the second was when Rikuson had gone to give his formal greetings to Gyoku-ou—he and this man had seen each other in passing. "These are being returned," the man said.
There was nothing written on the papers; no signature, no seal.
"May I take this to mean permission has been denied?" Rikuson asked.
"Yes. Necessary it may be, but there are several more important jobs. We must have our priorities."
Well. He couldn't be much more clear than that. The corners of Rikuson's mouth raised and he put the papers in a drawer.
"There's one other thing," the man said.
"Yes?"
"Master Gyoku-ou is asking for you. Not immediately—he suggests getting together for tea when you're done with your morning assignments. If you would be so kind?"
Although phrased as an invitation, Rikuson was not at liberty to refuse. Instead he said, "But of course. I should come to the open-air pavilion in the central courtyard before the afternoon bell rings, yes?"
"That's right."
Then, with no further evident interest, the bureaucrat left the office.
The pavilion was where Gyoku-ou always liked to have his tea. It was the coolest place available, right beside the oasis. Rikuson could have guessed: bug-repelling incense was burned there all morning whenever there was going to be tea.
This man Gyoku-ou was by no means incompetent. He had received an education befitting the son of a man of influence, and even Rikuson could sense a genuine desire—perhaps inherited from his merchant father—to make the western capital a more prosperous place. Gyoku-ou possessed an almost unchecked ambition; it had been in his eyes when he was young, and remained there now.
With such ambition came an element of danger.
"Is this within my jurisdiction as well?" Rikuson asked the empty office. He was often there alone, and found he had taken to talking to himself. "Much as I'd appreciate a few more acquaintances..."
Remembering people's faces wasn't just a unique ability Rikuson possessed; it was also his hobby. Having a perfect memory for every face you saw meant it got boring seeing the same people over and over.
Among the paperwork he found bills for silks, gems, and other luxury accoutrements. They were far cheaper here in a trade nexus than they were in the Imperial capital, but he still goggled at the prices. He knew very well what these resources were being used on. Just after he had arrived in the west, Rikuson had crossed paths with a young woman. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, and seemed much like Empress Gyokuyou.
When Rikuson had inquired with the bureaucrat showing him around, he'd been told that she was Gyoku-ou's daughter. The bureaucrat had added in a mutter that they didn't look much alike —but he'd been wise enough to leave it at that.
"Ambitious... Yes, he is that."
Rikuson no longer saw the young woman anywhere. She had probably been on her way to the capital for days now.
He felt the corners of his mouth lift up again, and then he went back to his work, the quill rushing over the pages once more.
Other than his tanned skin, the honorable personage across from Rikuson didn't look much like someone from the western capital. He had a rich, dark beard, and other than some uncommonly deep wrinkles, he could have passed for a perfectly ordinary person from Li. His straight hair framed a round face; he was slimmer than the average inhabitant of the western capital, but toned and muscular.
This was, needless to say, Gyoku-ou. If the father, Gyokuen, looked like a friendly merchant, the son looked like a warrior. He was somewhere in his forties, but he looked at least ten years younger than that, here among the inhabitants of the western capital, where it was so easy to get a paunch. His perfect, white teeth probably helped him make a good impression.
Rikuson looked at Gyoku-ou's straight front teeth, then averted his eyes. "I'm honored by your invitation," he said with a long, slow bow.
"Oh, you don't have to grovel. Have a seat."
A manservant pulled out a wicker chair and Rikuson sat. There were glasses of juice on the table.
"Would you have preferred tea?" Gyoku-ou asked.
"No, sir. Desk work does make one crave something sweet."
There was condensation on the glasses; Rikuson wondered if they had been chilled with underground water.
"You're trying to be deferential again. What, do you think I have some sort of ulterior motive here?"
"Ha ha ha! No, but I am nervous." Rikuson chuckled and took a sip of the juice. "I confess, I worry you must be disappointed that I was the best the capital could send. I'm in no way suited to your station."
"Ha ha ha. My father would never pick the wrong man, of that I assure you. You served under Sir Lakan, didn't you? I'd say that alone is proof of your competence."
Sir Lakan, was it? Rikuson set down his glass. There was a whole array of different fruit juices on the table.
"If I may ask," Gyoku-ou said, getting to his feet and turning around. His gaze settled on a group of merchants. "Is there anyone you recognize among that group?"
"Three people, sir," Rikuson said after a second. "Two of them run the caravans that come to the capital each year. The other does his trading primarily by sea."
The manservant reappeared and placed writing utensils in front of Rikuson. He put down their names.
"I only know the names of the two. And everyone else in that group is new to me."
"Understood. I'll have the names checked against our records." Maybe Gyoku-ou suspected one of them of something—or maybe he just wanted to put Rikuson's powers of recall to the test.
A short while later, a bureaucrat came and whispered in Gyokuou's ear.
"Mm," Gyoku-ou said, sounding satisfied. He stroked his beard.
"Impressive. You were right on both counts."
"I simply happened to recognize them," Rikuson said with another humble bow.
"Funny thing, that. You must see dozens or hundreds of faces every day, and yet you remember them. You know, in the capital, they claim that members of the La clan are all gifted with rather unusual skills. Are you sure you're not one of them? It might explain why you were serving Sir Lakan."
"Wh-What a notion, sir!" For the first time that day, Rikuson laughed from the heart. It might have been the funniest thing he'd heard since he'd come to the west. No traveling comedian could have told a joke funnier than that Rikuson might have La blood flowing through his veins. "That clan is packed full of people who...break the mold, let us say. As for me... Hmm. What I do is more of a habit."
"Habit?"
"Yes, sir. My mother always told me I mustn't forget people's faces."
"Ah, yes. I seem to recall you come from merchant stock, don't you?"
"I do, sir, and to forget a customer's face is to risk a vital business relationship. My mother warned me that to remember was to live." Rikuson's laugh seemed to have dissolved his fear, for he spoke easily now.
"It sounds like you had a strict upbringing."
"Yes, sir."
Rikuson let the moment breathe; he took a sip of the juice. He was just thinking back on the honored strategist's habit of juice drinking when Gyoku-ou said something unexpected.
"Do you suppose Sir Lakan would like that juice?"
"You know Master Lakan is a teetotaler?"
"Who doesn't?"
Rikuson was aware that the story was well-known. After all, whenever that man passed through somewhere, it was like a typhoon—and it fell to Rikuson to clean up after the storm.
"I'll make sure there's some of this juice available when he comes to the western capital," Gyoku-ou said.
"When he comes here, sir?" Rikuson repeated, caught off guard. He suddenly became aware that he was covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
"Ah, you're tense again. Yes, I suppose it's the first you've heard of it. Let me tell you a little secret." It seemed they had finally reached the heart of what Gyoku-ou wanted to discuss. "Sir Lakan is coming to our city—with the Imperial younger brother in tow."
He almost made it sound like the Imperial family member was ancillary.
Rikuson forced the corners of his mouth into a smile, but inside, he heaved a sigh.
Question: How much do 300,000 people eat in a year?
Answer: It depends on what they're eating.
The answer was so absurd that Rikuson passed through anger and arrived at sheer incredulity.
After the abrupt tea party, he'd had an opportunity to talk with several people—all of them conversant with commerce. He'd hoped they might have more thoughtful answers for him.
"It's impossible to say for certain. The western regions aren't as fertile as Kae Province. Rice is far more of a luxury here than it is in the central region."
He'd heard the reasoning. He'd heard it many times.
If not rice, then wheat. If not wheat, buckwheat. He was looking for possible substitute foods, wanted to know how much of each they were likely to be able to procure. He'd done the calculations over and over, but he wasn't a mathematician; he couldn't find the answer. Truth be told, however, none of the bureaucrats in the western capital were going to go that far out of their way for Rikuson. He was simply put off, treated as an outsider; or else they claimed someone higher up the chain had stopped them; or else that they were too busy and couldn't spare the time.
"I suppose this is how the Moon Prince always felt," Rikuson said, unable to contain a sigh. For such a young man, that noble, so often the victim of Lakan's interference, worked hard. Unfortunately, hard work wasn't enough. Being part of the Imperial family meant you had to shine brighter than anyone in order to gain acknowledgment and acceptance.
Rikuson trotted back to his office to find a messenger waiting outside. "A letter from Kae Province, sir," the man said.
He gave Rikuson a small box—hardly a letter, in Rikuson's estimation. The box was kept shut with a string tied in a decorative bow. He'd often received such letters in the capital. A variety of esoteric rules governed how the string was to be tied, and once undone it couldn't easily be retied.
There was a knack to undoing these bows, and Rikuson possessed it, but to be perfectly honest, at that moment, he didn't have much energy for such things. Instead he grabbed a knife
and simply cut the knot.
Topmost in the bundle was a sheet bearing a wildly stylized L, a playful little touch Lahan liked to add to his correspondence.
Lahan was Lakan's nephew, so they were often working toward the same ends. Rikuson had thought of Lahan as more of a friend than a colleague, but in the end, he reflected ruefully, they had only ever talked about work.
"At least he knows what he's doing." Lahan was a numbers man, and he had furnished Rikuson with exactly the data he wanted.
For rice, each tan would yield about 150 kilograms, roughly enough to feed one person for one year. Of course, it could be stretched if the rice was mixed with other foodstuffs. There were detailed calculations of how the yield would be affected if they added in wheat, soy, or potatoes. Furthermore, Lahan indicated how readily each could be preserved, the liquidity of the various crops, and even the current market prices.
"I was afraid he would just try to foist his potatoes on us.
Guess I owe him an apology."
Lahan's father grew potatoes, but they didn't keep as well as rice or wheat, and Lahan's family was presently trying to develop ways to make them last longer or otherwise process them.
The winding columns of numbers made Rikuson's head spin. He had no doubt Lahan had organized them neatly, but it was a rare person who could look at a bunch of numbers and perceive the truth of things. Rikuson had become conversant with numbers as a matter of necessity, but for most people, the ability to parse prices at the shop was all the numeracy they needed.
Rikuson flipped vacantly through the pages. Most of it was sheer data, but one page bore an inscription: Interesting things
will happen soon.
"I guess he knows," Rikuson said.
Lakan would be coming to the western capital. Lahan had probably scrawled the note in hopes of giving Rikuson a little shock, but unfortunately for him Gyoku-ou had pulled the rug out from under his surprise.
Rikuson smiled as he put the letter back in its box. Then he picked up the tie he'd cut.
"Hmm." Now he wished he hadn't. He went through his drawers, hoping he might find something to replace it with, and came up with a piece of hemp cord that he tied around the box. As long as he remembered how he knotted it, he would know immediately if anyone had opened it and tried to retie it.
He placed the box in a chest on a bottom shelf and gave a great stretch. "Time for a little walk, I think."
Yes, he was talking to himself much more these days. He'd heard of officials quitting their jobs because they'd been done in psychologically by desk work; perhaps he was going the same way.
First a tea party, now a walk. It might look to an observer like he was slacking at his work, but he was normally so diligent. They would just have to live with it.
"I wonder if I'll be allowed to make the rounds outside one of these days." This was something else his mother had told him: a merchant who doesn't know what's happening on the ground can't sell anything. It was a long, long time ago now that he'd heard those words, but he still remembered them.
Maybe he could get them to send him to see the farming villages by claiming it was for a petition. He did a lap around the courtyard, pondering how he might explain the situation so that they would approve his expedition.
As he walked, he heard shouting. He took a detour, heading toward the voices, which he discovered belonged to some burly men. They seemed to be fighting; a group of men had formed a circle, and at the center, two of them were grappling with each other. Ah: they were wrestling.
The shouting men were all smiling and laughing; they were enjoying themselves. Rikuson remembered them all to be soldiers. The kerchiefs around their heads were all the same color, a shade of blue. From the colors of their sashes, he judged that they were all different ranks.
Rikuson ducked in among the men, trying to get a closer look at the match. When it was over, the victor turned out to be someone he knew well: it was Gyoku-ou. The man who had been sipping tea with him earlier was now winning a wrestling match.
Standing there sweating and laughing with his troops, he didn't look like the ruler of an entire city. To those around him, he must have appeared as someone who shared the sentiments of those under him.
Rikuson swallowed heavily. He didn't think Gyoku-ou was wrestling with his minions just to earn brownie points. He enjoyed it as much as they did.
Rikuson didn't want Gyoku-ou to notice him. If the governor invited him to wrestle, he feared he might be snapped in half. The guilt he already felt at being out for a walk just because he wanted a break would compel him to take part.
He turned on his heel, determined to go back to his office. It suddenly seemed better to throw himself into his work than to try to get some fresh air. After all, he'd been sent to the western capital to help take care of the excess work Gyoku-ou couldn't handle himself. The burden on Rikuson was great, yes, but it wasn't as if the governor didn't have his own job to do. Even this friendly moment with his soldiers doubled as an effective way of winning their hearts and minds.
Rikuson thought back to a play he'd seen a long time ago. In it, a general had spent the whole night drinking with his troops, a fleeting moment of enjoyment before they faced the battlefield, where they might be cut down at any instant. Gyoku-ou was much like that general. There were protagonists in this world and bit players. Rikuson understood that he was not one of the former.
In a land at war, his role would have been to die without doing anything of note. Here in this world of peace, it was to do odd jobs and miscellaneous tasks.
Gyoku-ou was different. He was a main character, at the heart of the action.
Not like Rikuson.
Rikuson heaved another great sigh.
"I suppose the western capital needs him."
Gyoku-ou could steal the show in peace as well as war.
Chapter 14: Selection
I felt...surprisingly calm.
Maomao gently pressed a hand to her mouth to keep her opinion from coming out of it. Instead she washed her hands carefully and changed her clothes. Next she would go to the bath.
That was all.
She had dissected a human body for the first time, the corpse of a man hanged for burglary. Now he was covered with incisions. If he'd known he was going to be sliced up after he died, he might have reconsidered his life choices.
I have to be sure to wash really well, Maomao thought. She sniffed her hands to see if they still smelled. She'd perfumed her change of clothes to be extra sure, so she thought it was going to be all right...
"Niang-niang!"
She wasn't sure if she should stop or not. Only one person ever called her that. She turned back to see Tianyu.
She didn't say a word—to do so would be as good as admitting that she would answer to "Niang-niang." At the same time, though, it didn't feel quite right to just ignore him.
If it turns out he's just going to prattle at me, though, I'm leaving.
As a matter of fact, Tianyu had a good reason for stopping her today. "Dr. Liu wants to talk to us," he said.
"What about my bath?"
"Sounds like it'll have to wait," Tianyu said with no small amount of disappointment—apparently Maomao wasn't the only one who had been looking forward to washing up. Tianyu pressed his outfit to his nose and sniffed mightily.
If she wasn't the only one being delayed, then Maomao could hardly complain. She followed Tianyu. She couldn't help noticing that the other apprentices, though, all headed home.
"What about the rest of them?" she asked.
"What else? They've been held back," Tianyu said, and then it made sense. The other apprentices had done well enough dissecting animals, but their hands had been shaking as they cut human flesh. It seemed only Maomao and Tianyu had managed to look like they belonged there.
So he swung it too? Bah. Anyway, I thought we might at least get a few more tries, Maomao thought and sniffed her hands
again.
They were brought to a room with Dr. Liu, Maomao's old man (that is, Luomen), and several other physicians. There was a long conference table lined with benches, with everyone arranged around the far end.
They're...all upper physicians?
All the men present were skilled and learned. The medical office, like everywhere else, had its hierarchy, but broadly speaking the physicians were commonly referred to as being upper, middle, or apprentice.
Maomao rubbed her eyes, for in that august company she saw someone she would never have expected. He waved eagerly to her, his eyes kind, his frame portly. He bore a loach-like mustache despite being a eunuch.
"Master Physician..." Maomao said. Which could, of course, be qualified as: rear palace physician.
It was the quack.
What's he doing here? I mean, I guess it makes sense, kind of. Whatever she might think of his medical expertise, he looked after the medical office of the rear palace all by himself, which meant that he must at least be afforded a title equivalent to the other upper physicians. Nonetheless, he seemed distinctly out of place. He sat there like a piglet among the ranks of men who otherwise seemed distinguished by their intellect and skills.
Come to think of it... The quack had been frightened even to touch a dead body. How did he ever make it from apprentice to
physician?
It was a mystery. One of the seven wonders of the royal court, one might say.
Maomao's thoughts were interrupted by a clap. "It looks like
we're all here," Dr. Liu said, quieting the murmuring room.
Maomao realized several middle physicians had joined them as well at some point, and they were looking at Maomao as if she was even more out of place here than the quack. He might not be as physically impressive as the others, but a woman smack in the middle of this convocation of men was always going to draw attention to herself.
"All right, let's begin. You can take any open seat." Easy for him to say...
The upper physicians were all seated; now, the middle physicians began to move. Tianyu, an apprentice, remained standing, so Maomao did likewise, waiting until everyone else had a seat. Dr. Liu's invitation sounded universal, but there was still a hierarchy here. An order. It might be different in an emergency, but at this moment it would be best to respect protocol if she didn't want to cause unnecessary friction.
Tianyu took the lowest seat of all, and Maomao occupied the final remaining chair after him.
So I find myself in another ambiguous position, she thought. Evidently no one had the nerve to sit right next to the upper physicians, so the only open seat was beside the quack. He gave her a friendly grin as she sat down. "My, but it's been a while," he said. "Have a bite?" He furtively showed her the candy he was hiding under the table.
What is he, the neighborhood auntie? Maomao thought, but she said, "Maybe not right now."
It was best to politely decline; she would never be able to concentrate on the discussion with candy rolling around in her mouth. Plus, Dr. Liu was glaring at them. The quack hadn't noticed that he had been noticed.
Dr. Liu proceeded to explain why he had called them here, evidently choosing to overlook the quack's full cheeks.
"I've gathered you together so we can decide who's to go to the western capital," he said. The same subject Maomao had overheard him discussing with Jinshi. Jinshi had wanted physicians to accompany him on the long journey—two more, if possible.
Two more... So I wonder how many there already are.
In the heat of the moment, Maomao had suggested herself as a candidate. She didn't know whether anything would come of it. She knew, however, that if she wasn't chosen, it would mean trouble for her. Lots of trouble.
"Is there anyone here who specifically wants to go to the western capital?" Dr. Liu asked. Maomao looked around and was about to raise her hand, but someone beat her to it, flinging his hand into the air.
"Question, sir!"
If someone had a question, then Maomao couldn't very well volunteer yet. She let her hand slide back down.
"The parameters of this trip are far too vague. Why are we being asked to go to the western capital? Is this a punitive posting?"
The speaker was one of the middle physicians, someone who was supposed to be quite adept. Maomao didn't remember his name.
It's a fair question, actually. Jinshi had already spoken to her about this trip, so she naturally assumed it was simply a long expedition. Someone who didn't know the circumstances, however, could well think that Jinshi was effectively being demoted.
Wait... Is he?
A punitive posting, a demotion... Well, but the way Jinshi had been talking, it seemed he would set out very soon, so it didn't sound like a demotion. To everyone else, however, it looked like His Majesty and Empress Gyokuyou both wished for Jinshi to go on a very long trip. With the Emperor having fathered a couple of princes, even his own brother could appear to be an obstacle. "What's that? It's a punishment?" the quack said quietly to Maomao, concerned.
He hadn't heard?
It seemed like all the other upper physicians were familiar with the matter. Maybe the quack had been left out of the loop specifically because he was a quack. Or maybe he'd been so busy sucking on some candy that he'd missed it.
Dr. Liu coughed pointedly; Maomao was left with no choice but to pretend she hadn't heard the portly doctor.
"This assignment is not punitive. It will, however, be a long trip, considering the destination. Even at the most optimistic estimate, you should expect to be away from the capital for at least three months."
"Is there a war starting?" It was a tricky subject, but this middle physician didn't mince words. The assembled doctors began muttering, and the quack clung to Maomao in fear. She could practically feel everyone looking at them.
"My dear Guen. If you'd be so kind," Luomen said, nudging the quack.
He has a name? It's Guen?
Maomao had never had a chance to find out his name in the rear palace; everyone simply called him "doctor." Okay, maybe she'd heard it somewhere along the line, but quite frankly, remembering people's names was not one of Maomao's special skills.
That soldier would never forget, she thought, picturing Rikuson. He'd been sent to the western capital, hadn't he? In his case, it was definitely a demotion.
The quack released Maomao, but clutched onto Luomen instead. "What do you make of all this, Luomen?"
"Hrm. Well, let's hear him out and see where this goes."
Dr. Liu was so thoroughly sick of the quack's antics by this point that he'd stopped even looking at him. Being totally oblivious was, in its own way, a sort of genius.
I can't believe they haven't fired him yet. How he still had a job was one of life's mysteries.
"I can't speak to the prospect of war," Dr. Liu said. "Our business is to treat the sick and the injured. We do as we're told.
What's more, this trip promises to be a very large-scale one."
Dr. Liu was not finding a warm reception among the physicians. It seemed unlikely that anyone would volunteer.
They might change their tune if he told them who was at the center of this expedition. Jinshi was a member of the royal family,
and a physician who went with him might have the opportunity to speak to him personally. But I'm not sure it's been made public
that Jinshi's going...
Considering his status, the matter would probably be kept
quiet until the last moment—and so nobody would raise their hand. Maomao, feeling more or less comfortable, was once again about to raise her hand, but she saw Dr. Liu glare at her.
What's with him? she wondered. Was he telling her not to put herself forward here? Did her lowly status indeed ultimately stand in her way?
"No volunteers? I figured as much. I've come prepared with a list of three candidates, but I'd like to fill one more place. Nobody wants that final seat?"
Despite Dr. Liu's prompting, no one reacted. The upper physicians looked outright tired of this; maybe they had already heard the story. "Yes, sir!"
One person raised his hand: Tianyu.
"I know I'm still an apprentice, but if no one else will go, may
I?"
He sounded chipper as ever. As happy as if he were dissecting an animal—or a human being.
His persistence in the face of En'en's total indifference had led Maomao to think that Tianyu must be a brazen man indeed, but as she spoke with him during their work, she had gradually come to understand that wasn't the case. Tianyu simply didn't experience the broad fluctuations of emotion other people did. His talkative nature could make outsiders think he was emotional, but it was even possible he spoke to En'en precisely because he was intrigued by her chilly reception, something he got from no one else.
He's a twisted guy, Maomao thought. Not that she felt inclined to push the matter; everyone had their foibles.
"Anyone else?" Dr. Liu asked. No hands went up. The upper physicians collectively exhaled.
I'm sure he could get one of them if they knew Jinshi was coming. With Dr. Liu in charge, though, it would never happen. Maomao thought her father Luomen would be a good candidate— he was deeply knowledgeable about the western reaches and knew the language as well—but she shook her head. He's too old,
and he's not strong enough anymore. Becoming a eunuch had left
him even more aged than simply being old. Having a missing kneecap didn't help either. Such a long journey was beyond him.
If three people had already been chosen, however, what would happen to Maomao? I guess I just have to have faith that I'm
already on the list.
It seemed a shame. Many people dismissed the western capital as a rural backwater, but nothing could be further from the truth. It was a thriving city, a nexus of western culture. Not to mention a place where it would be much easier to acquire the newest medical skills and technology.
Am I sure Pops won't go?
Even as she asked the question, she knew it wouldn't happen, knew it was impossible. As for Luomen, the quack was still glued to him; Luomen didn't look thrilled but couldn't disentangle himself.
"Anyone else at all?" Dr. Liu asked again, whereupon the overachieving middle physician raised his hand once more. "Are you volunteering?" Dr. Liu said.
"Another question, sir." The physician looked straight at Maomao. "What is one of our court ladies doing here?" No doubt the question had been on everyone's mind—but they all sensed this was not quite the time to ask. "Surely her exceptional presence shouldn't be taken to mean that she's to be counted among the physicians?"
Boy, I hope so. If Maomao could finally get her answer right here and now, that would be wonderful, but the rest of the room didn't share her enthusiasm. The upper physicians didn't betray much reaction, almost as if they weren't listening anymore, but the looks from the middle physicians were scathing. Tianyu watched the scene unfold with no particular change in expression.
"She's not to be considered a physician. She is, however, coming with us," Dr. Liu said.
Maomao felt a wave of relief. So he'd found a compromise. The point was, she was able to go along.
"Sir, I'm not sure a court lady is suited for such a protracted trip." The middle physician wouldn't give up.
"I grant she may not have the stamina of a man, but she's passed the practical examination. She has the skills of a physician, if nothing else. What's more, to be quite frank, her knowledge of medicines is probably better than yours. If and when we run out of medical supplies at our destination, it will be helpful to have someone who can make substitutes using the ingredients at hand and without recourse to a textbook."
Dr. Liu could be harsh, but he was also a firm judge of character and ability.
The middle physicians still seemed less than pleased. A few of them gave Maomao disbelieving looks, as if to say That
examination? and Are we sure about this?
"Still not happy that a woman gets to come along and be treated the same way as you lot? Then think of it this way. It's going to be a big group this time. There will be plenty of other court ladies accompanying us to help with other administrative duties. You don't object to a bit of extra help, do you?"
"It's still the case that this is the first time a lady has ever been brought along specifically in a medical capacity. And to make her take the examination! That's going too far, Dr. Liu, even for you." Hrm. This middle physician seemed to be the opposite of Tianyu: he was a bit of a pest, but he did seem to be concerned for Maomao. Even his most oblivious outbursts were things that she might have been grateful for under other circumstances. Right now, however, was not that time.
"I didn't make this decision," said Dr. Liu, dangerously close to sounding petulant. His next announcement, meanwhile, was enough to silence any dissent. "Grand Commandant Kan will be joining us this time."
That sent a buzz amidst the middle physicians. Maomao felt all her hair stand on end. She looked at Luomen, who looked back at her mournfully.
Maomao was no En'en, but she was on the verge of grinding her teeth.
"You all think you can handle him?" asked Dr. Liu, dangerously close to sounding despairing. It was enough to silence any further objections. Maybe Dr. Liu should have kept this confidential information to himself, but regardless, the other physicians would certainly take anyone they could get to help them with this particular person.
Maomao, however, didn't have time to think the matter
through in this calm and rational fashion. All she had was an instant, in which she became very angry. That son of a bitch! He knew!
For the first time in quite a while, Maomao wished Jinshi were there so she could look at him as if he were a worm stranded in a puddle.
Dr. Liu wasn't done either. "We leave in five days. I'll give you all the time off to prepare, so say your goodbyes and get ready to go."
Maomao's mouth hung open and she couldn't get it to close.
Chapter 15: Preparations
They were to leave in five days. It was so sudden that Maomao had to rush to prepare. She had to do the shopping, and there were quite a few people she needed to talk to.
Maybe I shouldn't go around telling everyone I'm going out of town, she thought, but a communication had already gone out, so evidently it was okay. I definitely have to tell the old madam. She didn't want to be greeted by another punch in the stomach when she got home.
So it was that she went to the Verdigris House, where the madam said, "Huh. That so? In that case, I want some ambergris as a souvenir."
Yeah, that's not happening.
The name of the substance, in Maomao's language, meant "dragon's saliva incense," and it was indeed said to be made from a dragon's drool, although that was not, evidently, where it really came from. It was very expensive, and also had medicinal functions; it was effective for the heart.
"What do you mean, you're leaving again?! This is ridiculous! I've never heard of a court lady going so far from the court so often!"
This anguished objection came from the apprentice apothecary, Sazen. There were even tears in his eyes.
"I'm sorry. You'll just have to manage somehow. You have Kokuyou, and you can always get in touch with my father if anything comes up." Maomao handed him a signed sheet of paper, and that was it. A customer had arrived at the apothecary shop, so Sazen trudged back to help them.
I think he's more of an apothecary than he gives himself credit for, Maomao thought. He was certainly a chronic worrier—maybe it caused him to think less of himself than he deserved.
"Goodness gracious. You'd better be careful. They say the sun in the west can give you an awful tan." Such was the admonishment of Maomao's older sister at the Verdigris House, Pairin, whose skin had a particularly healthy glow today.
Had a good customer last night? Maomao thought. Her sister's sexual appetites went far beyond the ordinary, so for her, a "good" customer was more than just one with a lot of cash. No doubt he'd been a well-built specimen of a man.
"Here. You'll be needing this for sure. Put it on every morning, then wash your face to take it off before you go to bed." Meimei placed a ceramic vessel in Maomao's hand. Presumably it contained some sort of cream that would be good for the skin.
"I'm not sure I'm always going to get the chance to wash my face," Maomao said. The western capital was a long way off, and whether they went by land or by sea, water would be precious.
"They're going to take our little Maomao somewhere like that?
What idiot made that decision?" demanded Joka.
Funny you should ask. You might know him as a certain masked noble...
That accounted for all three of the Verdigris House's famous princesses.
"Oohh, I'm worried about you! Is it too late for you to back out, Maomao?" Pairin said, hugging her close. She really had been busy the night before—the warmth was still radiating off her.
"Just think about it. The money we work ourselves to the bone to earn, the nobles are pissing away on a vacation," Joka spat.
"Not at all! Those nobles help our business thrive. We'll just have to wring them for all they're worth—make sure the cycle continues," Meimei said, her laughter clear and loud, in pointed contrast to the vulgarity of what she was actually saying. Then she gazed out the window. "I admit, I'm as worried as any of you... But I think there's someone along who will be ruthless if
anyone dares to lay a finger on Maomao."
Now she looked at Maomao, her gaze sorrowful.
"Meimei," said Maomao. "I'm going to keep this indirect, but I'm more worried about him than anyone."
The freak strategist was going with them. Maomao didn't know why, but if the people in the western capital had understood who they were dealing with, they would have asked for him to stay home.
Or maybe they weren't in a position to refuse? Don't tell me they actually invited him.
His absence wouldn't be an issue in the capital, as his subordinates could keep his office running smoothly for months without him. Maomao's real fear was about what kind of trouble he might cause on the road. Just picturing it was enough to make her head hurt.
Is this what they're really using me for? She ground her teeth. She'd always known he could and would use anyone available to him—it was her fault for forgetting. In fact, oddly, she felt some small sense of relief to realize that the way he handled people hadn't changed since the rear palace.
Those who stood at the top couldn't afford to be swept away by sentiment. Jinshi's behavior could be emotional at times, but Maomao believed there was still some trace of rationality at work in those moments. At least, she wanted to believe.
No... Not possible, she thought, immediately dismissing the idea. Otherwise, he would never have burned a brand into his own skin.
Having said all that, maybe this wasn't really Jinshi's fault. His hands might have been tied in his selection of personnel. It didn't really matter. In the end, it meant trouble for Maomao, and nothing but.
She was putting away the cream Meimei had given her when a smart-alecky voice said from behind her, "Hey, Freckles!" "Yeah? What, Chou-u?" Maomao turned, annoyed.
"You're dumb!" he shouted, and with that the smart-mouthed brat ran off. He still dragged one partially paralyzed leg, but it obviously didn't dampen his spirits. His lackey Zulin likewise stuck out her tongue at Maomao, then ran after Chou-u.
"What was that about?" Maomao muttered.
"Chou-u misses you, Maomao," Meimei said.
"Hrm. And it looks like Zulin is still following him around?" "That just started again recently." Meimei looked troubled.
"Started again?"
"She's got an older sister, you remember? The girl you brought in with her. She was training as an apprentice, and this year she began taking customers."
"She did, huh?" So many women came and went in the Verdigris House, Maomao didn't really keep track of them all. "Isn't that a bit early?" She recalled the young woman being awfully thin.
"She's fifteen. A decent diet went a long way toward putting some meat on her bones, and our customers started taking notice. She had everything she needed. She must really have been eating poorly where she came from."
Moreover, the girl herself was full of ambition; she'd been eager to make her "debut." It all must have inspired conflicting feelings in her younger sister.
"She's not very cultured yet, but I think she'll grow into it, that girl."
"You think so? I think she's a bit too prickly," Joka said.
Pairin laughed openly at that. "That's the last thing I want to hear from a woman who took the name 'Joka'!"
It was not the name her parents had given her. The madam had been known to rename girls in order to encourage them to forget their past lives, but Joka had given herself a name that was a parody of the name of the goddess who had created the world —and it audaciously included the supposedly forbidden character ka.
"My mother always told me my father was someone very important. I have every right to use it," she sometimes said.
A father who would justify the use of that character? The only people who could do that were the Imperial family. About the only person fitting that description whose age would make sense with Joka's was the former emperor, but Maomao was well aware that that was impossible.
How must Joka have felt to know that her mother had been deceived? Maybe that was where her hatred of men sprang from.
Maybe.
On top of it all, the old madam had actually let her use that prickly name.
Very scary.
The Verdigris House would carry on without Maomao. It was full of strong women—and actually, the men here were pretty strong, too, so things would be all right.
Maomao sighed and went on to the next stage of her preparations.
The sun was already low in the sky by the time Maomao finished her shopping and got back to the dormitory.
This next part might be the hardest of all, she thought, as she heaved a sigh and entered the building.
She could hear the steady thunk, thunk of a cleaver. She's still at it, Maomao thought, peeking into the kitchen. Yao was there, chopping chicken under En'en's direction. She was hardly an expert yet, but she'd dialed back the bone-smashing vigor of the other day and now looked like she was cooking a proper meal.
Maomao didn't say anything.
En'en didn't say anything.
Yao was too focused on her chicken to notice Maomao; En'en saw Maomao there and shot her a pleading look.
I think she's saying..."We're concentrating right now. Please don't interrupt."
Maomao was heading to her room instead when she met the woman who ran the dorm coming the other way. "Maomao, is it true you'll be going away for several months? I can leave your room for you, but do you want me to clean it?"
The woman's voice carried well, easily all the way to the kitchen. The result was predictable: an "Ouch!" followed by a
"Mistress!"
Maomao peeked through a crack in the door and saw pretty much what she had expected. "Don't do that, young mistress," En'en said. "You mustn't put your finger in your mouth! Raw chicken meat is dangerous. Here, I'll give you some first aid."
Even meat intended for food could contain poison or bugs.
"I think that's a bit much, En'en," said Maomao as she watched En'en wrap so much bandage around Yao's hand that it was practically immobilized.
Maomao had involved herself now, but Yao looked peeved. It was obvious Yao wanted to say something, but Maomao wasn't exactly the most socially adroit person in the world and wasn't sure what she should say to Yao. Given that she was still learning how to hold the cleaver properly, it seemed highly unlikely that Dr.
Liu had invited her to join the special classes yet.
Finally, Maomao said only, "I'm sorry. I'm going to be going away for a while."
"I understand," En'en said, and she had the good grace to look sorry about it—but just for an instant an expression passed over her face that Maomao couldn't quite put a name to, one that said "Now it'll be just me and Lady Yao!" Yao, thankfully, was looking at the floor and didn't notice.
Yao understood as well as En'en did, Maomao suspected. She was a smart woman, and would get what was going on intellectually—it was just taking her emotions some time to catch up.
She's still only sixteen, Maomao reminded herself. Four years younger than Maomao.
Figuring she'd said all she could say, Maomao was about to go back to her room when she heard another thump—this time of someone stomping on the floor.
"Maomao!"
"Yes?"
Yao's breath whooshed out her nostrils like an angry boar. She stood tall, resolution clear on her face.
"Young mistress..." En'en had produced two folding fans, one inscribed Yao, the other inscribed Go for it! Where had she gotten those? Truly, this was a lady-in-waiting of sublime accomplishments.
Yao gave one more great snort and stood in front of Maomao.
"Here, young mistress." En'en handed her some kind of booklet.
"Mn!" Yao pressed the booklet at Maomao.
"Wh-What's this?"
"Wh-What do you mean, what?"
Yao couldn't quite seem to get an explanation out, so En'en helped. "She copied things out of the books in the library. She collected as many examples as she could find that aren't in the textbook, so I think even you'll be surprised by some of what's in there, Maomao."
"Wha?" Holy shit, I want that. "C-Can I really take this?"
"W-Well, I said you could have it!" Yao shot back, although she had not, in fact, said that.
If she was offering, though, she didn't have to offer twice.
Maomao took the book and immediately began flipping through it.
"Wow! Wooooooooow!"
"No! Don't look now! L-Listen, I didn't do anything that's, you know, that big a deal. En'en insisted, so I copied out a little bit.
Just a little bit!"
She was as sweet as she was sour, this girl! It was almost too much.
Unfortunately for Yao, Maomao could tell the difference between her handwriting and En'en's—but she was decent enough not to point out which of them had done the copying.
Instead she bowed her head and said, "Thank you very much." Almost before she knew what she was doing, she'd even grabbed Yao's hand in a handshake. To be perfectly honest, she was so happy, snot could have come pouring out of her nose.
"Hmph... Well, you'll need something to pass the time on your trip." Yao was blushing and her voice seemed very quiet. Behind her, En'en was giving the handshake an icy look.
"I'll be sure to get you something as a souvenir in return," Maomao said.
"I don't need any souvenir!" Yao said, and went back to the cutting board still looking annoyed.
"You can't chop anything in that condition. At least let me tend to your injury," Maomao said. If she let En'en do all the treatment, Yao seemed likely to end up as a bandage mummy.
Yao submitted to Maomao's ministrations, but En'en loomed threateningly nearby the entire time.
Chapter 16: A Voyage by Sea
On the day they were to leave, Maomao found herself riding in a carriage with a single bundle of belongings on her back.
It's as emotional as it is...ordinary, by now.
Yao and En'en had been there to see her off, En'en looking about the way she always did and Yao a bit sulky. Maomao did feel sad to say goodbye, but it wasn't like she was never coming back.
Her medical supplies had all been prepared in advance and packed. Other necessaries were also with the cargo, so all she had with her specifically were some fresh clothes and the book Yao and En'en had given her. Maomao didn't suffer from carriage sickness, so she looked forward to passing the time by reading.
I heard there were four doctors going, she thought, but in the end no one had told her exactly who. It nagged at her—there was every indication that they were hiding something.
No sooner had she boarded the carriage than she found out who one of the doctors was.
"Ooh! Is that the ship we'll be on?"
Tianyu stuck his head out. Maomao had been expecting him— after all Dr. Liu's prodding, he had still been the only volunteer.
Awfully inexperienced for an assignment like this. Guess I'm not one to talk.
Maomao had been chosen as well, although she wasn't counted among the physicians. So there were four doctors and one helper. Dr. Liu had talked about a shortage of personnel, so he must have put a lot of thought into this selection.
Maomao had to constantly remind herself that she was ultimately only there to help—while also not forgetting what she was really there for.
The Imperial younger brother, a.k.a. Jinshi, would be on this trip, as would the freak strategist, so this was going to be a bigger affair than last time. Three large sailing ships waited for them, the biggest Maomao had ever seen. She was told they would be going by sea, and the ships looked the part. Each had four or five masts, and she saw cannons as well. The ships' construction suggested they had been heavily influenced by western technology, but gaudy red, green, and gold coloring marked them as Linese vessels. Maomao didn't know how large the ships were inside, but they looked like they could easily hold several hundred people each. Maybe even a thousand, if everyone squeezed.
"Is it really going to be faster than going overland?" Maomao asked before she could stop herself. She'd taken a boat home from her last visit to the western capital, but this time they would be going by sea, not river. The route was definitely longer by sea, but you could also travel uninterrupted, day and night.
"It's probably because of all the cargo. You need it when you have such a big VIP staying somewhere for so long. Plus all the gifts they have to bring." The explanation, offered with a touch of resentment, came from one of the upper physicians, a man with a beard and a rugged face. His skin was noticeably tanned despite the fact that he probably spent most of his time at a desk. He had light hair that suggested at least some foreign blood in his veins. Maomao vaguely recognized him, but because they worked in different medical offices, she didn't know his name. Evidently he was one of the four doctors chosen to go on this trip.
"Yes, that makes sense," Maomao said. Under any other circumstances, she could have simply tried to gloss over the fact that she didn't remember his name, but this time she was going to need to learn it. She would have to find it out later.
"I'm going to be in charge during the trip," the physician said.
"I look forward to working with you."
He seemed to have his feet on the ground, Maomao thought. Knowing Dr. Liu, he would have chosen his people not just for their skill, but their attitudes as well. This man gave the sense that he came from the western capital himself.
"The other two physicians are already on board," the man said. "I'm going to be on the lead ship, Tianyu will be on the rear ship, and Niang-niang, you'll be on the middle one. You'll be accompanied by another of the upper physicians."
Maomao didn't say a word. Should she tell him he had her
name wrong? Then again, did she have any right to, considering she couldn't remember his either?
She settled for "Sir, a question."
"Yes?"
"Who else is going to be on the ship with me?" She gave a great, vast, mighty scowl as she spoke.
"The center vessel is for our most important traveler. A relative youngster. Couldn't you tell by how sumptuous it is?"
The ship in the middle was indeed the largest and most gaudy of all.
"A youngster," Maomao echoed, wondering if she could feel relief yet. That seemed to imply it was Jinshi, not the freak. I
might have guessed, but still.
At the same time, that left her with the question of which physician would be with her. If Jinshi were to summon Maomao to him alone, it could raise suspicions.
"From what Luomen tells us, Grand Commandant Kan is generally fairly subdued on a rocking boat, he just needs antinausea medications and some juice to supplement his nutrition." "Is that so, sir?"
If he got seasick, that would make him much like Lahan.
Evidently it wasn't just alcohol that made his head spin.
"They've told you what you need to know about the ships?"
"Yes, sir. They said there's a medical office on board where all the necessary equipment will be stored—and where I'll be
sleeping for the most part."
"That's right. Although you're welcome to sleep with the ladiesin-waiting if you like, Niang-niang."
"The office, please."
The presence of ladies-in-waiting was natural enough; Jinshi could hardly travel without them. But will Suiren be there?
Suiren, Jinshi's attendant in the first flush of old age. A trip this long would be hard on her, but if she wasn't here, the only other candidate Maomao could think of would be Basen's older sister Maamei. Didn't I hear something about her having kids, though?
Asking a mother to leave her children for such a long time wouldn't be easy either. Maomao pondered the situation, but in any case, there would be other ladies-in-waiting on board.
Carefully chosen ones, no doubt, but it would still be in Maomao's best interests to keep her distance.
"The other physician on board can fill you in on anything else you want to know," said the doctor with the beard.
Yeah, okay, but who is he?
They seemed happy to tell all and sundry that the freak strategist would be along, so why were they being so cagey about the doctor? It didn't make sense.
"Oh, it's you, sir?" Tianyu said as he got on his boat.
"Got a problem with that?" snapped, of all people, the middle physician from the convocation. He'd looked like something of an overachiever—and apparently on this occasion it had blown up in his face. Of course, Maomao didn't know his name.
Not who I'm worried about. She boarded her boat, still wondering who the other physician could be.
On board, the sailors were working industriously.
I wonder if that's our VIP's room. Sumptuous chambers jutted up from the deck. They would have a nice breeze, and were certainly well appointed. The same room wouldn't have looked out of place at a villa belonging to the Imperial family. It looks the
most comfortable...but also like the most obvious target.
Maomao went down the stairs, belowdecks. The damp air clung to her skin. There were no walls, perhaps to allow the air to move through better; there were only the flimsiest excuses for dividers in the space. The bureaucrats will probably have to sleep
packed in down here, Maomao thought. It would be much the same when they were eating. The ship had hired sailors, so the administrators would have time on their hands. Board games seemed likely to become even more popular, with the ships devoid of other entertainment.
There were enough cannons on board that the vessel could have doubled as a battleship. There were a few areas that were properly walled off—probably rooms for the ladies-in-waiting and the more important travelers. The gender ratio on this ship was skewed very much in favor of the men, and the separate rooms were presumably to keep anyone from getting any funny ideas, as they might have if everyone were sleeping together.
Gee, this is kind of...exciting.
Admittedly, she was probably going to be sick of this ship after seeing it all day, every day for the duration of the trip, but anybody wants to explore a new environment. There were stout ropes and wooden flotation devices here and there on the walls.
The ship had three levels—four, if you counted the VIP chamber abovedeck. The next floor down was similar in construction to the one above, but it contained the medical office and kitchen. Maomao decided to save the medical office for last; instead, she went to have a look at the kitchen. It contained several water barrels and a stove, which was cleverly built to allow smoke to escape.
Scary stuff, using fire on board a ship.
The area around the stove was built with fire-resistant materials, but you would still have to be very careful.
It looked like a very small kitchen considering the number of people aboard—it was probably intended to cook the VIP's meals and little more. Grunts like Maomao would have to be content with warm soup.
Whatever you ate eventually had to come out the other end— Maomao was just wondering where the bathroom was when she saw a structure built out on the prow of the ship. It was probably made to allow things to fall directly into the sea—possibly including an unwary occupant. Maomao intended to be careful.
At the very bottom of the ship was the cargo. Munitions and water were stored there, along with provisions and what Maomao took to be gifts for the western capital. She was less than pleased to spy some sweet potatoes—it was clear who had done the hard sell on those.
Will they really keep? She peeked into one of the wooden boxes. The potatoes had been stored in rice husks, seemingly as a measure against the humidity.
Once she was satisfied that she had seen the rest of the ship, Maomao went to the medical office. It had real walls, so that they could quarantine anyone who might be sick. When she opened the door, she found the master of the place sitting in a chair—a man of soft and gentle mien.
She didn't say anything; for a second, she thought it was her old man, Luomen—but no, not quite.
"Oh! Hullo, young lady!"
The voice was carefree—and familiar. It belonged to someone who was normally found in the rear palace: the quack doctor.
"Is that you, sir?" Maomao asked. It came out as a question, and with good reason: the quack's trademark loach mustache was missing. His face was smooth as a baby's behind.
"Ack! Don't look at me. I'm too embarrassed..." The quack blushed and pursed his lips, as if he were a young woman just old enough to start trimming her bangs.
"What happened, sir? That mustache was your pride and joy."
He sniffled. "They told me I had to shave it. They said it wasn't normal for a eunuch to grow hair like that."
"I admit, it's somewhat unusual."
Eunuchs were missing what made them men, so they also tended to lose distinctive male physical characteristics. Facial and body hair grew thinner—but of course, there could be exceptions. In some cases, it even seemed that the "male" part actually remained inside the body. In any case, the quack had succeeded in growing a mustache despite being a eunuch, and had appeared to take great pride in it, frequently stroking the thin strands of hair.
"That still doesn't explain why you're here," Maomao said.
"Well, you see, there are no consorts at the rear palace requiring particular attention right now. Consort Lihua is really the only upper consort, and Luomen is more than capable of taking care of her. I heard there might be a new consort coming, but I guess it fell through."
Was he talking about Empress Gyokuyou's niece? So she wasn't going to enter the rear palace after all.
A demotion, indeed...
Dr. Liu was a very thorough man. He'd found Jinshi his physicians, on the grounds that there weren't enough of them for a trip to the western capital—and if they had one capable upper physician, it wouldn't look right if they didn't have at least one more. So he had chosen to use the quack, who had the rank and title if nothing else. It was even possible he'd gone so far out of his way to equip Maomao with medical knowledge because he knew she got along with the quack. Alternatively, maybe he'd chosen the quack because he knew Maomao would be going.
"Hoo hoo hoo! I've never traveled by ship before. Doesn't it make your heart pound? I don't know what all is going to happen, but I'm sure it's going to be a fun trip as long as you're here, young lady."
If the quack doctor had anything to recommend him, it had to be his optimistic side. Maomao also had the sense that he had the good luck to somehow survive anything that might happen to him. Someone or something she couldn't identify seemed to like him.
"How about we start with some tea? I'll boil some water."
"I think they might get upset if you help yourself to the stove," Maomao said.
"Really? Well, we can use a brazier, then."
"I think we might suffocate if we burned charcoal in here."
The room didn't get much air, and the charcoal would burn incompletely. There was a window, but it was very small; the room itself was rather dim.
The quack's face fell. "I'm starting to think traveling by ship might be less cozy than I thought..."
"Needless to say, sir."
The quack buried his disappointed countenance in the cot nearby. "Sigh! And the beds are hard, I see."
"I'm afraid there's not much to be done about it, sir. Just be glad you don't have to sleep packed in with everyone else. Oh, here, we can use this shelf for our cargo."
Maomao put her change of clothes on the shelf and opened the book Yao had given her. She set herself up so she could use the light coming in through the window; it was at the perfect angle to allow her to sit on the bed.
"Aww. You're reading a book, miss?"
"Looks like it'll be a while before we leave. I'm sure someone will come call us."
"Hrm." The quack puffed out his cheeks, disappointed, and took out a portable Go board. "That's fine. I'll work some Go problems." He took out a book of his own—the one by the freak strategist, of course.
They had what amounted to a sending-off ceremony for the ship, and then they set sail. The VIPs, principally Jinshi, conducted what seemed to be some sort of ritual, but Maomao only half paid attention. She spotted the freak strategist nosing around, so she went below and took refuge in one of the rooms.
It was hard to call a ship voyage pleasant, but it was a less dubious mode of travel than she'd pictured. Certainly better than her river cruise, at any rate.
I hear they used to have to eat bug-infested bread on ships. So instead the sailors would put out a live fish to draw out the bugs first. Maomao had been known to eat locusts and snakes, but even she didn't relish the thought of eating bread full of bugs.
I guess the trip's not going to be that long.
It felt long to her, but it was nothing like the months that sailors sometimes spent at sea. They might be on the ship upward of two weeks at most, and they would make several calls at ports along the way. For the first meal, they had meat wrapped in bamboo leaves, fish soup, and even tangerines. A touch of luxury for the first day on board, she supposed.
"They even have fruit! This is wonderful!" the quack said, smiling beatifically as he peeled and ate his tangerine. Maomao had long ago finished eating and was brushing her teeth.
She had a vague sense of why they had been served tangerines. "People don't get enough produce on sea voyages," she said.
"Too true. It doesn't last long enough."
"That causes an imbalance in nutrition and makes people sick."
"Yes, indeed. A balanced diet, that's the thing."
It wasn't quite clear whether the quack knew what she was talking about or not.
He remarked: "Gosh, plenty of free time on our hands here.
There don't seem to be any patients."
I'm sure it's no more free time than you had at the rear palace, Maomao mentally shot back. She swished some water in her mouth and spat it out the window. Some might call that behavior uncouth, but it was just ocean outside. This was quick and convenient.
"If it means no one is getting hurt or sick, then it's good news," she said and looked at the office's shelves. For a ship, they had a generous assortment of medicines, including herbs to treat the most common ailments as well as some concoctions to combat ship-specific illnesses. They even had a few topical medications.
"May I ask you something?" Maomao said, deciding to broach a subject she'd been wondering about for some time. "I seem to recall once when you didn't even want to look at a corpse, so how did you manage to pass the test to become a doctor?"
"The test? Ah, the test. Yes, I passed it!" The quack gave a triumphant little snort and pounded himself on the chest.
Maomao gave him a doubtful look. "I don't suppose you're talking about a written test?"
"Yes, of course. There was no doctor in the rear palace, so they opened the physicians' examination to the eunuchs. I was the only one who passed!" Another little snort; the quack was obviously quite proud of himself. It was sometimes said that the eunuchs were people who had failed to make it as bureaucrats or soldiers. There were also many among them who were former slaves who had been castrated by foreign nations. To be quite honest, Maomao could understand why most of the eunuchs failed the test: many of them were simply not very educated.
It seemed unlikely that any physician would be eager enough to work in the rear palace that he would become a eunuch for the privilege, so they'd gone with the opposite and tried to make a eunuch into a physician. She wondered if they had expected what they got.
"And what about after that? The practical examination?" Maomao pressed.
"Practical examination? Hmm... I'm not sure I remember any... Ah, now that you mention it, I guess they did make me dissect a chicken."
"And?"
"Oh, I was at the end of my rope, let me tell you! When I tried to wring its neck, the bird gave me a good, hard peck on the forehead and knocked me clean out!"
Maomao was dead silent—and startled to realize how easily she could picture it.
"They called me to dissect a pig, too, but when it looked at me with those big, dark eyes, well, I just couldn't do it!" Naturally. Also likewise frighteningly picturable.
"I see," Maomao said. After all that, the higher-ups had probably given up on forging the quack into a real doctor, but they still needed someone who could do the rounds for the consorts in the rear palace, so they'd given him the title and left it at that. "Did any other eunuchs become doctors after you?" Surely if they'd administered the test a few more times, they might have scared up someone more qualified.
"Well, about that. You remember the Empress Dowager built a building for the ladies she gathered in the rear palace, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
It had been intended to serve as a haven for the girls who had been the former emperor's bedmates, somewhere to keep them safe even though they couldn't leave the rear palace. Unfortunately, in the end, it had been used in the Shi clan's rebellion.
"While they were between doctors, that place became something of a clinic. They were not pleased when I entered the medical office, and fought tooth and nail against any other eunuch physicians."
"Ahh..."
It made some sense. The palace women serving at the clinic knew far more about medical treatment than the half-baked quack.
"They claimed the rear palace didn't need any more doctors, so unfortunately, any talk of promoting more eunuchs fell by the wayside." So the quack had ended up as the rear palace's only official physician.
This is a man who lives by his luck alone...
She would have to get him to pull a fortune for her sometime.
Shenlü, that was the woman's name, wasn't it? She ended up at the center of it all.
The quack was gazing into the distance.
Shenlü was a middle-aged woman at the clinic. She'd helped Shisui and the Shi clan to escape, or so Maomao had heard. Not only that, but when she had begun to face suspicion, she had reportedly plotted suicide—but Maomao had heard nothing else since then.
I guess she was likely to die one way or another, whether she did it to herself or waited for them to do it to her. Apparently no one had felt Maomao needed to be informed one way or the other.
The quack finished brushing his teeth and began preparing his medical tools. "Now then, we'll be doing an exam once a day.
After mealtime, I'm told."
An exam of whom? The most important people, presumably.
Or the most important person.
"Ahh! I haven't seen Master Jinshi—ahem! I mean the Moon
Prince—in ages. I'm so nervous!"
Maomao hadn't heard anyone else call him Jinshi in quite a long time. He was the Moon Prince now—or more accurately, he was the Moon Prince once again—and had been for more than a year.
"Yes, of course."
Granted, the quack had blushed just as hard back when he'd believed Jinshi was a fellow eunuch.
Hrmm...
They'd made Maomao his helper, not that they'd asked how she felt about it.
Jinshi's room was far more sumptuous than any other part of the ship.
He gets a nice breeze in here. Spacious too. And bright.
Of course, all that came with being abovedeck, but anyway, it had to be pretty pleasant, Maomao thought.
"This way, please," a woman said mildly.
Sea travel can't be easy for someone so old.
It was the somewhat elderly lady-in-waiting, Suiren. Maybe there hadn't been anyone else they could bring. She let the quack doctor into the room without flinching, but when her eyes met Maomao's a scowl passed ever so briefly across her face.
Good luck, you two, Maomao thought at the other two ladiesin-waiting in the room. They likewise glanced at the quack but studied Maomao. They really did pick good people.
These two could obviously tell what was going on—the reality
of things. Maomao actually felt rather fond of them, insofar as they weren't immediately hostile to her.
One of the ladies appeared to be somewhere in her forties. Old enough that she might've been one of Jinshi's milk mothers. The other lady, Maomao had seen before—it was Chue, who had been at Jinshi's villa of late.
I guess she must be pretty capable, in spite of the way she acts.
Her occasionally odd behavior seemed to remain unchanged.
Most of the women around the Imperial younger brother looked quite plain, but that was very much in character for him. As Maomao walked through the room, she wondered if En'en would be here, had she remained in Jinshi's service.
"P-Please, p-pardon the intrusion," the quack said, already stumbling over his words.
Jinshi, sitting in a chair, waited on the other side of a folding screen. He'd changed out of his ritual outfit into something comparatively easier to move in.
"It's been quite some time, Master Physician. If you'd be so kind." Jinshi held out his arm. The smell of incense drifted around the room, but Maomao couldn't shake the sense that it was Jinshi himself who smelled most fragrant of all. Sparkly Jinshi was on full display, as he had been at the rear palace, no doubt in part because he was with the quack doctor.
You wouldn't have to be the quack to feel a bit intimidated.
"Eep..." squeaked the quack. Maomao stood to one side and watched him. If he'd still had his loach mustache, it would have been shaking.
The "exam" appeared to consist of little more than taking Jinshi's pulse and asking him a few questions.
I guess I can't expect much from this guy, Maomao thought. When it occurred to her that maybe that was exactly why the quack had been chosen, she felt a rush of genuine pity for him. He would never notice the change in Jinshi, let alone have the courage to ask him to take off his shirt for an examination.
Suiren was a woman of experience; she would be quite capable of looking after Jinshi's health even without the quack's ministrations.
Maomao, meanwhile, kept an eye out that nothing seemed about to go wrong. Not that she expected the quack, however carelessly and randomly he might work, to suddenly flip up Jinshi's outfit.
"W-Well, I don't see any p-problems," the quack declared, stuttering to the bitter end.
"My thanks. I'll be seeing you daily from now on."
"Eep!"
The quack cleaned up his tools, which he had barely touched in the course of the examination. Jinshi was still looking at him.
When the quack looked up, he turned up the sparkle even more.
The hell?
Roses drifted behind Jinshi's back.
"Master Physician, I see you shaved your mustache. It suits you."
The quack didn't actually squeal, but he might as well have. He looked like he was on cloud nine.
Jinshi continued, "I must apologize for extracting you from your accustomed environs in the rear palace to make you take a journey by sea. However, you have a most important role to fulfill.
I would be gratified if you would accompany me to the end."
"Y-Y-Yes! Yes, of course!" said the quack, eyes brimming. He took Jinshi utterly at his word.
To Maomao, meanwhile, it looked like a farce. Suiren and the other ladies-in-waiting likewise weren't buying it. But that didn't matter. Only the quack needed to believe.
"The others here are aware that you're a eunuch, Master Physician. If you should find yourself inconvenienced by anything at all on that account, I do hope you'll tell me."
"Y-Yes, sir!" said the quack, so eager that the tears were now practically pouring from his eyes. His cheeks were as flushed as could be, and Maomao almost thought she could see a flower blooming behind him too.
"One other thing." Jinshi looked at the quack with sorrow in his eyes. Maomao glared at him, but she wanted this ridiculous play to be over as soon as possible. "Your name, Master Physician. It's Guen, is it not?"
"Y-Yes, sir!"
Oh. Is that his name?
"You are the only physician on this ship, and as such, I've requested that everyone refer to you not by your name, but as
Master Physician. If you have no objections?"
"I... I would be honored!"
The quack, indeed, had no objections. He was practically begging to be addressed by that grand title.
Something's going on here, I just don't know what, Maomao thought.
As the quack finished cleaning up his equipment, Suiren said, "Excuse me, but I've got a small request. Do you think we ladies could receive daily examinations as well? Of course, I wouldn't dream of troubling you with such minor affairs, Master Physician. If you could spare the young lady who's helping you, that would be fine."
Ah-hah. It begins.
Maomao looked at the quack. "I'm sure you're very busy, sir. You go on ahead."
"Yes, of course," said the quack, who didn't stumble over his words when speaking to Suiren. "Well then, young lady. Can I trust you with this?"
Maomao took the bag of medical supplies from the quack. "Of course, sir," she said, with all the enthusiasm of someone reading from a script.
She politely accompanied the quack to the door, and when she was sure she couldn't hear so much as his footsteps in the hallway, she turned back to Jinshi, who suddenly looked very gloomy indeed. Maomao was about to snort at him, but Suiren forestalled her with a smack.
"How about something to drink?" asked Chue, ever socially conscious.
"I don't need tea," Maomao replied.
"Of course."
Chue could hardly be called beautiful, but would it be rude to say that that was precisely what made it easy to relax around her?
There are too many beautiful people in the world, anyway, thought Maomao. Suiren herself had probably been quite the lovely lady once; even at her age, she still had plenty of her looks left. As for the other, forty-something woman, her face was stern, but nonetheless quite beautiful.
It was also she who spoke first to Maomao, holding out her hand. "Lady Suiren has said she's willing to wait for her exam, so perhaps you could start with me?"
Hm? Maomao was sure she'd seen the woman somewhere
before. If she were just a bit younger...
"What? Is there something on my face?" That face made Maomao think of a predator. She'd definitely seen it before.
"Maomao, Taomei is Basen's mother," Suiren said.
"His mother?"
If she was Basen's mother, that would make her...
"Perhaps you've met my daughter, Maamei," Taomei said. Yes, that was who she looked like. Maamei, the woman who had brought treats to the Go tournament. In another twenty years or so, Maamei would probably be a dead ringer for this woman.
"Er..." Maomao wasn't quite sure what to say. Should she remark politely that she was grateful for Basen's good offices? Well, but he hadn't really done anything for her. And Maamei certainly hadn't.
But wait—one person related to Taomei had.
"I'm always grateful for Gaoshun's good offices," Maomao said. A man attentive to every detail. If this woman was Basen's mother, that would make her Gaoshun's wife.
Shit! That means I should be careful.
Maomao had once offered a lady of the pleasure district to Gaoshun—who had refused on the grounds that his wife was a scary woman. Maomao didn't actually expect Taomei to find out what she had done, but it still gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"Oh? That's good to know. He's on this trip as well, you know."
"Master Gaoshun is?"
Maomao stole a glance at Jinshi, but she saw no sign of Gaoshun. Maybe he was patrolling the ship? There were guards at the entrance to Jinshi's room, but it was all women inside—which made her a bit uneasy.
"What about Master Basen, then?"
"He's taking a separate route to the western capital. Overland." He had to go by himself? Didn't that bother him?
Basen had been carefully and deliberately distanced from Jinshi recently—he was no political animal, but even he must have noticed by now.
"He has his own job to do," Taomei said and then chuckled, demurely hiding her mouth as she did so. She seemed vaguely amused by the entire situation.
What kind of job? Maomao wondered. She had half a mind to ask—but right now, she needed to prioritize her job.
"Give me your arm, please," she said.
"Of course."
Taomei offered her arm, and Maomao took her pulse. It was good and strong. She seemed to be in excellent health, but Maomao did notice something odd. Taomei's left and right eyes seemed to be slightly different colors. She studied them for a moment.
"Is something the matter?" Taomei asked.
"No," said Maomao. The two eyes also appeared to move slightly out of sync. On an impulse, Maomao moved her left hand around. Then she did the same with her right, and only then did she see Taomei's eyes move.
Is she blind in her right eye?
Sometimes people were born with differences between their two eyes, but the color could also change later in life—often because of blindness.
"Was that some kind of test just now?" Taomei asked. She must have spotted the thoughts on Maomao's face. She pointed to her right eye—she was every bit as sharp as Maomao might have expected of Gaoshun's wife.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to be rude. You don't find it to be any hindrance in everyday life?"
"No, it's nothing to be concerned about. It happened a long time ago, and I'm perfectly used to it by now."
"Very well, ma'am. In that case, is there anything else that's bothering you?"
"No, nothing."
"May I look at your eyes and tongue?"
Maomao pulled down the skin under Taomei's eyes and looked at it. The right eye was definitely blind, its color cloudy. There were conditions of old age that could cause the eyes to become cloudy, but since Taomei said she'd lost her sight in that eye a long time ago, Maomao suspected it had been from an injury.
"Please be especially careful on this voyage. Everything rocks on a sailing ship."
"I'm aware," Taomei replied. Maomao felt a little silly for having said something so blatantly obvious. "I must say, though, don't you think the Moon Prince's traveling garden rather lacks any flowers of note?"
It was as hard to agree with her as it was to disagree with her.
"If only my daughter Maamei could have come on this trip, an old grandmother like me could have stayed home. We could hardly send her with her entire family, though."
"Goodness. If you're a grandmother, I must be a dried-up old husk," rejoined Suiren.
"I have three grandchildren. I can't go around pretending to be a young woman anymore, can I?" Taomei said. The way she faced Suiren's jibe head-on showed her stubborn streak, perhaps. Maomao thought she could almost see the sparks flying between the two of them. It seemed Jinshi had a way of whittling down the women around him to only the strongest and most capable. Maomao finished her examination promptly, then moved on to the younger ladies-in-waiting.
"My name is Chue."
"Yes, I know."
"But you can just call me Miss Chue. Like friends do!" She looked dead serious.
"Um... Right," Maomao said. She was a special one, all right. She was Gaoshun's daughter-in-law, which made her Taomei's as well. A rather frivolous young lady for such a stern mother-in-law.
Maomao wondered if they got along.
With her dumpling-like nose, small eyes, and tan skin, Chue looked much like her namesake, the sparrow.
She's not exactly beautiful. But at the same time... Now that Maomao saw her for a second time, she realized it was hard not to find Chue charming. She seemed like she might be better suited hawking wares at a street stall than serving the Emperor's younger brother.
"Chue is my son's wife," Taomei explained.
"Yes, Master Gaoshun told me. Your older son, yes?"
"That's right. Not Basen, but Baryou. Much as I wish Basen would hurry up and settle down." Taomei had that same amused look on her face as earlier.
There seemed to be quite a bit going on in this family of Gaoshun's.
"Since we're on the subject, let me introduce my older son," Taomei said. She strode over to a curtain in the corner of the room and flicked it back, revealing a pale-faced man working Go problems.
There was someone else here this whole time? Maomao hadn't even sensed him.
"Y-Yes, mother? Can I help you?"
"You could at least say hello, Baryou."
"H-Hello?" Baryou looked much like Basen, if he were smaller, scrawnier, and hadn't seen the sun in at least six months. "Y-Yes, hello..."
Baryou hardly even looked at Maomao, but he did slump to the ground, holding his stomach. He looked sick, and Maomao was about to trot over and work on him—but Chue got there first, summarily shoving Baryou back behind his curtain.
"Dearest mother-in-law, I sincerely think that when it comes to people he's meeting for the first time, we need to start with written communications, and then once he's used to them, they can talk to him through his screen. Just dropping someone on him face-to-face like that—well, there isn't enough stomach medication in the world to make him feel better!"
What Chue was saying was perfectly reasonable—well, no, it sort of wasn't, but it sounded reasonable.
"Yes, you always were better at handling him... It seems to me he's much worse than he used to be, though."
This was some relationship this mother and daughter-in-law had. Maomao wouldn't have known what wisecrack to make even if she'd had a chance.
"Don't you think we should have left Baryou and brought Maamei instead?" Taomei said.
"Yes, but then who would have watched my child?"
"Fair enough. You never were interested in child-rearing. It would be no small help to me if you would pop out at least one more, though."
The opportunities for wisecracks came thick and fast, but
Maomao suspected that if the quipping started it would never stop.
Let's summarize:
Gaoshun's wife, Taomei.
Gaoshun's son, Baryou.
Baryou's wife, Chue.
All of them very...characterful.
It would have been too much for Basen—for that matter, having him there would only have made things even more characterful. Maomao could see Gaoshun furrowing his brow so clearly it was like he was there with them. However Basen had contrived to get himself a separate trip, it had been the right choice.
Just when Maomao figured that that about did it as far as any interest in exams and was wondering if she should leave, Suiren gave her a poke.
"Yes, ma'am?" she asked. She turned to find herself faced with a gaze as friendly as a swarm of bees. Jinshi was glaring at them from behind his fancy screen.
Maomao had completely forgotten what she was really here for.
"Sh-Shall I call you Master Jinshi?"
After a beat he replied, "Yes."
Apparently, he had been waiting behind that screen the entire time. He'd finally peeked in when the women's exams never seemed to end—but all the same, she questioned his judgment for looking when the women were having examinations.
"But only here," Jinshi added. "Don't use that name anywhere else."
"I understand, sir. But the examinations are still..."
Suiren was making tea with a smile. Maomao had said she didn't need any, but apparently the other party here did. Well, the exams were a facade, anyway. Jinshi beckoned her behind the folding screen, and she had no choice but to go. Behind the screen was a door, and behind the door was a bedroom.
"Take your time, then," Suiren said, giving Maomao the tea. None of the other ladies-in-waiting followed them. Incidentally, the click of stones could be heard from behind the curtain— evidently Baryou had resumed working his problems.
The bedroom was dark; there were no windows. Instead there was flickering candlelight. There must have been some sort of ventilation, because despite the absence of windows, there seemed to be plenty of air in the room.
"Lock the door, please," Jinshi said. Maomao set down the tea and obligingly locked the door. It was a swinging door, not a sliding one, perhaps reflecting the western influence on the design of the ship. She placed the bag she'd taken from the quack on the table and took out fresh bandages. It was actually Maomao who had packed the bag, so she'd made sure to include them, along with salve.
I'll tell the quack I was replacing my bandage. If she showed him the one wrapped around her left arm, he would accept the explanation without thinking too hard about it.
"If you would, then," Jinshi said. He sat on the bed and took off his overrobe, as he always did.
"Yes, sir. Pardon me." Maomao wiped her hands clean, then reached for Jinshi's flank. She touched the red, raised flesh and
Jinshi flinched. "It looks like it's progressing well."
"I'm starting to get sick of that salve."
"We need to watch it a little while longer. I'm going to wipe it down, okay?"
Maomao wiped the old balm away and applied new. Jinshi twitched a little—maybe she was tickling him—but he did the same thing every time, so she paid it no mind, just kept working.
Maomao had several burns of her own on her arm, but she had never really treated one as serious as Jinshi's. She could only evaluate the scarring, trying to remember what Luomen had done.
I wish Yao had copied a few pages about burn treatment for her book, she thought. She'd flipped through the volume, but hadn't seen anything offhand. She could conceivably ask the other physicians, but she would have to be careful to do so without arousing any suspicions that Jinshi was involved.
Once the medicine was applied, she replaced the bandage, again as always.
"Done already?"
"Done already," she confirmed.
"Don't you have anything else to talk about?"
Well, there was nothing else to treat. Except maybe his head. Life would have been so much easier if she could have tightened down the screws he obviously had loose.
Sure, there were plenty of things she wanted to say—would it be rude to tell him, though, that there was nothing she wanted to
talk about?
Jinshi was silent; apparently he was as lost for conversation topics as she was.
Maomao cocked her head, then said: "May I be so bold as to speak first, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"This trip to the western capital. How long do you expect it to last?"
She didn't expect him to have an exact answer for her, but she was grasping at conversational straws.
"To be honest, I don't know. I believe we talked about it being at least three months, didn't we?"
"Yes, sir. Another question, then. About the merits of bringing me on this trip. Do I have any value at all here other than to treat your wound?"
Jinshi didn't say anything to that, but he averted his eyes.
Argh. I knew it.
"Did you use me to lure in the freak strategist, sir?"
There was another pause, and then Jinshi replied, "Would it help if I said I felt bad about it?"
Maomao wanted to give him a good glare, but she held back.
There's no way I'm getting paid enough for this!
She couldn't believe it. They had better give her some very expensive alcohol or she would never put up with this. All she had at hand, though, was the tea Suiren had served. She took the first sip, before Jinshi—her tiny way of getting back at him.
"You're thinking you're not getting paid enough for this," Jinshi said. He could be quite perceptive when he wanted to. He took a cloth-wrapped item out of the folds of his robes and unwrapped it to reveal a whitish-gray stone.
"Is that what I think it is?!"
"It should be. Would you kindly confirm?" Jinshi took a needle
out of a drawer beside the bed.
"Confirm? You mean..." Maomao took the stone. It felt lighter than it looked. Very light, in fact. Jinshi appeared to be telling her to investigate exactly what it was. "Gladly, sir."
Maomao heated the needle in the candle flame and then stuck it into the light stone. It produced a distinctive smell.
"It's real! Not that I would expect you to bring me a fake, Master Jinshi. It's actual ambergris!" They'd hardly left and Maomao had already procured her souvenir for the old madam.
"Laka—ahem. I mean, the strategist absolutely had to accompany us on this trip."
"Was that a request from the western capital?" Maomao asked.
"It was. But I also wanted to get his opinion on the place." So that's what's going on.
The strategist was a freak, trash, and pretty much set the low bar for humanity, but when it came to strategy he had no peer.
"I heard there might be a war," Maomao ventured, looking around. She hoped that, this being Jinshi's room, it had been properly soundproofed.
"The best thing to do isn't to win a war," Jinshi said. "It's not to start one at all. But doing what's best is sometimes very hard."
In other words, the potential for war was very much on his mind. She was starting to see why the doctors had been brought along, whether they liked it or not.
"I don't think having me here is going to make it any easier to handle the freak strategist. My father might have been another story."
Yes, Luomen seemed to have a way with the strategist. If he were younger, if his knee weren't bad, he might have come with them on this trip. Unfortunately, life wasn't that simple, and it was the quack doctor who had come instead.
He'll never be a substitute for my—hm? Maomao thought back on how Jinshi had behaved with the quack. He'd talked the man up, made him feel good. To those watching, in fact, he'd appeared downright unctuous.
He'd particularly complemented the quack's newly shaven face. Knowing the quack, he wouldn't let that beard grow back for a while. Moreover, Jinshi hadn't used the quack's name at all, but had insisted on referring to him as "Master Physician." Hardly anyone else on board knew the quack. And, assuming Maomao didn't use his name, he was no quack—just another doctor. Even if his physical characteristics would probably give him away as a eunuch.
So the upper physicians had been summoned on this lengthy voyage, and one of them was a eunuch. One with whom Maomao was frequently seen.
Suddenly she wanted to pound the table.
No, can't do that! Calm down!
She went to take another sip of tea to calm herself, but found it was already drunk dry. Jinshi offered her his own cup. She took it without hesitation and drank it down. It was made partly with herbs that had a sedative effect, maybe to help him keep his emotions under control. Suiren was quite something, sensing that they would need something like that.
Maomao let out a long breath, then stared hard at Jinshi. "You're trying to use the master physician as a body double for my father."
"You're always so quick to pick up on things. Saves me having to explain." He looked at her the same way he had back in the rear palace.
Luomen and the quack were both eunuchs, but they looked very different and were nothing alike in age. To those who had heard only rumors, however, all they would see was a eunuch doctor—and there were only so many of those. They would never imagine Jinshi would deliberately bring along the doctor from the rear palace. If they expected anyone, it would be Luomen, who had emerged from humiliation to serve in the royal court.
This was the reason they had kept Maomao in the dark about the chosen physicians until the very last moment.
"The western capital—or should I say, Sir Gyoku-ou—was insistent that Sir Luomen should come. You understand what that means?"
"I don't suppose it's as simple as that they have a patient they'd like him to see?"
Luomen was an extraordinary doctor; no doubt there were plenty of sick people in the western capital who could benefit from his services. But it seemed likely there was something else going on.
"From my perspective, I think they may be under the impression that this will keep the honored strategist tame. Of course, I gave them no specific answer. If they happen to mistake the master physician for Sir Luomen, that's their problem."
The tone of authority in Jinshi's voice indicated that he wasn't his usual somewhat pathetic self, but was the Emperor's younger brother. A man who could and would use people as pawns.
"Tame, sir? I think it would be safer to give your hand to an actual fox. Especially because this man Gyoku-ou—he's Empress Gyokuyou's older brother, isn't he?" Maomao asked.
"Many people assume that they can do what others cannot. Sometimes they grow desperate enough to try anything. Not every adherent of a sage is a sage themselves, however. Most of all, there's no shortage of countries that have been brought to their knees by their queen's relatives."
A beat. Maomao felt herself get goosebumps. "Should you really be telling me this?"
"I'm not telling you anything. I'm only speaking of possibilities." Yeah, but not ones you doubt.
At the same time, not being told anything would have irked Maomao as well.
Jinshi raised a pointer finger, then pointed it at Maomao. "When they get desperate enough to try anything, who will they target?"
"You're saying I'm a weakness that could be exploited?"
"You obviously are. And the strategist's former aide now serves
Sir Gyoku-ou."
He's talking about Rikuson.
"Sir Gyoku-ou knows about you, of that much we can be sure."
Rikuson would have to tell them, if they asked him. She was starting to understand Jinshi's seemingly harebrained selection of his entourage for this trip.
"You thought they would come after me if I stayed in the capital?"
"Again, it's a possibility. You know how many enemies the honored strategist has."
That left Maomao quiet.
"I suspect you are far more widely known than you would ever think, and not all those who know you are fool enough to ignore you."
On that point, she had to agree with him. She should have thought harder before becoming a medical assistant. It was Jinshi who had arranged the opportunity for her, but her life might have been much quieter had the freak strategist not made such a display of himself. Well, lamenting the past wouldn't do her any good.
"Lahan will be able to manage things, somehow, which is why I had him stay behind. I've also requested Sir Luomen put in an occasional appearance in the rear palace. And, with all apologies to you, I needed you to come with me. I thought it would be better for you somewhere the strategist could see you. Not easier, perhaps, but safer."
"You" this, "you" that. Just when she thought he'd finally started using her name once in a while.
"It also happened to be quite convenient for me."
You son of a—! Maomao almost exclaimed, but instead she took a sip of tea, exhaled, and said simply, "Is that so, sir?"
Much as they might have disturbed her, Jinshi's words showed that he had done what he'd done out of consideration for Maomao. He had taken into account her web of personal relationships, the people he needed and where he needed them, and above all what he had thought would be best for her safety.
"I've assigned an old friend of yours as the master physician's bodyguard. One Lihaku."
"Yes, sir," Maomao replied coolly. She gave the ambergris a distant look.
I'm not quite sure that explanation sits right with me. She gathered up the tea supplies and made to leave the bedroom. She hadn't even touched the snacks.
"Won't you take some snacks with you, Maomao?" Suiren, ever ready, had some baked treats all wrapped up and ready to go.
It will make the quack happy, Maomao thought, so she said, "Yes, thank you." She took the snacks, bowed respectfully, and left the room.
"Are you quite sure about this, young master?"
Suiren was saying something to Jinshi, but Maomao ignored it.
"Oh, er..." Jinshi reached out, starting to say something to Maomao, but to be frank she had had quite enough talk for one day. Pretending she hadn't noticed, she left.
Gaoshun had returned and was waiting outside. Diligent supporter that he was, he seemed to sense something when he looked at Maomao, for his brow furrowed, but there was nothing he could say. Maomao gave him a quizzical look but decided to head back to the medical office.
Chapter 17: Chue
Maomao wrote industriously in the daily report: three cases of seasickness, two injuries, one person feeling unwell.
"Gracious, it's been busy," said the quack, whose idea of work was a quick exam and handing out some medicine. He wiped at some more or less nonexistent sweat on his forehead. For some reason, he seemed more energized than he had back at the rear palace.
He really did have too much time on his hands, Maomao thought.
They had been living on the ship for several days now. Some people still hadn't quite become accustomed to the constant rocking, but cases of seasickness were down overall. If the first day at sea had seemed quiet, by the second, the seasick travelers had come knocking at their door in droves.
"It certainly has," said Maomao. She was used to the medical office by the military camp, which frankly saw more action than this, but the quack was used to the rear palace office—which saw more tumbleweeds than patients—and it must have seemed like a madhouse to him.
They'd prepared plenty of seasickness medication ahead of time, but the stuff was only good for taking the edge off it; when it came to those who showed up pale-faced and queasy, Maomao figured that the best treatment was to give them a bucket and lead them to a well-ventilated area.
No wonder Lahan isn't here. She'd thought he might be, considering the freak strategist was coming—but that pennypincher got the worst seasickness. He might actually be useful to have around on this trip, much as she hated to admit it, but he must have found some excuse to weasel out of it. Besides, he was —whatever she might think of him—next in line for the family headship, so he and the strategist probably shouldn't be away from home at the same time.
She'd been concerned that the strategist would somehow notice her and make his way over to her ship, but so far nothing had happened. He was probably down with seasickness.
"Now, then, how about a quick snack? If you'd be so kind, miss, go call our friend."
The moment there were no more patients in the office, the quack began making tea. Use of fire was heavily restricted, however, so he couldn't boil water. It had to be served cold.
There were three cups—and three snacks. Snack food was at a premium on the ships; this was the one the quack had received when he went to examine Jinshi. In fact, each time since then, snacks had been available upon his visit, and each time he was sent home with a few as souvenirs.
I guess he wants to reinvigorate himself. Maomao sighed and opened the medical office door.
"What's the matter, young lady?" Standing in the hallway was a man at least two heads taller than Maomao—Lihaku. He had been assigned as their bodyguard, and at the moment he held a large weight in each hand. He was just standing around most of the time, so he seemed to have decided to take the opportunity to work out.
"It's snack time, sir."
"Thanks! That's great news." He put down the weights and came into the office, although his presence there made it significantly more cramped.
"You don't mind sweets, do you, my dear Lihaku?" asked the quack.
"I'll eat anything!" Lihaku said.
"Good, good. Do you take sugar in your tea?"
"What? Does anyone do that?"
"I hear it's the way in the south."
"Very interesting! Plenty of sugar, please!"
Lihaku was so taken by the question of how this drink would taste that he was about to put a generous portion of the ship's precious supply of sugar into his tea. Maomao snatched it away.
"I'm afraid I can't let you. Sugar is extremely valuable."
"Oh, foo." The quack pursed his lips. He was a regular offender
—Maomao would have to hide the sugar and honey. It was one thing when he was just killing time at the rear palace, but on a trip where their supplies could only dwindle, she needed him to exercise some restraint.
That wasn't the only thing...
Sweet tea? That can't be for real.
Maomao liked her food spicy and her alcohol dry—in other words, she was not going to put up with any sweetened tea.
"Surely a little bit would be all right? The flavor's so weak when you make it with cold water," said Lihaku, pouting too.
"What if you ground up the tea leaves in a mortar? That makes them more flavorful," Maomao said.
"Hey, that's not a bad idea. Do we have a mortar?"
"We do! And maybe you can handle the physical labor for us?" the quack ventured. The talkative eunuch and the amiable soldier couldn't have looked more different, but they had soon become friends. Lihaku had been the right choice for this job.
Still, there was the matter of the quack, who had unwittingly been made Luomen's body double. What would he think if he ever found out the truth?
I guess silence is golden, thought Maomao. She knew the quack, and she knew it wouldn't do him any good to be told something so unpleasant, anyway. If only Jinshi would treat me
the same way.
She rejected the idea almost as soon as it came into her head. She was sure Jinshi had told her what was going on because he thought that would be best, and Maomao couldn't deny that it was easier to grasp the options available to her with more information. The Emperor's handsome younger brother was quite a capable man. At the very least, he thought about things rationally, acting on analysis rather than instinct. It was much easier to accept the answers he arrived at, even if they weren't perfect, knowing he thought things through—even Maomao couldn't really complain.
Except about that stupid brand.
That, she still couldn't believe.
She let that thought lead her back to the question of the quack. Was she angry that Jinshi had used him as bait? Or— "Not going to eat, miss?"
"I'm eating," Maomao said, picking up a snack. It was a bun filled with something pickled, a good way to make sure it would keep. It gave the snack a fairly powerful flavor, but when offset by the tea, it was perfect. She couldn't resist a little Hrm?! as she ate; it was really good.
"It's not sweet at all," the quack said, his face downcast. He'd taken his first bite expecting something sugary.
"Wow, that's good! It doesn't look like much, but this thing means business!" Lihaku said.
"It should be. It's a gift from the Moon Prince himself," the quack replied with a little snort like he was very proud of the fact —and here the snacks had technically been given to Maomao.
Maomao got more tea and looked out the little window. "I can see land," she said.
"Ooh! Can you?" The quack came over and squeezed in at the window.
"I heard we were supposed to make port by noon, but it looks like we're running a little late. Nothing unexpected, though," Lihaku said, checking a notebook to be sure. "We'll stay two nights, then leave the next morning. It's going to be busy." "Which ship is the old fart on again?" Maomao asked.
"The old fart's on the lead vessel," said Lihaku, who knew exactly who Maomao was talking about.
He might try to come over here when the seasickness clears. Maomao scowled. If they wound up traveling on the same ship, even by accident, it was not going to be any fun.
"I don't think you've got to worry about him," Lihaku added. "Once the old fart disembarks, he's got a banquet to attend. Got to do a little diplomacy, since we've gone to all the trouble of bringing along an Imperial family member."
"Oh, I heard about the banquet. They'll need a physician to attend, but since I'm not going, you don't have to either, miss," the quack said. Then he gave them a questioning look and said,
"By the way, who's this old fart?"
Maomao was distracted by another thought and didn't answer him. "Diplomacy? Of course."
"Sure. Want to have a look?" Lihaku pulled a simple map out from the notebook. It showed the coast along with the ship's route. "We're in a foreign land here, even if they do serve Li," he said. Indeed, the map also included borders. "The princess of this country lived in the rear palace a number of years ago. I heard
she was given away in marriage, though."
Yes, that did sound familiar. Very familiar.
"Ah, Consort Fuyou," the quack said. "Ahem, well, she's not a consort anymore."
"I remember her!" Maomao clapped her hands, her memory jogged by the quack's interjection. It was the woman who had been seen dancing on the walls of the rear palace.
"Do you suppose Miss Fuyou will be there as well?" the quack asked.
"Hmm. I don't think so," Lihaku said. "She's the one who was given to a soldier who'd distinguished himself with his service, right?"
"I think so. I'm not so sure it was the right thing, though—you can't go giving away princesses to just anybody, even princesses of a vassal state," the quack said.
If I had to guess, I'd say the authorities knew very well that there was more to it than that.
If the soldier was an old friend of Princess Fuyou, there was every chance that her family was as well. They might even have felt that if Fuyou wasn't going to be able to fulfill her role at the rear palace, then the sooner she was out of there, the better.
"The thing is, we also can't just send our best soldiers back to their home countries," said Lihaku.
"Ah, yes, that makes sense."
"A bride from the rear palace... If I was going to get a reward for distinguished service, I think I'd prefer cash," Lihaku went on.
"I must say I'm surprised, my good Lihaku. You don't seem like the money-loving type."
"Oh, everyone's got things they'd like to spend on."
Like buying a high-priced courtesan out of her contract, right?
Maomao wondered what Lihaku's current salary was. He seemed to be moving steadily up the ranks, but if he didn't strike it rich pretty soon, Pairin was going to end up as a madam herself.
Maomao looked out the window again. If we don't make land until evening, I guess all the shops will be closed.
They were in a country just to the south of Li, but they couldn't expect to get off the ship the moment it docked. Judging by the height of the sun in the sky, they wouldn't have much time for shopping. If they were lucky, there might be a night market or something—but places like that didn't tend to sell the items Maomao was after.
They're usually grilled treats, or skewers, or fruit.
Sure, those things were fun, but they weren't what she wanted. She hoped they might have some free time the next day.
"Is someone coming?" the quack asked as they heard distinctive footsteps outside the office door. Shortly thereafter, there came a knock. "Please, come in," said the quack, and in walked Chue.
"Hello! Pardon the interruption."
"What's the matter? Is the Moon Prince feeling poorly?"
"No. I have a favor to ask, if it's all right." She turned her small eyes on Maomao. "We've been told they want to borrow a food taster for the banquet tonight." Lihaku's and the quack's eyes joined hers.
I mean, I don't exactly dislike that work. What she did dislike was being in the same place as the freak strategist. She was trying to devise some way out of the request when Chue took something out and showed it to her.
Maomao didn't say anything. She couldn't, however, keep her gaze from drifting to the mushroom Chue was holding. It appeared to be dried shiitake.
Hnngh...
Was this Jinshi's clever little touch, or Suiren's? Shiitake were a luxury even as mushrooms went, rarely found growing in the wild. En'en used them in her cooking every once in a while, but generally speaking, they were all but unobtainable for Maomao.
If I could cultivate them, think of the business I could do!
Under the name xianggu, they were also a medicine, used for treating anemia and high blood pressure. Maomao could use this one for medicinal purposes, or she could rehydrate it and use it to add some extra flavor to her cooking. It could even be turned into a soup or stock.
Was this lady-in-waiting, Chue, teasing Maomao? After a quick glimpse, the mushroom disappeared from her hand—only to reappear in the other one. Then it disappeared again—only to reappear with a second, and then a third. It was like she was doing some sort of magic show.
"What do you say?" Chue asked, polite as could be—but it was clear she wouldn't be taking no for an answer. She had the good grace to look chagrined about it, but she would do what she had to do—or rather, make Maomao do what she had to make Maomao do. A very Jinshi-esque approach.
"All right," Maomao said after a moment. "I understand."
"This is for you, then!" Chue promptly produced a set of clothing, again seemingly out of thin air, and handed it to Maomao. "It's for you to wear to the banquet. We'll be making you up too!" Makeup tools, including a brush for rouge, appeared clutched between her fingers with a snap! like you might see from the villain of a stage play.
She's so characterful, I can hardly stand it. A simple descriptor like "Basen's older brother's wife" was never going to suffice to explain this person. She stands out even with all the characters
around her.
Chue's looks might have been plain, but maybe she had bolstered her inner self to compensate. Maybe you just had to be mentally strong like that to survive with the powerful Ma women.
I think I'm going to get buried, here, Maomao thought, wondering if she should do something to up her individuality so as to keep pace. Then again, she thought, there was no reason to go out of her way to stand out. Ending all her sentences with some distinctive speech pattern would only grate before long.
"I'll pass on the makeup, thanks. Just the mushrooms, please."
"If you're sure," Chue said, a bit disappointed at Maomao's very ordinary reaction. Nonetheless, she handed over the shrooms.
Now they have me wondering exactly how many medicinal plants they brought along, she thought, staring at her prize.
When Maomao got off the ship, she was greeted by the reek of fish and the bustle of activity. It was already getting toward dusk and many of the shops were closed, but she could see a few people rushing from place to place trying to do evening shopping. "Do be careful, now!" called the quack, waving a handkerchief from the ship.
"She'll be fine—she has me with her!" Lihaku called back.
Wasn't he supposed to be the quack's bodyguard? Maomao thought. Evidently she was also part of his mandate, as far as it went.
The clothes Chue had given her were of fine fabric, but they were unadorned and the color was plain. A reasonable compromise for a food taster. The smooth linen felt good on her skin, here in this humid land.
I'm going to wear this all the time starting tomorrow. Maomao had hardly packed any clothing other than underwear, so this was perfect timing. Plus the material would dry quickly after washing, very convenient. She had her medical helper's uniform, but the thick cloth made it unsuitable for the muggy conditions.
Chue had taken several more opportunities to ask Maomao if she wouldn't like some makeup, but Maomao had consistently declined. Still, it would have been rude to show up completely barefaced, so she'd put on a dusting of whitening powder and a touch of rouge.
"They said there would be a carriage waiting," Lihaku said, looking around.
"Do you think that's it?" Maomao asked, pointing to a carriage stopped in front of one of the other ships.
"That one? It's already got passengers—I don't think there's room for us." People were piling in.
Women? The ladies-in-waiting of the important folk, she supposed. There seemed to be so many of them, though.
She and Lihaku were standing there, at a loss for what to do, when Chue popped up. "Hello!"
"Yikes! Where'd you come from?" Lihaku yelped. He hadn't noticed her approach at all. Usually her distinctive footsteps gave her away, but this time they hadn't heard anything.
"There's a carriage waiting over that way, all ready for you.
Right this way, please."
"You're pretty light-footed, ma'am."
"Miss Chue is as nimble as she is plain. That's what makes her great! You can feel free to call me Miss Chue, by the way." She grinned, spun around, and struck a nonsensical pose.
"Well! Don't mind if I do, Miss Chue."
"Of course, Master Lihaku. Incidentally, Miss Chue is a married woman, so she must decline any advances."
"That's a shame. You're my type. If I'd met you before I ran into the woman I'm destined for, I would definitely have tried to make a move on you."
Which was another way of saying she wasn't his type.
"It's too bad for you. You don't meet many women this good," Chue said.
She just rolls with everything, doesn't she? All that cheerfulness—she was a kind of person, a type, that Maomao hadn't had around her to this point. Chue, meanwhile, had somehow pulled a string of tiny flags from the folds of her robe.
I'd like to make a sarcastic quip, but I don't even know where to start, Maomao thought, and then she got into the carriage, ignoring the somewhat lonely-looking Chue.
This country they were in, situated to the south of Li, was called Anan. It had been a vassal for more than a century; even the name "Anan" wasn't its original name, but had been foisted on it by an old emperor. The character a meant things like "second," "secondary," or "inferior." It was the same with Hokuaren, the collection of countries to Li's north. That name meant, quite literally, the collection—ren—of inferior—a—countries in the north—hoku.
Whoever gave them that name must have been awfully important, thought Maomao. And awfully full of themselves, to force upon another country such an openly degrading name.
I guess every other country probably has its own name for ours too.
The people from the west had fairer skin than the Linese and were often tall. Thus they sometimes derided the Linese as "monkeys." They were speaking the local language, and probably thought they couldn't be understood—little did they know that Maomao's smattering of the western tongue was just enough to tell her she was being insulted. If the madam had become aware of someone belittling her, she simply would have smiled and raised her prices.
I guess we each do it to the other.
If you didn't want people to insult you, don't insult them—but Maomao was less worried about being insulted and more worried about staying safe. Countries were really just very large groups of people, so relations between countries ultimately came down to a form of human relations.
When Maomao climbed out of the carriage, she was confronted with a huge palace. The vermilion lacquer was the same color as in Li, but the shape of the roof was subtly different. It was a little rounder, and lanterns hung from it, shining.
A pure-white path ran down the center of the palace, through a garden with windmill palms planted in neat pairs.
"This way, if you please," said a man who appeared to be a servant. Thankfully, he spoke the Li language, although with a slight accent.
Doesn't matter what I please. I'm just a food taster, Maomao thought. She even considered saying it out loud, but Chue was already trotting ahead. Guiding Maomao, in her own way. She still made those strange, chirping footsteps. Maomao and Lihaku followed obediently.
"You may use this room," the servant said, leading them to a door. Chue promptly ducked inside, taking a swift look around.
She was used to this.
"Everything look all right?" Lihaku asked, joining her in the room and scanning the area.
"It's fine. Sometimes you get bugs or snakes here in the south," Chue replied.
"Snakes?" Maomao asked. Her eyes lit up and she gladly joined in the surveillance. "Are any of them venomous?"
"Yes! Some."
"Are there any scorpions here?"
"No, no scorpions."
After a careful search turned up no bugs and no snakes, both of them looked thoroughly disappointed.
"I understand about the young lady, but why do you look so unhappy, Miss Chue?" Lihaku interjected calmly, careful to use "Miss Chue's" preferred form of address.
"Well, wouldn't it be more interesting if there were something here?"
So Chue didn't just like to stand out herself—she was the kind who preferred when things were lively. Maomao was starting to see how she had ended up in Gaoshun's character-laden household. At the same time, she was a little scared to contemplate how Chue and her mother-in-law must get along.
Chue started making tea. The carafe was evidently full of cold water, because it was sweating—a mark of respect for the visitors.
The cold water must have been fetched very recently.
"Don't worry. I can handle that," Maomao said. She figured Chue must be busy.
She reached for the tea supplies, but Chue said, "It's all right, I'm making some for myself too. I'm going to be with you this evening, Miss Maomao." She worked with such quick movements that there was nowhere for Maomao to join in. "Lady Suiren expressed her concerns about an unmarried young woman being alone with a man, even if he is her bodyguard, so here I am. I'll be watching you!"
Maomao and Lihaku looked at each other—and then, as one, they said, "Hah! I think not."
"And neither do I. But when the big lady gives you an order, you do it. Besides, you've met my mother-in-law. I think I handle her quite well, but it's exhausting to be with her every minute. You've also met my husband—do you think he ever sticks up for me? I can tell you I don't mind leaving him to her and getting myself a break every once in a while."
With that, Chue flopped on the couch and sipped her tea. She looked absolutely relaxed. She even grabbed one of the snacks, some kind of rice cracker, and started munching away on it.
Maomao and Lihaku decided there was no reason not to make themselves at home as well. Lihaku, seeming at a loss for anything else to do, found a post in the corner of the room and started doing pull-ups.
Muscle brain, Maomao thought. She sat in a chair and likewise started drinking. Meanwhile, she resumed reading the book Yao had given her.
"While we have a minute, I'd like to tell you how the banquet is going to go," said Chue. She still had crumbs on her lips, but apparently she was in the mood to work.
"Please do," said Maomao.
Chue leaned back, as comfortable as if she were in her own home, and said, "You and I are going to handle the food tasting, Miss Maomao. For the Moon Prince and Grand Commandant Kan. There's a few other bigwigs around, but they've made their own arrangements."
Chue was supposed to belong to the Ma clan, but apparently, to Maomao's surprise, she did food tasting as well.
"I'll take the Moon Prince, if I may," Maomao said. Neither was, you know, great, but he was the lesser of two evils.
"Certainly. I think Grand Commandant Kan sounds much more interesting."
Whatever her reasoning, Chue was going to handle the freak strategist, and for that Maomao was glad.
"For the most part, we'll do the food tasting pretty much the same way it's done at the garden parties and the like, so I don't think I have to tell you how it works. This is a diplomatic occasion, though, so we'll be hidden behind the seats while we work."
"Makes sense."
"Just try to feel things out from there."
That's kind of lackadaisical. Or, well, I guess more just undirected.
Granted, it would be easier than having to do everything by the book.
At first, she'd seemed more like En'en, but it was starting to feel like she had more in common with Maomao. If anything, Maomao was probably the more diligent about what was going on around her.
"That concludes the explanation! I'm sure they'll come call us when it's time, so we can all do whatever we want until then.
Dismissed!"
"All right."
"Sure thing!"
With that, they resumed doing whatever they wanted.
Chapter 18: Anan's Banquet
Even when you spoke the same language, cultural differences could still be massive. Ananese banquets turned out to look very different from Linese ones.
Being situated to the south of Li, it was quite warm in Anan— hot, in fact. The sound of drums and flutes filled the air, a lighter and more cheerful noise than the music of Li. Carpets were laid out outdoors, and people sat on them—there were no chairs, but instead shiny cushions were supplied on which to sit. The food, likewise, was served not on a table, but atop a carpet, and instead of each person being served individually, everyone ate from large communal plates. The alcohol came in uniquely shaped jars, and was distinctive for its bright color.
The food was prepared by women, all of them scantily clad. They wore skirts that were hardly more than gaudily colored cloth wrapped around their waists, while their tops were short-sleeved. The sinuous alcohol jars almost seemed designed to complement the women's shapely bodies.
There was a lot of black hair around, but not much of it was straight. Skin tones ranged from ivory to honey colored, and many of the people had rugged faces. Maomao recalled that Fuyou, the former middle consort, had had facial features very much like those of someone from Li. Perhaps she'd been sent to the rear palace exactly for that reason.
The soldiers who had been summoned to attend the banquet couldn't stop ogling the alluring dancers and servers.
"They just walk different, don't they!" Chue said to Maomao, swinging her hips demonstratively. No one saw her—the food tasters worked behind a curtain. "I think I'll buy one of those outfits tomorrow and give my husband a little temptation."
"Does he like that sort of thing?" Maomao asked, picturing Baryou, who looked like a pale, scrawny version of Basen. She had to admit, she couldn't help but wonder what their married life was like.
"Not at all," Chue said bluntly. She just wanted to wear it, it seemed.
Events like this in Anan were evidently less highly formal dinner than friendly banquet; still, the people important enough to need food tasters sat on a raised dais with a lovely low table and footed trays. Maomao's job was to take food off a tray one piece at a time and taste it to make sure there it wasn't poisoned. The curtain seemed intended to conceal the fact that she was doing this, but it also conveniently concealed that the food tasters were chatting together.
"There's a lot of undistinguished faces in the royal family here," Chue remarked impertinently. "I guess it's only natural. All those political marriages were bound to introduce a lot of foreign blood." That answered Maomao's question—Fuyou looked relatively Linese, it seemed, because she had a fair amount of Li heritage. Such matches were a common way for two countries to forge a stronger bond, by making themselves family. Alternatively, a ruling country might seek to thin out the bloodline of a vassal state with such a tactic.
Everything looks peaceful here, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe Anan doesn't like Li very much.
She couldn't stop the thought. After all, the people of Anan knew that the very name Li had given their country was meant to mock them.
Maomao peeked out from a gap in the curtain at the person who seemed overwhelmingly the most likely target of any such resentment. Jinshi sat holding a cup of alcohol and smiling. From behind, she could only see his face in profile, but the scar in his right cheek looked redder and more prominent than usual, maybe because of the heat.
Jinshi had his diplomatic smile on. He had been poured a hefty serving of alcohol, but there was scant sign that he had drunk any of it. Maomao could see servers at the edge of her vision, hovering and keeping a sharp eye for any empty cups.
It wouldn't be easy to get close to him, huh?
They kept stealing glances at Jinshi, but he seemed to have an assigned server, and not just anyone could wander up to bring him something.
"Here you are," said a mild voice—it was Gaoshun, passing some food through the gap in the curtain. It would eventually make its way to Jinshi, but only after Maomao had taken a taste.
This dish was glistening pork spareribs. Carefully, Maomao ran a silver chopstick along the surface. She checked that it didn't cloud over, then began taking out the bone and dividing the meat into several slices of roughly equal size that she then put on a small plate.
She sampled the food. It was a bit sweet, maybe stewed in fruit. It had the crisp, cool taste of tangerine.
Very good, she thought. She swallowed her sample and resisted the urge to take another bite. She was on the job now: it wouldn't look good to eat any more.
"Very good!" pronounced Chue, who was munching away. She was well beyond the point of tasting for poison.
"Miss Chue, what about your job?" Maomao asked.
"I checked, and there's nothing wrong with it! It's quite delicious." She put a hand to her cheek, but it was obvious that she was just eating at this point.
If only Hongniang or Sazen or Lahan's brother were here now, Maomao thought, thinking of the three best quippers she knew. It was too much work to come up with sarcastic responses for
everything Chue did all by herself. She would have appreciated
some help.
Maomao passed the tasted plate on, indicating it had met with her approval. It was Gaoshun who actually took the plate and gave it to Jinshi.
By contrast, it was the freak strategist's aide who had to take Chue's plate, with next to nothing left on it, and give it to his superior. It was the same man who had been with the strategist when he'd poisoned himself with his own juice.
For a long, silent moment, the aide looked at the plate. Then he looked pleadingly at Chue.
"Go right ahead," she said. "There's no poison!" Some fat still glistened around her mouth.
The man was left with no choice but to take the beleaguered dish to the strategist. When the next course arrived, it was more spareribs.
"A girl would like a little variety!" Chue said with a sigh, polishing up a new pair of silver chopsticks.
Something different came to Maomao—three things at once, in fact. "Seems like a lot," she said to Gaoshun, who had brought the plate. She hadn't quite meant to let the thought out of her mouth, but it managed anyway.
Gaoshun's brow furrowed. "It's from the honored guest over there," he said, sounding like he wasn't quite speaking of his own free will. From the other side of the curtain, the freak strategist waved.
"Help yourself, Miss Chue," Maomao said.
"Well! Don't mind if I do." Chue dug in—er, started tasting it for poison—without a second invitation.
The freak strategist might be let down, but Maomao's job was to taste food to see if there was poison in it, not to eat other things until she got full.
This might be a fancy dinner, but Jinshi was really here to conduct diplomacy. He had on his smoothest smile and was talking and laughing. He ate only a modest excuse for a meal, so Maomao didn't have that much to do.
If Jinshi had been a woman, his looks might have brought a country to its knees—and when it came to diplomacy, they were a weapon he could wield to his advantage.
If nothing else, he knows how to handle people. Even if the shine did come off pretty quickly when you got into his inner circle.
The other VIP was doing substantially less work. The freak strategist picked at Chue's leftovers, swigging down not alcohol, but juice. Someone appeared to be trying to talk to him, but he didn't look interested. He kept taking little glances back to try to catch a glimpse of Maomao.
"Maybe it's not my place, but don't you think you could try to be a little nicer to him?" Chue asked around a mouthful of chicken.
"Do you know what will happen if I give him an inch?" Maomao veritably spat.
Chue tilted her head back and closed her eyes as if she was
trying to imagine. "Something very interesting, I suspect." She sounded like she enjoyed the prospect—well, she wouldn't be the one in the middle of it.
I wish this dinner would hurry up and end. Maomao sighed and picked up the next bit of food.
For all its trials and tribulations, the dinner did eventually conclude.
I'm pretty sure there was nothing funny in any of that, Maomao thought. As the food taster, it was also part of her job to keep an eye on the state of her health after the meal. A slowacting toxin could take anywhere from several hours to several days to show up. She still had room in her stomach, but she wanted to wait and see how she felt for a while before she had anything else to eat.
"Phew! I couldn't eat another bite!" Chue said, rubbing her bulging belly. To the bitter end, she'd more enjoyed than sampled the strategist's food.
Now all they had to do was go back to their rooms for the night. They had permission to go shopping the next day, and Maomao was actually sort of looking forward to it.
So the evening of the banquet ended without incident. Yes, that night was quiet...
Chapter 19: The Quack Vanishes
Sunlight pried at Maomao's eyelids, and she heard birds twittering outside.
"Hm... Mmm..."
She slowly opened her eyes and gave a great stretch. The bed was soft and smelled lovely, and since they were on land, it didn't even rock. She felt like she'd had her first deep sleep in a long time.
This is Anan, right? she thought, trying to recall where they were through the haze of a freshly awakened brain.
When she got out of bed, she found breakfast, consisting of congee and a medley of relatively sumptuous dishes on the table.
She also saw that Chue was already eating.
"You're prompt," she remarked.
"Yep. Miss Chue is an early riser—otherwise her mother-in-law gets mad. Come on, let's have breakfast!" She continued stuffing food into her face. The richness of the dishes suggested they were leftovers from last night's banquet—except Maomao didn't recognize any of them. Apparently, guests were guests, and were not to be served leftovers.
"I don't need much," Maomao said, putting some vinegar on the porridge and starting to eat. On the surface, it looked like a fairly ordinary Li-style breakfast, but the unmistakable tang of fish sauce in the vinegar reminded her that she was in another country.
Notwithstanding the impossibility of keeping up with the necessary quips, Maomao didn't have to be on any kind of special behavior around Chue, so she didn't worry about eating daintily. When she had finished breakfast and was brushing her teeth, the door flew open with a bang.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Young lady!" said Maomao's bodyguard, Lihaku. He looked mildly distressed. "I was informed a few minutes ago that that friendly old doctor isn't on the ship."
"What?"
Why would the quack doctor be missing?
Did someone kidnap him?
The whole reason the quack had been brought along was to be a body double for Luomen. Lihaku was supposed to be the quack's bodyguard as well, but at the moment he was with Maomao. There were other soldiers stationed on the ship, though, and abducting the quack shouldn't have been an easy task.
"I don't understand what you mean. I mean... Why?"
Maomao held her head in her hands; Chue looked very intrigued.
"Your guess is as good as mine," said Lihaku. "I'm going to go back to the ship and see what's happening. What about you, miss?"
"What about me?" Maomao said. She couldn't just walk around on her own out here. Someone would need to know where she was going...
"All right, I've heard the story," said, of all people, Chue. "This smells like a mystery! Don't you worry—I already went ahead and got permission." She winked at them, her teeth sparkling.
"How could you already go ahead and do that? We just found out about this," said Maomao, sadly picking the most ordinary and least interesting response. She knew this might be a good time for an amusing comeback, but she had the feeling that if she started dealing them out, they'd never stop, so she let the opportunity pass.
"Simple. They told me that if you went outside, Mister Lihaku and I could go with you. And since I figured you'd have nothing but time to kill today, I went ahead and got permission for you to go out. If you just stayed here all day, Miss Chue would have to stay with you, and then we would miss the chance to see Anan, and I would have to sit here fretting about whether my mother-inlaw might drop in for a visit."
In other words, she had been ready and eager to make herself scarce all along.
Hey, if they'll let me go, I might as well.
Chue's eagerness turned out to be rather helpful.
"If it's all right, I think I'll start by going back to the ship," Maomao said, looking to Lihaku for confirmation.
"Sure. I thought you would, miss; that's why I told you. As far as I'm concerned, there's no problem, but..." He looked away.
"But what?"
"Er, well, when I was talking with the messenger, I was spotted by...someone I would rather not have been spotted by."
"Someone you would rather..."
With mounting dread, Maomao looked toward the entrance to the room. Chue pattered over to the door and opened it.
"Yikes!" said an eavesdropping monocled freak.
"Good morning, sir," Miss Chue said, although her greeting was purely for form's sake.
"Good morning! Maomaoooo! What lovely weather we're having, eh?"
She didn't say a word, only gave him her most scathing possible look.
"So! I hear you're going out! Maybe Daddy should come with you!"
"Please don't." Maomao's expression was like ice, but it failed to dampen the freak strategist's spirits.
"All those stores! Oh, what shall I buy you? Some clothes? A hair ornament? Oh! Or maybe you'd like some nice medicine!" He was, as ever, not listening to her.
"Miss Maomao," Chue said, nudging her. "It doesn't look like we can keep him from coming with us. Why not give in and let the nice wallet come along?"
"Wallet? I think we'd be lucky if he had two coins on him to rub together." Maomao had the distinct impression that it was typically Lahan or the like who handled any money matters for the strategist.
"Well, then I'll go grab the aide. He must have the purse." With that, Lihaku was off to go call the man.
"Master Lihaku! Wait!" Maomao called after him.
"Maomaaaooooo! Ooh, I hope they have lots of medicines! We have to find a souvenir for my honored uncle too." The fox eyes arched excitedly.
"The purse! We need money. It'll cost time to leave him here," Chue said. "If the master physician might be in trouble, we haven't a moment to lose. Also, I want a hair stick with Ananese coral."
"You're always ready to mooch, aren't you, Miss Chue?" Chue was a very friendly person, let it be said.
"I have to be! My husband's income isn't stable enough for anything else. By the time we'd gotten married and even had a child, he was still studying for the civil service exams. Once he passed them, I thought we were set, but then he didn't get along with his colleagues and retired. At least his connections finally got him a new job. But it all meant Miss Chue had to go to work almost as soon as the baby was born."
Chue waved a string of small flags as she spoke. She certainly didn't look like someone who had it as rough as all that, but, well, who knew?
"Incidentally, ever since my husband got his new job, I've been under pressure to pop out the next kid. Sure, goes the logic, maybe my brother-in-law will end up head of the family, but who knows if he'll produce a child? I think the big lady's just bullying her daughter-in-law."
"I can't say I don't see her point."
If Basen really was guaranteed to inherit, then it was understandable to worry about heirs given his distinctly shy attitude toward women.
Even things with former consort Lishu could be over if he's not careful how he goes about it. Maomao thought of the luckless princess who had gone to a nunnery the year before.
What was Basen doing on that separate overland route?
Maomao and Chue's conversation concluded when Lihaku returned. "All right! I got him!" he shouted. He had the purse—er, the freak strategist's aide—with him.
When they got back to the ship, they found it awfully quiet. Maybe everyone had gone out. The sailors were making sure everything was shipshape, while the cleaners, a group of middleaged women dressed in men's clothing, removed trash from the rooms, swept the deck, and industriously polished every surface on the ship. The cleaners also made the travelers' meals, and most of them seemed to be family members of the sailors.
"Maomao! Let's not waste too much time doing whatever we have to do here—we should go shopping!"
An obnoxious old man was jabbering about something, but Maomao ignored him. The handful of soldiers remaining on board scurried away the moment they saw the strategist, eager not to be caught up in whatever he was doing.
"Here," said one of the soldiers who'd been appointed to guard the quack doctor—the man who had informed Lihaku of his disappearance.
"What in the world were you doing?" asked Lihaku, who seemed to know the man, slapping him on the back.
"I—I'm sorry. We only took our eyes off him for a moment, while we were changing the guard, and he vanished. Then we tried to get into the medical office..."
Maomao tried the office door, but it wouldn't open. "It's locked," she observed.
With all the medicines inside, the door had to lock to keep anyone from waltzing in and helping themselves to the supplies. The office was always kept locked when there was no one there.
"I tried to peek in, but I didn't see anyone there, so when the physician didn't show any sign of coming back, I thought I should tell you." The soldier bowed his head.
"All right, I see. You said you were changing the guard. Go get the guy who was on duty before you." "Yes sir!" The soldier rushed off.
"A locked room! This smells like a mystery," Chue announced with glee.
"Where'd the old guy go?" Lihaku mused.
"If we're lucky, he just fell asleep somewhere," said Maomao. She had a backup key, so she opened the door—but the quack doctor was not in the room. "Nothing too unusual here," she said. If there was anything out of the ordinary, it was that the quack's sleepwear lay on the bed in a heap.
"Not a very neat guy, I take it," Lihaku said.
"I don't know. That's not what he normally does with his pajamas."
He might toss them aside for a moment, but he would be sure
to fold them later. He might be incompetent, but he wasn't uncivilized.
Out of the corner of her vision, Maomao saw the freak strategist reaching for the medicine cabinet, so she slapped his hand away. She would have sworn he looked happy about it—but it made her feel ill, so she ignored it. The aide bowed his head repeatedly toward her in apology.
"If I were the quack, and I was in a hurry..." Maomao muttered. She tried to picture what he would do once he had gotten up in the morning and changed his clothes. They'd spent the last several days living their lives with only a curtain between them, so she had a pretty good idea of what made him tick.
"He probably went to the bathroom," she said.
The bathroom was at the prow of the ship. A eunuch's missing equipment made the need to urinate more frequent. It was possible quack had woken up and badly needed to go to the toilet, so he'd sloughed off his sleepwear in a rush. Last night, there had been classy food aboard the ships as well as on land, and there was a good chance alcohol had been served. It was impressive that the quack had even remembered to lock the door in his hungover haze.
"I think we should try the bathroom," said Maomao. They took the quickest route from the office to the head, passing one of the cleaning ladies as they went. She was busily working near the stove, trying to get out some stubborn stain, maybe oil that had jumped out of a pot or pan.
They eventually reached the toilet at the ship's prow, but there was no quack there.
"We're pretty sure he didn't fall in, right?" Lihaku said, and he was mostly joking—but it was true that the toilet was a hole that simply let waste fall directly into the sea.
"No, he didn't. With his waistline, he would just get stuck," said Chue.
Maomao didn't say anything, but crossed her arms and cocked her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the old fart snacking on some dried fruit, but she decided to ignore him. His aide was offering him some tea in a bamboo tube. "What's the matter, Miss Maomao?"
"I was just thinking... The master physician might get stuck, but what about something else? Something that wouldn't?"
"Such as?"
Maomao took the key to the medical office out of the folds of her robes. "What if he was sleepy and in a hurry, and dropped
this? Seems like a possibility, doesn't it?" "Yikes!" was Chue's reaction.
"Y'know, with that guy, I could just see it," said Lihaku. Neither of them contradicted Maomao.
Without the key, the quack wouldn't be able to get back into the office.
"Excuse me," Maomao said to one of the sailors.
"Yeah? What?"
"You didn't happen to see the master physician around the toilet this morning, did you? Maybe in a tizzy?"
The sailor looked at her, confused, then called over some of his mates. One of them clapped his hands. "I d'nno if it was your physician or not, but I did see a fat little man in an awful hurry. He was getting in the way of cleaning the deck, so I told him to go somewhere else."
"Do you know where he went?"
"Hrm... Well, he was going to be in the way of cleaning anywhere belowdecks, so I told him he could be on deck, just once I was done swabbing." The sailor pointed to the wharf. On it there was a wooden chest, and on that Maomao could easily picture a quack doctor, sitting and looking quite dejected.
"Even if he thought of trying to get in touch with you to borrow your key, miss, most of the soldiers were away," said Lihaku. The timid quack would have had a hard time stopping one of the obviously busy sailors to ask a favor—and his qualms would only have been compounded by the guilt of having lost the key in the first place.
Maomao sat down on the chest where she imagined the quack doctor had sat. Sailors and cleaning people bustled around the pier. As Maomao sat there, just looking around, several of them gave her dirty looks: she was definitely in the way.
I can see why the soldiers all left.
It would be awfully awkward, being on the ship at that
moment. No doubt the men standing guard in the halls had been the subjects of many a reproving glare from the cleaners, who saw them as mere obstacles. No wonder the guard hadn't waited for his relief to arrive before leaving his post.
"Where could he have gone?" Maomao mumbled.
As she sat there, staring into the distance, one of the cleaners, a plump middle-aged woman, bustled right up to her and her companions and said, "You wouldn't happen to be the extra help, would you?"
"No. Do we look like it?"
If it had been just Maomao and Chue, it might have made sense, but Lihaku was standing right there. Not to mention the old fart and his aide—the former of whom had started climbing up the mast, the latter of whom had followed, trying to stop him, and both of whom had been dragged down by the sailors the moment they were spotted.
"I can't say you do. I was just hoping for a few more pairs of hands. The lady we sent to do the shopping hasn't come back in all this time and I'm at the end of my rope. If you're not busy,
maybe you could take a message for me?"
The lady they sent to do the shopping?
Maomao pictured the quack as he must have looked most recently: changed out of his sleepwear but not into his physician's uniform. A clean-shaven eunuch. Eunuchs often looked somewhat gender-neutral, so it was possible someone could have mistaken him for a middle-aged woman. It wouldn't have helped that the cleaners wore men's clothes for ease of movement.
"Pardon me, but could you describe the person you sent to go shopping?" Maomao said.
"Well, she was a helper sent over from one of the other ships. They told me they couldn't spare anyone too young, but even so —what a piece of work they came up with! Just sitting there, no idea what she should be doing. So I gave her this errand, and now here we are. It's been more than two hours and she's still not back!" The woman spread her hands in frustration.
"Hullooooo!" came a woman's shout from the pier. "The help's here! What do you need us to do?"
Maomao, her companions, and the cleaner all looked at the woman coming down the jetty toward them.
"It looks like your helper has arrived," Maomao said.
"Yes, well... But then...who did I send shopping?"
The quack spent most of his time cooped up in the medical office, so the woman hadn't recognized him.
Maomao and the others shook their heads at each other. "What did you ask 'her' to buy?"
"Well, soap. Cheap bar soap is easy to get at Anan's port.
Cheap liquid soap always smells. No one likes it on a ship." Bar soap wasn't much used in Li.
"Do you know where they sell it?"
"Probably one of the stalls around town. Would you be so kind as to go and get some?"
"All right," Maomao said. She and the others now knew where they had to go next.
"Ooh, those clothes look nice! Maybe I should buy them."
"Ah, not bad, not bad. This hair stick would look lovely on you,
Maomao!"
"How's the juice at that shop? Bit of a strange color, but I think it looks drinkable."
The freak strategist had been going on like this ever since they'd gotten to the marketplace. Incidentally, all of his hair stick and clothing choices were at least a thousand years ahead of their time, and the juice looked like it would do a number on your stomach. Maomao repeatedly stopped his aide from producing the purse.
"My. He doesn't slow down, does he, Miss Maomao?" Chue, who seemed totally unfazed by the strategist's antics, had several skewers of grilled bird meat in her hand. It wasn't chicken—it was leaner and bonier. Probably a sparrow or some other pest bird from the fields.
I thought orders had gone out not to catch sparrows for the time being, Maomao thought. It was one of Jinshi's attempts to forestall the swarm of locusts. Maybe Anan wasn't subject to the command, even if it was a vassal state.
"Are you sure that's not cannibalism?" Maomao asked.
"It tastes good, and that's what counts! Here, have a bite." "Thanks."
Chue offered Maomao one of the skewers, and she gladly took it. The meat was tough, but some people liked it this way.
"Excellent. Now, my good aide, I'll be needing another skewer." Chue stuck out her hand and the aide, looking defeated, dropped a few coins into it. It looked like the most natural thing in the world.
She's not even paying for it!
Chue was definitely too shrewd for her own good, or at least for everyone else's. The freak strategist was munching on fruit he'd skewered on a chopstick.
Maomao, taking a bite off her own skewer, looked around for anywhere selling soap.
"Bar soap isn't cheap. Should they really be using it to clean the ovens?" Lihaku asked. He was right—even Maomao and the others had no better than ash, or maybe liquid soap, when they washed. Bar soap wasn't very familiar in Li and wasn't widely sold.
"I don't think it's the same in Anan." Maomao patted a nearby tree. It looked similar to a windmill palm, but it lacked the bushy trunk. Large berries grew high overhead. "This is a palm tree," she said. She'd only seen them in pictures in books, but this one was also known as the betel palm. The nuts could be chewed like tobacco, or ground into a powder to clean the teeth, and also to flush worms out of the body.
The plant they were looking at just then, however, was a little different.
"Some kinds of palm are used for their fruits or berries, and others are used for their oil. Some palms have a berry that's a lot like a red date. The oil palm is used to make oil, just like the name implies, and if you mix the oil with seaweed ash, you can make soap."
She didn't know, though, how it was hardened into shape—by reducing it, drying it, or perhaps by mixing in another ingredient.
Maomao looked at the shops. Just by the palm trees was one selling their berries, large fruit in which the vendor put a hole and inserted a straw.
"One please...er, for each of us," said the considerate aide, purchasing enough of the fruit for all of them. Maomao decided to accept his hospitality, since they were here. What came through the straw was both somewhat sweet and somewhat salty.
"Wish this were a bit sweeter. Sugar! Don't you have any sugar?" The insatiably sweet-toothed old fart was disappointed.
"I'm fond of the salty stuff myself," said Lihaku. At that, the aide offered him a leaf piled with something white.
"The shopkeeper says this is on the house. Palm meat, he claims."
It was pale, translucent stuff doused in fish sauce. Maomao and Lihaku both took a piece and tasted it.
"It's a bit like raw squid," Maomao remarked. She couldn't pretend she didn't like the al dente quality—it would be a good side dish with some wine.
"Hmm. Not quite my thing. It's a bit...rubbery." Lihaku wasn't as enamored. Oh well. That meant more for Maomao and Chue.
"Excuse me. Do you know where we might find a soap vendor?" Maomao asked the palm seller.
"Soap vendor? Bit farther in. He sets up right next to the fried food places a lot of the time. There's a square just ahead. He's often there," came a reply colored with a distinct Ananese accent. Apparently the shopkeeper was willing to indulge customers who had spent some money. He added, "You all are Linese, yeah? Your stout friend there should keep you safe, I think—but be careful." "Careful of what?" Lihaku asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Lot of Linese around these days. Seems you're not like most of them, but there are plenty who like to make fun of us. Last night, there was even a fight at the bar. Taxes have gone up, see, and there's talk that our princess got chased out of the rear palace because they didn't like her enough. Just try not to give anyone an excuse, that's all I'm saying."
Taxes had been raised as a protective measure against locusts. Meanwhile, the princess "chased out" of the rear palace must have been Fuyou, who had left after causing a scare about a ghost.
They're not exactly wrong. Maomao wanted to push back, but it was true: some of the Linese visitors had a bad attitude. There was a lot of pent-up frustration from the unaccustomed ship travel, not to mention some people were convinced that they were suffering a punitive demotion.
"Huh," said Lihaku, and Maomao saw a new look come into his eyes. "We'd better find that old doctor fast, then." The flighty quack would make an easy target all by himself.
Maomao and the others finished their drinks and threw the shells away, then headed deeper into the market as the shopkeeper had suggested.
"Boy, something smells really sweet," Lihaku said.
"And really oily," said Maomao.
The air seemed thick. The square itself was paved with flagstones, and something that looked like a mausoleum stood in the center. Trees lined the area. Some of them were even fruit trees, sprouting small mangoes. There might even be some lychees among the plant life, but it was probably the wrong season for them.
The shops seemed calculated to catch the interest of passersby. Maomao felt like she would be overpowered by the sweet smell, but there were also places selling incense, candles, and cards. Available snacks included sesame dumplings and fried bread, among others. The freak strategist bought some immediately, and just as quickly Chue started sponging off him.
The aide was kept very busy.
"Where's the soap?" Maomao muttered. She looked around until she spotted a place with what looked like white bricks piled up at the stall. She trotted over, to be greeted by a scowl from the shopkeeper.
"You Linese?" he demanded as they walked up. His accent was less noticeable than that of the palm seller.
"Who cares what I am? I'm a customer. I want to buy some soap. How much?" Lihaku said.
"Doesn't matter, because I don't have any to sell you. Try somewhere else." The shopkeeper pointedly turned away.
"Well, that's a problem. Want to tell me why you won't sell to me?" It was easy to assume that Lihaku must literally have muscles for brains, but he was making a wise choice here. Maomao, seeing that she couldn't be of help, took a step back and watched.
They could see the gears turning in the shopkeeper's head.
Lihaku simply stood with an easy smile on his face.
"If you want to buy soap, go directly to where they make it. We need soap for our daily lives around here. What are we supposed to do when you buy up all our stock just because of the novelty of it? The price of materials has gone up recently. When I sell out of this batch, I'm going to have to raise my prices."
It turned out even a surly shopkeeper had a story. He should have just said so upfront. Why did bitter people always have to take so long getting to the point? He would make the same money no matter who he sold to, but he was trying to keep his price low for the locals. There were some residential areas nearby: this was a perfect place for them to come buy their soap.
"Materials are more expensive?" Lihaku asked. "You mean because the Linese are buying everything?"
"No—because the materials we had burned up. There was a fire."
A major ingredient in soap was oil—practically made for burning.
"I see... Well, thanks. The place that makes the soap, is it farther along here?" Lihaku asked with his friendliest smile. The shopkeeper made a point of looking put-upon, but he pointed the way nonetheless.
"Walk straight that way and look for the signs of the fire.
There's a little hut there where they're working on more soap. There'll be plenty of craftspeople around; I'm sure you can ask one of them. I warn you, though, they're not as nice as I am."
"All right, well, we appreciate it. And since you're so nice, maybe you could tell me one more thing. Did an older guy, a Linese like us, happen to come by earlier today trying to buy soap?"
"An older guy? Wait... You mean the old lady? Pudgy, with kind of droopy eyebrows?"
"Yeah, that's him! He's no old lady, though. Where'd he go?"
"He asked the same questions as you lot, and I gave him the same answer. He went toward the soap makers'. Would've been about half an hour ago by now."
"Great! You've been such a big help. We really appreciate it." Lihaku shook the man's hand, and Maomao offered a bow. By that point, the strategist had purchased all of the snacks at the snack stall, and Chue was busy mooching off him. At least he was relatively calm while he was eating.
Maomao couldn't help being impressed by Chue's adaptability. She felt bad for the aide, though, who had to be in about three places at once.
"Maomaaaoooo! Look! Fried bread!" The freak strategist stuck the bread out at her, trying to stuff it straight into her mouth, but she dodged him. Chue moved to intercept and got the mouthful instead.
"Delicious!" she said, wiping her lips as if this were nothing out of the ordinary. Just what kind of stomach was she packing?
After a bit of walking in the direction the soap seller had indicated, the group found themselves among a cluster of houses. Windmill palms grew here and there in lieu of other garden plants.
"Do these trees produce any kind of fruit, I wonder?" Chue asked, eyeing them closely.
"They do, and it can be used in medicine, but no one seems to think it tastes very good," Maomao said.
"Why are they here, then?"
"I think maybe because they can also be used to make brooms, ropes, that sort of thing. The leaves have medicinal properties too."
The palms were quite versatile, in fact, but Chue seemed uninterested in anything that wasn't edible.
"Please stop, Master Lakan!" said the aide, who looked like he was at the end of his rope. If this was what he had to deal with every day, Maomao hoped he kept some stomach medicine on hand.
"Think that's it?" Chue asked when she spotted a half-burned building. There was some sort of crowd near it. Maomao hurried over, her bad feeling growing. When she got there, she spotted a very familiar back.
"I'm telling you, it wasn't me!" the back's owner pleaded. It was the quack doctor, practically in tears. He was surrounded by several men, one of whom had him by the collar.
"Master Physician!" Maomao exclaimed, running up. The quack, snotty nose and all, grabbed hold of her. She tried to peel him off —he wasn't going to make it any easier to talk to anyone—but that was when the freak strategist broke in.
"What are you doing to my little girl?!" demanded the old fart, who still had sugar around his mouth.
"My! Is this man your father, young lady?" the quack asked. The fact that, in spite of his obvious fear, he still sounded somehow unconcerned was, well, just him.
"He's a total stranger," Maomao replied promptly.
"Who is this person? Tell me his name!" Lakan demanded.
"I could, but you would never remember it, Master Lakan," his aide said. The aide did, however, imitate Lakan in staring at the quack. "You're the master physician, aren't you?"
"Er, ahem, yes, that's, er, that's right," said the quack. He wiped away the worst of the snot with a handkerchief, but he still looked pretty pathetic.
"Oi, you bunch! You know this guy?" said one of the men. He had a thick accent, filthy clothes, and comparatively dark skin. He was young, and obviously his blood was all in his head. By his feet was a jar full of cloudy oil.
The quack tried to hide behind Maomao, so she found herself out in front by default—until the freak strategist stepped in front of her protectively.
Knock it off. You're not going to do anyone any good here.
She'd hardly had the thought when Lihaku stepped in front of the strategist, that ingratiating smile on his face again. "That's right, this old guy is with us. Something seem to be the matter?" He was their bodyguard, and he was doing his job. He might be a big mutt, but he made a decent guard dog. The Ananese men started muttering among themselves.
"Wh-What, can't you see? Just look!" The dark-skinned man pointed at the wall. The scorched bricks were drenched with water, and on the ground was a wooden chest that appeared to be the source of the fire. "The fire came from there, and the old guy was right next to it. Meaning he started the fire! He must've started the one the other day too!"
"N-No! I didn't! I just wanted to buy soap!" the quack moaned. "I've seen him, lurking around here! I know this is all your fault!"
"Okay, just calm down. I hear what you're saying, but I want you to get our side of the story too," Lihaku said. He never raised his voice, but he gave the man a look like a large dog putting a puppy in its place. Five men surrounded the quack doctor, all of them vigorous and muscular—but not as well-built as Lihaku. The angry man considered shooting back, but fell silent under Lihaku's gaze.
Maomao watched the man from behind her bodyguard. Between their dirty outfits, the jar of oil, and the fact that they were standing in front of a soap-makers' shop, she suspected that they were soap makers. She could see the damp patch on the blackened wall and smell the scorched odor in the air. It seemed likely that after the first blaze had been put out, another, smaller one had started.
"First things first. I don't know about this fire of yours, but this guy only came to Anan last night. Until then, he was rocking across the sea on a boat. That much, I can tell you for certain.
You follow?"
That set them talking.
"Yeah, okay. But that box was set on fire, and he was the only guy around. What's your excuse for that, huh?"
"Set on fire?" Lihaku looked at the quack for confirmation.
"N-No! Nooo! It caught fire on its own, I tell you! I didn't do anything!"
"Liar! How'd it light itself, then?"
"Yeah!" said one of the other men.
"It couldn't have just burst into flames by itself!" added a third.
"All right, all right, I hear you. Stay calm," Lihaku said.
Maomao pushed past the quack and peered at the blackened box. There appeared to be fibers of some kind inside, along with grains of something, although both were thoroughly charred.
"Maomao! That's filthy. Why don't we get something nice from the snack stall and head on back?"
The freak strategist was the only one with no idea what they were doing there.
"Imagine what it'll do to our diets if we only eat sweets. I think another savory skewer on the way back would be just the thing. Chicken wouldn't go amiss, but some shrimp could also be really good."
The strategist wasn't the only eccentric character in attendance —there was another who thought only of eating.
"Y-You too, Miss Chue?!" wailed the quack.
"Well, we can't leave empty-handed. Let's buy some soap and hurry back," said Maomao.
"Oi! You're the ones who aren't listening!" said the soapmaker, incensed.
"We are listening. In short, if we can prove that this man didn't start your fire, you'll let him go, yes?" Maomao said, looking at the man still holding the quack by the collar.
"Yeah, sure. But you better be real convincing."
"Very well. If I can't answer to your satisfaction, you'll receive ample compensation. Just get it from the old fart over there."
"L-Lady Maomao!" The strategist's (that is, the old fart's) aide looked like he was going to cry.
The craftsmen started muttering among themselves again. The huddle soon finished.
"All right. Get ready to pay up."
"Of course. But if he's innocent, you'll sell us soap at the market price."
"Done."
"Very well." Maomao looked at the burned box. "Were you using this for garbage?" She turned the box over. The sopping fibers were from the bark of the windmill palm. Some small, round things also rolled out.
"'Sright."
"Is the bark of the windmill palm part of the soap-production process?"
"No. We make scrub brushes from the palms. Soap's not the only thing we make here."
Soap and scrub brushes. Two products that might well be used together—reasonable enough to manufacture them in the same place.
"So these blackened things, these are fried scraps?" "Yeah."
Fried scraps—that is, literally, leftovers from something being fried. Making soap required a great deal of oil, and no matter how abundant resources might be, they would have to find a way to keep expenses down if they were to sell it at a price people would accept for a daily consumable. What were they to do?
"Were you using used oil in the soap?"
Plenty of establishments in town sold fried food. Lots of places to get supplies.
"Not exclusively. What would that have to do with anything, anyway?"
"I see. And you were throwing away the batter scraps here?" "Yeah."
Maomao looked hard at the men, then glanced at the sun to check its position. It wasn't yet high noon.
It's not very nice of me, but maybe I can stretch the truth here.
"These fried bits, you filter them out of the oil?"
"See for yourself. Right over there." The craftsman pointed toward a pot brimming with oil. Beside it was a wire strainer with a cloth over it.
"And you do this while the oil is still hot?"
Cold oil was harder to strain. The strainer was probably made of metal wire to allow the hot oil to flow through it. I suppose the
cloth is cotton.
"That's right. We go around and collect it while it's still hot. These days it's a bit of a race—other soap makers are also coming to this area to get oil."
Maomao nodded and looked into the strainer. There weren't too many scraps in it.
"So you throw away any scraps?" she asked.
"Sometimes we eat them—but there's too much for us to eat everything."
"Enough to fill this strainer?"
"Sometimes. But we throw 'em out before it gets full."
Maomao raised an eyebrow and looked at the burned-out trash bin. "It seems to me that your trash box is quite a ways away. You didn't move it, did you?"
The man paused. "Yeah, we have another receptacle here.
What about it?" He went over to a large jar near the strainer and looked into it. "Hey, who emptied this?"
Maomao looked back to the workers, who had started mumbling again.
"Do you think you can help me, young lady?!" the quack pleaded, looking at her with a hangdog expression. Maomao braced herself, afraid that the freak strategist would jump in again, but he didn't do anything. Surprised, she looked over to find him watching the soap makers. Occasionally he would creep very close, looking intently at them, inevitably to be rebuffed with a contemptuous look. His aide scurried back and forth apologizing. It couldn't have been easy to be him.
Why's he looking so close? He can't tell one face from another. The strategist was oblivious to people's faces, which was one reason he treated everyone but his own family so indifferently. It made Maomao wonder why he was staring at these people, but she couldn't bring herself to ask. The question is, what do I do?
She had most of what she needed to prove the quack's innocence, but her explanation would be bolstered if she got one thing ready in advance.
"Miss Chue! Miss Chue!"
"Miss Maomao! Miss Maomao! What do you need?"
Maomao whispered to Chue. Chue's small eyes went very wide; then she said, "Roger!" and set off running. It would be a while before she was back. Maomao would have to watch the men's moods and judge her moment.
"Excuse me. I think I can explain how the fire started. If you would come over here?" she said to the chattering craftsmen.
"Yeah? Can't wait to hear it."
"Hope you've got a good story."
"I believe I do. The fire wasn't set; it started naturally. Therefore, this man is innocent." Maomao patted the quack on the shoulder.
"Y-Young lady!" the quack looked at her, quaking violently. "Is something the matter, Master Physician?" she asked.
"They'll never just take your word for it! Look how they're glaring at us!" The men were indeed fixing the visitors with scary looks.
"Yes, thank you. I understand. I don't suppose that you all would take my word that the fire started naturally?"
"Damn right we wouldn't. How'd this fire start? And don't bullshit us just because you don't want to pay!"
"It's no such thing, I promise you. All those cast-off fried scraps—those are the source of your fire." Maomao plucked some of the leftover scraps out of the strainer. "You have a lot of fried bits and pieces in one place. They retain heat inside them, and can potentially catch fire. As will, for example, oil-soaked rags that are with them."
"Catch fire? On their own? I've never heard anything so stupid."
"It can happen. Look."
Chue came trotting back, a large pot almost overflowing with fried scraps in her arms. "Miss Maomao, I got it!"
"Thank you very much, Miss Chue."
Maomao had sent Chue to collect fried scraps as quick as she could.
"Do you think we can expense this? They didn't have enough just lying around, so I had to beg them to make more for me. It wasn't cheap, I can tell you!"
"Kindly ask the good aide there," Maomao said. She wasn't about to pay for this. Instead she left it all to the freak strategist's man, who was plying his master with occasional snacks to keep him from getting out of hand. The strategist was munching on a fried treat and still staring intently at the soapmakers. It was most unusual for a man who normally took no interest in other people.
"All right, you see the pile of scraps. What do you think will happen if I just leave it here?"
The soapmaker shook his head. "You're tryin' to say it'll catch fire? Joke's on you. It'll just cool down!"
"Are you sure about that?" Maomao leered at him, then put the scraps in the jar that served as a trash receptacle.
A moment passed.
"See? Nothing's happenin'."
"Just wait."
Maomao glanced at Chue, who had taken out some artificial flowers and was playing around with them.
"Hey, uh, young lady? Are you sure about this?" Lihaku didn't look entirely convinced either. He was keeping his distance from the trash container, as befitted a man who had survived having his hair singed by an exploding box.
"Wait a little longer," Maomao said.
"Screw waiting! This is a waste of time! I'm going back to work," one of the craftsmen said. He turned to leave—and that was when they noticed it: warm air accompanied by a distinct burning odor. Smoke was coming from the jar.
"Is this for real?" one of the craftsmen asked, hurrying over to look.
"Wait, is it safe to get close to that thing?" asked another.
"It won't explode. At least, I don't think," Maomao said, walking over to the jar herself. She couldn't see any flames yet, but she expected some soon. "There you have it: spontaneous combustion of the fried scraps. You see now that this could very easily be the cause of your fire?"
"N—Now, just a minute! If it's so easy for a fire to start, why hasn't there been one before? We've been doing this work here for decades, and this is only the second fire we've had!"
"Have you always thrown away large quantities of hot scraps?"
"No... No, just recently. Wasn't long ago we started doing it."
Maomao remembered the man saying that they were in competition with other soap makers to get the supplies. That could well inspire someone to collect hot oil, even though it was dangerous, and simply toss out the hot scraps that came with it.
Maomao looked at the big jar and thought, It's a risky business, collecting the oil while it's still hot. She said, "I gather
you still don't believe me, but you can't doubt your own eyes. The fire started naturally."
The soap maker was silent and, as Maomao said, obviously incredulous. To be fair, she hadn't thought it could be true either when she first heard about it. So she'd done an experiment.
Granted, today, she'd stacked the deck in her favor—in two particular ways. Normally, it would have taken longer for the scraps to catch fire, as she knew because she'd tried it herself before. I really had to wait that day.
She hadn't been using fried-food scraps, but old rags soaked in highly flammable incense oil. Nothing at all happened with just a few of them, so she'd piled more on until they started to trap the heat. Still there had been no fire; she'd waited so long that she'd drifted off to sleep. Only then did they ignite. She'd woken up when someone doused her with water, thankfully before she was burned.
I really wanted to see the fire actually start.
She'd hoped to try again so she could confirm it with her own eyes, but she had been angrily informed that there were to be no more experiments in this field.
In this case, the craftsmen didn't seem likely to put up with much waiting, so she'd had Chue pull a little trick: along with the copious amount of scraps, she'd asked her to procure a cinder. Chue, with her gift for sleight of hand, had easily slipped it to Maomao, who had surreptitiously included it when she dumped the scraps in the jar.
I'm glad it caught. She wasn't proud of this modest con, but she hadn't had much choice.
As for the second advantage she'd given herself—well, she was fairly confident that the cause of the first fire had been what she'd described. But the second one, the one that started while the quack had been standing there, that was harder to explain.
Not impossible, but it wouldn't be very likely.
The trash container that had caught fire had been full of palm leaves and fried scraps—but not really enough of them to spontaneously combust. Maomao's experiment had involved rags, not fried scraps, so it wasn't exactly the same thing, but it seemed clear to her that they would need a hotter environment to catch fire.
Question: Why would they use a wooden chest to throw those things away?
Luomen would no doubt have warned her against saying things she couldn't prove.
While Maomao was still thinking about it, the freak strategist abruptly broke off his study of the craftsmen and leaped into action. Maybe he'd run out of fried snacks to eat.
"Tell me something! Why're you trying so hard to pin this on someone else?" the strategist demanded.
"'Scuse me?" one of the men said, befuddled. The strategist never made much sense, but this was above and beyond.
"Erm, Master Lakan is saying that someone here is lying, and that that person is the real culprit," the aide said, helpfully interpreting.
"Wh-Who? Who would do such a thing?" asked the quack, looking at Lakan with pleading eyes.
"That black Go stone right on the edge of the group there."
"Go stones are, ahem, how Master Lakan sees people whose faces he can't distinguish." It wasn't easy being the strategist's aide. He'd probably worked harder than any of them today—and Maomao didn't even know his name.
"Oh yeah? You think I'm lyin'? You got any proof of that?" demanded the man Lakan had identified as a black Go stone.
"You're blinking. Your heart is pounding—I can practically hear it. And you stink of sweat."
"P-Pardon me. I'm not sure what to say about that one..." Even the aide was at a loss.
People blink more when they're lying, and their heart rate increases. Sometimes they start to sweat.
A popular rumor around the Li court held that you couldn't tell a lie in the presence of the strategist. Just when it seemed he was making wild pronouncements based on nothing more than pure instinct, Maomao discovered that in fact there was some method to his madness.
I remember Pops saying... The freak strategist might not be able to tell people's faces apart, but he could discern the parts of faces. He could see eyes or noses, they just didn't cohere into a human face for him. Instead, he had other ways of telling strangers apart. Their voices, their movements, their characteristic smells. He might be the most perceptive observer you could find.
It just doesn't do us much good, because he usually doesn't give a fig about other people.
No, that wasn't quite true—in his work, it was perfectly helpful.
This worthless old fart was a better judge of talent than anyone. "Hey, you can't talk about me like that!"
"No, no, I can smell it. Smoke. Tobacco. The soap fragrances— the honey, the aromatic leaves—they almost cover it, but you were smoking until a few minutes ago, weren't you?" the monocled old man said. The rest of the soapmakers immediately looked at the new suspect.
"Hey! You said you quit!"
"We told you not to smoke around the oil. Don't tell me you freakin' did it out here!"
The others closed in on the accused man, and shortly tobacco leaves were discovered in his robes.
A tobacco fire! That would certainly explain how this blaze had started. Looking for a chance to take a puff, the man had said he was going to take out the trash as a pretext to have a smoke somewhere the others wouldn't see him. In that trash had been leaves and scraps. The fibrous leaves were readily flammable, and the scraps may as well have simply been oil. When tobacco ashes were thrown on top of them...
The fire wouldn't start immediately. First it would begin to smoke, and only after that would burst into flame—just as the quack doctor happened to be passing by. The freak strategist had probably been able to pinpoint that the smoker was lying because the man had suspected on some level that it was his tobacco that had started the blaze.
The other workers appeared to take the man's tobacco leaves as proof; they had him surrounded and were giving him a piece of their minds.
"Ahem, er, thank you very much. You saved me," the quack doctor said, straightening the front of his rumpled outfit.
"It's wonderful, isn't it? Perhaps you could thank Miss Chue by buying her a coral hair stick," Chue said, never one to miss an opportunity.
Maomao went over to the shouting men. "Excuse me," she said. She was glad she had been able to establish the quack's innocence, but there was one more thing she needed to do. "I'd like some soap, please."
This errand was turning into quite an ordeal, and she just wanted to get it over with.
Chapter 20: Smack Up Against the Wall
It had been a very...characterful day. And a long one, for that matter. It was still only just past noon.
Just as Maomao had suggested, the quack doctor had dropped the key in the toilet.
"That's right! Then I was so depressed about not being able to get into the medical office—and then someone asked me to run an errand."
She'd called it, all right. The cleaning woman hadn't even given the quack a chance to explain, and in the end he'd shuffled sadly away from the ship. By his own report, the market was nearby and he had figured he would be back soon.
Maomao gave the quack the extra key, then returned to the palace. She had no interest in looking after the freak strategist, and she was hoping to unload him on someone as soon as she could. In the event, she didn't have to worry. Having had a nice walk and plenty to eat, all that was left was to take a nap. He was as drowsy as a three-year-old—and living about the same life— and when he was told to go to his room and get some sleep, he obediently did so.
It was hard not to feel bad for the freak's aide, though. Maomao hoped he would be able to take a break himself. As for her, she went back to her room as well.
"I'll be in the next room," Lihaku said, stationing himself in the adjoining chamber. It was nice to know that if anything out of the ordinary happened, he would come running.
Well, looks like there's nothing going on. I think I'll get a little sleep too.
Maomao lay on her bed with every intention of not getting up again for the foreseeable future, but suddenly she found herself in the grip of a surge of anger. It was the quack doctor's own fault that he had gotten into trouble, because of the way he just wandered from one thing to another. At a very deep level, he lacked any sense of danger. He had no business being on this trip.
Why the hell did they even bring him?!
Yes, that was the question. The quack was too laid-back to have so much as a twinge of doubt about it, but he was there as Luomen's body double, and if he was unlucky, he could find himself kidnapped or worse. She knew they had done this for Luomen—or had they? Who had they done it for?
If anything happened to my old man, who would take it the hardest?
The freak strategist? Or maybe even...
Maomao buried her face in the sheets and kicked the bed.
"I'm glad to see you're keeping busy," someone said. It was Chue. She had witnessed the petulant display, much to Maomao's chagrin. How long had she been there?
"I'm sorry. I seem to have kicked up some dust," Maomao said, sitting up and straightening the bedsheets as if nothing had happened.
"No worries. We're going to go see the Moon Prince now, okay?"
"The Moon Prince? But it's barely noon."
Typically, Maomao changed Jinshi's dressings after he had washed for the day. Putting on fresh salve only for him to take a bath would defeat the purpose.
"Don't worry, you'll see when we get there. I've brought boiled water—wipe yourself down." Chue trotted in with her squeaky footsteps and laid out some fresh clothes for Maomao. It seemed to be a not-so-subtle message that she needed to change after hiking around outside and getting all sweaty. Chue's behavior was every bit that of a lady-in-waiting, but watching the way she veritably danced around, her tail shaking, as she got ready—she was obviously having fun, but it also looked very tiring.
No wonder she eats so much.
All the dancing and sleight of hand and other little things must use a lot of energy. Thus enlightened, Maomao took the new clothes—although they weren't completely new; they were the same as the ones she had gotten yesterday. Chue looked like she probably had a supply of several more sets.
Maomao wiped herself down and changed.
"Pardon us," Maomao said as she entered Jinshi's room. It was a chamber fit for a guest of state, with all the ornate decorations that entailed. It was several times larger than Maomao's room and was divided into several chambers. She could even see a balcony outside.
"Please, come in," said Suiren, who was there to greet them. She led Maomao to an inner room with a gentle smile. Past a curtain, Jinshi was lounging on a couch, Gaoshun at one hand, Taomei at the other. She didn't see Chue's husband, Baryou, but suspected he might be in the next room.
Oh-ho! Gaoshun and wife!
Maomao might have felt better with Taomei showing her around rather than Suiren, but maybe the old lady was being considerate, trying not to take any more family time away from Gaoshun. He and his wife were both busy people; it didn't seem like they got to see much of each other. As Maomao might have expected from Gaoshun's description of his "fearsome" wife, Taomei was the older of them, and she acted like it.
What with the banquet and all, Maomao hadn't come to Jinshi's rooms the night before. Now she saw that a member of the Imperial family truly was treated differently. There was an arrangement of fresh fruit on the table (no such thing had been present in Maomao's room), including some that weren't in season yet, like lychees, mangoes, and even bananas.
I wonder how they grew those.
She was most interested in the fruit, many of which she knew only in dried form or from pictures. She thought she could feel the spark in Chue's eyes right over her shoulder. It was almost enough to make her reach out and take one of the pieces of fruit, but she knew she couldn't do that. Having the old lady glaring at her was bad enough, but even Taomei had her one good eye fixed on Maomao. Gaoshun, for his part, was watching with his standard pleading "Please don't do anything" face.
Maomao collected herself and looked at Jinshi. "Did you need something, sir?" If she sounded a bit stiff, it was because her anger from earlier hadn't completely ebbed away yet.
"Need something? Not so much. At the moment, I mostly need you to wait."
"Maomao," Suiren said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "We'll have a visitor soon. If you would step back for the time being."
"Yes, ma'am," Maomao said after a beat. Why had they called her here, if they just wanted her to wait?
Shortly thereafter, a large man entered the room accompanied by a woman. He appeared to be supporting her body weight.
Wait. Is that... Maomao thought she recognized the woman, who possessed a restrained, ephemeral beauty.
"Princess Fuyou. Allow me to congratulate you on your pregnancy. I can only apologize that I wasn't able to greet you sooner," said Jinshi, conclusively identifying the woman.
Fuyou! The woman who had caused the stir about the spirit in the rear palace. The woman whose somnambulance had made her dance upon the palace walls. The man with her must be the soldier to whom she had been given, then.
"Moon Prince. Never is there a moment when I forget the kindness you've shown me. It was thanks to you that I was able to return to my home country." Fuyou sat slowly. Her clothing was billowy, but still her body looked heavy. Her belly was probably quite big under that outfit.
Her husband said nothing, most likely because here and now, his wife ranked higher than he did.
"Without your intervention, Moon Prince, I doubt I would find myself here today," Fuyou said.
Could it be? Maomao thought. The people riding in the other carriage when she'd arrived in Anan—could that have been Fuyou and her husband? Lihaku had said Li was loath to let go of one of its best soldiers, but Fuyou had evidently been sent back to her home on account of being pregnant. And Jinshi had evidently helped her.
So what happens to her husband in this situation? Would he stay in Li, or go back to Anan? Maomao didn't know, but being able to have one's child in one's own homeland mattered a lot. I
think I get it. Jinshi had wanted Maomao to see the two of them.
There was just one thing: I didn't really do anything in that case.
Jinshi had told Maomao to cure Fuyou's sleepwalking, but Maomao had suspected that it was only an act anyway. Seeing the princess now, she was virtually certain. Yet she had never informed Jinshi of those doubts.
Did he figure it out himself?
She'd told Empress Gyokuyou the truth, quietly, but she doubted the Empress had let anything slip. If Jinshi had realized that Maomao had been covering for Fuyou, that made her somewhat uncomfortable. At the same time, she was glad to know that Fuyou was happy.
Fuyou and her husband spoke to Jinshi about something or other, civil and courteous the whole time, and then they left.
They seem like a good couple. Even in those few minutes, Maomao could tell. The soldier fawned over Fuyou so much that it was almost embarrassing. He had earned the right to marry her through his deeds, but it was thanks to Jinshi that they had been able to come back here after that. It also seemed increasingly likely that Jinshi knew what Fuyou had been up to in the rear palace.
Maybe he's just a soft touch.
He had a sentimental streak he couldn't quite shake. A nice thing as a person, but a weakness as a man of power.
It's going to hamstring him.
It was the same with how he treated the quack doctor. On some level, he was using the quack, but he was only doing that because of that same devotion to sentiment.
Jinshi tended to sell short his own abilities.
I mean, no, he manages to do things. He just took too much upon himself. Things would go so much better for him if he could let certain things go, yet instead he continued to reach out. The more he thought he could help, the more he got involved, until he was spread too thin.
I know someone else like that... She thought of the person she was always chasing after. He, too, spent himself in the service of others. He was the man Maomao respected more than anyone.
I guess it's my fault the quack got mixed up in all of this.
It was Maomao—Maomao was the one who would take it the hardest if Luomen found himself in danger. Jinshi had proven himself a kindhearted politician, yet at the same time, still naive.
That's why he was able to be such a complete ass.
Why had Jinshi done something so idiotic?
"You're half responsible for this," Empress Gyokuyou had said. Jinshi had a strong sense of duty. Maomao might have expected him to be less impulsive. She might have thought he could have at least waited until the princes were a little older.
It turned out he couldn't.
Some people just have the weirdest tastes, she thought for the umpteenth time. Jinshi sometimes seemed to show a liking for creatures with strange dispositions. The unworldly little master had found himself unable to find a new toy among all the people around him. Like a baby chick, he imprinted on one single toy, and it became his whole world.
If I'm just a thing to him, then he should treat me like one and order me around. The naive child was unable to do that, however,
and so had chosen a crueler method instead.
When Jinshi had burned that brand into his side, the one he had hurt the most was not himself, but the Emperor, or so Maomao thought. She'd found her hypothesis turning to suspicion, and then suspicion turning to certainty: she'd begun to think she knew what the true relationship was between Jinshi and His Majesty.
The Emperor is Jinshi's real father.
Jinshi had lived his life as the "Imperial younger brother," but if he was actually the Emperor's supposedly dead son... Surely he wouldn't have done what he did? The question left Maomao with a shadow of a doubt. If what she suspected was true, what then?
What do I do? Even as she asked the question, she felt she already knew the answer.
"You can step forward now," said Suiren, giving her a gentle push. Maomao wasn't sure she liked the pregnant tone in the old woman's voice.
"I see you wanted me to know what became of Lady Fuyou," she said, bowing to Jinshi. For the moment, she took the other thoughts she'd been having and stashed them in the corner of her mind.
"Not as such. I simply thought it might benefit you to be
aware, since I did ask you for help with her."
"Yes, sir. I admit, I feel somewhat better having seen this."
Maomao glanced around. She couldn't escape the sense that Jinshi was trying to be thoughtful toward her.
All right, time to play the game.
She looked over at the balcony. "This is quite a sumptuous room, sir. It even has a balcony."
"You like it? Feel free to go out and have a look." "If I may, then." She trotted straight for it.
"Xiaomao!" Gaoshun tried to stop her, but out of the corner of her eye she could just see Jinshi holding him back.
She stepped out onto the balcony. Well! She'd assumed it would be the perfect place to be assassinated by an arrow, or a feifa gun, but that turned out not to be the case. There's so many
trees around, it would be hard to get a good shot. And there's nowhere to shoot from nearby either.
It seemed to her that the balcony had been deliberately designed to be safe. She was no expert, but she supposed that anything else would have been inappropriate in a VIP's room.
Because it was safe, no one followed Jinshi when he stepped onto the balcony with her. Taomei was saying something to Gaoshun; it was clear he was no match for his wife.
Not sure I like the sense that we're being set up here, though...
She was alone with Jinshi. That wasn't so strange; she was going to have to look at his burn later, but she wanted to do it before her mood changed.
"I hear you had a trip into town today," Jinshi said.
"Yes, sir, and the townspeople have much to say about Li."
The locals could hardly have been called favorably disposed, but at least things didn't seem about to explode.
At least, they were favorably disposed enough that they might try to send a woman to a guest of state...
"Master Jinshi, please be careful tonight. As every night," Maomao said. There was always the risk that some woman might try to invite herself into Jinshi's bed.
"I never can guess what you're going to say next." Jinshi leaned against a wall, out of sight of his attendants. It looked like Gaoshun wasn't the only one walking on eggshells around Taomei.
"Surely you can imagine what I mean, sir? Just think back to your nights at the rear palace."
"Hngh," Jinshi groaned, looking upset. So he did have some idea what she meant. He looked at her like he had something to say, but couldn't quite get it out. Finally he managed, "Ahem. As you can see, Princess Fuyou has come home. The King of Anan's niece will be entering the rear palace—I hesitate to say in exchange, but..."
"It sounds very busy."
"Yes. Empress Gyokuyou's niece is supposed to be coming as well."
"I heard that, sir. Interesting that you have, though. Remind me who it was that ran away from the rear palace?" Maomao pressed. "You're no longer Jinshi, Master Jinshi, and I think it would be best if you stopped troubling yourself about the rear palace forever and focused on your own work."
"I would agree, but it turns out I can't seem to cut myself off completely."
Maomao looked at him, unimpressed. He managed to meet her gaze, but he didn't look very comfortable.
Maomao found herself angry again. "Master Jinshi, you're a man of power, and I think it's time you behaved like it." "I know..."
"You should use the things that are available to you to use." "I am..."
"In that case..." Maomao stepped up to him and smirked, standing on her tiptoes to look him right in the face. She slammed her right hand against the wall, effectively trapping him. His eyes went wide. "I can't say I enjoy being used. However—" Here she lowered her voice so that only Jinshi could hear. "Half-assed attempts at being nice are a far greater nuisance. I'd much rather be a useful tool than a meaningless burden. Your hesitation is the country's hesitation, and a moment's indecision on your part could mean the deaths of tens of thousands of your subjects. I know you'll only regret that. So you might as well pick a path and throw yourself headlong down it."
Finally, she leaned away from him.
"If you're going to use something, then use it. Medicine doesn't work unless you take it."
She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. Everything she'd pent up inside had come pouring out her mouth. Maomao was no princess; she was a common apothecary. If he was going to pull her strings, then it was better he just go ahead and do it. He should use her till she fell apart.
If she could escape all of it, of course, she would have liked to, but she wasn't going to cut off her nose to spite her face. There was more she wanted to say, but she figured she had pushed it about as far as she could.
She discovered, though, that there was something else behind her boiling anger. Her hands went to Jinshi's cheek. "You're only human, Master Jinshi. You're not some mythical immortal who can save everyone." She held his face in her hands, the fingers of her left hand brushing his scar. "You can be wounded, scarred, brought low. Only human."
Who was she talking to? She knew Jinshi was standing in front of her, but for some reason she kept seeing Luomen's face.
No wonder I'm so upset.
The principle that drove Jinshi's behavior seemed very similar to Luomen's. She was afraid that if he went on like this, he would end up just as luckless in life as her old man. Just like Pops... He'd spent himself trying to rescue everyone and everything. Like a fool. He should have wanted more, been greedier, but instead he'd suffered his fate patiently.
Suffered and suffered, and for what? To become an old man resigned to his empty hands.
This was, it was fair to say, Maomao's one criticism of her father. She'd felt it keenly in the affair with the Shaonese shrine maiden. She respected Luomen immensely. A man who never lost his kindness no matter what unhappiness he encountered was like a miracle. The price, though, was that his body and his heart were both battered. In time he became so that everything he did, he did in the expectation of defeat. Would Jinshi end up like him one day? Or—
"Please, please don't go doing anything else like burning a
brand into your skin," Maomao said.
"I heard you...the first several times," Jinshi replied.
"Are you sure?" A smile flitted across Maomao's face, and she slowly pulled her hands away. Except they didn't leave his cheeks.
Jinshi held them there. "Please let me go, sir," she said.
"Don't want to."
He sounded like a child. It was something he did sometimes, resorting to childlike language.
"I'd like to be going back soon," she said. "Just a few more minutes."
"Master Gaoshun must be beside himself."
"Then just rejuvenate me a bit."
"Rejuvenate?"
He let go of her hands and spread his arms wide.
Oh no. Is he coming in for a hug? She was just about to tell him that she would do no such thing, but the outstretched arms didn't reach for her. Instead they shifted, so that they appeared to be ready to receive something.
"What exactly do you want?" Maomao asked.
"I wanted a hug, but I thought that at this moment, perhaps I need something else." Jinshi scratched his left cheek, the one without a scar. "Vigor. Help me out."
"You want me to slap you."
"As hard as you can. The way you slapped that lady-in-waiting at the Crystal Pavilion."
His eyes were sparkling. What the hell was she supposed to do now? And what was he doing remembering her worst possible moments?
"Have you already forgotten what I said?" She'd just warned him not to do anything like that brand again, and hardly a minute later, here he was engaging in more self-destructive behavior.
"I understand," he said. "This won't leave a scar."
"It'll leave a mark!"
Maomao would be the one who got in trouble. They'd trusted her enough to leave her alone with Jinshi; she couldn't betray that.
"Please."
"I can't!"
"I'm asking you!" Jinshi slumped to his knees. "There's no one who can tell me what to do anymore," he almost spat. Gaoshun and Suiren could scold him all they wanted, but they were still, in the end, his servants. The only person who could conceivably contradict Jinshi to his face would be the Emperor.
No one to tell you what to do, huh?
Jinshi's request to be reduced to a commoner would mean severing his connection to the ruler.
I don't know what their relationship is like, how they talk to each other, Maomao thought. From what she'd gathered, though, they seemed to have a good rapport, as royal blood relatives went. But you reap what you sow.
That would explain why he didn't want her to take it easy on him. Maomao could only sigh.
"Fine. Close your eyes."
"Thank you."
Maomao pulled her hand back and whacked Jinshi across the face. It was not quiet.
Jinshi sucked in a breath and was about to open his eyes, so Maomao placed her hand gently over his eyelids. "Let me see it," she said. Even her hand hurt, so Jinshi's cheek must be burning.
She could see the flush rising in it.
Suiren will never miss this. Whether the old lady got upset would depend on how Jinshi reacted.
"Pain, pain, go away," Maomao said, recalling a rhyme her older sister Pairin had often used on her. She kissed the reddened cheek ever so gently. Her lips were colder than her fingertips, and made the cheek feel that much hotter.
I know a children's verse can't actually work. It was funny, though: somehow the cheek looked less red than before. Nah,
that can't be. And it wasn't: rather, Jinshi's entire body was redder than it had been.
Maomao lifted her hand off his eyes. He couldn't quite look her in the eye, but his hands clasped hers firmly.
"M—Maomao," he said.
"Yes, sir?" she answered, drawing away slightly.
"The other side too, please."
He pointed at his right cheek, the one with the scar.
Maomao glowered at him. "Absolutely not, sir."
Epilogue
Maomao looked out the small window. She could see more and more ships come into view. Their fleet seemed to grow larger with every port they called at. Most of the additions were merchant vessels, also going to the western capital and presumably joining them to help protect themselves from pirates.
"Funny. This trip has felt so long, but we can finally see the destination!"
"What are you talking about, Miss Chue?" the quack asked. Chue was lounging in the medical office like she belonged there, as she so often did.
"Oh, nothing. It just seemed like the right sentiment, so I said it."
"You say the strangest things. I just don't follow," said the quack. Maomao agreed that Chue's pronouncements could be obscure, but there were a handful of creatures like her in the world.
Maomao stepped away from the window, intent on taking inventory of their remaining stock of medicine. As Chue's helpful exposition indicated, they would soon be arriving in the western capital. They would have to think about restocking their supplies, but the quack—ostensibly the key to the functioning of the medical office—spent all his time chatting, as he always did.
Chue now spent as much time in the medical office as Lihaku did. She insisted that it was "for work." Maybe she mispronounced
"cutting work."
"Master Physician, if you could at least take some notes as to our quantities of medicine," Maomao said, pressing a notebook and brush into the quack's hands. It wasn't a big job, and she could easily have done it by herself, but she thought it was important not to spoil the doctor.
"Want me to help?" Chue offered.
"No, thank you. We'll never hear the end of it if we let
nonmedical staff touch the medicine."
"That's too bad. Miss Chue knows a lot about poisons, you know!"
She also never missed a chance to promote herself. Trying to justify her continued presence in the medical office (and absence from real work), Maomao supposed.
"Enough to do food tasting, at least, I see," Maomao said. She thought back to the banquet in Anan. The banquet, then the case of the missing quack, then slapping Jinshi...
That last one was a real problem for her. Maomao put a hand to her lips. Why'd I do that? She knew perfectly well that children's charms didn't have any medicinal effect. She'd treated Jinshi like a child who could be deluded by a little charm.
The one silver lining was that the people in the room hadn't appeared to have heard anything—maybe the balcony had been built specifically for such secret conferences. Maomao had been worried what would happen if Suiren, Taomei, or Gaoshun had heard them. Yet only Chue had displayed any interest.
As for Jinshi's request that she slap "the other side too," he'd just needed something to wake him up. It definitely wasn't a masochist thing, he'd explained.
What else was I supposed to think, with that look on his face?
His story for the red mark on his face was that he had given himself a good, hard slap on the cheek just before coming back into the room. Suiren and the others were aghast, but he'd simply chuckled and explained that "I just needed to make sure I was good and alert."
Maomao had remained absolutely silent. It was all she could do.
She was so very, very tired.
"Ooh, I had such a good time in Anan! I can't wait to see how much fun we have in the western capital," said Chue, her small eyes sparkling. She produced little flowers, flags, and even, for some reason, doves out of her hands, but Lihaku and the quack had already handled the witty comebacks on those subjects. No need for Maomao to get involved in that game now. She did have a question, though.
"How are you doing that?"
"Oh-ho! Interested in Miss Chue's mysterious abilities?" She snorted proudly with her bean-bun nose.
"Yes. Because in my experience, such abilities usually require some preparation."
She'd seen the White Lady do similar things onstage, although her tricks had involved less "preparation" than a knowledge of human psychology.
"What would you do if I told you?" Chue asked.
"I thought they might be perfect for when the bigwigs ask me to entertain them," Maomao replied. Her brothel jokes always seemed to fall flat, so a little performance she could put on instead seemed ideal. Even better if it could help take the tension out of a situation.
"I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I've already shown the Moon Prince what I can do on this trip, and if you're thinking of amusing His Majesty, I did this for him before we left so he could help me decide where to go with them in the future."
Where to go! The quip almost escaped Maomao's mouth, but she forced it back. Truly, Chue was a woman who knew no propriety.
Maomao emptied out bags of medicine, made the quack take notes, then put them back in the chest. Again and again they did this.
"Oh! I haven't told you about our upcoming schedule yet, have I?" Chue said.
"So you do have an actual job here," said Maomao, who had been certain Chue was just slacking off.
"Yep! Miss Chue always works hard so her mother-in-law won't get mad at her." She straightened up and fished a roll of wood strips out of the folds of her robes.
"Goodness, you're behind the times, Miss Chue. You should get some nice paper, much easier to use," said the quack, stretching his fingers. He came from a family of papermakers, and he sounded pleased to be in the know.
"Nopers! I am a woman of elegant taste who loves the old ways. I adore the texture of wood, I savor its smell!"
Paper was convenient, but there were plenty of aesthetes like her who preferred the virtues of wood. Maomao didn't really get it herself, but neither did she have a reason to stop Chue from writing on whatever she wanted. She was, however, curious how Chue had managed to conceal such a lengthy scroll in her robes.
"When we reach port, we'll get in a carriage with our luggage.
It should be about a thirty-minute ride to the western capital.
You're advised to look out for scorpions."
Maomao nodded, hoping that there would in fact be scorpions.
"Once we get to the western capital, the quack—ahem, I mean master—physician is to join up with the other doctors. You'll go with him, Maomao. There will be someone to show you to the room where the medical staff will be based. It's somewhere in Master Gyokuen's villa, and all of you won't be able to fit in there at once, so you'll be divided into three groups. Also, the higherups will be all together; you'll just have to live with it." Did she say quack?
She hadn't done a very good job of covering for herself, but the quack was so busy writing that he didn't seem to have noticed.
"Miss Maomao, you're going to be working with the other doctors for the most part, except when summoned for things like food tasting. I think you'll be seeing a lot of me and Lihaku."
Lihaku was the quack's bodyguard, but what about Chue? A messenger, maybe? It mostly seemed to Maomao like she was trying to come up with an excuse to cut work and avoid seeing too much of her mother-in-law, or "the big lady," but she politely pretended not to realize it. The last thing she wanted was for Suiren to get involved instead; it would be a disaster.
"One other thing. At night, I'm off the clock, so please don't call for me then."
"What? Not even in an emergency?" the quack asked, although he continued to work, the brush agile in his plump hands.
"Not even then. My mother-in-law is giving me the hurry-up about the second one, so I have to use my most transcendent techniques." Somehow, she managed to say this with a straight face.
The quack doctor was perplexed at first, but when Maomao said, "Miss Chue is a married woman," he seemed to connect the dots—because his face went beet red and he dropped his brush.
Maomao was surprised he'd survived as the rear palace's physician, based on that reaction.
Still, knowing that Chue's husband was literally the man behind the curtain, Maomao questioned whether he could fulfill his role.
"Fwoooo! Now, big, deep breaths!" Chue had squatted down and was gliding her hands around her stomach.
Maomao interrupted. She felt bad, but Chue showed no sign of stopping otherwise. "Miss Chue, enough with your weird exercises. Anything else we should know?"
Chue straightened up as if nothing had happened. "When we get to the western capital, I think you'll find yourself living pretty much in the manner to which you've become accustomed on this ship. The only difference is, your instructions will come from Dr.
You, one of the upper physicians."
You—so that was the name of the tan-skinned doctor. It was a reasonably common name, especially in the west. Maomao would have to try to remember it.
"Like I said, I think we'll be spending a lot of time together, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask Miss Chue or Dr. You. Except at night, like I said. Nobody knows if the young Ma boy will be able to produce an heir, so there's a lot of pressure on me! The continued existence of the Ma clan rests on my shoulders! Well, okay, so there's a branch family still, but... Well, you know my mother-in-law..."
Chue looked downright desperate. So there was something that could scare her.
I guess it's not easy being the wife of the eldest son, Maomao thought, not that it really concerned her. She put away the last of the medicine, and with that they were done taking inventory.
Chue stood up. "We'll arrive very soon, so I'm going to go back."
"See you next time, Miss Chue!" the quack doctor said as if she were a friend just dropping by for a visit.
Chue waved and was about to leave, but then she paused and turned back. "Miss Maomao..."
"Yes? Is something the matter?" What else could Chue want?
"People lie in the palace just as much as they do in the pleasure district. There are going to be plenty of liars in the western capital, so do watch out. Oh, and I'll keep quiet about what happened—don't you worry." Then she grinned, her dark face looking even darker in the minimal light of the lower decks.
What happened? Maomao wasn't sure what she meant by that. "All right then! Bye!"
Chue closed the door with a clack, and then there was only the gentle rocking of the ship.
Thus Maomao arrived, again, in the western capital. She could only wonder what awaited her on her second visit.
