Chapter 6: The La Clan (Part One)

Are we sure about this? Maomao thought as she sipped her tea. Familiarity could be a dangerous thing—it blunted your sense of danger.

"I suppose this counts as a warm welcome," Lahan said, likewise sipping some tea.

A stony-faced man sat across the table from them, arms folded.

"Now, my dear brother..." Lahan said. If he was to be taken at his word, the man facing them was his older brother. He was of medium build, not too tall, his features more or less undistinguished, and that seemed to be all there was to him. Come to think of it, Lahan had said the eccentric strategist had adopted him, but he never said he didn't have other siblings.

Maomao had simply assumed.

Lahan had brought them to an estate not far from the boat landing—close enough to walk. Rikuson had gotten off the boat with them, but Lahan had given him an "I'm not so sure about bringing strangers along," and he was now at an inn near the landing. Maomao thought he could just as well have continued home with Ah-Duo and Consort Lishu, but apparently that wasn't in the cards.

As for the endlessly cheerful Kokuyou, he'd said he was going to find a carriage to take him to the capital. If fate decreed, they would meet again.

The house to which they had been going wasn't in a town; it was plopped down somewhere off by itself. A reasonably sumptuous house it was, but it was just sitting out here in the countryside. Maybe some high official from the capital had been banished out here; it would have been humiliating for someone like that.

Is it really all right for us to just drop in somewhere like this?

Maomao could see what appeared to be crop fields all around. Small houses dotted the landscape in the distance beyond them, but they were too far apart to constitute a village. The crop growing in the fields was something Maomao didn't see much of. It looked similar to bindweed, but bindweed was considered, well, a weed, because it rarely produced fruit. But this, whatever it was, had been planted over a large area.

Wonder what it could be.

Just as they were on their way to the house, they'd passed this man on the road. He'd given them a stricken look, then dragged them to a nearby shed, which was where they were now. As for the tea, the kettle had been right there, and they'd simply borrowed it. It hadn't smelled funny, so it was probably safe. The tea tasted unusual, though, most likely something roasted. The place appeared to be a small workshop serving the fieldwork; the neatly arranged farm implements spoke to the owner's meticulousness.

"Why are you here?!" the man demanded.

"Why? What, can't your little brother come for a visit?" (It was Maomao's suspicion that they were really here because Lahan had

smelled money.) "Is Dad around? I'd like to talk to him."

"Dad! You mean your fox-eyed 'father'?"

"No, I mean Dad. My honored adoptive father is in the capital, for your information."

Lahan's brother fell silent—until he smacked the door with abandon. "Get out of here and go home! Now, before they find you!"

"You're terrible. It's been ages since you saw your little brother."

"You're not my father's son anymore."

The conversation sounded vaguely absurd. Maomao opened the lid of the teapot and looked inside to find not tea leaves, but roasted barley. Yes, she thought, impressed; that was one way to use it.

So Lahan nonchalantly sipped his drink while his brother raged and ordered him to go home. Maomao, meanwhile, inspected a vine lying in a corner of the small building. It appeared to be the same thing that was planted in the fields outside. The vine had been clipped off and put in a bucket. A good, hard look revealed what appeared to be roots—so they were planning to replant it?

The leaves really did resemble bindweed, but apparently it was something else. Maomao started going through the shelves. Something about the fields had her attention and wouldn't let go. On the shelves she found nothing but buckets and rags, so she looked outside through the window. Although the little shed cast a shadow in that direction, she saw pots with young morning glories in them.

But it's not a morning glory either.

There were lots of morning glories out behind the shed. Were they purely ornamental? Or perhaps the family made medicine from them? Morning glory seeds were known as qianniuzi, and were used as a laxative and diuretic. They could be quite toxic, though, and had to be dealt with carefully.

When Lahan's brother saw Maomao peering out the window, he slammed it shut. "What are you doing?!"

"Nothing. Just curious about the morning glories."

"Who the hell are you, anyway?" A little late for that question.

"She's my younger sister, dear brother."

"I'm a complete stranger, sir."

"Which is it?!" Lahan's brother clenched his fists.

Maomao and Lahan looked at each other, then Maomao said,

"He certainly is easy to get a rise out of."

"Right? They don't make many like him—he'll actually throw out a comeback when you want one."

"Stop it! I don't understand a word either of you is saying!" Lahan's brother stamped his feet. It really was fun to tweak him.

Lahan poured more tea from the teapot and offered it to the other man, who drank it down in a single gulp, then flung the cup away—the drink must have been really hot. Maomao went and retrieved the wooden drinking vessel.

"Excellent reaction. Inspiringly by the book," she said.

"Right? You'd think the likes of him would be everywhere, but they're surprisingly rare, his type."

"Godthammit, I don'th underthand one word!" the brother exclaimed, his tongue popping out of his mouth.

Okay, enough fun at Brother's expense. Time to get back to the subject.

"You seem to be intent on chasing us out. Might I ask why?" Maomao said. "I mean, I understand how you might despise this man for betraying his real family and joining up with that awful fox strategist."

"You've got it all wrong, Little Sister."

"She's got it pretty much right, but that's not the point."

"Pretty much right, Brother?!" Lahan said, genuinely distressed.

Had he really not realized?

His brother ignored him, looking at Maomao instead. "He calls you his little sister. You're Lakan's girl, then?"

Maomao replied with a truly dire look. Brother shivered and shrank back.

"Maomao, don't look at my dear brother that way; you'll give him a heart attack. I said, don't!" Lahan sounded like he was talking to a child, and that only annoyed her more. She looked away from both of them and took another drink of tea.

Lahan's brother sat down, his face drawn, and took a few deep breaths to steady himself. He opened his mouth, but Maomao glared at him. He put a hand to his forehead and chose his words carefully. "Look, it doesn't really matter who you are—you should get out of here, as fast as you can. And if you are who Lahan claims you are, all the more reason."

"I take it from your tone that this is no small matter," Lahan said.

"If you understand that, then stop quibbling and go."

Being treated like that, though, could only pique a person's curiosity. Lahan's spectacles flashed. "Brother, what has happened?"

"It's safest if you don't ask."

"We just want to know what's going on. Then we'll be good and go home."

"If I tell you, there will be no escape."

"Brother," talk like that is going to have exactly the opposite of the effect you want, Maomao thought.

As the conversation went on, Lahan kept trying to wheedle out the information he wanted. Eventually, Maomao suspected, he would get the truth. Except that the plot twisted first.

The door opened with a clatter, revealing an elderly man with a cane, a middle-aged woman, and several of what appeared to be servants.

"I thought I heard a ruckus out here," the woman said, narrowing her eyes at Maomao and Lahan. Lahan's brother went pale. "It's been a long time, Lahan. Three years, if my memory's not failing me?"

"It has indeed been a long while." Lahan stepped forward and bowed deeply. "Mother. Grandfather."

Mother... Grandfather... Maomao thought. In other words, these were the family who had been chased out of the capital. The old man was the picture of stubborn age, weathered around the eyes, his face set, his beard very long.

As for the woman, she had a lovely face, but her narrowed eyes made Maomao think of a predator. She looked like the woman from the Shi clan—Loulan's mother. In short, she was intimidating. Her outfit was a bit, well, loud, and she wore a white bracelet around her wrist—maybe she hadn't quite caught up with the current fashions yet.

"I see you've brought some scruffy little waif with you. Who's this, your maid?" the woman said. It seemed to be practically obligatory for new acquaintances to ridicule Maomao, and she was used to it by now. She stayed quiet and kept her eyes on the ground.

"Oh, heavens, Mother. This is my little sister."

"Laha—?!" Older Brother started to cry out, but slapped his hands over his mouth.

"Little sister... Lakan's daughter, are you?" the old man interjected. Maomao continued to look at the ground, but her face contorted into a scowl.

There was one person there who looked at least as offended by the name as Maomao did, and it was Lahan's mother. Maomao could even hear her grinding her teeth.

"Yes... Yes, that's right," Lahan volunteered. Even his brother had him fixed with a staggering glare. So this was why he'd been so intent on getting Lahan and Maomao out of there undiscovered. He hadn't wanted his mother or grandfather to find them. In that much, Maomao agreed with him: it looked like life would have been easier if they'd never met these people.

The old man made a muffled sound; it confused Maomao for a second before she realized it seemed to be laughter.

"Ha ha ha ha. How did you hear about it?" Lahan looked perplexed. "How did we...?"

What's he talking about? Maomao wondered, wearing an expression of confusion similar to Lahan's. The others didn't seem to notice, perhaps because she and Lahan both had relatively minimal facial expressions.

Unconcerned, the old man continued: "If you're here about Lakan, forget it. He's an empty shell of a man. Didn't even resist when we put him in confinement. He just keeps muttering to himself. Frankly, it's unsettling."

"Wait... Confinement?" Maomao and Lahan looked at each other.

Lahan's brother put a hand to his brow and let out a long sigh.

"Grandfather, what in the world are you talking about?" Lahan asked.

"Oh, don't play dumb. Your foster father may be an eccentric, but even you would start to suspect something when he didn't come back for ten whole days. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

Maomao didn't understand exactly what was going on, but she understood that it sounded like a pain in the neck. And if this old man, Lahan's grandfather, was to be believed, that freak was in confinement somewhere. Not that she could believe it.

"Erm, ten whole days doesn't mean much to us, Grandfather. Maomao and I have both been away from the capital for more than a month now," Lahan said, scratching the back of his neck.

The old man slowly turned to look at Maomao. "You're kidding."

Maomao brought out a small box from their luggage, which she opened to reveal a pot with a most unusual plant in it. It was the little cactus she'd received. "You won't find these around here, at least not yet," she said. They also had gooseberry jam and a few other things, but she figured a formless lump of food wouldn't be as communicative. "We also have furs and silks," she added.

Lahan's mother and grandfather stared at the plant, the likes

of which they'd never seen before. Yes, it was something that convincingly said "souvenir from the west." "You're kidding," Grandfather repeated.

"Why should we lie to you?" Lahan said. "We brought cigars too. Want some?" He, too, opened some of the luggage. Tobacco leaves were typically imported, and were quite a luxury item in the capital, but in the west, they could be had cheaply.

Mother and Grandfather looked at each other silently. At length, Grandfather swept one hand upward.

"Get 'em."

The servants standing behind him advanced on Maomao and Lahan. They were shortly captured, still a little stupefied.

"How could this have happened? How could they lock me up?

Me! I thought I was family."

"I think you mean a traitor."

"How rude!" Lahan said and sat down in a chair. They were indeed locked up, but in a fairly ordinary room. The furniture was old but sturdy, and the place was respectably clean. Maomao knew, because she'd run a finger along the shelves and windowsills looking for dust like a cruel mother-in-law, but hadn't found any.

"Still..." Maomao said. There were a lot of mysteries here. If Lahan's grandfather was to be believed, that freak was somewhere in this mansion, also under lock and key. He might be lackadaisical to a fault, but Maomao wasn't sure he would have let himself be apprehended that easily.

"You think that old fart is telling the truth?" Maomao asked.

Lahan scratched at his tousled hair. "Can't be sure he isn't."

"And the old guy?"

"Maomao... There's something I haven't told you," Lahan said rather abruptly. "The courtesan he bought from the Verdigris

House last year—she wasn't in the best of health."

"I imagine not."

The woman had already looked as if she might die at any moment. And who should buy this expiring wisp of a courtesan but the eccentric strategist?

"That's why my honored foster father didn't come on this trip." Was that why Rikuson had been so insistent that Maomao should go to the strategist's place? Maomao leaned on the windowsill. The window had wooden bars on it and didn't appear to offer much chance of escape. Past the bars she could see farmers working in the fields. What in the world were they growing out there?

"Father rarely regarded people as, well, people. But after he welcomed that courtesan into his home, he changed dramatically.

It was embarrassing to see, quite frankly."

"Oh?"

"They would play Go and Shogi every day. Go more often, I suppose. Which was bad news when he had to go out to work. He would take a board diagram with him, and after he made a move, a messenger would be sent back to the house to put the stone on the board, then record the responding move and come back to court. Again and again."

Yes, Maomao saw, that would indeed be annoying. She felt for the messenger.

"The messenger was always quite busy—right up until the turn of the year. After that, he found himself with more and more free time."

"Whatever you think you're getting at, it has nothing to do with me." She didn't believe the eccentric strategist would simply let himself be captured, carted off from a courtesan he felt so strongly about. In other words, it had simply been her time. She'd probably lasted longer than she would have if she'd been left to live out her days in the pleasure district. Perhaps it was that thought which enabled Maomao to seem so calm. To others, she might even have appeared cold—but when you were involved in medicine, you ended up being confronted with people dying on a regular basis. If you spent all your time weeping about it, you'd never get to the next patient.

Although there are some who shed tears every time, she thought. Some who, although they might do better just to get used to it, never did. Some who never learned to simply accept it. Some like her adoptive father. She thought it was inept, stupid; but that was exactly why she respected him so much.

"Nothing to do with you? Don't be so bleak. If that courtesan

did die, I don't believe even my honored foster father could endure the shock."

"And you think they used that opportunity to bring him here?"

It was a ridiculous idea. In spite of it all, the old freak was a high official. If he were to go missing for ten whole days, one could expect consternation from a lot more people than just his adopted son.

When Maomao voiced this objection, however, Lahan responded: "When he bought out his courtesan, he ended up taking off work for two weeks. And when he got back, there was

still hardly any work waiting for him." He needs to earn his damn living!

Or everyone else needed to admit that they didn't actually need him after all.

"The point is this: as long as everyone else is doing their jobs, then short of an outright crisis, they could probably continue to function for a good six months before anyone noticed he was gone."

Honestly. Why doesn't the Emperor just fire him?

Maomao started to worry that maybe the strategist had some sort of leverage over the ruler. Or maybe it was simply because the freak was so good at picking talented subordinates.

"Sounds a little half-assed to me. Are courtiers just a lazier, sloppier bunch than I thought?"

"All I can say to that is...well, he's my father." Maomao heaved a sigh.

"If I had to guess, I would say Grandfather and the others have locked Father up in hopes of causing the family headship to appear vacant and thereby get it given to them," Lahan said.

"Family politics aren't really my thing. How do they decide who gets to be head of the clan?"

She'd heard that the old freak had stolen the family headship from Lahan's grandfather, but she didn't understand the specifics. Maybe there was some kind of paperwork involved, something that showed who owned what.

"Typically, among the named clans, there's an object that's passed down along with the name. Whoever possesses it is head of the clan, and they bring it with them when they present themselves at the palace. Obviously, of course, they aren't at the palace every day—just on special occasions. Usually the heirloom would be kept somewhere safe. When the head of the family changes, the former head accompanies the new one when they formally greet the Emperor. I know they say Father 'stole' the family headship, but in reality that procedure was still observed."

"How did he manage that?"

Judging by what she'd seen of Lahan's grandfather, he didn't seem like the type to give up his office quietly. Would he really have just politely gone with...well, you-know-who to see the Emperor?

"It was quite simple: Grandfather was forced out. He was never one for beautiful numbers, you see."

"Let me guess—you found the proof." She wondered if it would have been inappropriate to ask aloud how old he'd been at the time.

"What Grandfather was up to was...well, no more than petty, so he himself would be the only one punished. Grandfather said the revelation would tarnish the family name, but Father hardly cared about such things."

So "Grandfather" was to be dragged down from his height, and he could choose either to do it as a criminal, or to surrender the headship—and it was none other than his grandson who had helped put him in that position. Beautiful numbers, indeed. Lahan had probably enjoyed helping the old freak, doing all that research.

"I suddenly understand why they don't treat you like family around here."

"I'm sorry? What an odd change of subject..."

And the man himself didn't even see it! Yes, he was that freak's nephew all right.

"Okay, but they've spent all this time living quietly out here in the boonies, right? Why would they decide to act now?"

"I can think of a few reasons they might." Lahan started counting on his fingers. "One: public documents in this country are disposed of after ten years. Or I guess you could say they wear away; anything that isn't extremely important just isn't preserved carefully. The proof I found of the pocket change my grandfather stole would only mean anything if they could compare it to those papers." He held up another finger. "Two: they might have found some sort of leverage over him, something they could threaten him and protect themselves with if need be. Though they'd be risking his wrath, of course."

He turned toward Maomao, and she backed away from him uneasily. Of course, at the moment, the wrath would come not on account of Maomao, but the courtesan. "You think they could get information like that way out here?" she asked.

"Well, hold on. Let me finish," Lahan said, and held up a third finger. "Three: someone gave them that information."

Oh! The situation suddenly started to sound familiar. "You think that's what's happening here too?"

Here too: both the bandits who had attacked Consort Lishu and the story about the fortune-teller in the western capital had made her think of the "white" immortal. The MO was similar in both cases.

"I'm only floating a possibility. But one that can't be ruled out."

Yes, he was right. They couldn't be sure about anything, but they should work on the assumption that it was possible. That, however, left Maomao with a question. "If all these incidents are related, then one thing bothers me."

"What?"

She couldn't shake the sense that the shadow of the White Lady hung over the succession of mysterious events lately, and several things about this one smelled of the same perpetrator. But she wondered: "We've had cases in both the east and the west that could seem to involve the immortal. Do you think she's actually connected to them all somehow?" She would have to be

extremely fleet-footed. "Even if we assume it's not the Lady

herself, but her agents, doing the work, information would seem to travel too quickly."

"True..."

The fortune-teller in the western capital might have acted a lot like the White Lady, but how would she have heard of the halfsister of Consort Lishu, who was far away in the east? If they were sharing information, how were they doing it? The question remained unanswered.

"What if the White Lady had a coconspirator in the capital?" Lahan asked. Then she would be able to find out who would be traveling west.

"How do we explain the very existence of the fortune-teller, then? She was already there at least ten days ago." "That's exactly it. It seems impossible," Lahan groaned.

"Still..." Maomao murmured, gazing out the window.

"Still what?" Lahan asked.

"I can't help wondering if they're going to feed us," she said, looking at the fields. The farmers were still working industriously.

Maomao's fears turned out to be unfounded. They were given a meal, and it wasn't bad. Decent ingredients—meat and fish. The fish was a little salty. The farther inland one went, the more frequently one encountered salted seafood. Fish in the capital was taken fresh from the sea and rushed to diners by swift horse, so one never saw pickled seafood there.

What turned out to be surprisingly tasty were the sesame buns. They were filled, not with sesame paste, but with crushed chestnuts or red beans or something. The filling was thick and sweet; maybe they'd used honey or syrup to give it that consistency.

No, wait. Is this...sweet potato? she wondered, chewing the food thoughtfully. That would make sense.

Even Maomao, who wasn't a big fan of sweet treats, ate two of the buns; Lahan wolfed down no fewer than five of them. "Look at you go. I'm almost impressed," Maomao said.

"For your information, using one's brain makes one crave sweet food," Lahan replied, then stuffed another bun into his mouth.

"I wonder if the family here has a sweet tooth," Maomao said.

Sweet potatoes were an unusual food item. Having lived in both the Verdigris House and the rear palace, Maomao had encountered them before, but they weren't readily available in the marketplace. The rest of the ingredients involved in the meal were unremarkable—maybe the people here were particular about their filling.

"Not really. At least, I don't recall them being that way. I mean, not that they hate sweets, either."

"Hm." Maomao sipped her post-meal tea. This time it didn't taste of roasted barley, but of actual tea leaves. Then, grabbing onto a passing thought, she said, "I don't think we've seen your dad yet. What's going on with him?"

"Yes, what is he doing? I wanted to see him too," Lahan said, licking the grease off his fingers as he spoke. It reminded Maomao of the fox-eyed strategist, and earned him a scowl. "Do you think this father of yours is caught up in all this?" she asked.

"Hmm. I doubt it. My foster father only asked that the clan head's seat be vacated. Rumors have a way of spreading, though, and my grandfather was a proud man. He found he couldn't stay in the capital any longer. Dad, he could have stayed there if he'd wanted. He just chose not to."

"A fact your mother seems distinctly less than pleased about."

Lahan smiled sardonically. "Yes, it was Grandfather who chose

Mom. She and my foster father get along like oil and water."

It would have been more surprising if they had been friends, really; Maomao pictured the arch woman and felt a pang of sympathy.

"I do wonder about the wisdom of putting us both in the same room. I hope they'll at least give us separate places to sleep," Maomao said.

"If they make us sleep in the same room, who cares? It's not like anything's going to happen."

"You've got that right."

That was all there was to say about it; they both looked at each other as if they couldn't believe they were having this conversation.

"Speaking of which, have you and the Emperor's younger brother—"

"I think I'll get some shut-eye," Maomao said, flopping over onto the bed beside her.

"Hey! Where am I going to sleep?"

"There's a couch right there."

"You should have more respect for your elders!"

"I thought you elders were supposed to dote on us kids."

Lahan evidently had some issue with this arrangement, but Maomao didn't let it bother her. Instead she lay in bed, trying to get the facts straight in her head.

Lahan and the eccentric strategist did appear to be giving the former head of the clan and his family enough money to live on— they had the resources to hire servants, after all, although perhaps not to update their furniture to the cutting edge of luxury or eat fancy food at every meal. It seemed like a sweet enough arrangement to Maomao, but someone who had once lived in the lap of luxury in the capital might well find it deeply degrading. The humiliation had festered over many long years, and now was on the point of explosion—but who had lit the fuse?

Maomao recalled the white bracelet Lahan's mother had been wearing. She hadn't gotten a very good look at it, but it had reminded her of the white, snakelike twist of rope. She hoped it wasn't just a misunderstanding—but it brought back some bad memories.

That "immortal" sure is tenacious, Maomao thought. She was like a phantom; her traces seemed to be everywhere. It was almost enough to convince Maomao that she really did have the supernatural ability to be in many places at once.

Maomao fell asleep wishing someone would hurry up and catch the woman.

The next thing she knew, it was evening. She came out of the bedroom yawning to discover not only Lahan, but his nasty old grandfather. If it had been just Gramps, she might have bodyslammed him and tried to escape, but she could see a servant behind him.

The old man's face twisted when he saw Maomao. Maybe she still had bedhead? Or eye goobers? Maybe the pillow had left a mark on her cheek and he didn't like it.

"We're going," Grandfather said, and left the room before Maomao could object. She and Lahan shared a look, but since the alternative to going was presumably just being locked up again, they went.

"It looks like you really are Lakan's daughter," Grandfather remarked, but Maomao didn't say anything; there was no reason for her to respond to that. It gave away, though, that the family had been looking into matters while she'd been asleep. She wondered how they had managed that when she figured she hadn't slept more than four hours.

"The man's a complete half-wit," Grandfather went on.

"Whatever we do, whatever we say, he just mumbles to himself. Doesn't even try to talk to us. But your name... Your name, at least, he remembers."

Maomao stopped in her tracks. This conversation suggested something about who was going to be at their destination, and she didn't like it.

"I know you're not a big fan, but we'd better go. Arguing won't get us anywhere right now," Lahan said, and unfortunately, he was right. Maomao started walking again.

They were headed for a building on the edge of the estate, with big, round windows with bars on them. You could see right inside—meaning you could see the filthy, middle-aged man on the floor.

The man was lying on his back, his chin bedecked with messy stubble. The hair on his head hung loose behind him as if he'd swept it away in annoyance. A grimy bowl was on the floor beside him. Grains of rice were stuck to his clothes and fingers, as if he'd been eating with his hands instead of chopsticks.

"Father!" Lahan cried, rushing up to the bars. The sight of the man, obviously out of it, must have stirred something in him.

There did indeed appear to be something wrong with him. His mouth kept moving, forming silent words—he looked as if he were an addict going through withdrawal of some kind. Lahan had apparently had the same thought, for he turned to the elderly man. "Grandfather, I know you said Father wouldn't listen to you, but you didn't give him opium or something, did you?!"

"Hmph, I can't speak to that. But I do want him to cough up the location of the heirloom." The old man looked at Lahan imperiously. Then he spread his arms and said, "Anyway, I didn't summon him. He summoned me, and I went to the capital for him. He was like this when I found him."

Maomao actually agreed with him—this definitely wasn't opium poisoning.

"There were no servants or anybody else at the house. Just him, the codger, bent over a Go board and muttering to himself." Grandfather alleged that he'd brought the strategist here on the grounds that there was no one else around.

No one? Maomao wondered. She looked at Lahan: that didn't seem possible. "Did he have to fire all his servants or something because he was too deep in debt to pay them?"

"No, he retained a minimum of household help. He needed someone to do the cooking and cleaning, and to look after the patient." Then, however, Lahan added: "Still... I figured this might happen."

What was he referring to? Rather, who: he had to mean the courtesan the strategist had taken in last year. The servants might all be gone, but she would still be there—and the fox-eyed strategist wouldn't have gone away and just left her at home. The fact that he was here and looking shell-shocked must mean that the courtesan had died.

He looked as if his very soul had fled his body—and yet, the body moved. He appeared to be facing something that could not be seen. He was sitting before someone who was no longer there.

"Can't you do something for him, Maomao?" Lahan asked. Just for an instant, the eccentric strategist twitched, but then he resumed his relentless mumbled litany. He was in bad shape.

"You're supposed to be what passes for his children. Don't you have any idea where the family jewels might be?!" Grandpa demanded.

"I'm afraid you can yell all you want, sir, but..." Lahan said, shaking his head.

Maomao was more direct: "I have no idea." She, too, shook her head.

"Then maybe you remember this!" The old man took a sheaf of papers from the folds of his robes. They were covered with numbers of some kind. "Lakan had this on him. This sort of thing is your specialty, Lahan. These numbers must reveal a hidden location or something!"

The old man was evidently under the impression that the numbers were some kind of code. Lahan took the paper and squinted at it. Maomao peeked over his shoulder.

They both saw what it was immediately. The paper had two numbers on it side by side, and there were dozens of pages.

They also knew that the sheaf didn't contain the answer the old man was looking for—but under the circumstances, there was no reason to tell him that right away. Instead, they felt they needed to do something about the deflated freak. Frankly, Maomao would have been just as happy not to have anything to do with him, but sooner begun was sooner done.

"Do you have a Go board in this house?" she asked.

"The hell does that have to do with anything?!"

"Do you have one?" she repeated, not changing her tone. The old man clucked and called for a servant, who brought a Go board and stones.

They entered the strategist's room. When the board was placed in front of him, his shoulders shivered. Maomao sat across from him, on the other side of the board. She took the black stones, while Lahan placed the white ones where the strategist could reach them.

Maomao picked up a black stone and placed it on the board, following the numbers written on the paper. In response, the freak took a white stone and set it on the board with a click.

She believed the papers were notes kept by the messenger while the strategist and his courtesan played Go. In addition to the two numbers, running numbers had been carefully inscribed along the upper right. Maomao simply played according to the numbers, and the strategist responded.

Maomao wasn't a particularly good Go player. She knew that the opening part of the game involved something called joseki, sequences of moves that were largely set. Thus, she could expect the strategist to make the same moves he had in the actual game. She just kept turning the pages, playing, and turning the pages again, until she was down to the last three sheets.

Lahan, watching, cocked his head. "That was a bad move." He was referring to the stone Maomao had just placed—but she'd played it exactly according to the paper.

The strategist narrowed his eyes for a moment and then, click, he made another move.

"Putting the stone there... It would have to be a sacrifice play. But why? Why would she do it that way?" Lahan muttered.

Maomao didn't know much about Go, but Lahan had some acquaintance with it. Whatever—she just kept playing the way the paper said.

When they reached the end of the paper, though, they were still in the middle game.

"No... You'd never make a mistake like that," the monocled freak murmured. There were grains of rice stuck to his stubble, and Maomao had to fight down the urge to tell him to wash his damn face. "You know I would never miss it... So why?"

The strategist didn't move to play the white stone in his hand; he just stared at the board.

After a silent moment, Maomao grumbled, "Maybe she was just sick of normal moves?" She didn't know much about Go, but over the many, many years of its existence, common wisdom had been established: With such-and-such a board situation, this is

how you should play. Then the other player would likewise respond in a particular way.

"It's certainly true, you'd normally do this in this situation. Then the response is here, and then black moves here..." Monocle kept mumbling to himself, fretting with the white stone in his fingers—but then he seemed to come to some kind of realization.

Click. The stone went on the board.

"But that..." Lahan said, his expression darkening. Apparently, it wasn't a very good move either. Without the paper to guide her, Maomao no longer knew where to play, so instead she slid the bowl of black stones toward the strategist. He picked one up and clicked it down on the board.

Lahan, who obviously knew more about Go than Maomao did, folded his arms and watched. At first he looked skeptical, but one of the ensuing moves seemed to spark something in his mind, and his eyes widened.

"Hey! This is no time to sit around playing games!" Gramps burst out. "Hurry up and—"

"Hush," Lahan said. "It's just getting good."

He watched the board with a studious expression. Getting good? The freak was playing himself! Then again, in his own mind, it seemed to be someone else holding the black stones. The color gradually returned to his formerly ghostly pallor.

The only sound was the click, click of stones on the board,

move after move after move.

Finally the freak stopped. "We're down to the endgame." He set down his hand as if to indicate he was through playing. Then he squinted at the board. "The outcome is pretty well obvious. Including five and a half points komi, black wins by one and a half points."

Lahan looked at the board too. "I'll be. He's right," he said. Evidently he was just as quick at reading territory in Go as he was at every other kind of calculation.

The strategist pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them. He rolled a Go stone across his fingers, still staring at the board. "I had to wonder. I just kept asking myself—how could you go before our last game was finished? You always hated to lose. I was sure you wouldn't leave before it was over." The words seemed to tumble out of his mouth. "And I wondered, why would you make a move like that one? It had to be a mistake, I was sure

—even though I knew you would never make a mistake."

He was talking to himself; what he was saying wasn't directed at any of them. He was interrupted by the old man.

"Hey! Lakan! Where are the family jewels? I want that treasure, now!" He shoved Lahan aside and loomed in front of the eccentric strategist.

The strategist looked up at him balefully for a second and muttered, "You're a rather noisy Go stone." But then he clapped his hands and said, "Ah! Father, is that you?"

"'Father, is that you?' Pfah! Don't you remember your own parent's face?!"

It wasn't a matter of remembering, though; the man simply couldn't distinguish one face from another.

"Parent? Ah, yes... Yes, that reminds me..." He sounded completely out of it, but he took a cloth-wrapped package from his robe. "I'm afraid I'm telling you this rather, ahem, belatedly, but I've taken a wife."

Inside the package was hair. About five sun in length, tied with a hair tie. Maomao knew whom it belonged to.

Grandfather turned beet red and aimed a blow of the cane in his hand at the strategist's temple.

"Father!" Lahan cried, rushing up. Maomao took a handkerchief from the folds of her own robe. The cane had slid down the strategist's temple, brushed his cheek, and wound up hitting his nose. He hadn't taken a direct blow to the face, but his nose was still dripping blood.

"You're always like this! You never listen to what I say, just babble about things that make no sense! And just when I think you're completely self-absorbed... This! What is this?!" Gramps was pointing at the sheaf of papers. "Are you mocking me again?!"

"I'm not mocking you. This is why I called you."

Maomao suspected that much, at least, was true. The man might make an ass of himself around court, but she had a sense that he hadn't done the same thing with this old guy. Lahan's grandfather had talked about the strategist summoning him—to think, this was the reason.

However, that was to speak from the strategist's perspective. Sometimes people simply couldn't understand each other, parent and child or no. The elderly man and the eccentric strategist were simply too different.

"Whatever. The jewels, man. Make with the jewels!" Gramps was in high dudgeon now. He grabbed his cane again—and a blade emerged from within it. It was a sword-cane. "You know what'll happen to you if you hold out on me, right?"

The strategist looked up, but not at the blade. His eyes were fixed on something else. "Maomao? What are you doing here?"

So he had noticed her at last. Maybe he would never have been so pliant if he hadn't. It just went to show how intent he had been on his game. "So you've come to see your daddy!"

"No." Maomao wished he would focus on the situation they were in. Sensing danger, she moved to the wall.

"Ah, Maomao is here! Today, we must have a feast!" the strategist said, clutching the hair clipping. Then he turned the hand toward Maomao. "Won't you say anything? Just a word, to your mother..." He looked at her with the strangest of expressions. With his haggard face and filthy beard, he suddenly looked many years older.

Normally, Maomao might have simply ignored him—but now, surprisingly, she dipped her head respectfully in the direction of the hair. No, she had nothing to say, but she could do that much.

"Don't ignore me, dammit!" the infuriated old man bellowed, brandishing his sword-cane. Age had taken its toll on him, but he had been a soldier once, and he was still sturdier than they might have expected. Facing him were a strategist who was a soldier who left all the real work to his subordinates; a dyed-in-the-wool civil official whose weapon of choice was the abacus; and Maomao, who had no confidence that she would be of any help in a fight.

The three wusses scattered—and it was all they could do to escape the old man and his flailing cane. Servants stood behind Grandfather, but obviously weren't going to help anyone.

Maomao, seeking any kind of safety, hid behind a post.

Then, though, they heard a slow, calm voice. "Put that away; it's dangerous. What if you actually hit somebody with it?"

Maomao looked to see the old man floating in midair, his legs kicking. He dangled from weathered hands that gripped his arms; holding him was a man with sun-darkened skin and a handkerchief around his neck. His clothes marked him out as a farmer—maybe the one Maomao had seen from the window of her room. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and very well built, but his eyes were gentle and serene.

"Hey, what are you doing?! Let me go!"

"Yes, yes. As soon as you give me that sword," the burly farmer said, plucking the weapon away from the old man and putting it back in its cane. "When did you find the time to make this?" he murmured. The servants, rather than trying to help Grandfather, looked downright relieved to see the farmer.

Who's this? Maomao thought, but her question was promptly answered.

"It's been too long, Dad," Lahan said, bowing his head.

"Ah, you look well. Despite the somewhat dire straits I found you in. That girl there—is that my niece?" The farmer tossed the sword cane to one of the servants, and his already gentle face softened even more. The man looked like a bear, yet his presence was warm, comforting.

"May I take that to be my little brother who's just come in?" the eccentric strategist said, smiling.

"You may, although I might wish you would learn to know who

I was one of these days," Lahan's father said, smiling sardonically.

He still hadn't let go of the old man, who continued to kick. "I'm doing this for you, blast it! Don't you want your birthright back?!"

"Me? Not particularly."

"And you can live with that?! You weakling!"

"That's right! You always were that way!" Suddenly Lahan's mother was there. She didn't seem to get along with the strategist very well; she must have heard the commotion and come to investigate. Lahan's father looked disturbed to find himself confronted with another critic.

"What good would it do for me to inherit the family headship?

A buffoon running the household could only embarrass everyone."

His resigned tone only aggravated the old man and Lahan's mother.

"You'd still be better than that jackass!" Gramps shouted.

The jackass in question was grinning stupidly at Maomao. It was supremely disgusting.

"Don't you love our son? Don't you want to see him inherit the headship?" Lahan's mother pressed.

"But Lahan's our son too," the farmer protested. Apparently the son the woman was referring to was Lahan's older brother, whom they'd met earlier. It seemed Lahan was considered a traitor and no longer her child.

The house appeared to be divided: some who had been following the old man's orders until moments before were now looking at Lahan's father, openly torn.

"What good would it do for me to inherit the headship at this point, anyway?" Lahan's father said. "There's no one to replace me, is there?" Then he added: "Besides, maybe no one would care if my dear brother Lakan didn't come back, but I think Lahan would be missed." His tone was placid, kind.

At that moment, a servant came running up. "Master! There's a man named Rikuson here..."

Gramps and Mom both scowled at that. "S-So what?! Throw him out on his ear!"

"B-But sir, he's got several other men who appear to be, uh, soldiers with him..."

"You know, I do seem to recall there being a garrison around here," Lahan said as if it were just occurring to him. But it was a scripted line if Maomao had ever heard one.

"Damn! D-Did you count on that when you decided to come here?!"

"Oh, no, nothing of the sort. Although it seems it certainly didn't hurt."

His insouciant tone stoked Gramps's anger; the old man pounded the wall with a wrinkled hand. "I'm surrounded by idiots! Incompetents! My whole family is an embarrassment!" Now he was stomping on the ground so hard it seemed like he might put a foot clear through the floor. "I've got one son who never has any idea who he's talking to, and another who thinks he's a farmer! Curse the womb that bore them both! I should've had another son—maybe that one would have come out right!"

The old man's fury showed no sign of abating. His listeners refused to look at him; with what he was saying, even Lahan's mother found her lip curling.

"And then there's Luomen—never could use a sword, and then he got himself mutilated! Is there even one person worth my time around here?!"

Maomao was suddenly in motion. She darted out from behind the post, grabbing the bowl on the ground—the strategist's leftover soup. The next moment, she was in front of Gramps, and then she dumped the rotten stuff all over the old man.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Gramps raged. He slapped Maomao with an open palm, leaving her cheek burning.

Maomao stumbled backward. "Maomao!" the strategist cried. He tried to catch her, but she dodged him deftly. The old man's hand she hadn't been able to avoid, but the strategist she could easily escape from.

"I just didn't like your tone," Maomao said in a quiet voice. It was the wrong thing to do, so if she got hit for it she would just have to live with it. But she had wanted to stop the old man from ridiculing her old man. "I won't hear you say another word against my adoptive father. What I'm saying is, please shut up!"

"You mouthy little trollop! Just who do you think I am?"

Who? Maomao thought. In her opinion, it was the old man who didn't understand who he was.

"Without that heirloom, you're just a frail old man who doesn't know how to have confidence in himself," Maomao said with a smile. Her lip was split, but that was a minor detail.

The old man's face went tight, and Lahan's mother blanched as well.

"Forget the family name. Forget the headship. What have you done with your own two hands to be proud of?" Maomao asked.

"Listen to this scrawny whelp..."

The fact that he responded not with an actual reply, but with inarticulate cruelty, was answer enough. He'd coasted along on the family headship, committing a series of minor offenses. She didn't know whether his failure to push into the territory of serious corruption was down to a genuine rational streak or simple cowardice.

Maomao had a few more things she would have liked to say to the old man, but then someone was standing between the two of them.

"I'm sorry, young lady, but please. That's enough." The owner of the kind voice was Lahan's father, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. "I know you cherish your uncle, but please do remember that this man is my father." His face, with its hint of sorrow, reminded her of her own old man, Luomen.

With an effort, she swallowed what she had been about to say.

Chapter 7: The La Clan (Part Two)

"I wondered what was going on..." Rikuson heaved a sigh. He had eventually made his way into the mansion, and Gramps and Lahan's mother were now sequestered in a separate room. Rikuson had made the call within moments of seeing the strategist's beleaguered state. Truly, he was another of the fine subordinates the freak had found for himself.

"I'm very sorry. If my brother Lakan had regained his sanity sooner, this could all have been over much quicker," Lahan's father said, sounding tired. Maomao felt a strange affinity for him, perhaps because he so much resembled Luomen—not in his appearance, but in something less tangible.

Figuring the "prison" room wasn't exactly congenial, they'd moved to another part of the house. At the moment, Lahan, his father, Maomao, Rikuson, and the strategist were all together, along with several men Rikuson had brought with him. Maomao felt a little bad for them having come all this way when ultimately they hadn't been needed. Rikuson would give only his official story, namely that they'd come to bring their superior officer back home, but there was no question the men were intended to intimidate.

Maomao, meanwhile, didn't want to be in the same room as the freak strategist, but she knew she couldn't be pushy about it just then. In the blink of an eye, though, he was beside her and jabbering about something. She wished he would shut up. She knew she ought to take pity on him in his weakened state, but she discovered she just wasn't able.

"Maomao, we should go have a dress made for you sometime. We'll get lots of the finest fabric, and we can have a hair stick made too!" the strategist said.

Maomao didn't say anything.

"And then we should get all dressed up and we can go see a show! Yes, let's do that!"

Maomao didn't say anything.

"You like books, don't you, Maomao? I've got an idea—why stop at just reading them? What if you were to make a book yourself?"

Even when she ignored him, he wouldn't let up. She almost twitched at the idea of making her own book, but she managed to force down the reaction.

"Elder Brother, we're trying to talk, here. Perhaps you could sit quietly for a moment?" Lahan's father, the strategist's younger brother, tried to talk him down, but without much conviction. Neither Lahan—the strategist's adopted son—nor Rikuson—his subordinate—could be too forceful with him either. So eventually, every gaze in the room settled on Maomao. She frowned mightily, but she was cornered.

She gave a sniff and made a face of exaggerated disgust. "You stink. You smell like a feral dog who's been out in the rain," she said.

The strategist brought his own sleeve to his nose and sniffed.

Then he looked at Lahan's father. "Where's the bath?"

"Take a right out of this room and it's at the end of the hall. I'll ask the servants to get it ready for you right away."

"Yes, please. Right away," the strategist said, and left the room.

"And don't forget to brush your teeth," Maomao called after him. (One for the road.) If they were lucky, they wouldn't see him for at least an hour.

"I guess it's tough, having a daughter," Lahan's father commented sadly. "Not that I was able to get through to him on my own."

"Just watching it breaks your heart," Rikuson agreed, sipping his tea.

"Be that as it may, you got here awfully quickly," Lahan said to him. "I thought you might take your time yet."

Lahan had been staying at an inn near the ship's landing, and Lahan must have known that when he and Maomao failed to return, Rikuson would get suspicious and come to the mansion. But it hadn't even been an entire day since they'd left—a rather short timeline.

"I had a tip," Rikuson replied, gesturing at Lahan's father.

"Not so much from me personally," the man said. "Someone else went and told them. Someone who doesn't always own up to his true feelings." Lahan's father looked out the window, where Lahan's older brother could be seen listlessly dragging a green vine around. "He moans about being stuck doing farmer's work, but you see how devoted he is to it. No, he isn't always forthcoming about his feelings, but he's a good boy."

"He's just okay. I guess he's not a bad person," Maomao said.

"My older brother's not precisely a paragon of virtue, but he's not capable of true evil," Lahan added.

"Erm, the two of you aren't exactly bursting with praise," Rikuson said, watching the young man in the fields with a touch of pity.

"They say the father exists for his son and his grandson, but it doesn't seem like that to me. That boy's even less cut out for politics than I am," Lahan's father said. With his tanned skin and hulking body, he looked like he could have made a very capable soldier, but ultimately one had to reckon with personality. Sometimes a person was more suited to the hoe than the sword or the spear. This man looked every inch the farmer.

"I do have to wonder," Lahan said, cocking his head. "Why would they bring all this up now? If they were waiting for the evidence of Grandfather's corruption to be expunged, I would have expected them to move sooner." Maomao wasn't sure that was such a smart thing to say with Rikuson sitting right there, but apparently it was all right.

"A fair question. Lakan called for your grandfather on account of his new bride. And that was fine, as far as it went. Normally, I think my father would simply have ignored him and not gone to the capital. Except..." Lahan's father took a piece of braided rope from the folds of his robes. Although his earth-stained fingers had darkened it, it was clear that it had originally been white. It was much like the one Lahan's mother had worn around her wrist.

"I am so sick of those things," Maomao said, pointedly looking away from it.

"Uh... I haven't said anything about it yet," Lahan's father said, appearing bemused.

"You don't have to. Let me guess—your wife fell under the sway of some fortune-teller or something."

"That's exactly right."

"And she asked how that freak was doing."

"I don't know for certain. But we learned there was no one around him..."

The freak's adopted son Lahan and his close attendant Rikuson were both in the western capital. Even if the strategist were to disappear, the two people most likely to notice weren't around.

Frustrated, Maomao picked up something on the table. The servant had evidently brought it to accompany the tea. It looked sort of like a dry, flat daikon with white powder on top. The fact that it was on a plate meant it was presumably food. It was sweet, yet chewy; it was stringy, but not unpleasant.

Is this sweet potato?

Maomao had eaten processed sweet potato before, but almost always stuff that had been steamed and turned into a paste. This one appeared to have been cooked and dehydrated.

"This is pretty good. Am I right that this is sweet potato?" she asked.

"Oh!" Lahan exclaimed, leaning forward as if he had suddenly remembered something. "That's right! Dad—you said something about an interesting potato?"

"Hm? Potato? Oh! Yes. Yes, I suppose so."

Lahan grabbed some of the snack off Maomao's plate. "You said you thought you might have an idea—did you mean this?"

"Mm. It's steamed and dried potato. No sugar, no honey, but it's sweeter than chestnuts or pumpkin, isn't it?" He gestured out the window as if to say, There it is. Maomao had wondered what was in the fields—it was these potatoes.

Lahan squinted and adjusted his glasses. "How much are you growing?"

"We're trying to expand as much as we can. Wouldn't want any of the fields to go to waste."

"You seem to lack sufficient help."

"Some of the farmers in the area come and help us out. We've got more potatoes than we know what to do with." They seemed happy to help in exchange for all the potatoes they could get. "Oh! But don't worry. We haven't sold them in the open market, just like you said, Lahan. When we do sell them, we make sure

it's only product, not raw potatoes."

"That's fine, then."

Maomao found herself perplexed by the conversation. Were Lahan and his father trying to corner the market on sweet potatoes? Was it Lahan's fault that Maomao had only ever seen sweet potatoes as an ingredient, not raw? She would have gladly grown some sweet potatoes for herself if she could have gotten her hands on a raw one.

"It's such a waste, though," Lahan's father said. "We've got more potatoes than we could ever need. The storehouse is full. Well, the pigs are pretty happy to have them for slop, I admit. I think it's improved their meat too."

If they had so many sweet potatoes, wouldn't they just stop growing them?

"Last year, one tan yielded two hundred shin (750 kilograms) of sweet potatoes," Lahan's father said.

"Two hundred shin?!" Maomao exclaimed.

"Four times as much as an ordinary rice yield," Lahan said. "Partly thanks to Dad's tinkering, I'm sure, but even so— incredible, right?"

"Is the crop unique to this region?" Maomao demanded, leaning toward Lahan's father.

"Not at all. A long time ago, I bought a sprout that I thought was an expensive but interesting-looking morning glory—but it was from the south. It turned out to be a different plant, although one that looked similar. Something you grow with rootstock, not seeds. I didn't have any luck getting it to flower, and I became bent on trying to get a blossom out of it." He gazed out the window. "After we came here, we had plenty of space in the fields. I knew flowers sometimes only bloom under specific conditions, but at times they also produce unusual byproducts.

Like this." He plucked off a piece of the dried potato.

Intrigued, he had started to play around with processing his rootstock in various ways. "When I looked into it, I discovered this was a tuber called a sweet potato—sweeter than chestnuts, and able to grow even in poor soil. I think I might be the only person in the whole country growing these things. Lahan told me not to let any seed potatoes out of the village, and that's what I've been doing."

By now, Maomao was starting to get a pretty good idea of what Lahan had wanted from his father. It had to do with what the emissary from Shaoh had said: provisions or asylum. Pick one. What was more, it would serve as a countermeasure to the insect plague that would soon strike them. Lahan, she suspected, was hoping to use his father's potatoes to solve both problems—but no matter how tremendous the yield was from those fields, there was no way they were producing enough to feed an entire country. Even if there were seed potatoes left, it didn't seem like a viable solution.

Lahan's father, though, provided the answer. "You don't have to use rootstock. You can use stems too. You could probably make it work as long as it had been freshly planted." "Stems, sir?" Maomao asked.

There were ways of growing plants beyond just seeds or potatoes—a stem clipping could be made to work, as long as it put down roots. If they could do that, maybe they could hope for, say, ten times as much yield. (Yeah, yeah, counting chickens

something something.) But it still wouldn't be enough. Unlike rice, though, the bugs wouldn't go after the potatoes. That was a major advantage.

"Dad, I have a favor to ask you," Lahan said—and then he went on to describe more or less what Maomao had imagined. He wanted to buy up the sweet potatoes, and he wanted seed potatoes and sprouts too. And he wanted his father to tell him how best to grow them, if possible. It turned out he wanted quite a lot.

Maomao thought Lahan was being rather presumptuous— notwithstanding that they were talking to his father—but "Dad" kept smiling. Hardly taking a moment to think, he said, "Sure, I'll be happy to." He sat back in his chair, ground some ink, and started writing out the instructions.

Maomao, her brow wrinkling, said, "Are you sure about this? If you don't lay some ground rules now, you might just get taken to the cleaners here."

"Watch your mouth!" Lahan objected.

"Ha ha ha! I told you we had more of them than we knew what to do with. If you leave us enough to give to the other farmers, that'll be fine. And, er, if our taxes weren't quite so heavy, I'd be happy about that too."

That only made Maomao frown harder. She glanced at Lahan, but he was grinning, obviously working the abacus in his head.

Maomao grabbed the brush from Lahan's father.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She began writing a contract, the brush moving in quick, decisive strokes. "First, we have to set the price of the potatoes, as well as the sprouts. If you're going to teach him the cultivation methods, that's extra."

"Of course I'll pay for that," Lahan said, as if to say that so much, at least, was obvious even to him. Still, Maomao couldn't bring herself to leave the situation alone. Lahan seemed too much like his foster father.

Lahan read unhappily over the contract Maomao had produced; he seemed to be reconsidering how to handle the amounts.

Then there was a thump and a man covered in mud entered.

"I've got it, Father," he said.

"Excellent. Just leave it there."

It was Lahan's older brother, carrying a bucket with a green vine in it. At least one of them must have realized Lahan might be after this—their preparations were very thorough.

Lahan's father picked up the vine. "They taste better if you don't let the vines overgrow. You have to cut back the roots periodically." He showed it to Maomao. "You can boil the excess vines. I think they're pretty good, but my father doesn't agree."

Tasty or not—a crop that would grow even in poor soil, could be grown by vine, and where even the vines were edible? It was like it had been custom-made to prevent famine. Of course, even if they got started now, there was no telling how much they could actually hope to harvest, but given everything that had been said, it sounded like they would certainly get more of this stuff than they ever would of rice, even if it wasn't enough.

So that was why Lahan had been so receptive to the emissary's advances.

"We should've started selling earlier," Maomao said, eliciting wry smiles from Lahan and his father. No doubt Lahan had ordered them not to release the crop into the market because he'd known it was going to be a booming business.

"My father didn't like the idea very much. Complained about having to act like a farmer," Lahan's father said. It seemed a little late to be worried about that with all these fields around. "Besides, if you sell a bunch of a new crop, you're looking at some real headaches with taxes."

It was true that selling always invited taxation. Staple foods like rice and wheat were taxed as a percentage of yield, the amount varying from region to region.

"Vegetables, though—for those, they only take a percentage of what's actually brought to market."

"Because things that rot—well, if you try to store them someplace, they'll just go bad."

Better to collect after the goods had been converted into hard cash. Which category would these potatoes fall under? Potatoes as such probably kept, at least for a while. If they carelessly flooded the market with raw potatoes, they could be subject to substantial taxes.

"To be fair, if we've got a ton of them just lying around, it doesn't really matter if they take them for taxes," Lahan's father observed.

"Now, Dad, it's important to economize on your taxes."

Maomao shot Lahan a look: what a thing to say, when he was on the side that was collecting. Lahan's father, though, seemed to be enjoying his rural life. Given his build, he could have gotten along pretty well as a soldier, Maomao suspected, but here he was.

"It looks like you enjoy your life here," she remarked casually.

Lahan's father smiled, his eyes sparkling. "I do. So much so I almost feel bad about it." He fiddled with the potato vine as he spoke. "With apologies to my mother and father, I'm grateful to my older brother Lakan. If it weren't for him, I would never have gotten to experience the pleasure of a calm life of fieldwork." "Think of the trouble he caused to the people he caught in his wake," Lahan said. The eccentric strategist had driven his father— the clan head—and his younger half-brother, who would have been next in line, from the capital in order to claim the family headship. Then he'd adopted his nephew Lahan. That was as much as Maomao knew about the situation, but she trusted that it was true.

It turned out, however, that for Lahan's father, that eviction from the capital had been a blessing in disguise.

"I like it here," he said. "The more you cultivate, the more you can grow. Back in the capital, about the most you could hope to grow was potted plants." His smile made him look much younger than his years. "If what we're doing here can save people from starvation, then I say, take as much as you need! Let the whole country grow potatoes!" He was really getting into this.

"I don't think Grandfather is going to share your positivity," Lahan said.

"Well, there's not much we can do about that. Ten years in exile hasn't softened his pride at all. His life will just go on the way it has been—painfully boring, as far as he's concerned." There was a startling glint of coldness in the man's eyes.

"He always did like to accumulate unbeautiful numbers," Lahan said. He was calculating the size of the field and how many potato sprouts he could plant. The vine cutting would last several days if kept in water.

The reality was that even if they started a field right now, there were no guarantees they would be able to harvest this year. Just as there was no cure-all medicine, there were no perfect answers in politics. You simply had to weigh the pros against the cons and decide what would be most advantageous.

Just as they were thinking about what they would do, the door slammed open.

"Maomaaaao! I've taken my bath!"

In came the strategist, buck naked except for a minimal layer of underwear. Forget eccentric—this was downright sick. He didn't even seem to have taken the time to dry himself completely; his skin and hair were still dripping.

Not bothering to hide her annoyance, Maomao poured some of

the now-cold tea into a cup, then took a small bottle from her robes and added several drops of its contents to the drink. She held it out to the strategist.

"M... M... Maomao! You're serving me tea?!"

"Please, have some."

The strategist's eyes brimmed with tears of emotion as he took the cup and downed it in a single gulp.

There was a brief moment of silence. No sooner had he drunk the tea than a shudder passed through his body—and then he collapsed to the floor.

"You poisoned him!" Lahan exclaimed.

"It's just alcohol," Maomao replied. The strategist was as vulnerable to liquor as he had always been. If anything, she thought he seemed even less able to hold his drink than before.

Thoroughly not interested in seeing any more of the man's naked body, she brought a blanket from the bedroom and draped it over him. Lahan and Rikuson carried the freak to the couch with looks of exasperation.

"Maybe I was lucky I only have sons," Lahan's father said with a droll smile.

The freak was grinning in a most distressing way. "...ake a..." he mumbled, slurring in his sleep.

"What's that you said, sir?" Rikuson asked, leaning closer.

"I'll make a...a Go—"

Rikuson looked stricken. "He wants to make a Go book for some reason," he said, looking like he didn't really understand. Maomao, though, glanced at the table. Lahan had preserved the earlier match as a game record.

There were, supposedly, many more records of many more games between the freak and his courtesan—enough to fill a book.

Hrmm...

The sleeping strategist looked very peaceful. Maomao had expected him to be more depressed about things, but it seemed not. He gave no hint of being weighed down by grief, but was his usual freakish self, driving ahead.

"Normally, when one buys a courtesan, one makes her a mistress. Then one doesn't need any approval from one's parents —which would have been convenient, considering the relationship between my honored adoptive father and my grandfather," Lahan told Maomao.

"Yeah, so?"

"Even then, he seems to have wanted to make formal introductions, to the point of calling for my grandfather, whom he'd left here for so long."

This woman is my wife, he'd wanted to say. Clearly, unambiguously.

"Lakan always was a romantic," Lahan's father said.

"Yeah, great." Maomao sat down in a chair as if to make clear that none of this had anything to do with her. She took the potato vine from the bucket and bit into it experimentally. "It's terrible raw," she said, and dumped it back in the bucket with a frown.

Chapter 8: The Conclusion of Lishu's Journey

"It's been a long trip, but it's almost over," Ah-Duo said as she stood on the deck of the ship and savored the breeze.

"Yes." Consort Lishu had a firm grip on the railing. Her seasickness was much better now, but she was always afraid a sudden toss of the boat might throw her off her feet, so she didn't let go. Ah-Duo smiled at her antics; Lishu responded with a pout, suddenly embarrassed.

With them on deck at the moment were a lady-in-waiting, the young woman Ah-Duo referred to as Rei, and two bodyguards.

Rei was dressed in masculine clothing, but seemed to be a woman. Lishu had been flustered around Rei at first, but after a while it occurred to her what was going on. Since Ah-Duo wore men's clothing, too, the two of them made a lovely picture together. Both were tall and slim, simultaneously pretty and cool. Lishu could barely restrain a sigh when she looked at them—of admiration for one, and disappointment that she lacked the easy beauty of the other.

Lishu was sixteen, and she would have liked to say she was still growing, but she'd stopped getting taller last year, and her body seemed unlikely to grow any more womanly from here on out. She'd heard that cow's milk could help with that, and for a while she'd tried to drink it, but it made her sick to her stomach every time, and she eventually gave it up.

To her chagrin, her ladies-in-waiting had discovered her making trips back and forth to the toilet. She knew they called her things like "the hopeless consort" and "trophy consort" behind her back. It made her upset and angry—of course it did—but what could she say? She knew it was true. At least she was aware of the nicknames now. Even that was better, far better, than having no idea what her women were saying, dancing around for them like a jester.

Lishu's thoughts must have shown on her face, for Ah-Duo asked, "Will you be all right going back to the rear palace?"

Oops! the consort thought, and forced her lips to curve upward in a smile. "I'll be fine."

She had allies now, even if only a few. Along with her chief lady-in-waiting, several of Lishu's other ladies had recently begun to be more considerate toward her. The maid who came to get the laundry occasionally spoke with her too. Lishu could just imagine what her former chief lady-in-waiting must have thought about her talking to someone of such low birth, but ever since the rebuke she'd received after trying to take Lishu's mirror from her, the woman had been far more quiet.

The laundry maid had told Lishu that there was a book she loved but couldn't read, so Lishu had been making a copy for her without telling the other ladies-in-waiting. It was a small secret, as secrets went, but with as little excitement as there was in the rear palace, it was enough to set the heart pounding.

Ah-Duo, meanwhile, looked at Lishu with concern. "And can you do your job?"

"I'll...be fine," Lishu said again.

Her job: in other words, her duty as a consort. Sometimes that meant officiating at ceremonies, but Lishu knew that wasn't what Ah-Duo was referring to.

She was talking about the Emperor's visits.

To this point, His Majesty had never ordered Lishu to be his bedfellow on account of her age. But she was sixteen now—no longer "too young." When this journey was over, one of those visits would be waiting for her.

"You're Sir Uryuu's daughter. What happened on this trip need not affect you. I'm sure you can still talk to the Night Prince."

The Night Prince—the man who had formerly used the identity of the eunuch Jinshi in the rear palace. It turned out that identity had been a cover; in reality, he was someone whose name could hardly be spoken. People referred to him as "the Emperor's younger brother" or "the Night Prince" instead.

But as to that subject, Lishu could only shake her head. Yes, she'd been quite smitten with him when he'd been in the rear palace. A youth who looked like he had jumped out of a picture scroll, who always had a gracious smile even for her? She knew very well that it amounted to flattery, because she was an upper consort, but it still made her happy to have someone call her by her name and say kind things about her.

Before—long ago, when she was callow and ignorant—Lishu might have responded joyfully. The idea that someone so beautiful, someone she had been so taken with, could conceivably become her husband was like a dream.

But Lishu understood: the young man's captivating smile was one he could and would show to anyone and everyone. She'd realized that almost a year ago now.

It was the moment when she'd seen the Imperial younger brother's unguarded smile—not the one like a celestial nymph, but one belonging to an ordinary young man. Lishu had never seen it before, and it stabbed her with the realization that she was not special to him.

"I couldn't. He would be wasted on me," she said.

Ah-Duo grinned at that. "Ho ho. Happy being the Emperor's upper consort, then?"

"Ack! That's not what I—!" Lishu waved her hands as if she could push the idea away. She felt she wasn't even fit to be His Majesty's consort. Empress Gyokuyou and Consort Lihua both seemed to Lishu as if they lived above the clouds, so far removed from her that when she was seated next to them at banquets, she always found herself wondering if it was really acceptable for her to even be there. Sometimes she noticed herself being more highhanded than she needed to with her ladies-in-waiting in an attempt to shore up her own confidence. She burned with shame at the thought.

"No? Then what, if I may ask, did you mean?" Ah-Duo gave her a teasing smile.

Lishu puffed out her cheeks—but not too much. Strangely, she never really found it unpleasant when Ah-Duo teased her.

Lishu thought there was someone more suited to the Night Prince—as there was to the Emperor. She was quiet for a long moment.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" Ah-Duo said, her eyes dancing, but Lishu continued to gaze silently at her. Ah-Duo looked like a handsome young man, but she was a woman. Once, she had even been His Majesty's only consort.

Both Empress Gyokuyou, with the exotic allure of her red hair and green eyes, and Consort Lihua, who was like a blooming rose, and clever, too, were fit to be the centerpiece of His Majesty's garden. But when Lishu asked herself who was most suited of all to stand alongside the Emperor, her mind went back to when His Majesty was still the heir apparent. How he would occasionally

pop his head in to steal a snack when Ah-Duo and Lishu were taking tea together, and would bounce Lishu on his knee. She was an ignorant child, then, and called him Uncle Beardy. It would bring a wry smile to His Majesty's face, while Ah-Duo held her sides laughing.

Now, it seemed unimaginable.

Lishu would munch on some sweet treat and watch them, thinking, So this is what a husband and wife look like. She thought they went together better than any couple in the world.

Maybe that was why she couldn't bring herself to accept this, even if she knew it was inevitable. Knew it had been inevitable from the moment she became a consort.

Lishu was, and would be, one more obstacle between Ah-Duo and the Emperor. She knew that love in real life was never as beautiful as it was in the picture scrolls, that this was what she had been born to. Yet she worried that Ah-Duo, whom she adored, would come to despise her because of this. She thought, in fact, that Ah-Duo might still be a consort if Lishu hadn't come to the rear palace.

In her mind, though, neither did that mean she should become the Night Prince's wife. Ultimately, she found herself simply swept along by life, not knowing what she really wanted. She knew love, or perhaps "love," from her scrolls and novels—but she didn't understand what it really was.

"You can just see the capital," Ah-Duo said. Though still hazy in the distance, it was possible to make out the vast outer wall surrounding the palace. "I'll head back to our quarters. I want to get my things in order." Ah-Duo kept only a minimum of serving women; she largely looked after herself. It made her extremely impressive in Lishu's eyes.

"Me too!" Lishu let go of the railing and made to follow AhDuo. "Ow!" she exclaimed.

The wood of the railing was somewhat rough, it seemed, for a splinter had pierced her palm. She tried to press her palm with her finger to draw it out, but all she succeeded in doing was making herself bleed. Frustrated by the shock of pain, she found another memory bubbling to mind.

A servant of the Night Prince had saved Lishu two separate times—the first from bandits, the second from a wild beast from a foreign land. On the first occasion, he had easily driven off the bandits, but Lishu, cowering behind, hadn't been able to see his face. It was only when the lion had attacked that she'd seen him face-to-face for the first time. She'd imagined he would be older, but she realized they couldn't have been more than five years apart. She heard later that he was a member of the Ma clan.

The young man had hurt his hand—was it because of the allout swing he'd taken at the lion?—and was being tended to; Rei had tried to treat him, but the young man had declined her. The apothecary girl had noticed, however, and given him first aid over his objections. The apothecary was so aloof, and the young man, despite his griping, had allowed himself to be treated. Lishu saw that they must be good friends, and the thought made her sad.

More than once during their stay, she had fretted about whether she ought to thank him, but in the end she was so embarrassed that he'd seen her reduced to a sniffling wreck that she couldn't work herself up to talk to him. The young man might be someone else's servant, but he also came from a respectable house himself. Maybe he took Lishu for a little girl who didn't know her manners. She wished she could at least send him a letter, but her position didn't allow that either. Even if she could have sent one, though, she knew she never would have. She just didn't have it in her.

Lishu felt a wave of depression. She returned to her cabin, gazing at the splinter in her hand.

"I guess this is goodbye for a little while, then," Ah-Duo said lightly as she climbed into another carriage. Originally, they were supposed to part ways at the ship's landing, but Lishu had begged, and convinced Ah-Duo to let her share a carriage back to the capital. Lishu really wished they could have been together all the way to the palace, but she gave up on that idea. Ah-Duo might have indulged her, but Lishu could see her own attendant growing ever more uncomfortable. She decided not to bother AhDuo any further.

Lishu watched Ah-Duo through the window of her carriage as it departed, and then her own transport started back to the rear palace. The six weeks of travel, to which she was unaccustomed, had been hard on her. She'd spent day after day in a carriage or on a ship, feeling her skin bake under the hot sun. There had been bugs, and to cap it all off, she'd been attacked first by bandits and then by a lion. Talk about kicking someone when she was down.

Yet the truth was, it had been fun. Life in the rear palace boasted every convenience, but it was boring. Lishu was glad to finally be seeing her ladies-in-waiting after so long, but she knew that included some who didn't like her very much. Without them, though, Lishu would never have been able to maintain her dignity as a consort.

She looked at the lady-in-waiting beside her—ever since the lion attack, she'd served Lishu with a look of fear on her face. She'd been assigned to wait upon the consort by Lishu's father, yet she had all but ignored Lishu—maybe she'd been told to do so by Lishu's half-sister, or maybe she believed the rumors about the consort being an illegitimate child. Maybe both. Lishu was secretly relieved that the woman wouldn't be coming back to the rear palace with her.

The carriage passed through the gate of the palace, the driver presenting a seal that served in lieu of written permission to enter.

Lishu had assumed they would proceed directly to the rear palace, so she was surprised when the carriage came to a halt with the rear palace gate still some ways off. "What's going on?" she asked the lady-in-waiting with her.

Uneasily, the woman tried to get a peek at the driver, then she looked back at Lishu just as uncomfortably. "It appears they wish to speak with you, ma'am."

At that moment, several middle-aged women boarded the carriage. Lishu hadn't seen them in the rear palace—from their outfits, she assumed they were court ladies who served in the palace proper.

"Lady Lishu," said the one in the center, kneeling before her. "Please accept our humblest apologies, but for the next month, you will be asked to live outside the rear palace." She lifted her head and looked Lishu in the eye.

Chapter 9: Homecoming

The horse whinnied as it came to a stop in front of the Verdigris House.

That was a long trip, Maomao thought, climbing out of the carriage and nodding politely to the driver. He unloaded her luggage with a thump. It included the outfits that had been thought necessary for the journey, which were now hers to keep, along with some unique products and unusual medicines from the western capital—and a gigantic load of potatoes.

"Maomao, my goodness... Are you planning to open a new business?" The old madam walked up, a pipe clutched in her withered hand. "I'm happy enough that you got them to send us rice, but I wish you would think about the quantity. The storehouse won't hold any more!"

She grabbed one of the dried potatoes out of a basket. It was raw still, but growing eyes, so it would have to serve for a seed potato.

After the showdown at the quack doctor's village, Maomao had at least wound up with as much rice as they would sell her. She'd let the madam know by letter—the first batch must have arrived already.

"And what's this?" the madam asked, looking at the potato dusted in white powder.

Maomao took it, tore a piece off, and put it in her mouth. For a potato, it was awfully sweet—almost as sweet as a dried chestnut.

The madam took a piece too and chewed. Her eyes narrowed.

"It would be better to grill it a little first. It's a bit tough for me." She shouted for one of the menservants, instructing him to haul the basket away.

"Nobody said you could have all of them," Maomao said.

"Nobody had to. I know for a fact you and Chou-u can't eat all those by yourselves. I'm helping you out here, and listen to you.

Not even a word of thanks."

The past month and a half clearly hadn't dulled the madam's stinginess one bit.

Maomao, though, wasn't going to take this lying down. "Even a year's free rent for the apothecary shop was cheap for all that rice, don't you think?" she said. Practically pocket change. She'd written in her letter that instead of paying for the rice directly, the madam could give her free rent. The fact that the old woman hadn't said anything about it, Maomao took for agreement.

"Yeah, yeah. This is separate. You got these for free, right? Well, share with your neighbors," the madam said. "Heeeey, everyone, Maomao's home! And she brought souvenirs!"

The old woman never let up! Her shout brought a crowd of courtesans. Work was over and they should have been resting, but the mercenary impulse was strong.

"Freckles!" Chou-u came bursting out of the crowd, Zulin obediently following her "boss." But there was something else with them... "Yeesh, you sure took your time! You just up and leave, and then you don't come home for nearly two months?!

That wasn't part of the deal!"

Yeah, well, Maomao hadn't bargained for it either. What bothered her more, though, was the creature behind them.

"Hey, what's that behind you?" she demanded of Chou-u. "Don't tell me you forgot about Zulin! What a jerk!"

"That's not what I'm talking about. Behind her." Maomao pointed at a calico cat sitting and grooming herself.

"What, you don't remember Maomao? Man, that's cold," Chouu said.

"Oh, believe me, I remember her," Maomao said. But the furball was supposed to be at the quack's village. What was she doing here in the pleasure district? "What I want to know is, why is she here?"

It was the madam who answered. "She was in with the rice!

They couldn't exactly send the cat back by herself, could they? Anyway," she added, "I'd just spotted some mice in the storehouse, so I think she can stay for a while. And she's friendly —makes her popular with the customers. We have to do something about her habit of stealing side dishes at dinner, though."

The madam was a practical woman. She would never keep a pet—but an animal who could make itself useful, that was all right.

Maomao (the girl) gave Maomao (the cat) a dark look. The furball narrowed her eyes, yawned a little, and said, "Meeeow!"

At that moment, someone stumbled out of the apothecary's shop.

"Y-You're home?" asked the man, Sazen. Maomao had tasked him with running the shop while she was away. He'd never been the most robust-looking person, but now he appeared haggard, and he had an unkempt beard on his face. He stumbled over to Maomao and promptly collapsed on the ground. "The shop... It's all yours..." he managed, and then he was out cold.

Chou-u poked at him with a stick he'd gotten somewhere. "Stop that," the madam said, ordering a manservant to get Sazen out of the way.

"People were coming down with colds left, right, and center while you were away, Freckles. We used up the medicine you made before you left, but people kept begging us for more," Chou-u told Maomao.

She nodded: it made sense. People often got sick as the seasons changed, so there hadn't been enough medicine even though she'd made more than she had expected to need. Very few people in the pleasure district could afford to go to the doctor for proper treatment—taking some medicine was the most they could do. And a lot of them wouldn't even do that.

"Some of them were really pushy," Chou-u added. "One even stole some medicine, because he said he'd gotten it for free last year!"

Maomao's old man had probably given it to the guy—a bad habit of his. He would hand out treatments gratis to anyone who came weeping and crying, and once you'd given away medicine one time, everybody wanted it for free. No doubt he'd given the store's stocks away generously until the madam had noticed.

Maomao went into the apothecary's shop. She saw a mortar and pestle containing some half-made medicine, along with a medical book on the ground. She picked up the book and flipped the pages, which had smudges on them, as if Sazen had handled them with dirty fingers. Normally she might have given him a piece of her mind for failing to treat the book with proper respect, but when she saw him lolling there, she found she couldn't say anything.

I might just have gotten a lucky break with him, she thought. He wasn't very skilled, but he didn't just give up either. That was what really mattered.

Maomao went through the drawers of the medicine chest, tallying up which drugs needed to be replenished. Then she set about cleaning up the messy floor.

It was humid in the shop. Time had passed while she was busy cleaning up from her time away, and it was now early summer. Rain fell continuously with no sign of letting up. A young man— the scion of an important merchant house—walked by with a prostitute Maomao knew, trotting along under an umbrella as if to illustrate that this season had its own charms. The woman probably hated getting her clothes all wet, but she wasn't going to miss this chance to go out. The courtesans' activities could be quite limited: the brothel was like a cage, and the courtesans were the little birds within it.

"You can almost hear the crickets in here," Meimei said with a resentful look at the woman outside. She was chewing on a dried potato with her luscious lips. The potatoes were quite tasty if you put them over some heat for a few minutes to soften them. They were sweet in their own way, not like one of those snacks that used sugar or honey.

"It was so hard on poor Sazen too," she added. Epidemics aside, Sazen might not have collapsed if Maomao's trip had been at a slightly different time of year. Sazen, who had a propensity to feel responsible at the strangest moments, had evidently begrudged himself even time to sleep in order to mix up enough medicinal herbs.

"You don't need to get some sleep, Sister?" Maomao asked. She was sure Meimei had been on the job the night before. The older woman had just gotten out of the bath, and her hair was still dripping. To sleep when it was time to sleep: that was part of a courtesan's job as well. Meanwhile, a high-class courtesan like Meimei had practice in the afternoons to keep her skills sharp.

Meimei, however, only munched lazily on the potato and looked at Maomao closely. "Listen—yesterday, my patron..."

"Yes?"

Meimei had three men who were her patrons, as Maomao recalled. One was a civil official, and the other two were merchants; all of them loved board games.

"He said I should come to his place," Meimei said. Come to his place: in other words, he wanted to take Meimei home with him. If he was talking like that, he wasn't just asking her to go for a little walk with him.

"He wants to buy you out?"

"That's what it comes down to."

For a courtesan, being bought out was akin to getting married.

It was an opportunity to be freed from the cage of the brothel. Meimei, though, didn't look happy about it. Maomao could understand: her taste in men was extraordinarily poor.

"He's bad news, this customer?" Maomao asked.

"No, I wouldn't say that."

"Is the madam opposed?"

"Oh, she loves the idea."

That might seem to make everything simple, but this decision would influence the rest of Meimei's life. Maomao could well imagine she wouldn't want to make it too lightly. It was not a choice that could be easily undone once it had been made.

Meimei was still a popular courtesan, but who knew how long that would last? Age was the unavoidable barrier for some in her line of work, and most women would have retired from the profession long ago.

"This guy, his wife has passed away, but he's got kids," Meimei explained.

"Hmm." Maomao didn't sound particularly interested. She hadn't meant to respond so apathetically, but she'd suddenly found herself picturing the freak strategist. In the end, she'd given him an alcoholic drink to knock him out and then made her escape before he woke up. Lahan had come with her, keen to get back to the capital so he could coordinate about the potatoes. Rikuson had effectively drawn the short straw and had to stay behind. The strategist had been muttering in his sleep again about making a book, and at the moment he was probably ignoring all his work to focus on that task.

Maomao wondered if Meimei still had feelings for the likes of him. Did she know there was no longer a bought courtesan at his house? Maomao briefly wondered if she should tell her older sister about it—but the information seemed as likely to make Meimei's life more difficult as easier, so she stayed quiet.

"Kids don't tend to like me very much," Meimei said.

"Can't you just ignore them?" Maomao replied.

"Interesting idea..." For some reason, she seemed to be studying Maomao. She'd finished the potato and was wiping the grease from her fingers with a handkerchief. "Speaking of kids, where's that naughty tyke of yours?" she asked, attempting a change of subject.

"Chou-u? No idea. Probably with Ukyou or Sazen."

"Hm. There's something I'd like him to draw for me."

"Porno?"

Meimei grinned and gave Maomao an affectionate pinch of the cheek. Maomao regretted the question; she realized that sort of joke was more Pairin's thing.

"I thought for sure everyone would be sick of him by now, but his popularity seems surprisingly enduring," Maomao said, rubbing her reddened cheek. Chou-u had been doing booming business drawing portraits of the courtesans and menservants, but Maomao had assumed the interest was mainly driven by novelty.

"Sure. That boy, he's talented." Meimei ducked out of the apothecary's shop and went for the clerk's desk, where she picked up a folding fan. The bamboo frame was covered with quality paper and decorated with a picture of a cat playing with a ball. The animal was a calico—maybe Chou-u had taken Maomao for his model—and despite the paucity of lines used to depict it, the creature seemed startlingly alive.

Just at that moment—almost as if she knew what they were talking about—Maomao the cat came by; her tail stood up and she let out a "Meow!"

"When his portrait business started running out of steam, the boy began coming up with things like this," Meimei said. "He knew lots of courtesans like cats. I wondered why he was spending all his time following Maomao around—and then he came up with this!"

Maomao (the girl this time) didn't say anything. Chou-u certainly was thorough. And although the fan's frame was old, the paper was new. He'd refreshed it with stuff presumably sent from the quack's village. So the paper had been given to him, and he'd refurbished the frame—in other words, the materials had been free.

Maomao had to admit that Chou-u's drawing ability appeared to have improved substantially—maybe it just had to do with how quickly children grew and matured. She was sure that before, his drawings had been more superficial.

"Oh, that's right—the boy's learning from a painter, I think," Meimei said.

"That's news to me." Maomao frowned.

"You were away in the west for so long. A customer from a big merchant house brought this guy along—a cutting-edge painter, or so he said."

"Ah," Maomao replied. It was a familiar story: rich people bought paintings or ceramics all the time; it was sort of a sport for them. When that wasn't enough, they would surround themselves with the artists who created works they particularly liked. It was an expensive hobby, one only the rich could indulge in.

"Believe it or not, he said he'd introduce the guy to Joka," Meimei added.

"Yikes!"

Joka was one of the "three princesses" of the Verdigris House, but she despised men. Civil officials or students might at least be able to talk to her about poetry or the civil examinations, but painting wasn't exactly her wheelhouse.

"That's not all," Meimei said. "This painter? It turns out he specializes in portraits of beautiful women." Her gloom of moments before was gone, replaced by a grin and excited, gossipy waves of the hand.

"I'm guessing our dear sister didn't take it well," Maomao said.

"Oh, no she didn't! She was so angry. And you know what she does when she gets angry—she writes poetry. Then some ignorant rookie courtesan copied one of Joka's poems exactly and sent it to a customer! There was a ruckus!"

Joka was a specialist at poems and lyrics—but one had to take care with anything she wrote in anger. The verses might look beautiful at first glance, but they were soaked with venom. She couldn't be allowed to write to customers when she was in a bad mood—the madam would make sure to check Joka's outgoing mail at moments like that.

While Pairin's appetite for men could make her hard to handle, Joka was at the other end of the scale, and was equally troublesome.

Maomao the cat wove around Meimei's legs and mewed for a treat. Meimei picked her up and put her on her knees, scratching her under the chin.

"So this is the painter Chou-u has been learning from?" Maomao (not the cat) asked.

"Uh-huh. Joka was hell-bent on sending that nasty letter, and she used Chou-u as her messenger."

Mr. Merchant, it seemed, desperately wanted Mr. Painter to create a picture of Joka. The intention had been for the man to do a rough sketch when he met the courtesan, and then complete his final draft later. Nice and easy. But Joka wasn't about to sit there and let him study her. Instead, she conducted the entire meeting from behind a folding screen—rude, but effective.

Undeterred, Mr. Merchant and Mr. Painter had left their address and pleaded with Joka to get in touch with them. Normally, a letter would be delivered by an apprentice courtesan accompanied by a manservant, but a young girl couldn't be asked to deliver a missive of such vitriol, so Joka called for Chou-u instead. A neat way to skirt the madam's vetting process.

Chou-u delivered the letter—all well and good—but he also took a liking to Mr. Painter's pictures and started spending time with him.

"He might even be over there today," Meimei said.

"And after I warned him not to go out," Maomao grumbled. She wished everyone else would think about what watching out for Chou-u meant. He still dragged one leg—if anything happened to him, he would be hard-pressed to react.

"Heeey! Maomao!" she heard Ukyou call.

Maomao stood up, ignoring the cat, who had rolled over on her back and was begging for food. "What's wrong?" she called back.

Ukyou looked distressed.

"It's Chou-u!"

"What's he done this time?" Maomao scowled, looking as if she was not at all surprised by this development.

"Please—just come with me," Ukyou said, taking her hand.

"Some friend of his is dying!"

Chapter 10: The Bad Dumplings

Ukyou brought Maomao to a mansion in the middle of the city. In the capital, the farther north you went, the better public safety was, and that was where most of the middle-class houses were located.

One of the houses looked more weathered than the others. It must have once been resplendent in its own way, but now some of the roof tiles were missing, and the clay wall had given way in places, revealing the bamboo frame underneath. It looked less like age and more like that the owner didn't keep up with maintenance.

"Here, this is it." Ukyou knocked on the door of the tumbledown house. "Sorry, but this is as far as I can go. I'll catch hell from the madam if I don't get back," he said.

"Yeah, I understand," Maomao said, but when she went into the dilapidated house, it was with a look of some curiosity. Ukyou certainly seemed to be a busy man. "What's this?" she wondered aloud as she entered. Despite the battered state of the house's exterior, inside it was remarkably neat and tidy.

That wasn't what surprised her, though. Instead it was the walls. They were painted white and covered in stucco, on which pictures had been painted. A peach garden spread across one entire wall—but it wasn't three heroic warriors biting into the peaches, but a beautiful woman. She was shaped a bit like a peach herself, her hair was pitch-black, and white teeth peeked out from between lips that looked as luscious as the fruit she was eating.

She was the very essence of the peach-village immortal.

That's the sort of thing you only have time to do if you've got a patron, Maomao thought. Meimei had said the man did paintings of beautiful women, but Maomao had never imagined something so spectacular. She studied the wall closely—the painted surfaces had a unique sheen to them, not like the paintings she was used to. She was just about to run a finger along the wall in hopes of figuring out what the material was when she heard pounding footsteps.

"Freckles! Hey, Freckles! What are you standing around for? Come look at him, quick!" It was Chou-u, his face pale.

Shit, that's right. Maomao did have a bad habit of becoming completely engaged in whatever had her attention. She allowed Chou-u to drag her through the house, until they reached what looked like a living room. It was littered with various and sundry objects, though: colorful powders (probably pigments), eggshells (for some reason), a white dust that she took to be stucco, and another substance for thickening it.

Right in the middle of the room, a man lay on a couch. Another man with a worried expression was beside him. The man on the couch was haggard and lacked facial hair, and his pallor had gone beyond pale; he was practically white. The only color in his skin seemed to be on his fingertips, which were covered in paint. The man standing beside him looked fastidious, except that his hands, too, were dirty.

"You have to look at the master!" Chou-u said.

The "master" must be the famous progressive artist. There was a bucket full of vomit beside the couch.

Maomao began to examine the man. His arms and legs twitched occasionally. She opened his eyes and looked at his pupils; she took his pulse. As far as she could tell, he showed every sign of having a case of food poisoning.

"What are his symptoms?" she asked.

"I guess he was throwing up and having diarrhea for a long time," Chou-u said.

"When it finally subsided, he seemed to be suffering with the chill, so I laid him down," added the man standing nearby.

"And who's this?" Maomao asked.

"He's the master's work friend! Come on, hurry it up!"

Chou-u could browbeat her all he wanted, but there was only so much Maomao could do. If you didn't know what toxin was at work, you couldn't treat it. If it was true the man had been vomiting and having diarrhea, though, there was one thing he would certainly be lacking.

"Chou-u, get me some salt and sugar. If there's none in the house, get some from somewhere else," Maomao said. She pulled a coin pouch out of the folds of her robe and tossed it at him.

"Got it," he said and scurried out of the room. He might not be able to run well because of his half-paralyzed body, but he could be trusted with this much of an errand, at least.

"I'm going to use the kitchen," Maomao told the work friend, who nodded.

She went to the kitchen and looked in the water jug to make sure the water was still good. She would have preferred to boil it, but there wasn't time. "Is this fresh water?" she asked.

"It was purchased from the drinking-water vendor just yesterday, so it should be all right," the man said. Yes, if they'd bought the water, then it should be safe. The same might not hold in the rougher parts of town, but around here, it was unlikely anyone would sell something adulterated. Maomao thought they could more or less safely rule out the possibility that the artist had drunk contaminated water. She took a scooperful, sniffed it, then sipped, but as far as she could tell, it smelled and tasted normal. The house might not look like much, but at least they could afford decent water.

"Do you have any idea what might have happened?" Maomao asked the fastidious man.

"I think so," he said. Despite his distress, he had enough presence of mind—and enough courtesy—to offer her a chair. He sat on a barrel instead. "He's more than happy to eat spoiled food

—it's a bad habit of his. I suspect that's the problem here." Food poisoning, then, as Maomao had thought.

"He found some stuffed dumplings that he ate. They tasted spoiled, so we spit them out right away, but he swore up and down that they would be fine if we cooked them, and he ate them up."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Ah, the kid was with us."'

The kid? That must have been what they called Chou-u.

Bad food didn't magically become good again just because you cooked it a little more. The poisonous element of the spoilage often remained. A moldy dumpling, for example, could still be toxic even if you scraped the mold off. Not many people worried about it, though. Sometimes they didn't have the luxury to worry about a touch of poison, when they were facing a choice between eating bad food and not eating at all.

"Argh! What am I going to do? Even if he gets back to work on the painting, it won't be done in time." The man brushed his fingers across a large board resting against one wall. It was painted white and bore a sketch, a faint outline of a woman. No doubt the next step would be to color her in, the picture growing ever more lifelike as the colors became more vivid. "He promised it would be done ten days from now!"

Ten days? So there was some sort of deadline involved.

"I'm back!" Chou-u said, coming in with sugar and salt, which he handed to Maomao. She put them in the water she'd prepared, mixing them in, then taking some cotton she had with her and dipping it in the water. She let the water drip from the cloth into the man's mouth, administering fluid several times.

She was torn about whether to keep him warm or induce a fever. If nothing else, the filthy clothes he was wearing now wouldn't be able to absorb his sweat. She had them change the artist into a cotton overgarment that could soak up the perspiration. It couldn't be doing him much good lying on a couch either; she got a proper bed ready and then set about preparing stomach medicine.

The man vomited two more times while she was doing all this, but there wasn't much to bring up; only the acrid smell of stomach acid pervaded the room.

Maybe keeping the sweat off him and giving him liquids was having an effect, because by nighttime he seemed calmer and his spasming had stopped. Maomao, Chou-u, and the man's partner were all exhausted. There was nothing in this house except painting supplies, and even getting the bedroom in a usable state had required asking for help from the neighbors. The mattress had been as hard as an old rice cracker and just as moldy. What kind of life had this man been living?

Maomao and Chou-u were each slumped in a chair. The couch on which the master of the house had been lying was now open, but quite honestly, nobody was interested in using it until it had been thoroughly cleaned.

"You think he'll make it, Freckles?" Chou-u asked, concern in his voice.

"Probably," she said. It was impossible to be certain, but assuming nothing unexpected happened, she thought the man would regain consciousness. They would have to try to keep him still for a while, and give him food that would aid his digestion. The house didn't even have enough rice to make thin rice gruel, though; they would have to go and get some. For that matter, there weren't any decent pots to cook in either.

Adroitly reading the situation, the other man said, "I'll go get some rice and a clay pot from my place." It couldn't have been easy; he was tired too. Was he that close to the man who owned this house?

"What does our patient usually eat, anyway?" Maomao mumbled.

She was sort of talking to herself, but Chou-u answered, "The master always buys stuff from street stalls, or sometimes the neighbors give him food. Today it was those dumplings."

"That explains the state he's in," Maomao said, provoking a look of disgust from Chou-u. "What?"

"Nothing. Just thinking about that stuff we ate today. The other guy and I both shared the dumplings with the master, but they were so disgusting, we spat them out. I thought they were weird before I tasted them, though."

One thing that was strange about them, for example, was the way the master had said "I don't remember seeing these around here" when he saw the dumplings on the table. That might seem like a red flag, but the artist had nonetheless offered them to his guests.

"I guess I appreciate that he was trying to be hospitable and all, but I feel like there's a lot of stuff around here that maybe he shouldn't be eating." Chou-u sounded unimpressed. One always heard that there were plenty of weirdos among artists, and it seemed to be true.

Maomao leaned her elbows on the armrest and put her chin in her hands. "I'm surprised you were even able to put something like that in your mouth."

"I mean, the other guy said he would eat one too, and they did look good."

The other guy; in other words, the work friend from earlier. Chou-u was always hungry, so he was apt to eat anything that seemed remotely edible. It was enough to make one wonder if he had ever really been the son of a fancy household.

"But it was so bitter! I think maybe the bean filling had gone bad or something," he said.

"Bitter?" Maomao asked.

"Yeah, just awful! I was like, ugh! and spat it out. So did the other guy."

So it looked fine, but it tasted bitter? Maomao crossed her arms and cocked her head. "Was it really bitter? Not more like sour?"

"Yeah, it was bitter. 'Sour' isn't the word I would use."

"And the filling didn't smell funny at all?"

"If it had, I probably wouldn't have eaten it." Chou-u had taken off his shoes and was kicking his feet. They had the window open to change the air in the room, and it had gotten humid inside. Night had fallen; Maomao found a lamp lying around and lit it. It was an unusual-looking light—from his paints to his sources of illumination, this artist seemed to like imported stuff—but it burned fish oil, so Maomao was used to the smell. (In fact, Maomao the cat had started lapping up the oil recently; it was proving quite a problem.)

"Did the filling have any threadlike things? Anything stuck to it?"

"Stuck to it? Well, now that you mention it..." Chou-u seemed to have thought of something. "I guess it might have seemed a little slimy. I spat it out so fast that I'm not sure. The other guy said it was rotten and to spit it out. We washed our mouths with

water and didn't swallow any of it." Maomao was perplexed.

"But I don't think those dumplings would've tasted better just 'cause you cooked them. I wonder if there's something wrong with the master's tongue." Chou-u looked at the sleeping man with real exasperation.

Something wrong with his tongue, Maomao thought. She was

beginning to see a light at the end of this tunnel. "What did you do with your leftovers, then?" she asked.

"Threw them away! They're in the trash bin outside. The master was all upset about us wasting food, but at least he didn't go try to take them out of the trash."

No sooner had Maomao heard that than she grabbed the lamp and went outside, where she located the wooden box for the trash. A disgusting odor emanated from it—the garbage was still inside. Right on top were two half-eaten dumplings. Maomao was glad she'd made it before the men came to take the trash away to be slop for pigs.

"Yikes! What are you doing? That's gross!" Chou-u said when he saw her digging through the garbage. But Maomao had no compunctions about picking up a mangled dumpling with her bare hands. She looked at the filling and discovered minced pork and several kinds of vegetable. She pulled the dumpling apart, trying to figure out exactly what was inside.

Chou-u watched her. "Freckles... Please stop grinning while you paw through raw garbage. It's super scary."

A smile must have come over her face without her even realizing it. If she was smiling, it was from excitement—she couldn't ignore the rush.

"Is this what your master or whoever cooked and ate?"

"Yeah. I guarantee he's got no sense of taste or something. It tasted awful, but he kept saying how delicious it was."

A hypothesis was beginning to solidify in Maomao's mind.

"What about that other guy? What did he come here for today?"

"Probably to stop the master, I guess. The master swore that when he finished the job he was doing, he was going to leave on a trip immediately." Chou-u looked down, dejected.

"What kind of trip?"

"Well, he said he studied painting in the west once, way back when. He saw this beautiful woman there and he never forgot her.

That's why he only ever paints pictures of women, he says."

The west? It reminded her of the lamp, the paints—everything had had a strong whiff of the exotic about it.

"The other guy keeps trying to tell him that there's no way a woman he saw decades ago is still around, but he's desperate to find her again."

The flow of time was not merciful; no matter how beautiful, no woman could ward off the effects of age. Even a lady who once wept tears of pearl could end up as a withered, greedy old hag. If there were such a thing as a woman who didn't age, she would have to be an immortal or a faerie or something.

"Wh-What in the world are you doing?"

Ah, speak of the devil: the "other guy" had returned with rice and a pot. He was so shocked that he dropped the pot and came running over.

In the darkness, covered in garbage, Maomao must have looked a fright. She still hadn't wiped the unsettling grin off her face either. Even she found it weird to be smiling so hard—but she couldn't stop. Instead she grinned at the man, clutching handfuls of trash in both hands. Then she looked at Chou-u.

"Chou-u, you can go home. One of the menservants should be coming for you soon." She assumed Ukyou, thoughtful as he was, would show up to see what was going on now that the sun had gone down. He could ask someone to cover for him at work.

"What? No way I'm leaving yet!"

"You've got to be tired. At least go to sleep until someone comes to get you."

"Yeah, well... Wash your hands, Freckles." He had no real comeback, meaning he was tired. He yawned and went inside.

"Honestly... What are you doing?" the painter's partner asked again, watching Maomao from a safe distance. He was looking at the garbage in her hands.

"Could I talk to you for a few minutes? I'll wash my hands first." Maomao put down the garbage and headed for the well.

Maomao and the man were sitting in the kitchen again, Chou-u and the master asleep in the next room. They spoke quietly so as not to wake them.

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" the man asked.

"Do you know much about poisonous mushrooms?" Maomao said.

"I can't say I thought that's where this discussion was going," the man said, but he wouldn't quite look at her.

A few things about this case had struck Maomao as unusual. For one, you'd expect something rotten to taste sour. Sure, some things might turn bitter when they went bad, but a bitter flavor wasn't enough to be certain you were dealing with rotten food. And if the taste was bad enough to cause the other two to spit it out, why hadn't it bothered the old master?

Then there was the question of where the dumplings had even come from.

"Did you know that there are certain mushrooms that are bitter when raw, but that the unpleasant flavor goes away when they're cooked? What's more, those mushrooms are poisonous—they're often behind cases of food poisoning at this time of year."

This particular mushroom was frequently mistaken for an edible variety used in cooking. The surface was slightly slimy, which would fit with Chou-u's description, as well as the mushrooms Maomao had observed in the filling of the dumplings in the trash.

If they'd gotten the food from a street stall or something, there might have been a public outcry about it—but in any case, nobody would go on eating something that tasted truly terrible.

Had they gotten the food from someone in the neighborhood? But there hadn't been any talk of people getting upset stomachs— someone would have told them if there were.

Neither the street stall nor the neighborhood explanations seemed very likely.

"May I ask who brought the dumplings?" Maomao said. She looked at the paintings of beautiful women that seemed to adorn every wall. Each looked like a gorgeous female immortal, and each had distinctive, individual characteristics, suggesting the artist had used a different model for each one.

The deadline for the work the artist was doing now was drawing near, and when it was over, the master had claimed he would leave for the west. This man here had been trying to stop him. He claimed to be a colleague, but there was nothing about him that really said artist.

"What are you trying to say? It was just food poisoning," the man said.

"Yes, it certainly was that. Food poisoning caused by some mushrooms."

The dumplings weren't actually rotten—but they were poisoned, and had been from the start.

"Why did you do it?" Maomao asked. "Why did you put poison in the dumplings? Why were you so desperate to make it look like an accident that you even got Chou-u involved?"

"I d-don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't get the impression you intended to kill him," Maomao said, and the man didn't respond. "If anything, I think you sincerely don't want him to die. Am I wrong?"

The man was silent for a moment, then he closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. "The poison proved more potent than I'd expected." This man was the straightforward type—this seemed as good as a confession. "I was wrong to bring the kid into this, but if it saved him, then I'm glad I did it."

Maomao didn't know what she would have done had the man turned out to be the violent type. But he stayed calm; more than anything, he sounded worried about the old painter. On his face was a combination of relief and regret.

"I see how glad you are that he's all right. Why poison him in the first place, then?" Maomao asked.

"Because he was leaving! He wouldn't shut up about his trip to the west, but he doesn't mean to come back!"

"He was moving there permanently?"

"Yeah. He's consumed with the idea...again."

The man got up from his seat and went into the next room. He gazed lovingly at the assembled paintings, then went to another room deeper into the house. This room, too, had walls covered in pictures of beautiful women.

"These paintings are stunning," Maomao said, squinting at them. It occurred to her that if a certain elegant beauty had been there, he could practically have blended right in. (An irrelevant thought if there ever was one!) He was probably stuck under an avalanche of work at the palace by now. "I hear there are even merchants who want to collect his work. If he were to take commissions, he could probably make a comfortable living."

"Yes, but he can't send the painting out until it's finished."

"And this westward journey of his, he talked to you about it?" "Yes, but he insisted it was just a trip. I guess he felt he had to lie even to me. It must be a lie—otherwise, why would it have taken him the past six months to get ready?"

This man had just wanted to give the artist a bout of food poisoning—a reason to postpone his deadline. Maomao, having been all but dragged to the western capital, understood that any venture even farther west would require substantial preparations. Proof of identification to get you across the border, a caravan to take you. If you missed your opportunity, you'd practically have to start over from square one. That was what this man had been hoping would happen.

"Argh... This is awful. I thought he really might die." The man put his head in his hands and mumbled, "Please don't die..." He was genuinely, deeply worried.

"Couldn't you have used a milder poison?" Maomao asked, although she realized it might sound odd to speak of any poison as being mild.

"No—he's got an iron stomach and a constitution to match," the man said. It was that indefatigable stomach that had convinced the artist that anything could be eaten if cooked properly—and which had convinced this man that only a good, strong poison would do the job.

That's why he had needed Chou-u, to make it look like it really was food poisoning. With a third party to testify that the dumplings were spoiled, nobody would suspect anything else when the painter got sick to his stomach.

Maomao could hardly believe this. "Why didn't you just talk to him, then?"

"I did! More than once. At first he didn't even tell me about his plan at all."

Eventually, though, the artist had hit trouble trying to arrange everything he needed for his trip, and had turned to this man for help. Even then, he'd stayed quiet about his intention to relocate.

This man had claimed to be a painter, but really he was just an assistant on the master's work. He would mix paints, purchase pigments, and find merchants who wished to acquire the master's paintings.

"I'm hardly more than a gofer. Without the master, I'm not

capable of doing anything!"

"Do you really believe that?" Maomao asked.

The master was certainly a gifted painter, but as a human being he seemed to be missing something—and people like that tended to end up dead in a field somewhere before long. They needed assistants like this.

"I've learned things from talking to so many merchants, though, and I tried to tell him about them," the man said. He'd heard that strange things were happening in the west—that they were still only foreshocks, but if the rumors were true, it would be best to keep their heads down for the time being. "But he insisted that if that were the case, he had to go—that it was now or never."

Instead of being dissuaded from going west, the master had redoubled his preparations. He'd already met with the leader of a caravan, so there was no way for this man to intervene from that direction.

In the dark room was a large canvas covered with a white sheet.

"He'd given up on the idea of going before—but then he saw this beautiful lady, and it inspired his passions anew." The man pulled the cloth aside.

Maomao's eyes went wide. "But this is..."

"A woman much like the immortal he encountered in the west, he says. This isn't her, but she looked so much like the other woman that the memories came flooding back to him. I guess I don't blame him. How could you forget someone like this?"

That's what this is about? Maomao thought, cold sweat running down her neck.

"The master said she was a shrine maiden he'd seen in Shaoh," the man explained.

The painting depicted a woman with white hair and red eyes.