The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 10 - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: A Moment’s Peace

For a little while after that, Maomao’s days were peaceful.

That’s not to say there was no work. The medicines in the medical office had to be restocked using ingredients that could be found in the western capital, and she had to make sure they worked as intended. She also tried to gather some medical instruments to make up for the shortfall in what they had.

The freak strategist showed up at the annex more than once, as well. Maomao had been trying to avoid him and the trouble he would cause, but before she knew what was happening, the quack was showing him in and inviting him to tea. She could only put her head in her hands.

About the only other notable event was that Basen’s duck started laying eggs. He got very upset at Maomao when she tried to eat one—he insisted that he would raise the chick, but as it was an unfertilized egg, no chick would be forthcoming. When Maomao told him as much (shades of her lectures at the rear palace), he’d gone bright red. And this was a full-grown adult male? Oof.

She’d had a bit of a fright when she spotted Gaoshun and Taomei walking arm in arm in the courtyard. She’d let her gaze linger a moment too long, surprised and wondering if they got along better than she had realized, when the predator’s eyes flashed. Gaoshun was abruptly shoved away by his wife, who continued to walk along as if nothing had happened. Being shy was one thing, but the younger husband ended up propelled into a pool. A tragedy.

Days turned into weeks, and soon it had been an entire month since Lahan’s Brother had left on his journey. Maomao continued to inspect Jinshi’s burn, but she found it increasingly hard to ignore the desire to take some skin from his backside.

“It sounds like things are going well enough,” Jinshi said one day. He held a crumpled letter which, when he showed it to her, contained a detailed report about the state of some farmland.

“With Lahan’s Brother, you mean?” Maomao asked, inspecting the handwriting, which was neat and careful, although it tended to lean to the right a bit. The letter had to be able to travel by pigeon, so unfortunately, reporting on the current situation consumed all the meager available space. Lahan’s Brother didn’t even have room to sign his name. The letter concluded with the name of the village he’d been in when he wrote it, and that was all.

It’s a real shame, him not having room to sign it, Maomao thought. She could just picture him on some far-flung plain, teeth clenched around a handkerchief as he tried to endure the agony. Would that day ever come when they might discover what he was truly called? No one knew. No one knew.

“Yes, that’s right. I knew this would be useful.” Jinshi looked into the birdcage and smiled. The pigeon cooed. “They may only work in one direction, but being able to communicate information so quickly is a boon.”

He used them in his communications with Empress Gyokuyou as well. Given that he hadn’t raised the subject of her niece lately, Maomao assumed the Empress had the matter in hand.

She looked at the pigeon, which pecked at some millet and burbled again. “So you sent some of these birds with Lahan’s Brother?”

“Yes. I was able to borrow several through that girl—Kulumu, was that her name?”

“How many did you send with him?” Maomao asked offhandedly.

“Three. He seemed capable enough of taking care of them. We can supply him with more by sending a fast rider to his last location.”

Jinshi opened a map of I-sei Province. Suiren appeared and drew circles around the villages from which letters had been received.

Lahan’s Brother’s really been hard at work, Maomao thought. Jinshi had given him the seemingly impossible task of reaching all the villages in two months, but Lahan’s Brother was almost on the return leg of the trip. That guy sure knows how to get a job done.

He also, she suspected, didn’t realize that it was precisely his ability to get a job done that caused people to foist so many on him. If he were clever, he’d have dialed it back by twenty percent or so, instead of going all out every single time.

“Maomao.”

“Yes, sir?”

Jinshi seemed to have grown accustomed to using her name. She remembered how for a long time he’d addressed her merely as “you.”

“I... Hrm. It seems your workload has dropped off recently.”

“Yes, I’d say so.” The most urgent tasks had been taken care of. They’d made enough medicine to hold them for a while, and had even gotten the tools they needed.

“Perhaps you might turn your hand to other things.”

“Oh!” Maomao clapped her hands, remembering. “The wheat harvest is coming up soon. Do you think I could go help with that, sir?”

This didn’t seem to be what Jinshi had been expecting. “The wheat harvest? Why?”

“Sir! I’m very curious if any ergot has grown.”

“Ergot?” It sounded like he didn’t recognize the word.

“It’s a kind of sickness where the wheat becomes black. In simple terms, it’s toxic to eat.”

“Yes, that does sound quite simple.”

“By the time the wheat is ground it’ll be too late to tell, so I’d like to look now.”

Ergot could be used to induce abortions, and there was commonly a good deal of it in poor-quality flour, so it was best to be sure. She could see exactly how large the harvest was at the same time.

“I see. Very well. I’ll prepare a carriage for you.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir. A little bird told me that Master Rikuson will be going for an inspection soon, and I thought I might be able to travel with him.”

The specific species of little bird? The quack doctor, who’d happened to overhear it from somewhere. Maomao had confirmed the validity of the rumor with Chue.

“Rikuson...”

“Yes, sir. There’s a great deal I’d like to talk with him about. I thought it might be a good opportunity.”

She’d ended up not seeing Rikuson again after that first day in the western capital. She needed to talk to him personally.

Jinshi looked briefly conflicted, but then he said, “All right. I’ll inform Rikuson that you’ll be coming.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

There was one other thing she wanted to do on this trip—gather medicinal herbs from the plains on the way. Some of her specimens from the previous trip had yielded promising results. She’d better hurry and go get a basket to put them in.

“If you don’t mind, then, Master Jinshi, I’ve got to be going!”

“Hey!”

Jinshi looked like there was something else he wanted to say, but Maomao ignored him. She trotted off, practically skipping away to get everything ready.

A few days later, Maomao left for the farming village.

“My, what wonderful weather we’re having,” Chue said with a big stretch. These days it seemed that Chue tagged along wherever Maomao went. “Guess I didn’t have to worry about rain after all!” She leaned out of the carriage for a good look: the weather was indeed lovely.

Maomao caught the scent of grass on the breeze as she let the rattling carriage carry her along.

“The weather should be clear for a while yet. Outside of the rainy season, I-sei Province doesn’t get any precipitation worth mentioning,” said Rikuson, who sat in the seat across from them. He wore an outfit that would be easy to move in, appropriate for visiting a farming village.

“Sounds perfect for a wheat harvest,” Chue said. If rain fell during the harvest, the wheat could start to sprout, which would make it lower quality. And if it couldn’t be properly dried, it might simply rot.

“It is. The weather can be fickle, though. I’ve even heard of hailstorms occurring around harvesttime.”

“Hail can be awfully difficult to predict, can’t it?” Maomao said. She was no farming expert; such sympathetic but innocuous interjections were the most she could hope to offer. If Lahan’s Brother had been here, he would probably have been clenching his fist and expounding on the manifold labors of the harvest season.

Maomao glanced toward the driver’s bench: Basen was holding the reins. Lihaku would have been just as good for a guard, but since Basen had accompanied them last time, he did so again now. His duck was there too. She was practically their mascot at this point.

Maomao looked at Rikuson. “What caused you to want to survey the farming villages, Rikuson?” she asked. This was the question she’d wanted to address to him personally. She suspected Jinshi had already given her the answer indirectly, but she wanted to hear it from Rikuson’s own mouth.

Rikuson glanced around, with what seemed to Maomao a particularly long look at his subordinates following behind the carriage. Then he said, “There are several reasons. Which would you like to hear, Maomao?”

As she had requested, he addressed her with no honorific or title—in the past, he’d been altogether too respectful toward her. Chue seemed intrigued, though, that they spoke in such familiar terms.

“All of them,” she said firmly.

“Very well. The first has to do with insect plagues. I happen to be in contact with Sir Lahan, and I frequently lean on his knowledge and expertise. He warned me that if there were to be a plague in Li, it would be likely to come either from the north or from the breadbasket to the west.”

Indeed, a small-scale plague of locusts had broken out in the fertile regions to the northwest the year before. The terrifying thing about these insects was that, left alone, they would wreak ever more destruction.

“For reasons I won’t pretend to know, I was given the honor of being posted here to the western capital, where I’m treated essentially as a bureaucrat. The polite term for what I do might be secretarial work, but less favorably, I could be called an errand boy. Some of the paperwork I deal with just happens to be about harvests, so I took an incidental interest in the availability of stores and provisions.”

“Do you really need to go visit in person, though?”

“That’s the second reason.” Rikuson held up two fingers.

Maomao’s eyes widened. She wasn’t sure what he could mean.

Rikuson smiled, almost apologetically. “I think you may be aware of this already—that the numbers in the reports regularly fail to line up with the actual amounts?”

Was he talking about the attempts to fudge the production quantities? Such things did indeed seem to be going on in the farming villages.

“What’s the third reason, then?” Rikuson had said he had several reasons, and Maomao didn’t think just two would qualify as several.

“The third reason?” His mouth sat open for just a beat. Then he said, “A long time ago, I heard that there was a special form of cultivation. Something that would decrease the number of pest insects.”

“You mean fall plowing. So that’s why you spoke to Nianzhen.”

“That’s right. Do you see now?” Rikuson’s smile was gentle. Maomao thought he looked thinner than the last time she’d seen him.

“Who told you about fall plowing?” Maomao asked.

“My mother and my older sister. My mother was a merchant who engaged in trade far and wide, and my sister helped her. I learned quite a bit from them in my younger days.” Rikuson looked out the window of the carriage, but he didn’t seem to be taking in the scenery.

“That makes sense,” said Maomao.

What else do I need to ask?

She spent long enough thinking about it that they arrived at the village, the carriage rattling as it slowed. Maomao stuck her head out the window. Wheat shimmered golden in the fields—it looked like a rich harvest. She saw green leaves too, suggesting the villagers had planted potatoes.

All right. Shall we dedicate ourselves to farmwork for a while? Herb collecting could come on the way home. Maomao had just hopped out of the carriage, sprightly and ready to go, when she saw a fast rider coming up behind. That wasn’t so remarkable in itself—but from the man’s look, something was clearly wrong.

Maybe he was attacked by bandits?

No, that wasn’t it.

The horse stopped in front of Maomao and her party, its tongue lolling from its mouth as it listed to one side. Its rider wore the uniform of a soldier.

I think I recognize him. He was one of the guards who frequently attended Jinshi. That would suggest he was of a fair rank—so what was he doing running himself ragged catching up with them?

“What’s going on?” Maomao asked. She held out water, but the man shook his head. His mouth worked open and shut; he didn’t say a word, but gave her a piece of paper.

The heck?

The paper, folded as small as possible, seemed to be a letter from Lahan’s Brother.

“The Moon...Prince... He said if you saw this...you would understand...”

Understand what? Maomao wondered. Perplexed, she opened the letter.

A single line ran down the page. It wasn’t even drawn with a brush; it looked messy, like Lahan’s Brother had used a piece of charcoal as an improvised writing instrument. But that wasn’t all—the line had been violently scratched out again. The letter didn’t even say where it was from, but there was no mistaking who had sent it.

Lahan’s Brother had needed to tell them something so badly that he had found time in the midst of some sort of chaos to send a pigeon with this message.

I know what this is, Maomao thought. She realized she recognized the dark scribbles. They resembled the picture that the girl Jazgul had given her the year before, after the visit of the Shaohnese shrine maiden.

Maomao hadn’t understood what it meant then.

But I do now.

The line was the horizon that spread out before her. And the blot was a dark cloud.

She looked at the sky, still clear and blue, and said, “They’re coming.”