The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 10 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Annex and the Forgotten Man

Gyoku-ou’s annex seemed like quite a comfortable place to be thanks to its abundance of greenery. When one thought of I-sei Province, where the western capital was located, one thought of the desert, but in fact there were many grassy plains. It was dry, yes, but there was more here than sand; there was enough water for herbaceous plants, at least, to grow. Which was not to say that water wasn’t precious here.

Was that the main house we stayed in last time? Maomao wondered. There had been lots of green there too. Just having all those trees in the mansion’s garden was enough to provide the impression of wealth. Of course, to the people of the capital—who were used to living by the great river, with the sea not so far away—it might have lacked a certain something.

But it’s enough to be refreshing.

The garden here was done roughly in the style of the central region, but it was full of plants she had never seen before. Her first thought was that she would love to test their medicinal effects—but, well, that was Maomao for you.

“Young lady! Let’s set our luggage down first. It’s been such a long trip, and I’m so very tired,” the quack said, looking as run-down as he sounded.

“Good idea,” said Tianyu. “Hey, Niangniang, once we get to our room, maybe we can play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to explore the mansion.”

Lihaku walked a few paces behind the three of them, keeping watch. The medical office was in a separate building from the mansion. They couldn’t exactly complain about the location; sickness was considered an impurity, after all. If the office was anywhere too well traveled, they would only have to worry about infection every time a patient showed up, anyway.

“This is one odd place,” the quack said, looking at their building, mystified. “I thought the same thing at the administrative building’s medical office...” It certainly wasn’t what they were used to in Li, and while the western capital had its own architectural style, the building didn’t really seem to belong to that either. It almost looked like...

“Is this a chapel?” Tianyu asked, his hand brushing the bricks.

“Chapel? What’s that?” the quack asked. No wonder he didn’t know the word; there weren’t many chapels in Li, and the quack was hardly what you would call cosmopolitan.

“Think of it like a shrine,” Maomao offered.

“Oh! A place to pray.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of different religions in this city,” Tianyu said.

They entered the building to find a high-vaulted room. There didn’t appear to be any objects of worship inside; the only vestiges of any faith once practiced here were some decorations on the walls. Maybe some pious person had once lived here. When the place had passed into Gyoku-ou’s hands, he had stopped short of tearing it down, but it was no longer a place of worship.

“It’s the perfect size. Oh, and look! The rest of our belongings have already arrived. Hmm, there really is quite a lot. It’s going to be a job organizing everything. Suppose we just leave them in the boxes?” the quack said.

“Good point. Let’s hurry up and rock-paper-scissors it! Who gets to go exploring?”

Not long ago, Maomao would have eagerly accepted Tianyu’s suggestion. Careful thought, though, left her with a question: Even if she won the game, would the other two actually do their work here? At the same time, she knew she would be annoyed if Tianyu won—and if the quack doctor earned the chance to go exploring, well, that thought was a little nerve-racking too.

In the end, Maomao took the most boring solution. She rolled up her sleeves, tied a handkerchief over her mouth, and said, “Right, exploring comes later! First we need to get this stuff sorted!”

“Aw. You seemed all excited to look around earlier.”

“I’m so very tired from our trip, young lady. Can’t we take things slower?”

“No, we can’t!” Maomao said, rebuffing them both. Their medical supplies could have rotted during the long sea voyage; they needed to know what was still usable and what wasn’t so that they could stock up on anything they needed. “No one leaves this room until we get all of this organized.”

“Oh no...” The quack stuck out his lower lip and looked deeply dejected.

Tianyu didn’t look happy about it, but he shuffled over to the supplies and started working.

“What would you like me to do, young lady?” asked the big mutt, Lihaku. He looked like he might just drop to the floor and start doing push-ups to pass the time if she didn’t have anything for him to do, so she decided to put him to physical labor.

“Could you get the box by the door and bring it here?” Maomao asked.

“Sure thing! Oof! This is heavy!” It turned out to be a bit much even for Lihaku.

Maomao went over to the box, opened the lid, and peeked in. It was packed with rice husks and sweet potatoes. No wonder it was so heavy. Even Lihaku wouldn’t be able to lift it by himself.

“I don’t think this is ours,” she said.

“What do you think? Should we borrow a cart and haul this somewhere?” Lihaku asked.

“No, I think we can just let someone in charge know and they can deal with it,” Maomao replied, pondering whom they should tell.

At just that moment, someone came from the direction of the garden, waving urgently. “Heeey! I think some of my cargo got mixed in with yours,” the newcomer called. He was a man with no particular distinguishing characteristics—the only thing notable about him was how unnotable he was. He had unobjectionable looks and was probably twenty-three or twenty-four years old.

I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before, Maomao thought, pondering further.

When the newcomer saw Maomao, he stopped short. “It—It’s you!” he said, pointing dramatically at her. “The one who might be Lahan’s sister or might not, I can’t tell!”

“The answer is not.” Now she was sure: she’d had this conversation before. But who is this guy? Her eyes drifted to the box full of sweet potatoes. The mention of Lahan’s name sparked a memory. “You’re Lahan’s Brother, aren’t you?” Her memory of him was hazy, but she thought that was who he was.

“Lahan is younger than me! Why should I have to be defined in terms of him?!”

Yes, this was Lahan’s Brother, with his delectable reactions. She had met him before, and remembered him mostly for being very normal and offering copious chances for witty interjections. His face, though—that she had completely forgotten.

“Well, I don’t know your name,” she pointed out.

“My name is—”

“That wasn’t an invitation.” She’d only just recently, and finally, remembered the quack doctor’s name. She didn’t need any more to learn.

“Listen to me! Let me tell you my name!”

Maomao, however, was in no mood to listen. “More importantly: What are you doing here?” This guy normally spent all his time tending potato fields in the central region.

Lahan’s Brother looked scandalized by Maomao’s question. Lihaku, having decided that he wasn’t a threat, looked on quietly.

“I’m here because they dragged me here! They brought me instead of my father, with orders to teach the people of the western capital how to grow these things!” Maomao sensed some resentment. “These things” referred to the sweet potatoes.

“I take it Lahan duped you into doing this.”

“H-H-He did not!”

Lahan’s Brother was nothing if not easy to read. And Lahan remained his usual ruthless self.

“Why didn’t he ask his father?” Maomao asked. Lahan’s Father, La...uh, something or other, loved farming and seemed like he would go to the ends of the earth if there was a field to be tended there.

Lahan’s Brother paused. “After his experiment with growing sweet potatoes in the north came to light, he can’t get away.”

“Experiment?”

“Sweet potatoes yield several times more than a rice crop, so he thought they would be perfect for Shihoku Province, where there’s plenty of people and space.”

“Right.”

Jinshi had been trying everything he could to shore up the food supply, and she seemed to recall Lahan being very bullish on potatoes as well.

“The problem is, sweet potatoes come from the south, so they don’t grow well in the north. In fact, I doubt they’ll grow at all, but Dad says it’s worth trying to figure out what the northern limit is, so I just let him do that.”

“I’m not sure this is the time...” Even Maomao could tell that this was a dangerous idea. A famine was looming; they couldn’t spare people and land to satisfy one farmer’s curiosity.

And he had such a pleasant look...

The man had reminded her of Luomen, and evidently when something interested him, he became completely absorbed in it to the exclusion of everything else.

“It would be too risky for all the fields to be sweet potatoes, so I brought these too. Have a look.” Lahan’s Brother tossed her something from the box next to the crate of sweet potatoes.

“Regular potatoes? This is a white potato, right?”

It was a big, stout, round potato. Potatoes were a relatively new foodstuff; the matron of the Verdigris House had told Maomao that they weren’t yet widely eaten when she was young.

“That’s right. A tuber like this can grow even in the cold, even if the ground isn’t very fertile, so he made me bring these along. Lahan only knows Nice Dad, but he can be a pretty formidable character when he wants to.”

Lahan’s Father, La-something-or-other by name, was evidently a bona fide member of the La clan. Even Maomao had nearly been taken in by his pleasant countenance.

“Potatoes can be harvested twice a year, so my father has been hell-bent on planting them. I’m afraid he might be trying to use them to fudge his harvest numbers.”

“You seem to know a lot about potatoes,” Maomao observed. She’d taken Lahan’s Brother to be a completely average person with no special qualities other than his vulnerability to a good quip, but it turned out he did have something to offer.

“Wow, you’re a regular farmer!” Lihaku said, clapping Lahan’s Brother on the back. He hadn’t followed the entire conversation, but he was impressed just the same.

“F-Farmer?!” Lahan’s Brother choked. He seemed to want to push back, but he was too enraged to say anything more. The quack doctor, apparently intimidated by Lahan’s Brother’s fury, kept his distance. Tianyu seemed to judge the man simply too normal to be interesting.

“So your point is, these potatoes aren’t food, they’re seed crops?” Maomao said.

“Yes, they are! I’m supposed to show the people how to raise them. Him and his My older brother can’t spend his whole life tied to one place! How is one field so different from another, anyway?!”

In short, this normal person had demonstrated a normal interest in the outside world and been duped for it. The fact that he had chased down this crate of seed potatoes, though, showed that he was indeed a dedicated farmer. Maomao suspected he would produce a lovely crop, even if he complained the whole time.

Teaching them to grow new crops, huh? That presumably meant Lahan’s Brother would be spending his time out in the farming villages.

“When you go out to the villages, take me with you,” Maomao said.

“Why would I do that?”

“There’s something I want to investigate.”

This was a gift from above. She’d assumed she would have to ask Rikuson or someone—until Lahan’s Brother had come along.

I saw Rikuson’s outfit. The mud-streaked clothes suggested he’d been inspecting a farm somewhere. But what was a man sent all the way from the capital doing relegated to the fringes of his new home?

Maybe he was checking the harvests to make sure no one’s cheating on their taxes. Or maybe... Maybe he knows about the insect plague.

A plague of insects had struck west of the royal capital, which meant there was a good chance the locusts had come from farther west than that. It would always be easier to deal with a swarm of locusts when there weren’t as many of them.

I’m not all that interested in bugs, but I don’t think I can get out of this one.

For a second, Maomao found herself thinking of another young woman, one who had liked insects far more than she did.

“Of course, I’m trusting myself to your services today, Master Physician. As ever.” Jinshi smiled as he received them. They were in the most sumptuous guest room in the annex. There was a rich, thick, delicately embroidered sheep’s wool rug, and the curtains appeared to be made of silk; they shimmered and shone each time the wind ruffled them. Maomao could never help wondering about the market value of Jinshi’s accommodations.

That looks good, though, she thought, spying a plate of fruit on the table. There were luscious grapes, so recently chilled that they were still sweating. They promised sweet juice filling the mouth as they burst between the teeth.

I wonder if he needs them checked for poison.

Sadly, Maomao wasn’t there at that moment to taste Jinshi’s food. That job fell to Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting Taomei. The boisterous Chue was missing today, and Maomao didn’t see Baryou either, although she had her suspicions about what was on the other side of the gently rustling curtains. Suiren and Gaoshun stood by the wall.

The quack doctor remained cowed in Jinshi’s presence. “Eep! L-Let’s get started, then...” As usual, he could barely get the words out, and as usual, his exam was pro forma at best.

Tianyu was also absent from this scene. He’d proved too likely to offend someone important to be invited on a visit like this. Tianyu was perceptive enough that he might have looked askance at Maomao and the quack going to do this exam, but if he had any doubts, he had kept them to himself for the moment. Was that because he knew how to take a hint, or had someone on Jinshi’s side of things reached out to help him understand? Maomao preferred not to think about it.

I also don’t care either way. She had things to do. For now, she would put aside the question of why Jinshi had been consigned to the villa. The freak strategist wasn’t in the same building; that was what really mattered.

“All right, young lady, I’ll be heading back,” the quack said.

“Yes, sir,” Maomao replied.

The quack left without so much as a scruple. His bodyguard, Lihaku, went with him.

Jinshi turned down the sparkle just a bit. “Tea, if you would,” he said.

“Of course, sir,” replied Taomei, and went to prepare it.

“Here you go.” Suiren thoughtfully brought a chair, so Maomao sat down. She wasn’t rude enough to grab any grapes just then, but she tried to send Suiren a telepathic message that she’d like some as a souvenir.

“How are you settling into your new workplace?” Jinshi asked.

“Easily enough, sir. The personnel haven’t changed, so it’s just getting used to the new environment.” That was the honest answer. What she really wanted now was to find out what kinds of medicine were available in the western capital. When they’d taken stock of what had been used during the ship voyage, it turned out to be chiefly nausea medication and antipyretics. The southern route they’d taken had been as hot as high summer, and combined with the poor air circulation on the ship, they’d had lots of cases of dizziness. Heatstroke was best cured by water, not medicine, but Maomao suspected that while she was away, the quack had diagnosed many of the cases as colds and handed out antipyretics. That would explain it.

Funny enough, it had worked out: the medicine the quack had prescribed tasted so bad that patients had to take it with plenty of water anyway, so in the end it had cured their heatstroke.

He’s sure got luck on his side, she marveled. Even better, she’d heard that they would be given new supplies bought in the western capital to make up the shortfall in their inventory. Wish I could have gone along on the shopping trip, though. She was so curious about exactly what drugs were sold here.

Maomao, however, had other things to attend to. She glanced around, then stole a look at Jinshi’s side. She wasn’t sure how to bring that up, so she settled on changing the subject entirely.

“I gather we have a potato farmer among us, thanks to Lahan’s connections.”

This was Lahan they were talking about; if they succeeded in cultivating potatoes in I-sei Province, she was sure he intended to go straight into exporting them to Shaoh or something. It was right next door to I-sei, which would minimize shipping costs.

Jinshi gave her a look. “A potato farmer? He’s your cousin, is what I heard.”

“No relation,” she said firmly, so that there would be no mistake.

“But I heard he was Lahan’s older brother.”

“Yes, but Lahan and I are complete strangers.”

Jinshi gave her a harder look, but he went along with it.

“Anyway, yes, we do have a potato farmer here. When I heard he was from the La clan, I expected someone... I don’t know. More distinctive.”

“Have you met him, sir?”

“I’ve only seen him in passing. I saw him when Lahan was helping him onto the ship.”

In other words, he had spotted them smack in the middle of the dupe.

“He’s a very normal person, sir.”

“Yes. Very normal.” It seemed Jinshi shared Maomao’s assessment—but anyway, if he already knew about him, that made everything easier.

“I’d like to accompany him to the farming villages. Do you think I could be given permission?”

“The farming villages? It would help me if you could go, but then how would you handle your medical duties?” Jinshi patted his flank pointedly.

You did that to yourself, Maomao thought. He already knew how to change the dressings, anyway, so she didn’t have to be examining it all the time.

“A young man named Tianyu has been assigned to our group. I think he could manage things, sir,” she said, ignoring Jinshi’s injury for the moment. She might object to Tianyu as a person, but his actual work seemed trustworthy.

“Hmm... Very well,” Jinshi sounded like he had to swallow some objection, but agreed nonetheless. “I was already planning to have someone get a firsthand look at the farms. There are enough issues with the villages vis-à-vis the impending plague. This might be perfect.”

“What kind of issues?” Maomao cocked her head. Jinshi had so many different problems to deal with, she didn’t even know which one he meant.

Jinshi looked to Gaoshun, and the other man unrolled a map of I-sei Province on the table. It bore several circles in ink.

“What are these?” Maomao asked.

“The locations of the farming villages.”

“There aren’t as many as I expected, considering I-sei Province’s size.”

“There’s a fair number of individual plots of farmland, but some sort of problem crops up when they reach a certain size. Outside of the western capital itself, the population here has never been very large, and with all the trade that goes on, many people simply import their food.”

In this land, withered soil was the norm and water sources were limited. Maomao might only be able to go out to the nearest village.

Is that the same place Rikuson went?

He’d looked very busy—she doubted he’d been visiting the farms just to pass the time. He must’ve gone to the closest place.

“And these,” Jinshi said, taking a brush Gaoshun offered him and drawing a larger circle on the map, “are grazing lands.”

“Grazing lands, sir?” In other words, a place where livestock could feed. Probably not cows here in the western capital—goats and sheep, more likely.

“Some of them are used by the farmers, but some of them are areas that nomadic tribes pass through. Groups that don’t have permanent settlements.”

“I see.”

Jinshi didn’t seem to be explaining for Maomao’s sake so much as he was trying to organize his own thoughts. “Do you remember the orders I issued to try to combat the grasshoppers?” he asked.

“I do. You forbade the killing of pest birds, promoted the eating of insects, and said the farming villages should be taught how to make insecticide.” Maomao had been involved in the insecticide project herself. She’d developed several formulas that used primarily local ingredients.

“Right. Those orders went out all over Li, including I-sei Province, of course. However...” He trailed off.

Maomao thought she could see the miscalculation Jinshi had been confronted with. “Even if farmers do use insecticide, they only use it on their fields,” she said.

“Exactly.”

And I-sei Province had a few small fields and a lot of very big plains. The farmers wouldn’t kill the bugs in the grassy areas. Not to mention that there was every chance the nomads had never received the orders at all.

Even if they had... They wouldn’t want to put farm chemicals all over something their livestock were going to eat, and they wouldn’t go around killing grasshoppers one by one either.

Jinshi and Maomao were both silent.

The grasshoppers that had avoided extermination would produce a new generation many times larger than their own.

Maomao, though, was puzzled. “Pardon me, sir, but wasn’t there already a small-scale insect plague in western Li last year? Did that include the western capital?”

“No report of any plague came from I-sei Province,” Jinshi said, sounding equally perplexed. “Admittedly, this area survives largely by trade and doesn’t do much planting of its own, so any agricultural damage would be modest...”

“But there should have been some.”

She thought back to the previous autumn. Jinshi had sent her a crate of grasshoppers—it almost qualified as harassment—and she had measured hundreds of them. At the time, Lahan had speculated that they might have come from Hokuaren on the seasonal winds. And which area was closest to Hokuaren? I-sei Province.

Could the grasshoppers have missed them by pure luck? Or...are these people hiding something?

Maomao searched Jinshi’s face. He didn’t look overly concerned, but seemed calm, like he was simply confirming something he already knew. Information he already had. She tried to look at the others in the room for a hint, but Suiren, Taomei, and Gaoshun betrayed nothing.

Is I-sei Province trying to hide a bad harvest? she wondered. Then she groaned to herself. Maybe it’s Empress Gyokuyou’s brother.

Gyoku-ou, the man who was now in charge in the western capital on behalf of their father. He seemed to have some sort of history with Empress Gyokuyou, but Maomao had largely ignored it as something that didn’t involve a simple apothecary.

Did all this have something to do with why Rikuson had been out in the village, getting himself filthy?

Maomao started to feel impatient, restless. Thinking about the question only left her tying herself in knots, but she hated the feeling of leaving it unanswered. Best to move quickly, then.

“I know it’s somewhat sudden, but perhaps you’d allow me to leave for the farming villages tomorrow, sir?”

“Much as I’d like you to get underway as soon as possible, that might be a bit too soon,” Jinshi said. “Hmm...”

Gaoshun intervened at that moment. “Moon Prince,” he said.

“What is it, Gaoshun?”

“If Xiaomao is to leave, best she wait a few days first.”

“Why? So everything can be gotten ready?”

“No, sir. Because Basen should arrive a few days from now.”

Maomao felt like she hadn’t heard that name in a long time. Basen, she remembered, was traveling overland to reach the western capital.

“I think he would make an ideal bodyguard for Xiaomao,” Gaoshun said.

“All right. We’ll use that time to prepare,” replied Jinshi, and with that, it was settled. Maomao let out a sigh of relief and was about to head back to the medical office where the quack and Tianyu waited, but Jinshi spoke again. “Just a moment.”

“Yes, sir?”

“My stomach is bothering me. Perhaps you could examine it?” He grinned at her.

I might have known.

“I’ll be waiting in the next room,” he said. Then he left and, perhaps informed ahead of time, Suiren and the others stayed behind.

“Very well,” Maomao said after a moment. She took out fresh bandages. Privately, though, she wished Basen would hurry up and get here.