The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: Red Nails

The disgustingly multicolored roses stole the show at the garden party. Lakan looked at them vacantly. The musical performance had virtually lulled him to sleep; he was holding someone’s cap with a ball of fuzz attached to it in his hand, and he didn’t even know where he had gotten it.

Oh well, Lakan thought, and placed the cap next to him on the table. The official beside him greedily snatched it up and arranged it on his own head. He seemed to be looking reproachfully at Lakan, but the strategist didn’t really know why. He decided to take out his monocle, polish it with a handkerchief, and then put it back on the other eye.

The roses were positioned in the very center of the banquet, as if to show off the poor taste of whoever had arranged them.

He was at a banquet; he remembered that much. Music furled around him and silk streamers waved. He was presented with a meal that was clearly the height of luxury, and he could smell wine everywhere.

It so happened that Lakan had never been very good at remembering things that didn’t interest him. He recalled what had happened, but not the attendant emotions; he felt completely divorced from those.

Before he knew it, the proceedings were over, and two consorts, one dressed in black and the other in blue, were receiving roses from the Emperor matching the colors they wore. Lakan heard whispers around him indicating how beautiful the women were, but he wouldn’t know. Whether people’s faces were beautiful or ugly was something else he’d never had a connection to.

God, this was boring. Wasn’t he here? Why go to all the trouble of provoking him if he wasn’t even going to come?

He was left with no choice but to find someone else to tease. He could at least let off a little steam. He looked around: there were plenty of people still here.

He hated crowds.

Most people’s faces just looked like Go stones to him. He could differentiate between men and women, for men’s faces looked like black stones, and women’s like white ones, but they all had nondescript, expressionless caricatures of faces on them. Some of the people he knew particularly well in the military had graduated to looking like Shogi tiles, but that was all. The grunts all look like pawns, and as their ranks went up they started to look like lances or knights, the game’s more powerful pieces.

The job of a military commander was simple: to arrange the pieces where each was most suited. A place for everything and everything in its place; that was what won most battles. It wasn’t difficult! That was all Lakan had to do, and his job was finished. He might be a talentless hack himself, but if he could distribute his pieces correctly, those around him would take care of his work. That was how Lakan felt about the matter, anyway.

Even that man whom everyone said was as beautiful as a celestial nymph—Lakan had to take their word for it. He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he had to find a gold general with a promoted silver in tow.

And finding people was something he was used to.

Argh, but his eyes hurt worse than usual today. The red stuck in them. Everyone had red pigment on the tips of their fingers.

This so-called “red polish” was supposed to be all the rage among the palace women these days. The red polish that he recalled, floating back from his memories, had never been so garish. It had been thinner, lighter. The red of balsam.

The word tugged on his heartstrings, reminding him of the name of a courtesan. Even as the thought floated through his mind, a diminutive palace woman appeared directly in his line of sight. She looked small and frail, but determined, like woodsorrel.

She turned hollow eyes on him. When she saw he was looking at her, she turned as if to say, Come with me.

Out beyond the peony garden, a Shogi board had been set up in a small open-air pavilion. On top of the board was a paulownia-wood box, inside which rested something that looked like the withered remains of a rose.

“Might I ask you for a game?” the girl said, but her voice was flat, affectless, as she picked up the pieces.

Nearby was the gold general, with his promoted silver close at hand.

What possible reason could he have to refuse? How could he turn down a request from this dear little girl—his dear little girl?

Lakan grinned cunningly.

○●○

What in the world did she hope to achieve?

Maomao had asked Jinshi to go home if it was at all possible; he, in turn, had ignored her. She looked deeply displeased, but accepted it on the condition that he be quiet. Then she had issued her unspoken invitation to the commander, after which she began lining up the Shogi pieces.

Her face was utterly without emotion; even her usual cold reticence seemed warm and humane in comparison. She would scratch the back of her hand from time to time; maybe she had a bug bite.

“So, who’ll go first?” Lakan asked. His eyes, one of them behind a monocle, gleamed with genuine joy. It only went to show how obsessed he was with this game.

“Before we decide that, let us lay out the rules—and the wager,” Maomao said.

“That should be easy enough.”

Jinshi stared over Maomao’s shoulder at the board. Lakan fixed an unsettling grin on him, but this was one contest he wasn’t going to lose. He poured ever more honey into his own smile.

It would be a standard contest of three games out of five. Jinshi simply didn’t understand. The commander had never been beaten at Shogi. Maomao’s very choice of game was madness. From the way Gaoshun’s brow was furrowed, it seemed he shared Jinshi’s opinion. What could be going through Maomao’s head?

“What pieces do you want for your handicap? A rook, perhaps? Or a bishop?” Lakan said.

“I don’t need a handicap,” Maomao replied. Jinshi, though, thought Lakan had been very sporting to offer one, and that Maomao should have politely accepted it.

“Very well. If I win, you’ll become my child.”

Jinshi nearly objected aloud to this, but Gaoshun stopped him. They had promised not to speak.

“I’m currently employed, so you would have to wait until my term of service expires.”

“Employed?” The fox-like eyes glanced in Jinshi’s direction. He never let his smile slip, though he had to resist a twitching in his cheeks. “Are you really?”

“Yes, and the paperwork says so.”

And so it did—at least, that was what the paper Maomao had seen said. But suppose it had been the old madam—her guardian, after a fashion—who had actually signed it? The man who was effectively Maomao’s adoptive father had pinched the brush right out of Maomao’s hand.

“Well, I hope it’s all in order. But more importantly...” Lakan studied her. “...what will you ask for?”

“Yes, the wager I request.” Maomao closed her eyes. “Perhaps I could ask you to purchase one courtesan from the Verdigris House?”

Lakan stroked his chin. “I must say, of everything I thought you might ask for, I didn’t expect that.”

Maomao remained completely impassive. “The madam is looking to clear out those who are getting on in years. I won’t stipulate who you must buy out.”

“So it’s come to that.” Lakan looked absolutely exasperated somehow. And then he grinned. “But if that’s what you request, then that’s what I must accept. Is that all you ask for?”

Maomao regarded Lakan coldly. “Perhaps I could also stipulate two additional rules.”

“Name them.”

“All right.” Maomao produced a bottle of wine she’d asked Gaoshun to prepare. She poured equal amounts into five separate cups. The smell suggested it was distinctly potent stuff.

Then Maomao produced some medicine packets from her sleeve and sprinkled one into three of the cups. They each contained similar-looking powder. She gave each cup a gentle tilt, dissolving the powder, then quickly shuffled the five cups around until it was impossible to say which were which.

“After each game, the winner will pick one of these cups and the loser must drink from it. The loser doesn’t have to drain the entire cup; a mouthful will do.”

Jinshi was getting a very, very bad feeling about this. He moved from directly behind Maomao over to one side. He had the impression that her face had taken on a slight flush. Previously so emotionless, her lips now flirted with a smile.

He knew what caused Maomao to make that face. He wanted to know what the powder was but didn’t dare ask. He was angry at himself for not being able to ask.

Lakan voiced the question instead. “What was that powder you put in them?”

“A drug. Medicinal, in small quantities.” But, Maomao added, all three cups together would be tremendously poisonous. She managed to say this with a smile on her face, strange girl that she was. “The other rule I request,” she said, “is that if a person abandons a game for any reason, it will be considered a loss. Those are my two rules.”

She gently rocked the cups that might or might not have been poisoned. Her hand was stained red, and on that hand the pinky finger was deformed.

Lakan stared intently at that finger.

Maomao thought of the most terrible things, Jinshi reflected. Even knowing it would be all right as long as one didn’t drink all three cups, she seemed cavalier about it. Was she trying to gain a psychological advantage? True, any ordinary opponent might have been shaken by the extra pressure. But this wasn’t an ordinary opponent; it was the master strategist himself, widely regarded as a superlative player. It would take more than a little scare tactic to bend him out of shape.

As anyone might have predicted, Maomao lost the first two games in a row.

Jinshi had thought maybe she at least knew the ins and outs of the game, but it became clear that she knew the rules at best, and had no real experience of actual play. She had already drunk down two of the cups; quite eagerly, in fact.

For the umpteenth time, Jinshi asked himself what she could be thinking.

The third game had only just begun, but the outcome already seemed apparent. When Maomao drank that third cup, she might poison herself. The chances of picking one of the drugged cups were three out of five the first time, and after the second game, two out of four. After this last game, the chance would be one out of three. In other words, there was a one-in-ten chance that she was about to poison herself horribly.

Jinshi wasn’t sure which was more frightening: the thought that Maomao might poison herself, or the realization that he knew she might drink the poison and be just fine. He wasn’t sure if Lakan knew how resilient Maomao was when it came to toxic substances.

He looked at Gaoshun, wondering what they would do when the winner was decided. At that moment, there came a voice: “Check.” But the voice didn’t belong to Lakan; it was Maomao’s.

Jinshi and Gaoshun both looked at the board to discover Maomao’s gold general closing in on Lakan’s king. The way she had used her pieces was pathetic, amateurish—but there was no denying that the king had been trapped with no escape.

“Well, heck. I yield.” Lakan put his hands up.

“A win is a win, even if you gave it to me, yes?” Maomao said.

“So it is. God knows I can’t poison my own daughter, even if I do it by mistake.”

Maomao’s expression hadn’t changed as she drank the two cups; it was impossible to know whether there had been drugs in them or not. Lakan gazed at his expressionless daughter with a somewhat cowed smile. “That drug you used—does it have any taste?” he asked.

“It’s quite salty. You’ll know at the first sip.”

“Fine, then. Which one will you pick for me?”

“Take whichever one you like.”

So that was it: Lakan could afford to lose two games. If either of the drinks he took tasted salty, he would know Maomao was out of danger. The percentages were the same, but this was a much safer method. Nothing escaped this man.

Lakan took the cup in the center and brought it to his lips.

“Oof. Salty.”

Jinshi hung his head. To his ears, the words signaled that it would all be over with the next game. He wondered what he would do now...

“And...warm.” He looked up when he heard that. Lakan’s face was bright red, and he was swaying unsteadily. Then the blood drained from his face, and suddenly he slumped over, pale as a sheet.

Gaoshun rushed over and propped Lakan up.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jinshi demanded. “You said one dose of that drug was safe!” No matter how much she hated Lakan, he couldn’t believe she would actually poison him.

“I did. And it is,” Maomao replied, appearing thoroughly vexed. She picked up a carafe of water nearby and brought it over to Gaoshun and Lakan. She pried Lakan’s eyes open to make sure he wasn’t comatose, then dumped water into his mouth, forcing him to drink. She wasn’t exactly gentle.

“Master Jinshi,” Gaoshun said, perplexed. “He appears to be...drunk.”

“Alcohol is the king of all drugs,” Maomao commented. She had, she said, simply added a bit of salt and sugar to help the body absorb it. She was attending to Lakan, albeit with a minimum of enthusiasm. Despite her distaste for him, she was evidently going to do justice to her vocation as an apothecary. “And this man is not a drinker,” she said.

With that, Jinshi finally understood what she had been plotting all along. He realized that he had only ever seen Lakan drink juice, never alcohol.

“All right,” Maomao said, scratching the back of her head and looking at Jinshi. “Let’s drag him off to the brothel so he can pick a flower.”

She sounded practically disinterested. Jinshi could only offer a stunned “Right.”