The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Balsam and Woodsorrel

An old memory came back to him. So many scenes in black and white—this one alone boasted some faint red. It seemed he had trouble seeing things others saw easily, but this alone shone bright and clear.

Red. Red were the fingers that held the Go stones or Shogi tiles.

His toned, rippling muscles would have been the envy of anyone. Only one person seemed unimpressed by them: that great lady, the esteemed courtesan Fengxian.

He was sometimes obliged to visit brothels when out socially with others, but to be blunt, they were of little interest to him. He couldn’t drink alcohol, and dancing or erhu performances didn’t excite him. No matter how beautifully a woman dressed, she looked like nothing more than a plain white Go stone to him.

He had been this way for a long time: he couldn’t tell one human face from another. But even this was an improvement. It was bad enough to confuse one’s mother with his wet nurse, but he couldn’t even tell men apart from women.

His father, feeling that there was nothing he could do for his child, had begun seeing a young lover. His mother promptly began plotting to get back her husband—though he had abandoned his child because the boy couldn’t identify his own father’s face!

Thus, despite being born the eldest son of a prominent family, Lakan had lived his life with an unusual amount of freedom—a blessing, as far as he was concerned. He lost himself in Go and Shogi, which he learned by playing game after game; he kept his ear to the ground for rumors, and once in a while he pulled a little prank.

That time he made blue roses bloom in the palace? That was something he’d tried after hearing his uncle talk about it. His uncle wasn’t always the most pleasant person, but was, the young man felt, the only one who understood him. It was his uncle who told him to focus not on people’s faces, but on their voices, their body language, their silhouettes. It made life a little easier when he started to assign Shogi pieces to those he was closest to; over time he reached a point where only those he had no interest in were Go stones, while those he was starting to become more intimate with appeared as Shogi tiles.

When his uncle began to appear as a dragon king—a promoted rook—the young man knew for certain that his uncle was a person of great accomplishment.

To him, Go and Shogi were simply games, extensions of his leisure. He never imagined that they would reveal his true aptitudes. His family background afforded him another stroke of luck: although he had no special martial talents, he was promptly made a captain. He knew he didn’t have to be strong and powerful, though; if he used his subordinates wisely, the profit would come. Shogi with human pieces was the most interesting game of all.

He continued undefeated in both his games and his work until a spiteful colleague introduced him to the famed courtesan. Fengxian had never lost to anyone at her brothel, and he had never lost to anyone in the army. Whichever of them had their streak broken in this game, the spectators would enjoy themselves.

He discovered then that he had been like a frog living at the bottom of a well. Fengxian all but broke him over her knee. Even though she held the white stones, meaning she had the disadvantage of playing second, she amassed a crushing amount of territory. She took the stones in her delicately painted fingers and systematically cut him down to size.

He could hardly remember the last time he had lost a game. He didn’t feel anger so much as a sort of awe at the remorseless wound she had inflicted on him. Fengxian resented that he had taken her lightly: he surmised as much from the way she never said a word, the way even her movements were dismissive, as if the game hardly warranted her attention.

Entirely without meaning to, he started laughing, so hard he clutched his sides. The onlookers murmured; they thought he had gone insane. He laughed so hard his eyes blurred with tears, but when he looked at the merciless courtesan, he saw not the usual white Go stone, but the face of a woman in an ill humor. The look in her eyes would let no one get close to her. Like her namesake, the balsam, Fengxian seemed as if she might burst at the slightest touch.

Was this what human faces looked like?

It was the first time he had experienced something other people took for granted.

Fengxian whispered something to an apprentice who was attending her. The little girl pattered away and returned with a Shogi board. The courtesan, so lofty that she wouldn’t even allow a man to hear her voice at their first meeting, was challenging him to another game.

This time, he wouldn’t lose.

He rolled up his sleeves and began setting out his pieces.

The woman named Fengxian had her pride as a courtesan if nothing else. Perhaps it was because she had been born in a brothel. She sometimes said that she had no mother, only a woman who bore her—for in the pleasure district, courtesans could not be mothers.

Their acquaintance continued for years and years, and during their meetings they would focus on one thing only: playing Go or Shogi. Gradually, though, they saw each other less frequently. As accomplished courtesans grew more popular, they also became more reluctant to take customers, and Fengxian was no exception.

Fengxian was intelligent, but flinty and hard; this might not have appealed to most people, but there was a small cadre of diehards who ate it up. Perhaps there’s no accounting for taste.

Her price kept going up, until it was all he could do to see her once every few months.

Once when he went to the brothel to see her after a long absence, he found her painting her nails, looking as disinterested as ever. Red balsam flowers and some thin grass sat on a plate in front of her. When he asked what the latter was, she replied, “It’s cat’s paw.” A plant with medicinal properties, evidently, useful to counteract bug bites and some poisons.

Interestingly, balsam and cat’s paw shared an unusual characteristic: if you so much as touched the ripe seed pods, they would burst and send seeds everywhere. He picked up one of the yellow flowers, thinking that maybe he would try touching one the next time he had a chance, just to see what happened—when Fengxian said, “When will you come next?”

How strange—this from the woman who only ever sent the most impersonal notices to remind him her services were available.

“Another three months on.”

“Very well.”

Fengxian told an apprentice to clean up her manicure supplies, then began setting up a game of Shogi.

It was about that time that he first heard talk of Fengxian’s contract being bought out. Sometimes the price had little to do with a courtesan’s perceived value: some people would drive up the amount simply because they didn’t like one of the other bidders.

He had managed to earn some promotions in the military, but meanwhile, his position as heir to his family’s fortune had been usurped by a younger half-brother, and the bidding ultimately became impossible for him to keep up with.

So, what to do?

An awful idea entered his head, but he immediately snuffed it out.

It would have been unimaginable to actually do it.

Another three months, another trip to the brothel, and now Fengxian sat before him with two game boards ready to play, one of Go, one of Shogi.

The first words out of her mouth were: “Perhaps a wager today?”

If you win, I’ll give you anything you like. And if I win, I’ll take something I want.

“Choose your game.”

It was Shogi at which he held the upper hand—yet when he sat, it was in front of the Go board.

Fengxian dismissed her apprentice, saying she wished to focus on the game.

He didn’t know which of them had been victorious, but the next thing he knew their hands were intertwined. There were no sweet nothings from Fengxian. Nor did he feel compelled to offer any vapid words of sentiment. In that respect, perhaps, they were alike.

He heard Fengxian, cradled in his arms, whisper, “I want to play Go.”

Personally, he had been thinking about some Shogi.

The misfortune began after that. The uncle with whom he had been so close was dismissed from his position. The man never had known how to play the game, and Lakan’s father declared the uncle a disgrace to the family. The uncle’s misadventure had not in fact done any harm to the family, but Lakan now found himself persona non grata for having been too close to him; he was told to go on a long trip and not come back for a while.

He could have ignored this, but it would only have been a headache later. His father was in the military, too, making him not just a parent but a superior officer. At last, he wrote to the brothel saying he would return in half a year’s time. This was after he had received a letter saying the contract buy-out had fallen through.

Thus, for a time, he labored under the impression that all would be well.

Little did he imagine that it would be some three years before he came back.

When he finally returned home, he found a mountain of letters had been tossed carelessly into his dust-choked room. The branches tied to them were withered and dry, making the passage of time painfully evident.

His gaze fell on one letter that showed signs of having been opened. It was full of all the familiar banalities—but in the corner of the letter, there was a dark-red stain. He glanced into the half-open pouch beside the letter. It, too, was stained.

He opened the pouch to discover what looked like two small twigs, or maybe lumps of clay. One of them was tiny; it looked delicate enough to crush in his hand.

He was too late realizing what they were: he had ten of them himself. This gave new meaning to the term “pinky swear.”

He rewrapped the two twigs and shoved them back into the pouch, then raced for the pleasure district as fast as his horse would carry him.

When he reached the brothel, which he found looking substantially more dilapidated than when he had seen it last, there were only Go stones there. There was no one who resembled balsam, although a woman came at him with a broom. It was the old madam; he could tell by her voice.

Fengxian was no longer there: that was the only thing the madam said to him. A courtesan who’d been abandoned by two important prospects, had dragged the name of her establishment through the mud, and was no longer trusted by anyone had no choice but to turn tricks like a common harlot. Did he not grasp what happened to such women?

A little thought might have revealed the answer, but his head was full of Go and Shogi and nothing else, and he had been unable to arrive at the truth. Throwing himself on the ground and crying, heedless of onlookers, wouldn’t turn back time.

It was all his fault for being so impulsive. All of it.

Lakan sat up abruptly in bed, gripping his still-throbbing head. He recognized the room he was in. Somewhere with a fragrant but not overpowering incense.

“Are you awake now, sir?” someone said gently. A face like a white Go stone appeared before him. He recognized her from the voice.

“What am I doing here, Meimei?”

Yes, he knew this courtesan of the Verdigris House. She’d been Fengxian’s apprentice long ago; the one Fengxian had ordered out of the room, in fact, if he recalled correctly. He’d seen her as an apprentice tentatively toying with Go stones from time to time, and so he had humored her with the occasional game. She always acted all embarrassed when he told her she was a pretty good player.

“A messenger from some noble brought you here and left you. My word, but you were a mess. I don’t know whether your face was more red or blue!”

Meimei was more or less the only courtesan at the Verdigris House who would entertain him. It was always her room to which he was shown on his visits.

“I sure didn’t think I’d end up this way.” He’d assumed that if his daughter was drinking it, the alcohol couldn’t be that strong. Then again, Lakan had never been very conversant with different types of alcoholic drink. Just a single swallow of this stuff had been enough to set his throat on fire. He grabbed a carafe of water from the bedside and drank lustily.

A bitter flavor spread through his mouth, and he spat the water out before he knew what he was doing. “Wh—What is this swill?!”

“Maomao prepared it,” Meimei said. He presumed she was smiling, for she covered her mouth with her sleeve. The drink was probably intended as a hangover cure, but the way it was delivered implied a touch of malice. Was it strange that, even so, he couldn’t keep a grin from his face?

Beside the carafe was a paulownia-wood box.

“Well, would you look at that...”

He had sent it along with a letter a long time ago, jokingly, as if it were loot. He opened it to find a single dried rose. He hadn’t realized it would retain its shape so well despite having dried out. He thought of his daughter, who reminded him of woodsorrel—cat’s paw.

After those long-ago events, he had come knocking on the door of the Verdigris House again and again, each time to be met with the madam’s recriminations. There’s no baby here, go on home, she would shout as she thrashed him with the broom. She could be terrifying indeed.

Once, as he was sitting, exhausted, with blood dribbling down the side of his head, he noticed a child rooting around nearby. There had been grasses with some sort of yellow flowers growing by the building. When he asked the child what she was doing, she said she was going to turn the grass into medicine. Instead of the Go stone he expected to see, he perceived an emotionless face.

The girl set off running with two handfuls of grass. She was heading for someone who walked with a limp like an old man. And his face, which might have been expected to look like a Go stone, instead looked like a Shogi tile. And not simply a pawn or a knight, but a dragon king, a powerful and important piece.

He knew now who it was who had opened the one letter out of all those he had received, and the dirty pouch. For here was his uncle Luomen, who had disappeared after being banished from the rear palace. The girl with the cat’s paw went trotting about after him; he called her Maomao.

Lakan pulled out the dirty pouch. It was even more worn than it used to be, since he carried it with him at all times. He knew the two twig-like objects would still be inside, wrapped in paper.

Maomao’s hand had looked unsteady as she moved her tiles. Partly that could have been because she didn’t play the game much. But partly it was because she was playing with her left hand. When he had looked at the red-colored fingertips, he had noted that her pinky finger on that hand was deformed.

He couldn’t blame her for hating him. Not considering all he had done. But even so, he wanted to put himself near her. He was tired of a life of nothing but Go stones and Shogi tiles. That had given him the incentive he had needed to steal back his birthright, to expel his half-brother, and to adopt his nephew as his own. Then, in the course of much negotiating with the old madam and over some ten years, he had successfully paid off an amount of money equivalent to two times the damages.

It must have been around that time that he was finally allowed back into the rooms. Meimei naturally took on the role. Perhaps she was paying him back for teaching her Shogi all those years before.

Lakan continued to visit, time and time again, because the only thing he wanted was to be with his daughter. Unfortunately, one talent Lakan decidedly lacked was the ability to grasp how other people were feeling, and again and again the things he did seemed to backfire.

He tucked the pouch back among the folds of his robe. Maybe it was time to give up, at least this time. Somehow, though—call it stubbornness—he couldn’t bring himself to let the matter drop completely.

And besides, he didn’t like the man in her company. He stood much too close to her, and during their match, he had touched her shoulders no fewer than three times. Lakan had been peevishly pleased to see his daughter brush the hand away each time, though.

All right, how to make himself feel a little better? Lakan picked up the carafe and drank down the foul-tasting medicine. However disgusting it might have been, his daughter had made it herself.

Maybe he would spend some time deciding how to knock the bug off his flower. His thoughts were interrupted when the door flew open with a slam.

“Finally had enough sleep, have we?” a Go stone cried hoarsely. He could tell from the voice that it was the old madam. “So you’re looking to buy one of my girls, are you? You ought to know by now that a couple of thousand silver isn’t going to cut it.”

Still a skinflint, as ever. Lakan held his pounding head, but a wry smile appeared on his face. He put on the monocle (which he only wore for effect). “Try ten thousand. And if that’s not enough, how about twenty or thirty? Admittedly, a hundred might be a bit of a stretch.” Lakan winced inwardly as he spoke. They weren’t small sums, even in his position. He would have to beg from his nephew for a while; the boy had some side businesses he ran.

“Well, all right. Come this way, and make it snappy. I’ll even let you choose, whichever one you like.” He let the madam lead him into the main room of the brothel, in which there stood a whole row of gaudily attired Go stones. Even Meimei was mixed in among them.

“Hoh, I could even pick one of the Three Princesses?”

“I said whichever one you liked, and I meant it,” the madam veritably spat. “But you can expect to pay for it.”

Even with this dispensation to choose freely, Lakan faced a unique problem. However fancy the girls’ dresses, to him they all looked like nothing more than Go stones. He could practically hear the women smiling. He could smell their sweet fragrances. And the kaleidoscope of colors that was their outfits nearly blinded him. But that was all. He felt nothing more than that. None of them moved Lakan’s heart.

He had been told to choose, though, so choose he must. Once he had purchased the girl, he could do as he pleased with her. He had enough money to keep a lady, and if she was unhappy with that, then he would give her some cash and set her free to do as she wished. Fine; surely that would be fine.

With that in mind, he turned toward Meimei. He supposed it was guilt that induced her to be so kind to him. If she hadn’t left them that day, perhaps none of this would have happened. It would be well and good, he thought, to reward her decency.

At that moment, Meimei spoke. “Master Lakan.” He could hear a small smile in her voice. “You must know I have my courtesan’s pride. If I am your desire, then I will have no hesitation.” So saying, she pattered over to the great window that looked onto the courtyard and opened it. The curtain fluttered, and a few stray flower petals drifted into the room. “But if you’re going to choose, then choose with your eyes open.”

“Meimei, I didn’t give you permission to open that window!” the madam exclaimed, rushing to close it again.

But Lakan had already heard it, distantly. Laughter. Like a courtesan’s chuckle, but somehow more innocent. He thought he caught the words of a child’s song.

His eyes widened.

“What is it?” the madam asked suspiciously. Lakan gazed out the ornate window. The singing drifted to them in snatches. “What are you doing?!” Becoming increasingly agitated, she tried to grab his hand.

But she was too late. He jumped out the window and hit the ground running, dashing single-mindedly toward the source of the voice. He had never regretted his failure to exercise more bitterly than he did at this moment. Yet he ran on, even as his legs threatened to buckle underneath him.

For all the times he had been to the Verdigris House, he had never been to this particular part of it: a small building, almost a storage shed, at a distance from the main house. He could hear the song coming from within.

Trying to keep his heart from pounding clear out of his chest, Lakan opened the door. He caught a distinctive odor of medicine.

Inside was an emaciated woman. Her hair ringed her head but had no luster, and her arms lay atop her like withered branches. She reeked of illness. And there was something else: her left ring finger was deformed. Lakan could only stare in amazement. He realized then that he felt something on his cheeks.

The madam rushed up. “What are you doing? This is a sick room!” She grabbed his hand and tried to drag him away, but Lakan didn’t move. He was staring, fixated on the emaciated woman. “Come on, get out of here. Come choose one of my girls.”

“Yes. Right. Must make a choice.” Lakan sat down slowly, making no effort to wipe away the overflowing droplets. The woman didn’t seem to notice him; she only smiled and sang her little song. There was no longer any trace of the imperious bearing or the mocking look. Her heart had reverted to that of an innocent child. Yet despite her wasted state, to Lakan, she looked more beautiful than anyone in the world.

“This woman, madam. I want this woman.”

“Don’t be stupid. Get back in there and pick.”

Lakan, though, reached into the folds of his robe, feeling around until he found a heavy pouch. He pulled it out and placed it in the woman’s hand. It appeared to catch her interest; she opened it and looked inside with stiff, stilted motions. With trembling fingers, she pulled out a Go stone.

Perhaps it was only his imagination that made him think he saw a momentary flush in her face. Lakan grinned. “This is the woman I’m going to buy out, and I don’t care how much it costs. Ten thousand, twenty, it doesn’t matter.”

There was nothing the old madam could say to that. Meimei came up behind her, her dress dragging on the floor as she entered the room to sit across from the sick woman. She took the woman’s bony hand. “If only you had said what you wanted to begin with, Elder Sister. Why didn’t you speak up sooner?” Meimei seemed to be crying; he could tell when he heard the sob. “Why not let it be over before I started to hope?”

Lakan didn’t understand why Meimei was crying. He was busy studying the woman, who looked affably at the Go stone.

She was as beautiful as balsam.

○●○

I am so tired...

Maomao was reminded how exhausting it was to deal with people she wasn’t used to. She’d helped get the soused fox-eyed man to a sleeping chamber, and now was all but stumbling home. She’d already parted ways with Jinshi and Gaoshun, who had business of their own to attend to. They’d left her with another official—the one who had accompanied her during the food poisoning investigation.

Basen, that was his name. She’d only had to meet him several times to start remembering it. He was easy to work with: he wasn’t effusive, but he did his job attentively and thoroughly. It was a good combination for Maomao, who rarely felt compelled to start a conversation if someone else didn’t do it first.

Seeing him again, though, had reminded Maomao that sometimes there were people you simply didn’t get along with. Things you simply couldn’t accept. Even if the other person had never had any malice.

As she trudged along, Maomao spied a glittering entourage. At the center of it, attended by a palace woman holding a parasol for her, was a woman in a lavish dress—Consort Loulan.

Maomao heard someone cluck their tongue. She realized Basen was beside her, watching the group through lidded eyes. He didn’t seem to like it very much. Maomao briefly wondered why, but then she saw a portly court official standing and waiting for Loulan. He was flanked by men who looked like aides, and there was a train of people behind him.

When Loulan saw the portly man, she hid her mouth with a folding fan and began speaking to him in an obviously friendly manner. Notwithstanding all the ladies-in-waiting who were present, Maomao wondered if it was really all right for any consort to be speaking so intimately with a man who wasn’t His Majesty.

A venomous whisper from Basen, however, answered her question. “Damned schemers, father and daughter both.”

So that must be Loulan’s father, the one who had pushed to have her admitted to the rear palace. Maomao had heard rumors that the man had been an influential advisor of the former emperor, but that the current ruler, who preferred to promote people on demonstrated merit, regarded him about as favorably as a black eye.

Nonetheless, Maomao shot Basen a look. She wished he wouldn’t badmouth a high official out loud, even if she was the only one around. If anyone chanced to hear them, they might think she was a willing party to the conversation.

He’s still young, I guess. Looking at him, it occurred to her that he wasn’t much older than she was.

It had been decided that Maomao wouldn’t go back to the rear palace that night, but would stay at Jinshi’s residence instead.

“And here I was under the impression you despised him,” Jinshi said slowly, his arms crossed. He’d gotten there before she had and had been waiting for her.

Maomao was sipping some congee Suiren had prepared. It was bad manners to talk while one ate, but she was more interested in catching up on the nutrition she’d missed during her time at the Crystal Pavilion. Suiren, shocked to see Maomao so thin when she reappeared after her stint away from Jinshi’s residence, hadn’t stopped at congee but was producing one dish after another. In this, too, she was like the women of the Jade Pavilion, not begrudging any task because she was a lady-in-waiting.

“I don’t despise him. It’s precisely because he did what he did—and who he did—that I’m here at all.”

“Who he—?” Jinshi seemed to be wondering if there wasn’t a more delicate way to put that.

Not sure what he wants me to say, Maomao thought. She was only telling the truth.

“I don’t know how you imagine the pleasure district works, but no courtesan has a child unless she wants to.”

All courtesans routinely took contraceptive medicines or abortifacients. Even if a child was conceived, there were any number of ways to end the pregnancy early on. If they gave birth, it meant they wanted to.

“In fact, one might almost think it had been planned.”

By paying attention to when a woman had her flow of blood, it was simple enough to take an educated guess when she was likely to conceive. A courtesan need only send a letter changing her partner’s visit to a convenient day.

“By the commander?” Jinshi asked as he took a bite of a snack Suiren brought him.

“Women are cunning creatures,” Maomao replied. Thus, when her aim had gone awry, she’d lost control of herself. She had been so far gone that she had even been willing to injure herself, and worse...

That dream the other day.

It really had happened. Not satisfied with just severing her own finger, the courtesan who had given birth to Maomao had taken her child’s to add to her letter as well.

No one at the brothel ever spoke to Maomao about the courtesan who had borne her. She was well aware that the old madam had ordered everyone to stay silent on the subject. But just the atmosphere of the place, along with a modicum of curiosity, was enough to make the truth clear.

Maomao was the reason the Verdigris House had nearly gone under.

She also learned that her father was an eccentric man who loved Go and Shogi—and that all that had happened could be laid at the feet of one headstrong and selfish courtesan.

She learned one other thing, as well: the identity of this woman, whom Maomao had always been told was no longer there. The identity of the woman who, until the humiliation of her missing nose drove her insane, had always refused to go anywhere near Maomao.

That fool of a man. There were better courtesans! Why didn’t he just buy one of them out? That’s what he should have done...

“Master Jinshi, does that man ever speak to you anywhere but your office?”

Jinshi thought for a second. “Now that you mention it, no, he doesn’t.” The most he ever did, Jinshi said, was give him a quick nod of the head when they passed each other in the hallway. The only time the man ever cornered him with chatter was when he showed up at Jinshi’s office.

“Once in a while,” Maomao said, “you’ll meet someone who can’t discern people’s faces. That man is one of them.”

This was something Maomao’s old man had told her. She’d only half believed it herself, but when he’d told her that he was like that, it had somehow seemed to make sense.

“Can’t discern?” Jinshi said. “What do you mean?”

“Simply what I said. They can’t seem to put faces together. They know what an eye is, or a mouth, and can perceive these different bits, but they don’t register them in aggregate as distinct faces.”

Her old man had been solemn as he told her this. He was communicating that even he deserved sympathy, for he had suffered much in his life because of this thing he couldn’t control. Nonetheless, while her old man was compassionate, he did grasp the broader situation, and he never tried to stop the old madam from chasing the other man out of the brothel with her broom. He knew that wrong was wrong.

“For some reason, he does seem to recognize me and my adoptive father. I think that’s where that stubborn obsession of his comes from.”

One day, out of the blue, a strange man had appeared and tried to lead her away. The madam had shown up shortly after and beaten him with a broom, and the sight of the bruised and bloodied man had inspired fear in her young heart. Anyone would be scared by a man who reached out to them grinning even as blood poured from his face.

He showed up periodically after that, always doing something unexpected before being sent home a bloody mess. It had taught her not to be surprised by anything, or at any rate by very few things. The man kept calling himself her father, but as far as Maomao was concerned her father was her “old man,” not that raving eccentric. He was, at best, the stud who had sired her.

He was trying to displace Maomao’s old man, Luomen, and be her father instead, but Maomao was having none of it. This was one point on which she wouldn’t bend. Everyone at the brothel told her that the woman who had given birth to her was gone—it was less trouble that way. And even if she was alive, what did Maomao care? Maomao had her old man; she was Luomen’s daughter. And she was perfectly happy that way.

That man wasn’t the only one responsible for her. In fact, she was grateful to him on that count. She had no memories of her mother—only of a terrifying demon.

As for how Maomao felt toward Lakan—she might hate him, but she didn’t resent him. He was clumsy about some things, but not malicious; even if he was sometimes a bit overdramatic in his reactions. If there was a question of forgiveness to be answered, well, there was at least one person who had more reason to resent him than Maomao did.

Maybe the madam’s forgiven him by now, she thought.

She wondered if the man had noticed the letter in the box with the rose in it. It was the biggest concession Maomao was capable of making to her sire. Well, if he never noticed, that was fine. Let him buy out her pleasant courtesan-sister. That might be happiest all around.

“I can’t help thinking it certainly looked like you hated him.”

“That’s simply because you don’t know him very well yet, Master Jinshi.”

When Maomao had been trying to get into the ceremony, it was Lakan who had helped her. She suspected he’d had an intuition that something was going to happen. He’d never needed to look at scenes and gather evidence the way Maomao did in order to predict impending events. He seemed to simply have a nose for them. And his guesses were rarely wrong.

“Has he never wheedled you into looking into a matter you otherwise wouldn’t?” Maomao asked.

Jinshi fell quiet at that, but from the way he then whispered, “So that’s what that was,” she presumed she had guessed correctly. Perhaps he was also the reason Lihaku had been so quick to investigate Suirei, and that the Board of Justice had responded so efficiently to her.

The one hitch with that man was that as much trouble as he put everyone else to, he never seemed to want to lift a finger himself. Just imagine what might happen if he were willing to take a public stand every once in a while.

Maybe that resurrection drug would already be within reach. The thought pained her immensely.

He didn’t understand what genius he was blessed with. This whole country held few people whom her old man would praise so openly and with such fervor. Maomao recognized this feeling: it was jealousy.

“It might be impossible to make a friend of him, but I’d suggest you not make him an enemy either.” She almost spat the words—then held up her left hand and looked at the pinky finger. “Master Jinshi, do you know something?”

“What is it?”

“If you cut off a fingertip, it will grow back.”

“Must you say that while I’m eating?” He gave her an uncharacteristic glare, their usual positions reversed.

“One more thing, then.”

“Yes, what?”

“If that man with his monocle ever told you to ‘Call me Papa,’ how would you feel?”

Jinshi paused for a moment and looked deeply disturbed: another unusual expression for him.

“My goodness,” Suiren said, putting her hand to her mouth.

“I suppose I would want to tear that stupid monocle off his face and shatter it.”

“I expect so.”

Jinshi seemed to understand what Maomao was getting at. He whispered a question, something about whether it was rough to be a father. Standing beside him, a twinge of grief passed over Gaoshun’s face. Perhaps something about the conversation struck a nerve.

“Is something the matter?” Maomao asked, and Gaoshun gazed up at the ceiling.

“No. Only bear in mind that no father in the world wishes to be reviled,” he said softly.

Well now, Maomao thought, but she only brought her spoon to her mouth, determined to finish the last of her congee.