The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Raw Fish

“Xiaomao, may I have a moment?” Gaoshun asked as Maomao was about to head back to her room after finishing the day’s work. Their shared master Jinshi, evidently tired from his own exertions, had gone to take a bath directly after eating.

“What seems to be the matter?” Maomao asked, at which Gaoshun hesitated for a moment—stroking his chin to cover for himself—and finally let out a long breath. “There’s something I’d like you to look at.” Jinshi’s aide seemed to have even more furrows in his brow than usual today.

What Gaoshun showed Maomao was something written on a bound collection of wood strips, which he unrolled on a table. Maomao looked closely at them. “A record of an old incident,” she observed. The strips recounted the case of a merchant who had contracted food poisoning some ten years before. The victim had allegedly consumed blowfish.

Maomao swallowed in spite of herself. Argh, I wish I could have some blowfish.

Gaoshun was looking at her, noticeably vexed. Maomao shook her head and wiped the grin off her face.

“Next time we have a chance, I’ll take you to eat something of the sort,” Gaoshun said, though he added pointedly that blowfish liver would not be served.

Maomao was a bit put out by that (Real gourmands know how to enjoy that unique tingle!), but nonetheless, there was nothing like the prospect of a good meal to get her invested in a project. She started studying the materials closely. “Why are we looking at this, if I may ask?”

“Long ago, my work happened to involve me in the matter of this case. A former colleague of mine brought it up to me again, because a very similar incident occurred recently.”

Was this former colleague, Maomao wondered, someone from before Gaoshun had become a eunuch? So he really had been a military official or some such.

“Very similar?” Maomao said. “How so?” She mentally set aside the question of her companion’s history. She was, quite frankly, more interested in this case of poisoning than she was in talk of Gaoshun’s past.

“A bureaucrat ate a dish of shredded raw blowfish and vegetables, and now he’s comatose.”

Comatose? Maomao didn’t like the sound of that. Gaoshun had never been the type to mince words, and she doubted he had started just now. She took a discreet glance at Gaoshun’s face. He had the same wrinkle in his brow, the same somewhat wrung-out expression as usual—but he also seemed to be studying Maomao in much the way she was studying him.

“My apologies, Master Gaoshun, but might I ask for further details?” Despite her directness, Gaoshun didn’t flinch, but only nodded slowly, his hands still resting in his sleeves.

“Yes, of course. I’m quite happy to tell you, Xiaomao. I’m confident you know where you stand.” She wasn’t sure that was a compliment. The meaning was clear enough: Keep your mouth shut. “Besides,” he went on, “could I really leave the story off there?”

What a tease. He knew perfectly well that Maomao’s curiosity would be fired by now. “Please, by all means, continue,” Maomao said, frowning at how amused Gaoshun seemed by his own sudden importance to her.

Gaoshun pointed at the strips of wood and said, “In the current case, the dish included blowfish skin and meat, almost raw, just given a quick scalding. The victim consumed the dish and fell into a coma.”

“Meat? You mean, not the internal organs?”

“That’s right.”

Blowfish poison couldn’t be removed by heating it, but the poison was concentrated in the fish’s organs, principally the liver, and the flesh proper was substantially less dangerous. Maomao would have guessed that any case of coma on account of blowfish poison would almost have to have involved consumption of the liver. Could that much toxin really have built up in the flesh? she wondered. Depending on the exact variety of fish and the environment in which it was raised, the meat could, on occasion, be poisonous. She didn’t have enough evidence to be certain one way or the other, so she couldn’t rule out the possibility.

When Maomao had eaten blowfish, it had always been the less poisonous meat. Well, almost always—every once in a while she got it into her head to put a bit of liver in her mouth, but it was a dangerous game. She well remembered the madam forcing her to drink water until her stomach practically turned inside out.

“To be honest, I’m not hearing anything unusual so far,” Maomao said.

“Well, there’s one detail I haven’t mentioned,” Gaoshun said, shaking his head slowly and scratching the back of his neck as if embarrassed. “The chefs involved in preparing the dishes insist they didn’t use blowfish. Not on this occasion, and not in the incident ten years ago.”

Gaoshun was frowning openly now, but Maomao simply ran her tongue along her lips. This was getting more interesting by the minute.

There were several points of similarity between the two cases. For one thing, both the bureaucrat of the present case and the merchant of the older one had been epicures with a taste for unusual food. On these occasions, they’d been consuming dishes of shredded raw fish and vegetables in which the meat had been gently scalded by dipping it briefly into boiling water, but they had each been accustomed to eating fish completely raw as well. The fresh taste of raw fish could be wonderful, but the uncooked meat all too often hosted parasites. Most people didn’t much like it, and in some areas eating raw fish was outright forbidden.

Adventurous eaters like the victims in question would have been accustomed to consuming blowfish. And although they would all deny it publicly, some such people on occasion deliberately had a little bit of toxin left in their fish, in order to enjoy the tingling sensation it produced.

And people would judge them for it! Philistines, Maomao thought. She was of the opinion that people ought to be more or less tolerant of the preferences of others, at least when it came to food.

Neither of the chefs who had prepared the tainted food would admit to any wrongdoing; both were adamant that they hadn’t used blowfish in the preparation of their dishes. And yet, the men who had eaten said dishes had nonetheless succumbed to food poisoning. Blowfish innards and skin had been discovered in the kitchen waste and submitted as evidence, but the fact that the internal organs were complete and accounted for was understood to show that no part of them had in fact been consumed.

They actually took this investigation really seriously, Maomao thought, finding herself oddly impressed. She knew there were far too many officials in the world who were happy to settle for pinning the crime on someone via circumstantial or, if necessary, doctored evidence.

Both chefs asserted that they had used blowfish in their cooking the day before the respective incidents, but not the day of. With the season as cold as it was now, it wasn’t surprising that the trash might not be taken out for several days at a time—unlike, say, in summer, when it might have been disposed of more regularly. The dish in question had been prepared with a different fish, the remains of which were also discovered in the trash.

So this obviously isn’t a setup by some official, Maomao mused, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the cooks are telling the truth. Unfortunately, there were no eyewitnesses to the meals in question. Afraid of angering his wife with his outré culinary choices, the administrator frequently took his meals alone. The cook had brought in the dish, but the official’s servant only saw him eat at a distance and couldn’t identify exactly what fish had been used in the meal.

Moreover, the victim had succumbed only after he was well finished eating—the best part of half an hour after the meal was over. A servant bringing tea discovered the man twitching and barely breathing, his lips blue.

The symptoms are certainly in line with blowfish poisoning, Maomao thought. The information Gaoshun had given her, though, simply wasn’t enough. She decided to give up trying to think the problem through for a while, until she could get more details from the eunuch. She was just mumbling to herself, “What in the world could have happened?” when an irreproachably handsome visage appeared beside her. Maomao felt the muscles of her face tauten reflexively.

“If you’ll excuse me, perhaps you could not pull faces at yours truly? It wounds me.” Jinshi’s hair was still wet; Suiren was trying to wipe it with a towel, exclaiming, “Oh, goodness,” as it dripped everywhere.

Maomao forced herself to resume a normal expression. It seemed she had been all but vibrating with distress.

“You were certainly hanging on every word Gaoshun said,” Jinshi remarked. He didn’t sound amused.

“I was only as engaged as anyone when a speaker has something interesting to say.”

Jinshi looked scandalized. “Now, just a moment. When I talk, you never...” He couldn’t even bring himself to finish the sentence, but for the moment, Maomao didn’t care.

“It’s gotten late,” she said. “If you won’t be needing me, sir, I’ll be going back.” She nodded politely to Suiren, still mopping at Jinshi’s hair, and pattered out of the room. Jinshi seemed to be trying to say something else, but Suiren snapped, “Don’t move,” and Maomao heard nothing more from him. She was somewhat exasperated with herself, acting so helplessly fascinated by the matter of a person’s death. She wondered what her father would think of her as she headed back to her room.

The next day, Gaoshun brought her a cookbook. “These are copies of recipes the chef commonly prepared. The servants testified that most of the meals served to their master came from this collection. This is the recipe the chef claims to have been following.” He set the notebook on the table and opened it to a page with instructions for raw fish lightly scalded and then shredded. Maomao looked at it, stroking her chin.

The recipe called for the fish to be accompanied with minced vegetables and lightly vinegared. A few scrawled notes indicated modifications to the vinegar, but overall there was nothing unusual. Several different vinegar dressings were listed, presumably to account for the season and available ingredients. Exactly which fish and vegetables were to be used weren’t specified in detail.

Hm. Maomao continued stroking her chin. “This doesn’t answer the crucial question of what was actually used,” she said.

“I’m afraid that’s true.”

Jinshi was watching Maomao with curiosity from a short distance away, although he didn’t appear to be enjoying himself. He had longan fruit with him that he cracked open and ate listlessly. The dark, dry seeds emerged with each crack. Longan were like lychee, but smaller, and were normally a summer fruit. When dried, the fruit was much valued in traditional medicine.

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Jinshi said, settling his elbows restlessly on the table and looking across at Maomao. He clearly wanted to be part of the discussion. Gaoshun frowned but didn’t go so far as to reprimand him. Somebody ought to give him a piece of their mind, Maomao thought, coolly regarding Jinshi as he leaned uncouthly on the table. At that moment, somebody plucked the longan from Jinshi’s hand.

“Boys who can’t comport themselves like gentlemen will go without snacks,” Suiren said, chuckling openly from her place just behind Jinshi. Despite her laughter, Maomao felt the charge in the air. She couldn’t shake the sense that she could see storm clouds rising up behind Suiren. Would it be strange to describe the lady-in-waiting as having the aura of a seasoned warrior?

“Yes, yes.” Jinshi’s eyebrows drooped, but he took his elbows off the table and resumed proper posture.

“Very good.” Suiren nodded, placing the fruit back in his hand. Here Maomao had assumed Suiren was just a doting old lady, but apparently she could be a stickler for propriety.

But they were getting off track. It was time to bring things back to the subject at hand.

“This incident occurred just recently, didn’t it?” Maomao said.

“About a week ago,” Gaoshun replied. During the cold season. This dish typically used cucumber, but this time of year, they would have had to find something else.

“May I guess that it was prepared with daikon and carrots?” There were only so many vegetables that would be available in winter. To each ingredient there was a season, a window in which it could be best enjoyed.

“Ahem... The chef said he used seaweed,” Gaoshun said.

“Huh!” said Maomao, her mouth opening in an expression of surprise. “Did you say seaweed?”

“Yes, seaweed,” Gaoshun replied. Seaweed was a common ingredient in traditional medicine as well. And yes, it would make some sense appearing in this particular dish.

But a gourmand like that wouldn’t want just any seaweed. He would want something different. Special. Maomao felt the corners of her mouth turn up. She suspected her front teeth were showing. Jinshi and the others looked at her with their own mouths agape.

Maomao, still grinning, turned to Gaoshun. “Perhaps I could inspect the kitchen of the house in question. If that’s possible?” She wasn’t sure he would go along with the idea, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

Gaoshun acted swiftly, and the very next day, Maomao had everything she needed to get into the kitchen where the trouble had started. She was given to understand that obtaining permission had been a simple matter, as the official inquest was already complete.

The estate was situated in the northwest of the capital. The northern quadrant of the city was occupied primarily by high-ranking officials, and the area was packed with gorgeous houses. When they arrived at the particular mansion they wanted, the victim’s wife (allegedly wasting away with the stress) was asleep, so a manservant showed them through the house. The wife had already given her approval, they were told.

A manservant, Maomao mused as they entered the kitchen. Gaoshun had arranged another official to accompany Maomao, but he spent most of his time looking at her doubtfully. He clearly didn’t relish this assignment, but Gaoshun had told him to do it, and evidently he would obey, so there was no problem as far as it went. Maomao wasn’t there to make friends with him, so it was all the same to her.

The man was with the military, but young. His body lacked the bulk of a long-serving soldier, but his movements were brusque and efficient. Under his furrowed brow was a face that was manly despite its remaining traces of youth. He looked oddly familiar, Maomao thought. She was just about to trot into the kitchen when a man came running up to her in high dudgeon.

“What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just wander around this house! Get out of here! Who let this riffraff in?!” He caught the manservant by the collar.

Maomao was fixing him with a glare when the young man accompanying her stepped forward. “The mistress of the household gave us her blessing. And this is official business.” Maomao applauded the calm but firm tone he took with the overheated newcomer.

“Is this true?” The man relaxed his grip on the servant’s neck. Through a coughing fit, the manservant managed to confirm that it was.

“Now, may we proceed? Or is there some reason we shouldn’t?” the young official asked, at which the man made a sound of disgust and spat, “Pfah! What do I care?”

The manservant later explained to them apologetically that the younger brother of the comatose official was overseeing his estate in lieu of the man’s indisposed wife; he was the one who had accosted them.

So that’s what’s going on, Maomao thought, but recognizing that it would be improper to insert herself into someone else’s family affairs, she left it at that. Instead, she looked around the kitchen. As she’d feared, the chef had already washed and cleaned his tools; however, aside from the fish, which had been disposed of lest it start to rot, the majority of the ingredients still remained.

She began to explore the room, and there, on a shelf near the back wall, she found it, sitting right out in the open. Maomao’s discovery, salted and stored in a small pot, brought a grin to her face. “What is this?” she asked the servant. He squinted into the pot, his face suggesting he wasn’t sure. So Maomao took a bit of it and dropped it into a jug of water. “Do you recognize it now?”

“Oh! This is that thing the master liked.” The servant informed them that the master had eaten it all the time; it couldn’t possibly be poisoned. The servant’s mistress evidently trusted him, and he didn’t appear to be lying.

“You heard the man. Hurry up and go home,” the younger brother snapped. He’d been watching Maomao at work for some time now. In particular, he seemed to be fixated on the jar she was investigating.

“Yes, of course,” Maomao said, putting the jar back where she’d found it—and grabbing a handful of the contents as she did so, secreting it in her sleeve. “Our apologies for disturbing you.”

She left the kitchen, but she could feel the man’s eyes boring into her from behind.

“Why did you just run away like that? You hardly even objected,” the young military man said to Maomao as they rode home in their carriage. She was surprised he was willing to initiate the conversation.

“Oh, I hardly think I ran away.” Maomao produced the bit of salted seaweed from her sleeve and placed it delicately in a handkerchief. It had left her sleeve disgustingly salty, but the young man would probably get upset if she tried to shake it out right there. “This is strange,” she said instead. “It’s a little too early in the year to harvest this particular kind of seaweed. But I don’t think a salt-cured piece from last year would have lasted this long.” No, this ingredient was well outside its season.

“That leads me to think it wasn’t harvested around here,” Maomao went on. “That maybe it was obtained from the south somewhere, through trade, for example. You wouldn’t happen to know where such a thing might come from, would you?”

The young man’s eyes widened. He seemed to understand what she was asking of him.

That just left Maomao’s own task to attend to.

The next day, at her request, Gaoshun arranged a kitchen for her to use. It was in one of the bureaucratic offices of the outer court, and included accommodations for someone to stay overnight. Maomao had prepared everything the night before; now, she started to cook. Well, cook might be a strong word. She was only steeping the seaweed in some water to get the salt off. It was a simple enough process, but things being what they were, she’d figured it would be better not to use the kitchen in Jinshi’s building, hence why she’d asked for a different one.

Two plates sat in front of her, bearing her preparation. She’d divided her pilfered seaweed into two portions and soaked them in water. By now they were a rich, deep green.

Also before her were Gaoshun and the official who had consulted him about this case, along with the young soldier from the day before, and, for some reason, Jinshi. Maomao thought Suiren was likely to rake him over the coals again for being a rubberneck.

“I discovered you were right,” the soldier said. The seaweed had been imported from the south. “I tried asking the manservant we met about it. He says that indeed, that seaweed was never eaten in winter. I inquired with the other servants as well, but the answers were all about the same.”

The stranger in the room, the man who had consulted Gaoshun about the incident, shook his head. “I already spoke to the cook about it. He says it’s the same kind of seaweed he always uses. He swears it can’t be poisonous.”

In fact, Maomao agreed: it was the same kind of seaweed. But there was a difference. “One of them may yet be poisonous,” she said. With a pair of chopsticks, she picked up one of the pieces of seaweed from its plate. “Tell me, do people in the south normally eat this kind of seaweed? Or could it be that a gourmand-official imported dried samples from the plant’s native land, thinking there might be money to be made?”

“And what would be the problem if he had?” Jinshi asked. Today he had none of the loose, almost informal quality he’d sometimes demonstrated recently. Perhaps it was because there were other people present. Gaoshun looked as serene as ever, but the other two officials seemed somewhat uncomfortable in the presence of the radiant eunuch.

Maomao twiddled the chopsticks playfully as she replied, “There are ways to make a poison not poisonous.”

Several, in fact. Eels, for instance, were normally poisonous, but if one drained the blood and heated them enough, they became edible. To take another example, this particular kind of seaweed, Maomao recalled, had to be cured with quicklime. One of the two pieces before them was treated with quicklime; the other was not. At the moment, Maomao was holding in her chopsticks the piece she had been steeping in a quicklime solution overnight. She took a big bite of it, distressing the onlookers. They crowded around and fussed over her.

“I’ll be fine... I think,” Maomao said. In truth, she only knew the theory; she wasn’t actually sure if a single night’s steeping would be enough to neutralize the poison. This was another important test for her.

“You think?” Jinshi demanded.

“Oh, calm down. I have an emetic right here.” She showed them the pouch of herbal medicine hanging around her neck.

“Aren’t we a little overconfident?!” Jinshi snapped. A moment later, Gaoshun had Maomao in a bear hug from behind while his master forced the medicine down her throat. Thus she ended her demonstration by vomiting in front of four important men. Lovely. What a thing to do to a young woman who had yet even to be married.

Worse, the emetic induced vomiting through its awful flavor, so it was a poor chaser for the seaweed.

And here I was trying to prove that seaweed was safe, Maomao thought. She wiped away the stomach juices, composed herself, and then said, “Here’s the question as I see it: who suggested the idea to the tradesman to import this salted seaweed?” The merchant had gone to a foreign land, one where there was no custom of consuming this plant, simply in order to obtain it. Presumably he was at least aware of the potential danger. “The man who fell into a coma from it could be said to have reaped what he sowed.”

But what if something else was going on? What if the possibility of poison had been well accounted for?

Here I go, speculating again.

There had been a similar case ten years before. What if it had given someone a hint—inspiration? Maomao had no way of saying whether the two were really connected. But as far as the current case, she trusted her intuition. Everyone here in this room with her was intelligent. She doubted she needed to say anything more, and she didn’t intend to. Maomao was a person of such minor consequence. She had no desire to ponder anyone’s particular guilt.

“I see.” Gaoshun nodded slowly, evidently comprehending what Maomao was driving at.

She let out a relieved breath, then grabbed the seaweed in front of her and ate it—this time, from the other plate.

And thus, for the second time that day, Maomao was induced to retch by a pale-faced Jinshi and his companions.

The culprit turned out to be the younger brother of the comatose bureaucrat. Once they found out where he’d purchased the seaweed, he could hardly confess fast enough. So Maomao had been right to be suspicious of the way he’d been watching her in the kitchen. He might as well have told them outright there was something he didn’t want them to see in there.

His story was a common one: with the elder son alive and well, the younger went forgotten. Maomao and the others were almost disappointed to discover such a comically prosaic motive at work.

However, a problem remained. Apparently the man had been willing to commit murder over this simple grievance, but how had he learned about the poisonous seaweed in the first place? He claimed a fellow patron at his favorite bar had happened to mention it in the course of a conversation. And neither Maomao nor anyone knew at the time whether this was simple chance, or if it went deeper.

Maomao was cleaning up, muttering over the fact that she never did get to eat the toxic seaweed. But it was no use crying over spilled milk—or regurgitated seaweed—so she determined to think about something else.

Ahh, I wonder what I’ll use my precious new ingredient for. The bizarre herb sprouting from a bug danced in her head. Just as it threatened to take over her every thought, she shook her head: she had to stay focused. She was on the job. But she couldn’t keep herself from grinning at the thought of that disgusting dried insect with the grayish mushroom popping out of it. She was overjoyed just thinking about the possibilities: maybe she would make a medicinal wine out of it, or turn it into pills.

The overweening happiness caused her, to her chagrin, to greet the master of the room with a giant smile on her face. The moment she registered Jinshi—and the shocked look he was giving her—Maomao dropped her eyes to the ground.

I’ll bet that wasn’t very appealing. Slowly, uncomfortably, she looked up, to discover Jinshi was suddenly beating his head against a pillar. It made a clacking sound like a woodpecker. The noise brought Gaoshun and Suiren running.

Gaoshun seemed to be fixing Maomao with a glare. It wasn’t my fault! Maomao protested wordlessly. Your master is wrong in the head. Silently she was pouting, but all she actually said to them was, “Welcome back.” She could at least act polite.

Jinshi had been spending especially long days at work of late. He claimed it was because there were so many things that needed taking care of. In which case, perhaps he should have been working the other day rather than standing around gawping at Maomao’s experiment.

Jinshi’s assessment of the person he’d recently had to entertain to get his work done was less than flattering: “You could say we don’t get along. Or at the very least, that there’s a stark difference of opinion.” Now he sighed as he accepted some fruit wine from Suiren. Everyone in the room had a well-developed tolerance for Jinshi, so it didn’t affect them, but if some girl had happened to see him like this, she might have fainted on the spot. A most troublesome eunuch indeed.

So there was someone out there who could successfully have a different opinion from Jinshi. That was impressive in its own right.

“There are some people even I can’t deal with easily,” Jinshi said.

The person in question was evidently a high-ranking military official, a man of sharp intellect but unorthodox character. He would nitpick, bring visitors to people’s offices, barge in, challenge them to a game of Shogi, distract them with simple banter, and otherwise prevent paperwork from getting stamped for as long as possible.

And on this occasion, Jinshi was his target. Jinshi had found himself obliged to entertain the man for a good two hours each day, which meant he had to make up the time later.

Maomao’s face contorted. “What old hermit would waste his time like that?”

“Old hermit? He’s only just past forty. The worst part is, he gets his work done before he comes to bother me.”

A forty-something, eccentric, highly ranked military officer? These particular characteristics rang a bell with Maomao, but she had the distinct feeling that recalling exactly why would bring nothing good, so she decided to forget about it instead. Unfortunately, forgetting wasn’t likely to make her bad feeling any less accurate.

○●○

“I believe the matter you were concerned with has already been approved,” Jinshi said, bringing his nymph-like smile to bear on his uninvited guest. It took a genuine effort not to scowl.

“Hell, sure it has, but flower viewing is just so hard in the winter. Thought this would be the next best thing.”

Jinshi was confronted by a middle-aged man with an unshaven face and a monocle. A loiterer if ever there was one. He wore a military uniform, but his build was more that of a civil official, and his squinted, fox-like eyes carried equal parts intelligence and madness.

The man’s name was Lakan, and he was a military commander. In some other era, he might have been considered a sleeping dragon, a great military mind waiting to be discovered, but in this day and age he was just another oddball. He came from a good family background, but was still unmarried at more than forty years old; he had adopted a nephew of his to oversee his household.

Lakan was interested in three things: Go, Shogi, and gossip. He would engage anybody in one of these, even if they weren’t interested. As for why he had made himself such a nuisance to Jinshi recently, it was because Jinshi had taken on as a maid a young woman with a connection to the Verdigris House.

The situation was simply what it was, yet it couldn’t look good to society at large to take a girl from a brothel. Yes, she was nominally just his maid, but what were people supposed to think? This rumor-loving official had run with the story of Jinshi’s youthful new acquaintance, until the military was thoroughly convinced that the eunuch had purchased her out of prostitution. And it was hard to say they were wrong, exactly.

Jinshi let the old fart’s jabbering (where did he get all these stories?) go in one ear and out the other as he stamped away at the papers Gaoshun had brought him.

Until the moment Lakan said something rather unexpected. “I used to have a friend at the Verdigris House myself, you know. Someone I was very close to.” Jinshi had never known him to show any interest in things carnal.

“A courtesan? What was she like?” he asked, his interest aroused (much to his annoyance).

Lakan grinned and poured a bit of the fruit juice he’d brought with him into a glass. Reclining on a couch, he could have been relaxing in his very own room. “Oh, she was a fine lady. Excellent Go and Shogi player. In Shogi I could hold my own against her, but in Go, oh, I was always losing.”

To defeat a military commander at a game of strategy was no mean feat, Jinshi reflected.

“I thought about buying out her contract. Figured I would never meet a woman so interesting again. But life doesn’t always give you what you want, boyo. A couple of interested parties showed up, both very rich, and started a bidding war. Drove up the price.”

“Goodness.”

Sometimes buying out a courtesan’s contract could cost as much as building a small palace. In other words, the bidding war had put the woman out of Lakan’s reach.

But why was he telling Jinshi this?

“She was one odd duck, that lady. Sold her arts but never her body. Hell, she didn’t seem to think of her customers as customers. When you had tea with her, she never would act like she was serving her master or anyone important. No, no. Instead she’d look at you, imperious, like royalty granting an audience to the basest peasant. Now, there are those that like that kind of treatment, and they went mad for her. I mean, listen to me—takes one to know ’em, eh? Ah, the very thought sends a shiver down my spine!”

Jinshi, growing more and more uncomfortable with the conversation, tried to look away from Lakan. Gaoshun was stationed quietly in the background. His mouth was pulled into a single, straight line and he was biting his lip hard.

There were a great many people in this world who shared Lakan’s predilections.

Jinshi wasn’t sure if Lakan realized the effect he was having; in any event, the arch-eccentric went on: “Ah, what I wouldn’t have given to take her to bed!” His leering grin betrayed no small hint of madness. “I admit, in the end I just couldn’t let her go. I resorted to a bit of an underhanded scheme. Suffice to say that if she was too expensive for me to afford, all I had to do was make her cheaper, mm?” Shave off the premium, as it were.

Behind his monocle, Lakan’s fox-like eye was sparkling. “Aren’t you curious what I did?”

Jinshi found himself inexorably drawn into Lakan’s story. This was what made the man so fearsome. “We’ve come this far. I suppose it would be a waste not to at least hear the end of your tale.” Jinshi suddenly realized his tone had become chilly. Lakan smirked at him.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, boyo. I have a little favor to ask first.” He laced his fingers together and stretched mightily.

“And what might that be?”

“The serving girl you got in recently—I hear she’s quite an interesting specimen.”

Jinshi was on the cusp of letting out a sigh of exasperation: This again? But what Lakan said next caught him by surprise.

“They say she has a knack for solving mysteries.” Lakan didn’t miss the flinch this provoked from Jinshi. “I have a friend,” he went on. “A metalworker who used to produce pieces for the palace. But he kicked the bucket a bit back, see? He had three pupils, but funny enough, he didn’t designate a successor.”

“Oh?” Jinshi said politely, while thinking how unusual it was for Lakan to have a craftsperson among his acquaintances.

“It’s a sad thing, a master craftsman who doesn’t pass on his secrets before he passes on himself. I keep thinking he must have left some hint, something to make sure his art didn’t die out, but I’m not finding it.”

“What are you getting at?” Jinshi asked curtly. Lakan removed his monocle and said, “Oh, it’s nothing. Nothing to speak of. Just wondered if there might be some way to find out what secrets that old man took with him to his grave. Such as by having a particularly clever young maid look into the matter.”

Jinshi didn’t say anything.

“Our dead friend was a funny guy. Left a will, very portentous stuff. Makes a man think there must be more to it.”

Jinshi still didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was all he could do to muster: “I’m not making any promises. Tell me about the will.”