The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Lakan

The night before, Maomao had had a strange dream. She had dreamed of long ago—or rather, of something that must have happened long ago, for there was no way she should have been able to remember it. She wasn’t sure if what she dreamed of had even really occurred.

It must have been visiting that woman, she thought. Brought back old memories.

In the dream, a grown woman had looked down on Maomao from above. Her disheveled hair tumbled around a drawn face, and her eyes glinted hungrily as she stared. Her makeup was flaking off, the rouge on her lips starting to smear.

The woman reached out and grasped Maomao’s hand in hers. Her skin was stippled with minuscule welts, like a leaf in autumn.

In her other hand the woman grasped a knife. The hand that held Maomao’s was wrapped in bleached cotton cloths, layer after layer, all of them seeping red. The fluttering cotton smelled rusty.

Something like the mewl of a kitten escaped Maomao’s vocal cords. She realized she was crying.

Maomao’s hand was pressed against the bed. The woman raised the knife high. Her lips were contorted and trembling, her red, swollen eyes still running with tears.

Fool woman.

The woman brought the knife down.

“Goodness, are you tired? I’m afraid bedtime won’t be for a little while yet,” Suiren said as Maomao yawned. She sounded polite about it, but the old lady could be a real disciplinarian, so Maomao straightened up and focused on polishing the silver eating vessel. She would be practically begging for trouble if she appeared to be slacking the very day after she’d taken time off. The fact that it was evening was no excuse.

“I’m quite fine, ma’am,” Maomao said. It was just a dream, strange or no. She’d assumed that if she threw herself into the routine of her work, she’d soon forget it, but it had refused to quite go away all day. This isn’t like me, Maomao thought, a rueful smile flitting across her face.

Just as she was stacking the dishes back on the shelf (clatter clatter), she heard rapid footsteps. The honey candles were burning in the room. It was time for their master to return. Suiren took a dish Maomao had polished to perfection and began preparing a snack.

Jinshi trooped clear through the living area and appeared in the kitchen. “A gift, from a weirdo. Share it with Suiren.” He set some sort of bottle down on the table. The “weirdo” was a particularly unpleasant official who had been making himself something of a nuisance to Jinshi lately.

Maomao undid the stopper and was greeted by a sour, citrusy smell. Some kind of juice, she figured. “We’re accepting gifts from weirdos now, are we?” she asked, her voice completely flat. Jinshi had already retreated to the living area and was resting on the couch. Maomao added some coals to the brazier.

Gaoshun observed that they were scraping the bottom of their coal supply and left the room. Going to get more, Maomao figured. Now there was a man you could rely on.

Jinshi gave a great scratch of his head (most uncouth) and looked at Maomao. “Are you familiar with the regulars at the Verdigris House?” he asked.

Maomao cocked her head, surprised by the question. “If they’re conspicuous enough about it, yes.”

“What kind of people go there?”

“That’s confidential.”

Jinshi knitted his brow at the brusque response. Then he seemed to realize he was coming at it the wrong way, and tried something else. “Let me ask you this, then. How would one go about reducing the price of a courtesan?” He sounded uncommonly careful as he picked his words.

“What a distressing topic.” Maomao huffed. “But there are any number of ways. Especially when it comes to the top-ranked women.”

The most renowned courtesans, the most sought-after, weren’t working constantly. In fact, they might work only a few times a month. Accepting customers every single day was for the “night walkers,” the women who had to take work to survive. The more highly ranked a courtesan was, the less she liked to be seen. Hiding herself away induced would-be customers to inflate their estimation of her value all on their own.

Such women attracted patrons by virtue of their singing and dancing, their musical accomplishments, or other facets of their education. At the Verdigris House, apprentices were given basic instruction, then divided into those with looks and prospects, and those without. The latter began taking customers as soon as they made their debut. They weren’t selling their arts, but their bodies.

As for those who showed potential, they started by sharing tea with the customers. Those adept at entrancing patrons with their conversation or ravishing them with their intelligence rose in value. Then, by deliberately keeping a popular courtesan from seeing too many people, you could produce a woman who commanded a year’s wages in silver just to share a drink. By this system, there were even women who went their entire careers, until the day their contracts were bought out, without a customer ever laying hands on them. This in itself played to men’s fantasies; everyone wanted to be the first to pick such a blossom.

“A flower is valuable because it’s untouched,” Maomao said, lighting some soothing incense. She was doing it for Jinshi, who had looked tired lately, but this evening it seemed it might help her as well. “When someone picks it, its value immediately drops by at least half. But there’s more...” She gave a small sigh, then took a deep sniff of the incense. “If such a woman were to become with child, her value would be practically nothing.” That same emotionless tone.

It was all because of that stupid dream.

○●○

Jinshi let out a deep breath as he pressed his chop to some paperwork. He wondered what was going on. It nagged at him, what the apothecary’s daughter had said the night before. She’d sounded so solemn.

And then, conveniently, the man most likely to know the answer to Jinshi’s private question appeared.

“Hello, hello.” The grinning fox knocked on the door and entered without waiting to be invited in. He’d come, just as he had promised he would yesterday. He’d even made a subordinate haul along a couch with a nice, soft cushion. Jinshi tried to resist pulling a face as he wondered how long the man would be here today.

“Shall we pick up where we left off yesterday?” Lakan asked, pouring some juice from a bottle he’d brought with him. He’d even brought treats of some kind: he placed on the paper-riddled desk a baked snack that smelled richly of butter. The occupants of the office wished he would stop putting food directly on the table; Gaoshun could only hold his head in his hands when he saw the oil stains left on the papers.

“It seems, sir, that you did something quite reprehensible,” Jinshi said as he pressed his chop to another piece of paper. He hardly registered what it said, but Gaoshun, standing behind him, didn’t speak up, so it was probably fine.

Based on what Maomao had told him, he had a fairly good idea what this wily madman must have done. And after that thought came another, equally unwelcome one. Namely, that his actions weren’t incomprehensible. That they had a consistency. Even a certain logic. Jinshi thought he understood why Lakan had started with the talk of buying out a contract at the Verdigris House. Why he’d spoken of his old “friend.” But Jinshi didn’t want to admit the implications. To do so would only invite yet more trouble.

“Reprehensible? How rude. And the last thing I want to hear from a thieving little magpie.” Lakan’s eye narrowed behind his monocle, and then he laughed. “I had finally brought the old lady around, do you know that? It took me ten years of work. And then you swoop in and snatch her away from me—just imagine how that feels.” Lakan gestured emphatically with his cup. Ice floated in the juice.

“Are you saying I should give back your shiny trinket?”

By this, Jinshi meant the reticent young woman.

“No, keep it. I don’t want to get stuck in the same rut as before.”

“And if I don’t want it?”

“Then what could I possibly do? I could count on one hand the number of people who could go against your will, milord.”

Lakan was resolute about never saying quite what he really meant. It drove Jinshi to distraction. Lakan knew who and what Jinshi was; otherwise he never would have said what he did. But the logic was there, in his words.

Lakan took off his monocle, wiped it with a handkerchief, then replaced it—in front of the other eye. So it was just an affectation. Jinshi had always known Lakan was a strange one.

“But I do wonder what my, ahem, little girl will think.”

The way he emphasized the words little girl—ugh. So it must be true. Much as Jinshi resisted admitting it.

Lakan was Maomao’s birth father.

Jinshi finally stopped stamping paperwork.

“Could you let her know I’ll be popping by for a visit one of these days?” Lakan said. Then he left the office, licking the butter off his fingers. He’d left the couch where it was, though, implying he would be back.

Almost in unison, Jinshi and Gaoshun hung their heads and let out great sighs.

“I met an official who said he’d like to see you,” Jinshi told Maomao as soon as he got back to his room. Realizing it would do no good not to say anything to her, he had resolved to get it out of the way.

“And who is this official?” she asked. Jinshi thought he detected a flicker of unease behind her studiously indifferent expression, but she was hiding it well, her voice just as toneless as ever.

“Ahem. His name is Lakan...”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Maomao’s expression shifted. Her eyes widened and she took a step away from Jinshi, almost, it seemed, involuntarily. To date she had looked at him like a beetle, like a dried-out earthworm, like mud, like dust, like a slug, and even like a flattened frog—that is to say, in many demeaning and belittling ways—but he realized that all of these were kind and gentle compared to the look she leveled at him now.

It was, frankly, hard to describe, but even Jinshi felt he could barely survive it. Maomao looked as if she might smash open his heart and pour in molten metal so that not even ashes remained.

This one look communicated to Jinshi clearly how Lakan’s daughter felt about her father.

“I’ll turn him down. Somehow,” Jinshi managed, still a little dazed. It was a wonder his heart didn’t stop.

“Thank you, sir.” Maomao, for her part, regained her customary expressionless affect, and then resumed her work.