The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 3 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: The Shrine of Choosing

It’s said that once upon a time, a different people lived in these lands. These people had no chieftain, but a woman of noble blood came to them from a far place and took up residence among them, and conceived in her belly the son of heaven, who would become the country’s first emperor.

The woman was called Wang Mu, “the Mother Royal,” and some said she was an immortal. She possessed eyes that could see even in the dark of a moonless night, and it was with this strength of vision that she led the people.

The elderly eunuch read aloud from the book in his soft, gentle voice. About half his pupils were listening attentively; the other half were either actively asleep, or struggling not to be. Maomao, fighting back a yawn herself, didn’t blame them for feeling a little drowsy.

From what she could see from her vantage point outside the classroom, there appeared to be about twenty students, though she didn’t know if that was a lot or a little. So it went, she thought, but the eunuch beside her seemed somewhat let down.

“Sir, they’ll see you,” she said to Jinshi, whose face threatened to be visible through the window. Nobody would be able to concentrate on their studies if they knew such a beautiful creature was watching them.

“I was told there were only about ten students to start with, so I think the numbers have gone up a little,” Gaoshun said placatingly.

They were at the rear palace’s “institute of practical studies,” which Jinshi had spearheaded. He’d wanted to hang out a sign boldly proclaiming that it was a place of learning, but Maomao had dissuaded him, arguing that making a big deal about it would only make things more difficult, so in the end the school went ahead quietly.

They’d refurbished one of the less-dilapidated buildings of the northern quarter to serve the purpose. In fact, this was the building that had been used when the foreign emissaries had visited recently, so it was looking very nice indeed.

Xiaolan was among the students. Maomao could see her rubbing her eyes sleepily, splitting her attention equally between the textbook and the teacher. She’d learned to recognize many common words by now and had moved on to reading simple stories. The one the teacher had just been reading was the story of how the nation had been founded, something everyone would have heard at least once in their lives.

Maomao herself had no interest in learning such things at this point in her life, but Jinshi had invited her to come see how lessons were going, and she couldn’t really say no. Anyway, it would be untrue to say she wasn’t curious. Xiaolan was there, along with a few other palace women Maomao knew, and most of all, if Jinshi’s plan succeeded, it could change the face of the rear palace.

“Master Jinshi, it’s time.”

Jinshi was a busy eunuch, as his attendant reminded him, and he reluctantly turned away from his brainchild. He probably would have liked to continue to observe for a while yet, but he had other things to do.

“What are you going to do next?” he asked Maomao.

“I’d like to stay here and watch a little longer, if that’s all right.”

“Mm. If you notice anything amiss, report it to me.”

Maomao bowed slowly.

When class was over, some eunuchs appeared with baked snacks that they distributed to the students, who eyed the treats hungrily. Maomao found Xiaolan and went over to her.

“Oh, Fwaofwao,” Xiaolan said around a mouthful of food. She looked like she was going to choke, so Maomao asked one of the eunuchs to bring some water, and by the time he got back, Xiaolan was indeed pounding on her chest.

Alongside the textbook on her desk was a sand tray. The books were provided to the students, but handing out consumables like paper and brushes would soon drain the funds dry, so instead, students practiced their characters in small trays of sand. The smudges on Xiaolan’s pointer finger suggested she’d been working hard. True, she’d looked pretty spent by it—but Maomao could pretend she hadn’t noticed.

Xiaolan took the cup Maomao offered her and took a drink, then a noisy breath.

“Managing to pick anything up?” Maomao asked.

“Hee hee. I’ve still got a long way to go. I want to ask the teacher about this,” Xiaolan said, pointing to something in the textbook several pages ahead of what the instructor had been reading. “Me, I’m not that smart. If I don’t work ahead a little, I don’t think I’d ever keep up!” She stuffed the rest of her food in her mouth and washed it down with another drink.

Maomao decided to go with Xiaolan, just casually. They left the classroom and went through a covered hallway to an adjacent building where the instructor kept his office. Outside, Maomao could see the pond that had been used to stage their performance at the night banquet, and beyond it an old shrine. The shrine had supposedly been there since before the founding of the rear palace, and the architecture was different from what Maomao was used to. It was a long, narrow building oriented along a north-south axis. The relative lack of weathering compared to the other buildings nearby implied the shrine saw regular maintenance.

I wonder if they still observe some ritual there, Maomao thought. But in any event, they passed the shrine by and arrived at the teacher’s office.

“Excuse meee,” Xiaolan said. “May I have a few minutes?” It wasn’t exactly a refined greeting, but the old eunuch welcomed them in with a smile just the same. Xiaolan’s affable nature seemed to have gotten the better of him. He spoke to her as gently as if he were talking to his own grandchild.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen your friend there before.”

“Just tagging along,” Maomao said.

“I see, I see. Have a seat in that chair and wait, then, if you don’t mind.” The eunuch smiled at her. Maomao obligingly went and sat down. She looked out the window, gazing at the shrine they’d passed by earlier. Its pillars were closely spaced, and the interior appeared to be divided into a complicated series of rooms.

“Wondering about that shrine?” the eunuch asked.

“A little. I can’t help thinking the architecture is somewhat odd.”

This was Maomao, who promptly became obsessed with anything that caught her interest. She’d been staring fixedly at the shrine without realizing it.

“That shrine was built by the original inhabitants of this land. Lady Wang Mu, the Mother Royal, chose not to forbid the people from practicing their faith when she ruled this place. Instead she used it, and made that faith concrete.”

Wang Mu was the woman who had appeared in the founding myth the eunuch had been teaching in class; she was said to be the mother of the first emperor. There were many interpretations of the story, the most popular being that she was either the survivor of a vanished country, or else a female immortal descended from the immortal realms.

“Any who would rule this land must pass through that shrine, and only those who choose the proper path may become chieftains of the land. Such was the charge Wang Mu laid upon the first emperor.” Her son was able to pass the test and thus became ruler of the land.

“Very interesting.”

“Isn’t it? That shrine was the reason the capital was moved here, as well.” The old eunuch smiled nostalgically. “It hasn’t been used in decades, though, and I question whether it will see use again in the future.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well...” The eunuch handed Xiaolan a writing utensil, kindly allowing her to use his own brush. She took it and frowned, still struggling to hold the brush correctly. She didn’t seem interested in what he and Maomao were talking about.

“All of the elder brothers of His Former Majesty were felled by an epidemic. Worse, many male children and infants died, depriving the Imperial line of any potential successors.”

That was why the previous emperor, his parents’ youngest son, had ascended the throne. The circumstances had long invited ugly rumors to the effect that the empress regnant—his mother—had had a hand in the “plague.”

Maomao couldn’t help thinking that the eunuch’s story was not the most respectful toward the Imperial family, but she sensed no hostility in his voice; if anything, he had the dispassionate air of a scholar laying out facts.

Xiaolan plunged the brush into the ink, splattering polka dots on her cheek.

Rites of passage were by no means unusual, but Maomao found her interest especially piqued by this one. She looked at the shrine, and the eunuch looked at her, though at first she wasn’t sure what he was thinking.

“I must say, I’m happy to know someone is interested in that old building,” he said. “Not many want to hear such tales. It’s been quite a long time.” Then he, too, looked outside.

“But there was someone once? In the past?”

“Yes. Hrm... A doctor who was here many years ago, a real eccentric. Whenever he had time on his hands, he would go wandering about the rear palace with a look on his face much like the one on yours now.”

A face floated into Maomao’s mind. “His name wouldn’t have been Luomen, by any chance?”

The eunuch’s eyes widened with surprise. “You know him?”

Maomao’s old man Luomen looked like an ordinary, reasonable person, but he really wasn’t. For one thing, if he had been reasonable and ordinary, he wouldn’t have planted medicinal herbs all over the rear palace.

Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned him.

He had, after all, been banished as a criminal; maybe it would have been better not to say his name. To all appearances, though, the eunuch didn’t bear Luomen any ill will. Maomao said only, but honestly, that Luomen was a relation of hers, and that he now made his living (barely) as an apothecary.

The eunuch looked at Maomao, clearly moved. Xiaolan, meanwhile, was gazing intently at her own unsteady characters.

“I see,” the eunuch said. “Yes, Luomen...” Maybe he’d been friends with her adoptive father. She wanted to ask about it, but realized it was time to be getting back. She collected Xiaolan (who had folded the sheet full of characters, despite their crudeness, and tucked it lovingly into the folds of her robes) and left the school.

Two days later, His Majesty paid a visit to the Jade Pavilion. Maomao performed her food-tasting duties as usual and was just about to leave the room when he stopped her.

“How can I help you, sir?” she said. If His Majesty wanted to talk to her, it was probably about the illustrated “textbooks” or the like. Unfortunately, she could now only distribute whatever she could get past the censor, so it was no longer so easy to slip things to His Majesty. She thought she’d asked Jinshi to tell him that personally.

“I intend to go to the Shrine of Choosing now. I’d like you to accompany me.”

Huh? Maomao slapped a hand over her mouth before the sound could make it out.

What in the world was going on?

They went by lantern light through the darkness, heading for the northern quarter of the palace. His Majesty’s two eunuch bodyguards were with them, as were Jinshi and Gaoshun. Jinshi was watching the entire thing with a probing eye; he appeared to have been called out here quite suddenly.

What does His Majesty have in mind? Maomao wondered. The northern quarter was never exactly bustling, but at night it became eerily silent. The one silver lining was that at least they didn’t hear any sounds of unhealthy love emanating from the bushes or the shadows of the trees.

When they reached the shrine, someone was waiting for them: the old eunuch Maomao had spoken to earlier that day.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said with a respectful bow. The Emperor, stroking the beard of which he was so proud, nodded at him.

“May I enter once more?”

“You may enter as many times as you wish, Your Majesty.”

The hairs on Maomao’s neck stood up at what sounded like an undertone of provocation in the eunuch’s words. The Emperor, still working at his beard, remained perfectly calm, but Gaoshun and the other eunuchs didn’t hide their displeasure. Jinshi alone didn’t frown; he was staring intently at the shrine and seemed to be thinking.

The old eunuch unlocked the shrine door and ushered the Emperor inside. “And whom do you require for your attendants?” the eunuch asked, and again he sounded faintly mocking.

“These two, if I may,” the Emperor replied. He was looking at Jinshi and Maomao, grinning.

What’s this about? Maomao wondered, looking less than pleased as she entered the shrine. She could understand why His Majesty would choose Jinshi. He officiated ceremonies and everything, so he was used to these kinds of places. But Maomao? What possible purpose could she serve?

“Women aren’t forbidden in here or something?” Maomao whispered to the old eunuch, but he smiled broadly.

“You may recall that Wang Mu and the empress regnant were both women.”

Maomao didn’t respond to that, just put her head down and followed the two men.

Just past the shrine entrance was a large, empty space. There were three doors, each of a different color, and above them a sign that read: Pass not through the red door.

Maomao squinted. The doors were blue, red, and green, respectively. The color of each was clear and bright, suggesting they were regularly refreshed.

“Which door do you choose, sir?” the old eunuch said, stroking his chin.

The Emperor scratched the back of his neck, then headed for the blue door. “I chose the green one last time. Might as well try this one.”

“Indeed, sir.”

The party passed through the blue door. They continued through a narrow hallway, then arrived in the next room to find three more doors and another sign. Maomao cocked her head. The sign read, Pass not through the black door. This time, the doors were vivid red, black, and white. The walls and pillars were noticeably dusty, yet the doors were freshly colored.

“Looking after this place is a chore, I can tell you. Just when I thought it would never be used again, someone comes along saying he suddenly wants to enter.” The old eunuch rubbed his shoulders pointedly; evidently he was the one who had to paint the doors.

The Emperor stroked his beard, then picked the red door. Beyond it was another hallway, and then another room. Three more doors, and a new riddle. Maomao wondered despondently how many more rooms there would be. Without any windows to let a breeze through, the shrine was stuffy and warm.

She had been right about one thing: the shrine’s layout was certainly complex. Sometimes they backtracked, or went up a flight of stairs, until she had lost all sense of direction. Eventually she realized that some of the rooms shared doors with each other.

Guess it’s not meant to be over quickly.

Quite apart from Maomao’s impatience, Jinshi was staring at the doors and sign with an unusually serious look. Pass not through the blue door, the sign instructed. The doors in this room were blue, purple, and yellow. His Majesty chose the yellow door.

“Seems this is the last one,” he said. The door creaked open, but beyond it was only a single door. In place of a question, the sign above it read: Child of royalty, yet not child of the Mother Royal.

It didn’t exactly make sense, but it was a pretty clear rejection.

“Same as last time, eh?” The Emperor seemed to be hiding a bitter smile behind his bountiful beard. Jinshi was watching him closely. “Is it not given to me to know the will of heaven?”

“Your Majesty jests. Ever since this shrine was closed away in the rear palace, I alone have been left to oversee it. Heaven’s will has nothing to do with it.” The eunuch put his hands in his sleeves and bowed his head. Something in his manner seemed to say that despite having been made a eunuch, he still harbored some unshakable pride. Most likely, this man had been overseeing this shrine for some long time—and when the building had found itself within the boundaries of the rear palace, he had gone so far as to accept castration to continue protecting it.

The Emperor had followed all of the signs’ instructions to the letter. Had he still somehow made a mistake?

The eunuch opened the door before them. “You’ll find the exit this way, sir,” he said.

Maomao and the others, still unsettled, went outside.

On what conceivable basis had the Emperor been rejected? Maomao counted on her fingers, tallying up the number of rooms, thinking about which doors the Emperor had chosen. She even sat down to ponder it, using a twig to scratch in the dust the order of the doors he’d picked as best she could remember it. She realized it probably wasn’t the most becoming behavior with the sovereign himself still present, but she did it anyway.

“I’m certain Luomen would understand,” the eunuch said.

My old man would? Maomao thought. Was that so? Was this a riddle he might be able to answer for them? It was nice of the eunuch to give them a hint and all, but at the same time it made Maomao purse her lips in annoyance. She felt like he was saying: Your old man would get it, but you never will. She knew her adoptive father was something special, but it rankled her to be completely dismissed like that.

In other words, Maomao was angry.

“You’re saying my adoptive father would know what’s going on?”

“I couldn’t say. It’s possible,” the eunuch replied, suddenly evasive.

Luomen would understand: in other words, the key was something he knew. His knowledge was broad, but he particularly excelled in medicine. Was that where the solution lay?

Jinshi and the Emperor were watching Maomao expectantly. She felt a shiver run down her spine. Wish they’d stop that. They could look at her as hopefully as they wanted; she wasn’t her old man, and wouldn’t be able to come up with the answer so easily. That only made her more frustrated, though. And something still nagged at her.

Three doors, three colors... How did they go together?

“Do you know what it means when it says I am not a child of the Mother Royal?” the Emperor asked.

The Mother Royal? Maomao thought. Wang Mu?

Yes—the mother of the first emperor, spoken of in the country’s earliest stories. The tales never mentioned a father. Normally, one would expect that to produce an emphasis on the maternal line. Yet in Maomao’s country, agnatic descent was the rule, inheritance passing from father to son.

Once again, Maomao thought over the words on that last sign.

Child of royalty, yet not child of the Mother Royal.

Did the words hold some great secret?

Could the expression “child of royalty” refer to the paternal line?

It was said that male children received what made them fit to rule from their fathers. Meanwhile, in a matrilineal system, female children were said to receive what made them fit from their mothers.

The Imperial throne had been occupied by a direct line of male successors; true, the occasional empress had interposed herself, but as far as Maomao was aware these women’s bloodlines hadn’t continued. Suppose the blood of Wang Mu still remained somehow: what would it lead one to do?

Suddenly, Maomao found herself remembering the story of the former emperor. The last of his family’s sons, his older brothers dying young of an epidemic and clearing the way for him to take the throne. The fact that he alone had survived when all his brothers had died had inspired rumors that the empress regnant might have had a hand in things.

But is it possible that—?

Maomao looked at the old eunuch, the Emperor, and Jinshi, and then she went and stood in front of Jinshi. “Master Jinshi. Were the brothers of the previous sovereign all borne by the same mother?”

He looked perplexed by the suddenness of the question, but it took him hardly the space of breath to answer, “I’m given to understand that not all of them shared the same mother, but that the mothers of all the Imperial princes were sisters. Cousins of the emperor before last, I believe.”

“Close kin, then.” When it came to noble blood, marrying sisters and close relatives wasn’t uncommon; indeed, Consort Lihua herself was a not-too-distant relative of the Emperor. “May I ask something else?” Maomao said, somewhat hesitantly.

“What?”

“I’m afraid it may be considered terribly improper.” Depending on their reaction, it could even get her killed on the spot.

“Speak.” It was not Jinshi who issued the command, but the Emperor himself.

Maomao took a deep breath and let all the words out at once: “Is it possible that many or most of those who have occupied the throne down the generations have had poor eyesight?”

It was neither Jinshi nor His Majesty who reacted most noticeably to this question, but the old eunuch. Maomao smirked.

“I have heard that many of them didn’t see well, but the previous emperor had good eyes,” His Majesty said, but this only confirmed for Maomao what she already suspected. She looked at the shrine.

“Would it be possible to go through this thing again?”

“You believe you’re qualified, young lady?” the eunuch said teasingly. “Women have been brought into the shrine many times, but they were always princesses or consorts. You were permitted entry last time, but I’m afraid I question allowing you in repeatedly. Particularly if you’re going to advise on the choice of doors.”

Maomao was far too scrawny to be called a beautiful princess even in flattery; evidently, it would be improper for her to enter the shrine repeatedly. The Emperor laughed merrily. “Perhaps I should name you one of my consorts, then. Though I think I would be lucky to survive telling Lakan about it.”

Surely you jest, Maomao thought.

“Surely you jest,” Jinshi said, stepping out in front of her. “Imagine the looks your other ladies would give you.”

“True, too true!” His Majesty said, clutching his sides in mirth. He patted Maomao on the head. She was used to seeing him at his leisure in the Jade Pavilion, but tonight he seemed to be relaxing in a somewhat different way.

I think he’s mocking me.

And perhaps he was. After all, Maomao was well aware that a lady had to have a bust of about ninety centimeters to even begin to excite the Emperor’s interest. Consort Gyokuyou and Consort Lihua both met that standard and more.

Jinshi was looking at the Emperor, perturbed—was it Maomao’s imagination, or did he look a bit like a pouting child?

“You take her, then,” he said to Jinshi, and then he looked at the old eunuch. “You’d have no objection then, would you?”

The eunuch pulled a face but looked at Jinshi. “You would accept that?”

“If His Majesty so orders, then I can only obey. Anyway, the girl is working something out.”

“And I’m quite interested to know what it is,” the Emperor chipped in, chuckling. The old eunuch headed back to the shrine entrance, looking thoroughly exasperated. The Emperor, who appeared quite pleased, jerked his thumb in the direction the eunuch had gone, as if to say, Let’s go.

They went to the entrance once more, this time with Jinshi in the lead, followed by the Emperor and the old eunuch. Maomao trailed behind them, surprised to realize that it seemed anyone at all could attempt the shrine. They entered the first room, and Jinshi turned back to look at Maomao. The red, blue, and green doors stood before them.

“Which shall I choose?” he asked.

Maomao narrowed her eyes. The sign above the doors said only not to pass through the red one. Slowly, she pointed at the blue door. Jinshi obediently opened it. It was the same one the Emperor had chosen earlier. The old eunuch arched an eyebrow.

In the next room, Maomao picked the white door, earning herself another eyebrow arch.

“Hm, taking a different path from myself this time?” the Emperor said, stroking his beard as he followed Jinshi through the white door. Ordinarily, it might have been considered rude for Jinshi to walk ahead of His Majesty, but none of them—Jinshi or the Emperor or the old eunuch—seemed to take it amiss. The sovereign had always seemed to have a fairly permissive streak, so maybe he wasn’t particularly interested in standing on ceremony.

Maomao led them through the next room, and then the next, until finally they arrived in the tenth chamber. This time the sign said something a little different:

Choose thou the red door.

There were still three doors—but none of them were red. Instead, they were white, black, and green.

“What is this?” Jinshi said, sounding agitated. It was understandable; he didn’t see any red door. That was exactly what, in Maomao’s mind, made it clear that this was the final riddle. She pointed to the green door.

“Go through there, and you’ll understand,” she said.

Jinshi must have trusted her, for he opened the green door without hesitation. Beyond it was a hallway, at the far end of which they could see a staircase. They ascended, their footsteps echoing on the stairs, and opened the door at the end to be greeted by a damp breeze.

They were on the roof of the shrine, up high enough to see out over the entire rear palace. The square space seemed to have been constructed specifically to inspire the sense that one was gazing down on all around.

The old eunuch’s lips were twitching; whether he was fighting a smile or a scowl, Maomao wasn’t sure. “My congratulations. You have chosen the proper path,” he said, looking around. “In days of old, only those chosen by Wang Mu could become the next king. Eventually, the kings came to be called emperors.”

Throughout the ages, the first order of business of those so selected had been to give an address from this shrine. Considering the sophistication of the architecture at the time, the shrine had presumably been the tallest thing in existence.

“There were times when no one was able to choose the correct path. In such cases, they would return accompanied by a consort who was able to do so.” The old eunuch looked at Maomao with a pained expression. “Traditionally, only those of the proper blood have been able to succeed, but in this case it seems someone else has guessed the right order.” This evidently didn’t agree with him.

The geezer makes that sound like a bad thing, Maomao thought, all too readily drawn in by his provocation. She’d chosen correctly—what was wrong with that?

“History lessons are all well and good, but perhaps you could explain what’s going on so that I can understand it?” the Emperor said.

“Does one so august as His Majesty lower himself to ask teaching of me?” the eunuch said. This time it was Jinshi’s turn to raise an eyebrow, but the Emperor was too even-keeled to be drawn in by the eunuch’s taunt. Nonetheless, the old man said, “You shouldn’t hear it from my lips. I suggest you ask the girl.”

He was going to foist it off on her.

“Well?” the Emperor said, turning to Maomao. But there were things even she found difficult to say.

Trying to decide how best to put the matter, she said, “Very well. Allow me to explain what guided my thinking in choosing the doors.”

Out of the first three doors—blue, red, and green—Maomao had chosen the blue one. The sign said only to avoid the red door, so one might think the green door was a perfectly fine choice. And normally, one might be right. But “normal” didn’t quite apply in this shrine...

“There are certain people who would be unable to distinguish which door was red and which was green,” Maomao said.

“Unable to distinguish one from the other?” Jinshi asked, puzzled. His Majesty looked equally perplexed. The two of them were such different people, yet with that expression of confusion on their faces, they looked oddly similar.

“Yes,” Maomao replied, “and so they would choose the door that they could be certain wasn’t red.”

That would be the blue one. The first chamber would whittle down the candidates by half.

“The next room is the same. If you couldn’t tell the difference between black and red, you would choose the white door.” And half the remaining candidates would be weeded out.

In each room, there appeared to be two possible right answers, but in fact there was only one. The final riddle worked the same way. Because the candidate would be certain that the white door was white and the black one black, they would assume the final door must be the red one. It wasn’t, of course; it was green, but because anyone who had made it that far would be unable to tell red and green apart, they wouldn’t know that.

Only half of those who entered the shrine would choose the correct door in the first room; in the second room, it would be a quarter, and by that ninth door, only one out of every 512 people would make the right choice.

“And what does all this mean?” Jinshi asked, still obviously flummoxed.

“It means that those who are chosen by this shrine—those who prove themselves the children of Wang Mu—have one thing in common: they can’t see color.”

They could see some colors, of course. Individual differences would mean some people would still make wrong choices, and conversely, it was possible that some had simply guessed wrong. But they need only return with someone whose blood was closer to Wang Mu’s. That was why consorts were allowed into the shrine.

“It’s not common in this country, but in the west, people are periodically born unable to distinguish between red and green,” Maomao said. Her father had told her that roughly one out of every ten people in the country where he had studied had this condition. It was evidently less common in women than in men. It was passed down from parent to child, and although it could be a hindrance in daily life, it was also possible to adapt to it such that others might never realize a person had the trait.

That was why the old eunuch had said Maomao’s old man might understand.

“Some also claim,” she went on, “that the more trouble one has distinguishing colors, the better one’s night vision is.” She’d never investigated that claim personally, so she couldn’t be sure. However, for such a profoundly challenging trait to persist down to the present day, it was likely to co-occur with some exceptional benefit. “And I believe in the founding story, Wang Mu is said to be able to see clearly even on a dark night.”

Wang Mu had come from a far land and had carried with her an inability that hadn’t been present here before—the inability to distinguish color. It couldn’t have been easy for her and the retainers she brought with her to start a new life in this place. Perhaps the solution was marriage. In the story, Wang Mu didn’t have a husband, but it would be reasonable to suppose she’d wed the chieftain of this area. It was hardly unusual for people from other lands to be taken as spouses in order to help dilute blood that had become too concentrated. If that spouse had local authority, so much the better. It would explain why people here prized patrilineal descent despite tracing their ancestry back to Wang Mu.

Yet Wang Mu, or perhaps one of those who had come with her, hadn’t wanted lineage alone to determine the succession; instead, while continuing the chieftain’s bloodline, a different way was created to discern whether a person had inherited Wang Mu’s blood: the Shrine of Choosing.

The passage of time slowly but surely warped the truth of the matter. When a strange people with strange technology arrive somewhere new, over time they’re absorbed into the local population, generation by generation. A simpler method was to leave a written record. Wang Mu’s story was written down in characters the local populace didn’t know, and as those who had witnessed their arrival died out, the story became the truth. A conquest patient and peaceful.

Not that I can tell them that, Maomao thought. She proceeded to explain all this to Jinshi and the Emperor, passing over the most inconvenient parts. They might look askance at a few of the things she said, but she doubted they would pursue the matter too closely, nor did she want them to. Everyone would be happier that way. So Maomao picked her way through the story, refraining from saying anything she thought her old man wouldn’t have told them.

“So you’re saying the blood of Wang Mu doesn’t flow through my veins? It’s true that my mother wasn’t of royal lineage, nor my grandmother, the empress regnant.”

Maomao shook her head. “This shrine exists only as a way of being certain that the blood is present, not demonstrating that it isn’t. Sometimes a characteristic may be seen in the parent that doesn’t appear in the child.”

There was also, of course, always the possibility that the Emperor’s honored mother had been unfaithful—but she would keep that to herself.

“In any event, allowing the blood to become too concentrated can bring serious problems of its own.” All of the former emperor’s older brothers had died of the same epidemic, for example, presumably along with many other close relatives. “Perhaps the result of trying too hard to satisfy the shrine.”

When Maomao finished her explanation, she heard clapping: the old eunuch was applauding.

“Never once did I imagine the likes of this girl would really and truly solve the riddle,” he said. Okay, so he could be rude sometimes. “It’s said that Wang Mu came to rule this land because of her unparalleled wisdom.” After all, only a truly keen intellect could come up with something like that shrine as a means of maintaining their bloodline. “If you wish to further thin the blood, might I suggest taking someone like this young lady into your retinue?”

Excuse me?

What was that doddering old coot thinking? Maomao wanted to pull off a shoe and fling it at him.

“Amusing as that might be, I’d rather not make an enemy of Lakan. And perhaps more importantly, her bust would have to grow about another fifteen centimeters first!”

First: just how intimidated was he by the “fox strategist”? And second: Really?

“I grant there are many who wouldn’t smile upon it,” the old eunuch said. He looked into the distance for a second, then glanced at Maomao. “Do be wary.”

“I’m well aware,” the Emperor said.

“I know you are, Majesty,” the eunuch said, this time looking at Jinshi. “Do be wary,” he repeated.

Jinshi nodded without a word.

Just who is this guy? Maomao wondered. Simply a eunuch who had found favor with the Emperor? It didn’t matter. Maomao foresaw nothing good in knowing the answer. Maybe it doesn’t matter who he is. She would leave well enough alone. Ignorance, as they said, was bliss.

She was ignorant of something else, as well, however: that she would yet have cause to regret what she didn’t know.