The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: The Stronghold

They left the hot-springs town and bumped along in a carriage for half a day, until they arrived at some kind of fortress. Maomao was deposited in one of the rooms.

“I never intended to bring you here,” Suirei informed her. Her cheek was red and swollen. She’d always seemed quiet and serious, but her expression was darker than ever now. She’d never exactly been the cheerful type, but a cloud seemed to hover over her. Maomao understood why, having observed the exchange in the storehouse.

Maomao had snuck into the storehouse, where she’d been discovered by a middle-aged woman called Shenmei. And Shenmei had called Shisui by the name Loulan.

I see it now, Maomao thought. She’d had an inkling—it would have been strange if she hadn’t noticed anything. Maomao had met Consort Loulan only once, when she gave a special class to the Emperor’s four favorite ladies and their ladies-in-waiting. Loulan, dressed in garish apparel, had taken in the lecture with hardly a twitch of her face. Consort Gyokuyou—having a perfectly pleasant time—and Consort Lihua—ever studious—had asked questions. Consort Lishu had been in no condition to ask anything, as Maomao recalled. But Consort Loulan not only hadn’t asked anything, but had hardly spoken at all the entire time.

Maomao hadn’t given it much thought—of course a noble wouldn’t feel obliged to speak to a mere serving woman like her—but now she understood. Maomao had realized Shisui—no, Loulan—was well-bred by her possessions and the nuances of her behavior. She’d hidden from the Empress Dowager so she wouldn’t realize who Shisui really was. Probably the same reason she’d gone to another consort when Lishu had appeared in the bath. Maomao, meanwhile, hadn’t noticed anything amiss when they’d first met over Maomao, the cat, so Loulan hadn’t been particularly careful around Maomao after that.

She’s quite an actor, though. Other than her notable predilection for bugs, Loulan was a perfectly ordinary young woman. She could munch on snacks with Xiaolan and chat about the latest gossip. She was like a tanuki, fabled for its ability to transform itself. Her disguise had fooled them all.

“Let’s put her to the whip,” Shenmei had said upon finding Maomao. She sounded almost cheerful; her voice had all the gravity of someone suggesting a tea party in the garden. “Do you suppose a hundred lashes would do? Go ready a whipping post.”

“Lady Shenmei...” Suirei began. Shenmei’s hand moved the instant she began to speak, the folding fan she was holding connecting with Suirei’s cheek once again. Suirei took a step back, but remained expressionless and looked at the ground. She was pale and her hand was trembling slightly; her breath was coming in the same quick pants as it had after their encounter with the snake.

This is bad, bad, bad, Maomao thought, feeling herself start to sweat all over. She understood now why Kyou-u was shaking so hard: this woman was dangerous. There were certain nobles you never wanted to meet, and this woman was one of them. Worse, Maomao was less than an insect in her eyes. She’d been discovered sneaking around where she didn’t belong; of course the woman would have her finished off under the guise of “disciplining” her.

“And what about this little child? What shall we do with him? I suppose he does need to be taught some manners.”

Kyou-u, terrified, clung to Maomao.

“Honored mother...” Loulan, the ostentatious hair stick bobbing in her hair, stepped forward, her voice like the chill ring of a bell. “Didn’t you say that we needed a new apothecary?” Then she looked at Maomao, but her eyes were vacant, like they belonged to a porcelain doll.

Shenmei’s face contorted for a second, but then she hid her mouth with her folding fan and studied Maomao. “She doesn’t look like any apothecary I’ve ever seen.”

“I agree. But believe it or not, she’s more than thirty years old. She’s spent her days testing medicines on herself, until she’s come to age more slowly than normal people.”

Loulan took Maomao’s left hand and rolled up her sleeve, revealing the bandage-wrapped arm. “I know not which concoction it is. But one of them seems as if it may be connected to the elixir of immortality. She may find it, presuming she doesn’t fail and die as the last man did.” Loulan sounded downright nonchalant.

Elixir of immortality? “The last man”?

Shenmei knitted her brow, clearly disappointed by this. “If you say so. I suppose that’s that, then.” She flipped the shawl of her dress back and turned to the foreign emissary watching from behind her. “Shall we resume our discussion, then, Lady Ayla?”

Shenmei somehow managed to sound condescending despite the respectful term of address. The foreign emissary with the veil over her head followed after her. Both, however, were women of no small pride, and each looked less than friendly toward the other as they walked along.

Maomao was once again about to breathe a sigh of relief when Shenmei stopped. “This apothecary of yours can’t possibly do proper work in this place. Let’s bring her back to the stronghold with us.” A nasty little curl came over her rouged lips.

Which brings us to the present moment.

Maomao found herself in a storage space that was, she was told, the room the previous apothecary had been using. It was a bit of a mess, but there was certainly apothecary-ish stuff lying around, and a wicker trunk crammed to bursting with books.

Maomao looked at Suirei. “You’re half-sisters? Different mothers?” She wasn’t asking so much as confirming.

“She’s the only one who treats me like her older sister.”

What was there to say except that this helped everything make sense? She’d heard Loulan was Shishou’s only daughter. Considering how fearsome his wife was, she hardly seemed like the type to afford equal treatment to a child she hadn’t borne herself. Indeed, it seemed she hardly wanted Suirei to exist.

“Lady Shenmei despises me. It drives her to these things,” Suirei said, rubbing her red, swollen cheek.

Maomao had a thought. “May I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Is it possible that Shisui was your name first?”

Loulan seemed inordinately fond of the name Shisui. It was a perfectly ordinary name, but it combined the Shi of “the Shi clan” with the sui of “Suirei.” Far too simple as pseudonyms went. Anyway, the more common versions of the name would have used the character “purple” for shi, or perhaps “offspring.” Loulan had chosen some unique characters, but the name sounded the same.

“That’s right,” Suirei said. “But when Lady Shenmei came back from the rear palace, she couldn’t bear the thought of me. And she hated that one of the characters in my name was related to the clan.”

First Shenmei had chased the young Suirei and her mother out of the mansion, then treated them like servants. Finally she’d taken even Suirei’s name, giving it to her own blood daughter as if it were a simple childhood moniker. As if she had done it out of spite.

Thus Shishou had two daughters, yet one of them had been raised in the lap of every courtly beauty, to be offered as a flower to the Emperor, while the other was shrouded in darkness to sow discord in the rear palace. Now Maomao saw why the assassins had made that attempt on Jinshi’s life—if they were Shishou’s agents. Even Maomao had heard more than once about the sharp difference in opinion between the two men about how the rear palace should be run.

But something still bothered Maomao. She took the hair stick from her hair and looked at it. Shisui—no, Loulan—had told her it was valuable. Yet there was someone who could afford to simply give it away. Someone who wielded great influence even outside the rear palace despite his youth.

Jinshi. The man who was more than just a eunuch—indeed, who wasn’t even a eunuch. Maomao stared at the hair stick—but then she stopped.

“What is it?” Suirei asked, watching her.

“When you entered the rear palace as a eunuch, how did they examine you?”

“Bit of an abrupt question, isn’t it?” Suirei said, looking at the ground. One might almost think she was embarrassed. But then she said, “It’s a physical exam. They feel you, just over your undergarments. You don’t even have to take anything off.”

That was how Suirei had been able to get in. She’d never had what they were looking for—and it probably never occurred to them that a woman might sneak in disguised as a eunuch. But it was easier than getting a man past the same hurdle.

“Any chance an uncastrated man could do it?”

“Three officials check you, from three different departments. It would be tough to bribe everybody.”

If any one of the three didn’t take the bait, the others could expect worse than a little beating when it came out that they had let a man into the rear palace. Too much risk for a little pocket change. You’d never get all of them to go along with it.

So then—how had Jinshi gotten in?

“Only a few men can come and go in the rear palace as they please...” Namely the Emperor and his immediate relatives. No... The ages don’t match up. But...

She’d often thought that Jinshi was younger than he looked. Not a child—she wouldn’t go that far—but he gave a distinctly youthful impression. Although she suspected all too few other women in the rear palace would agree with her.

Maomao didn’t say anything for a long moment. “What are you thinking?” Suirei asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

All right, better set that aside for now.

Come to think of it, she felt like Jinshi had been trying to have some kind of important conversation with her when they’d been on that hunt—might it have had something to do with this subject? If she hadn’t noticed, it was his fault for having such superb ox bezoars around. Ox bezoars made people insane. Fearsome things!

But anyway, she had to think about the situation she was in now. They’d traveled about a half day by carriage from the hot-springs village. Judging by the position of the sun as she’d been able to make it out through the curtain, they’d gone north. Partway through the journey the landscape had turned white, and snow had begun to fall.

So we’re either well to the north or up in the mountains, Maomao thought. Shenmei had spoken of a stronghold. And indeed, this place had high walls all around and a cliffside at its back. More a stronghold than a castle. That courtly-looking woman...in a stronghold? She didn’t seem like the type to set foot in such a place. Then again, that could just be Maomao’s bias; she knew from experience how tough and stubborn noblewomen could be. But this seemed like pushing it.

It was almost as if Shenmei saw herself as at war.

Wait...!

Maomao thought of the feifa she’d seen in the storehouse. She thought about how unusual it was that a foreign emissary like the woman called Ayla should even be in a place like this. So that’s what’s going on...

There’d been rumors for some time now that the emissaries had been in secret talks with someone or other. What if it had been the Shi clan? What if that was how the brand-new feifa had arrived?

And what if the gun had been disassembled in order to understand it—so that more could be produced?

“Are you planning to start a war?”

Suirei, who had been about to leave the room, stopped. “It’s not my decision to make. Considering what Lady Loulan said, I’d suggest you get started on the medicine.”

“Oh, you don’t have to ask me twice. You don’t have to ask me at all.”

“Good. There’ll be food. There’s a toilet in the next room down the hall if you need it. And whatever you do, don’t make Lady Shenmei mad.”

Yes... Whatever I do...

Maomao didn’t know what kind of discipline would await her if she failed to heed this advice. But Suirei left the room without a backward glance.

All right, what to do now? Maomao looked around the room, thinking. The entrance was locked; there were bars on the windows, and the ground outside was piled with pure, white snow. Suirei hadn’t bothered to tell her not to try running away. Was that because escape was impossible? Or was it her way of saying: If you’re going to do it, at least do it right?

She opened the door to find a narrow hallway, at the far end of which was the restroom. Such facilities were normally located outside, or at least on the first floor—but she was on the third floor here. It couldn’t be easy to keep the thing clean. But evidently they were less concerned with convenience than with preventing any opportunity for escape.

They said there was another apothecary here before me... Had he been confined too? They said he’d died trying one of his own concoctions. Hrm. It almost made sense, and then...it didn’t. Maomao crossed her arms and decided to let the subject lie for the time being. There were more important things to do.

Yes—things like...

Maomao began to smile as she approached the packed wicker trunk and opened the lid. It was all but overflowing with books. She was curious about the medicine cabinet along the wall, as well, but this could come first.

“Ah... Ahhh!” she exclaimed without meaning to. To her, the wicker trunk may as well have been a treasure chest. She began rifling through the contents, cackling like a madwoman.

It was always Suirei who brought her meals, which consisted of soup and a side vegetable—not bad, even if they did tend to be a little cold. There were a lot of dried ingredients, though; they could almost have qualified as field rations.

Maomao sat on her bed with her legs crossed. She’d had a look through all the books in the room. She thought it had taken about five days, although it was hard to be sure. It wasn’t exactly good manners to rest her chin on her hands and her elbows in front of her, but there was no one here to scold her.

A war. What a thing to stumble on.

Maomao glanced out the window for a moment. Everything was white outside—she suspected the harvest was over, and they were approaching the time of year when there would be no farming to do. She thought she’d heard it said once that war was something that happened when the farmers had too much free time.

From what she could see through the window, they appeared to be on very high ground with a mountain at their backs. Not a bad location for a stronghold. She sketched a map on the tabletop with her finger. If they were in the northern lands, Shihoku-shu, then this stronghold must have been located right on the country’s border.

Maomao tossed herself back on the bed, grabbing her hair. She tried to picture a half circle to the north of the capital. Ten days by boat. Then walking to the hot-springs village, and then another half day by carriage. Were there any mountains in that range?

If I’d known things were going to turn out like this, I would have studied!

The exam for court ladies had included some questions about geography, she seemed to recall. But every time she’d opened the book to study, she’d only ended up falling asleep, so she hardly remembered any of it. She did remember Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting Suiren jabbing her awake.

I even miss the jabbing, now.

Just then, Maomao heard raised voices from the hallway. She recognized one of them. Curious, she hopped off the bed and put her ear to the door.

“Young master, you mustn’t play there!”

“Aw, why not? I haven’t explored over here yet!”

It was Kyou-u. They must have brought him here along with Maomao—she remembered Suirei frowning at the idea. She could hear other children behind him.

Wait... There are other kids here?

“What’re you doing? You’ll miss out on your snack!”

“Whatever! Hey, save some for me!”

Maomao, rocked by the realization that there were children in the stronghold, slid down against the wall and let out a long breath. This place might be built like a fortress, but it was all too obvious what would happen if it came to a siege.

As far as Maomao was aware, the current Emperor was a relatively merciful ruler. But there were still lines that were not to be crossed. One palace woman who had attempted to kill a high consort had been sentenced to hang, and her family mutilated. Some such measures were unavoidable if the Emperor was to maintain his authority.

Just imagine, then, what would happen if a rebellion on this scale were to be discovered. No member of the clan would be left alive. Not even children and infants. Was that why the children were here? Because someone who understood the stakes had brought them?

Maomao sighed again. She hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. She should just forget about everyone else. She didn’t have time to be thinking about things like this.

And yet her heart was unbearably, inescapably heavy.