The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Feifa

This really came in helpful, Maomao thought. Several pieces of something resembling fish meat were stuck on the end of her hairpin—the hair ornament Shisui had given her could be split in two, and the pointy part made for an ideal skewer.

Maomao swallowed audibly as she watched the grease drip from the sizzling meat. I just wish I had some salt. Or soy paste! Yeah, if I could have anything I wanted...

Once the meat was good and cooked, she blew heartily on it, her cheeks puffing out. It looked a little bony, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

It tasted sort of like chicken, but there was a distinct savor of fish—because the fire had used fish oil. The meat was juicy and full of nutrients—it was almost hibernation season, after all—and the grease flecked Maomao’s lips.

As she chewed, she became aware of some kind of commotion outside. She wanted to grill up her catch before the fire went out, though, so she ignored the noise, skewered another piece of meat, and started cooking. She couldn’t help mumbling, “I really want some salt...”

That was when she realized there was a man standing before her, looking flabbergasted. “What are you doing?”

“I’m eating. You wouldn’t happen to have any salt, would you?”

“Of course I don’t have any damn salt!”

Well, it had been a bit of a long shot, admittedly.

The man looked around the room, then put his hand to his mouth with a “Hrgh!” Trying to keep himself from vomiting, it seemed. Something about him rang a bell with Maomao—a close look revealed that he was the guard who’d been part of her argument earlier. What was he doing here?

“What are you, uh, eating?”

“Snake, sir.”

“...I wish you’d just said fish.”

This guard said the strangest things, Maomao thought. But it was all right. She stuffed the rest of the cooked meat in her mouth and swallowed.

“I thought this was supposed to be a torture chamber,” the guard said.

“And I suppose for some it would be a living hell.”

Many might have wished never to set foot in the room, but for Maomao it was a treasure trove. The cramped chamber had nearly a hundred snakes and poisonous insects in it. Some had been chopped up, or were missing their heads. The rest were crawling around dully, on account of the temperature being rather low.

How stupid can you be? Maomao wondered. What had they expected, using snakes in winter? Normally, these animals might even have been hibernating by this point—of course they moved slowly. For someone as experienced at catching snakes as Maomao was, it couldn’t have been simpler to grab them and wring their necks. And the bugs weren’t moving any faster. Wouldn’t you expect the snakes to eat the bugs, anyway? Some of the dumb frogs went greedily after the toxic insects, then fell flat over from the poison.

Using the hairpin like a gimlet and the hair stick she’d received from Jinshi as if it were a dagger, Maomao had first killed the dangerous venomous snakes. They must have struggled to catch enough of them at this time of year, though, because most of the serpents in the box were harmless, nonvenomous creatures. Even of the insects and frogs, only about half were poisonous.

Maomao yearned to sample a few of those poisons, but this wasn’t the time. Once she had dealt with the obviously venomous snakes, next came the ones she wasn’t sure about. The harmless snakes she left alone. Snakes didn’t go out of their way to attack people, and again, they weren’t exactly moving quickly.

Nonetheless, Maomao wasn’t eager to have snakes wrapping themselves around her in the cramped quarters, so she sat on top of the box they’d been held in and scattered ashes around it. She always carried medicine with her in the folds of her robes; that was her way. She really would have preferred tobacco, but under the circumstances, the best she could do was burn some particularly pungent herbs and scatter them. (She borrowed the lamp in lieu of a proper fire.)

The guard was looking at her as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I didn’t even need to show up,” he groaned.

“Yes, why are you here, anyway?” she asked.

He looked a bit sullen. “Miss Suirei and...and the brat, they asked me to. They said it was because you were stuck in here that we weren’t being punished. The brat wouldn’t shut up about me rescuing you—he said he’d give me this.” The guard was holding a jade ornament. A fairly rich reward, as a matter of fact. Then he looked around, and his face was pale. “I’ve got to hand it to you. I would’ve gone nuts in here. Don’t think I would have lasted. Miss Suirei said I ought to get out of here, quick. Sounds like something dangerous is going to happen.”

The folds of the guard’s robes were noticeably puffed out, like he’d just come from looting a burning building. When Maomao looked outside herself, she discovered a man unconscious on the ground—apparently the work of her former guard.

“I think you should run too,” her rescuer said. “The smoke signal’s gone up already.”

“Smoke signal?”

“Yeah. The sign that an army of vengeance is coming from the capital. That’s what all the noise is about.” And why the guard had been able to reach her so easily.

“Thank you. You’ve helped me very much,” Maomao said with sincere gratitude. If she’d been stuck in here, things could have turned ugly.

“All right, well, I’m out of here,” the man said. “One last word of advice, if you’re open to it. Directly across from here there’s a stairway that leads down—but you want to avoid it. Lots of bad stuff happens down there, and it’s well-traveled. If you’re going to run, stay clear of the stairs. Work your way to the stables and steal a horse or something.”

“Bad stuff?”

“I think they’re making fire powder. You’ll know it right away—it stinks to high heaven.”

Maomao’s eyes glinted. “Thank you again. I’ll be going.”

“Hey! Were you even listening to me?” the man shouted, but Maomao ignored him and headed directly for the basement.

Maomao worked her way down the stairs, keeping one hand against the cold wall. The stones carried the vibrations of whatever was going on deeper down. When she finally got a glimpse of the lower level, she discovered several dozen men at work. Their outfits left their shoulders bare, and she detected a distinctive aroma—not the burning of sulfur so much as the fermentation of animal feces. So this was the source of the odor that had occasionally drifted upstairs to her.

There was a pile of black clumps. Farm animal dung? Maomao wondered. But it was too small for that, closer to the size of rat pellets, or some other small creature. She’d heard wild animal droppings could serve as a component of saltpeter—was that what they were doing with it?

The basement was warmer than she’d expected; they were probably keeping the temperature up to help dry out the fire powder they made. It was, frankly, terrifying. They had a fire pot at a distance, surrounded by a curtain to keep sparks away, but what if one of them caught anyway? Were the men down here knowing full well how dangerous this environment was? Even if nothing exploded, breathing this air for too long would eventually be toxic in and of itself. It was not a very good place to work.

The finished fire powder was being carried out via another exit. As she stood watching, Maomao heard footsteps behind her. She quickly hid behind a nearby shelf, heart pounding in her ears so hard she was afraid whoever was passing by might hear her.

When she finally saw who it was, she could only stare: it was Shisui, looking grim. Then again, perhaps it would have been more appropriate to call her Loulan, dressed as she was in an ostentatious outfit much like her mother’s. She looked wildly out of place in the gloomy basement reeking of excrement.

“Loula—” Maomao started to call out to her, but Loulan didn’t seem to hear; there was something fierce in her eyes as she walked into the basement. The men began to murmur as they noticed her. One of them stepped forward uneasily—he must have been the foreman. “Young mistr—”

“Get out of here, now,” Loulan said, her voice ringing around the underground room. The men looked at each other, unsure what was going on. “This fortress will fall soon. I want you men to leave before it does.”

She produced a large pouch from the folds of her robes and tossed it to the ground. Silver coins spilled out of it, drawing the men’s attention; they started jostling each other to grab the money. Once Loulan was satisfied that all the coins had been claimed, she took the lantern she was holding, raised it above her head—and flung it as hard as she could.

She can’t be serious.

The lamp arced through the air and landed square in the drying fire powder.

“All right, get out of here. If you can,” she said, that innocent smile on her face. Maomao immediately covered her ears and flung herself on the ground. Her palms were hardly enough to blunt the roar that assaulted her eardrums. Several of the men kicked or stepped on her as they scrambled to escape.

The explosions spread, first the charcoal and then the animal dung catching fire.

I’ve got to get out of here, fast, Maomao thought, but at just that moment, she saw someone take a dramatic sidelong stumble. Several pairs of feet stepped on the exquisite cloth of the figure’s outfit, sullying it. Maomao grabbed the person’s hand and pulled.

“Oh? What are you doing here, Maomao? I thought you were in one of the cells.” Loulan, her hair thoroughly disheveled, looked at her in perplexity. No, it didn’t seem like Loulan—in this moment, her innocent demeanor made her look like Shisui.

“I’d like to ask you a similar question,” Maomao said with a touch of annoyance, whereupon Loulan reached out and brushed her cheek, her right ear.

“Are you all right? You’re not hurt?”

“My guard helped me. And the snakes were delicious, thanks.” Maomao understood that it had been deliberate, the way Loulan had suggested the taibon as punishment; it ended up a part of her plan in its own small way. And Maomao hadn’t had snake meat for a while; she appreciated it.

“Um, I’m not sure what you mean by that. Although I did expect the punishment would suit you.”

She didn’t know what Maomao meant? This from the girl who happily ate bugs, Maomao thought. But it didn’t matter; at the moment, they had to hurry up and get out of there.

“We’re getting out of here, fast.” Maomao pressed her sleeve against Loulan’s mouth and started looking for some way to sneak out of the basement. Intending to escape the fortress as quickly as she could, she tried to drag the other woman along. Loulan, though, went to start up the stairs.

“The fire’s only going to spread,” Maomao said.

“That’s all right. I have to go up there.”

Then Loulan ascended the steps, her battered skirt trailing behind her. Smoke was billowing now, flooding Maomao’s nose and making her eyes water. If the fire didn’t get them, toxic fumes would.

“Wait. You’re coming?”

I can’t believe I’m this stupid, Maomao thought, then said, “I guess.”

It would have been simple enough for Maomao to escape on her own; the men from earlier were already heading for the stronghold’s exit, pushing and shoving to be the first one out.

“If my mother finds out, it won’t be pretty. I know her. She’ll want to know how this happened, even if it means sticking around. We’ll be lucky to get off with a little whipping.” Loulan looked downcast; she didn’t seem like someone talking about her own mother.

“It looks like she treasured you growing up, at least, Loulan.”

Loulan had said something before about being beaten if she couldn’t tie hair or give a massage properly. But it was hard to imagine that happening to someone of her status.

“My mother... She can’t even remember my real face.” Almost as far back as she could recall, Loulan had been painted with rouge and face-whitening powder. Whatever happiness or grief she had shown had been for her mother, like she was a doll. Like she was wearing a mask.

Before she was ten, she learned of the existence of her older sister when one of the maids died after an especially vicious beating by Loulan’s mother, and her father took in the woman’s child. When Loulan saw her mother confront her father about it, her hair everywhere like an enraged devil’s, she was convinced she was seeing hell itself.

“Mother was always cruel to my older sister,” Loulan said. She realized that Shenmei must have been equally brutal to Suirei’s mother, leading to the woman’s death. And then she learned why Shenmei hated her older sister so much. “She asked if he intended to make a fool of her with mother and child alike. She said the daughter was like her mother, a whore who would do who knew what. It was the strangest thing, to see someone in such gorgeous clothing say such filthy words.”

“Could it be Suirei is...?” Maomao remembered what Shenmei had said when she’d licked Suirei’s blood.

“Didn’t you hear any rumors about it at the rear palace? There was a palace woman, the former emperor’s first victim—her child was taken from her. That woman was my older sister’s grandmother.”

That woman had died alone and forlorn in the rear palace. In her later years, her one pleasure was said to be gathering spooky stories.

“Remember when everyone almost suffocated telling scary stories? It might have been that old lady’s doing. After my mother did such terrible things to her, how could she not revile me, her daughter?” Loulan chuckled.

“We can’t even say if ghosts really exist,” Maomao replied. There was no way to know. At least, not as far as she was concerned.

“Why am I not surprised you’d say that?” Loulan said, grinning. “I so wanted to see my older sister. Sometimes I would sneak over to her place dressed as a maid. Mother never recognized me, and made me work.” Loulan, though, naturally wasn’t trained in these tasks, and often felt the sting of Shenmei’s folding fan. Despite the blows, she still went to see her sister. And somehow, Shenmei never realized whom she was “disciplining.” She saw only a lowly servant girl, not her precious doll who heeded her every word.

“You know why my mother and father got married?” Loulan said. “They just wanted to make me. My father carried the blood of the hidden village—supposedly the same bloodline as Wang Mu.”

Maomao thought back to the fox masks. Loulan had painted a pattern on hers like a mercurial tanuki. Perhaps for her, the world of colors was the same as it had been for Wang Mu.

“Mother kept telling me that what they wanted was for me to become a new Wang Mu.” With that, Loulan stopped in front of a room on the third floor. If Maomao parted ways with her now, she’d never find out what Loulan was planning—and she wanted to know.

“Hey...” Maomao paused for a second, unsure how to continue. Was she speaking to Loulan, or Shisui? She wasn’t sure, but in her own mind, she knew who this woman before her was. And so she said, “...Shisui.”

“Yes?” Shisui asked, smiling, her hand on the door.

“I know there were substances floating around the rear palace designed to induce a miscarriage. Did you keep some on hand too?” Shisui was still smiling. “To use on yourself?”

Shisui’s expression didn’t change. She simply opened the door. “You really are a sharp one, Maomao. I knew it was the right choice to bring you here.”

Maomao thought back to the scary story Shisui had told, about the insects with the bell-like cry. They were a kind of bug Shisui had caught at the rear palace once. And the previous apothecary here had written extensively about them in their books. You could keep them in a cage; they made the most beautiful sound. But come autumn, the bugs would eat each other. The female would eat the male. It was part of their reproductive cycle.

That seemed to have been the point of Shisui’s story, but why had she chosen to tell that tale at that time? Maomao thought she knew now. She was talking about herself.

If she became pregnant, she would devour the child’s father.

The cage was the rear palace; the male and female insects, the Emperor and his women. It wasn’t a very respectful allegory, but it certainly fit. Shisui had feared it. Near the area where she’d been catching bugs, there had been lantern plants and whiteblossom—ingredients for an abortifacient.

They entered the room. There was a large bed with children sleeping on it. Kyou-u was there too; he alone was on the floor.

Must’ve rolled off, Maomao thought. She hated to wake them, but they had to get the kids out of there. She went over to the bed—and stopped. “What is this?”

Something was wrong. Saliva was running from the kids’ mouths, and their hands clutched at the sheets. Their skin was cold. Maomao took one of them by the wrist and felt for a pulse. “He’s not breathing.”

On the table by the bed there was a pitcher, and enough cups for all the kids. Shisui, her eyes full of compassion, came over to the bed, reaching out to touch the children.

Maomao, furious, raised her hand dramatically upward, but fought the urge to bring it down on Shisui. “You poisoned them?”

“It was medicine...”

Maomao squeezed her trembling hand into a fist.

“We’ve shown our hand now,” Shisui said. “Can’t you see it? Our entire clan will be executed.” Including even the little children. They, too, would be led to the gallows, not understanding what it was their parents had done. “I mixed it with some nice, sweet juice for them. In a nice, warm room, after we’d all enjoyed looking at a picture scroll together. I wonder if any of them were upset about it. If maybe they wanted to sleep with their mothers. I’m sorry, little ones. But your mothers were friends with mine. Kyou-u came late... It must have been because he was trying to help you, Maomao.” The hint of a smile appeared at the edges of her lips. “Him, I think he might have known. I saw him bite his lip—but he drank all his juice anyway. I really didn’t want to bring him here.”

“And why did you bring me here?”

Shisui smiled as if to say Maomao ought to know. “I’d hoped there would be another way to get you here, but it just didn’t work out.”

So that’s how it was. Maomao let her hand drop. There was a heavy thud from outside, but she couldn’t look away from Shisui’s face.

“They say Mother never used to be that way, but I wonder. It’s how she has been ever since I was born, at least. She would torment my older sister every time she saw her, and the young ladies-in-waiting too. She taught her female relatives to drink and debauch themselves with men. Father never said anything to her; he never could go against her. He was just waiting for her to forgive him.”

Shisui’s mother, this Shenmei, was insane. It was clear to see.

“She’s like an insect, consuming her husband when a child is born. In fact, the bugs are better. At least they do it so their children can survive.”

Shisui hated the idea of becoming a mother—so much so that she would concoct and consume her own abortifacients. Maomao could sense she was learning the most important reason for this. Not all mothers were like Shenmei. But Shenmei was the only mother Shisui had.

“I took the liberty of learning a little something about your background, Maomao. It seems like your upbringing wasn’t that different from my sister’s.” Meaning, perhaps, that she had been raised by a former physician, or that her birth father was a high official.

“I don’t have a father or a mother. Just my adoptive father,” Maomao said.

“Hee! My sister says the same kind of thing. Well, I guess it makes sense. She keeps swearing she’s not my big sister.”

What was Shisui getting at?

“I guess she’s right. There’s no way she can be my sister. Our father is a tanuki. I’m sure he’s got some grand plan, trying to get his hands on the Emperor’s bloodline.”

Not Shisui’s sister? Was that her way of saying that she had no connection to the Shi clan?

What a liar.

Shisui was in fact much like Suirei—particularly with the expressionless look she now wore. Shisui adored her older sister, yet at this moment she denied that the relationship existed.

“If only these little ones were bugs, they might have been able to sleep through the winter,” Shisui said, her hand brushing the children once more.

Yes, if they were bugs...

Maomao understood. She knew now why Shisui had wanted her here. Maomao looked at her without saying anything. There was just a suggestion of tears in Shisui’s eyes. Maomao was about to reach out, but Shisui shook her head.

She could run away too! Maomao thought. But even Maomao had no idea what Shisui could do after that. Maomao knew nothing about politics; she couldn’t have cared less about the subject. She just wanted to learn as much as she could about medicine, research and study it, and invent different drugs. That was all she wanted out of life.

It should have been enough.

Forget about other people. Put yourself first. What had they thought would happen, bringing her here?

And yet Maomao reached out her hand.

Shisui rebuffed her. “I have my own part to play. Please, don’t stop me.”

“Is there some meaning to this?” Maomao didn’t know where Shisui was headed—but the outcome was easy enough to imagine.

“Stubbornness. Mine.”

“Just forget about that!”

Shisui smiled mischievously. “Think of it this way, Maomao. Say you were presented with a poison you’d never seen before, and you were told you only had one chance to try it. What would you do?”

“I’d drink it down to the last drop,” she replied immediately. What other answer could there be?

“Thought so.” Shisui stood up, smiling, and went to leave the room, her steps as light as if she were simply going out to go shopping.

She’s leaving...

Maomao didn’t know what to do; she had no idea what this moment called for. She tried to find the right words, but nothing came out. She could only reach out and grab Shisui’s hand. “At least let me offer a prayer.”

“A prayer? That’s not like you, Maomao.”

“Every once in a while. Every once in a blue moon.” Maomao took the hair stick from her own hair and placed it in Shisui’s collar.

“You know that’s not my hair, right?”

“If I put it in your hair, you’d just be too pretty.” Shisui’s head was already bristling with hair sticks. These accessories were said to keep away evil spirits, but so many at once seemed apt to attract them instead. “Give it back to me sometime. It was a gift.”

“You’re silly. I’m going to sell it.”

“That’s fine, then.” This particular hair stick was plain, yet of uncommonly fine make. The one who had given it to her could be especially obstinate, so there was every possibility that just like its original owner, it would somehow manage to find its way back to her.

“You’ve got some soot on you.” Maomao held up a mirror from beside the bed.

“Oh, you’re right. I look like a tanuki.” Shisui laughed. She laughed, and then she looked at Maomao. “You know what you need to do.” She turned away.

The door shut with a clack. Her footsteps got softer and softer in the distance.

Maomao found herself looking at the ceiling without really knowing why. Just leaning her head back and staring. The building shook with an increasingly loud series of explosions.