The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Army Marches

Let’s turn the clock back a little.

Jinshi was in a rocking, jolting carriage, sitting across from a man with a sour look on his face. But maybe “carriage” wasn’t quite the right word. Pulled by no fewer than ten horses, this was more of a house on wheels. The floor was covered with an animal pelt, and there was a table in the middle of the cabin.

Lakan, a man renowned for his unrelenting smirk, was now glaring at a map with evident annoyance. Behind him, his adopted son was studying Lakan’s and Jinshi’s expressions and tucking a receipt into the folds of his robe. This man, Lahan, was the second most tightfisted person Jinshi had ever met after the madam of the Verdigris House—but on this occasion, he was more than happy to acknowledge that Lahan had saved his neck.

He felt like he might be attacked at any moment. The intervention of the eunuch Luomen had successfully soothed the worst of Lakan’s rage, but it still smoldered. Attending behind Jinshi, Gaoshun was prepared to draw the sword at his hip at a moment’s notice. That was the kind of reprisal one risked in raising a hand against Jinshi, but at the moment Lakan probably didn’t care. Jinshi suspected he would have been just as happy to jump on top of Jinshi and beat him senseless.

The man was just that worried. Lahan, however, was proving a helpful check on him. “Father, I ask purely hypothetically, but if a man were to do violence to a member of the Imperial family, the crime would not fall on him alone, would it?” It was a roundabout question, to be sure, but it was enough to keep Lakan from doing anything rash.

To attack Jinshi would be the end of a person’s family. Even Lakan’s daughter Maomao wouldn’t be spared. Lakan wasn’t easy to fool, and he knew exactly who Jinshi was—that was why he had asked him to mobilize the army. He suspected Lahan had guessed the truth as well. Why? When he asked, he received the most La-clan-ish of answers: “Because your height, weight, chest, and torso are all the exact same number. Such people are very, very rare.” As ever, Lahan’s way of looking at things was more or less inscrutable to others. “You’re terribly lovely; it’s only a shame you weren’t born a woman,” he added.

That gave Jinshi gooseflesh. True, Maomao’s cousin looked and acted much like she did, but unfortunately, Jinshi didn’t swing that way.

Still, he knew talent when he saw it, and he had obtained special permission for this civil official to accompany him on this military expedition.

Today, Jinshi was not the eunuch Jinshi. His hair was held in place by a silver hair stick, and he wore not his usual black official’s outfit, but armor and a helmet of bluish-purple, with thick cotton underpadding.

“I hope he can distinguish victory and defeat better than we can distinguish whether he’s a man or a woman.” That was Lakan. He was right about one thing: the time had come for Jinshi to shed his eunuch’s skin. They were leading an army and trying to coordinate several plans at once.

“Are you quite sure about this?” Jinshi asked.

“There won’t be any problems,” Lahan assured him. The map before them showed a stronghold with mountains at its back. The map was older, since the fortress hadn’t been used in quite some time, but they had found soldiers who had once been stationed there to update it and make sure it was as accurate as possible.

It was Lahan’s belief that firearms were being produced in that stronghold. The northern reaches had timber aplenty. Many wished desperately to control the place in hopes of capitalizing on its lumber resources, but the Shi clan defended it stoutly.

There were hot springs nearby as well. An excellent source of sulfur. But there was one more ingredient that would be necessary to create fire powder.

“What would they do about saltpeter?”

“Small animals like to hibernate in the area, perhaps because of the hot springs. There are large caves in the vicinity.” That implied the presence of substantial quantities of bat guano. It would be possible to create saltpeter from the excrement.

Jinshi grunted. If the defenders had firearms, they were unlikely to bring individual feifa to bear on an attacking force. No, they would have something on the stronghold walls designed to ravage an advancing enemy en masse: cannons. Cannons; that would be the real danger.

But if Jinshi could think of it, he could be confident that Lakan was already well aware of the possibility. To him, the map probably looked like nothing more than a Go board. He pointed to the cliffside behind the stronghold.

“It is theoretically possible to overpower them before they can use their cannons,” Lahan said firmly.

“You heard abacus-brain,” Lakan said, bopping his adopted son on the head. The fire powder necessary to make a cannon work easily got wet. Powder might be kept near the guns at all times, but if so, it would be in an armory to keep it dry. The stronghold was at a high altitude, and snow fell there frequently. Scouts reported that this very night, the stuff was coming down heavily.

If Jinshi’s forces simply advanced on the stronghold, they would be sitting ducks. Thus it was Lakan’s suggestion that they should take out the powder depot to deny the enemy the use of their cannons. And the way he came up with to do it was bizarre. Bizarre—but possible. That was what made him so fearsome.

“I think it will be a very economical way to handle things,” Lahan said. It had probably been that one word, economical, that had convinced him to buy into the plan. In their relatively short time together, Jinshi felt he’d gotten an impeccable handle on how the man thought.

“We must force our way in and find Maomao. Daddy will save her!”

Jinshi suppressed a grimace at the word “daddy.” He couldn’t be seen making faces like that.

He bit his lip as he thought of the diminutive young woman. Had she been taken as a hostage, or was there some other reason? Had she even, perhaps, gone along of her own free will? Whatever it was, she was there in the enemy camp, and he wanted to rescue her as soon as he could.

Jinshi clenched his fist. “We’ll do that, then,” he declared.

“Wait one moment, please,” said Gaoshun. Furrowing his brow, he knelt before him. “I see a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Lakan and Lahan looked as perplexed as Jinshi.

“Have my good lords forgotten the nature of this army?”

They were leading a force more than large enough to handle a stronghold of this size. If they followed Lakan’s plan, they could expect virtually no casualties.

“Are you, sirs, suggesting that the Forbidden Army would stoop to an ambush?”

Jinshi swallowed heavily and reached up to touch the hair stick on his head. It was sculpted in the shape of a qilin—a symbol of the Imperial family.

He had spent so long as a eunuch that sometimes he felt he was at risk of forgetting his true identity. At this moment, though, he was not Jinshi, and in light of who he was, it behooved him to subdue the enemy boldly and openly.

He understood all this. And yet the words that came out of his mouth betrayed him. “I’m in agreement with the grand commandant.”

“Understood, sir,” Gaoshun said, and obediently stepped back. His eyes were on the man behind him, and his piercing gaze made the hair on the back of Jinshi’s neck stand up.

“Most excellent. Not interested in making a drinking cup out of my own skull,” Lakan said. Then he snorted and exited the carriage, past the curtain. True, they weren’t moving terribly fast, but it was still a jump. Jinshi thought Lakan looked as if he crumpled slightly on hitting the ground—was he okay?

Lahan was working his abacus furiously, making sure there were no mistakes in the calculations.

Jinshi’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice. “—getsu.” It was Gaoshun, calling him by his true name. The crease in his brow seemed to have gotten deeper. “You’re going to have to change how you interact with the young lady after this.” He sounded as if he were admonishing a child.

“I know.” Jinshi sighed deeply, his breath fogging in the cold air. He shivered, and pulled his white hooded cloak up over his head.

○●○

It was just past midnight when he heard the explosions. Wondering what was going on, Shishou got up, grabbing the sword he always kept by his bed.

He’d been in bed, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. The court might regard him as “the old tanuki,” but even he had little things that kept him up at night. Indeed, how could he possibly sleep? For a decade and more now, he had tried, and had found it impossible.

He heard shouting in the next room—surprise at the noise, perhaps—but it soon quieted. The voices of the women enjoying themselves returned to their usual burble. Just one wall away, his wife must have been enjoying her wine. She seemed to revel in leading the clan women into lewdness, cavorting with paid men. It was how she had behaved almost every day since their daughter Loulan had been born, being sure to lose herself in pleasure where Shishou would know it.

The women with her had been reluctant at first, but by now they enjoyed these diversions. His wife always chose women who were already married, who had borne children, fulfilling their familial duties. She took pleasure in seeing these virtuous wives debauch themselves.

She hadn’t always been like this. Shishou went out on his balcony and looked into the distance. An enemy attack, he thought. The lights of the army—perhaps the Forbidden Army—were still far away. From this stronghold on its high perch, it was possible to see many li into the distance. He still had time to catch a few winks.

Then Shishou scrunched up his nose—there was a strange smell in the air. Was that...sulfur? They were making fire powder in the basement. Had it exploded?

Of course. He tightened his collar. He had to do something, he thought—but he didn’t move. It was pathetic, but the strength simply wouldn’t come. The cunning old tanuki, favored by the empress regnant, and whom even the reigning monarch could barely look in the eye—that was not who Shishou was at this moment. Even he himself recognized it.

Holding his stomach (it had started to protrude abruptly and dramatically after his fortieth birthday) he proceeded forward, one step after the next. To get outside and find out what was going on, he would have to pass through his wife’s room. That pained him more than anything.

The woman gifted to him by the former emperor—or rather, his betrothed, whom he had waited twenty years to have returned to him—had grown thorns in her time at the rear palace. When she had finally come back to Shishou, he already had a wife, and a child—Suirei.

He had never intended to get married to someone else. Even the woman who became his wife probably hadn’t wanted it. She had been born in the rear palace, then banished as an illegitimate child—even though her father was none other than the former emperor.

It had been the former sovereign’s wish. A request when his health suddenly began to decline twenty years ago. “Please, care for my child,” he had said.

Shishou’s wife came to have not only thorns, but poison.

He had to do something, and quickly. He kept repeating this to himself and finally managed to open the door. The male prostitutes looked startled, and the women, with their remaining modicum of modesty, scrambled to cover themselves with the sheets.

His wife, meanwhile, lay on a couch, taking a long drag from her pipe. Her eyes were sharp and full of contempt. “What was that noise?” she said languorously, purple smoke drifting from her mouth.

Shishou was just about to tell her he was on his way to find out when the door to the hallway flew open. Loulan stood there, covered in soot.

“What are you doing here in such a pathetic state?” Shishou’s wife said.

“You’re the last person who has any right to ask me that,” Loulan shot back, with a pointed look at the women fighting over the covers. “All of you, who abandoned your children so you could lose yourselves in a life of excess.”

One of the women, shocked back into remembering her own child by Loulan’s words, made to flee the room, but Loulan slapped her across the cheek. As the woman crumpled to the ground, the male prostitutes made a break for it, realizing how desperate the situation had become.

Shishou could hardly believe he was seeing his own daughter. He’d always believed his Loulan was a prim and obedient child. She put on the outfits her mother told her to put on, like a little doll.

Meanwhile, Loulan strode into the room, sliding open the doors of the wardrobes that stood against the wall. When she opened the biggest one, she found a young woman crammed inside of it.

“My dear sister. I’m sorry. It took me a little longer than I meant.”

The trembling young woman was bound hand and foot—she was being disciplined. Closely resembling Loulan, she was Shishou’s other daughter, Suirei.

Loulan freed Suirei, rubbing her back gently. It was obvious from how smoothly and easily she did everything that this was not the first time this had happened. Or the second. Shishou felt his stomach plummet at the realization of how profoundly he had failed.

And then Loulan turned and looked at her father, Shishou. She smiled at him. “Father. At least take responsibility here in these last moments.” He didn’t have time to ask responsibility for what, for she went on: “You’re the old tanuki, the transforming trickster, of the fox village. Let’s play our parts to the very end.”

There was another roar, and this time the entire stronghold shook. Shishou grabbed onto the wall for support and worked his way back to the balcony to find out what had happened this time.

He saw flakes of snow floating everywhere. Everything to the east of the stronghold was completely white, and he couldn’t see anything. At first, he didn’t understand what had happened. As the haze of snow began to clear, though, he saw it: the building that should have been there was buried. The armory, as he recalled. It was now half inundated with snow.

As he stared stupidly, Loulan said, “You should have known this was an opponent you could never beat. Please, take responsibility.” She, she added, would deal with her mother.

Then his daughter, her slightly scorched hair bobbing, walked over to her mother, looking downright regal, and stood before her.

Take responsibility, his daughter had said. Shishou clenched his fist, resolved.