The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 4 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue

The capital was in an absolute uproar that day. For the Emperor had finally taken an Empress, and at the very same time, a new Crown Prince had been presented. The celebratory atmosphere, building on the anticipation of the new year that had already been brewing, even reached the pleasure district, and the young apprentice girls were beside themselves with excitement.

The Empress’s name was Gyokuyou, and the Crown Prince was her son. The child had been delivered safely.

As joyous as that was, it also meant that Maomao was now without an occupation—and so we find her back in her tumbledown apothecary’s shop, grinding herbs.

“Yo, Freckles, how about a snack?” A boy, young enough that his voice hadn’t changed, opened the door and came in. His name was Chou-u: a brat of a kid with a dumb gap in his front teeth. They’d abandoned his old name. The fact that his new one sounded somewhat like it was a tactic of desperation, for the boy seemed to have a faint memory of what he was once called.

It was clear to see that he was still an unruly kid, but it had only been a few days earlier that he had finally been able to get up and about. He’d been in a sort of torpor until then; it was impossible to say whether it was down to his youth or simple good luck that he was able to be this active again.

Eventually, all five of the children had revived. Maomao had expended every effort to keep them breathing—including having Suirei, who had been moved elsewhere, summoned to assist with the “resurrections.” She’d said the experiments hadn’t been finished. No doubt she would have wished to wait until the effects of the drug were better understood before doing something like this. But circumstances had left no choice except to give the children the medicine. As a result, several of them suffered side effects.

Chou-u had been the last of the five to awaken.

These children, who would otherwise have gone to the gallows with their parents, were given new names and taken in by a new home. Chou-u, though, remained in the pleasure district. For better or for worse, he had lost his memory. He was also left with mild paralysis in half his body—but under the circumstances, one had to say he was lucky. For a while, it had looked as if he might not wake up at all.

No one seemed to know quite how it was that the children had survived, but in any case, they were to go to live with the former Consort Ah-Duo. Some argued that they should be sent to different places, but Ah-Duo felt that would be needlessly cruel.

Maomao was amazed when she saw the former consort: she was wearing men’s clothing, for some reason, but she seemed far more alive than she ever had when she was living in the rear palace. What really startled Maomao, though, was the former consort’s resemblance to Jinshi.

I did wonder. Could it be—

No, no. Let’s drop that train of thought. Maomao forced the fantasy she’d once entertained out of her mind.

Ah-Duo had taken in not just the children, but Suirei as well. Yes, she had been something of a thorn in the side of the rear palace, but allowances could be made for her circumstances; and above all the fact that the former emperor’s blood flowed in her veins argued in her favor. She would be watched closely, certainly, but her life would be spared.

Chou-u had been sent to the pleasure district because it was felt that, lacking his memories, it would be best if he were raised separately from the other children. Maomao thought that might be a mess in the making, but it was nothing to do with her. Or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be—so what was the nasty little brat doing in her shop? They had insisted that this was really the safest place for him—but Maomao was damned if she knew how so.

The brat began to rifle through the medicine cabinet, and Maomao gave him a sound knuckle to the top of the head.

“Yowch! What’d you do that for?!”

“That is not for you to eat,” Maomao said, snatching back from him the packet of expensive rice crackers one of her sisters had given her. Instead she tossed him a piece of brown sugar from the same drawer. That seemed to be enough to satisfy Chou-u, who walked out of the shop munching on it. There was a good-natured guard who sometimes played with him; that was probably where he was going.

They say children are highly adaptable, and Chou-u was living proof. Instead of getting all depressed about having amnesia, he reveled in having lovely ladies to dote on him and a friendly guy to be his playmate. In fact, he hardly seemed to have any complaints at all for the moment. The old madam, meanwhile, had been well compensated for taking him in, and nothing warmed her cockles like a financial windfall. In other words, it would be a while before she felt any need to get upset at him.

Maomao lounged lazily on the floor, munching on the salty rice crackers. She folded a raggedy old cushion and put it under her head, then lay back and gazed upward.

Her old man, Luomen, wasn’t going to be coming back to the pleasure district; for the time being, it had been decided that he would stay at the palace. He’d been banished—on dubious grounds, yes—but he was a man of consummate talent. No doubt the Emperor was loath to let him go.

And why was Maomao here, instead of serving Jinshi again? There was a reason for that too.

Seki-u had visited Maomao at one point. (Although she’d known Maomao was an apothecary, she’d been surprised to discover that the pleasure district was her base of operations.) “I wasn’t going to be able to sleep if I didn’t at least get these to you,” she said, and gave Maomao two letters written on crude paper. The name of the sender was one they had practiced again and again, writing in the dirt: they were from Xiaolan.

Xiaolan was pretty lonely, Seki-u informed her, what with how Maomao and Shisui had both disappeared at the same time. Apparently, the public story was that both of them had been dismissed from the rear palace.

“She was really down about it,” Seki-u said. “You could have at least said goodbye to her.” She went on to describe how Xiaolan was doing in rather detailed terms; Maomao started to sense that, unable to leave Xiaolan completely alone, Seki-u had taken up the mantle of being her friend. “There’s not that much work she can do, but being cheerful like she is goes a long way.”

Xiaolan hadn’t been able to get herself retained at the rear palace, but one of the lower consorts had taken a liking to her, and had written her a letter of introduction; she was now a serving woman to the consort’s younger sister at their family home. Maomao didn’t doubt that the charming Xiaolan would soon be fully integrated into the household.

One of the letters was addressed to Maomao, but the other was for Shisui. Maomao opened the one addressed to her. The penmanship left something to be desired, clearly the work of someone still learning her characters, but the effort she had put into this note describing her current situation was evident. There were mistakes and revisions in a few places, but paper was still too luxurious a resource for Xiaolan to rewrite the letter afresh; instead, she simply blotted out the errors.

At the very end, she had written: “I hope I get to see you again sometime. I want more ice cream!”

As for the letter for Shisui, Maomao took it, but didn’t open it. She suspected, though, that whatever else it said, that last line was probably the same.

She felt something warm roll gently down her cheek. Ploop, it went, falling onto the paper and distorting the characters.

They hadn’t found Shisui’s body. She’d been shot with a feifa and then fallen off the stronghold roof, yet no matter how they pawed through the snowbanks below, they came up with nothing. They said they would look for the body again when the snow melted in spring. Maomao, for one, hoped they never found it.

I’ll have to go find more medicinal ingredients.

Maomao had her work cut out for her in the pleasure district, probably far more so than she ever had in the palace. Her old man had made a supply of medicines before he left, but that was long gone, and she suspected the fields were dead by now too.

She hadn’t seen Jinshi since they’d left the Shi stronghold. Even if she’d wanted to, he wasn’t exactly the kind of person you could waltz up and ask for a meeting with.

There was no way a man who had taken command of an army—and had the scar on his face to prove it—could continue pretending to be a eunuch in the rear palace. Jinshi must have finally gone back to being whoever he really was. Maomao didn’t know his real name; she couldn’t have used it even if she did. The worlds they lived in were simply too different.

As for his injury, there were plenty of perfectly competent doctors around; he didn’t need Maomao. Hell, her old man was there at the palace. Maomao couldn’t have done anything to help even if she’d been present.

Anyway, now that Jinshi was no longer a eunuch, he couldn’t get away with keeping some lowborn girl around him. He wouldn’t have to sneak and spy anymore, anyway. So it was best, really, that Maomao had come back to the apothecary’s shop in the pleasure district. At least with her father no longer there, the madam would probably stop trying to sell her off.

Ugh... So tired...

She’d been up all night the night before making medicines. Creating new drugs was a challenging endeavor. You could mix several ingredients trying to increase the potency of an effect, but sometimes you accidentally ended up with a poison instead. She’d made several new wounds on her left arm to test some of them out, but she just couldn’t quite get the outcome she wanted. She’d even tried rubbing some of her concoction onto the wound on her ear (why let it go to waste, after all?), but it didn’t tell her much. After all these years, she seemed to have developed a pretty high tolerance for pain.

Got to cut deeper if I want to be sure. Maomao looked at her left hand, then tied some string firmly around her pinky. She stood and took a small knife from a cabinet. Here goes!

Just as she was about to bring the knife down, a beautiful voice interrupted her: “What are you doing?”

Without a word, she turned to see a man in an unusual mask standing in the entryway of the shop. Behind him were a familiar, middle-aged man who looked distinctly overworked, and the madam, rubbing her hands and offering them an ingratiating smile.

“Done with all your work?” Maomao asked, undoing the string around her finger and putting the knife back in the cabinet.

“Isn’t a person entitled to a break every once in a while?”

The madam poured tea and said, “Please, relax,” still wearing that smile. The drink was made from her best white tea leaves, and was accompanied by small pieces of finely sculpted sugar—the sort of expensive accommodations usually reserved for the Three Princesses’ guests. “Are you quite sure this is a suitable meeting place, sir?” she inquired, although for some reason she was asking Gaoshun. He nodded, and the old lady, looking slightly disappointed, backed out and closed the door with another “Relax. Take your time.”

What’s going on here? Maomao wondered.

Jinshi finally removed his mask, revealing his face, like a perfect jewel—except for the scar that ran down one cheek. Maomao gave the folded cushion a smack to straighten it out and set it in front of Jinshi, who sat down promptly and without undue grace.

“I’m sure you’ve been working hard, sir,” Maomao said, next placing the tea and snacks before Jinshi.

He took a sip of the drink. “I won’t pretend it’s been easy. Dealing with personnel has been a nightmare, and on top of that there’s the issue of the Shi clan’s territory to contend with.” He let out a long sigh, his brow furrowing. Was it just Maomao’s imagination, or was Gaoshun rubbing off on him?

She had heard that the members of the Shi clan had already been executed—most of them had been at the stronghold, anyway. Their territory would be put under government control, and with the richness of the timber resources in the north, it could be expected to produce a handsome addition to the nation’s coffers. Without the Shi clan serving as middleman, they could lower the tax rate in the area and still make plenty of profit. And there were so many things one could do with timber.

I hope they turn it into paper. Maomao smiled, hoping they had the right kind of trees up north to make decent sheets. She was just thinking how the country’s failure to start up a paper industry to this point had probably been due to the Shi clan’s interference when she realized she was grinding medicine in a mortar.

“Don’t pretend I’m not here,” Jinshi said.

“Sorry, sir. Old habit.”

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it.” Jinshi took a bite of the snacks and drank down the rest of his tea. When Maomao got up to make more, she found Jinshi grabbing her wrist.

“Yes, sir? What is it?”

He tugged, obliging her to sit back down. He was studying the side of her face most intensely, gazing at her ear. She was fairly sure the bruise from where she’d been struck was gone by now.

He smells...sweet. It wasn’t the smell of the snacks, but of his perfume. Suiren always did have good taste, Maomao reflected, an image of the slightly mischievous serving woman flashing through her mind.

“Perhaps it’s time I asked you to make good on your promise,” Jinshi said.

Promise? Maomao looked at the ceiling, trying to recall, and Jinshi scowled.

“You can’t pretend you’ve forgotten. I got you the ingredients for your ice cream, didn’t I?”

Oh! Geez! That! She almost clapped her hands as she remembered. But then her gaze returned to the ceiling as the exact nature of that promise came back to her.

“What is it?”

“Oh, er, nothing. It’s about—ahem—your hair stick.” Maomao’s voice grew so quiet it almost disappeared. “I, uh...gave it to somebody.”

Jinshi didn’t say anything, but his face grew tight—less, it seemed, from anger than from disappointment. Maomao knew this was bad; she struggled to think of some way of placating him. “But they might find it in spring!”

“Why would that be?”

“Well, and then again...they might not.” It was better if they didn’t. For if they didn’t find it... “It might make its way back to one of the shops in the capital eventually.”

“You sold it?!”

“No, sir, I didn’t!” Hmm. This was proving tricky. What should she say? “I gave it to Shisui...I mean, to Loulan. I did tell her to give it back someday.”

“So that’s what you’re talking about,” Jinshi said, and then he looked squarely at her. “In that case, perhaps I’ll ask you to fulfill your other promise.”

Other promise. Other promise. Ah!

“You mean to listen when someone is talking to me?”

“That’s the one,” Jinshi said, pleased.

Maomao faced Jinshi and adopted a formal sitting position. “All right then, sir. Go ahead.” But Jinshi didn’t say anything.

“Go ahead,” Maomao repeated. Still he didn’t speak, but only gazed at her. “Didn’t you have anything to say?”

“I did, yes. But on reflection, I’m sure you already know the thing I was about to tell you.” He was probably alluding to the matter of his real position, but Maomao was already aware of it. There would be no point in his telling her about it now.

“Something else, then?” she suggested.

“Something else...” Jinshi began, but then he said nothing further. Neither of them spoke, the silence stretching on.

What, he didn’t have anything to say after all? Maomao thought. She was about to get up, eager to get back to work on her medicines, when suddenly Jinshi was coming closer, then wrapping himself around her neck.

“May I ask, sir, what exactly you’re doing?”

She felt something damp and warm brush her neck—no, surround it. She felt teeth; she realized she was being sweetly, gently bitten.

“Do you know what it means now?” Jinshi asked.

“Well, human saliva can be toxic.” Just as a bite from a wild animal had to be carefully disinfected lest it fester, the same precautions had to be taken with a bite from a person.

Jinshi said absolutely nothing.

“I’d like to get back to my work, sir.”

“I know it takes more than a little toxin to bother you.”

He bit harder. It started to hurt a little, and she smacked him on the back. He only bit down harder still, and before she could stop herself Maomao pounded him soundly on the shoulders. Finally she felt his lips move away from her neck. A string of saliva stretched between them for a good shaku before it finally snapped.

“What, are you going to bite me to death?”

“I’ve wanted to at times.”

Maomao was just wondering what was with this man when she found him embracing her.

Jinshi smirked. “Now, where were we?”

Up close, she saw the stitches hadn’t come out of his cheek yet, although they were neater than they had been before, suggesting they’d been redone. Wonder if that’s my old man’s handiwork, she thought. She found herself reaching toward Jinshi’s face. His eyes softened in a smile, looking somehow innocent.

“And are you poisonous as well?” Jinshi was just reaching out for Maomao’s chin when:

“Freckles!” There was a crash as the window across from the entrance, where customers could pick up medicines, was thrown open. “Check this out! I know you wanted one of these!” There was Chou-u, looking terribly pleased with himself. He was holding a lizard above his head.

“Ooh! You got one!” Maomao slipped past Jinshi, whose head drooped dejectedly, and grabbed the lizard, depositing it directly into a jar.

“Huh? What’s that guy doing on the floor?”

“He’s very tired from work. Here, your reward.” Maomao gave him a chunk of brown sugar. Chou-u went running off again.

From the floor, Jinshi could be heard to growl, “Knew I should’ve sent him to the gallows...” He sounded like a feral dog indeed. Maybe it was the scar on his cheek that made Jinshi seem less androgynous than before; it was as if he were drawn in bolder lines now.

Maomao realized she could see a tiny crack in the door, and an eyeball peering through it. She opened the door noisily, discovering a very startled old madam and Gaoshun.

“Grams, get a bedroom ready. Pick an incense that promotes sleep.”

“Yeah, sure,” the old lady said with a disappointed click of her tongue.

As the old woman left, Maomao looked back at Jinshi, still lying on the ground. “You seem most fatigued, Master Jinshi,” she said. He only stared at her vacantly. “I think you had better rest.”

“Yes, fine. I’ll do that.”

That’ll be for the best, Maomao thought—but Jinshi didn’t move.

“Master Jinshi?” She crouched down and shook his shoulders. Huh, she thought, actually, maybe I can just call him Jinshi now.

While she was thinking it over, though, Jinshi said, “This will be my pillow”—and put his head smack on Maomao’s knees. The crown of his head was pressed up into her stomach, and his arms were wrapped around her back.

“Master Jinshi...”

He didn’t say anything. Was he asleep, or just pretending?

The madam quietly placed a fine cushion and some incense in a corner of the room, then showed herself out. Maomao sighed, then reached for her pestle. The smell of the medicine she was crushing mingled with the incense, and the sound of the pestle working was accompanied by Jinshi’s even breathing.

My legs are going to fall asleep, Maomao thought, as she began working on a new medicine.

○●○

Days after the start of the new year, the man still hadn’t had time to rest. There had been some sort of commotion in the capital, but here in this distant port town, whatever it was seemed unimportant—no skin off his nose. What really mattered to this man was selling his wares while the festive atmosphere lasted. During a celebration, men wanted to show their best side to their women. Every merchant knew that, and every merchant took advantage of it.

This man’s open-air stall had everything from rings that looked like children’s toys to fancy imported necklaces. It was a motley collection of goods, but it suited a moment when the firecrackers were going off.

“Thanks for your business!”

Ah, another sale. Another man with no eye for value. This customer was walking away with a pair of earrings that would have embarrassed a child playing dress-up. He was going to go back to his village and give them to his beloved, he said, but when she saw what passed for his taste, he would be lucky to get anything but a scornful laugh.

Still, the merchant was, well, a merchant, and it was his job to talk up the merchandise—even the crappy stuff. Convince the customer that it was worth parting with his hard-earned coins.

The merchant’s most recent customer was practically skipping away when a young woman appeared at the shop, someone he didn’t recognize. A lookie-loo if he’d ever seen one. Her outfit was scruffy and a little dirty. The clothing was made of good stuff, though, in a style they favored far to the north of here.

He was just about to shoo her away, lest she interfere with his next transaction, when she looked up at him. “Hey, mister, is this a cicada?”

“Ah, yes. Made from jewels in ancient times.” He hadn’t meant to simply answer her question—the girl’s looks, which were far more refined than her clothes, must have thrown him for a loop. There was a vestige of some innocence in her expression, but her body was clearly that of a grown woman.

“Huh, that’s neat! Jewels, huh?” She jabbed the jeweled bug with her finger.

“Hey, I’m trying to sell that! If you’re not going to buy it, then don’t touch!” The cicada wasn’t delicate, but he wasn’t about to let her put her grimy fingers all over it. After a moment he said, “Are you going to buy it?”

“Hmm... I don’t have much money...”

“Then forget it, kid.” It didn’t matter how pretty she was. You had to draw the line somewhere.

The cicada must have really captured the young woman’s attention, for she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off it. He wondered how she’d react if he told her it had supposedly been made to be placed in the mouth of a dead person. Yeah, that would probably spook her enough to get her to go somewhere else. He was about to inform her of the fact, when:

“Here.” The young woman took a hair stick from the folds of her robe.

“What’s this?”

“Payment in kind. You want it?”

“Hmmm...” The man squinted at her and took it. Whatever this hair stick was, it wasn’t likely to be worth much. Then again, its beauty and fine craftsmanship showed that it was not the sort of thing one would find at the average jewelry shop. There was some damage to one part of it—that was a shame; it would bring the price down significantly. But that was the only flaw. It was strange—the flat part of the hair stick showed a trace as if it had been bored through. Almost like there was something round stuck inside.

“How about it?”

“Sure, this’ll do just fine.”

The merchant considered asking where it had come from, just in case, but he thought better of it. No, he should simply thank his lucky stars to have come into possession of such a thing. The crest on this hair stick was superb in and of itself. He could use the patterned base and replace the decoration with something else, and it would still sell for a pretty sum.

“I’ll take this, then!” The young woman held the jeweled cicada up to the sun, making it gleam, and laughed. Her guileless smile made even her grimy outfit seem to shine. The merchant thought of the Emperor’s garden of flowers, the rear palace—this young woman must have been the sort of blossom that bloomed there.

Drawn in by her smile, the man found himself talking to her before he could stop himself. “A pretty thing like you—if you were to be part of the Emperor’s flower garden, you could have all the luxuries you wanted. You know, His Majesty’s favorite consort—what was her name? Err...”

“You mean Consort Gyokuyou?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. They said she’s the Empress now.”

Sometimes the bookseller sold pictures of her. Too expensive for commoners to afford, but they served nicely to draw in customers.

“Oh, Gyokuyou...” The young woman, with one eye still on her prize, looked around until she spotted something: a fisherman separating out the fish and the seaweed from his net. “Say, mister. My name—it’s Tamamo.”

“Tamamo? That’s a fancy word for seaweed, right? Sounds like a name fit for the blessing of the ocean.”

“I know, right? I’m really curious what’s across the sea.”

The girl called Tamamo grinned and looked at a boat docked at the port, a ship that had come all the way from a far island country. Several of the trade goods it had brought had even made their way to this very stall.

The girl hopped into the air and smiled brightly. “Okay, thanks. Bye!” She waved gaily to the merchant and ran off toward the dock.