The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 5 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Problems Accumulate

One thought dogged Maomao: This is a hell of a thing.

For important people in this world, there was no such thing as love, only a search for the most appropriate partner to help carry on their bloodline by leaving a child behind. Maomao found herself thinking about why exactly Ah-Duo had brought Consort Lishu with her. Maybe she’s to be given away.

She had never really been cut out for being one of the four ladies, the Emperor’s most-favored consorts. Her family background was distinguished enough, but she’d always lacked the killer instinct that enabled one beautiful blossom of the rear palace to trample on all the others. Instead, she’d always been mocked or ignored in turn by her own ladies. Frankly, she might be happier if the Emperor were to give her away in marriage to someone else.

The issue was whom the Emperor had in mind.

He certainly has a lot to offer as a partner, Maomao thought. But he potentially had even more drawbacks. This was a man so beautiful that he could have brought the nation to its knees were he a woman. Notwithstanding the scar on his face, if and when it came to light that he actually wasn’t a eunuch, the reaction would be fearsome indeed.

Could that explain why the consort was attacked?

No, it seemed doubtful... But even as Maomao tried to convince herself that wasn’t the reason, she quaked to realize how many of the dots it connected. How many lives would the nation-demolishing beauty turn upside down just by his mere existence?

In any case, the modus operandi of the bandits who had attacked Ah-Duo’s carriage was something new. Instead of being “righteous thieves” or whatever and accepting half the travelers’ possessions as a toll, they’d been willing to slice off a guard’s arm and threaten to sell a young woman for profit. If Basen hadn’t arrived with reinforcements, someone might have died.

Then there was the strange band on their wrists—did it serve as a way for the bandits to identify each other?

Thus it was that Maomao found herself lolling on a bed at an inn. The wounded guard was healing up here in town, and meanwhile they were trying to find replacements for the damaged carriage and escaped horses. It wasn’t Maomao’s job to get provisions this time, and she’d already confirmed that there were no interesting medicines at the local apothecary’s shop. Since it was Ah-Duo’s man who had been hurt, Suirei was in charge of his care, and her skill was such that there was no need for Maomao to intervene.

Hence, free time. At least until a knock came at the door. Wondering who it could be, Maomao opened the door—and was surprised by who she found.

Consort Lishu stood there, her face covered with a veil. “Pardon me. May I come in?” As ever she seemed skittish, like a small animal.

“Please,” Maomao said, and Lishu darted into the room as quick as a mouse. She was looking around anxiously, perhaps a sign that she’d slipped out of her room without telling anyone. Maomao offered her a chair and she sat down, still looking a little overwhelmed. It might have been proper etiquette to offer tea at this point, but if Maomao went asking for hot water, it could very well give away that the consort was here. Instead she decided to offer some mooncakes. Without anything to drink it would leave their throats dry, but, well, it was the thought that counted.

“What’s going on? Your ladies-in-waiting are going to get in trouble,” Maomao said. “Is your usual chief lady-in-waiting with you?” Maomao didn’t think she had seen her around. Lishu had some ladies, but Maomao didn’t think she recognized any of them from the rear palace.

“I was told I was the only one who would be leaving the palace. My father assigned the attendants.” She spoke softly, but more firmly than Maomao had expected. Maybe she was getting used to the young apothecary. Maomao had helped her out on more than one occasion, and it hurt a little that Lishu always seemed a bit terrified by her.

“What is it you want, then?”

“Er—?”

Lishu seemed surprised, but Maomao knew that if she didn’t get her business out of her quickly, it made it all the more likely that they would be found together, and she herself might suffer the consequences. So what was she supposed to do? Maybe a little prompting would help. Lishu was starting to fidget as Maomao said: “Are you going to be betrothed to His Majesty’s younger brother?”

She’d decided to dive right in.

“What? No, nothing’s been decided yet...”

So the matter wasn’t settled—but Lishu had heard about it. She also didn’t look very happy. What was going on, then?

“Are you feeling guilty about being attacked by bandits?”

“That’s not what I’m here to talk about...” Lishu wasn’t a good liar, not in the least. Maybe she’d recognized one of the attackers.

“What, then, if I may ask?”

The young woman glanced around again. She wasn’t a bad consort by any means, but Maomao was starting to understand why she’d been so thoroughly bullied. She could do with a bit more gravitas.

“Is there a way...” Lishu began. “Is there a way to tell whether a parent and child are...really parent and child?”

What was that supposed to mean? Maomao tilted her head slightly, confused.

“I’m talking about myself and my father. I mean...is it possible to tell whether I’m really the daughter of the man named Uryuu?” Lishu looked like she might cry; she could hardly get the words out.

Maomao didn’t say anything at first, but lit some calming incense. It was technically Jinshi’s, but he could spare it. Only then did she ask, “What makes you ask that?”

She’d heard that Lishu’s mother was dead. Her father, thinking of his daughter as nothing more than a political tool, sent her to the rear palace while she was still hardly more than a girl to please the former emperor. Ah-Duo—then the consort of the heir apparent—had taken Lishu under her wing and her protection, Maomao was sure.

Lishu’s brow knitted and her lips puckered, and she looked more than ever like she might burst into tears—but she somehow managed to hold herself to a few sniffles as she looked at Maomao and said, “The truth is, I...I was never supposed to go back to the rear palace.” Forcing the words out, she explained: even though she’d entered a nunnery after the former emperor passed, her father was still looking for ways to take political advantage of his daughter. At first, she was supposed to be wed to the governor of the south, but the man was old enough to be her grandfather—not to mention he was a lech who may not have been married but kept ten concubines.

Consort Lishu came from the U clan, one of the houses upon which the Imperial family had bestowed a family name. However, under the empress regnant, the nation moved toward a meritocracy, and the influence of one’s family name was greatly lessened. Therefore a once-great family might be willing to use any means to advance itself in the world.

“Lady Ah-Duo and His Majesty were the ones who put a stop to that,” Lishu said. Catching rumors of the impending union, they’d interceded on Lishu’s behalf—but then, that, too, could have been part of her father’s plan. A betrothal was nearly as official as a wedding, and to break one required a sufficiently weighty reason.

It would make a lot of sense, Maomao thought. Lishu didn’t measure up to the other high consorts—specifically, less in terms of her appearance than of her intelligence and disposition. Ah-Duo had been faced with a choice: watch Lishu be married off to some withered piece of trash, or gain her a respite—even if only for a few years—as one of the flowers of the rear palace. She had chosen the latter—she had chosen a chance at happiness for Lishu.

“I used to be so close to His Majesty that I would sit on his knee,” Lishu said.

“Goodness,” Maomao remarked. That might have been well and good when Lishu was a little girl, but if she were to do it today, the timorous young lady might simply stop breathing from embarrassment.

Hrm. The world was full of marriages between people of mismatched ages. True, it was typically the man who was older than the woman, but it just wasn’t uncommon. Perhaps Ah-Duo had assumed that during her years at the rear palace, Lishu would grow into more of an adult. Again, as a wife of the man who stood at the top of his country’s hierarchy, she would hardly be treated poorly.

What did all this have to do with Lishu’s question about determining parentage, though? Admittedly, her father had treated her shabbily—but if this was some impulsive emotional thing where she thought they couldn’t possibly be related because he had been so cruel to her, then frankly, Maomao was done listening. If her father was so unbearable, then Maomao wished Lishu would have the wherewithal to take advantage of the current talk of marriage to do something about it. She clearly had a pretty good impression of Jinshi; she’d forever been blushing when he came around at the rear palace. And this when she probably could have attracted just about anyone!

“I’ve heard my own mother was friends with Lady Ah-Duo,” Lishu said.

“Is that so?” If Lishu was a friend’s daughter, it would explain Ah-Duo’s fondness for her.

“I’m told they often had tea parties with His Majesty, the three of them.”

This time Maomao didn’t respond at all.

“When they married, my father was adopted into my mother’s household. I gather she might have become the heir apparent’s consort herself, had things gone differently.”

Maomao shook her head and fought the urge to rebut that idea. It struck her as most unlikely. At the time, Ah-Duo had been the consort of the heir apparent—the man who was now the Emperor—and she had already been unable to bear children then. The heir had no other consorts, and the former emperor was wasted with illness. If there had been another potential consort back then...

“My father had already been adopted by the household at that point. But as for me...” He didn’t see me as his real daughter. “His Majesty’s younger brother is a wonderful person. It’s just, for me personally...”

She sounded sincere. The consort was just about the age when young women began to fall in love with love. Her saving grace was that at least there were some lines she wouldn’t cross.

But no... Wait. Lishu was being too circumspect. Maomao had a suspicion about what she was really asking. She’s wondering if the Emperor himself might just be her real father. And if so, then marrying Jinshi—the Emperor’s younger brother—would be a rather unpleasant prospect. No matter how you looked at it, he would be a couple branches too close on the family tree.

She didn’t want to look into this. At the same time, though, she would feel bad telling the consort she couldn’t do it. Laboring under some misplaced pride would have been bad enough, but with Maomao it was worse: she was curious too. She contemplated how one might determine whether an alleged parent and child were related. The most obvious method would seem to be to calculate backward from the delivery date. But no, that would be impossible in this case. She couldn’t ask Lishu’s father directly, and if she were to raise the subject with the Emperor, her head might soon part ways with her body.

If Consort Lishu had possessed red hair and green eyes like Empress Gyokuyou, that would have made things even simpler. Lishu was pretty, even cute, but she didn’t look all that different from the average citizen of Li. Her hair was black and straight, her eyes likewise dark. Maomao didn’t know what her father Uryuu looked like, but it wasn’t likely to be distinctive enough to say for certain whether they were related.

This was what had brought Maomao to a particular room at the inn. There, Suirei was preparing medicine, looking grouchy. “What do you want?” she asked. Suirei wasn’t very friendly, Maomao thought—conveniently ignoring her own cold streak. Maybe her thoughts showed on her face, but naturally, she didn’t care.

There were three patients in the room: the man with the missing arm and two others who had been injured. None of them were in danger of their lives, but they would be convalescing for a while.

Ahhh. Just the smell of this place is relaxing.

The thick stuff Suirei was mixing up was probably something intended to prevent festering. She transferred it to a bowl, then removed the patients’ dressings as they grimaced. Maomao and Suirei between them had sewn up the men’s wounds, and while it had no doubt been unpleasant, they’d borne it with admirable composure—thanks to which each of them had been stitched up quite neatly.

“Have you got any antipyretics?” Suirei inquired somewhat brusquely as she inspected one of the injuries.

“I have the ingredients.”

“Then give some to me. I don’t seem to have quite enough.”

Sustaining an injury often led to fever, and medicinal components were hard to come by here. Suirei had already been to the local apothecary’s shop, but she didn’t seem to have come up with much; maybe the place didn’t stock many ingredients. This town might be a stopover on a trade route, but the goods, like the merchants, traveled on to other places. They weren’t sold here. Maomao wished that better, cheaper medicine were more widely available.

She had left the room to get what Suirei needed when she encountered someone wandering down the hallway.

“Ah, a fine evening to you, young lady,” said the guide in his characteristic drawl.

Nothing particularly fine about it, Maomao thought; the man rubbed his hands together and looked as bashful as if he were Lishu herself.

“Is everything all right, sir?”

“Oh, I’d just got to wondering how those injured men were holding up. I’ve got here a right fine draught I thought might be of help.”

“And how much is this draught?”

“I—I meant nothing of the sort, young lady! I don’t seek no payment—just thought about how awful it is being hurt like that.”

This smelled extraordinarily fishy to Maomao, but the man was probably just trying to clear his conscience—or cover his neck. After all, he’d been the one who was supposed to see them safely past any bandits, and the guide Ah-Duo had hired had apparently been from the same village as this man. He had also, reports had it, been the first to flee when he realized the bandits weren’t the ones he normally dealt with. One of the guards had shouted at him—and that was the moment in which said guard had gotten his arm lopped off.

Trust was paramount in the sort of business these men engaged in. Betrayal by one practitioner could reflect poorly on all the others.

“Here, this is it. It were given to me as a painkiller—do you think it’ll work?” The man took out a small pot that contained what looked like brown sugar.

Maomao snatched it from him, and when she showed it to Suirei, she likewise looked very surprised. “How did you get this?” Suirei asked with a hard look at the guide, who quailed at this glare from someone he probably took to be a young man.

“Have you ever used it yourself?” Maomao added.

“W-Well, you see, I don’t happen to know how to use it, and I was thinking you both might be able to tell me...” He seemed to be telling the truth.

“I see,” Maomao said. “Well, you’re very lucky.”

If he had used it, he might not be doing his job so energetically now. He might not be doing his job at all. The stuff in the vessel did indeed have pain-killing properties, and could be useful as a medicine—but only if you understood what you were doing with it. Otherwise, it could be worse than smoking cannabis.

“We’ll use this, and gratefully,” said Maomao. “But I want you to tell us exactly how you got it.”

The little pot was full of opium.

The problems continued to accumulate—and they turned out to be connected in the strangest ways. The guide said he’d gotten the opium from a merchant traveling with a caravan of entertainers. “It’ll help what ails you, and help you forget the cares of this world,” the merchant had told him. Perhaps if he’d been a more thoughtful, or more suspicious, man, the guide might have figured out what the merchant meant by that.

That’s supposed to be the line you use to sell cannabis.

In the town the guide was based out of, the stuff was dried and smoked. If they’d been planning to treat the opium the same way, it was just as well no one had explained to them what to do with it. The man insisted he never smoked himself. Smoking cannabis could be addictive—and if a cannabis addict began using opium as well... The idea hardly bore thinking about.

The final piece of the puzzle came from what the guide said when Maomao asked him to describe the merchant caravan. He’d said: “I got a glance—just a glance, y’see, but I saw her. There was this girl. The entertainers really seemed protective of her. I mean a young girl, maybe just fifteen.” And this had been roughly a year ago. “She had white hair—I’ve never seen the like. Can’t forget it. She was the incarnation of the serpent god, I’m sure of it, come secretly to earth. This is the first time I’ve ever told anyone what I saw...”

We need hardly spell out what Maomao thought of when she heard about a woman with white hair. A year ago would place these events before that woman had come to the capital.

Perhaps it was the man’s naive faith in the woman that had caused him to take the opium at face value, as a painkiller and nothing more. He, Maomao reflected, was truly a lucky man.

And there was reason enough to be grateful for the medicine; it salved the pain of the injured men. Opium didn’t have a particularly long shelf life, and Maomao had worried it might not be effective, but it proved otherwise. She felt bad for the guide with his heartfelt beliefs, but she decided to requisition all the opium he had. She paid him for the product, including enough extra that he couldn’t complain.

As long as we’re piling up problems, let’s throw on one more. One of the bandits bore a tattoo of a snake, and the bands they all wore around their wrists had initially been white and depicted two snakes in coitus. Unfortunately, despite attempts to get some answers, the men were in no shape to tell them anything.

All the bandits were opium addicts.