The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 5 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Last Volume

Gaoshun’s son Basen came knocking on the door of the apothecary shop with several volumes of the encyclopedia. Maomao offered the young man (who looked every bit as put out as usual) the battered cushion and poured some tea for him.

“Master Jinshi is busy,” Basen said. Evidently meaning he didn’t have the spare time to be coming here.

The reason he was still using Jinshi’s “eunuch name” was partly as an alias, but chiefly because Basen simply couldn’t speak his true name. The names of nobles were not to be pronounced lightly in the hearing of commoners.

The courtesans of the Verdigris House were all aflutter to see Maomao entertaining someone other than the usual beauty and his attendant. The madam, in particular, was trying to act nonchalant, but Maomao could see the abacus working in her head.

Unlike when she was with Jinshi, the door to the shop remained open while Basen was present, their dealings completely visible to the world. Perhaps it was an act of consideration on Basen’s part, a way of showing that nothing inappropriate was happening between them.

“I’ve brought what you asked for,” Basen said, and undid a package wrapped in cloth to reveal several thick books, one of which Maomao recognized quite well. An encyclopedia of bugs, part of a set that included books about birds, fish, and plants as well. Maomao’s interests were primarily herbal in nature; she’d devoured the volume on plant life, but this one on bugs she’d merely skimmed.

I hope it’s in here, she thought. Sazen had said her predecessor had been working on research regarding locusts. It must be here. But she didn’t see it. No matter how many times she looked, she couldn’t find anything on them. Eventually, even Basen started flipping the pages, searching for the elusive entry.

“It’s not in here?” he finally asked.

“It would seem not.”

“You said it would be.”

So what if she had? What wasn’t there, wasn’t there. It was confusing at best, though. Had Sazen pulled a fast one on them? Not likely; what would he get out of it?

“Did anyone handle this book while it was in storage?” Maomao asked, even though she knew that this was to cast suspicion on the soldier who’d obtained it.

“Who would be interested in something like this?”

“People like what they like.”

Nonetheless, the possibility seemed remote. If someone was going to loot the place, there were more obviously valuable things to steal.

Maomao groaned dispiritedly, but then she spotted someone coming toward the shop. Someone moving with all the grace of a willow tree in a gentle breeze, yet profoundly well-endowed—it was her older sister Pairin.

Maomao watched her with a scowl forming on her face. The madam was trailing behind Pairin, making no effort to stop her. She’d already sized up Basen, it seemed.

Pairin was a very pleasant courtesan. She was the oldest one working at the Verdigris House, but her beauty was undiminished, and she still caught the eye of many a man. The big dog—Lihaku—was a prime example. She was also reputed to be the greatest dancer in the capital. Not to mention a fine older sister; she was always kind to the younger courtesans and the apprentices.

However, she wasn’t without her faults.

Pairin sidled up and stood behind Basen—then ran one beautiful, shapely finger along his cheek.

Basen just about jumped out of his skin, although he somehow managed to remain seated while he did it. No, it might not make much sense, but evidently he was agile enough to “jump” without ever getting up.

“Sis...”

“Oh, pardon me. He had some dust on his shoulder.”

There was no way that was true. If the dust was on his shoulder, why brush his cheek?

Pairin’s every movement was studied and elegant; each gesture exuded womanliness. Her eyes were smiling gently, but to Maomao she looked like a hungry carnivore. Pairin had been “taking tea” the past several days; in other words, she hadn’t been seeing clients. This was no indication that she couldn’t attract paying customers—rather, it was a sign that working every day was beneath her. But there was a wrinkle: Pairin didn’t like taking tea. Her appetite was going unsatisfied.

“Wh-What’s going on?!” Basen tried to back away, but it was a small shop; Pairin soon had him cornered.

“Gracious, it’s still there. Here, hold still and I’ll get it for you.”

Maomao slid her mortar and pestle out of the way and put them up on a shelf before Basen could stumble over them. The tray of teacups and snacks, she held in her hand.

She’ll give him the first time free.

Basen’s face was somehow simultaneously both pale and flushed. If Lihaku were to show up at this exact moment, things would really get interesting. Maomao put on her shoes and munched on one of the snacks she was safeguarding. They weren’t as nice as the ones that were brought out when Jinshi visited—that was just like the old lady. Still, they were perfectly luxurious, thin rice crackers with a mild taste of shrimp. Just the sort of thing Maomao liked.

Oh, man! I got it! He’s a virgin, she thought. There was just something about him that said it. It made sense now, she thought, leaning against one wall and taking another bite of rice cracker, then washing it down with tea. She saw an apprentice watching her enviously, but she could hardly give the girl a snack right in front of the madam. Instead, she resolved not to eat the last cracker, but save it to give the girl later.

“Arrgh! I gave you what I was sent here to give you. I’m leaving!” Basen said, trying to pull his belt tight again (Pairin had almost gotten it off him) as he fled the shop. Maomao wondered if she should tell him that his underwear was showing.

“Aww,” Pairin said, sitting down. “A virgin, and I almost had him!”

So she thought so too. Pairin would have been an exemplary elder sister, if not for behavior like this. And Maomao felt she was getting worse every year.

“And to think—one taste, and it’s paradise...” the madam said regretfully.

Uh, pretty sure you mean hell, Maomao thought.

She’d better tell Lihaku to hurry up and save his money to buy Pairin out. Before Chou-u got old enough to catch the princess’s eye.

Sazen was sweeping by the front gate. Until he got strong enough to serve as a proper manservant, he was stuck doing what amounted to apprentice’s work. That was how Ukyou, the foreman of the menservants, ran things. If the candidate seemed too content with menial labor, Ukyou would decide he didn’t have the right stuff to make a worthwhile member of the staff, and in due course he would be released. Men who displayed indignation at having to do the work of young girls and tried to learn other jobs would be taken on board.

The sight of Sazen humming a tune as he swept the ground left little doubt in Maomao’s mind that he was not long for their establishment.

“Hey,” Maomao said brusquely.

“Hm?” Having changed out of his dirty clothing and shaved his beard, Sazen looked several years younger.

“The book’s here.” She showed him the volumes Basen had brought her, which she had wrapped in a carrying cloth. There was an audible thunk as she set it down. “And it’s not what you said it would be.”

Including the books Sazen had had with him, the entire encyclopedia came to fourteen volumes. None of them, however, seemed to contain anything about locusts. Maomao remembered the fourteen books from when she had been in that little room, so she knew the numbers matched.

“What? But that doesn’t make any sense.” Sazen undid the cloth and looked at the books. He squinted, inspecting them closely, and then his face darkened. “This isn’t all of them,” he announced.

“It’s all the books that were in that room,” Maomao said, confident that even she could count to fourteen.

“No, I mean these specifically,” Sazen said, picking up the bug-related tomes. There were two of them, clearly labeled I and II. “There were supposed to be three volumes about insects.”

“What?”

That meant there was at least one book that had never been in that room—or at least, that someone had removed it before Maomao got there.

“Huh! I wonder who would ever take something like that,” Sazen said.

“It looks like you would.”

“No, no. During the old guy’s time, the book was there, I know it was.”

The “old guy” was presumably the physician who had been banished from the rear palace. He’d been researching an elixir of immortality, or so Maomao had heard.

“I wonder if they buried him with it or something,” Sazen said.

“Why in the world would they do that?”

“It’s a tradition in my hometown.”

Well, she wasn’t asking about Sazen’s hometown, was she? But she was curious about the “old guy.”

“Why did he die, anyway?” Had it been simple old age? If he’d lived, he would have been about the same age as Maomao’s old man, so it wouldn’t be that surprising. The deceased physician was also said to have studied in the west at one point, so perhaps they’d known each other.

“Ah... Well. It was an experiment gone wrong.”

“Gone wrong?”

“They were trying to create an elixir of immortality, right? And to do that, you’ve got to test it out, don’t you?”

Does that mean...

There was something Maomao had been wondering about, something about the resurrection drug that had been used on Chou-u and the other children. Chou-u had gotten off with just some mild paralysis—but a drug that effectively killed you and then brought you back to life would never simply work that well on the first try. They must have conducted a series of experiments, gradually increasing the prospect of success.

So how had they done the experiments? They’d used rats, yes, but to really know it was going to work, you would eventually have to test it on actual human beings.

“Hey... What’s wrong with you?” Sazen grimaced. For a moment Maomao wondered why, but she soon realized: she was grinning horribly from ear to ear.

“Tell me. Where did they bury him?”

“No idea. I wasn’t the one in charge of that sort of thing.”

“Who was?”

Sazen scratched his head. “I guess you’d know her by the name Suirei. She was the old guy’s helper. You know, the expressionless one. The young mistress’s, uh, older half-sister, I guess they called her.”

A shock ran through Maomao, and before she knew what she was doing, she had smacked Sazen on the shoulder as hard as she could. Why hadn’t she realized it sooner? Suirei: a surviving member of the Shi clan, the previous emperor’s granddaughter, and Shisui’s half-sister.

“Ouch! What’d you do that for?”

“I’ve got it! You just keep sweeping. Don’t slack!”

Maomao rewrapped the book in its cloth, then rushed back to her shop to write a letter.

She requested a manservant to deliver her missive as soon as possible. Writing directly to Jinshi would have been to overstep herself, so she typically addressed her letters to either Gaoshun or Basen—but given that Basen didn’t always seem to have it together very well, she mostly wrote to Gaoshun.

The next morning came quickly, and with it an answer to her letter, followed closely by a carriage to pick her up. It would take her to where Suirei was—Maomao had heard she was now living with Ah-Duo, a former high consort. Maomao gave the encyclopedia volumes to a servant who came along with the carriage, then closed the shop door.

“Aw, you get to go out? Lucky you!” Chou-u said, tugging on Maomao’s sleeve. She frowned at him. “Take me too!”

“Absolutely not.”

Not only Suirei, but the other Shi clan children lived with Ah-Duo. Keeping Chou-u away from all of them was the whole point of having him here; she wasn’t about to take him straight to them.

“Jerk! You get to have all the fun!”

“I’m going for work. Maybe you can pass the time by cleaning in front of the shop or something.” She patted him on the head and passed him off to Ukyou. Ukyou, who liked kids, went away with Chou-u riding on his shoulders.

The new girl, the poor man’s daughter, was hanging around too. Her older sister was currently in an evaluation period as an apprentice. The madam had made clear that if she turned out to be a poor learner, she would soon be turned out, period. The girls’ father had come to take them back several times, but each time the menservants had chased him away. He’d tried to browbeat Maomao as well, but it was his daughter who had said she wanted to be a courtesan. Maomao hadn’t been involved then and wasn’t involved now—and above all, she still hadn’t gotten any money.

Come on, hurry up and pay me... She hoped his payment would appropriately reflect the complete success of her efforts. Maomao looked over at Chou-u riding on Ukyou’s shoulders. And what are we going to do about him? If he hadn’t been partially paralyzed, they could have trained him as one of the menservants—but to be a bouncer at a brothel required a certain level of physical capacity.

Maybe I should make him an apothecary, Maomao thought. At the moment, though, Chou-u showed no interest in matters medicinal. Maomao, by contrast, had already known a hundred different formulae by his age. How can he not be interested—when it’s so fascinating! Maomao got into the carriage, pouting a little.

Ah-Duo’s residence was grand and sumptuous, as befitted an Imperial villa. Maomao was made to change clothes before she disembarked the carriage. She knew Ah-Duo didn’t particularly care about such niceties, but propriety demanded it.

Thus Maomao found herself walking along, holding up the hem of her long skirt so it wouldn’t get dirty. She passed under a magnificent gate and through a courtyard laid with gravel. It was like a painting: garden stones and gravel and moss. The beauty of the place amply communicated the groundskeeper’s pride in their work.

After a short walk, Maomao arrived at a room where she found both Ah-Duo—the mistress of the house—and another person, both of them dressed like men.

“Welcome.” Ah-Duo’s voice was as clear and strong as ever; indeed, perhaps even more than before.

The person with her was Suirei. Perhaps she was dressed in male attire because she’d become used to it, or perhaps she had some other reason. She was as expressionless as she’d always been, and stood a step behind Ah-Duo.

“I suppose there’s no need for formalities. I’ll be present, but don’t mind me. Please, speak freely.” So saying, Ah-Duo seated herself on a couch, then gestured to Maomao, who, as a guest, sat next, and finally Suirei took a seat.

“Don’t mind me.” Easy for her to say. How could Maomao not mind her? Despite having some difficulty with the request, Maomao took the encyclopedia volumes, brought in by the servant, and set them on the table. Well, if this was something they didn’t want Ah-Duo to know, then Jinshi presumably would have handled things differently. Maomao had no choice but to forge ahead.

“Do you recognize these?”

“My mentor was using them.” Suirei’s tone was more polite than usual, perhaps because Ah-Duo was there.

“Is this all of them?”

Suirei cocked her head and looked at the books. After a moment she said, “One’s missing. I believe there should be fifteen volumes.”

“And do you know where the missing volume might be?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said softly, and it didn’t look like she was lying. What reason did she have to lie, anyway? Any connection between her and the Shi clan was already moot, but neither could she show herself in public. Her only path in life was to be sequestered in a place like this. Maomao didn’t know what might happen to her, what the Emperor had planned for her, but she felt it was a waste. Suirei was a talented pharmacist.

If she didn’t know where the book was, then they would have to move on to the next question. “This mentor of yours, then. Do you know where he is?”

The little flinch this provoked from Suirei didn’t escape Maomao’s notice. Ah-Duo sipped her tea and watched them.

“I knew it. He’s alive,” Maomao said, more a statement than a question. “He must have tested the resurrection drug on himself.”

Suirei lowered her eyes, then slowly closed them. Finally she nodded in resignation. “That’s right. It was the only way out of that fortress.”

So Suirei’s mentor had taken the resurrection drug himself, on the pretense of doing an experiment. And from the way she was talking, he had survived the experience.

But Suirei added, “You won’t be able to find out what you want to know from him. It doesn’t even matter if you talk to him or not.”

“What do you mean?” Maomao asked.

Suirei’s eyes widened slightly. “The boy—Chou-u, that’s what you call him now, isn’t it? You know what happened to him. Can’t you connect the dots?”

Chou-u had indeed taken the drug, died, and come back to life. But it had impaired the movement on one side of his body, and he had lost his memories as well.

“Are you suggesting your mentor is amnesiac?”

“Not exactly, but you’ve got the right idea. In fact, you may have crossed paths with him already without ever knowing it.”

“What are you getting at?”

Suirei’s eyes drifted down sadly. “You remember the hot-springs town?”

“Yes.” A hidden village that worshipped a fox deity. The light of the lanterns there still burned brightly in her memory.

“One of the bedridden old men there was my mentor.” The hot-springs town was a place for rejuvenation and recovery, and there had been more than one person fitting that description. “He no longer remembers who or what he once was. If he had been well, I don’t believe she would ever have imagined dragging you into all that.”

Her face darkened again as she spoke the word “she.” Maomao didn’t know what kind of relationship the half-sisters Suirei and Shisui had built together, but she strongly suspected Suirei was smart enough to have realized that she herself was one of the reasons Shisui had done what she did. Shisui may have wanted to help the country prosper, but she had also wanted to get her older sister out from under their mother’s thumb.

“I see...” Maomao said, her body going limp with disappointment. She’d finally dared to hope they might get some answers.

No—it was too soon to give up yet. “In that case, I’d like to know about the research on locusts that your mentor was doing.” Maomao placed the two volumes about insects in front of Suirei—but the other woman shook her head again.

“I had nothing to contribute to that research. I hate bugs. They were more her specialty.”

“Ah.”

Suirei had developed a phobia of snakes and bugs because of the “discipline”—really torture—she’d been subjected to. And the other girl to whom Suirei alluded was gone now. Maomao’s shoulders slumped again.

“When my mentor was ordered to create the elixir of immortality, almost all the research he’d done to that point was destroyed. He was able to preserve little more than what was in that room.”

So they’d destroyed his other work in order to make him focus on the elixir. Suirei’s mentor, intent on continuing the locust project, had used Sazen, who was in charge of obtaining supplies for him, to conduct some investigations.

Suddenly Ah-Duo, who’d been silent throughout the conversation, spoke up. “Now I see.” She set her teacup on the table and looked at Suirei. “‘She’ appears to have been a most intelligent young woman.”

“It doesn’t matter how intelligent she was. She’s gone now.” And nothing could bring her back. Suirei seemed to have resigned herself to her sister’s disappearance. Maomao clenched a fist.

“And do you think someone so smart would have failed to leave something behind?”

Maomao’s mind reeled. There was a bang: Maomao put a hand on the table as Suirei stood up abruptly.

“My apologies,” Suirei said.

“Not at all. You don’t need to be so stiff,” Ah-Duo said. “I hate undue formality. Just relax. You know I don’t stand on ceremony.”

No, Maomao thought, this was an appropriate time for an apology. Nonetheless, what Ah-Duo had said teased at something in her memory. What was it? What was it?

She tried to think back. Something that had happened in the fortress? Or perhaps before that... Before that, in the rear palace. Or at the medical office? No, no. It must have been...

Maomao smacked the table. “The clinic! What about the clinic? What’s happened to it?!”

Just before being kidnapped from the rear palace, Maomao had been at the clinic. That was where she’d seen it—a book on the bookshelf. An encyclopedia. About insects.

She was nothing if not thorough. Maomao pictured the young woman she would not see again and smiled. The idea that she’d found the one possible moment to show Maomao what she’d shown her overpowered the pain and made her smile wider.

With Shisui’s grinning, mischievous face in her mind, Maomao gave the table a hearty smack.

The clinic had been temporarily closed, Maomao was told. It was possible that not all the women who worked there had been privy to the escape plan, but any who had been were guilty of a serious crime, and Shenlü’s crime was the most serious of them all. She’d attempted to commit suicide, but had been stopped and arrested.

Still, the rear palace couldn’t go on without the clinic, and so it had been reopened, albeit with a eunuch overseer. Everything that had been at the facility at the time of Maomao’s kidnapping, however, had been confiscated—including the encyclopedia.

“Is this what you’re looking for?” Jinshi asked, handing her a book. He’d evidently gotten the day off. Outside the apothecary shop, Gaoshun accepted a cup of tea from one of the apprentices.

“If I may,” Maomao said, taking the volume and flipping the pages until she found the place with the most marginal notes. She opened the book slowly, and a sheet covered in writing fell out. She set the book on the floor so that Jinshi could see it, then gently picked up the fallen sheet. “Yes, this is it.”

The sheet was covered in detailed illustrations of insects. They all looked similar, and as the caption read “grasshoppers,” that was probably what they were. Some of the illustrations showed the entire bug, while others were close studies of the legs or wings. There were even some colors, though they were a little faded.

The illustrations seemed to be divided into two broad categories, with perhaps a third if one were being precise. Maomao outlined them as she read through the text. “I gather this is a grasshopper’s normal appearance,” she said, pointing to a picture daubed with green. It was hard to tell from the full-body illustrations, but the wing studies made it appear the wings of these insects were a bit shorter than the other two types.

“And this is the kind that are expected to proliferate this year,” she continued. “It’s this variety that causes a plague of insects.”

Jinshi was perfectly capable of reading the text himself, but Maomao still wanted to say it out loud. That helped the information lodge in her mind and made it easier to remember. Jinshi didn’t stop her; perhaps he had the same idea.

The brown-colored grasshopper had longer wings than the green one.

Finally Maomao indicated the illustration in the center, whose size was in between the green and brown grasshoppers, its color likewise a blend of the two. “And the text speculates that these may have been the cause of the limited crop damage that occurred last year.”

“In other words, a transitional stage to the brown grasshopper.”

“So it appears.”

Under certain circumstances, the grasshoppers’ coloration and the shape of their wings changed. This change took place over the course of several generations, their number increasing with each successive brood. As to whether their bodies changed because of the increased population, or whether the population increased because of the changed body shape, the text ventured that it might be the former. In other words, the bugs that caused limited crop damage presaged much more serious destruction later.

“You’re saying that there’s going to be more widespread famine this year?”

“Yes, although we can’t say just how big the scale will be.”

Only that if they misjudged the situation, many, many people could die of hunger. “They’re just bugs,” one might scoff, but sometimes those bugs could block out the sun and consume every crop in sight. Maomao, born and raised in the capital, had never seen such a thing, but more than a few of the girls in the pleasure district were farmers’ daughters who had been sold when just such a plague had left their families with nothing to eat.

And the timing could hardly have been worse. The entire nation was abuzz over the destruction of the Shi clan the previous year. If there were to be a major plague the year after the clan’s extermination, it would bode ill for the country as a whole.

None of that was what Maomao or Jinshi were interested in, however. Rather, what they wanted to know was: if this person had been researching the insect plagues, had he devised a way to stop them?

Hrm...

However, none of the notations suggested any uniquely effective chemicals. They only advised that when small-scale crop destruction had occurred, it was crucial to deal with the problem before it advanced to the next stage. To that end, the text enumerated a few possibilities. All of them were close to a “human wave” strategy: the best thing was to destroy the insects while they were still in the larval stage, and the notes described how to make several insecticides that were deemed to be particularly effective. The ingredients were relatively easy to obtain—no doubt chosen because so much of the chemical would be necessary. If the insects had already matured, the text recommended setting up bonfires—an age-old method of dealing with bugs, particularly in the summer. They simply flew into the fire and burned themselves up.

“All that, and we didn’t really learn anything significant,” Maomao remarked.

“I disagree—things could have been much worse had we gone along not knowing any of this. Even just the formula for insecticide can be considered a worthwhile result.”

Jinshi scratched his head, but then produced a large map from his robe. It depicted the country of Li, from the capital in the center to the province of Shihoku-shu in the north, and even the western reaches. Several locations had been marked with circles in scarlet ink. The name of the central area, incidentally, was Kae-shu; how the name of Shihoku-shu, which included the very name of the Shi clan, might change in the future remained to be seen, but for the moment there seemed to be no move to alter it.

“These are the locations of farming villages that have reported crop damage,” Jinshi said. “Do you notice anything about them?”

“I’m afraid I’m not sure what I’m supposed to notice,” Maomao said. She’d heard that crop damage from insects often occurred out on the open plain, and indeed each of the indicated villages was on such a plain. “Perhaps being out on the plain gives the grasshoppers room to grow.”

“Perhaps. But there hasn’t been serious insect damage in this region in decades.” Jinshi swept his finger around a particular part of the map—the northern lands that had formerly belonged to the Shi. The area boasted abundant natural resources and bordered on forests and mountains. Jinshi tapped his finger irritably on the forest.

“Wouldn’t one normally expect a forest to be home to enough birds to eat the bugs?” Maomao said.

“Funny you should say that.” Jinshi scratched his head awkwardly.

Shihoku-shu was, in principle, richly forested, but the timber in the area had already been stripped bare. The empress regnant had forbidden the untrammeled cutting down of the country’s trees, but upon her death, it seemed some of the less scrupulous members of the Shi clan had resumed harvesting timber without informing the capital. They raised the price on what they sold domestically so as not to attract suspicion, and the rest they sold to neighboring nations. The deforestation had continued until the region’s natural resources were badly depleted.

“Let me guess. Thanks to that, there are no more birds, which means nothing to check a plague of insects.”

“It seems a most reasonable guess.”

Wow. That was depressing.

So at least part of Jinshi’s despondency could be explained by his dashed hopes for Shihoku-shu’s timber resources. He’d probably hoped to make up any shortfall in the crop by selling off wood and using the profits to purchase grain, but this pulled the rug out from under that plan.

Wait...

If he was right, then Maomao thought she could take a guess as to why the empress regnant had limited timber harvesting in the first place—but she would think about that later. Instead, she looked at the diagrams in the encyclopedia. Then she reviewed the formula for the insecticide several times, then finally stood up. She took a book from the shelf, paged through it, and showed it to Jinshi.

“I don’t think this formula is going to yield enough chemical. I’ll prepare something else as well, although it might not be as effective.” Then she had another thought. “I don’t suppose it would be possible to burn off the areas where larvae are found?”

“Hrm. Depends on the place, I guess. I agree fire might be the quickest way...”

She tried to think of any other suggestions. “All I can come up with is perhaps forbidding the hunting of sparrows.”

Sparrows were routinely treated as pests themselves, but they ate insects, and that could prove important. If they could act before the grain ripened, it might be possible to limit the damage. But it seemed likely to provoke protests from those who hunted sparrows for a living.

It was hard to say how much destruction might be prevented if all of these ideas were put into practice. Of course, it might be that nothing happened in any case, but if so, it would only be a matter of good fortune. The role of those who practiced politics was to eliminate the possibility of crisis—even if people didn’t always appreciate what they were doing.

“A ban on sparrow hunting? Introduce that too suddenly, and you might just have a rebellion on your hands,” Jinshi said. Even here in the capital, there were places that specialized in “sparrow cuisine.” It was a basic dish; you could find it anywhere. “Maybe if we had something to replace them with...”

Maomao had a flash of inspiration: “What if you were to convince people that grasshopper dishes are all the rage at court?” Then people would think the aristocrats were looking for grasshoppers for their food, and more people would catch them. And if the Emperor was eating them, the aristocrats who followed his whims would no doubt adopt the habit too.

There was just one problem: Jinshi was sitting there frozen, his usually gorgeous countenance ashen.

I can’t believe this guy, Maomao thought. She had half a mind to produce the rest of the simmered grasshoppers right here and now.

Jinshi finally moved again—but it was only to look up, press his fingers to his brow, and groan. He was, it seemed, conflicted. At last he said, “Perhaps we could consider that...a last resort.”

“If there aren’t too many of them, it won’t come up,” Maomao said, but she was a little disappointed. She could at least tell, though, that Jinshi was more set on doing something than he had been before. Apparently, he hated the idea of eating grasshoppers just that much.

A bit of a smile came over Maomao’s face—causing Jinshi to freeze again. “Ahem. Master Jinshi?”

“Y-Yes, what is it?” he managed, stuttering just a little.

“Won’t you have a meal before you go back?” Maomao said politely. Now she was grinning.

So it was that Jinshi decided to have dinner before he left. The apothecary shop was, of course, too small for proper meal service, so Maomao found an unused room for them. Naturally, she produced the remaining grasshoppers. She didn’t actually intend to make him eat them; it was just a bit of a joke. She had every intention of taking them away again the moment Jinshi seemed even the least bit upset by her jest. (And then there was Grams, glaring very pointedly at her.)

However...

“Say ahh!” Maomao grabbed one in her chopsticks and pretended to feed it to him with uncharacteristic gusto. Jinshi watched her silently.

Okay, maybe that’s enough, she thought—but just then, Jinshi, with only some hesitation, took a bite of the grasshopper Maomao had offered him as a joke. She felt herself grimace, and she wasn’t even the one eating it.

To watch Jinshi knit his brow and chew away was to feel that one was seeing something that shouldn’t be seen. It was different, in its way, from the time she’d witnessed him made up like a woman, but still, it felt like something that shouldn’t exist in this world. Everyone else present seemed to have the same sense; they looked as if they had been struck by a collective lightning bolt.

Gaoshun’s hands were shaking. The apprentice who’d brought the meal looked like she might burst into tears, as if she’d dropped her favorite doll in the mud. Chou-u, who’d come along to snatch some food, was frowning profoundly and shaking his head as if to say, “This is bad news.” Even the madam wore a look of distaste.

Jinshi ignored them all as he chewed and swallowed. He still looked profoundly disturbed, but nonetheless he turned beseeching eyes on Maomao. “Congee.”

“Ahem, right away, sir.” She held out the bowl of congee to him, but Jinshi made no move to take it. Instead he looked from the congee to Maomao and back.

Uh... It’s gonna get cold. Maomao picked out some lotus, wondering what Jinshi was trying to get at. Maybe he didn’t like the ingredients. Whatever the case, all he was doing was staring at the porridge. Then, finally, Jinshi practically ate the lotus out of her hand. Maomao didn’t say anything, but she thought, What is he, an infant? She scooped up a bit of congee with the lotus; it looked in danger of spilling over, so she brought it to his mouth and he ate greedily.

Scowling, Maomao next picked up a grasshopper with her chopsticks. Jinshi frowned, too, but he took a bite of the insect nonetheless. Gaoshun could be heard to inhale sharply. There was a faint clatter as well: it was the apprentice, curling up on the floor on the verge of tears. Chou-u patted her back consolingly. Maomao wondered if the sight was really that shocking. Maybe it was too much for the eyes of children.

“I’m gonna get her out of here, Freckles. And mister, you oughta take some responsibility for yourself.”

Jinshi was too busy chewing the grasshopper to reply. He certainly didn’t look like he was enjoying the task, but when Maomao held out another to him, he obediently ate.

Chou-u led the little girl out of the room; by now there was snot pouring from her nose.

I’ve done a bad thing, Maomao thought. Jinshi, being as beautiful as he was, tried not to show his face more than was necessary even at the Verdigris House. The madam didn’t want the courtesans seeing him, not if he wasn’t going to provide any work for them. Thus, it was the little mute girl, the younger of the two sisters from the poor quarter, who’d brought his meal. She hadn’t been formally sold, but rather than send her back to her father, they decided to let her stay at the Verdigris House. There was just one catch: the madam, needless to say, wasn’t nearly altruistic enough to give free room and board, so she had the girl effectively doing the work of an apprentice. The child had a distinct timid streak, but again, if the alternative was to go back to her father, then she would rise to the work.

Chou-u, who saw himself as king of the brats, frequently interceded on behalf of the nervous apprentice. (“She’s my loyal henchman, after all,” he explained, as if they were in some sort of gang together.)

Jinshi, who at length had successfully swallowed the grasshopper, looked at Maomao again.

Yeah, okay, she thought and brought the lotus to his mouth once more.

After Jinshi had gone home, Chou-u appeared, now finished protecting the apprentice. “Hey, Freckles.”

To Maomao’s surprise, he was carrying a brush and some paper. “Where’d you get that paper?”

“Oh, Grams gave it to me.”

“That tightfisted old bag?” She counted every coin that came into her hands. Maomao highly doubted she’d simply give away something as luxurious as paper.

“Hey, all I know is, she said I could have it. Anyway, sit down over there.”

“What for?”

Maomao wanted to clean up the shop and get home already, not indulge the demands of some kid. She was about to try to shoo him away when she heard a weathered voice from behind her. “Bah, listen to Chou-u. Sleep here tonight. It would just be a lot of trouble to have to get another fire going when you get home, no? I’ve even got pajamas ready for you.”

“Grams, what’s going on here? Did seeing something that disturbing drive you insane?” Confronted with the madam acting nice, the words just sort of slipped out. Grams’s knuckles struck Maomao’s head with a speed one would never have expected from such an old woman. Despite having one foot in the grave, the old crone was still taller than Maomao, and the blow came down hard enough to send her reeling.

“Don’t question me. I laid out a bedroll in the room we used earlier. Take a bath before you go to sleep; it should still be warm.”

This smells fishy, Maomao thought, but it didn’t stop her from going to the room. As Chou-u spread out his paper, the madam solicitously prepared ink.

So fishy.

Maomao’s sisters Pairin and Joka were there, looking on, although Maomao couldn’t fathom why. They were both “taking tea” today. The other courtesans were busy entertaining customers.

“Grams, don’t you have to look after the incense?” Maomao asked.

“Oh, Ukyou’s taking care of it for me. It’ll be fine.”

Maomao was still puzzling over why they were all in this room when there was work to be done when Chou-u finished getting his brush ready and just looked at her. “What?” she said.

“Tell me what kind of guy you like, Freckles,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

Of all the things she’d thought he might say, she hadn’t expected anything that stupid. She took the pajamas out of the basket and started to get ready to bathe. The madam, however, tugged on her sleeve to stop her. “Come on, be serious,” she said.

“Maomao, my dear, you mustn’t argue with our lovely madam,” Pairin said. Even she was getting in on it!

Joka was smoking a pipe with a disaffected expression. Customers would be coming to the brothel at this hour, but this room was used especially for those who wanted to be discreet, and the chances of anyone stumbling across them were minimal. Even the madam didn’t seem disposed to grumble about Maomao’s rudeness.

“Come on, Freckles, cough it up. What kind? Do you like ’em tall? With lots of muscles?”

I can’t believe I’m doing this, Maomao thought, but she decided that it would be best just to play along. She sat on the mattress and said, “I prefer them not to be too tall.” Her feet were cold, so she stuck them under the covers.

“Huh! Okay,” Chou-u said.

“And I’d rather they have a bit of meat on their bones, as opposed to being too thin.”

With a man who was too tall, the diminutive Maomao would strain her neck looking up at him. And if he was too scrawny, people would think she wasn’t feeding him, and she didn’t want that.

“What about facial hair?”

“I don’t mind it, but not too thick.”

A mustache or beard could be seen as manly, but to Maomao’s mind it was just as likely to communicate filth. She was always annoyed when she saw a man who’d neglected his grooming so badly that he still had rice in his beard.

“Let’s talk about faces.”

“Soft, not sharp.” She didn’t want someone with the intense, cunning look of a fox—in fact, she hated it. Such people, in her opinion, could die in a fire.

“So soft their eyebrows droop?”

“You can take artistic license on that one.”

“Hmm. About like this, then?” Chou-u said, holding up the paper so they could see it.

“Gosh, a little boring, isn’t he?” said Pairin, who liked burlier men.

“A little sheltered, judging by that face,” said the madam, unimpressed.

“Wow. No way,” was all Joka had to say. Although she was one of the Three Princesses, there was one major catch that could make her tough to deal with as a courtesan: she absolutely hated men. She dismissed most of them out of hand.

Finally, Maomao got a good look at the portrait, and went completely silent.

“What’s the matter?” the madam asked, eyeing her.

“Nothing. I was just struck by the resemblance.”

“Resemblance! Maomao, have you got your eye on a special someone?” Pairin teased, but the madam looked no more pleased than before.

True, she didn’t hate him, as they said.

“Who is this man, exactly?” the madam inquired.

“Well... Man might not quite be the right word.” He was a eunuch, after all. “The picture... It looks exactly like the physician at the rear palace.”

There was a long beat in which everyone registered this rather dispiriting answer. Then they all promptly left the room.

“What a letdown,” said Pairin, who’d been all set to dig into some talk of romance. Now completely disenchanted, she was the first to leave. She glanced at Maomao as she went, but Maomao pretended not to notice. Then the madam exited, likewise looking as if nothing could interest her less. Chou-u, meanwhile, headed to the bath.

At last only Joka was left with Maomao, smoking her pipe. The older woman opened a window, letting in a breath of cold air. A half-moon floated in the sky, which was as dark as a pool of spilled ink and speckled with stars. From their vantage point they could see other windows in which were the silhouettes of men and women. A succession of romances being born this evening here in this brothel, destined to fade with the morning light.

Joka looked at Maomao, purple smoke drifting from between her lips. “I can’t say I don’t sympathize with you. Men! You never know when their feelings will change. And if they’re powerful, they’re only that much worse.”

She set down her pipe, the movement diffident and yet beautiful. Joka was the youngest of the Three Princesses, and customers deeply valued the education she’d been given as a woman with potential. Some claimed that if you could keep up with Joka’s conversation, you could expect to pass the civil service examinations, and her regulars included rich young men who hoped to take the tests.

“If you were more like our older sister Pairin, I wouldn’t stop you. She’s a bit of a devil lady. But you, you’re different. Pairin gets impatient, but I wish she’d understand that you’re not her. If anything, Maomao, you’re more like me.”

Maomao thought she understood what Joka was getting at. It was almost certainly...

“You’ll never find some fine prince whose heart will never change. That’s one lesson you can’t escape here. What does trust ever get you?” Joka picked up her pipe and settled the ashes inside, then she packed in some more tobacco and took a coal from the brazier. White smoke enveloped her. “When you come down to it, I’m a whore, and you’re a whore’s daughter.”

That was the reality of it.

Maomao looked at the ashes dropped in the brazier and felt a slight furrow form in her brow. “Sis, don’t you think that’s enough smoking?”

“It’s fine, now and again. The thing about these somber bureaucrats is, they hate to see a woman with a pipe.”

When she wasn’t entertaining customers, at least, she was going to do what she liked. As if to prove the point, she took another long drag on her pipe and breathed the smoke out into the sky.