The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 5 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The White-Snake Immortal

It all started with a story related by a customer.

“Well, at least that explains why there’ve been so few patrons lately,” Maomao’s older sister Meimei said, reclining on her side as she placed a Go stone on a board. The apprentice assigned to her sat on the other side of the board, looking nervous as she set some stones on it. It seemed they were working life-and-death strategy problems.

“Big, important men can’t get enough of strange and novel things,” Joka said, breathing out some pipe smoke. Maomao, meanwhile, was preparing her tools; her sisters had asked her to do moxibustion for them. These women’s lives were hard, and sometimes they needed a chance to relax and let off steam. Hence days like today, when they had no real work to do.

Meimei said it was the man she’d been playing Go with the night before who’d told her. He claimed there was someone even more striking than the Three Princesses of the Verdigris House around, a young woman who seemed to be a mystical immortal.

“I guess we’re too old for them these days,” Joka nearly spat. “And to think, they used to treat us like jewels!”

“Yes, of course,” Maomao said placatingly as she encouraged Joka to lie on her stomach and began placing herbs in specific spots around her body before lighting them. “Ahhh,” Joka moaned sensually. Her toes nearly curled. Maomao wished she could reassure her sister that she was still more than woman enough.

“He said her hair is pure white,” Meimei told them. “And if that were it, well, you might say, so she’s a girl with white hair. But... He said her eyes are bright red, as well.”

White hair and red eyes? That was indeed unusual, Maomao acknowledged with a nod. Finished with Joka, she began to place the moxa on Meimei. Meimei stretched a slim leg out from under the hem of her robe. Maomao rolled the fabric aside carefully so it wouldn’t get scorched, then lit the herbs.

“Not just white hair, but red eyes too? So she’s an albino?” Maomao asked.

“Probably,” Meimei said, she and Joka both nodding. The apprentice holding the Go stones, not quite able to follow, tugged on Maomao’s sleeve. It was the girl who’d nearly been reduced to tears by the sight of Jinshi eating the grasshoppers. Her name, Maomao had learned, was Zulin. Her older sister’s name was similar, but the older girl intended to change her name to symbolize her break with her father. And Maomao had no intention of bothering to remember a name that was only going to change soon.

Maomao gave the girl a look, but when she saw the child flinch back, she gave in. “Very rarely, a person is born without skin color. Their skin and hair are both white, and their eyes look red because you can see the blood inside them. We call them albinos.”

It happened in animals too. White snakes and foxes were considered auspicious, and venerated as gods—but what about people? Maomao had heard of a far land in which albino children were said to be considered panaceas and were sometimes eaten. She didn’t give the story any credence, though. Maomao’s old man Luomen had told her that the white hair and skin represented nothing more than a lack of coloration; otherwise, albinos were the same as anyone else.

Once, just one time, Maomao had caught a white snake. It was one of the strangest creatures she’d ever encountered. As for this albino woman, it seemed fascination with her had led people to treat her as an immortal. In other words, she was taken as a good sign rather than a bad one.

“Those pompous assholes will get tired of her soon enough,” Joka said.

“I don’t know,” Meimei replied, sticking out her other leg. “They claim she really can use immortal arts.”

That caused Maomao to cock an eyebrow. According to Meimei’s story, this woman could read people’s minds and transform metals. That sounded as preposterous as anything Maomao had ever heard, but fools and their money were soon parted—especially fools with a lot of money. The “immortal” had started in a small exhibition space, but now she was renting out the capital’s biggest theater.

She put on only one show each night, and the moneyed men who usually patronized the pleasure quarter were lining up to see her instead. The ladies here might well complain. And when one of their customers finally did show up after a prolonged absence, all he could talk about was the unearthly beauty of this female immortal and her incredible powers. Hardly the stuff to light the fires of romance.

The drop of twenty percent in the brothel’s income was enough to make the madam smack her pipe on whatever was nearby. The middle-class courtesans were seeing as many customers as ever, but the Verdigris House was a high-class brothel. It lived and died on whether it could attract the best customers.

“Who needs to see a show more than once?” Maomao muttered.

She’d intended the remark for herself, but Ukyou, the chief manservant, replied, “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

Ukyou, a man of about forty, had had his hands full recently looking after both Chou-u and Sazen. It looked like he had finally managed to catch a breath just before the lanterns went up for the night. He was munching on a big meat bun in lieu of a late lunch. Maomao offered him some tea (brewed from leftover leaves); he said “Thanks” and took a sip to wash down his food. “You know about liandan-shu, right?”

“You’re bringing this up now?”

Liandan-shu was an art which sought to help a person achieve a state of immortality. It had been enough to make Maomao’s eyes sparkle when her old man had told her about it, but he’d been quick to add that she must never attempt it. It could be a dubious practice indeed.

“You’re saying she pretends to have the power of immortality?”

“Maybe. She’s got that unusual appearance, and they say she can read people’s minds.”

“Ah.”

The great and powerful might arrive skeptical, but when this woman told them what they were thinking, how must they feel? Any sense of being made a fool of might be transmuted, as it were, into faith. And that might convince them that some elixir of immortality really did exist.

But if that isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard...

Maomao did know of someone who, after many attempts to create an elixir of immortality, had succeeded in producing a “resurrection” drug. Quite an achievement, as a physician, but the side effects still left much to be desired.

Maomao clenched her fists. She knew it was pointless to wish that physician were here, but if he were, he might have been able to give them a better idea of how to prevent any damage from the plague of insects. The disaster wasn’t yet upon them. If they could do something now, they might be able to change things. Jinshi and his immediate acquaintances were busy racking their brains for any possible preventative measures, but the rest of the nation’s important people took the matter lightly at best.

Maomao wondered about this woman’s alleged abilities. “So, what? She claims to have an elixir of immortality, and that’s how she attracts customers?”

“No idea,” Ukyou said. “I just got wind of what the big wigs’ bodyguards were saying.” He stuffed the rest of his meat bun into his mouth, washing it down with the rest of the tea. It was time to go light the lanterns. “If you’re so curious, why don’t you go see the show?”

“You think I’d pay that much to see that little?”

“Beg someone to take you, then?” He winked amicably and left.

Beg who? Maomao thought, grunting in disgust. Nobody has that much time on their hands.

Several days later, Maomao had an unexpected visitor.

“Of all the people I thought might show up, I never imagined him,” Ukyou said, scratching his chin. He was frequently at the Verdigris House these days to look after the kids. No sooner had he brought the visitor to Maomao than he disappeared again.

“Yes... Of all the people...” Maomao said.

“I’ll thank you to be a little more polite,” the visitor huffed. He was a diminutive man with round spectacles framing sharp, fox-like eyes, and he carried an abacus. His name was Lahan—yes, of the La clan. He was the nephew and adopted son of the eccentric strategist, and he had come to invite Maomao to see the infamous show. He even had some friends to come with them.

“I didn’t know you had any interest in...entertainment,” said Maomao, who’d produced tepid tea steeped from some leftover leaves, purely for form’s sake.

“When all the world seems interested, how could I not be intrigued?” Lahan slid his glasses up his nose pointedly.

Beside him stood a man Maomao didn’t recognize, smiling broadly. Probably not quite thirty, he had delicate features and a composed expression. Maomao gave him a quick but polite dip of the head before returning to her conversation with Lahan.

“They say this albino woman is quite beautiful,” he remarked. Maomao knew full well that Lahan had no special interest in beautiful things. Unlike ordinary men, he claimed to see beauty in the form of numbers. Evidently the adopted son of the eccentric was rather unusual himself.

“And you’re inviting me, why?”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t interest you.”

He was right about that, at least. But what did Lahan stand to gain by bringing her along? Maomao glanced around.

“If you’re worried about my father, he’s not here. And he won’t be there.”

“You mean it?” Maomao wouldn’t have put it past Lahan to use her as a sacrificial lamb to curry favor with the eccentric strategist.

“I mean it. However, one of his subordinates is with us.” Lahan indicated the man beside him. Maomao scowled before she could stop herself.

“Don’t look at me like that,” the young man said, wounded. “Lak—” He was about to say the name, but with one look at Maomao’s face he quickly covered it with a cough. “Ahem. May I, er, refer to him as the strategist?”

Maomao’s expression returned to something that bore looking at directly, causing the man to breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m the strategist’s subordinate. My name is Rikuson.”

“Maomao,” she said after a beat.

“Yes, I’ve heard of you.”

Maomao gave Lahan a good, hard stare. Why wasn’t the eccentric here himself? Why send someone in his place? The frizzy-haired, bespectacled man spread his arms helplessly. “It doesn’t look like my father will be leaving his house for a while.” It didn’t seem like this fact made his life easy.

“Huh.” That remark sounded significant, but Maomao didn’t foresee anything good for her coming of pursuing it. “I still don’t know why you’re inviting me along.” Lahan never did anything without calculating the potential benefit; he was the only person Maomao knew who could give the old madam a run for her money for sheer miserliness.

“There are going to be some dealings with the west coming up, and we were thinking of asking this troupe to perform for them.”

“Keep going.”

“There will be women among the delegation, you see, and I thought it would be wise to get a woman’s perspective on the performance.”

“Bullshit,” Maomao shot back. Yes, Rikuson was there, but she didn’t care; she had no intention of minding her manners just because one of the strategist’s lackeys was around.

Lahan spread his hands again, more deliberately this time. Frankly, the gesture was annoying. She suspected he’d only given her that excuse to see if she’d call his bluff.

Suddenly, Rikuson broke in: “Actually...” He looked uneasy. Anxious, even. Not sure how to explain himself. “My...ahem. My superior. The strategist. He let slip that...he is indeed curious about that. It’s that simple.”

Rikuson, motivated by what had apparently been a passing remark, had begun to investigate this troupe of entertainers. He found no basis for what the strategist had said, unless it was the man’s own vaguely supernatural instincts.

“But I did hear a rumor about them that made me wonder,” he said, and then with a look of wonder, he proceeded to relate the story he’d heard.

I hope this doesn’t turn out to be more trouble, Maomao thought as she pulled on a cotton padded jacket, an excellent item she’d gotten for free at the clothing shop. The color was louder than she would usually have preferred, but she wasn’t about to turn down free clothes—nor fail to use them.

Suitably warm, she went outside to the waiting carriage. It was already dark, and snowflakes drifted through the sky. She’d instructed Ukyou to give Chou-u dinner; if she’d told the kid where she was going, he would only have demanded to come with.

“Shall we be off?” Rikuson asked, politely opening the door of the carriage for her as if for a princess. Lahan was already seated inside. He was wearing a different pair of spectacles from normal—perhaps his idea of dressing up. Rikuson sat down beside him, and then the driver cracked the reins.

The theater where the alleged mystic was performing was on the eastern edge of the central part of the capital. Located near the high-class residences, this was the poshest part of a city whose every corner bristled with shops. This building, though, was usually used for performing theater troupes; a single woman—even a supposed immortal—putting on a show by herself was most unusual.

She seems to be one popular mystic, Maomao thought: when they disembarked the carriage, a whole crowd of people was already lining up. A man was taking coins and leading customers inside.

The woman was known as Pai-niangniang, “the White Lady,” after her appearance. It was a rather sumptuous name for a simple performer.

“What’s this about?” Maomao asked—though she hadn’t intended to say it out loud. All of the patrons were dressed in finery, but most of them had covered their faces with veils or weird masks, only a few going without.

Lahan covered Maomao’s head with a veil that was pleasant to the touch, and then he, Rikuson, and the brawny man serving as their bodyguard all put on masks that hid half their faces.

“It’s the done thing,” Lahan explained. “Things go so much better when you have a little something to give you a pretext for pretending you don’t recognize anyone.”

In other words, some of the rich and important people drawn to this show might enjoy themselves a little too much. Or perhaps this was part of the allure of the carnival atmosphere: the chance to give yourself over to the sense of the uncanny.

She must have sponsors, Maomao thought when she saw what the tickets cost—it would be tough to rent out such a fine theater at these prices. Even most full theatrical shows were backed by sponsors; a one-person show by a traveling performer would need them that much more. Meanwhile, Maomao could hardly notice something having to do with economics that escaped Lahan; she could see him glancing around, the abacus working in his head.

Inside, there was a stage, with a couple dozen tables set up in front of it. The ceiling was vaulted so that there was a decent view from the second floor. The place could probably hold a hundred or more spectators. There were buildings at the rear palace that were bigger and permitted more people, but this one had been designed to ensure that everyone had some kind of view of the stage. In deference to the audience, the pillars and rafters were carved with delicate, lovely patterns.

A huge lantern hung from the ceiling, bathing the space in a murky glow. Maomao and the others were seated on the left side, two rows from the stage. The tables seated four, meaning that with their bodyguard, they had the perfect number. The front-and-center seats were occupied by a corpulent man and the young woman hanging off his arm.

“The center section is the most popular. Drives the price to outrageous levels,” Lahan informed her, obviously annoyed. But the seats they were in couldn’t have been cheap either. It must have been a source of irritation for such a penny-pincher.

“I think we could have stood to be a little farther back,” Rikuson said. True, the best seats implied something about the power and wealth of their occupants—it was clear that the man in the front-and-center spot had plenty of money, if nothing else. (Maomao seemed to recall a merchant who’d been living large in the pleasure quarter recently, someone not too dissimilar to him.)

Almost as soon as they sat down, smiling waitresses accosted them with drinks, and some baked cakes were provided as a snack. An unusual combination, Maomao observed. She gave the drink an experimental sniff.

“It’s alcohol. Not going to drink?” Lahan asked.

In fact, Maomao liked alcohol. But she wanted to have a clear head when she saw this White Lady.

“Later. Or would you prefer I check it for poison?” she said.

“Don’t bother.” Lahan likewise set his drink on the table—he wasn’t much better at holding his liquor than the eccentric strategist was. Rikuson, taking his cue from Lahan, showed no sign of touching his refreshments.

“You don’t want to drink?” Maomao asked him.

“It wouldn’t do for me to be the only one who ended up less than sober.”

And of course the bodyguard wouldn’t imbibe—although his mouth, not hidden by his mask, revealed his disappointment at the fact.

A quick glance around suggested the alcohol was quite tasty, and judging by the number of people taking bites of the snack cakes, the two went well together. Maomao, though thinking Rikuson didn’t have to be quite so considerate, directed her attention to the stage.

A white mist drifted through the dim room. At the sound of a gong, the main act appeared on the stage like a beam of light. Her skin was white, her clothes were white, and her white hair wasn’t tied up but was allowed to cascade down her back. Against this field of white, her red lips and eyes stood out starkly.

As the sound of the gong echoed around the room, the White Lady moved to the center of the stage, where a beautiful desk waited for her. She stood in front of it, then picked up a piece of paper lying on it and showed it to the audience; it contained a diagram showing the stage and the desk itself.

A man dressed in white came on stage. His hair was black, but otherwise his appearance was much like the Lady’s; he was obviously her assistant. He took the diagram from her and stuck it to a wall on stage. Then he turned toward it and tossed something at it—some sort of throwing weapon, perhaps. The long, thin object pierced the paper and stuck. The wall had obviously been prepared ahead of time to make it easy to stick the knife in it.

There was now a hole in the paper. It was, in fact, precisely in the location of the second row on the left. “Who, may we ask, is sitting in this seat?” the assistant inquired.

“That’s us, isn’t it?” Lahan asked Maomao.

“Yes, sir, it would seem so,” she replied.

“What should we do about it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, sir...”

Lahan had scant interest in the subject, and Rikuson hardly seemed like the type to clown around onstage. Their guard, of course, was there to, well, guard them.

“How about you go up?” Lahan said, pointing at Maomao. “It’s a perfect chance to see her at work up close.”

Maomao was quiet for a moment, wondering what she should do, but she decided this was an opportunity she couldn’t miss. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, then,” she said, and walked up on stage.

The White Lady seemed even more brilliant under the flickering light of the lantern, her skin so pale that the veins were visible beneath it. This was clearly not someone simply pretending to be albino by dusting themselves with powder.

“Please write down a number. Any number,” she said, her voice barely audible. The man beside her repeated the instruction loudly enough for the entire theater to hear. The Lady continued, “Please don’t let me see what you write. Fold up the paper when you’re done, small enough that no one can see what’s on it.”

Then she and her assistant both turned their backs on Maomao. Maomao took the brush that was provided and began to write—it was already loaded with ink, so much that it was almost difficult to write with. The slightly unpleasant feeling of the ink suggested they hadn’t gone out of their way to get particularly high-quality writing implements. There was a pad on the desk so the ink didn’t soak through.

They didn’t have to make the ink so tacky, Maomao thought. It felt almost gritty. Just one of those weird things that bothered her.

When she had written a number, she folded the paper up and said, “I’m done.”

The White Lady and her assistant turned back around. The man took the desk offstage and replaced it with something brought in on a clattering cart. It looked like a box with a collection of strange cylinders shoved into the bottom. A hundred cylinders, arranged in ten rows and ten columns.

“May I ask you to push the paper into one of those tubes?” the White Lady said, and then she and the man turned around again. Maomao didn’t think that was really necessary; the tubes weren’t visible either from the stage or the spectator seats. Nonetheless, she balled the paper up even smaller and pressed it into one of the tubes. The paper was soft, but the pipe was narrow and she had to work a bit to do it. With a good shove, she managed it, though she didn’t envy the person who had to pull it out again. When she was done, she placed a thin veil over the box so the tubes couldn’t be seen.

Then the Lady’s assistant took the box, moving it to another desk in a corner of the stage. The veil, thin and light as it was, billowed as he went.

“It is ready,” he announced, and immediately there was a thunderous clang of the gong. It caught Maomao by surprise, and she was glad she was wearing a veil herself so no one could see her eyes widen.

As for the White Lady, she smiled and held out her hand. Maomao took the hint and held out her own hand; she felt pale, chilly fingers grasp her wrist. This time there was a jangling of bells. The White Lady stared intently at Maomao.

Ah... She must have poor eyesight, Maomao thought, noticing that the Lady’s eyes occasionally flitted in different directions. Her eyes had no pigment, either. Life must be tough for her.

As Maomao was getting lost in thought, though, the White Lady said, “The number you wrote is seven.”

Maomao jumped. “That’s correct.”

The red lips twisted into a leer. When Maomao met those crimson eyes, they made her think of the white snake she’d caught once long ago. It, too, had had red eyes and white skin. When she had tried to roast it, her old man had gotten mad at her; he’d said it was a messenger of the gods and she couldn’t eat it. Maomao knew it was no divine messenger. It was an animal that happened to have white skin for entirely mundane reasons. But her father, to her frustration, could sometimes be like that, bringing up illogical arguments at the most unlikely times.

Just as Maomao threatened to be swallowed up by those large, round eyes, the gong sounded again. Maybe it was the fog in the room that made her feel so warm, made her head hurt. She felt a flash of irritation at the sensation that a fly was buzzing around her ears, but then the White Lady spoke again.

“The third row from the top, second from the left.”

Maomao paused.

“Well?”

The assistant removed the veil to reveal to the audience what was in the box. He took the tube three rows down from the top and two from the left and drove a thin stick through it.

Pop! The paper Maomao had shoved into it came flying out. The man unfolded it to reveal the number seven—in Maomao’s own writing, of course.

Maomao went back to her seat, pondering what could be going on. The room was full of boisterous, cheerful voices; much of the audience seemed to be pleasantly drunk. Lahan and the others, though, were waiting studiously for Maomao to return.

“So tell me, what was that?” Lahan asked, now full of enthusiasm.

“Search me.”

“Wait... Did she slip a little coin into your hand, perchance?”

“Unlike some of us, I don’t work that way.”

“Well, neither do I! There’s no beauty in it.”

This man made no sense to Maomao—he adored even the smallest coins, yet he claimed there was a distinction between beauty and impurity in them. But she noticed Rikuson chuckling to himself.

“You can see I’ve got nothing,” Maomao said, opening her hands and rolling up her sleeves to prove she hadn’t been bought off.

“Did someone see you, then?”

“I really doubt it.”

Only the White Lady and her assistant had been up on stage with her. Maomao didn’t think anyone had observed her writing the number, and which pipe she’d put the paper into had been obscured by the cloth. But maybe... she thought.

She glanced toward the stage, which was bathed in the uneven glow of the lantern hanging from the ceiling. She’d thought perhaps there was a mirror in which the performers could see which number she’d written, but it didn’t seem to be the case. It looked like it would have been hard to hang anything of the sort from the ceiling—and anyway, you would need to have something of the sort in the first place.

Above all, though, the White Lady’s eyes were too bad for that. Everything more than a shaku in front of her probably looked hazy. Maomao was still contemplating it when the next part of the performance began. A new desk was brought out and a variety of utensils arranged on it. The Lady used a pair of chopsticks to pick up a small, thin piece of metal from among them. She chose a dish as well.

Her assistant took the metal and the dish, set them on a tray, and began walking around the theater with them. The piece of metal appeared to be no more than a sheet of polished bronze; the dish, meanwhile, was deeply recessed so that the liquid in it wouldn’t spill. The assistant skipped the second floor—evidently, he didn’t have time to make his way all the way up there—provoking a few shouts of protest from above. But that, in Maomao’s opinion, was just what you got for sitting in the cheap seats.

When the man returned to the stage, the White Lady took the metal sheet and the dish back from him. Then she placed the metal in the dish and placed the dish in a fire that had been lit almost without anyone noticing. She began chanting what sounded like a spell of some kind, then started to dance. In the gloomy, misty room, her entire body seemed to shine.

When the dance was over, the Lady took the chopsticks and removed the piece of metal from the fire.

The color’s changed. The reddish hue of the bronze had become a pure silver. Several people in the front row exclaimed with wonder.

“The bronze turned into silver!” someone shouted.

“What? Really?!”

Those in the back couldn’t quite see what was happening on stage, but they could see other people’s reactions, and pressed forward with interest. The guards managed to keep anyone from mounting the stage, but that was plenty close enough to see what was going on.

The Lady was bathing the metal in some sort of liquid, then wiping it dry with a cloth. This time she exposed it directly to the fire.

The shouting grew louder: “The silver’s changed to gold!”

Indeed, the silver sheet had turned to shimmering gold. The Lady shook it with the chopsticks, getting the heat out as she placed it on the dish. Her assistant held it up so everyone could see the shining gold clearly.

“Are you able to explain that?” Lahan asked Maomao, wiping his spectacles.

Maomao smirked. “Yes—later. For now, let’s enjoy the show.” Her eyes were sparkling—in fact, she was loath to look away from the performance on stage. With Lahan, her voice took on an edge that she normally reserved for use in the pleasure quarter; it might have sounded a little strange to Rikuson, but considering that he served someone very strange indeed, maybe he was willing not to let it bother him.

Maomao had other things on her mind, anyway. This is fascinating, she thought, so eager to see the panoply of unusual techniques on display that she almost forgot to blink. The woman might not be an immortal, but it was clear they couldn’t dismiss her out of hand.

The White Lady proceeded to show them a wide variety of intriguing entertainments. She placed a wet stone on a piece of paper and recited a spell over it, shortly after which they burst into flames. She produced butterflies seemingly out of thin air, and as they were flying away they, too, appeared to incinerate themselves, turning to ash in mid-flight. Each display earned a chorus of oohs and ahhs from the audience.

Finally, the Lady held up a shimmering silver liquid. With every eye in the house fixed on the mysterious substance, she poured it into a small cup and drank it down.

Maomao almost choked, barely resisting the urge to jump out of her seat. Thankfully she stopped herself before she got to her feet, and instead focused intently on the Lady.

“I hope you’ve had another enjoyable evening at my show,” the Lady said with a smile, and then descended the stage. The audience members, meanwhile, continued to fill the theater with excited chatter about what they’d just witnessed. Some people’s eyes flickered as if with flames, while others looked adoringly at the spot where the immortal had just been. Only Maomao’s group seemed less engaged than the rest, perhaps in part because they hadn’t indulged in the wine.

“She certainly is something special,” Rikuson remarked, finally reaching for his cup. Maomao, though, instinctively stopped him, looking at him uneasily. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

“Yes,” Maomao said, and took her own cup in her hand. She sniffed it, then put a single drop of the wine on her skin. When she saw how it behaved, she lapped up the smallest mouthful of the drink. “It’s mixed with something,” she said. There wasn’t much actual alcohol in it. It was closer to juice—very drinkable, but it also had several other, conflicting flavors. It seemed the drinks had been adulterated with several other substances, perhaps including some salt.

“It’s not poisonous,” Maomao said. But in spite of how modest the alcohol content was, it seemed likely to pack a punch. That was all there was to it.

Then there was the wavering lantern light. The darkened room. The eerie mist and phantasmal woman on stage. The strange phenomena the audience had witnessed.

Well, now.

This was all more than enough to inspire blind faith in someone. Maomao wondered how many of the audience members had been moved to exactly that. As she mulled it over, she continued to sip at her drink. It’s definitely a little salty, she thought. It would be better without, she reflected—and that was when it hit her.

She plunged a finger into her drink, then ran it over the tabletop, using the juice like ink.

“What are you doing?” Lahan asked.

“You wanted to know what’s going on? Here it is.” Maomao looked around at them. If that stuff’s like this, then that must have some trick to it too. She wished she’d looked around more closely when she was on stage. Had there been something there? It had been mistier up there than in the seats—warmer, making her head hurt and interfering with her concentration in some odd way.

Mist... Fog...

She suspected it was steam, maybe from something being boiled behind the stage. That would explain the heat too. But why did it make her head hurt, then? She’d felt like there had been a fly buzzing around her ears. What was that?

Hm? Just as she felt she was getting an inkling of what it might be, she caught a glimpse of the White Lady in the wings of the stage. Maomao stuck her fingers in her mouth, closed her lips, and blew.

“What are you whistling for? What a base way to show your appreciation.” Lahan was looking at her with narrowed eyes.

Maomao’s whistle hadn’t been very loud, while the chatter around her was noisy. The sound shouldn’t have carried far. And yet, she saw the Lady look around when she whistled.

Hah. Now I get it. Maomao grinned and started in on the snack cakes.

It was cold outside. They could easily have waited until they got back to the Verdigris House to talk about what they had seen, but Lahan and the others seemed eager to learn what was going on as soon as possible, so they decided to stop at a restaurant and talk there. Maomao picked a place on the expensive side, which left Lahan less than thrilled, but she couldn’t care less. A waiter showed them to their seats, and once they were seated around a round table, Maomao asked for whatever dishes the waiter recommended along with a bottle of their finest alcohol.

“Ever heard of moderation?” Lahan grumbled.

“The big earner says what?”

“My family bought something very expensive just last year; we’re practically broke.”

She knew that perfectly well—he’d bought it from the Verdigris House.

First, Maomao elected to explain how the White Lady had changed bronze into silver and gold.

“It’s very similar to what they call transmutation.”

Maybe she should have simply said “liandan-shu.” In fact, making gunpowder fell under the same category. Transmutation was a subcategory of liandan-shu, a way of turning base metals into noble ones.

Maomao played with the spoon the waiter had brought. The art of liandan-shu was aimed at prolonging people’s lives, but many of the things attributed to it were pure bunk. The histories told of an ancient emperor obsessed with gaining immortality, who had instead lost his life trying misguided ways of obtaining it.

Yes, the two were quite similar. “But if I had to distinguish them, I would say it’s closer to what they call alchemy in the west.”

“The west?” Lahan asked, and Maomao nodded.

“Yeah.” Lahan seemed to be thrown off by the fact that Maomao spoke more politely to Rikuson than to him. Maybe she could speak casually to Rikuson by now as well, Maomao reflected. “My old man told me about it, but I’ve never seen it with my own eyes before. That piece of metal did not turn into actual silver or gold. It simply had a metal plating on it that could be scorched off in the fire to change it from one to the other.”

Maomao had wanted to try it herself, but her old man had refused to tell her the necessary ingredients. Though she suspected that even if he had, they wouldn’t have been things she could get in a humble apothecary’s shop.

“What are you saying? What’s this ‘plating’?”

“It’s when you enclose one metal in a ‘shell’ of another metal,” Maomao said, pinching the spoon between the fingers of both hands. “If you’d like to know more, you should ask my father. And if you’d be so kind as to tell me what you learn... No, you must tell me.” Her eyes flashed.

The self-burning paper could be accounted for with the byproducts of that process, and if the butterflies had been made of paper as well, that might explain them. Moreover, the audience’s vision had been impaired by the mist in the theater, and they’d been drinking wine specifically made to induce a drunken stupor. Even she and Lahan and the others, who hadn’t been drinking, had practically been taken in; none of the other tipsy spectators would have suspected anything.

Incidentally, the paper butterflies sounded a lot like a traditional trick from the island country to the east. It involved cutting shapes out of a very thin, high-quality paper.

“Explain how she was able to read your mind, then,” Lahan said, still puzzled.

“Yes, about that...” Maomao was just trying to decide how to explain when the waiter returned with their pre-meal soup.

Maybe this will work, Maomao thought, and plunged her spoon into the soup bowl.

“Paper,” she said.

“Look at you, giving orders,” Lahan said, scowling at her, but nonetheless he produced some paper from the folds of his robe and handed it to her. Maomao ran the soup-laden spoon over the paper, producing a childish scrawl. She gave the paper a quick wave to dry it out, whereupon the scrawl disappeared.

“Do you see it?” she asked.

“The wet areas have shrunk slightly.”

“Bit too close an observation, there.”

“Bah. Show some respect to your adopted brother.”

Absolutely not.

Rikuson spoke up. “So, er, what does this have to do with what we saw?”

“Watch.” Maomao went over to one of the lanterns on the wall, gently removed the frame, and held the paper over the naked flame.

Lahan and Rikuson looked shocked—and while that was gratifying, this shouldn’t have been new to them. Jinshi and Gaoshun would have understood much sooner, Maomao thought. The soup-strewn parts of the page had singed and darkened in the flame.

“You see?”

“Hardly. What does this have to do with reading someone’s mind?”

Maomao shoved the spoon into Lahan’s mouth. “How’s it taste?”

“Like they used seafood stock. And a little salty.”

“Yes. It has salt in it.”

“So what?”

Well, there was salt in it. Specifically, in that grainy ink she’d used. No wonder it had felt so unpleasant to write with.

“There was salt in the ink. Blend it in well enough, and you wouldn’t necessarily see it, just like you don’t see it in this soup. But it was there, just like it is here.” Putting it to a flame clearly revealed that there was more than just water present.

“You’re saying she singed the paper to reveal the number? How?”

“No, she didn’t—but there are other ways.”

There had been a dark writing pad under the paper Maomao had used. Plenty of ink would have soaked into it.

Lahan looked at the slightly blackened paper, tracing the lines with his finger. “So that’s what was going on.”

“Yes. I believe so. It was something mixed into the ink.” It didn’t have to be salt; anything that could be blended with the ink but then remained behind when the ink dried would do. Suppose for the sake of argument that it was salt. Maomao would have written her number with the salty ink, which would have soaked through into the pad underneath. When the ink dried, the salty numeral would have appeared, a pattern of white powder on the dark writing pad.

“I see, I see,” Rikuson said, clapping his hands in understanding. “What about the tubes, then? How did she know which one you’d put the paper in?”

“Oh, that?” Maomao tore the paper in two, folded the halves, then put a hole through the middle. She stuck a finger through them, then blew between the two pieces of paper, producing a dull whistle. “I’m assuming you know how a flute works.”

“You blow into it, and it makes a sound.”

“And how do you change that sound?”

“You change how many holes the air comes out of. Even I know that much.”

Didn’t he get it yet, then? No, maybe not: he hadn’t seen the tubes where she’d hidden the paper up close.

“Suppose the tubes acted like the holes of a flute?”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear them make any noise.”

The theater had been full of sounds of bells and gongs. But there had been another, hidden by those louder noises.

“I got a pretty bad headache standing there. I suspect there was a sound so high-pitched that it couldn’t be heard,” Maomao said.

Loud noises could hurt the ears. She suspected that even if she didn’t consciously detect a sound, it might have subconsciously bothered her.

“A high-pitched noise?”

“Yes,” Maomao said, and then blew into her flute. “Did you hear that?”

“Of course I did.”

“How about this, then?” She made the noise higher, whistling the same way she had back in the cave with Jinshi. Lahan made a face, and Rikuson looked puzzled for a second. The bodyguard, however, narrowed his eyes.

“I heard that too,” Lahan said.

“I...sort of heard it,” Rikuson reported.

Then the guard, sounding unsure whether he was allowed to join in the conversation, said, “I didn’t hear anything...” Maomao felt a bit bad for him; he was obviously embarrassed.

“Good,” she said. “You’re not supposed to—it gets harder to hear as you get older.”

The guard was somewhere in his mid-thirties. He was clearly shocked to realize he couldn’t hear the sound—his reaction made him look somewhat like Gaoshun. Maybe all middle-aged people acted that way.

“Not everyone can hear sounds to the same pitch,” Maomao informed them. There were variations even among people of the same age bracket. The same way some people had better eyesight than others, some had better hearing. What’s more, Maomao suspected—although she had no way of proving this—that sometimes people with bad eyes compensated by developing better ears.

“I think that mystic has extremely sensitive hearing,” she said. Like how the Lady had reacted to Maomao’s whistle from a substantial distance and despite all the intervening noise. Maomao suspected that the White Lady practiced discerning whistling sounds on a regular basis. It made her think of the hunting dog Lihaku had been clowning around with on their excursion. It would also explain why there had been no flutes in the musical ensemble at the White Lady’s performance.

Both the vertical and horizontal flutes produced changes in sound by opening and closing a series of holes along the length of the instrument. Suppose the hundred tubes in that box were akin to the holes of a flute. Maomao pushing the paper into one of them would be like closing a hole on an instrument.

“You’re suggesting that she could discern a hundred different sounds, and that was how she knew which pipe it was? If that box was like a flute, what served as blowing into it?”

“There’s a very simple method.”

What if, with the gongs and bells as signals, someone blew into the flute ten times? The box had been covered with a veil, so it would have been no problem for the Lady’s assistant to be nearby, operating something that would force air through the pipes. You wouldn’t even have to learn a hundred different sounds: ten would suffice.

“As for how they blew into the pipes, the mist explains it.”

The mist was steam, which meant they were boiling water somewhere to produce it. What if the desk had been designed so that the vapor would enter it from below? The audience was so focused on what was on top of the desk that they wouldn’t notice any little devices underneath.

“Make sense now?”

“Mm.” Lahan and the others nodded.

“There’s one last thing,” Maomao said, thinking of the silver liquid the Lady had consumed at the end of the show. “That stuff is a very potent poison. I don’t know if she actually drank it or not, but it’s definitely not something to try at home. You should warn other high officials about it when you get the chance.” She gave Lahan her most serious possible look.

Several days later, the White Lady and her show vanished without a trace. In their wake they left only a series of mysterious food poisonings among the merchants of the capital.

What had her objective been? The “female immortal” who looked like the white snake was gone, but the mystery remained.

Long, long ago, those in power had sought an elixir of immortality, and had consumed silver that looked like water, believing it would prolong their lives. Little did they know all it would do was shorten them.

Because of the way it moved, the metal became known as quicksilver. Maomao wondered what had happened to the White Lady after she had drunk the stuff. Had she simply been pretending, or had she really consumed it? If the quicksilver could be expelled from the body still in its liquid state, it wouldn’t be too poisonous. But if it was dissolved in steam and inhaled, or else joined with some other substance into a new form, then it was very toxic indeed.

Once upon a time, it had been considered a palliative. The difference between a medicine and a poison was often a matter of application, Maomao reflected, gazing at the vibrant scarlet of a chunk of cinnabar—and resolved to put the entire matter out of her mind.