The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 6 - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Scandal (Part Two)

“Do you recall any books like this?” Maomao asked, showing the summary Lishu had written to the old man who ran the bookstore. She’d tried to get Lishu to write down the gist of the story and some of her impressions of it; they hadn’t had time for more. Unfortunately, among the things Lishu hadn’t been able to remember about the book had been the title. She had only been copying out the part the maid had asked for, and she’d given the rest of the book only a cursory read.

There wasn’t much Maomao could do. To prove that the incriminating “letter” was actually a manuscript of a book, they would have to find the book it had been copied from. Lishu told them that the book she’d been given was handwritten, not printed, but it had had an attractive cover, suggesting that perhaps it was a product for sale, just one with a small distribution.

“Hrm... Looks like your average love story to me, not that I pay much attention to that sort of thing.”

“I have to think you at least flip through whatever you stock.”

“Ahh, there are so many books these days. And my eyes aren’t what they used to be.” The bookseller yawned. He was virtually retired now; his son handled the bulk of the business. He obviously wanted Maomao to hurry up and go home so he could take a nap.

He wasn’t wrong that the story sounded like a bog-standard romance, but it had a political edge to it, the sort of thing that would have gotten the attention of the censors. The story went that a young man and a young woman from rival noble families fell in love with each other at first sight, and then yadda yadda yadda it ended in tragedy.

Maomao pressed a hand to her forehead—this wasn’t getting her anywhere. There were two other bookstores in the capital, both smaller than this one. She might even end up having to go to booksellers in other cities.

Her fretting was interrupted by a man who came in bearing a sizable load on his back. “Hullo,” he said to Maomao.

“Ah, you’re back,” the old man said—this must be his son.

“What are you doing, Dad?” the younger man asked, setting down his load and giving the elder a dubious look. “You’re not acting like the customers are just a nuisance again, are you?” The man knew his father well.

“She was pestering me about whether I recognized this one book. I don’t read every damn page that comes through here, you know!”

“Let me see,” the shopkeeper’s son said, taking Lishu’s summary and squinting at it. “Oh, this one...”

He knelt down and rifled through the bundle he’d brought, coming up with one particular book. The cover depicted a young man and a young woman, but something seemed a little odd about the picture.

He passed the book to Maomao, and she immediately began reading. Even just skimming the pages, it was obvious that it resembled the story Lishu had described. Then she stopped on one particular page. “This here...” she said. It was very similar to a passage Lishu had written from memory. Similar—but some of the details were different, the exact words were different. The meaning was almost identical, however.

“Yeah, there are some odd things in there, huh? They say it’s a translation of a play that’s real popular in the west.”

“A play? The west?”

“Sure. Some of the descriptions sound a little funny, right? Whoever translated it didn’t know what the world looked like to nobles all the way over there, so they changed names and customs and stuff to sound like ones we have here. Then each person who copied it made more changes to suit themselves.”

That prompted Maomao to look again at the consort’s summary. Lishu had included the name of one of the main characters, and it had nagged at Maomao, because it didn’t sound like a normal name. Now she realized it was a western name, transliterated directly into their language using arbitrary characters.

She flipped the pages of the book again, searching for that unusual name, but she couldn’t find it. She did, though, find another very similar passage—albeit one that used perfectly ordinary names.

“Huh. I wonder if she was reading some earlier copy of this book. This one is supposed to be pretty old, though,” the son said.

“Where can I get a copy of this?” Maomao asked.

“I bought it from the copyist. I think they said they got it in last summer. We’re hoping to print it, though, so if you’re going to go try to buy one now, we’ll chase you out.”

In other words, Consort Lishu had most likely used a copy that had been in circulation prior to the previous summer. Maomao stopped cold: hadn’t something else happened in the rear palace right about then?

“The caravan...”

“Hm? What’s that?”

“The girl does like to talk to herself, doesn’t she?” the old bookseller remarked. He and his son both peered at Maomao, but she had other things on her mind.

The caravan would have been able to bring translated books from the west. And the cargo wouldn’t have been inspected very closely, as they had discovered from the trouble with the abortifacients just after the caravan’s visit. It would have been easy to procure a book or two while the upper consorts’ ladies-in-waiting did their shopping.

“So, what?” Maomao said. “Someone just happens to stumble on this book in the caravan’s wares, buys it, and then tries to use it to bring her down? What about the letter, then? Was there someone on the inside?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re babbling about. You’re a strange one...”

“Dad, be nice.”

Maomao thought hard, ignoring the conversation, but she couldn’t put the pieces together, not now.

“Give me this,” she said, thrusting the book at the shopkeeper.

“Ten silver pieces,” the old man wheezed, looking at his feet.

“That’s robbery! This isn’t some fancy picture scroll. It’s got a crappy cover, mistakes everywhere—it’s like the copyist turned it out overnight!” Maomao wasn’t stupid enough to just pay what he asked.

“No, Dad, it’s not for sale at all! We’re going to use that to print from!” the son said, stepping between Maomao and his father.

“Two silver pieces! Fair compromise?” Maomao said.

“Nine silver. And a half.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not for sale!”

Some thirty minutes of squabbling later, Maomao obtained the book for six silver pieces and left the store with the son looking balefully after her.

○●○

Another day was starting. Another day of nothing but eating and sleeping.

“How about this robe today, Lady Lishu?” Kanan asked, holding up a blue outfit. It was one of Lishu’s favorites, but she was so depressed, she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to pick out clothes.

“Okay. That’s fine,” she said. She was too tired to tell Kanan to bring something different. Once she was changed, Kanan got breakfast ready. Water was on the floor below Lishu’s, but food was prepared in an entirely separate location. Kanan appeared to make every effort to hurry back with Lishu’s meals, but they had always gone cold by the time she arrived, and Lishu would find herself sipping lukewarm soup.

“I’m going out for a moment, then,” Kanan said. She left the room, and Lishu could hear her going down the stairs. There would be nothing to do until she got back—but these past few days, those moments hadn’t felt empty.

“Lishu, are you there?” asked the voice from the next room. Lishu, clutching her pillow, went into the other room and sat down, leaning against a chest of drawers. Still holding her pillow, she gazed up at the ceiling. There was a funny little pipe poking through one of the various holes that had developed in the dilapidated woodwork. The halls and stairways, through which everyone had to pass, were kept in decent condition, but it didn’t seem time had been taken to check over every room carefully.

“I’m here, Sotei,” Lishu called. In response, an aroma wafted down through the ceiling—at once sweet and bitter, it was most unusual. At first it had seemed very strange to Lishu, but it had become a source of comfort. No doubt it was some perfume the person above her wore.

That person was a young woman, like Lishu, and like Lishu, she was trapped in this tower for reasons beyond her control. She said her name was Sotei, and she had first spoken to Lishu a few days earlier. Her voice was wispy and frail, but she’d succeeded in pulling away a rotten part of the floor, breaking through the weakened ceiling, and pushing that pipe into Lishu’s room. She was obviously a far, far stronger person than Lishu.

The consort had been surprised—in fact, terrified—the first time she’d heard the voice from overhead, but once she realized the speaker was neither a mouse nor a ghost, but a young woman her own age, Lishu opened up to her with surprising speed. If there was one thing Lishu had plenty of, it was time to kill. Before she knew what she was doing, she had told Sotei her name—but to her relief, there had been no particular reaction. Maybe Sotei didn’t know who Lishu was.

“I wonder what they’ll serve today,” Sotei said.

“Yesterday was five-flavor congee, so I hope we get chicken and egg today. I wish they would stop with all the shellfish...”

It was so strange how, lacking anything else to do, simply eating became an entertainment in its own right.

“That’s right, you can’t have seafood, can you? But it’s so good!”

“There’s some I can have. But I always feel funny about it...”

Almost equally odd to Consort Lishu was how she never felt lost for words with Sotei. Maybe it was because they couldn’t actually see each other.

Lishu had never specifically asked why Sotei was here in the pagoda, but when Lishu said she’d been locked up on vague charges, Sotei volunteered that she was in much the same situation.

“There’s really nothing to do around here, is there? All free time and nothing to fill it,” Sotei said.

“You’re telling me. I’ve never been more sensitive to the sound of footsteps in my life.”

“I know what you mean! You know who it has to be—it’s the sound of your meal arriving, and you act like it!”

“What gluttons!” Lishu said, and she heard giggling in response. “You have very good ears, Sotei. You must have heard me down here—that’s why you talked to me.” Notwithstanding the aging structure, catching a voice from the floor below would have demanded pretty decent hearing. Lishu hardly even heard anything that was going on above her.

“That’s true, I guess my hearing is pretty good. For example, I can tell someone is coming up the stairs right now.”

Lishu focused and listened, and indeed, she heard footsteps approaching. She was sure it must be Kanan, but the steps went straight by her chambers, continuing upward.

“Hold on a second,” Sotei said. She left for a moment, and there was some clattering as she came back. “Ooh, that’s hot! Sorry to break it to you, but it’s seafood congee today.”

“Ugh. What’s in it?”

“I think this is dried shrimp. And this might be a little bit of pork, here...”

“I guess I can eat that stuff...” They were hardly her favorites, but she could either eat them or starve to death. If she pitched a fit about the food, she would only make life harder for Kanan.

Speaking of Kanan, Lishu thought, she was late. How long did it take to get breakfast? Sotei’s was already here. In fact, Kanan had seemed to be taking her time the past several days, Lishu had noticed—but when Kanan got back, Lishu’s conversations with Sotei had to stop, so the consort had been willing to overlook the delays.

From the little pipe in the ceiling, Lishu could hear Sotei eating. She claimed she didn’t have any ladies-in-waiting to speak of with her, but someone must have brought the food in a hurry if the congee was still hot.

“Hey, Lishu, want to know something?”

“What?”

“It’s about this floor.” Lishu was on the third floor of the pagoda, with Sotei above her on the fourth. From the outside, it had looked as if the tower might be ten stories or more. “They say nothing above the fourth floor has been used in decades, so it’s even more broken down than our levels. You have to go by guards on the way down, but because no one uses those higher floors, there’s no one to stop you from going up.”

“Wow, really?”

“Really. Maybe it’s because you can’t escape from the upper levels.”

There were windows around the outside of the tower, but even if one could break them and go through, there was still the height to consider. Lishu, at least, didn’t think she could get a ladder to help her climb down, nor did she wish to try. Such a conspicuous breakout attempt would never escape the attention of the guards.

The bigger problem, though, was that even if Lishu managed to get out, there was nowhere she could go. She kept waiting and hoping that Lady Ah-Duo might visit her, but the former consort had never come to the tower. It had hardly been a full ten days since their last meeting, though, and Lishu knew it would be petulant to speak of the issue.

Neither had there been any contact from the apothecary or Lishu’s father. It was easy enough to say that it hadn’t been that long, but every day that passed heightened Lishu’s anxiety. If she hadn’t had Sotei to talk to, she thought she might have lost it already.

“I’ve got an idea. Want to try going to the upper floors?”

That suggestion, at that particular moment, sent a shock through Lishu’s heart. “What? What do you mean, the upper floors?”

“The guard between the third and fourth floors is changed three times every day. The guard on duty goes down to summon the next person, and for those few minutes, there’s no one there. They don’t change all the guards at once, of course, so you can’t go downstairs—but you could go up. Me, I could do it any time. There’s no one above the fourth floor.”

She could go upstairs.

“We could see the whole capital from up there. Why not take a look? What’s the harm?”

Lishu didn’t say anything right away. As Sotei’s words drifted down to her, they were accompanied by that almost-sweet, almost-bitter smell. Lishu felt she would very much like to see the capital, but as yet she didn’t take a single step. “I have a lady-in-waiting with me,” she said. “If I disappeared, she would notice right away.”

“You haven’t told her about me. Why’s that?”

Lishu found that question hard to answer. A voice from the ceiling seemed like a tricky thing to explain, and she was afraid Kanan would try to make her stop talking to Sotei.

“Are you worried what she’d think about it? Her, an attendant who leaves you alone while she enjoys being free of this tower?”

Lishu felt a chill run down her spine, but she couldn’t deny what Sotei was saying. Lishu knew perfectly well that there was only one of Kanan, her chief lady-in-waiting, and she couldn’t be with Lishu constantly all day, every day. And yet, even at this very moment, wasn’t she out there, savoring the open air, while Lishu languished here?

The consort shook her head vigorously, as if she could shake the thought away. “That’s not what she’s doing!”

“No. No, of course not. She’s much too nice a lady to leave you here and forget about you, Lishu.” Sotei seemed to be trying to walk back her words a little, perhaps out of kindness to Lishu. “I just wish you could see the view from up here. I wish I could share it with you. If you ever change your mind, just come on up. Tell your lady-in-waiting to take half a day off—that should be plenty. They change the guards at...”

Lishu stared at the ground and listened to Sotei describe the timing of the changes of guard. Then Sotei left to clean up her meal, withdrawing the pipe from the ceiling so Kanan wouldn’t notice it.

Footsteps came again, and this time it was Kanan, who entered the room saying, “I’m sorry to keep you waiting so long, Lady Lishu.” There appeared to be some perspiration on her face, but at some point she’d found time to change clothes, including a new sash.

Kanan set Lishu’s breakfast on the table and the consort picked up the bowl, taking a lotus leaf and starting in on the loathed seafood congee. It was stone cold, the gruel like glue in her mouth, thick and sticky and flavorless.