The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Covert Ops

The damp, stagnant air was disgusting, the humidity making his hair cling to his neck. Jinshi sat in his office and regarded the pile of paperwork with a mounting desire to flee.

There was little more depressing than doing administrative busywork during the hot, rainy season. Jinshi brushed the hair off the back of his neck, sat up in his chair, and flipped some pages. The characters were running a little; maybe someone had handled the paper with sweaty hands. He heaved a sigh and picked up the cup of tea, served cold, sitting on the corner of his desk.

He let the tea ripple in the cup. When had it appeared there? He had the sense it had been left when he’d gone to the bathroom a few minutes ago.

“Who put this tea here?” he asked the official in the office with him. Gaoshun had gone back to the Emperor and was no longer there. Basen would return when he had fully recovered. In the meantime, Jinshi was making use of a bureaucrat with a particular gift for paperwork.

“A court lady brought it while you were away from your seat, sir.”

Jinshi was only human; nature sometimes called even on him. But for someone, a lady of the outer court no less, to wait for that exact moment to bring him tea, that was strange. A guard was posted at the door to his office at all times—except when Jinshi left the office, such as to use the toilet. Then the guard accompanied him. Perhaps the woman had known.

Jinshi’s office was typically off-limits to court ladies. Back when he had been pretending to be a eunuch, there had been actual fights among the women about who got to bring him his tea. Even after he had left the rear palace, women would sometimes sneak bits of their hair or nails into his snacks as a love charm, or simply charge in when he was alone and tear off their clothes. Nothing but trouble. The bureaucrat who had been assigned to him might have been good at paperwork, but it seemed he wasn’t acquainted with the specifics of Jinshi’s situation.

Jinshi opened a drawer of his desk and took out an item wrapped in cloth. With measured movements, he unwrapped it to reveal a silver spoon, which he held with the cloth and used to stir the tea.

The shining silver promptly turned cloudy. Jinshi was at least grateful his assailant had used a nice, obvious poison.

The blood drained from the official’s face as he watched. In fact, Jinshi wanted him to see this, in order to judge his reaction. At least the man understood what the besmirched silver signified. It seemed he really hadn’t known about the poison.

Jinshi handed the spoon to the guard at the door, who didn’t so much as blink as he rewrapped the utensil and placed it in the folds of his robes. His relief would come soon. He would probably hand the spoon on after that.

“Can you describe the woman who brought this?” Jinshi asked the bureaucrat.

“W-Well,” the man began. He was all out of sorts and failed to give much useful information. She was “young.” Not very tall. At least it proved one thing: that the man was dedicated to his job. He’d been so focused on his paperwork that he hadn’t taken special note of the woman who had walked in. Jinshi observed, incidentally, that there was a cup of tea on the bureaucrat’s desk as well—half empty.

Sigh. Very well. Jinshi took out another spoon and stirred the official’s tea, but this spoon showed no reaction. “You’re safe,” he said. An unmistakable look of relief passed over the man’s face before he shrank back, obviously chagrined.

Jinshi wasn’t in any mood to reprimand him. He just wanted someone to take care of the paperwork. This man seemed good enough at his task, and on top of that, he never looked at Jinshi like he had any funny business in mind. All Jinshi needed was for the guy to do a decent job until Basen got back.

“Put it out of your mind. There’s more work to do,” Jinshi said. He set the poisoned tea on a corner of his desk and went back to his papers. His assistant, still pale as the grave, returned to his desk.

Jinshi tried not to let the other man notice as he heaved a sigh.

His days were restless, tense. He’d lost track of how long it had been since he’d quit pretending to be a eunuch. Months. Being part of the court proper meant much, much more work, and he seemed to get less sleep every day. He’d at least been escaping into town to take a breather every ten days or so, but there was none of that anymore.

Jinshi had finished his work for the day and was sitting on a couch in his room. He’d had his dinner and taken his bath, so now all that was left was to go to bed. But he didn’t feel like sleeping, not after what had happened that afternoon.

“How about some nice fruit, Master Jinshi?” His ever-considerate lady-in-waiting, Suiren, brought him some pear slices, each on its own little skewer.

“Give,” he said. Perhaps it sounded a mite childish, but this was his milk mother, a woman who had known him since before he’d been weaned. It was just the two of them; she wouldn’t be upset.

He put a piece of pear in his mouth, savoring the crunch and the light, sweet flavor. The juice was cool and refreshing as it went down his throat. He thought about asking for a cup of wine, but decided that tonight, he would be satisfied with this.

“You must be so tired. You haven’t been into town lately, even on your days off. Your work is taking all your time and energy,” Suiren said.

“Yes, well, that’s what happens when the work is endless. Going forward, I think I may need more assistants.”

“And more ladies-in-waiting, I might add.”

Jinshi’s milk mother was on the cusp of old age, and she sometimes remarked how the years weighed upon her. He would have liked to hire some ladies-in-waiting, but his circumstances being what they were, it wasn’t easy.

“Ah, how I wish Maomao would come back!” Suiren said.

You and me both, Jinshi thought, but he only shook his head. He knew it wasn’t possible. “I’m sure she knows you’d just work her like a dog again.”

“Well, what’s the point of hiring someone who can’t do her job?” Suiren replied, her voice as sweet as her words were harsh. She could be very soft on Jinshi, but word was that every lady-in-waiting who served under her considered her a monster. “I must say, the amount of work I do every day is too much for these old bones,” she went on, accompanied by a demonstrative rubbing of her shoulders. “Oh, if only you would hurry up and take a consort, Master Jinshi, even just one, my life might be a little easier...”

Jinshi could only give a dry smile. “Don’t you worry that if I picked the wrong lady, your work would only increase?”

“No, indeed. It would make hiring new ladies-in-waiting so much simpler. It’s because they covet the position of your wife that they come after you with such fervor. Not that I imagine those types would vanish, but we could cut down on them significantly.” She sounded like she was talking about garden pests.

When Suiren began speaking of consorts, there was only one person Jinshi thought of. He knew she considered the whole idea nothing but trouble. It might have been one thing had she been the cloistered daughter of some well-to-do family, but for someone who had the means to support herself already and live her own life, being Jinshi’s consort could only be suffocating.

“Young master,” Suiren said sadly, observing Jinshi’s grim countenance. “Before I served you, I served His Majesty. I wasn’t perhaps as close to him as I am to you, but I knew him.”

“I can imagine.”

“His first consort, Lady Ah-Duo, had quite a rough time! I know she was subject to harassment from a great many women.”

Jinshi thought of the handsome lady who dressed in men’s clothes and was now in seclusion. It was hard to picture her the object of mean-spirited pranks.

“They could be terribly cruel. It was so bad that I wondered if I should try to intervene, until suddenly I discovered they had all fallen into line with her.”

Jinshi didn’t reply. So Ah-Duo had always been Ah-Duo.

“At first, when His Majesty sought Lady Ah-Duo, I thought it must be some kind of joke. She was his milk sibling, practically one of the boys. They still played games of tag until who knows when.” Yes, Jinshi had heard people say that if she’d been born a man, Ah-Duo would have been the Emperor’s right hand. “With all possible respect to Empress Gyokuyou, I must say His Majesty was deeply disappointed to realize that the one he truly wanted by his side was in no position to be there.”

“What are you getting at?” Jinshi finally said.

“Oh, nothing. Just the ramblings of an old woman. I simply hoped you might choose a path that would leave you without regrets.” With that, Suiren picked up the plate, which had a lone slice of pear still on it, and left the room.

“Without regrets,” Jinshi mumbled. That would not be easy.