The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 7 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Aylin’s Intentions

About every ten days one of the physicians from the outside, principally Maomao’s father, would visit the rear palace. The system was simple enough. Upper consorts were seen once a month, while middle and lower consorts received exams every three months. Even this made seeing everyone something of a challenge, but if Luomen was ordered to do it, then he would have to do it.

It had been nine days since their last visit to the rear palace. Nine perfectly normal days for Maomao, other than the two court ladies keeping a constant eye on her.

If there was a problem, it was that any letters that came to her were examined. Thankfully, none of them arrived from Jinshi personally; they usually came in Gaoshun’s name. Also (not that it mattered to her), it seemed Basen was back at work. His recovery struck her as preternaturally quick, considering the severity of his wounds.

Maybe he’s just built differently. One day, she hoped she would be able to test his powers of recovery against those of other people.

A letter came from Sazen letting her know that the apothecary shop was doing just fine, although he also complained that Kokuyou was obnoxious. Yes, Maomao knew he could be obnoxiously cheerful, but Sazen would just have to live with it.

Once in a while, pictures of Maomao the cat were mixed in with the letters; these came from Chou-u. In lieu of a personal seal, Maomao’s toe beans would be pressed on the pictures in scarlet ink. The scratches on the pictures suggested she signed them under duress.

In the name of careful inspection, Yao studied one picture of the cat particularly hard. At length, she handed it regretfully back to Maomao. En’en later asked if Maomao wouldn’t give her the cat painting; Maomao suspected it would then make its way to Yao.

Yao and En’en seemed to think the “pale woman” was just a code name. It seemed to nag at En’en, but Yao didn’t pay it much mind, so En’en didn’t pursue the matter too far.

The pale woman... Maomao was almost certain it was the same person she knew as the White Lady, although she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

If it’s not... She thought of the painter she’d saved from food poisoning. His house had had a painting of a beautiful woman with white hair and red eyes, someone he claimed to have seen in the western reaches. Could that be the woman that Aylin, who herself hailed from Shaoh, was referring to?

But why the riddle, then? No, it had to be the White Lady, Maomao thought, shaking her head. Yet still the woman in the painting wouldn’t leave her mind. Could there be some sort of connection?

Her question would be answered the very next day, when they saw Aylin again.

There were not quite a hundred women in the rear palace with the rank of consort. Rumors always swirled whenever an upper consort left the rear palace, but lower-ranking consorts often departed without anyone remarking on it. Sometimes they were given in marriage to deserving officials, or returned to their families, never having been visited by the Emperor. Many of the palace women scoffed at the idea of leaving the rear palace, but it didn’t particularly bother Maomao.

Maomao, Yao, and En’en were with Luomen and the quack doctor, making the rounds of the rear palace. This was their second time on this duty. They found the room with the flower and number indicated by their tag. It belonged to a lower consort, but the door had a black cloth over it, a sign of loss indicating that the owner of the chamber had died.

“Do you suppose she was ill?” Yao asked. But this was one of the women Maomao’s father had seen on their last visit, and he hadn’t noticed anything. Which implied...

“Suicide, I suspect,” Maomao said. It wasn’t that unusual. As long as the death was obviously self-inflicted, with no signs of foul play, the rear palace hardly batted an eye. It wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence, but it was nothing to get excited over.

The ladies in the rear palace might represent every different kind of “flower,” but most of them arrived convinced of their own beauty. Many had an awfully high regard for themselves, and more than a few were driven to despair by the gulf between their expectations of the rear palace and the reality.

The group heard some ladies chattering: “They say she was addicted to alcohol.” They were so caught up in their gossip that they didn’t notice the gaggle of medical personnel standing right nearby. As soon as they spotted the white overcoats, they scurried back to their posts.

It truly is a graveyard of women... Or rather, a battlefield, Maomao thought. Those who were defeated in combat had no choice but to disappear. On some level, the maids could be said to be freer than the consorts. They might be worked like dogs, but they had a fixed term of service. If they could just hold out long enough, they would get outside the palace walls again.

Today’s plan was to visit the lower consorts’ chambers, then lastly head to Aylin’s residence. They hadn’t initially planned to see her, as they had visited her last time, but the plan had been changed because of a personal request from the lady herself. Was she not feeling well? Or was there something else she wanted to know?

First, they came to the room of a lower consort with a camellia symbol on the door.

“No, no particular problems,” said the consort, who reeked of perfume, as one of her ladies fanned her. The bountiful odor came drifting toward them, making Maomao want to scrunch up her nose. It was summer, yet amazingly, the room was shut tight, giving the smell nowhere to go.

Too bad for her. She has His Majesty’s preferred body type. Even under the consort’s robe, the collar of which was fastidiously closed, it was clear she was voluptuous. Her facial features gave her a somewhat aggressive look, but she seemed intelligent enough. Very much within the scope of their ever-energetic Emperor’s interests.

Maomao stole a glance at the quack’s notebook. It was open to a page with the name of the odiferous concubine before them, along with notes about illnesses she’d suffered in the past—not to mention how many visits she’d had from His Majesty.

I was right. She is his type.

Only one such visit was recorded. She suspected it was the thick smell of perfume that had kept him from coming back for more. The odor seemed to be something imported. It was a shame, really: a touch of it behind her ears might have been quite pleasant.

It might seem startlingly frank, even uncouth, but in the rear palace records were always kept of the Emperor’s nocturnal visits, which were required to be reported to the physician. But being required didn’t make it any less trying sometimes. Like for Empress Gyokuyou. His Majesty had sometimes visited the Jade Pavilion every third night. It wasn’t just for show—oh, it definitely wasn’t—but someone had to be posted outside the bedroom just to make sure. The duty usually fell to Hongniang, Gyokuyou’s chief lady-in-waiting, but when His Majesty came on consecutive nights or the job otherwise grew too demanding, Maomao had sometimes taken up the post.

I had the advantage of being used to this stuff from the pleasure district...

From what Maomao could deduce, the Emperor and Gyokuyou were engaged in some pretty advanced hanky-panky. Just the noises that could be heard through the wall... For Hongniang, more than thirty years old and still single, it must have been a trial.

The simple fact that they kept a tally of such things was enough to prove that you weren’t in the outside world. Maomao suspected that visits to this lower consort wouldn’t resume at this point, but the one visit she’d had appeared to have left this woman imperious and proud, though in Maomao’s eyes it only made her seem the more sad. That lone visit put the world beyond the inner palace all but out of her reach.

Maybe if it weren’t for this stink... It was so overdone, Maomao wondered if there was something wrong with the woman’s nose. In fact, it seemed there might be: the consort’s small, shapely lips kept opening; it seemed less like a tic and more like she was breathing through her mouth.

Living creatures normally breathe through their noses, like dogs and cats do—and, normally, humans. If she was breathing through her mouth, it might suggest that her nose was blocked, and if she’d had that habit since she was a child, it would have affected the alignment of her teeth.

The alignment of her teeth... Maomao mused. Her old man was just checking the woman’s mouth, evidently having had the same thought, but the woman’s teeth were more or less straight.

“Do you sneeze often?” Luomen inquired.

“I do.”

“Any stuffiness in the nose?”

“Frequently, especially from spring to early summer. And especially since coming to the rear palace.”

“Do you have trouble sleeping?”

“I could sleep just fine, if only my nose weren’t blocked up.”

Luomen scribbled some notes. The quack was simply standing and watching, so Maomao took it upon herself to grab the portable medicine chest and give it to her father. He took out something for nasal inflammation. “Try using this. Stop if it gives you trouble sleeping. You may also find yourself urinating more frequently, but I don’t think that should be an issue.” Then he added, “I think the perfume you’re currently using may not agree with you physically. If you must use it, use just a little, or consider switching to a different kind.”

“All right,” the consort said. Maybe her meekness was inspired by gratitude that he had understood about her nose.

Maomao knew that if she noticed something, her old man could hardly fail to do the same. What was more, he’d managed to tell the consort that her perfume was too heavy in the gentlest possible way. Though if he hadn’t, when her nose got better, it would probably have dawned on her just how badly she’d overdone it.

Once they left the consort’s room, Luomen began inspecting the garden, where there were colorful summer flowers everywhere. “Where did this consort come from, I wonder,” he said.

The quack flipped through his notebook. “She’s from far to the northwest, close to the desert. Oh, the climate there must be very unpleasant.”

Maomao’s old man turned slowly toward her and the other two assistants. “Well, let’s make this a teaching moment, shall we? What do you think caused the lady’s rhinitis?” His riddle was accompanied by a gentle smile. Maomao’s hand was in the process of shooting up when she saw him give her a bit of a look, and she put it back down. He wasn’t asking her so much as Yao and En’en.

Slowly, Yao put up her hand. “Is it because her room was so stuffy?” It was certainly true that her chamber was closed up tight; that was one reason the smell refused to dissipate.

It won’t have helped, Maomao thought. The room had looked clean enough, but it didn’t seem like the consort was getting much fresh air in her living quarters. And they hadn’t seen her bedroom; there was always the chance it was dusty in there.

“It’s also possible her room is unsanitary,” Yao went on. “If her sleeping area was dirty, it could breed bugs that harmed her body.”

It was possible, but Maomao didn’t think that was what was going on. That consort didn’t look like a woman who had given up on attracting His Majesty’s notice. If she was hoping for an Imperial visit, she wouldn’t fail to keep the bedchamber clean and ready. Even her overdone perfume was, as far as it went, an attempt to doll herself up. She just hadn’t known when to stop thanks to her stuffy nose.

Maomao observed the grasses and trees growing in the garden. She said the inflammation was worst from spring into early summer. She crouched down, plucking some grass growing by the edge of the path. Mugwort. Maomao knew it well; she often used it in moxibustion treatments. It was a perfectly ordinary plant around here—but not, she suspected, where the consort had come from.

As Maomao crouched there looking nonplussed, her father took the mugwort from her like she was being a little brat.

He said, “I’m sure the consort’s bedroom is in good order. No doubt she keeps it that way so it will be ready anytime His Majesty might see fit to visit her. Particularly given that she has in fact had one such visit.”

Yao looked put out to be told (if not in so many words) that she’d given the wrong answer.

Luomen, however, knew how to soothe a wounded ego. “You were focusing on the right things. Illness often follows from a lack of sanitation, especially in bedrooms.”

Now Yao seemed conflicted: praise, good, but...praise from a eunuch...good?

I would have gotten the right answer, Maomao thought. Call it something less than mature—Yao was younger than her, after all—but Maomao’s adoptive father was one of the few people whose approval she craved.

“However, sneezing can also be caused by grass and flowers like these,” Luomen went on. It wasn’t the same as having a cold; plant pollen and spores could get into the body and cause fits of sneezing or seemingly unstoppable floods of snot. “Pollen can wreak havoc in the body. Hence the sneezing.”

It was unusual for Luomen to state the facts quite so plainly when he was dealing with Maomao. It was enough to make her wonder if there was something else going on with the woman. But, no: the straightforward approach was probably easiest for Yao and En’en; even the quack was looking at Luomen with undisguised admiration.

You’re supposed to be one of the teachers! Maomao thought at him.

Yao’s hand slowly went up again. “Um... If pollen ‘wreaks havoc’ on the body, why aren’t we all sneezing?” she asked.

Luomen smiled. “A good question. Just as there are those who catch colds more easily than others, there are those whose bodies aren’t affected by pollen. It’s also possible to find your body is suddenly affected when it wasn’t before. For example, if you’re already in ill health from something else. A long journey from a far country to an unfamiliar land, for example.”

Rather like their consort.

I knew all that, Maomao pouted. Her father looked at her apologetically. Physicians were supposed to hand down cryptic pronouncements from which students had to unravel the truth for themselves, but Maomao’s father didn’t work like that. He was kind enough to explain things so that anyone could understand.

It still stung a little, but Maomao could act adult, too, even if she didn’t always like it. She forced herself to assume a neutral expression once more as they went to the next consort’s residence.

After they had seen ten or so of the other consorts, they finally came back to Aylin. Maomao found it challenging, somehow, to think of her as “Consort Aylin.” Not because she was a foreigner. (If that were the case, she would surely have faced a similar difficulty with Empress Gyokuyou.) No, Maomao had trouble with Aylin’s title for one simple reason: she didn’t believe Aylin had really come to the rear palace as a consort.

A lady-in-waiting opened the door for them, exactly as a lady-in-waiting should, and they were shown to the same room as last time. Just before they entered, Maomao felt En’en tug on her sleeve. Yes, yes, I know, she thought. Maomao was a coconspirator, but Yao would play the part of the ringleader. Maomao thought En’en would be better at thinking on her feet, but that wasn’t how things worked around here. En’en’s role was to support Yao.

The first question was when to broach the subject. Aylin’s face was red and feverish; Maomao had no idea if it was an act or a real condition, but it certainly helped explain why she had specifically asked for them, and the flush gave her face a striking beauty of its own.

God, her chest is big, Maomao thought.

Being in ill health, the consort was wearing what amounted to sleepwear. One of her ladies looked like she wanted to object about the propriety. Maomao spotted En’en discreetly comparing Aylin’s chest with Yao’s, but she could keep that to herself. Was En’en hoping to help Yao “grow” even more?

“I’ll take your pulse, then,” Luomen said politely. However ravishing the consort might look, the men here lacked the means to respond. Anyway, they were an old man and an older man, their libidos already long withered.

Luomen considered the woman’s symptoms and then prepared a medicine: she complained of some stiffness in her neck, so he made a concoction of arrowroot. “You just have a cold,” he said. “The unfamiliar environment here must be stressful.”

“Thank you very much. I was thinking after your last visit, I’m glad to discover that the phys-icians here use more than chants and charms.” Aylin wore a look of wonderment.

“Some doctors do practice that sort of medicine. It simply happens that I don’t,” Luomen said, refusing to specifically denigrate folk practices like “chants and charms.”

“Of course, there must be some.”

“If you’d prefer magical practices, I can certainly bring someone who specializes in them.”

Aylin shook her head. “No; in fact, I’ve been very pleased not to encounter any such. I once served as an apprentice shrine maiden, you know, and I would rather not find myself subjected to the rituals of another faith.”

“Ah, I hadn’t realized. Yes, if you follow the ‘shrine maiden’s faith,’ that’s certainly understandable.”

The Emperor was not cruel enough to make his women abandon their beliefs when they entered the rear palace. As long as they practiced their individual religions discreetly, he was willing to look the other way.

She abandoned her country—

But it seemed faith could not be put aside so easily.

“I’m familiar with the shrine maiden-ism of Shaoh. What will do you do during rites here?” Luomen asked, referring to the sacred observances sometimes held in the rear palace.

“It is no problem. As long as I receive per-mission to take part, I will follow the ways of my new home.”

A very flexible response, then.

Yao fidgeted as she listened to the conversation, clearly feeling she was missing her chance to talk to the consort. As it was, it seemed it might be best not to try to talk to her at all.

The mark of a good subordinate, however, is the ability to come to the rescue at such moments. The medical examination was interrupted by a distinct crack: the sound of En’en (ever expressionless) biting into one of the lightly toasted rice crackers that had been put on the table along with the tea.

“En’en!” Yao exclaimed. Since she had spoken up, there was no need for Luomen or the quack to intervene—but Maomao knew En’en would never normally do something so impolite.

“My sincere apologies. They simply looked so enticing,” En’en said.

“Do not worry. That is why they are there,” Aylin said, still looking languid.

At that, En’en glanced at Yao as if to say this was what she had been waiting for. It was only then that Yao finally seemed to realize what the other woman was doing. “Why yes, they do look delicious,” she said. “Almost as good as those treats you gave us the last time we saw you. They were most unusual, those pale-colored cookies.”

The cookies had indeed been a strange shape, but they hadn’t been pale. Yao was trying to communicate that they had cracked the code.

Aylin’s expression didn’t change, although some of the ladies-in-waiting looked perplexed. Perhaps they hadn’t known about the papers in the cookies, or perhaps they’d been told they were simple fortunes.

“I’m so glad you enjoyed them. Baking treats happens to be a hobby of mine. I made more for today. I do hope you’ll take them with you,” Aylin said, a slight smile crossing her face. The smile didn’t reveal whether or not she had understood Yao’s meaning—but the young women couldn’t wait to find out what kinds of snacks the consort would give them this time. 

The treats Aylin gave them on this occasion contained no puzzles, as the three medical assistants confirmed when they got together to see what they had after their work in the rear palace was over. Instead the treats contained a letter, telling them to go to a restaurant near the dormitory. The fact that the same letter was in all three of their cookies suggested that they had been right to think they needed to pass the test together or not at all.

Many of the establishments in the northern part of the capital city were luxurious places, and the location named in the letters was a fancy drinking establishment. A lot of government bureaucrats spent time there, so there were plenty of private rooms available.

“Is it just me, or do we look out of place here?” Yao said. This was, again, a drinking establishment—a very fancy one—and despite her family’s wealth, it wasn’t the sort of place Yao, at just fifteen, was very familiar with.

It also wasn’t the sort of place three women usually went alone. Most of the patrons were men, the waitresses the only women in sight. The average person would probably have advised the girls to keep their distance, although Maomao, well acquainted with drinking and drunkards from the pleasure district, was unbothered by the cold looks their party received. At least no one seemed too drunk to think straight.

They were greeted by a waitress in fancy makeup. “Can I help you?” she asked, polite but obviously not regarding them as potential customers. Maybe she thought they were there to look for a job.

“We’re customers from the west,” Maomao said, exactly as the letters had instructed. The waitress took the hint and led them inside.

No sooner were they settled in their private room than Maomao felt herself go limp as the tension left her body.

“Hullo,” said a small, tousle-haired, spectacles-wearing man sipping some fruit liquor—no, more likely fruit juice. It was the freak strategist’s nephew and adopted son, Lahan. There was another man there as well, someone Lahan occasionally brought along as a bodyguard, but Maomao had never known him to say a word and figured it was safe to ignore him.

“Why, you’re—”

“Do you know this man?”

En’en had met Lahan when the strategist had collapsed the other day, but Yao had been away from the medical office at the time and didn’t know who he was.

“I’m so glad you made it here safely. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come,” Lahan said.

“I’m going home,” Maomao said, spinning on her heel.

Yao grabbed her arm. “Why are you going home? Do you know him too?” The question mark was practically visible over her head as she looked from Maomao to Lahan and back.

“This is Master Lahan,” En’en offered. “Maomao is Grand Commandant Kan’s daughter, you see.”

The freak strategist’s full title! She really had done her homework, Maomao realized, scowling bitterly. She resorted to her usual insistence: “He’s a stranger.”

Meanwhile, Lahan seemed entirely unbothered. “I’m impressed you know that,” he said to En’en with genuine admiration.

“I would naturally investigate anyone who insisted on hanging around so often. Even if there does appear to be a certain tacit approval of his actions.”

Damn freak! Maomao cursed the strategist silently. He was only ever a nuisance. She’d heard that since he’d managed to give himself food poisoning, his subordinates had been watching him closely at every meal.

“And this man is the Grand Commandant’s son,” En’en said.

“So he’s your older brother?” Yao said, giving Maomao a curious look.

“That’s right,” Lahan said.

“That’s absolutely wrong,” Maomao said.

“Which is it?!” Yao said. Maomao was bent on keeping Yao, at least, out of Lahan’s web. But the other woman went on, “So you’ve had someone on the inside all along.” She was under a misunderstanding, but not the one Maomao had feared. And who could blame her, when she found out that an acquaintance of Maomao’s was the ringleader?

It was Lahan who intervened. “Now that is wrong. We have no use for anyone who can’t solve a riddle as simple as that one, even if I am related to them. After all, if we sent someone without a working brain into this situation, it would only make things more dangerous for everyone.” He squinted his already fox-like eyes behind his large, round spectacles.

Maomao knew he wasn’t simply standing up for her; it was what he really thought. This was the man who had betrayed his own family and chased them out of their house. This was Lahan.

There was a crook to En’en’s lips; Maomao thought it was a smile, but if so, it was a distinctly sarcastic one. Maybe she’d heard rumors about Lahan, what kind of person he was. She certainly seemed more wise to the ways of the world than Yao, who was still cocking her head in confusion.

Maybe she has to be so she can help her more-sheltered mistress...

She was the right woman for the job, then.

“But why stand around to talk when we can do it while we eat? Sit, sit, and let’s have a pleasant meal.”

Maomao, still openly upset, took a seat. By dint of his social standing, the meal was presumably Lahan’s treat. She would take the opportunity to order the most expensive thing on the menu.

“So there you have it,” Lahan said, and although his tone was light, the content of his explanation sounded very troublesome indeed. It certainly warranted reserving a private VIP room at a lavish restaurant. What he’d said couldn’t go beyond these walls.

In outline, the story went something like this: Lahan had been involved in getting Aylin into the rear palace. That much, Maomao had known. Aylin claimed a political enemy of hers was making a bid for power and that she was in danger of her life. Her request for Li to export food to Shaoh had been, after a fashion, an attempt to give herself a lifeline: in times of famine, having a ready supply of food could make you powerful. She had probably hoped that would be a major card for her to play.

“But ultimately, even that didn’t faze her enemies,” Lahan said. The populace could be frightening if angered, but no weapon was powerful enough if you were assassinated before you could use it. So instead, Aylin had elected to enter Li’s rear palace. As such, outwardly, Li wasn’t offering her political asylum; in fact, it could even appear to be strengthening its bonds with a neighboring nation.

Maomao looked puzzled.

“Question?” Lahan asked.

“No, just thinking that women seem to do exceptionally well for themselves in Shaoh.”

A situation like Aylin’s would be almost unthinkable in Li, simply because outside the rear palace itself, a woman couldn’t hope to rise higher in the hierarchy than a man. Even serving as a court lady was, in most cases, ultimately undertaken in order to make oneself a more attractive bride. Women might be important tools for their use in political marriages, true enough, but rarely would they have the influence that Aylin seemed to.

“What, didn’t you know that?” Yao chuckled, sounding pleased to know something Maomao didn’t for once. She was obviously itching to explain. Maomao was increasingly starting to see the charm in her personality. “The country of Shaoh is supported by two pillars,” Yao said. “One is the king, and the other is the shrine maiden.”

Maomao had heard tell of Shaoh’s shrine maiden, at least a little bit. Her prognostications could influence the country’s politics, and that was what the faith sometimes called “shrine maiden-ism” consisted of.

“That’s right. You know your stuff,” Lahan said. Yao and En’en were both pretty young ladies, and he was no doubt happy to be talking to them.

“Traditionally, the king has the final word in political matters, because the shrine maiden has always been a young woman, mostly an image or symbol. But in recent years that’s changed,” Yao said. In the past, shrine maidens had rarely served more than a few years—maybe a decade at most—for by definition, only a girl who hadn’t begun to menstruate could serve as shrine maiden. “The current shrine maiden, however, is in her forties now, older than the king, which means she can stick her nose where a shrine maiden wouldn’t have dared before. In fact, it’s made women all over Shaoh more politically influential.”

“I see,” Maomao said. Again, she’d already known parts of this story, but this put everything in a new light.

Forty years old and still her menarche hasn’t begun? That definitely got Maomao’s attention. It was very unusual, but not unheard of; it could be caused by a number of things. Maomao didn’t know how the shrine maiden felt about the situation, but as for her, she was intensely interested. “Has that ever happened before?” she asked.

“The answer to that question bears directly on why we’re here, so let me pick up the story there,” Lahan said, munching on a thin-sliced pig’s ear. “There have been cases in the past. When their visitor fails to arrive, however, the next shrine maiden has always been appointed after the current one turns twenty.”

That made sense from both a political and a symbolic perspective. “So how has the current shrine maiden managed to stay in office so long?” Maomao asked.

“She’s special.”

Lahan took a piece of paper from the folds of his robe. It looked like a classical painting of a beautiful woman, except that the hair seemed to be only sketched in. It resembled the picture the artist had drawn of the woman with white hair and red eyes.

“The current shrine maiden is albino. There are several conditions governing which children might be chosen to be shrine maidens, but the most revered candidates of all are ‘pale’ children.”

An albino: rare even among shrine maidens. So venerated that she could still occupy her position in spite of all precedent. Maomao didn’t say anything, but the dots finally connected for her.

Do you want to know the truth of the pale woman?

She thought of the painting of the pale beauty the artist had encountered in the west. Could she have been this shrine maiden? She would have been just the right age at the time.

Albino people were said to lack whatever it was that would ordinarily have given their skin color. Sometimes “pale” children were born through sheer chance, but some bloodlines were more prone to producing them than others. Although they were supposed to be as rare in Shaoh as they were in Li.

“The shrine maiden is currently indisposed with an illness,” Lahan said. “She’s come to our country for medical treatment, but no man, not even a eunuch, is allowed to lay hands on her.”

“Hence court ladies serving as medical assistants.”

“Hence court ladies, yes. The shrine maiden coming from where she does, there’s a long trip involved, not to mention the distinct possibility of causing an international incident if anything goes awry. We needed people who know how to improvise.”

That explained why the test had taken such an odd form.

“What if none of us had passed the test?” En’en said.

“Then we would simply have had to ask someone else to go. A last resort, of course.”

Maomao was pondering who they might have sent when she thought of a lovely person who looked quite good in men’s clothes. With the exception of her parentage, Suirei was the most suitable person in every respect. She was probably considered a last resort because she was, in the end, a prisoner.

“If I may say so, Consort Aylin seemed rather worried about the shrine maiden and her illness. Would that be because the maiden is a check on her political enemies?” En’en said.

“You’ve got the general idea,” Lahan replied. Well, that was ambiguous. It was true that there was nothing specifically self-contradictory about what Lahan had said, but nonetheless something nagged at Maomao. The most successful lies were wrapped around a kernel of truth. She suspected that while Lahan wasn’t lying to them, he wasn’t telling the whole truth either.

Should I try to press the point? Maomao thought. But no: if she wasn’t careful, En’en or even Yao might catch on. Instead, she decided to stay silent for the moment.