The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 8 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Go Sage

Jinshi heaved a sigh and looked at the Go board, populated by all its stones. He recalled what his Go instructor had said the other day.

“I have to say, I think it’s probably impossible.” The man was the Emperor’s own Go instructor, and in spite of appearances could be quite blunt. “You can’t even beat me, not once. You’ve got no hope against him.” Impassive, the Go Sage snapped a white stone onto the board.

“Grk,” was the only sound Jinshi made. What else could he say? He’d thought he’d played a pretty good game, but with one move the Sage had unraveled all of it.

He’d known perfectly well it might turn out this way: he was a jack-of-all-trades, able to do most things to some extent. But at best, he was only somewhat better than average at them. He didn’t excel in anything. Gifted he might be, but he was not a genius.

Still, it was better than doing nothing.

“You’ve got your joseki patterns down pat, I’ll give you that. But get away from the prescribed sequence, and you’ve got no more imagination than the average player. You panic when confronted with a move you’ve never seen before.”

“You don’t pull your punches, do you?”

“I seem to recall that was what you wanted.” The Sage took a bite of one of the buns Suiren had made for them. The snack might have seemed at odds with the elegance associated with the game of Go, but apparently a sweet treat was considered de rigueur among players. Thinking naturally caused a craving for sweets—or anyway, that was the logic by which a certain eccentric strategist justified his constant consumption of such treats.

For days now, ever since the Emperor had agreed to lend Jinshi his instructor, he’d spent every day after work feverishly studying Go.

Talentless.

Simplistic moves.

The dull play style of the overachiever.

Yes, the instructor had been perfectly merciless. Jinshi had said when they started that he didn’t wish the Sage to spare his feelings, and the man had taken him at his word. When Jinshi asked whether the Sage was so cruel to all his students, he replied, “I choose opponents who can’t punish me for what I say.” He was very careful.

He also knew how to motivate a person: “You expect to beat that freak playing like that?”

Jinshi picked up a black stone and placed it on the board, unsure even as he did so whether it was the right move.

He was working with the Go Sage because he’d heard he was the only man who could beat the freak strategist (a.k.a. Lakan) at the game.

“So. You’re convinced I can’t win?”

“Completely convinced. You’re much too forthcoming, Moon Prince. Far too much of a straight shooter.” Somehow, coming from the Go Sage, this didn’t sound complimentary.

“Be that as it may, I must find some way to best him.”

“And I have come here to try to teach you how to do that. But it’s absolutely hopeless.” The Go Sage munched on another bun.

“Give me any chance, any way to win—even one time out of a hundred.”

“When Lakan is at his best, even I’m lucky to beat him one out of two games. If I’m at my very best as well.”

“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning...”

The Go Sage was better at the game than Lakan; that’s why he was called the Go Sage.

“Oh, I think you do. Let me ask you this, Prince: do you think you could defeat a bear bare-handed?”

“Obviously not.”

“How about a wolf?”

“If circumstances favored me, perhaps... But it would be difficult.”

“A dog, then.”

“I think I could manage, more or less.”

It was a lesson that had been driven home for him while hunting: humans were surprisingly weak for their size. It was the use of tools that enabled them to survive; without equipment, even a stray dog might prove too much for an unarmed man.

“What would you need to be victorious?” the Go Sage asked. He placed a stone, earning another groan from Jinshi: his instructor had seen clear through him yet again.

“To emerge unharmed? A gun might seem ideal, but I’m not sure I could hit the creature. I think I’d prefer a sword, something I’m used to. Or perhaps a dagger, and gauntlets to protect my arms.”

With a sword, he would be able to hold his own, at least in a confined space. On an open field, it would be much harder. He would lure the animal somewhere its agility couldn’t help it—then he would let it get a mouthful of his forearm armor, while he went for the throat.

“Your looks may be refined, but I see you’re willing to use messy tactics if need be.”

“It wouldn’t be my preference. I’m simply not that skilled with the sword,” Jinshi replied. Basen, he would be able to do a better job. He could probably face down that bear, Jinshi figured—but even he would come out of such an encounter gravely injured.

“Hmm. In that case, I have a stratagem that might just work for you.”

“Stratagem?”

“Oh, it’s nothing special. Just a way of tilting the odds in your favor.” The Go Sage leered, and for an instant the calm, cultured aspect he presented to the world vanished entirely. “You wouldn’t have to break any rules. For the rules don’t apply to what happens off the board.”

Jinshi swallowed heavily.

The Go Sage was unequivocal: “If this method doesn’t work, you will never beat Sir Lakan so long as you live.”

“I’ve lost...”

No matter how many times he counted and recounted the territory on the board, the captured stones, he couldn’t make his numbers greater than his opponent’s. The difference was only two points—but it might as well have been a thousand.

He had pulled out a seemingly unassailable lead in the middle game. His territory had been secure, and it hadn’t seemed possible that the tide should turn. Nor had Jinshi made any obviously poor plays—and yet the honorable personage munching away at his snacks had proceeded to close the gap with blinding speed.

Basen and some bodyguards were standing nearby. It was several days after the Go tournament. Jinshi had been working away in his office when the monocled strategist had appeared with no warning.

“Let’s continue,” he’d said. Had he been simply shirking work, Jinshi might have turned him down, but it was lunchtime.

A Go board and stones were waiting at an open-air pavilion near the office, the board already arranged in the state it had been in when their game had been so rudely interrupted. A few onlookers watched from a distance, but Jinshi had no reason to send them away or to refuse this game.

Many a time since their standoff at the theater, he had considered what he might do to consolidate his advantage and seize victory. He couldn’t believe he could lose after holding such a commanding lead.

“Impossible...” Basen had said, astonished. Impossible: yes, that was the only word for it. What must it be like in that man’s head?

The Go Sage’s words rang in his ears: “You will never beat Sir Lakan so long as you live.”

Why had Jinshi’s instructor compared his opponent not to a man, but to a beast? Jinshi felt a pang of regret. A bear, a wolf, a dog: Lakan was none of these. He was a monster unto himself, a fact Jinshi had failed to appreciate.

Lakan adjusted his monocle, chugged some juice, and looked in all-around perfect health. He was getting enough sleep, and wasn’t currently exhausted by a relentless series of Go games. There was no alcohol in either his drink or his snacks, so his head was clear.

Jinshi felt unutterably low. He’d used the dirtiest of dirty tricks and he’d still lost. He wasn’t interested in putting on airs, but this simply made him feel too pathetic. If there hadn’t been an audience, he would have slumped face-first onto the board and groaned.

Jinshi marshaled his remaining dignity and tried to look unruffled. If there was one quality he felt he could boast of, it was the thick skin he’d developed during his time in the rear palace.

He had to keep his chin up. He had to act like someone who could take his licks with aplomb.

He was about to raise his head when a finger appeared on the board.

“This move, in the endgame. You should’ve played it over here,” Lakan said.

Jinshi looked at him, stunned. The freak was scratching his stubbly chin and continuing to point. “And this, here. Then white would’ve had nowhere to go...”

He was mumbling, making it hard to hear him, but he was unmistakably explicating Jinshi’s errors.

“Master Lakan, doing an analysis?” said the strategist’s aide wonderingly.

“An analysis?” The words sparked a hubbub among the onlookers.

“My honored adoptive father very rarely performs such postmortems,” said Lahan, who had appeared rather out of thin air. He must have come running when he heard the game was going to be continued, because he was slightly out of breath. “It must mean, Moon Prince, that you have his attention.” He emphasized those last words pointedly.

“Now, why’d I make this move? Hrm...” The freak seemed to be involved less in an analysis and more in a personal reflection on the game. He seemed to be talking about his crucial error; he didn’t understand why he had done it.

He remembered every move of the game, even though his brain had been addled with tiredness and fatigue and alcohol.

Jinshi could only laugh.

“In any event, that was fun,” the freak said, coming over to Jinshi. “I don’t know what you’re after, but your means were fascinating.”

And then, leaving the game board where it stood, he walked away, swinging his bottle.

Jinshi watched him go, dumbfounded. The crowd began to disperse. A few of the onlookers seemed to want to approach Jinshi, but Basen and the other bodyguards looked like they would be having none of it.

Only Lahan remained by Jinshi, just sort of standing around. Basen wasn’t best pleased by his presence, but he allowed it. He’d rarely, if ever, spoken to Lahan, but it didn’t seem like they would get along very well.

“I can only apologize that my help wasn’t enough,” Lahan said. “At least my father seemed satisfied, I suppose.”

“Satisfied,” Jinshi echoed. “With my pitiful strategy?” He gave a sarcastic smile; he had a sense he was being mocked.

“The specifics of your plan don’t matter to him. If he says it was interesting to him, then it was.”

Jinshi didn’t quite follow. Lahan sounded like him—maybe it was his blood relation to the strategist, or maybe those with such unique talents inherently understood each other.

Jinshi finally decided to voice a question that had been bothering him. “Why did Sir Lakan want to hold a Go tournament at all? To be quite honest, I should think that he would play Go as and when he wanted, whether or not there was money involved.”

“Yes, and so I suppose he would, left to his own devices.” Lahan pulled out a book—the strategist’s Go book that had started this entire craze. “This book contains a great many records of games played between my honored father and a certain woman. Some of them are as much as twenty years old—the sequences of moves were still there in my father’s memory. This from a man who can’t remember who he saw yesterday! These games are priceless to him...and there shall be no more of them. This is all that’s left.”

“Ah...”

Jinshi had a reasonable idea of who the “woman” was: a courtesan from the Verdigris House, and Maomao’s mother. The year before, Lahan had purchased her at great expense, but in spring of this year, she had died.

“There will never be another quite like her. I think my father understands that... But perhaps he was hoping that, inspired by these records of past games, someone who played something like her might appear.”

“So he was trying to resurrect the past?”

“I think not. If anything, I believe he was trying to build a bridge to the future. Or perhaps my honored father doesn’t think that far ahead.” Lahan scratched the back of his neck, suddenly uncomfortable. “I do wish he would do postgame analyses of his other matches, as he did with yours. What if the people who paid for teaching games ask for their money back?”

“Teaching... Meaning?” Jinshi said. He did recall hearing that one could pay for the privilege of playing a game against the strategist—although most of those games had been postponed on account of Lakan’s indisposition.

“We’ve spent the last several days trying to mop up those teaching games. Ugh, I don’t mind telling you, accommodating everyone’s schedules has been a nightmare. In fact, he was just playing a game against someone else, and when it was over he suddenly disappeared. Where should I find him but here?”

Hence the earlier shortness of breath.

“If I might venture a question?” Lahan said.

“Yes? What?”

“Was it the Go Sage who put that little ploy in your head, Master Jinshi?”

It wasn’t really a question. The Sage had been at the tournament; Lahan probably knew perfectly well what had happened.

“I was borrowing time that was rightfully the Emperor’s for my instruction,” Jinshi said.

“Ah. Well, that makes sense, then,” Lahan said and nodded. “My father often complains that there are only ever savory snacks on hand during his games with the Sage.”

“Ah,” said Jinshi. So the man really didn’t want to go bare-handed against a bear either.

“Now, then, I believe I’ll be on my way... Ah, one more thing,” Lahan said, and smirked a little. “Those treats you brought the other day. My honored father seems to be quite taken with them. He’d like to know how to make them—without alcohol, ideally. Also, I know how he acts, but my father does hate to be in debt.”

“He doesn’t look it.”

“It’s true. Even if he may forget the debts he owes,” Lahan said, quietly, pregnantly. Then he trotted off.

“That looked like quite a conversation. Is everything all right?” Basen asked, coming over to Jinshi looking somewhat disturbed.

“All right? We were simply chatting about the weather. Ask Suiren to write up the recipe for those snacks, would you?”

“Er, y-yes, sir.”

“Without the alcohol. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jinshi left the pavilion behind and Basen followed him, puzzled.

They found something at Jinshi’s office when they returned.

“What have we here?” Jinshi asked. Basen took off the cloth covering the object to reveal a Go board of the kind used in formulating military strategy. It was a simpler version of something in the strategist’s office—but when he saw the arrangement on it, Jinshi raised an eyebrow.

“Doesn’t like to owe favors, eh?” he muttered.

Jinshi had been a staunch advocate of the strengthening of the army because he foresaw trouble to Li’s north and west.

Baryou poked his head out from his corner of the room. “A fine job he did of rearranging things, no? He’s addressed everything you were worried about, Master Jinshi.”

“I was hoping he might feel he owed me a little more than this.”

Maamei entered the room with a sheaf of papers and immediately lit into Jinshi. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, but we still have work to do—the work left over from your little break. I do hope you’ll hurry up and finish it. There are a great many ceremonies to be held at the end of the year, so I suggest you operate on the assumption that you won’t be able to take any more vacations.”

“Yes, I know.” Jinshi smiled bitterly and resolved to do his work. There was certainly plenty of it. “Maamei,” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

Jinshi recalled that there was one other matter he still had to attend to.

“I’d like to ask you to deliver three letters for me.” He opened a drawer in his desk.

“Yes, sir. To whom?” She gave him a questioning look, and the questions only multiplied when she saw the addresses on the letters.

“As soon as possible, if you would—but in as much secrecy as you can. And have a carriage readied.”

“Yes, sir.” She was deft enough to see that this was not a matter she should pursue too closely. Instead she simply took the letters and left the room.

“I suppose it may be too soon, but so be it,” Jinshi said. He had no special talents, and if he dawdled, he would be too late. He needed to make his move before that.

Still, he really—

“...really would have liked to have him in my debt.” Jinshi let out a long sigh and sat back at his desk.