The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 8 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Expedition

Dry air brushed Jinshi’s cheeks. As it had the past several days. Still, he hadn’t been on a proper excursion since his trip out west. Watching the scenery go by as his carriage rumbled along wasn’t a terrible way to pass the time, but he couldn’t deny a desire to ride out across the fields on his own horse.

“You can just leave things here to us. Don’t worry, our world will keep turning without you for a few days,” said Maamei, who stood with her chest out proudly. Jinshi pretended he couldn’t see Baryou (whose look said Are you really leaving me here?). Instead, with Maamei’s proverbial push, he headed out to do his observations. His destination: a village where the crops had been ravaged by insects.

It meant a day and a half of riding along in a rattling carriage. In an effort to get the job done as fast as possible, Jinshi planned to change horses and drivers at each town. Despite the stiff pace he meant to set, he had at least ten people with him including his bodyguards. A relatively modest number for an expedition involving someone of Jinshi’s status, but traveling large would only make things take longer. He pressed ahead with his comparatively small band in hopes of reaching the village that much quicker.

Likewise, in order to ensure that things went smoothly, he’d decided to be a bit...demanding about who would be on his staff.

“You’re not uncomfortable simply sitting for so long, sir?”

“If you’re so worried about it, let me ride.”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

Sitting beside him was not Basen but Gaoshun. Basen was present, on horse among the guards. With apologies to him, Gaoshun was still more capable when it came to serving as Jinshi’s aide-de-camp. Hence Jinshi had borrowed him from the Emperor. It was also, as it were, Jinshi’s little revenge on His Majesty, who’d been making his own life easier by having Gaoshun do his work.

“Are you sure Baryou is going to be all right? Even with Maamei?” Jinshi asked. He was concerned. “I know he’s always been somewhat frail. I thought I’d heard he was on bed rest at home on account of an illness.”

Admittedly, it was Jinshi himself who had nonetheless pushed for Baryou to enter his service, but he quailed at the thought of the man getting sick again.

“It was only his usual complaint.” Gaoshun offered Jinshi a tangerine, already peeled—but not before he took a single segment and put it in his mouth. Jinshi wasn’t sure it was really necessary to check such a trivial thing for poison, but making the practice habitual would discourage people from thinking about trying to poison something that might slip through the cracks.

“I know the gist of his story, but perhaps you could tell me the rest?” Jinshi gave Gaoshun an inquiring look as he took a bite of fruit. It was still sour, the perfect thing to wet his dry throat.

“Yes, sir. He never got along with his supervisor in his department, to the point that Baryou ended up with a hole in his stomach. The matter climaxed with an incident of copious vomiting on the supervisor’s desk, after which Baryou was taken to the medical office and soon thereafter withdrew from his duties. That would have been about three months ago, as I recall.”

And this was the man Gaoshun claimed was going to be just fine? Jinshi had known Baryou long enough to know that he wasn’t always very comfortable around people—and that people he really didn’t get along with could, well, give him the runs.

Gaoshun must have seen the concern on Jinshi’s face, because he added placatingly, “There won’t be any trouble. Maamei is with him. Ever since she had children, she’s become a much more well-rounded person.”

“Well-rounded?” She seemed just as forceful as ever to him. She must be, to come up with an idea like foisting the eccentric strategist’s own work back on him.

“Indeed. For example, she’s stopped complaining every time I touch my grandchild—as long as I wash my hands first.”

Jinshi didn’t say anything to that. Maybe it was simply the fate of this particular daughter’s father. Gaoshun had spent many years with Maamei treating him like a cockroach.

Gaoshun had a distant look in his eyes, but as he gazed out the window he said, “There, you can see it.”

Jinshi looked, and saw a village nestled among cozy rice fields. As they got closer, he could make out rows of simple houses. One of them was bigger than the others. A sentry stood at the village gate, watching Jinshi’s party suspiciously.

“We’ll go straight to the village headman’s house. If that’s all right?”

“Summon Lihaku for me first, if you would,” said Jinshi.

Lihaku, a soldier who had the air of a friendly dog about him, never seemed particularly intimidated, even in Jinshi’s presence. More importantly, he was a man of strong character, which made him most valuable. Jinshi had once again asked for him by name to be among the guards.

“As you wish, sir.” Gaoshun called out the window for Lihaku. It might have been quicker for Jinshi to summon him personally, but it would be best if his face wasn’t seen too often. He planned to wear his mask while outside. It wouldn’t exactly make him look less suspicious, but with Gaoshun to vouch for him, he assumed even the village headman wouldn’t press too hard about it. He’d relied on Basen for something similar before, but it had all been a bit...nerve-racking.

“Yes? What do you need, Master Jinshi?” Lihaku asked, hopping easily into the still-moving carriage. He’d known Jinshi back when he had been pretending to be a eunuch and eschewed the euphemistic nickname “Moon Prince” in favor of the name Jinshi had used in the rear palace.

“You’re from the provinces, aren’t you? How does this village strike you?”

“From the provinces? Yes, sir, albeit not around here. This village, though...” Lihaku looked out at it, not quite sure what to say. “The houses look awfully sturdy for a farming hamlet. I know they might seem pretty plain from your perspective, but they’re perfectly respectable out here. I heard the insects really devastated this place, though.”

It was the exposed and weathered posts that made the houses look something less than luxurious to Jinshi.

“My grandpa told me that grasshoppers don’t just eat all the grain—they go for timbers and even textiles,” Lihaku said. They had insatiable appetites—they seemed bent on robbing the people not only of their food, but of their clothes and shelter as well.

“According to reports, the only grain that survived was whatever had been fully harvested and put in the storehouses. Virtually everything else was consumed,” Gaoshun said, reading from a piece of paper.

“It’s enough to make your head hurt, isn’t it?” Lihaku said, frowning. “Though I guess you could say we were almost lucky that it happened here and now.” The damage would have been so much worse had the swarm come in the middle of the wheat harvest, or farther south, in rice country.

“It’s hard to see from here, but I’m sure there are dead bugs all over the ground out there. It might look ugly, but they were able to keep damage to a minimum because orders had already gone out to get ready to exterminate the insects.” Lihaku shook his head and sighed. It was a somewhat familiar way to behave around a member of the Imperial family, but Jinshi knew Lihaku was aware of his place, and chose to overlook the indiscretion. The choice was as much for Jinshi’s own benefit as for Lihaku’s—it made his life easier. Gaoshun could read Jinshi’s reaction and said nothing to Lihaku. If Basen had been here, he would have been all over the other soldier, and frankly it would have been a little bit annoying.

“Well, I’ll head back out,” Lihaku said. “Master Basen’s going to give me the glaring of a lifetime otherwise.”

Before he could leave, however, the carriage came to a halt. They must have arrived at the headman’s house. Basen didn’t seem to like the fact that Jinshi valued Lihaku’s service, and the big mutt wasted no time showing himself out. As for Jinshi, he put on his mask and emerged a moment later.

Though the timbers and roof showed some signs of having been nibbled on, the headman’s house was suitably impressive. Jinshi knew because of the touch of mockery in Lihaku’s tone as he remarked, “More of a mansion than a regular house, isn’t it?”

Canals ran around the mansion, flowing to a pond that had been created in the middle of the garden. It was a fancy idea, but the conspicuous lack of greenery made it appear forlorn. Specifically, trying to dress up a rice paddy as a pond was clever—too clever by half. But Jinshi would keep that to himself.

He stood behind Gaoshun. The headman appeared at the door, wringing his hands and bowing obsequiously to Gaoshun while shooting the masked man suspicious looks. He led them inside, where Jinshi surmised, based on Lihaku’s whispers, that the interior was just as relatively sumptuous as the exterior. Lihaku might look simple, but he was actually quite sharp.

“This way, if you please,” the headman said, leading them into a room where a feast had been prepared. The food looked rather poor to Jinshi, who’d had his fair share of ornate meals in the capital, but there was every chance it was more extravagant than might have been expected from a rural village headman.

Jinshi stayed silent. Gaoshun never so much as glanced at him, yet he knew what his master would want to say. “We’ve not come to eat. Tell us about the state of your village, this minute,” he said.

“Y-Yes, sir,” said the headman. To Jinshi, who was used to Gaoshun sounding deferential, the commanding tone was bracing. Even Maomao always spoke politely to him. It could get stultifying.

The headman promptly ordered a servant to take away the meal, leaving the large table empty. The room had been thoroughly cleaned and the window offered a view of the garden. Jinshi suspected it was the headman’s pride and joy, but at the moment it was strewn with insect corpses.

The headman brought out a map of the village.

“You can skip the pleasantries. Give us the situation. As many details as you can, but keep it short,” Gaoshun said.

“Yes, sir. It started about two weeks ago...”

About two weeks ago, a black cloud had appeared on the northwestern horizon, the headman said. It had been a strange sight, a storm cloud outside the rainy season. They had soon noticed that the cloud was accompanied by a terrible buzzing. It was, in fact, no cloud, but a great swarm of grasshoppers.

The swarm reached the village and began eating all the unharvested rice in sight. The villagers fought back with torches and nets, but no matter how many they killed or caught, it never seemed to make a dent in the swarm’s numbers. They simply continued to eat, and not just the rice, but the villagers’ clothes and shoes—even their hair and skin felt the insects’ bites.

The men would catch the grasshoppers and burn them or simply kill them. The women and children tried to shelter indoors; the women would kill any bugs that got through cracks in the walls, but the children could only hunch in the corner, trembling.

The grasshoppers’ assault lasted three days and three nights.

“These are the clothes I was wearing that day,” the headman said, holding up an outfit of sturdy hemp fiber. Holes had been made clean through it—and judging by the bright colors of the fabric, it wasn’t time that had done the work. “We made insecticide, but the swarm was simply too big. We didn’t stand a chance.”

Jinshi bit his lip: so the chemicals hadn’t been enough after all.

“And then there’s this,” the headman said, going out into the garden and brushing the trunk of one of the trees. “This was covered in new leaves... But the bugs ate every last one.” He sighed deeply.

“Where are the bugs now?” Gaoshun asked.

“We killed all that we could, burned what we were able, and tried to gather the rest of the dead ones in the back of the village. Do you want to see them?”

They did. The headman led them out behind the mansion. As they went along, they started to see more dead locusts on the ground, and then the bodies began to crunch under their feet as they walked.

Jinshi remained silent as they approached the place. We’ll refrain from a detailed description; suffice to say a large hole had been dug, and a dark mound could be seen above the edge. A couple of the guards put their hands to their mouths, fighting the urge to vomit. Clearly some of the men in the detachment were not fond of insects.

“Is this all of them?” Gaoshun inquired.

“All of the ones we were able to stop,” the headman replied.

“And about how many would you say got away from you?”

“I couldn’t guess.”

Gaoshun stroked his chin. “Basen.”

He was quick to come when his father called. “Yes, sir?”

“Go to the other nearby villages and find out exactly how much damage has been done. If you take a swift horse, you should be able to get back in decent time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Basen went to ask the locals about other nearby settlements. Behind his mask, Jinshi raised his eyebrows and then let them drop again.

“Is something the matter, sir?” Gaoshun asked him quietly.

“Not exactly...”

Jinshi needed to deal with what had happened—but there was something even more important that required his attention. He asked himself what the demented apothecary would do if she were here.

Quite abruptly, he crouched down on the ground. The grasshoppers were dead and still, but he could see that their bellies were swollen. He’d heard before that locusts in swarms took on a darker coloration and their legs grew shorter. These were indeed dun-colored and plain.

Jinshi took out a small dagger. Without a word, he plunged it into the body of one of the bugs. He didn’t enjoy the sensation—but he was certain that if Maomao were here, this was what she would have done. He went about dissecting one locust after another. The villagers watched the masked man in horror, but Jinshi couldn’t afford to be bothered by what they thought of him. He lined up the carved bugs in a row.

“Those are...” Gaoshun started. He seemed to grasp what Jinshi was aiming at. Jinshi was no entomologist, but even he could guess what might have caused the stomachs to appear swollen. They were packed with what looked like long, yellow tubules.

It was autumn, and after autumn came winter. These insects wouldn’t survive the cold months—they would entrust the future to the next generation.

“Eggs?” Gaoshun whispered, and Jinshi responded with a nod. Another thing he could guess was what the egg-laden insects would do next.

“This plague isn’t over yet,” he said softly, the mask muffling his voice. “We burn this land.”

Any surviving eggs had to be destroyed with fire—or the spring wheat harvest would fall to the spawn of these locusts.