The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 11 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Weeping Wind (Part One)

It was all right. All was well, Gyoku-ou kept telling himself. Soon, all would be over. Soon, it would all be taken care of.

He felt as if a thread that had been wound around his feet were soon to be cut. Meanwhile, he was moving to slash the countless threads wound around his neck.

The nightmare that had plagued him for nearly thirty years would be dispelled.

Soon. All very soon.

He picked up a flight feather that sat on the shelf. It came from a hawk his mother had especially adored. When she died, the bird passed soon after, as if following her into the next life. He remembered his distress when she had asked him to take care of the hawk for her. He didn’t know how to care for a bird and had never expected to.

“You’ll protect this town, won’t you?” he remembered his mother saying. She was such a kind woman; she had never resented anyone in her life. His father, Gyokuen, had called her Seibo, the Western Mother, because he had wished to make her the most venerated mother in all of I-sei Province.

She had told Gyoku-ou that his name, which meant Jade Nightingale, came from a bird that lived in the lands far to the east. He wished, though, that she had named him after the eagle instead. A strong name.

“Daddy saves Mommy. Like the hero in a play!”

He wished, then, that he hadn’t been named after a weak bird like the nightingale. He wished he had a stronger name.

Just as Gyoku-ou set the feather down, there came a knock at the door.

“Enter,” he said.

“Master Gyoku-ou, there’s someone who would like an audience with you. Will you receive them?” asked his aide, coming into the room.

Gyoku-ou was in his office in the administrative building, getting changed. The discussion with his siblings had gone long, and he wanted to hurry to the ceremony. He had no time to entertain visitors.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“A man named Takubatsu, from a village to the northwest. What will you do, sir?”

The question meant: Did he want a guard in the room? Gyoku-ou was in a hurry; whatever this was, he wanted it to be over quickly. “Don’t bother with a guard. And I want you out of here too.”

Takubatsu was Gyoku-ou’s milk brother. Takubatsu’s mother had been an enslaved former Windreader. Seibo, out of compassion for a fellow tribe member, had freed the woman from slavery and brought her to her own residence. Takubatsu’s mother had been close to Seibo, and this had led to her becoming Gyoku-ou’s nursemaid. Gyoku-ou remembered his mother and his nurse looking after the bird together.

Gyoku-ou finished changing as the aide showed Takubatsu into the room. “Pardon me,” Takubatsu said and came to stand before Gyoku-ou. He was an unimposing figure, with unruly black hair and pale eyes that betrayed foreign blood in his veins. Gyoku-ou’s nursemaid had had her son before she was freed from slavery—his father had been her owner.

Takubatsu had worked at the main house along with his mother, but when his mother fell ill, he had quit his job. Gyokuen had told the nursemaid she had done well and given her some money, and she and her son had moved to a quiet farming village.

Gyoku-ou and Takubatsu hadn’t had any contact to speak of after that. Takubatsu had probably been occupied acclimating himself to his new surroundings. Gyoku-ou, for his part, was just as happy to have Takubatsu out of the picture—he’d seemed rather too much like an older brother.

According to Seibo, however, after going to the village, Gyoku-ou’s former nursemaid had grown sedentary and senile. After working herself to the bone as a slave, old age seemed to catch up with her quickly.

Takubatsu had come to ask favors of Gyokuen several times when his life grew hard, and Gyokuen gave Takubatsu work. But more and more farmers came to imitate Takubatsu, trying to borrow money from Gyoku-ou’s father. Most of them were also former slaves that his mother had freed. This, Gyoku-ou had always thought, was what it meant to return evil for good. He never ceased to be amazed by his father’s softness.

“What is it? It’s unusual for you to come yourself,” he said now, suppressing his desire to demand why Takubatsu had to come at such a busy moment. Gyokuen wasn’t even in the city.

Takubatsu might have been Gyoku-ou’s milk brother, but it had been some time since they had seen each other. To be perfectly blunt, Gyoku-ou wanted to hurry up and finish this conversation. He had no wish to even see Takubatsu’s face.

“I’m sorry to show up unannounced,” Takubatsu said. “But there’s something I simply must know.”

When had they seen each other last? Gyoku-ou had been fifteen when his nursemaid left the estate. Until then, Takubatsu, who was a year older than him, had acted like his older brother.

At the time, Gyoku-ou didn’t care, but now it rankled him to no end. Still, he couldn’t summon the motivation to shout and bluster. He would handle this like an adult.

“Let’s be frank with each other. I happen to be busy. I have a state ceremony to attend in a few minutes,” Gyoku-ou said.

“Then in the spirit of frankness, I’ll simply ask: Do you mean to go to war with Shaoh?” Takubatsu glared at him.

“If that turns out to be the only option, then yes. We have to,” Gyoku-ou replied, adjusting his collar as he spoke.

“But you’re the one who put us in that position! Why? Tell me that! You always used to say that you wanted to be just like Master Gyokuen—to go to other places, build relationships with other people, help the business thrive. You wanted to help the western capital become great! You have children, grandchildren. You want to put your family in danger? Because that’s what you’ll be doing if you start a war!”

Takubatsu was shouting. Gyoku-ou’s milk brother. He’d always looked so large to Gyoku-ou—but now he seemed small and shabby. His mother’s decline had left him unable to get a decent job, which left him poor, and so he had come to Gyoku-ou’s father to wheedle and beg. Gyoku-ou had thought perhaps he’d come today to do it again, but no. This was what he wanted to talk about?

“Yes, I did—but as you say, that was the past. And also as you say, my first duty must be to protect my family.”

Takubatsu was talking about the halcyon days of Gyoku-ou’s youth, when the sky was always blue and no doubt had troubled him.

“As you can see, the western capital is in danger. The people are exhausted by the ravages of the insect swarm. If I am to supply what they lack, some sacrifice must be made, must it not?”

“It’s our leaders’ job to avoid precisely such sacrifices! If Master Gyokuen were here, he would be searching for some other way—any other way. Have you searched? Even the honored Imperial younger brother has done his part!”

Gyoku-ou found Takubatsu’s voice grating. The man had colicky hair and pale eyes. Signs of foreign blood. There was nothing about Takubatsu that Gyoku-ou liked—not the way he looked, not the way he acted.

“That is not your concern. I told you, I have business to attend to. I’m going to be part of a state ceremony. I’m out of time to entertain you.”

“A state ceremony where you’ll whip the people into a war frenzy, no doubt. It was always one of your greatest talents—give you a stage, and you could sway any audience. Just as our younger brothers and sisters looked shaken earlier.”

“Shut up!” Gyoku-ou bellowed in spite of himself. He had to be careful. The bureaucrats had left the two of them alone, but they might come in if they heard shouting. He couldn’t have that.

“Of course it’s my concern. I’m your older brother.”

Gyoku-ou regarded Takubatsu with an absolute chill in his eyes.

He couldn’t have his aides hearing talk like that. No one could.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Milk brothers we may be, yes. If you want to go around playing at being the elder, I can smile and play along. But you are not my older brother.”

“I know you wish I weren’t,” Takubatsu said slowly. “Master Gyokuen and Lady Seibo both raised you that way. And I’m sure my own mother agreed with them.”

Takubatsu threw a book on the table, a weathered lump of sheepskin parchment. It was a family register. Obviously quite an old one—decades old, perhaps. Gyoku-ou’s milk brother began flipping the pages.

“Too bad for you it’s all written right here.”

Seibo’s name was there. Listed as her child was a name Gyoku-ou didn’t recognize. They had been born, however, in the same year as Gyoku-ou.

“The story was that my mother left Master Gyokuen’s household because she was sick. But it was only a cover. Master Gyokuen put us out of his house in order to hide me and my mother.” The words came easily now, smoothly. “I’m told I was the son of a Shaohnese merchant. The man lost his children to sickness and accidents, one after another, and when his family was all gone, he recalled a child he’d had with a forgotten slave.”

Gyoku-ou was silent. He had a ceremony to get to, but he couldn’t leave this man alone while he was taking his little trip down memory lane.

“Eventually that merchant found his way to Master Gyokuen, didn’t he? Did you think nothing when you saw him?”

Gyoku-ou didn’t answer. It had been a few days after Takubatsu and his mother had left. A foreign man Gyoku-ou had never seen before came to the mansion and had taken Gyoku-ou by the shoulders. He spoke in rapid Shaohnese; Gyoku-ou had some trouble following him, but he could tell the man was exclaiming, “My son! My son!”

This foreign man had red hair and pale-green eyes. His eye color much resembled Takubatsu’s, as did his unruly hair. But his facial features and his sturdy build were the spitting image of an older Gyoku-ou.

The foreigner had mistaken Gyoku-ou for Takubatsu. Before Gyoku-ou could push the man away, Seibo was between them. She hugged Gyoku-ou close and gave the foreign man a fearful look.

Gyoku-ou had heard that his mother was a former Windreader. He’d heard that she had left her life on the plains to join his father in doing business—and that she freed former members of the tribe who had been enslaved.

But that was wrong. Those steps were out of order.

It was Gyokuen who had freed the Windreader slaves, including Seibo and Gyoku-ou’s nurse mother. Then, Seibo had become Gyokuen’s wife and begun doing business with him.

As slaves, she and the nursemaid had been owned by the same man. When Gyokuen had taken her in, Seibo had already been with child by a foreign father. The foreigner, never knowing this, sold his slave, Seibo, to Gyokuen.

“You and I, Gyoku-ou, are sons of the same father,” Takubatsu said. He sounded so calm, when Gyoku-ou didn’t want to hear this—but even plugging his ears would not be enough to block out the truth. “My mother told me everything. I’m sure she meant to take the secret to her grave, if she hadn’t gone senile. I’m sure she never meant to speak of your true father. I believe she truly was overjoyed by Master Gyokuen and Lady Seibo’s marriage.”

Takubatsu’s mother had revealed how Gyokuen and Seibo had known each other all along, and indeed had been engaged to be married. Then another tribe had attacked, and Seibo and Gyoku-ou’s milk mother had been sold into slavery. Their master had helped himself to his slaves, the nursemaid giving birth to Takubatsu and Seibo becoming pregnant with Gyoku-ou. Gyokuen had bought the slaves, giving them decent work and a place to live. Gyokuen had sought Seibo’s hand in marriage, but she refused him, on the grounds that she was already pregnant.

“This is your true name,” Takubatsu said.

In order to take up residence in I-sei Province, it was necessary to establish a family register, which would be kept at the administrative office in the western capital, overseen by the Yi clan.

Gyokuen promised Seibo that even if the child was not his by blood, he would raise it as if it were. She gave in, and the boy was renamed Gyoku-ou.

It was then that the nursemaid began working in Gyokuen’s household, and Takubatsu became Gyoku-ou’s milk brother.

Gyoku-ou had been so young that he didn’t remember any of this.

He clawed at his knees under the table. He knew. He knew all of it. He didn’t need Takubatsu to tell him—Gyoku-ou knew the truth. And still, he had to be Gyokuen’s eldest son.

Righteousness was with his father. Justice in the form of protecting the western capital. It was what Seibo had wanted. To accomplish it, Gyokuen’s eldest son, Gyoku-ou, had to be perfect.

The evil necessary to attain Gyokuen’s justice? Compared to other leaders, it was hardly evil at all. Gyoku-ou’s father was simply that good a man.

Gyoku-ou remembered how the former slaves failed at the unfamiliar practice of farming, again and again, and came to his father for money. Gyokuen, ever kind, lent it to them. What they couldn’t repay, he allowed them to pay off by working in his fields at the harvest. It was as gentle a loan as had ever been offered. In fact, considering the time and effort necessary to teach them, the borrowers came out ahead. Yet in spite of this, Gyoku-ou’s father was never greedy. Perhaps a man with deep pockets could simply, literally afford to help others like this.

Even then, there were limits to what could be permitted. They were broken by the first slaves Gyokuen had freed. People who knew about Gyoku-ou’s origins.

As they say, the quiet pheasant is not shot.

Gyokuen truly loved Gyoku-ou. Those audacious enough to try to threaten him disappeared one by one. Be they former slaves, or be they members of the Windreader tribe who knew Seibo, they vanished. They had to. The Jade must remain unblemished.

If Gyoku-ou was to succeed his father, then anyone who stood in the way must be eliminated.

“Where exactly did you get this register?”

“Big Lin had it hidden. I got it from him.”

Takubatsu seemed to be talking about something that had stirred up the household some time ago. Even Gyoku-ou had heard about it.

“The so-called Small Lin, the one who disappeared—that was you? That means you’ve been working on this for a while. But why?”

After a moment, Takubatsu said, “Master Gyokuen asked me to. He said that if Big Lin seemed to be hiding any papers from long ago, to let him know. He told me to burn anything I found. That was why he periodically called me here.”

Now it all made sense. “I see,” Gyoku-ou said.

Gyokuen had, as ever, had his son’s interests at heart. He’d given Gyoku-ou hell for what he’d done to the Yi clan those seventeen years ago, but even then he hadn’t disinherited him. Gyoku-ou worked on Gyokuen’s behalf. So that the people would venerate him, so that charity could be given to the weak, so that everyone would see him as a hero upon whom they could rely.

Gyoku-ou knew his father would forgive what he did. For Gyoku-ou, who would take over from his father, was the perfect politician, unblemished, always thinking of what would help the western capital thrive.

That was how he knew that what he was doing now was right.

“If you really care about the western capital, please, stop this nonsense about attacking other countries,” Takubatsu said. “If you won’t...”

He took a knife from the folds of his robe.

Gyoku-ou didn’t so much as take a step back. However, he couldn’t spend any more time on this matter. He forced his coursing blood to cool and let out a great sigh. “Very well,” he said. “I won’t do anything.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes. But only let me go to this ceremony. If I don’t appear, the mood will go sour. I don’t want to damage the Imperial younger brother’s reputation.”

“Yes... Very well. But I’m going to keep this family register close. I fully intend to raise the matter with Master Gyokuen.”

With that, Takubatsu put the knife on the table and picked up the register instead. Gyoku-ou trusted that he wouldn’t tell anyone what he knew.

“I want you to know one thing, Takubatsu. For the western capital, for I-sei Province, there is nothing I won’t do.”

“I know that. You always told me how much you wanted to be a great man like Master Gyokuen.” Takubatsu actually smiled.

“Exactly.”

“To you, he is a noble father—and I, too, see him as a father I can respect more than anyone else.”

Gyoku-ou didn’t speak, but at that, a thread snapped within him. He’d meant to remain calm at this moment no matter what happened. But it was bad enough for Takubatsu to call Gyoku-ou his younger brother. Now he called Gyokuen his father.

Gyoku-ou had to be Gyokuen’s eldest son. Had to be his pride, the leader of the western capital...

“Hrngh!” Takubatsu exclaimed.

Before Gyoku-ou knew what had happened, he realized there was a knife in his right hand and a sheathe in his left. Something slick ran along his palm.

“Wh... Why?” Takubatsu’s eyes were wide, and bloody foam dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His blood poured down the table and onto the floor; the family register he’d been holding dropped from his hands and into the red pool.

“Because you’re in my way.”

With the knife still lodged in Takubatsu, Gyoku-ou’s mind turned to the events of the past.

How he’d wished to be like his father, longed for his father to validate him.

Gyokuen loomed so large in his mind. Gyoku-ou had grown large too—but it wasn’t the same.

At first, he hadn’t much minded.

Gyokuen and Seibo had handled business together, and the family had been surrounded by servants. Gyokuen was a brilliant businessman, and Seibo was every bit as sharp as him. A hugely capable woman, she would find out what he needed, and then she would act to get it.

Gyoku-ou had wanted for nothing in his upbringing. Only, when he was five years old, another woman and her daughter came to live with them.

Gyokuen fawned over to the new child—a little sister to Gyoku-ou, still just two years old. Seibo was nearly as smitten as her husband. The new woman was also kind to Gyoku-ou.

Two years after that, a third woman arrived, bringing a little brother.

Then there was a fourth and a fifth...

The family got bigger and bigger. Each time it did, Gyoku-ou worried. To him, it felt like a jar full of honey being gradually diluted with water.

Gyokuen always picked intelligent women. One was a master of horsemanship, another skilled in arithmetic. Each of them passed on their particular talents to their offspring. The women supported Gyoku-ou’s father, and their children in turn helped them.

Through the bonds of family, the newly arrived You household became great in the western capital. At the same time, Gyoku-ou felt the bond joining him to Gyokuen weakening.

Yet it proved otherwise. Gyokuen chose Gyoku-ou for his successor. Seibo was still Gyokuen’s official wife; the other women were only consorts. Surely, it was only Gyoku-ou who could rule the western capital as Gyokuen had. Not his younger brothers or sisters.

Even after he discovered that he was not Gyokuen’s real son, Gyoku-ou maintained his equanimity. So what if they weren’t connected by blood? Gyokuen valued Gyoku-ou most of all. He couldn’t have cared more for him if he’d been his own flesh and blood.

So it was that Gyoku-ou was able to be kind and gentle to his younger siblings. Tolerant of them. Gyoku-ou alone was like a cuckoo’s chick, a different creature from his brothers and sisters, but so long as his father treated him as his eldest son, Gyoku-ou meant to play the part of the elder brother to the hilt.

The very last mother and child that Gyokuen welcomed into his house, however, Gyoku-ou could not tolerate. They had red hair and pale-green eyes—just like the master who had tormented Seibo when she was a slave.

Bit by bit the curses overflowed, the way ink might stain a piece of parchment.

The patter of blood dripping to the floor brought Gyoku-ou back to reality.

“...oku...o...” Takubatsu looked at him with bloodshot eyes and said something, his voice a whisper, but Gyoku-ou couldn’t hear it.

Gyoku-ou flipped the knife around in his hand and gutted Takubatsu.

Unable to speak anymore, he only glared at Gyoku-ou with baleful eyes.

“One final mercy for a milk brother,” Gyoku-ou said, and then he pulled the knife out before driving it past Takubatsu’s ribs and into his heart. Takubatsu groaned, twitched, and died.

The knife had belonged to Takubatsu. He’d tried to attack Gyoku-ou, only to meet his end by his own weapon. Yes, that would do for a scenario.

Gyoku-ou picked up the family register, wrapped it in a cloth, and placed it in a drawer.

He was right—someone had heard the shouting. There was a rush of footsteps that stopped outside the door, followed by a knock.

“Master Gyoku-ou? Is everything all right?” a voice asked.

“Come in,” he said.

“M—Master Gyoku-ou?!”

It wasn’t his aide who entered, but Rikuson. He’d been at the conference with them—he must have come to check on Gyoku-ou when he was running late.

“What in the world happened here?” Rikuson asked, maintaining an air of calm despite his obvious shock. This was the man that Gyoku-ou’s father had sent him from the royal capital to be his adjutant. He knew enough not to immediately make a scene.

“You’re telling me you can’t guess?” Gyoku-ou asked.

“This man... He’s the one who sought an audience with you a few minutes ago, isn’t he?”

Rikuson must have seen Takubatsu when he spoke to the aide.

“That’s right. He was my milk brother, in fact, so I indulged him. He came to beg for money, but when he saw he couldn’t wheedle anything out of me, he became enraged.” Gyoku-ou showed him Takubatsu’s knife.

“You did this, sir?”

“Yes. What, you think the likes of him could overpower me?”

Gyoku-ou’s face was still twitching. Takubatsu had brought this upon himself. Talking as if he and not Gyoku-ou were Gyokuen’s eldest son.

Gyoku-ou placed the knife on the table. He would have to change quickly and get some perfume to cover the smell of blood.

“Not at all, Master Gyoku-ou. Your strength he could not best.” Rikuson knelt down and looked at Takubatsu’s body. Inspecting the wounds, it seemed like.

“I didn’t want to do it, but he left me no choice. I wanted to settle things amicably. I have a ceremony to attend. But he tried to stand in my way. Good riddance to him.”

Rikuson’s gaze was empty as it drifted from Takubatsu to Gyoku-ou and back. “Yes... Of course.”

Then, for a second, Gyoku-ou lost sight of Rikuson. He turned—where had he gone?—to find the other man right next to him.

“Here’s what I’ll tell everyone,” Rikuson said, and his expression was cold, except for a glint of flame deep in his eyes. What was this? “Master Gyoku-ou was attacked by a traitor...”

Suddenly, Gyoku-ou felt very warm.

“...and he met his end.”

What did that mean? Gyoku-ou was still trying to understand when he collapsed.

He found himself face-to-face with Takubatsu. There was blood all over the floor; he could hear it flowing out.

“I arrived too late to save him, but I was able to stop the traitor,” Rikuson said.

What did that mean? What was he talking about? Gyoku-ou didn’t understand. He opened his mouth to say something but found he couldn’t speak. There was a bloody foam at the corner of his mouth.

He gasped. Still no voice came out, but only a groan, like the warbling of a bird.

“Don’t make that face. Don’t pretend you don’t know why. You’ll be able to be the star.” Rikuson’s face was expressionless, but there were tears in his eyes. “The hero of a tragedy.” The tears ran down his cheeks and fell to the floor.

He couldn’t do anything—not like this. He couldn’t do anything for the western capital.

He couldn’t rule the city as his father’s son.

He couldn’t go to Shaoh and rescue the slaves, as his father had done.

He’d planned to punish the man who had put his mother through hell.

Gyoku-ou was Gyokuen’s eldest son. He wouldn’t let anyone usurp that place from him.

All he had to do was erase every last shred of evidence that Gyokuen wasn’t his father.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do to achieve that.

Even if it meant bringing down the Yi clan, which had sullied its hands with wrongdoing for the benefit of the western capital.

One day, one day when it was all gone, he was going to rule secure in Gyokuen’s place...

The clatter of a carriage, the neighing of the horses, the creak of the wheels, the shouting of the driver.

The sounds of the marketplace, the shouts of the merchants, the burble of the crowd, the laughter of children.

The dry air and exhausted earth. Though the land had scant blessings, people here lived bravely and well. He was going to make them more prosperous, richer.

Not anymore.

And so it was only then that Gyoku-ou realized something.

It was strange. Wrong.

Why, when he was meant to inherit the leadership of the western capital in Gyokuen’s place? Why, when it fell to him to help the city grow?

Why, with all that being true, would he put the western capital in danger?

He felt the threads that had bound him for so many years unraveling one by one.

Threads that had held him for decades snapped and gave way, and he was free.

Gyoku-ou’s life scattered like a string of jade beads, and the man who had cut it was right there before his eyes, on his face a mixture of hatred and pity.

Who are you?

That was the last thought Gyoku-ou had.

He would think no more, do no more.

He would not make the western capital flourish as his father had.

He had sought to be a hero, but his life ended in utter anticlimax.