The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 11 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: From the Capital

Word that a major insect plague had broken out in the western capital had arrived ten days and four hours ago. As he listened to the panicked messenger’s report, Lahan had pondered a miscalculation: the swarm had arrived at least two weeks earlier than he’d anticipated.

Now, in addition to his ordinary workload, he had to allocate support for I-sei Province as well. He would say that as a result, his work had increased by approximately forty-five percent.

“Those westerners need to get a hold of themselves,” said Colleague No. 1, who resented the endless stream of work. This man was just six centimeters taller than average for his age bracket, but he’d been shot down by three successive court ladies on the grounds that he was “too uncouth.” As the man smiled his slimy smile nearby, Lahan worked his mental abacus. He compared their countermeasures, their predicted numbers, to what they were seeing in reality; he had to figure out just how serious the miscalculation was and order more supplies to compensate. He figured there was a sixty percent chance that his superiors would tell him it was impossible.

Before Lahan was a letter ordering him to send emergency relief to the western capital. Easy for them to say—or, as the case may be, write. Those supplies didn’t come out of nowhere. But he had been told to finagle some support, and finagle he would.

“Some bugs show up and they come running to us, begging for help? There’s pathetic, and then there’s pathetic.”

Lahan tuned out Colleague No. 1’s continued grumblings as he studied the stocks in the grain stores. The Moon Prince had bolstered the stockpiles by raising the annual tribute last year, and it made their own stores the logical place to start looking for provisions to send.

“Sir Lahan, may I punch that guy?” asked Colleague No. 2. Colleague No. 1 was not aware, perhaps, that No. 2 came from I-sei Province. He had black hair and eyes, like any other full-blooded man of Kaou, but his nose was some six millimeters higher than average, the lines on his face three millimeters deeper.

“I’d rather you not. Without you here, my work will increase by another twenty percent.”

Lahan was not the type to speak ill about people—at least people other than his honored father, perhaps. The walls had ears, as the saying went—but that didn’t stop Colleague No. 1 from continuing to heap abuse on the western capital.

Lahan straightened his papers, then clapped No. 1 on the shoulder and smiled. “If that’s the way you feel, I’ll take all the paperwork relating to the insect swarm off your hands. In exchange, handle these for me.”

“Say what?”

Colleague No. 1 looked at Lahan in disbelief. The job Lahan handed him was related to a particular, high-ranking bureaucrat No. 1 was looking to buddy up to. Specifically, he was the father of the next lady this colleague had in his sights. After being relentlessly teased at the last banquet about his three consecutive romantic failures, he was getting desperate.

“Yeah, okay, fine. But you owe me one,” Colleague No. 1 said.

Lahan kept his peace; he only continued smiling. Owe him, indeed. As a matter of fact, he’d corrected Colleague No. 1’s slipshod paperwork on forty-nine separate occasions in the past. In his mind, the ledger now read forty-eight.

Colleague No. 1 went out looking very pleased, although Lahan wasn’t sure why. The particular official in question was notorious for churning through staff. Lahan had never known one of his adjuncts to last longer than three months before the man drove him out—and he was sure No. 1 didn’t have it in him to hold out even that long. Lahan would be surprised if he hadn’t quit in six days. Why six? Because every sixth day was Colleague No. 1’s day off.

Lahan himself had been driven out by that particular official, but the man’s face hadn’t shifted by any values that indicated he was truly angry. He had shouted and yelled, yes, but his voice had been steady, without the tremors that indicated unchecked emotion. Above all, Lahan was more than confident that there had been no flaws in his work. The man was perfectly welcome to be upset, but Lahan knew the official himself was the cause of his own problems, so he had spent three easy months not particularly worrying about it. Now the man was a useful connection who could give him tickets to the plays at two silver per ticket.

“A-Are you sure about that? Letting him go? He may not be the greatest guy around, but he’s our second-fastest worker after you, Lahan,” said Colleague No. 3. He served directly under Lahan, although he was two years older than his bespectacled boss. He was trying to sound respectful, but Lahan was well aware that No. 3 had no love for Colleague No. 1.

“Fast he may be, but accurate is another matter. Speaking as the one who has to correct his careless calculations, I’m better off without him. Besides, I’m tired of babysitting someone whose work is directly impacted by his own personal motivation. We’re only going to have more jobs dealing with the western capital from now on. If he decides he doesn’t care and his efficiency decreases by thirty percent, it will drag everyone else’s morale down with it.”

Lahan put some other papers in front of Colleague No. 2. “I’m sorry, but there’s a job I need to do. Can you take care of calculating the supplies to be sent to the western capital? And it won’t be only food on that boat, so give that some thought as well. I think these papers should cover everything.”

“Sure thing.” No. 2 started calculating immediately. He was twelve percent slower than Colleague No. 1, but he was thorough and made few mistakes. Moreover, knowing that he was helping his beloved homeland would increase his efficiency by thirty percent, Lahan suspected, not to mention make him more than willing to do overtime.

“All right.” Lahan knew that the trouble with the insect swarm was not over. He expected a second and a third request for emergency supplies. They would have to balance the royal capital’s reputation with its finances, not to mention the devastation occurring in the western capital. “An insect plague! It’s trouble. Trouble for all of us...”

“You don’t sound particularly troubled,” one of his subordinates said, albeit apologetically.

“Oh, I am. I just have an unfortunate habit of finding something more interesting the more trouble it causes me.”

“You’re a twisted one, sir.”

“Maybe so. Maybe so.” Lahan laughed—but he was glad that he was of a persuasion to find this engaging. To be paralyzed at the crucial moment, when something must be done, was not beautiful. Was it such a bad thing, when confronted with a disorganized pile of numbers, not to despair, but to find meaning in building order out of the chaos?

Lahan picked up his collection of documents relating to the western capital’s past. “Now, I think it’s time I got to work.”

Come evening, Colleague No. 2 was indeed doing overtime of his own volition. Lahan, however, went home. Without his honored father Lakan around, it was his job to see to the safety of the La household. To that end, he required plenty of rest. Getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night decreased his reaction speed by ten percent.

Going home, however, did not mean he was free of worries.

“Master Lahan!”

Standing by the gate of the house were two of his honored younger sister’s colleagues, a pair of young women.

Lahan adjusted his glasses just before they had the chance to slide off his nose and greeted the lovely young ladies with a smile. “Yao. En’en. Whatever seems to be the matter?”

Yao, age sixteen. From the top, her numbers were... Well, a gentleman never tells.

The other girl was En’en, age twenty. The same as Lahan’s honored younger sister, Maomao. A warning was written on her face: if he tried anything funny with Yao, she would end him.

“Whatever is the matter, indeed! I asked you to inform us if you knew anything about what was going on in the western capital, but you sent no word at all!” Yao said.

“Yes, I did say I would tell you, didn’t I?” That was if he knew anything, but as no subsequent reports had yet arrived, he didn’t feel he had anything he could say. Certainly, he had no obligation to give every detail to a couple of court ladies from a completely separate department. The number one impropriety among bureaucrats at court was horning in on someone else’s territory—but the number two impropriety was leaking information because of a woman. The mixing of public and private business was never beautiful, no matter whom you did it for.

Nonetheless, the fact remained that Lahan was standing outside his house being yelled at by two young women. It wouldn’t look good, whatever the circumstances. Lahan gave at least the outward impression of being pure and decent with women. No scandalous talk on the matter touched him, nor for that matter his father, notwithstanding the time the old man had bought out a courtesan a few years earlier.

If anything, Lahan wasn’t so much worried for himself—he was afraid unseemly rumors would start about Yao or En’en.

“You must pardon me, but perhaps we could talk inside?” he said.

“Young mistress,” En’en said urgingly to Yao.

Finally Yao said, “All right.”

“Excellent.”

Lahan led them through the mansion toward the annex. On the way, he spotted the three children his father had picked up. One stopped working and bowed to him, then the others followed suit.

“Perfect timing. Si, Wu, Liu. Get tea implements and hot water from the kitchen and bring them to the annex, won’t you? Count to ten while you’re dispensing the hot water. Use the cart to bring it over—we can’t have you burning yourselves.”

“Yes, sir,” said Si, whose name meant “Four,” as the others meant “Five” and “Six,” respectively. The other two just nodded vacantly. Lahan’s honored father couldn’t remember names particularly well, so he called the children by successive numbers. Mostly Lahan used their actual names, but these three had come from an environment where the numbers were preferable to their real names.

Si’s predecessors Yi and Er—“One” and “Two”—had become soldiers, while San—“Three”—proved adept with sums and had stayed on at the house as help. Lahan had San purchasing trade goods and keeping an eye on the markets, and expected that in due course the child would become his right hand. It was thanks to San that things were running smoothly even with Lakan away and Lahan busy with extra work because of the swarm.

Lahan showed his visitors to the annex. En’en asked if she could help with anything, but he politely declined and told them to sit and read a book for a few minutes.

His insistence on treating them as guests was born of a refusal to cede the initiative to them.

“Master Lahan, I brought the tea,” said Si.

“Thank you.”

She’d even remembered to include snacks. He took three of the baked treats and gave one to each of the children. Then he steeped the tea himself—the household employed a minimum of servants.

“That’s quite lovely,” Yao said earnestly when she tasted the drink. En’en, though, looked less satisfied. Lahan was always precise about the amount, time, and temperature when he made tea, but a professional like En’en seemed to be looking for something else.

“Let’s get right to the point,” Lahan said, setting down his cup. “To be completely frank, I don’t have any precise information I can share with you about the insect plague in the western capital.”

“Really?” Yao asked.

“It’s true. The scale of the devastation is easy enough to guess from the quantity of provisions they’re requesting. This doesn’t look like it’s going to be a short-term thing—they’ll need repeated infusions of support if there’s not to be widespread famine.”

If they did nothing, tens of thousands of people might starve to death, and if that precipitated civil unrest, many more than that might be killed or injured.

It couldn’t have been easy for a young woman brought up in the cushy life of the capital to understand what famine meant. Even to Lahan it was a somewhat remote word. He had been in debt up to his neck, but he had never faced starvation.

Famine was not beautiful. A starving man or woman, no matter how handsome or lovely they might once have been, would waste away to a dry husk, muscles and fat withering, siphoned off by hunger. Lahan had no love for withered things; even the proudest spirit that had once resided in the most beautiful body could be reduced to a ghost driven mad with hunger.

Some claimed that there were those who, though poverty-stricken, were beautiful of heart—but such people were probably just insane. Lahan wanted the world to overflow with beautiful things, and especially wanted to be surrounded by them himself. He spared no effort in achieving this desire.

“All right, well, maybe you can tell me this: Is Maomao safe?” Yao asked.

“I haven’t had word from Maomao,” he replied.

No, no word at all. But his father (or rather, judging by the handwriting, his subordinate) had written him a letter describing the current situation in brief, and it made no mention of Maomao. Lahan took that to mean she was all right.

Anyway, if Maomao wrote anything to him, it was likely to be no more than instructions on things she wanted him to procure. He was more concerned that he hadn’t received any letters from Rikuson. If communications had ceased after the swarm struck, he could understand, but the letters had stopped coming months before that.

“I seriously doubt she has time to be writing letters given how chaotic it must be. And if she does, there must be more important people to write to than some tangential busybody like me.” Lahan started counting the days since the swarm. “We’re twenty days after a major catastrophe. Or, one might say, only twenty days. Even under normal circumstances, getting a letter between the western capital and here takes two solid weeks. It’s not that strange if we haven’t heard from her yet, is it?”

“Word of the swarm arrived more than ten days ago!”

“Yes, and I guarantee you a mere court lady doesn’t have access to the same communications network as the Imperial family and the most important administrators. What, you think they’re going to send a post-horse with this anonymous girl’s message? Priorities, priorities.”

Yao was silent at that. Lahan realized that maybe he’d been a bit harsh, but he didn’t intend to change tack. He would be happy for these two to regard him as their friend’s kindly older brother, but he wouldn’t let it cause him to mix personal and public business.

En’en, at least, must understand that even if Lahan could have supplied them with information, there would be nothing much they could do with it. If it had been just her, he might have told her everything he knew. But unlike En’en, Yao was still maturing emotionally. He didn’t want her to do something rash because he had foolishly given her too many details. It was for the best—the best for Yao—that he didn’t tell her anything.

Yao clenched her fists. She understood what he was saying intellectually, but her heart was still catching up.

Lahan wasn’t doing this merely to torment her. He was simply stating the truth—it merely had the unfortunate side effect of seeming like an attack. It still caused En’en to give him a don’t-bully-my-mistress glare. Her right cheek had risen by three millimeters and had developed a slight twitch.

This, in Lahan’s opinion, was what made young ladies such trouble to deal with. It was why he only spent his time with older women—for better or worse, they had been around long enough to know how to comport themselves.

By that metric, he and his younger sister Maomao should have gotten along very well, but every time they saw each other, his toes only seemed to end up ever more grievously injured. He’d recently ordered special shoes made with steel in the toes to protect himself. They seemed perfect for craftsmen who used heavy materials, or workers who carried heavy objects, and he was already considering whether they might make a viable commercial product.

They were only going to lose more time if Yao continued to sit there stewing, so Lahan thought of something he knew she liked. “Perhaps you’d take some hasma home with you? Just a little souvenir. I got it from a friend, but there’s far too much for me to eat by myself. I could use the help. Look, it’s dark out. I’ll call you a carriage.” He let his tone become a bit more friendly as he delicately urged them to go home.

But Yao said, “Let us stay here. Please.”

As one, Lahan and En’en responded, “What?” They both looked thoroughly shocked.

“Y-Young mistress, what do you mean by that?” En’en asked.

“Exactly what I said. We’ve stayed here before, haven’t we?”

“Well, yes, but that was on the pretense of a nice, long vacation...” The right shoulder of Yao’s rational-minded servant lowered by six millimeters; she was concerned.

“I haven’t read all the medical books in this house yet. I’m not going home until I have,” Yao said.

“You could just borrow them and take a few with you!” En’en replied, now openly horrified.

Even Lahan was starting to feel tense. Why did Yao suddenly want to stay overnight at his house? Was she trying to get him back for not giving her any information? No, she didn’t sound like she was doing this maliciously. There would be more murkiness in her voice if she were.

“I let you stay here last time because there were special circumstances,” Lahan said. “Maomao helped sell the pretext too. But this time is different. Much as I wish to extend kindness to a couple of young ladies, I won’t allow myself to be merely a convenient tool.”

He tried to be a gentleman, yes, but he was not going to simply let himself be taken advantage of. He wasn’t trying to get something in exchange—but those who ravenously devoured whatever they could were decidedly not beautiful.

There was a pause, then Yao said, “You think I’m just a selfish child making silly demands.”

Lahan didn’t say anything, didn’t say yes or no, but the smile that crept across his face should have told them everything. Selfishness—with no hint of the sweet child—he had plenty of from his biological mother; and temper, his grandfather was enough for that.

“I can see you don’t think much of me, Master Lahan,” Yao said. “You think women just get what they want from men by being coy and demanding.”

“And don’t they?” he replied without thinking.

“No, they don’t. Believe it or not, I have something to bargain with.”

“What would that be?” Lahan blinked exactly three times.

“You know my uncle, don’t you?”

“Yes, I should say that I do. Vice Minister Lu, isn’t it?”

Lahan had looked into Yao’s and En’en’s backgrounds the last time they had stayed at his house. He had learned about Yao’s uncle, an important member of the Board of Rites. He knew that Vice Minister Lu had spent much of his life going from one department to another, and that he was a sharp man.

“I believe he’s in the western capital at the moment, isn’t he?” Lahan asked.

The Board of Rites was in charge of religious observances and diplomacy, and the Moon Prince would need someone with him in the western capital to help conduct religious ceremonies. No mid-level functionary would do; it had to be a high-ranking member of the board.

“Do you know why my uncle was obliged to go to the western capital?” Yao asked.

“In order to help the Moon Prince conduct any necessary observances there, I presume. Not to mention that it would be helpful, in a land as close to our borders as I-sei Province, to have someone knowledgeable about diplomacy along.”

“Both those things are true. But what if I told you that he went for the same reason as Dr. You?”

“That would tell me nothing.”

Lahan had no acquaintance with Dr. You, so he didn’t know what connection he might share with Vice Minister Lu. The only thing he knew about the good doctor was that he was among those who had gone to the western capital.

“My uncle lived in the western capital once, when he was younger. He only returned here to assume the family headship when my father died,” Yao said.

Lahan was careful not to let his expression shift. As a way of getting his attention, it wasn’t bad, not bad at all. Yao wanted him to realize that her connection with her uncle allowed her to know something important that he didn’t.

Lahan was Lakan’s adopted son, and outwardly he was a member of no particular political faction. With an eye on the future, though, he could very much see himself becoming a backer of the Emperor’s younger brother. If there was information to be had that would be of benefit to the Moon Prince, Lahan was very interested in acquiring it. But he would have to probe the matter a little more.

“I grant you have a blood relation with Vice Minister Lu, but so what? I can’t imagine a man as important as the vice minister would simply let crucial matters of state slip to anyone, even his niece.”

“Young mistress, I think it’s time we gave this up,” En’en said, distraught. Much as she adored her “young mistress,” she could see that Lahan was right.

Yao, however, ignored her. She said only one word: “Coal.”

“Coal?” Lahan repeated, trying to contextualize it, figure out exactly what significance the word held. “You mean, the rock that comes from the ground?” His eyes widened.

Yao grinned. En’en looked very confused. Apparently there were things even Yao’s omnicapable lady-in-waiting didn’t know.

“Yes, that’s it. They can mine it in the western capital.”

“They can, yes, I’ve heard that. But they don’t, because at the moment they have no use...for it...” Lahan trailed off. Coal was a charcoalized stone that burned readily despite being a rock. It produced a great deal of ash, however, and considering the time and trouble involved in getting it out of the ground, firewood and charcoal had always been seen as better alternatives—supposedly.

“My uncle was investigating the western capital’s coal. Yes, he is a capable man, but even the most brilliant minister might slip up in a moment of weakness. Say, for example, when his dead brother’s daughter had been weeping her eyes out, and he had finally comforted her and gotten her to sleep. He might speak of such a thing, never knowing that she was listening.”

Yao chuckled and looked at Lahan triumphantly.

“In other words, you were sleepy, your memories hazy. Such information would hardly be credible,” Lahan replied.

That brought Yao up short.

En’en, meanwhile, raised her hand. “Master Lahan,” she said. She drew in her chin by three centimeters, and the way she couldn’t decide where to look betrayed her hesitation. Nonetheless, she said, “Master Lu went to the western capital before the former emperor met his end, before the demise of the former emperor and the empress dowager, whom they called the empress regnant. Given what happened, then and after, wouldn’t it make sense if Master Lu had gone to investigate something?”

Lahan opened his eyes twenty percent wider than usual. He’d assumed that even if En’en knew something, she would stay quiet about it. But it seemed that seeing Yao cowed by Lahan’s attitude had been more than she could bear. En’en was a substantially more competent negotiator than Yao, but in the end, swayed by her love for her mistress, she couldn’t help saying something.

“That’s what you think Vice Minister Lu was up to?” Lahan asked.

The vice minister was forty years old. Granted, he had begun his court service under the former emperor, but a man as smart as he was would have known what to do when confronted with the choice between continuing to serve the reigning sovereign, a puppet of the empress regnant with scant life left to live, or to align himself with the heir apparent.

Like Lahan, he would have asked himself what he could do to help give the prince a freer hand at court. It didn’t take any calculations to see what would happen when the new ruler took over power from an empress regnant who had conducted puppet politics for so long. Ministers gorged on power sometimes acted as if they had forgotten there was a court hierarchy at all.

The prince—the man who now sat on the throne as Emperor—was well aware of the dangers, and had taken measures to neutralize them. The reason Lahan could say this with confidence and not as a rumor was because his honored father Lakan had lent the sovereign-to-be his aid at the time.

Lakan hadn’t hesitated to chase his own father and half-brother out in order to secure power. At the same time, he had seen to it that several hostile administrators received punitive postings to distant lands. To Lakan, even the Emperor no doubt looked like a game piece, a King.

Lahan had played his part in all this. At the time, though, he’d been so absorbed in solving the puzzle he’d been given, breaking the code, that he hadn’t stopped to think what it all meant. Looking back on it now, he wished he had kept a diary or something; then he might have been able to go back and make a comparison.

“Hrm.” He was torn. For once, he wasn’t sure what to do.

He wasn’t looking for one hundred percent confidence in the information. If it seemed even remotely likely to be useful, then he ought to try to get it. Even if the odds were, say, less than eleven percent.

Whatever the veracity of the information might be, now that he had been given the hint, “coal,” he would need to investigate. But insofar as this information warranted investigating, to throw Yao and En’en out of his house now would be to owe them something later.

At the moment, all Yao wanted was to stay here. She wasn’t even asking him for all the details about the western capital.

Part of him thought, would it really be so bad to let her stay? Yet at the same time, he harbored an anxiety he couldn’t give a name to. It was just a feeling, something too faint yet to quantify in numbers.

And Lahan decided to ignore it.

“Very well. If this annex suits you, you may stay here. However, that’s all that I’m offering. I will not provide you with any information that might be in violation of my professional duties.”

“Y-You mean it? We can stay?” Yao asked, her face growing thirty percent more cheerful than usual. En’en, by contrast, was fifty-five percent relieved and forty percent uneasy—while the remaining five percent was devoted to glowering at Lahan.

Why would she give him such a scathing look? Lahan felt very much the innocent victim here.

Later, Lahan would learn the true meaning of En’en’s glare, and he would have further cause to regret allowing Yao to stay in his home—but he couldn’t know that now. Not at this stage.