The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 11 - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Meeting

How many times had Jinshi heard that something was “for his own safety”? For more than a month now he had led a life that bordered on house arrest. He wasn’t to go anywhere outside of Gyoku-en’s annex. Occasionally he might be invited to the main house or the administrative office, but at such times he would be accompanied by a panoply of soldiers. Certainly enough to keep him from doing anything unscripted.

Even from the brief glimpses he got out of his carriage as he went from one building to another, he gained a sense of the destruction—but he knew that, in any other case, it would have been much worse.

Jinshi had come to the western capital in part on the assumption that this insect plague was going to occur. He’d looked into old records about past plagues. They described entire crops annihilated, people so desperately hungry that they resorted to cannibalism. It was no exaggeration when people said that a plague of insects could destroy an entire country.

Naturally, the dissatisfaction and anger were directed chiefly at the Imperial family, which stood atop the national hierarchy. That was why Jinshi continued to submit to his confinement.

At the moment, Gyoku-ou controlled what he could do. Nobody in Jinshi’s entourage liked it—some of them even regarded Gyoku-ou as a half-baked stage hero. But Jinshi had his position to think of. As the Emperor’s younger brother, he was supposedly here to survey things in the western capital. As such, he was, ultimately, a guest. If he did anything to contravene that role, it could come back to haunt him later.

Or at least, so he had believed.

“I think you’re letting them upstage you a bit too thoroughly, Moon Prince,” Chue said, although her face betrayed nothing. She sat across from him in the carriage, which was also occupied by a bodyguard and a second lady-in-waiting, although it was neither Suiren nor Taomei.

He’d chosen his most capable people in response to a very unexpected situation. In this case, Gaoshun accompanied him as his bodyguard—that would normally be Basen’s role, but Basen would not have meshed well with the person they were going to meet. Basen was angrier than anyone at the way Jinshi had been treated in the western capital. He might be physically strong, but right now Jinshi needed someone who could keep their emotions in check.

“At this rate, people are going to think a helpless princeling bumbled in from the royal capital just to play a supporting part to Master Gyoku-ou.” With a dexterous flick, several small pieces of jade appeared between Chue’s fingers. Her hand worked busily: more emerged, then a few disappeared.

“I know,” Jinshi said. That was precisely why he was on his way to the administrative office.

Yes, Jinshi was there as a guest, but he liked to think he had done all he could for the western capital. He’d offered them provisions that he had brought specifically for that purpose, and they had promptly been distributed. He’d sent messengers to nearby villages to help ascertain the extent of the damage, and then calculated how much food each location would need based on those assessments. He was glad he had brought a capable civil official like Baryou.

The reason help had been so quick in coming from the royal capital was because Jinshi had dispatched a post-horse the moment he’d heard from Lahan’s Brother. If, at that point, nothing had happened—if there had been no swarm—it would have been easy to dismiss as a mistake on the part of the Imperial family.

The possibility of a swarm of insects had been a topic of conversation among the Emperor and some of his closest advisors and subordinates, and they had been aware of the possibility that it would strike in the western capital. But the decision to request support had fallen to Jinshi alone. He’d had no guarantees that the swarm would arrive—in which case, the supply ship might even have been refused permission to dock.

Therefore, and at the risk of sullying his own reputation, Jinshi had decided to allow Gyoku-ou to take control of events. When Gyoku-ou’s messenger had come to him shortly after the swarm arrived, Jinshi reported that he was safe and asked if it would be acceptable for him to request support from the royal capital. He also conveyed to Gyoku-ou that he would like the governor to receive the supplies.

So it was that the provisions Jinshi had prepared and procured, Gyoku-ou distributed.

Those who had come with Jinshi from the capital and knew the truth were furious, but this was the western capital. Even if Jinshi had tried to undertake the food handouts himself, he didn’t have enough people to do it. He hadn’t brought enough servants to cook and give out all that food. The quickest and best way to get it to the people who needed it was to work with Gyoku-ou.

The thing that most terrified people during a natural disaster was the uncertainty. Just being able to get a bowl of congee and a bit of rice would do much to relieve the anxiety.

Then there was the matter of market prices. Jinshi had received his share of exasperation for having no idea what things cost, but he’d been working on it the last few years and liked to think he was getting better. Even in the capital with all its wealth there were starving children who begged on the streets with empty rice bowls, or nightwalkers with their faces hidden who beckoned customers into dark corners, or parents who sold their own children to brothels. If he hadn’t seen enough of it from his carriage as he passed by, he’d witnessed more than his fill by walking those streets himself.

Jinshi had worn fine silk all his life, had always had clear soup to drink every night and congee without any fillers. Even now, he was at no risk of starving, unlike everyone else in the western capital. Why? What was it all for?

He would do best to throw away foolish pride. If Gyoku-ou wanted to stand in the limelight, then let him. Better for Jinshi to let himself be used like a tool than to stubbornly, selfishly refuse to help. In fact, perhaps it was Jinshi who was doing the using.

Let the Emperor’s younger brother be useless. Who cared if the people mocked him? Far better he be someone no one would desire to manipulate.

What would Basen think of all this? He’d be mad with rage, perhaps—but, unable to strike Jinshi in his anger, he would destroy anything else in the room that wasn’t nailed down.

Jinshi, for his part, rather liked the name Jinshi. Even if it was an identity he’d concocted to fool the eunuchs and the ladies in the Emperor’s “garden.” He preferred Jinshi, a name people could say, to Ka Zuigetsu, which none could speak. Even if he knew that making himself approachable and easy to talk to was a pointless exercise.

Time passed as he ruminated, until he found himself at his destination, the administrative office.

“’Kay! We’re here!” Chue looked outside and grinned.

Jinshi deliberately adjusted his mindset. Approachable he might be, but they were not going to take him for a fool.

He was shown to a room with a round table. Gyoku-ou and Lakan were already seated. Lakan, apparently with time to kill, was working Go problems. In a corner of the room waited bureaucrats with papers of some kind.

Gaoshun and Chue traded a look: this didn’t feel like the last time they had met Gyoku-ou, or the time before that. They were especially curious about Lakan. It wasn’t always possible to predict how the fickle genius would behave—and that made it even harder to guess why he was at this table.

“My apologies for summoning you here,” Gyoku-ou said, rising to his feet. Already, Jinshi knew it had been the right choice not to bring Basen. To have been sitting at all when a member of the Imperial family entered the room could be considered a sign of disrespect. On that note, Lakan showed no sign of looking up from his Go problems.

“What might I do for you?” Jinshi asked. “If this is about the insect swarm, I’ve brought some materials relating to the matter.”

Gaoshun produced the papers. They concerned some preliminary calculations about the food handouts that Jinshi and his people had made. They also described research into hardy crops that were quick to go from planting to harvest, food that might help provide famine relief if the provisions proved insufficient. In this, Maomao’s and Lahan’s Brother’s knowledge had proved invaluable. Finally, there were some reports about medicine and other things that would need to be supplied once the food situation was addressed.

“Yes, yes. You’ve been a great help to us in the face of this disaster, Moon Prince. I never imagined aid would come so rapidly from the central reaches.”

Well, Jinshi had. Because he had requested the support several days before mentioning the matter to Gyoku-ou. He’d been banking on the fact that the request would spend at least that long in committee when it reached the royal capital.

“Are you in need of further supplies?” Jinshi asked. He’d reviewed the reports himself. The current stock of provisions was expected to hold out only two or three months at most—but there was a limit to how much support could be provided. The real solution was to get some crops growing as quickly as they could.

“I do wish to ask you for more support, if I might. In the form of personnel.”

“Personnel? How do you mean?” True, Gyoku-ou was clearly short-staffed, but just sending in new folks willy-nilly wouldn’t solve the problem. If he wanted more farmers, it would be better to teach the locals than bring in outsiders.

“I need soldiers,” Gyoku-ou said.

“Why? You need help suppressing bandits?”

Food shortages tended to make the gulf between the haves and have-nots especially apparent. As the poor began to starve, they would soon turn to crime. The whole reason Jinshi had hurried to provide extra food was to blunt that possibility, to fill people’s stomachs before they turned to violence.

Gyoku-ou gave Jinshi a smile that verged on a leer. It was an expression one would never have seen from his father. It was the look not of a merchant but of a soldier, of a man less interested in kindness and decency than martial valor.

A bureaucrat behind Gyoku-ou handed him a large piece of paper.

“I’d like you to take a look at this,” Gyoku-ou said, and placed the paper on the table. It was a map of I-sei Province, with several areas circled in ink. Some of the circles were black and some were red, with more red circles the farther one went to the west.

“Hmm,” Lakan said thoughtfully, looking up from his Go problems. “Bandit attacks?”

“Precisely.”

They had circled everywhere an incident had taken place.

“Judging by the locations, I take it the red ones are incursions by foreign tribes.”

“Your mind is every bit as sharp as they say, sir.” Gyoku-ou looked at Lakan, visibly pleased. The strategist normally seemed like a doddering fool, but when it came to reading human behavior, he had no peer.

So the red circles were attacks believed to have been perpetrated by foreigners. True, I-sei Province was located right on the border—but even at that, the number of red circles seemed inordinately large to Jinshi. “Are they getting more frequent?” he asked.

“They are,” Gyoku-ou confirmed. “There were a good number last year as well, but this year has been particularly bad. We’d made some, ahem, modest military preparations, but there couldn’t have been a worse time for an insect plague.”

Jinshi had heard talk that conscriptions were increasing—but to hear such words from the governor’s own mouth left him speechless. Gyoku-ou was no fool.

“I think we can safely assume that the swarm has driven those reprobates into Li,” said Gyoku-ou. The swarm had covered a wide area, and the less prepared a place was, the worse the damage would be. Certainly other countries would have been hit at least as hard as their own, and possibly even worse.

“Then these soldiers you want are for the suppression of the tribes?” Jinshi asked.

There had been such an excursion some years before, but that had been merely about pushing the foreigners back—as he recalled, it hadn’t gone to I-sei province, but the western edge of Shihoku Province.

Gyoku-ou, however, said, “No,” and laid down another map. This one showed an even larger area, including Shaoh, Hokuaren, and Anan. “What would you say if we aimed here?”

He pointed squarely at Shaoh.

Jinshi looked at him. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Well, it’s as you can see on this map. The western reaches of I-sei Province have been the hardest hit. With the swarm having savaged every country around us, importing food is going to be difficult. So, what, then? Do we try to transport provisions overland?”

It would likely be impossible to transport enough food—and if attacks from the tribes weren’t enough, an invasion by a foreign country was also a real possibility. I-sei Province’s hard-won food would be stolen.

“What’s the quickest way to get provisions to this western area?” Gyoku-ou asked. “I believe it’s not by land—but by sea.”

And there sat Shaoh, a central hub of trade, well-connected to other places by both land and water. Yes, having free use of Shaoh’s harbors would certainly make it much easier to ensure a stable supply of food. Shaoh, however, would exact a heavy fee for the use of its harbors. Not to mention the likelihood that many of them were already dedicated to shoring up Shaoh’s own internal supply problems in the wake of the plague.

“You’re suggesting we start a war for this?” Jinshi kept his voice as level as he could. He had been more than ready to cede center stage to Gyoku-ou, to let him be in charge—but this was beyond the pale. In order to put food in his people’s mouths, he was proposing thievery. It would make him no different from the bandits he despised.

“Oh? You’re against the idea? I seem to recall it is you yourself, Moon Prince, who has the greatest grievance against Shaoh. The ripest reason to go to war.”

Gyoku-ou oozed confidence. Jinshi knew what he was referring to—the Shaohnese shrine maiden. He’d allowed her to die last year, and it had left Shaoh with leverage over him. Jinshi suspected, however, that Gyoku-ou did not know that the shrine maiden was in fact alive, and secretly taking refuge in Li.

“It was another Shaohnese woman who killed the shrine maiden,” Gyoku-ou said. “I grant she had been admitted to the rear palace as a consort, but surely Li can’t be held accountable for everything a woman from a foreign country might do.” Certainly, Li had come off the worst in the opinion of the wider world—and the Imperial family in particular had been embarrassed. “Shaoh used the murder of their shrine maiden to try to blackmail our country. More than reason enough to go to war, I would say. But you wouldn’t, Imperial younger brother?”

Depending on the era, a “reason to go to war” could be nearly anything. After all, simply besmirching the ruling family could get an entire clan wiped out.

Now Gyoku-ou turned to the strategist. “What do you think, Sir Lakan?”

Lakan once again stopped working his Go problems and studied the map intently. He wore the same look with which he would appraise a board game. He reached out to his aide, who gave him a bag. There were Shogi pieces inside.

“I don’t know about your reasons or excuses. All I know is how to win at Shogi,” Lakan said, and then he started arranging the pieces on the map. The aide gave Jinshi an apologetic look.

There was no malice in Lakan—but neither was there virtue. So long as something didn’t harm him or his family, he paid it no mind. If there was a chance to participate in an interesting game, however—that, he wouldn’t miss.

Jinshi saw now why Gyoku-ou had included Lakan in this conference. To the strategist, war was just a combination of his favorite games: it was a Shogi match using human pieces, and a game of Go in which you captured real territory.

“If you would stand at our head, Moon Prince, I have no doubt the people of the west would rally behind you.” This, then, was what Gyoku-ou was really aiming at with Jinshi. “Don’t you think that the people wish to behold you not merely as a visitor, but as a leader?”

There was one thing that Gyoku-ou seemed to have misunderstood. He believed Jinshi was eager for people to see him in his true guise. He was trying to flatter Jinshi’s pride as part of the Imperial family.

“If you should step forth, I would support you wholeheartedly—I would be your right hand!” Gyoku-ou said, his gaze piercing. Jinshi found himself wondering if Gyoku-ou truly was related to Gyokuyou. She, too, could be strong-willed, but she was nothing like this.

Jinshi could see it in Gyoku-ou’s eyes: he wanted war. He was eager for it.

“I may summon soldiers, but people live here.”

“Yes, they do. Our western lands are home to many loyal hearts. They may be merely farmers, but if the need were to arise, a great many of them would lend you their strength. Imagine! You leading us and Sir Lakan formulating our strategy. And finally, though I grant our power be modest, the You clan would stand to aid you.”

“The You clan?”

Gyoku-en might have started life as a merchant, but he had influence all over I-sei Province. His current power might even surpass that of the Yi, who had been destroyed seventeen years before.

Jinshi narrowed his eyes. “Tell me. Does Sir Gyoku-en know about this plan?”

There was the slightest twitch of Gyoku-ou’s eyebrow. “My father has long spoken of what we might gain if we could extend our reach into Shaoh’s territory.”

“Ahh. So he doesn’t know. And yet the whole clan of You would stand by me?”

Jinshi, drawing on his experiences in that den of women, the rear palace, remained resolutely calm. Compared to the lies women told, men’s braggadocio was rough, their facades easy to poke holes in.

“A sea route,” he said. “Yes, the benefits would be great. It does make one wish for Shaoh’s harbors, doesn’t it? But it would come at too high a price. What of the other countries with which Shaoh shares a land border? They might cease to send trade goods. And then there’s the question of attacking a nation that has made itself studiously neutral, as Shaoh has. Would we not be seen as barbarians who refused to respect the agreements? Sir Gyoku-en, I feel sure, would weigh all these things carefully in his calculations.”

Gyoku-en, as we’ve said, was a merchant at heart, and he knew better than to fixate on the profit right in front of his eyes. He would be sure to ask what he would sacrifice to gain it. Even if his son had written to him seeking his advice on this matter, Jinshi was confident that Gyoku-en would have told him that it was too soon for such a move.

Jinshi thought he caught a flicker in Gyoku-ou’s eyes at the mention of his father’s name; he thought the other man was the slightest bit shaken.

Gyoku-ou adopted a discontented air. Jinshi, meanwhile, refused to let his expression soften. The Emperor’s younger brother he might be, but he knew that even so, Gyoku-ou would view him as a young upstart, hardly half his own age. Perhaps he thought he could overwhelm Jinshi with sheer presence.

He could not.

“I’m here as a representative of the central region—but I am also His Majesty’s eyes, and it would not be fitting for the eyes to take it upon themselves to command.”

The words His Majesty sent a shiver through the bureaucrats waiting nearby. All of them hailed from the western capital—meaning that they were Gyoku-ou’s allies, and presumably viewed Jinshi as little more than an insouciant child. There was audible muttering when the child pushed back against their own master.

Gaoshun gave Jinshi the faintest of smiles. Perhaps he had a bit less heartburn now. Chue could spare them the raised thumb, though.

Gyoku-ou would not be put off so easily. “You say, then, that as the Emperor’s eyes, you cannot make decisions on your own?” Yes, definitely the right choice to leave Basen behind. He would have risen to this obvious provocation and only made things worse.

“I say this because I have decided. Have you determined that an attack upon Shaoh would do more good than harm? A merchant must be skilled at such calculations.”

Jinshi returned taunt for taunt. He knew he was very much on Gyoku-ou’s home ground here, and he had no desire to engage in a losing battle. He wished he had reinforcements at this moment. “If we attack Shaoh, I cannot imagine Hokuaren will stand quietly by.”

“That ragtag confederation of barbarians skulking in the north? What have we to fear from them?”

“Fair enough. You know, there’s an animal that can be hunted up in Hokuaren—the red deer. Its horns make an excellent energy tonic, one prepared every night for the Emperor and his ladies in the rear palace.” There was no small self-deprecation in Jinshi’s remark. He’d spent years pretending to be a eunuch. He knew how to let ridicule roll off his back. “Then there’s the tigers. They have very large ones up north—the bones are used in making wine.”

It was called, appropriately enough, tiger bone wine, and it was said to be highly nourishing.

Needless to say, Jinshi had become quite knowledgeable about medicines. “A physician with extensive experience of medicines taught me, so it was quite effective,” he said.

Strictly speaking, it hadn’t been a physician, but his point was made. Moreover, he wasn’t so sure whether the elixir had been effective or not. He’d left it to the chefs in the rear palace to serve the medicinal meals.

“Medicines and...alcohol...” Lakan muttered. “Say, Onsou. Once this war starts, will we still be able to get those things?”

“We may be able to, sir, but they’ll probably be much more expensive,” his aide replied. “Medicine tends to be scarce in times of war. It’s hard on doctors and apothecaries.”

“I see.” Lakan returned the Shogi pieces he’d been placing into the bag they came from and stood up.

Onsou was a highly capable aide-de-camp. He’d naturally understood what Jinshi was trying to communicate to Lakan.

“What seems to be the matter, Sir Lakan?” Gyoku-ou asked, puzzled.

“Sorry. I’m leaving,” Lakan said, and with that, he turned and went.

“Master Lakan, wait for me!” Onsou cried, chasing after him.

The westerners had hardly picked their jaws up off the floor when Jinshi stood as well. “It seems our strategist is in no mood for war. Perhaps I might also be on my way, then?”

Gyoku-ou said nothing. Jinshi decided to take that to mean that he could go.

“He didn’t look like he liked that very much,” Chue whispered.

Sadly for Gyoku-ou, if there was one realm in which Jinshi had far more experience than he did, it was what made Lakan tick.