The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Emergency Patient, Emergency Situation

Autumn wore on, and the harvest took place on the cusp of winter. Many plants leave their seeds just before winter; even in the capital, it was considered to be rice-harvesting season.

That made it a very busy time for farmers—but they weren’t the only ones.

“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao, could you give us some help with this?”

Chue appeared in Maomao’s room and dropped a pile of papers on her desk with a thud. They turned out to be records of harvest yields.

“Miss Chue, Miss Chue, why are you bringing these to me?”

“Good question! It’s on the Moon Prince’s orders. He said, ‘Is there no one who’s good with numbers? There’s simply too much of this,’ so I took some of them. It would be very convenient if Lahan’s Brother’s brother were here, but he’s not, so you’ll have to do.”

Lahan’s Brother’s brother. That would work out to Lahan.

Voicing such elaborate quips seemed like too much work, so Maomao let it go. “So you came to me instead,” she said. “You know I have other work to do, right?”

“You mean growing your herbs? Or do you mean mixing the medicines and pressing them into little balls? There are a million people who could do that, Miss Maomao. As long as there’s nothing only you can handle—sewing up wounds, treating illnesses of unknown origin, maybe surgery—then I don’t think you have to work so very hard.”

“I’m not sure that justifies dumping bureaucrats’ work on me.”

“There’s no one else who can do it. You’ve got to pitch in!” Chue drawled. “When it comes to arithmetical work, you have to have a certain amount of trust in the person you entrust it to, don’t you?”

“And do you? I mean, trust me to do it?”

“Yes, yes. These are all papers of decently sized necessity that I think should be just fine with you.”

“Could you please not call the necessity...decently sized?”

“Er, why not?” Chue tilted her head, puzzled. But then she said, “I think it might be quite interesting to compare them with last year’s harvest numbers.” Thud. She deposited another stack of papers.

“Meaning you want me to compare this year’s numbers with last year’s and find out how short we are on the harvest.”

“I love how you’re always so quick on the uptake, Miss Maomao!” Chue stuck out her tongue playfully. “I’ll go ahead and give instructions to everyone outside.”

“You seem busier than usual, Miss Chue.” Under normal circumstances, she would have bugged the quack doctor until he produced tea and sweets.

“Oh, Miss Chue is always busy! I’m just busier than usual today since we have lots of important visitors. Okay, byeee!”

With that, she trot-trotted out of the room; Maomao could hear her distinctive footsteps retreating down the hall.

“Lots of important visitors, huh?”

Now that Maomao thought about it, things had seemed a little livelier than usual. Jinshi had even called Lihaku away, so today they had only their rotating guard. A second guard had been added for the quack, and supposedly there was nothing to worry about. That kid, Gyokujun or whatever, occasionally glared into the medical office, but he didn’t seem inclined to start anything.

I’m not against administrative work, but I don’t love it, Maomao thought. In any case, though, these important visitors were no concern of hers. She would go ahead and do the work she’d been given.

She looked at the pile of papers and put her head in her hands. Maomao just wanted to mess around with medicinal herbs—why did they have to go and be shorthanded?

The most obvious thing was the catastrophic shortfall in the wheat harvest. Lahan’s Brother’s potatoes were just a drop in that particular ocean; they would have to figure out how to get by on nothing but the emergency stores and whatever provisions could be sent to them.

“Think we can swing spreading about eighty percent of this around? Hrm... I just don’t get it,” Maomao muttered to herself.

A proverb held that one should eat to satiety, never to fullness. But to ask those who were used to being full to leave their stomachs partially empty was to invite discontent. Meanwhile, when supplies were unreliable, if some people ate until they were full, others would have to go even hungrier than usual to make up the difference. The poor and their ilk might be able to fill only half their stomachs; they were the ones who would starve first if there wasn’t enough food to go around.

If tens of thousands of minds could be brought to think as one, they could almost certainly have gotten by on eighty percent of the normal amount of food. But that wasn’t possible; it was just human nature.

No, no, stop.

She couldn’t start empathizing with numbers. Letting herself get all depressed about this wouldn’t do anyone any good; it would just make her less efficient at doing her job.

She had been at it for about an hour, muttering thoughtfully to herself the whole time, when she noticed someone peering into her room.

“Can I help you?” She asked. She turned to find a young woman—Gyoku-ou’s granddaughter, Xiaohong.

Maomao gave her a hard look. She knew what a soft touch the quack was with children; he’d probably let her right into the office.

Xiaohong gave a little jolt and backed away. Well, Maomao didn’t want her being frightened of her. She tried to make herself smile, but it must not have been going very well, because the girl backed away even farther.

“Ahem,” Maomao said. “I’m afraid we can’t have people stopping by the medical office when they have no real business here. Furthermore, this is my personal room...”

That was as conciliatory as Maomao could be.

“There’s...a patient,” the child said. “Can you look?” Maomao had to strain to hear her.

“A patient? Where is this person?”

“There... Over there.” Xiaohong just pointed.

“I’ll need you to do more than point.”

“Please help him. Uncle Shikyou, he’s dying.” Xiaohong was struggling not to cry. She was too meek for this to be an act; she seemed to be in earnest.

Maomao wondered what to do. This didn’t strike her as a childish prank. If Shikyou, Gyoku-ou’s eldest son, was indeed on death’s doorstep, Maomao couldn’t possibly just ignore him. But then, someone as important as Shikyou would obviously have a doctor already attending him.

“Tell me something. Why did you come to me? There are plenty of other doctors, right?”

The confusion of the days immediately after the swarm was long since settled. Reprehensible though his behavior might be, there was no way a physician would refuse to see the son of the late governor. And Maomao couldn’t imagine any reason a female attendant would be required in this instance.

Most of all, though, she wondered why it was Xiaohong who had come to call her.

“Uncle... Uncle says that if a doctor sees him...he’ll be killed.”

“Killed?”

Now, that got her attention.

She came out of her room. The quack was drinking tea; too lonely drinking by himself, he’d given some to the guard as well and induced him to sit down. The other guard remained standing outside the door of the office; Lihaku, of course, wasn’t there.

The east-side window is hanging open, Maomao observed. That was in the guard’s blind spot, and the quack wouldn’t have noticed it if he’d been looking right at it. The child seemed to have sneaked up to Maomao’s room. Her only real obstacle would have been the guard drinking tea with the quack, but if she could get by him, she would be home free.

Maomao glanced back at the papers on her desk. I don’t think a kid could make heads or tails of them, she thought, but just for good measure, she swept them together and stuck them in a letter box, which she put in a drawer of the desk.

“All right,” she said, turning to Xiaohong. “You said he’d be killed. What do you mean?”

The girl didn’t say anything, but was clearly avoiding meeting Maomao’s gaze. She’d come to the apothecary because there were no other doctors they could rely on, but in her own childish way she was trying to decide how much it was safe to say.

Frankly, Maomao was starting to hope that this was just a prank. Because if it was real...

Maomao actually knew very little about Shikyou. Politically speaking, she didn’t even understand what his exact status was, or if he was friendly or hostile to the central government. From what Chue had said, it sounded like it was best not to have too much to do with him.

In short, the smartest thing for Maomao to do at that moment was...

Ignore the kid’s babbling and just do my darn work.

Or so one might think.

Yet at the same time, she feared to imagine the situation in the western capital if Shikyou should perish so soon after Gyoku-ou.

And then there’s another problem. Namely, that Maomao wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if she knew she had let a man die without even trying to help him. Knowing that good-for-nothing, he would probably whine and cry and try to get her to let him get away without paying for his treatment. She could just walk away then.

All right, what do I do? Maomao fretted and wondered.

There were three main possibilities.

One: what Xiaohong was telling her was either untrue or a mistake, and she was summoning Maomao for some other reason.

Two: what Xiaohong was telling her was true; there had been an attempt on Shikyou’s life, and with no one else to turn to, Maomao was the straw Xiaohong had grasped at.

Three: what Xiaohong was telling her was true; there had been an attempt on Shikyou’s life, and there was no one else to turn to. However...

There’s always the chance that it was the central government that wanted him dead.

Normally, she would report something like this to Jinshi, but in this case she didn’t have the luxury of that sort of time.

“Hrmm...”

Xiaohong watched Maomao, her eyes brimming with tears. Why would he use this girl as the messenger? If Gyokujun had shown up with the same request, Maomao would have laughed him out of the office.

Damn it all!

After all her fretting and wondering, Maomao heaved a sigh.

“All right,” she said. “Show me where he is.”

Maomao caved to Xiaohong’s request, but as she went, she left something on her desk: a wooden figure of a masked owl that Chue had carved in a free moment.

Please, don’t be the third possibility, she thought.

She packed the minimum of medical instruments into a bag and headed down the stairs. Xiaohong would sneak back out the window.

“Oh, fancy seeing you here. I thought you were going to spend today cooped up in your room,” the quack doctor said. The guard drinking tea with him studied her too.

“I just need a change of air. I’m going to go check on the herbs in the greenhouse,” she said.

“That sounds nice.” The quack continued to brew more tea, with little or nothing in the way of suspicion. The conversation should provide plenty of time for Xiaohong to get back outside.

“Master Lihaku isn’t back yet?” Maomao asked.

“No, he’s on loan to the Moon Prince. They needed someone good and strong to guard him. Our friend should really be looking after more important people, anyway.” The quack seemed to regard Lihaku primarily as there to be his (tea) drinking buddy.

Maomao bowed politely to the guard at the door. “I’m going to the greenhouse. Please take good care of the master physician while I’m out.” Looking as nonchalant as she could, she left the medical office and grabbed a basket, just as if she were really going to check on the herbs.

So, what if it really was the central government that tried to take out Shikyou?

There was every possibility—but at the least, she assumed it hadn’t been Jinshi’s idea. If she’d thought for a minute that he was behind it, she would never have left such an obvious clue as the owl on her desk. Jinshi had kept his peace despite Gyoku-ou’s relentless mockery. Shikyou was probably nothing more than a cute little rascal to him.

Xiaohong peeked out from behind a tree. “This way.”

Maomao joined Xiaohong and let the girl take the lead. Bureaucrats on business as well as servant men and women around the estate glanced at them as they passed, but no one seemed to take too much interest. They had to be careful not to look too furtive; they would look more like they belonged there if they, well, acted like they belonged there.

This is bad for my heart.

Xiaohong headed for the door that led from the main house toward the administrative office. Maomao thought she might open it and go right in, but then she veered to one side. “This way,” she said again.

They followed the fence that enclosed the administrative office and the main house until they came to a wooded area. The trees were unusually large for the western capital, but they seemed to be less for display and more to block the wind. Maomao recognized the species, but didn’t remember what it was called—which suggested it was neither toxic nor had medicinal properties.

“This way!”

Almost hidden amongst the trees was a small door, so overgrown with vines that it wasn’t obvious at first glance.

A hidden passage?

Maomao was starting to get the feeling that whatever was going on, Xiaohong hadn’t been making it up. The door had a clever locking mechanism, and it took the girl a moment of finagling with the key to open it.

How does she know about this thing?

Maomao would have assumed that a hidden passage like this would have been kept secret from everyone but the family’s direct bloodline; even relatives would have been kept in the dark. Yes, Xiaohong was Gyoku-ou’s granddaughter, but subsidiary family lines were seen as less important.

Maomao squeezed through the door and found herself in a long, narrow passageway. There was a fence to either side, and overhead a canopy of tree branches.

“Xiaohong...”

There was a man there, his face bloodless and pale—Shikyou. Another child was already with him—the cheeky brat Gyokujun, who was a tearful mess.

Maomao went straight to Shikyou. His abdomen was covered in blood.

“Wh...Who is this?” Shikyou managed.

“The doctor,” said Xiaohong.

Shikyou gave Maomao a look at once appraising and searching.

“A doctor! If you’re a doctor, then help my father! Make him better!” Gyokujun demanded, sniffling noisily.

“Keep your voice down. Don’t shout,” Shikyou said, firm with his son despite his condition.

Gyokujun looked at him, wide-eyed, and answered “Yes, sir,” in a small voice.

Gyokujun was in the direct family line, for what it was worth, and he’d probably been told about the secret passageway. The boy, who had never shown much understanding of his own position, probably thought of it as nothing more than a secret base to play in, and must have shown it to Xiaohong just to impress her.

“May I look at your wound?” Maomao asked.

“You? The likes of you is going to examine me?” said Shikyou, who sounded in control in spite of all the blood. Maybe the wound wasn’t that bad after all—or maybe he was putting on a brave face. One thing was for sure: the blood on his shirt was expanding steadily.

“I don’t particularly care whether I examine you or not, but if we don’t stop the bleeding soon, I think you’re going to die of blood loss.”

Shikyou paused in thought. It was too late to send Xiaohong to find another doctor. It was an open question whether either his son or his niece could locate one of the adults and convince them to come with them. Gyokujun, in particular, might simply bring the quack.

If the injury wasn’t really so bad, Shikyou could afford to chase Maomao away—but if it was as serious as it looked, she was his only hope of treatment.

What will I do if the wound isn’t bad?

It occurred to her that he might try to kill her on the spot to shut her up. If that happened, then—with apologies to Xiaohong—she would have to use the little girl as a hostage. Shikyou might look like a ruffian, but even he, Maomao hoped, would hesitate to harm the niece who had helped him. Hmm, or maybe his son Gyokujun would make the better shield...

After a long moment, Shikyou said, “All right,” and showed her his bloodsoaked belly.

Look at this!

This was a piercing wound if Maomao had ever seen one. The flesh of his side had been torn open. No wonder he was bleeding so heavily.

“Urgh...” Gyokujun mumbled, and Shikyou clapped a hand over the boy’s mouth before he could make another noise. Instead, Gyokujun fainted clean away.

Xiaohong covered her mouth and looked away, but at least she understood that she couldn’t scream.

Apparently, this man Shikyou was very good at putting on a brave face.

“A poisoned arrow?” Maomao asked after a moment.

Shikyou snorted. “Figured that out, did you?”

“It looks like you thought quickly. How long was it before you were able to pull it out?”

Shikyou had been shot with a poisoned arrow and had torn it out himself. Just imagining it made Maomao a little lightheaded.

“Not even ten seconds.”

“Was there any pain? Tingling or numbness?”

“If you wait until you feel the numbness, it’s already too late!”

So he knows something about poisons.

If there had been numbness, it would have suggested the distinct possibility of wolfsbane, a powerful poison that could cause death in less than a minute.

“Where were you attacked?” Maomao asked.

“Do you need to know that?”

If he’d been shot in the administrative office’s hidden passageway, then the shooter would probably have been firing from the administrative building itself or else the main house. And why had he sent Xiaohong to call Maomao, rather than seeking help from someone nearby himself? Perhaps because he didn’t know what an adult sent to call a doctor might do. Even sending a girl so young had been a real gamble.

Should I take this to mean that this was a family quarrel?

If so, then it wasn’t the central government that had made the attempt on Shikyou’s life, but one of his siblings. There were plenty of people who stood to benefit in terms of the succession and inheritance with the eldest son out of the picture. Xiaohong might be quite fond of Shikyou, but even the girl’s own mother was a potential suspect here.

Maomao urged Shikyou onto his side, then took a handkerchief from her robe. Gyokujun was still unconscious, so she left him where he lay.

“I take it this was a dart, not an arrow proper?” Maomao asked as she pressed the cloth to Shikyou’s abdomen and waited for the bleeding to stop.

“What makes you say that?”

“You tore it out before there was any pain or numbness, meaning you had immediate reason to think that it might be poisoned. And the weapon was a blowdart, not an arrow, because using a bow and arrow on the grounds of the estate is difficult, isn’t it?”

When the wound finally stopped bleeding, Maomao took out her needle and thread. It was only the muscle and flesh that had been torn; the internal organs were unharmed. Best to sew it up right away, even if the sutures would be a bit rough.

“Where’s the dart?”

Shikyou handed Maomao something wrapped in a cloth. She saw discolored bits of flesh—and a needle head. She could investigate what kind of poison it was later.

“This is going to sting. Just stay with me. Here goes,” she said, and then she started sewing. True to form, Shikyou’s face twisted, but he didn’t cry out. Xiaohong was looking resolutely away from the scene.

“There. That should do it.”

By the time she had finished stitching, Maomao was covered in blood. She’d come here secretly, but if she went back looking like this, everyone would know she had been treating someone for something.

I knew I should have just ignored the whole thing, Maomao thought, starting to feel annoyed. She cinched a cloth belt around Shikyou’s abdomen. He groaned aloud, but he would just have to live with it.

That takes care of the emergency treatment. There was still a problem, though—if Shikyou left the confines of the hidden passageway now, it would be impossible to know who was a friend and who was an enemy.

Gyokujun was still out cold, and Shikyou was woozy from blood loss. For the moment, Maomao decided to have a look at the dart: a long, thin, cone-shaped needle.

Can’t tell what kind of poison it is. You wouldn’t know just from looking, of course. She could always prick her finger and see what happened—that would tell her a lot—but this was no time to be conducting human experiments. Maybe she could grab a passing mouse or something and give it a quick stab.

The real problem was that her slapdash intervention wasn’t enough; she couldn’t just leave Shikyou lying there.

The question is, how do we move him without being seen?

Maomao was still fretting over the question when there was a rustling in the underbrush. She turned toward the sound, startled.

A face peeked out from between the trees. “What are you doing there?” the owner drawled. “Oh me, oh my! This looks very interesting indeed.”

Maomao only knew one person who talked like that. Chue clambered up the fence and looked down at her. “Hoh, hoh! So that’s where you went.”

“How...did you find this place?” Maomao looked around. She didn’t think she had been talking that loudly, but maybe her voice had carried beyond the passageway.

“Oh, please. You, Miss Maomao? Leave your work for a change of air? I didn’t believe it for a second. I especially didn’t believe you would leave such comparatively important paperwork behind.” Chue rubbed the owl figure between her fingers. “I heard that Dear Brother Shikyou was visiting the main house, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of anyone for the last two hours. And there’s something in the air at the house and the office. Something strange.”

She was frighteningly sharp. How did Chue turn out to be so capable? It was also daring of her to refer to “Dear Brother Shikyou” when he was right there, hazy with blood loss or no.

“You look a fright, Miss Maomao! We’ll have to run a bath for you.”

“I’d rather you took care of the patient and these kids.” She indicated Xiaohong and the unconscious Gyokujun.

“Yep, yep.” Chue hopped over and down from the fence. At the same moment, the hidden door opened and several men came through. They started trying to pick up Shikyou and the children.

“Come now, Miss Maomao, this way, please. Here’s a top you can wear.” Chue put her own wrap over Maomao’s shoulders. (“All that blood would just attract too much attention!”) She seemed her usual, lackadaisical self, and yet...

There’s something going on here. Something nagged at Maomao. Not something big—just the sense that Chue was going a little faster than usual. She seemed to be busying herself protecting Maomao, but who was it who really needed the attention right now? Wasn’t it the injured Shikyou?

“What’s wrong?” Chue asked. “Why’d you stop?”

“Miss Chue,” Maomao said and glanced backward. Two of the men had hefted Shikyou between them. An alarm bell was going off in her head.

I absolutely should not say this.

She should toddle off, take her bath, and pretend not to have seen any of this. That would be the smart play.

But there’s still the chance that it was the central government that tried to have him killed. And I don’t think Jinshi was behind it.

Slowly, Maomao opened her mouth. “Miss Chue,” she said again.

“Yes, Miss Maomao? What is it?” Chue was smiling, just like she always did.

“Where are they taking Master Shikyou?”

There was a beat. Then Chue said, “Heh heh! Miss Maomao.” She clapped a hand on Maomao’s shoulder. “You’re such a handful, you know that? Sometimes you are too smart for your own good.”

Chue’s eyes looked a little wider than usual, and they weren’t smiling.