The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: The Kingdom of the Ri People

Let’s turn back the clock a bit.

“There’s someone who craves an audience with you, Moon Prince.”

The root of all evil—no, wait, his name was Rikuson—showed up at Jinshi’s office. Gyoku-ou’s second son, Feilong, was with him.

“I wish you greetings, Moon Prince, and beg to express my unfettered delight to see you well this day.”

This was going beyond obsequious, Jinshi thought. What was the big idea? Before, this man had rubbed him the wrong way; recently, he had become positively aggravating. And Rikuson himself seemed perfectly well aware of that fact. He might even have been doing it on purpose.

He was also, however, capable of doing excellent work, so Jinshi had no intention of treating him dismissively. If he let his emotions get the better of him now, it would only mean more work for him in the long run. He had the distinct impression that Rikuson might even like it if Jinshi drove him out of his position.

“What do you need?” Jinshi asked. “Is it something that can’t be conveyed by more of your paperwork?”

“I thought it might be best to present this matter to you in person, sir.” Rikuson glanced pointedly around the room.

“Leave us for a moment,” Jinshi said to the guards and bureaucrats with them. Basen was there, too, as was Baryou behind his curtain, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Gaoshun was on night-shift guard duty, and currently getting some sleep. “If you think this is going to take very long, please feel free to sit.”

“My gratitude for your consideration knows no bounds.” Rikuson helped himself to the couch; Feilong sat as well, but at least he had the good grace to look reluctant.

Rikuson had once served the freak strategist, and Jinshi detected no small whiff of the man’s former boss in his audacity. Beside Jinshi, Basen frowned slightly, but he didn’t say anything. He still had more growing to do as Jinshi’s bodyguard, but he had matured much compared to how he used to be. Except for the duck standing next to him; that was going to have to change.

“A person from a foreign land wishes to meet you, Moon Prince,” Rikuson said.

“Who?” Jinshi asked brusquely. Normally, he would have expected to hear about such a matter before Rikuson, not through him. There were only so many ways a foreigner could get into this country. If they had come by sea or were stuck at the post town, Dahai would have brought it up with him.

“Someone from the Ri kingdom.”

“The Ri kingdom?”

Jinshi unfurled his mental map. Ri was one of the countries to the north—just north of I-sei Province, in fact. It was part of the federation called Hokuaren.

Hokuaren was made up of several nations, but practically speaking it was a single large country with several smaller satellite states.

The kingdom of the Ri people bordered Li, so it served as a northern buffer with Hokuaren. Anyone foolish enough to pick a fight with Li would find themselves spending an inordinate amount of national resources to do it. At the same time, however, the Ri were menaced by federation nations looking to expand their territory, so Li was forever having to reinforce their troops.

The Ri people seemed to have drawn something of a short straw, and Jinshi sympathized with that, but at the same time, they were not an exceptionally friendly nation. The two lands maintained cordial relations; that was all. Li sometimes imported Ri handicrafts via Shaoh, and sometimes the Ri would send a special emissary in the name of diplomacy.

“Who asked you to intercede in this matter?” Jinshi inquired, continuing not to mince words. Given how Rikuson had been behaving lately, it seemed likely to be quicker than beating around the bush.

It was at this point, however, that Feilong spoke. “Perhaps I may answer that question, sir?” He might have been Gyoku-ou’s son, but unlike his father, he seemed fragile.

“You may.”

Feilong bowed deeply. “The emissary from the kingdom of the Ri was presented to us via an introduction from my uncle—my grandfather Gyokuen’s second son.”

Feilong knew very well that he had quite a few uncles, and rather than give a name, he simply referred to “the second son.” Jinshi knew the men’s names, but admittedly, the numbers were easier to follow.

“The man in charge of land transport, yes?” Jinshi asked.

“Yes, sir. The second son oversees transport by land, the third son transport by sea.”

Unlike Dahai, Jinshi hadn’t had much contact with the second son. Small wonder he might reach out to Jinshi through Feilong.

“And what does this emissary from the kingdom of the Ri want with me?”

“As regards that, it seems the emissary would prefer to tell you himself, sir.”

Quite in contrast to Feilong’s apologetic attitude, Rikuson was smiling openly. He evidently relished the prospect of how Jinshi would respond. Jinshi had half a mind to arrest him for impertinence.

“Must it be me?” Jinshi asked.

“We judged it most prudent to involve the most highly placed person in the western capital,” Rikuson said smoothly. Jinshi privately vowed to find some excuse to punish him.

“Why not simply deal with this yourselves, Rikuson? Is your knowledge of the western capital not far more abundant than mine?”

A nice, indirect way of saying that he didn’t want to do it and would leave it to them.

Rikuson’s smile never faltered. “I question whether my station is high enough for such a duty.” A nice, indirect way of saying that he didn’t want to do it either.

“Not high enough? Do you mean to suggest someone so important would be sent as an emissary?”

“I should think so, sir,” Rikuson replied—still smiling.

Without letting his expression slip in the slightest, Jinshi closed his eyes. He heard someone knocking on a table behind the curtain. That was Baryou’s signal. He knocked twice for yes, three times for no. His two taps now meant he thought that what Rikuson was saying was plausible.

“What makes you say that?” Jinshi asked.

“I think there are several...odd things about the recent situation of the Ri kingdom. No doubt you know what I speak of, Moon Prince; I need not belabor the point.”

Another two taps from Baryou. Well, that settled it. Jinshi braced himself. “Very well. I’ll make time.”

“I thank you.” With deep bows, Rikuson and Feilong left the room.

When he could no longer hear their footsteps, Jinshi finally let out a sigh.

“Moon Prince, are you really going along with their request?” Basen looked disturbed by the idea.

“It’s not a matter of ‘going along.’ I don’t have a choice—and in that case, it’s my duty to do it. And Baryou?”

“Yes, Moon Prince,” came a voice from behind the curtain.

“What is the current situation of the kingdom of the Ri people? Do you have any idea what they might be seeking in this discussion?”

“Two ideas, sir.” They heard Baryou rifling through some papers. “The first is that, like Shaoh, they may be seeking provisions. The kingdom of the Ri people is more northerly than Li, and they will have suffered more drastic food shortages from the swarm than we have.”

Jinshi could well imagine it. It seemed strange, though, that they would turn to a nation with whom they weren’t even especially friendly to supply them with food. “What’s the other possibility?” he asked.

“A succession dispute. Rumor has it that the king of the Ri people has been suffering with illness for the past several years. He has four sons, but the oldest is not the offspring of his queen. My most recent information was that the second son was poised to inherit—but unfortunately, that information isn’t so recent anymore, and I’m not sure what the current state of things is.”

“They wish to involve Li in their succession crisis?”

“Under normal circumstances, I agree, that would be extraordinarily unlikely. However...” Baryou didn’t quite seem to want to say what he was thinking.

“You have a suspicion?” Jinshi prompted.

“Yes, sir. Do you remember when Sir Hulan asked to borrow a doctor the other day?”

He did. He’d granted permission when he heard Maomao wanted to go.

At that exact moment, Hulan wasn’t there; he was carrying a message.

“We sent Maomao, as I recall. Something about seeing a young woman,” said Jinshi. Maomao had examined Gyoku-ou’s granddaughter, Xiaohong, as well. Jinshi had assumed this was more or less the same thing.

“Yes, sir. As it so happens, that young woman bore a striking resemblance to the fourth son of the Ri king...”

Jinshi gave the curtain a cold look. “That wasn’t in your report.”

“I conferred with my wife, Chue, and we judged it best not to mention.”

“That wasn’t for you to decide, Elder Brother!”

“Basen, be quiet,” Jinshi said before Basen could really start shouting.

“If a man in your position, Moon Prince, knew that the fourth prince of another nation was within his own borders, nothing good could come of it in the long run.” For what was another nation’s prince doing hiding in Li? “There is a great gulf between knowing, not knowing—and pretending not to know.”

Something was going on involving another country, but only Jinshi’s subordinates knew about it. Meaning that if anything went wrong, Jinshi could easily cut Baryou and the others loose.

Controlling his anger, Jinshi said, “And now I know. What of it?”

“Considering the pointedness of your questions, I decided it would be better for you to feign ignorance than to be truly in the dark.” Baryou didn’t even try to hide it.

If the Ri emissary was after the fourth prince, Jinshi had half a mind to simply hand him over. That would almost certainly be the safest response for Li—unless the Ri believed that Li was giving the prince political asylum, or even acting as his backer in an attempt to set him up as the heir apparent to the Ri kingdom. That would be very dangerous indeed. Which was presumably why Baryou had decided not to say anything.

That, however, raised a question.

“If that was the fourth prince, mightn’t the Ri believe that whomever he had made contact with in Li had actually led him here?”

After a long moment, Baryou said, “Yes, sir.”

“What of the medical assistant who examined the prince?”

“If it was all merely coincidence, then there’s plausible deniability. We’ve taken steps to ensure it.”

He was saying that there would be no harm to the medical assistant—in other words, to Maomao.

“And is there plausible deniability?”

“I believe so. As long as we don’t go out of our way to provoke them.”

“Provoke them...” Jinshi muttered. Unfortunately, diplomacy offered plenty of opportunities for provocation. It was so often about tripping each other up, fighting to get yourself into the most advantageous position. It wasn’t pretty, but when you were chasing your own country’s advantage, it was easy to ignore the other party’s feelings.

And when a royal family was involved, nearly anything could devolve into war.

“Why did Hulan want this person examined?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea. But he could have made any number of connections that way.” Baryou’s genuine ignorance was apparent in his voice.

“Moon Prince,” Basen said slowly. He had been quiet until this moment.

“What is it, Basen?”

“Er... I heard something, once...”

“What? What did you hear?”

“Someone said that Sir Hulan is on good terms with his eldest brother, and that he supposedly asked Sir Shikyou to make some foreign connections.”

“That’s strange. I thought Hulan was insisting that his second brother, Feilong, should be the successor.”

“But I gather the first and third sons are cordial with each other, and often talk together.”

Shikyou: the oldest of Gyoku-ou’s four children, regarded by all and sundry as little more than a nose-picking brute. If he was the one who had brought the Ri nation’s fourth prince into Li, then the question of how to respond became more complicated.

“Moon Prince. I think it may behoove you to distance yourself from Sir Shikyou for a while.”

“Yes, I understand.”

For better or worse, the only time Jinshi had really met Shikyou face-to-face so far was at the conference to discuss Gyoku-ou’s inheritance.

“As long as it’s someone else involved, there are still ways around this problem. But if it turns out you’re connected to the matter, sir, then this won’t just be I-sei Province’s problem—Li itself will be seen as picking a fight with the Ri kingdom.”

One certainly wanted to avoid that. And to that end, Baryou was prepared to become the lizard’s tail.

“Shikyou...” Jinshi heaved another sigh. This would weigh heavily on him as he met the Ri emissary.

The meeting was to be held neither at the administrative office nor the main house, but at the western capital’s most luxurious restaurant—the entirety of which had been rented out. It would be conducted in the presence of Feilong and his uncle, Gyokuen’s second son.

The Ri emissary and his party gave Jinshi appraising looks. They hid it well, affecting genuine politeness, but Jinshi had spent enough time being sized up in the rear palace that he saw right through the act.

Li was many times—many tens of times—more powerful than the Ri kingdom, but the knowledge that the Ri had a massive federation behind them gave the emissary a big head. What’s more, the Ri people were, by and large, brawnier and hairier than the Linese. Jinshi could see the contempt in the emissary’s eyes.

For that reason, he made sure to choose someone especially tall and imposing as his bodyguard. Lihaku might have made a good choice—he could think on his feet, and Jinshi had some trust in him. But he had been with Maomao when she had gone to see the person who might have been the fourth prince, so for safety’s sake, Jinshi decided to have Lihaku wait in the wings for now.

Basen had grown substantially of late, but he still hadn’t reached his full height, and he had that hairless baby face. Jinshi instructed him to dress not as a soldier, but like one of the administrators. Basen didn’t like it much, but acquiesced when Jinshi said it was to throw the Ri delegation off. Nobody would suspect a clean-shaven bureaucrat to be capable of taking on a dozen men with his bare hands.

Rikuson recused himself from the meeting, claiming he still had work to attend to. Jinshi had thought this would be a good moment to have him along, but at least it looked like he didn’t mean to cause any trouble. Jinshi had the distinct sense that the man had grown rather more carefree lately.

He asked Hulan, Chue, and even Baryou not to be present, since they had all been on the trip to see the maybe-prince. He would particularly miss Baryou and Chue, who with their gift for languages would have been helpful interpreters, but there was no way around it.

Given this dearth of close aides, Jinshi was very grateful that Gaoshun would be with him.

Such were the trials of diplomacy. If they were simply going to stand there and accuse each other of things, then there was no need to worry about the feelings of a country that wasn’t even a friend.

Nonetheless, Jinshi knew that his own face would help in a negotiation. He was shown to the room, and the moment the emissary and his party saw him, they froze. Then they stared intently at the scar on his right cheek and heaved sighs of disappointment.

People sometimes mocked him for his looks, but it seemed the smile of a celestial nymph worked just as well on foreigners as it did on his compatriots. It might have been even more wildly effective had he been a woman, but that would have brought its own dangers, as Jinshi well knew. People not infrequently remarked that it was a good thing he had been born a man, so that the country need not fall to its knees under his beauty. If heaven was going to give him a gift, Jinshi often thought, he wished it had given him some actual talent, instead of just a pleasant appearance for people to make light of.

As often as his looks had made his life more difficult, however, they had just as often helped him. If he could use them now, then he would.

As emissary, the Ri had sent a man who much resembled an ordinary Linese, with yellowish skin and brownish hair. Only his thicker body hair and largeish nose and eyes gave away his foreign birth.

He was refreshingly direct about the purpose of his visit. “A nobleman from our country is missing. Do you know anything about it?”

The subject was as expected. The man’s tone seemed abrupt, but he was speaking through an interpreter, so it was hard to tell how respectful he was actually being. The emissary avoided mentioning the person’s age and referred to “a nobleman” instead of a member of the royal family, but the question aligned with what Jinshi had been told.

“There is a possibility of kidnapping. If you know anything, we would like you to tell us immediately.” To all appearances, the emissary looked deeply concerned for this missing noble, from the furrow of his eyebrows to the slight trembling of his hands. If this was an act, he was doing a very good job.

Had the freak strategist been here, he would have known the truth immediately, no matter how good an actor the man might be—but Jinshi didn’t have the courage to bring him to a diplomatic meeting. It would be like lighting a pipe by a powder store.

Jinshi had to consider all the potential possibilities.

“If my older brother has caused any kind of problem, please allow me to be part of this discussion,” Feilong said with a grim look.

“My nephew’s indiscretion would be my responsibility as well. I urge you to make a fair judgment, without regard for us personally.” This came from Gyokuen’s second son.

As blood relatives, they were prepared to accept punishment, but what was “fair” in this case was hard to say. Normally, it would be impossible to make such a judgment without better information. If priorities had to be chosen, however—what should come first?

Suppose for a moment that the noble in question was indeed the fourth prince. If they took the emissary’s words at face value, then the prince had been kidnapped and brought to Li. It would be most natural to assume Shikyou had been behind it.

If he had been involved in the abduction of a foreign royal, there would be no protecting him, even if he was the son of the former governor. Worse, everyone knew what a black sheep he was. It would be best not to be involved with him, but be ready to simply cast him aside if there was any trouble at all.

It might sound cold, but that was diplomacy. Letting a man run free when he caused strife with another nation or even sowed the seeds of war would result in tens or hundreds of times more deaths than merely his own.

Suppose the emissary was not telling the truth, however. Then the proposition was different.

Without clear information, it could be impossible to decide what to do. Jinshi would have to order Shikyou to be put under observation for some time, perhaps even barred from entering the main house or the administrative office.

Even though they were meeting in a restaurant, the talks ultimately concluded with hardly a bite being eaten. The emissary and his party said that they would be staying at an inn for a while. Jinshi didn’t know just how long that was, but he would have to keep his guard up.

Sadly, it’s always at moments like this that the trouble happens.

Jinshi left the restaurant and climbed into his carriage. He requested some water to wash down the meal he had barely eaten. Basen had loosened the collar of his administrator’s outfit; apparently he found it constraining. Thankfully, they hadn’t needed him in the end.

Someone knocked on the carriage door.

“What is it?” Basen looked suspiciously out the window.

“A message, sir,” said the person outside, who handed them a letter with a simple wax seal. It was from Baryou.

“What does it say?” Basen asked Jinshi, who opened the letter and looked at it.

He pressed a hand to his forehead. “This is very bad timing.”

The letter stated that Shikyou had appeared at the main house and insisted on coming in, until it became a fight.

Why did the trouble always have to happen at moments like this? Jinshi couldn’t believe it.

And then he read the rest of the letter.

“Master Jinshi, you don’t look so good...”

“That idiot. That absolute idiot!”

Baryou informed him that Shikyou had been wounded and run off—and that Maomao had gone to treat him.