The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Priorities

There was nothing so unpleasant as being made to dance to someone else’s tune. Maomao swore that the first thing she would do when she got back to the western capital was get permission to deck Hulan.

In the meantime, her journey continued, and she still had no idea what she should do.

Where in the world are we going?

She, Gyokujun, and Xiaohong rode along in the covered wagon with the lady biaoshi, resting, moving, resting, and spending the night in whatever town or village where they could find an inn.

Unlike the central region, it was all grassy plains here, so Maomao quickly lost track of where they were; they might as well have been going in circles. By checking the position of the sun every so often, however, she was able to deduce that they were heading in a generally westerly direction.

On the way, they occasionally paid obeisance at temples or stopped to buy clothes. Maomao realized that a certain amount of pointless busywork was necessary if she was to be taken for an unsophisticated housewife.

The detours served another purpose too—appeasing the endlessly curious children, who would never have shut up otherwise. Even Maomao was happy to check out the street stalls they passed, full of meat skewers and unfamiliar foods. The only real disappointment was that there weren’t as many as there might’ve been before; the insect swarm had taken its toll.

“Ugh! I don’t wanna walk anymore! Get me a palanquin!”

“I’m hungry! I want some fruit!”

“You expect me to eat bread this hard?”

How many times now had she dropped a knuckle on Gyokujun’s whiny head? She’d always heard that boys were more trouble than girls, but now she knew it in her bones. Xiaohong was polite and quiet and did what Maomao said.

Once, as the wagon trundled along, Maomao turned to the biaoshi and said, “Is it safe for me to ask where we’re going now?”

“If I told you the name of the village, would you know where it was?”

Well, she had Maomao there.

“As I think you’ve realized, we’re traveling west. Your home is in I-sei Province’s second-largest city. Your husband is a businessman, but thanks to the swarm, he’s got no business anymore. You may not know much about the world, ‘ma’am,’ but you know this can’t go on, so you used the last of your savings to hire a biaoshi, and are on your way to your family to tell them that you’re in dire straits.”

The cover story turned out to be more in depth than Maomao had expected.

“All right. I understand,” she said. In other words, their destination was the province’s second-largest city, or perhaps somewhere on the way.

“May not know much about the world.” Real nice.

Maomao might have resented the characterization, but the fact was that she had never been west of I-sei Province. Her eyes lit up when she saw the strange food, drinks, and handicrafts. There was hardly any fish to eat, but there were plenty of snakes for sale to make up for it. One place had served live scorpions, but Maomao had been prevented from partaking—it wasn’t something an out-of-her-depth housewife would eat, she was told. She had so, so wanted to, though.

At first, Gyokujun and Xiaohong had been ill at ease being separated from Shikyou, but being endowed with the natural curiosity of young children, they were still more than happy to explore the stalls with Maomao.

Xiaohong is so much better behaved than that little shit.

Maomao had expected her to complain more, or demand things she wanted, but she did no such thing. Maomao wasn’t a fan of children. In fact, she actively disliked them. She was an advocate of applying “the punishment of the iron fist” when children refused to do as they were told—but when it came to Xiaohong, she found she never needed to entertain the possibility. If anything, she felt like she was dealing with an adult. Maomao couldn’t help wondering how Xiaohong had been raised.

“Is it just me, or does Xiaohong get all the attention around here?” Gyokujun asked her, glowering.

“Why should I fuss over you? Would it make you feel better if I patted you on the head and went ‘There, there’? Come here—I’ll pat your head so hard your hair’ll come out!”

“N-No way! That’s not what I meant!”

Maomao fussed over Gyokujun, all right—like tickling his sides as mercilessly as she could.

The lady biaoshi turned out to be right—nobody seemed to question the story that Maomao, Gyokujun, and Xiaohong were a family. In addition to changing the tone of her skin, they added some blemishes around her eyes, much like how she did her freckles. Xiaohong’s light hair lent credence to the story that her father had foreign blood, and explained why she didn’t look like her mother. As for Gyokujun, he looked enough like Xiaohong to pass as her brother.

“I can’t say you seem very intimidated by any of this,” the biaoshi said as they ate one day. They were at a small restaurant with nine tables that sat four people each. The second floor doubled as an inn, and the place would even groom the horses for them.

“Why should I? It’s not every day you get a chance to see the interior,” Maomao replied. They would have to travel the same road whether she was anxious about it or not—better, then, to take it easy until they came face-to-face with their problems. Maomao dipped some bread in a lamb stew and took a bite. It was meaty, but not very salty. For vegetables, there were a handful of root vegetables and garlic chives. Water was by and large too precious to drink; instead, there was a wide variety of alcohol. Despite the extra expense, they ordered water for Gyokujun and Xiaohong.

“I want a grape water!” Gyokujun said.

“Well, there isn’t any.”

“But I want it!”

Gyokujun had a bit of a temper, and was quick to whine when things didn’t go his way. Every time Maomao slammed him with a knuckle, though, he burst into tears; she wished he would hurry up and learn his lesson.

“It seems awfully empty around here,” Maomao said, looking around the restaurant.

“I agree,” the biaoshi replied.

The building was quiet. Maomao presumed it had been built because this area was a trade nexus, but the swarm of insects had impacted more than just the food supply—it had also struck at trade, the economic heart of this region. That might also explain why the handful of customers who were there all seemed to be in a bad mood.

I don’t think any of them look like the brawling type offhand, she thought, although she observed one person sitting in a corner nursing some alcohol. They’d been glancing in the direction of Maomao’s party for a while now. Trying to decide who to target, maybe?

Maomao’s table had just two women and two children at it. Yes, they had the pair of drivers who doubled as bodyguards, but they made it a point not to eat at the same time. Unfortunately, a small party of women and children might as well have been carrying a sign that said Please rob us.

“Maybe we should hire some more biaoshi?” Maomao suggested.

“There should be another guard I can trust in the next town.”

Meaning, the lady biaoshi didn’t want to take on just anyone. No unknown quantities. Maomao got the distinct impression that, woman or not, this biaoshi would be a force to be reckoned with.

“Maybe we should have at least one of the drivers eat with us?” Having a man at the table would give people a different impression of them.

“A lot of people in I-sei Province think it’s inappropriate for a woman to share a table with a man from outside her family.” In other words, it wouldn’t play to their cover. “I’m going to have to make preparations for our move to the next town. I’ll leave one of the guards with you. Don’t come out of your room.”

“Understood.”

Maomao would have liked to explore this area a bit, but she was going to do as the biaoshi said. They were a long way from the central region, and safety was not guaranteed.

“I know it’s boring just to wait around. Read a book or something,” the biaoshi said.

A book. Sure.

The only book Maomao had with her at the moment was the scriptures from where she’d been confined. It had just sort of turned up in the covered wagon. She suspected Xiaohong had brought it.

Maomao had no particular interest in the holy text, but with absolutely nothing else to do, read a book it was. Naturally, Gyokujun set to bullying Xiaohong. So much for reading quietly.

The biaoshi came back a couple of hours later. In addition to whatever else she had done, she’d also been shopping, and had a large bag with her. She didn’t look very happy, though.

Maomao had grown tired of reading and was playing with Xiaohong. The best they could muster were marbles played with shells and stones, or cat’s cradle—games that passed the time but did little else. Gyokujun had huddled up in a corner. Maybe his head hurt from Maomao smacking it.

“Doesn’t look like you’re bursting with good news,” Maomao said.

“I’m afraid not. The plan was for us to meet my comrade in the next town, but he seems to be off the trade route at the moment, and I couldn’t get any information on him.” The biaoshi placed the large bag in front of Maomao.

“Off the trade route?” Maomao asked, opening the bag as she spoke. Inside she found provisions like dried meat, furs to keep off the cold—and medicinal herbs. That made her eyes sparkle.

“The merchants decided to avoid the main road; it’s full of bandits. There were already enough of them, and their numbers have only grown since the swarm. No food, no money, and lots of people out of a job. With the road so dangerous, better to bypass it and head for the next town after that.”

“Ah...”

The bandits might be starving, but if they stole all the food from all the merchants, soon there would be nothing left to steal—but some of them weren’t thinking that far ahead.

“But I thought there was a biaoshi agency that you could trust in the next town?” Maomao was positively grinning now as she laid out the herbs. All her caution had turned to medicine.

The other woman shook her head. “I said I knew a guard there, not another biaoshi.”

“Oh. Right...”

It was true; she hadn’t specified a biaoshi. Maomao sniffed the herbs industriously. Xiaohong copied her, but quickly pressed a hand to her nose and turned away—they were very pungent herbs.

“You know,” Maomao said, “I’ve been starting to wonder. Hasn’t it been long enough that it should be safe to return to the western capital?”

“I can’t be sure of that right now. My mission is to send you home only once the danger is completely past. I can’t send you back on a whim.” The biaoshi sounded very firm. Maomao still didn’t understand exactly why she was dragging them all over creation, but on this point at least Maomao sensed that she was telling the truth. “Unfortunately, I’m also not sure what to do if we can’t make contact with my friend in the next town. I’m considering going there anyway, on the understanding that it will entail some danger. What do you think?”

Maomao, now checking to make sure the herbs were dry, groaned. “It doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice. For one thing, we’re going to run out of money if we just keep wandering the back roads of I-sei Province.”

“It does take a bit of the load off my shoulders to hear you say that.”

From the folds of her robes, the biaoshi produced a small jar: a delicately glazed piece hardly larger than the palm of her hand.

“What’s that?” Maomao asked. She put down the herbs and squinted at it.

“A nerve toxin. It can’t stand up to much heat, so don’t get it too warm, if you’d be so kind.”

“You gathered snake venom without me? I would have helped!” Maomao took the jar and gave it a gentle shake. She heard a faint splish. She could only imagine how many snakes the woman must have caught to gather so much venom. Snake venom was less stable than mineral poisons and readily lost its potency, particularly when heated. Maomao had learned that from a book—and had confirmed it by her own experience.

“I’m impressed you guessed it was snake venom. You’d be surprised how easy it is to come by at the butcher’s.”

In this inland area, fish was rare; snake tasted similar and was rich in valuable nutrients.

“Any scorpion in there?” Maomao asked.

“A few drops, yes.”

Maomao realized the biaoshi was serious. The more varieties of poison there were in a concoction, the more difficult it was to devise an antidote.

“Take this too.” The biaoshi handed her a needle wrapped in cloth. The needle was fixed in place so that as long as the cloth was wrapped around it, it could be carried safely. “If anything happens, prioritize your own life.”

So in other words, no matter what, survive. Is that it?

Even, the biaoshi was telling her, if she had to kill someone to do it.