The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 22

Chapter 22: How Things Turned Out

The cleanup of the bandits was almost comically quick. The ones using the toilet found themselves hog-tied, while those in the church put up token resistance, but were subdued and arrested with almost no bloodshed.

Still, with so many of the bandits suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, the place was hellish in a whole new way, and we’ll refrain from describing it in too much detail. Maomao did not want to be the one who had to clean up.

She did, however, find herself face-to-face with Shikyou and frowning intensely. The lady biaoshi was to one side of her, while Xiaohong, overjoyed to be reunited with her uncle, was on the other. They had borrowed one of the assembly rooms; guards were posted outside to discourage any eavesdropping.

“I think it’s about time you explained what’s going on,” Maomao said, showing no sign of intimidation despite being faced with a man who weighed at least twice as much as she did.

The lady biaoshi left the room with Xiaohong, perhaps a sign of consideration.

“Believe me, I’d love to, but maybe we should start by reintroducing ourselves. How much do you know about me? Don’t hold back; tell me everything.”

Maomao decided to take him at his word. “You’re Master Gyokuen’s grandson and Master Gyoku-ou’s oldest son. Nephew of Empress Gyokuyou. In a word, your bloodline is perfectly respectable, but your behavior is anything but. You’re a black sheep who’s not much favored in the current succession dispute. You once sold fake bottles of very exclusive wine, and some people claim you have ties to bandit groups. While I’m at it, I think you should do a better job raising your own son. If you’re going to just let him grow up like that, maybe you should have another kid.”

“Well, I did say not to hold back.” Shikyou didn’t look offended by Maomao’s words. “Thanks to you, Gyokujun returned safely, although he was pretty traumatized from being chased hither and yon by bandits.”

He continued: “All right, my turn. You’re Grand Commandant Kan’s daughter. Publicly, you’re here as a court lady serving as an assistant to the medical office, but in reality you’re a favorite of the Moon Prince, is that right?”

“Because I was born to a courtesan with whom Grand Commandant Kan was close, he’s mistaken me for his daughter, that’s all. As to the Moon Prince, I can tell you only that he values me for my ability to check food for poison.”

You had to make sure to nip these misunderstandings in the bud.

“Mm, very well. We’ll pretend that’s true.”

Maomao wasn’t sure she liked the way Shikyou said that, but she chose to ignore it. Otherwise they would never get anywhere.

“Now, how did things end up like this? Where should I even start?” Shikyou grunted and drummed his fingers on the table. “I know I have a reputation as some kind of gang leader, but...well, maybe you’d understand if I said I set up a biaoshi agency? Or more properly, I purchased a small agency and succeeded to its leadership.”

“What about the bandit connections?”

“How could I be on good terms with pirates? That bear has had it out for me ever since I took his eye. Once I set up shop as a biaoshi, he started making a nuisance of himself in my territory. Sometimes he’d even claim to be with my agency! So I’ve had to labor under these ridiculous rumors that we were somehow in league with each other.”

Maomao was leery of taking Shikyou’s story completely at face value, but it more or less lined up with what Chue had told her.

Actually, it’s Chue’s information that’s suspicious.

If Maomao accepted exactly what Chue said, there was a contradiction. For that matter, Chue talked about Shikyou as if he were some kind of lazy outcast, but then she had helped Maomao to escape with this very man.

Knowing “Miss Chue,” I wouldn’t put it past her to have used some expertly massaged truth to lead me along. Was she trying to keep me from getting involved with the “rogue,” Shikyou?

If so, Maomao would have to listen to Shikyou’s story and compare the facts as she heard them.

She decided to cut right to the chase. “Why was someone after your life? And why did it mean that I had to leave the western capital?”

“That’s a very long story.”

“I expect as much.”

Maomao didn’t care how long the story was; she just wanted him to hurry up and tell it.

“It started like this: not long after the Moon Prince arrived here, I was asked to accompany a caravan to the western capital. Another biaoshi would see it on the first leg of its journey, but once they left that agent’s territory, I would be in charge.”

“Did you accept the job knowing that the caravan originated in a foreign country?”

“Well, I had a good guess. And I suspect they asked for me because they knew who I was. I’m sure they assumed that even if Gyoku-ou found out what they were up to, his son would be able to smooth things over. The biaoshi were well aware of his xenophobia, you see.”

“And what about you, his son? Did you share it?”

Empress Gyokuyou had been tormented in her youth by Gyoku-ou’s children. Did that make this man just as xenophobic as his father?

Shikyou took a moment to answer. “Yes...I used to. Taking my cues from my father, I hated ‘outlanders’ as much as he did. I realized, though, that in a country that shared so many borders with other lands, excluding foreigners would benefit nobody.”

Hmmm. Maomao sipped the horse-milk alcohol they had in lieu of tea. It was from the unpoisoned supply, of course.

“As it turned out, however, these visitors were not people who should have been let into Li lightly.”

“Did they include a foreign VIP?”

“Yes, although I didn’t know that at first. My suspicions only took shape gradually.”

“How so?”

Shikyou held up his pointer finger. “The fact that they asked me about the Moon Prince’s presence in the area, for one thing. Then there were the pursuers who showed up shortly after these visitors did. They seemed awfully persistent—too much so to be after an ordinary merchant. A good deal of trouble, they were. Also, the fact that there were wanted posters going around—at first, I thought my new friends might be criminals, but that didn’t seem to be quite the case. Finally, they claimed to be from Shaoh, but they had northern accents. Visitors from Shaoh, with which Li has diplomatic relations, would be one thing—but if they were from Hokuaren, ah, that could be a problem.”

“Hokuaren,” Maomao echoed. When Shikyou mentioned the wanted posters, she remembered the paper the bear-man had consulted.

“I thought they might be plotting to assassinate the Moon Prince, but that wasn’t how they behaved. They had some other objective.”

“Like what?”

They’d clearly gone out of their way to arrive while Jinshi was there. Why?

“A desperate bid for political asylum, perhaps. Maybe they thought that with the Moon Prince near at hand, their pursuers from their own nation would find it hard to cross the border. I keep asking myself whether their methods were ingenious or insane, and I come up with a different answer every time.”

I can see how that would be a lot of trouble, Maomao thought. Meanwhile, the man before her had been keeping his head down and running...

“The swarm held us up something terrible,” Shikyou said. “It generated a lot of anti-foreign sentiment, but fortunately we were able to find safe haven in the post town, thanks to my uncle Dahai. I admit, though, I started to sweat when our dear guest fell ill and suddenly needed a doctor.”

Maomao paused. A VIP...at the post town...who needed a doctor?

That rang a very, very loud bell.

“This VIP. Were they a child, by any chance?”

“That’s right.”

Maomao put her head in her hands. I knew it.

“I couldn’t cool my heels in the port town forever, but my father’s death complicated matters.”

“What changed with Master Gyoku-ou’s passing?”

“If you had the choice between someone who would lend a sympathetic ear to a foreigner’s plight and someone who wouldn’t, who would you rather talk to? These foreigners... I think maybe it’s time I put a name to them. This child was a very important member of the kingdom of the Ri people. They sent someone to come get him, on account of things having largely quieted down in their lands.”

The kingdom of the Ri people...

Maomao had a vague sense that the country was part of Hokuaren, but she didn’t know anything beyond that.

“They wanted me to speak with the Moon Prince on their behalf. Which I was just on my way to do when...” Shikyou patted his side, right about where the poisoned dart had hit him. “They got me as soon as I entered the estate. I reflexively took out the guards by the gate. Unfortunately, that was a mistake. Since I didn’t know where the assassin was hiding, though, I made for the passageway so I could lie low for a moment and pull out the dart.”

“That was when Gyokujun and Xiaohong came along. Xiaohong went in search of a doctor and found me, and then I treated you,” Maomao said. The dots were starting to connect. “So do you know who told the kids about the passageway?”

Shikyou was silent. He didn’t want to acknowledge that it had been his own younger brother Hulan.

“Fine. Next question. Was there really a point to making me flee with you?”

“Well, I was suddenly a criminal, a kidnapper of a foreign dignitary. Once you treated me, people were going to think you were involved, whether you liked it or not. One basic rule in diplomatic relations is: never let the other guy see something that might be disadvantageous to your own country.” Black sheep though he might be, Shikyou had learned an eldest son’s lessons well enough to understand that. “Since I was attacked with a blowdart from somewhere within the estate, it seemed more than likely that there was someone on the inside. That’s what Chue said. So, yes. I’m sure you’re right. Hulan was behind this.”

“You think so, sir?”

So it had been Chue’s decision to get Maomao out of there. Maomao, who had already made contact with this foreign dignitary—she might not have known it at the time, but no one would believe her if she said so. Most of all, the moment Chue realized they had been betrayed from within, she would know that the turncoat might eventually catch Maomao.

“If I could meet with the foreign dignitary and safely turn him over to the Ri kingdom, we could let you go. But of course, first we had to make sure we weren’t handing him over to a political enemy. Meanwhile, we needed to keep you and my niece out of sight—and shake off our pursuers. Not to mention, I was desperate to get word to the Moon Prince. That was probably the biggest problem of all.”

In other words, what he wants to say is that he’s been a busy man.

“Naturally, not everything could go right. Our VIP scented danger and ditched the post town. Instead, he headed for another meeting spot, a place we’d arranged in advance in case anything happened. That’s why we had to keep you hanging for a while.”

“And one of the people on the trail of this dignitary of yours was One-Eyed Dragon,” Maomao said.

“That name’s wasted on him. Call him bear-man; that’s enough for his like. You know about his grudge against me. I’m sure he was thrilled to take on this job. I use this town all the time when I’m preparing for a job. He probably thought he could ambush me here.” Shikyou paused. “It’s a terrible thing I’ve done.”

He was understandably upset, knowing that the bandits had chosen to take over this town because of him. No small number of people had died because of the bear-man.

“But you’re here now. That means you were able to safely hand over the VIP, doesn’t it?” Maomao asked.

“Yeah. Reinforcements from the Moon Prince arrived a couple of days ago and helped wrap everything up nice and neat. I wanted to come for you sooner, but I was afraid of what the bear-man might do if he thought I was sniffing around. I never meant to use you and Xiaohong as bait. I know, I know. That sounds like an excuse, and I’m sorry. But it never crossed my mind that they might confuse Xiaohong for my foreign dignitary.”

“I know that. Normally, I don’t think they would have.”

One-Eyed Dragon—ahem, the bear-man—had only mistaken Xiaohong for the foreign prince because he couldn’t read. The portrait on the poster wasn’t colored; the finer points of the visitor’s identification were given only in a written list. The hair color, maybe that was an understandable mistake, but getting the eye color wrong? Only someone who hadn’t read the list could have done that.

It’s not that he didn’t read it, but that he couldn’t.

And if most of the outlaws were illiterate, that meant certain things could be slipped past them. Maomao looked at the sleeve of her robe. She’d changed from the woolen work outfit into the robe that had been laundered. The sleeve was embellished with embroidery of a sparrow, delicate work that went well beyond “patching the tears.” The outfit hadn’t had any tears.

Such delicate stitching could never have been achieved with a few minutes’ work, so Maomao thought maybe the sparrow had been there all along, and the woman had added the string of words.

It was almost as if whoever had done the stitching had known that Maomao had no interest in clothing, and had known that she would pick up on “patching the tears,” like it was a code word. It was the sort of thing someone would have to know Maomao very well to orchestrate. The words on the sleeve had been such that only she would understand, and she would do exactly as they ordered.

There must have already been a collaborator in this town. The middle-aged woman, Maomao was sure of it. No wonder she had already known that Maomao and Xiaohong were supposed to be mother and child. She always had seemed suspiciously talkative for a homespun resident of a nowhere burg.

“Did you have some prearranged mode of communication?” she asked.

“I just sneaked in and told her. Well, by which I mean we had an arranged drop point where I left written communications.”

“You had someone who could do that?”

“Sure. Someone who’s very good at it.”

Maomao thought for a second. “Would that be your lady biaoshi?”

“You got it.”

“Don’t tell me. Is she—”

Before Maomao could get the question out, the door opened.

There stood the lady biaoshi. Thirtyish, gallant, but oddly approachable. Maomao squinted and took the woman in from head to toe. She was tall, and her voice was deep and clear. Yet something nagged at Maomao. Nagged at her enough that she was moved to ask:

“Miss Chue?”

It hardly seemed possible, and yet...

“Hee hee! Oopsie! Figured me out?” The lady biaoshi struck an absolutely silly pose. The commanding, collected image she’d maintained until that moment shattered like glass.

“Please spare me your strange behaviors when you’re dressed like that. My brain can’t keep up,” Maomao said.

In fact, she was wondering how someone could turn into such a different person. Chue’s height was different by some nine centimeters; the very structure of her body seemed to belong to someone else. Her movements, usually crowned with her unmistakable footsteps, were every inch those of a trained soldier.

Most of all, Chue had been ninety-percent comedy, leaving Maomao to wonder who the tough-looking biaoshi was.

“This is my most bestest disguise that I have more confidence in than any other, and you still saw through it, Miss Maomao. Hrm. My poor self-confidence! It’s been taking a beating lately!”

“If it makes you feel any better, I would never have realized if it weren’t for this embroidery.” Maomao showed Chue the design of a sparrow—a chue—right there on her sleeve. It almost felt like a tease. This little hint at the lady biaoshi’s true identity had been like a message from Chue saying that she would soon come to rescue Maomao and Xiaohong. Maomao suspected Chue had several collaborators in the town, and that they exchanged information via code words.

“By any chance, is the man they called laoshi also an acquaintance of yours?” she asked.

“Very clever!” Chue said.

Maomao let out a sigh. No wonder Chue had been so hell-bent on teaching her the line from the scriptures. If only she’d also said why she was teaching it to her! Well, it was too late to complain now.

“I think you have a few things to explain too, Miss Chue.”

“Fair enough! Where shall we start?”

With that, Chue let down her hair, and the piercing gleam in her eyes changed to something more like the pleasant look that Maomao was used to. Chue rubbed her fingers over her skin, and little white flakes came off—she hadn’t just used makeup to change her skin tone; she’d used a special glue to change the shape of her face.

“Maybe you could tell me how you and Master Shikyou are related,” Maomao said, looking from one of them to the other. Chue gave a broad grin. Maomao went on, “Miss Chue, you always talked about Master Shikyou as if he were a good-for-nothing, or at least someone I should keep my distance from.”

“That’s right. I was telling the truth the whole time, you know!” Chue said, the drawl returning to her voice. “You remember those bandits who attacked us, Miss Maomao? They really did work for Shikyou once.”

That was when they had gone out to the farming village with Lahan’s Brother. Basen had left those particular scofflaws in a sorry state.

“In the sense that they were at the biaoshi agency when I bought it,” Shikyou said. “But they were always ruffians. I kicked out everyone I couldn’t trust to guard our charges, and the ones who really didn’t like it took up banditry in our territory, or joined up with the bear-man.”

I guess a biaoshi agency can’t have untrustworthy people around, can it?

Maomao wondered where that left the men who had explained what was going on and then abandoned her in the woods. Yes, they had broken with their job, but in her eyes they had been honorable about it.

“Does this somehow also explain the incident with the wine?” Maomao asked.

“Oh! Er...ahem, no. That was stuff I meant for my own private consumption, but I didn’t have anything to put it in—until I found the perfect empty bottles. But then someone mistook them for a shipment and sent them out.” Shikyou fidgeted uneasily. At least he was telling the truth, but he had still done his aunt a bad turn.

“You see how he is! And you wonder why I thought you should keep your distance, Miss Maomao,” said Chue. She’d finally shed all of her biaoshi makeup—it really was her under there.

“Huh! So that’s the story.” Maomao had the sense that they were still hiding something, but she decided to take what she could get for now. “I still don’t know how the two of you are connected. Miss Chue, maybe you could tell me what it is you’ve been up to?”

“Certainly. I don’t mind saying, my life has been very hard since I escorted you away from the main house. Uncovering the traitor who attacked Shikyou, explaining matters to the Moon Prince, and keeping our dear quack off the trail! But worst of all was that strategist. Do you know how I toiled? How hard I worked? Of course, then I met up with you, and the Moon Prince and our quack and the master strategist became someone else’s problem.”

She didn’t go into the details of how she had kept them all at bay, but it obviously hadn’t been easy.

“I managed everything except the traitor bit before I met up with you, and after that I had to keep you on the move. The western capital was still dangerous, not to mention we had to shield the Moon Prince from any suspicion of involvement with the kidnapping of the Ri VIP.”

“Yes, I see that.”

It also explained why Chue had disguised herself so thoroughly that even Maomao hadn’t known who she was.

“Then I was busy handing the VIP off to the Ri folks. That was in the next town down the road, while you both waited here in this one. I planned to get us all back to the western capital once any suspicion of kidnapping had been cleared up.”

“But you hadn’t counted on ‘bear-man’ being here.”

“Right! That was my biggest miscalculation! I had a bad feeling, but I had no idea he’d entrenched himself so deeply. Speaking of which, who would ever have expected him to confuse poor Xiaohong for the foreign dignitary and chase after her?!”

In a board game, there was one player whose moves you could never predict: a total amateur. And bear-man was no tactician. No doubt they really hadn’t been able to guess what he would do.

“After that, I had no choice but to rethink my plans. I sure couldn’t keep guarding you! Instead, once I was sure they wouldn’t kill you, I got out of this town.”

“Meaning once Xiaohong and I made contact with ‘laoshi,’ you left?”

“That’s right.”

Maomao wanted to spit a few choice words at her, but somehow she kept them down. Chue had had her own problems to worry about.

“I’d only scouted out the situation and made contact with a few of my coconspirators, so the pirates didn’t know about me. But they did find the wagon before I got back, and once I was sure escape wasn’t an option, I had to take a new tack!”

“So you left me to seek harbor as a ‘fellow believer’?”

“That’s right. The laoshi has never been one to lay a hand on a believer, and he’ll do anything and everything to protect them.”

Anything and everything, huh?

That had led him to leave the nonbelievers to their fate, but as much as Maomao detested that, it had saved her life. She was hardly in a position to criticize.

“Shikyou and his friends hadn’t arrived in town yet. I couldn’t afford a confrontation with Bear-Man, and I couldn’t let them know that the Ri dignitary was nearby. So I avoided this town and went to the next one to let them know, then prioritized safely handing over our VIP. What if I had come back on my own? I wouldn’t have been able to overpower so many people. There were also perfectly good reasons I couldn’t ask the Moon Prince to send help. Although eventually, he found the mole on his own and started working with Shikyou, which made everything easier! Once the dignitary was safely back with his people, I joined Shikyou and some agents from his biaoshi agency and headed here.”

“Is that why you sent the message through your collaborator? The hint that you would be here soon?”

“Yes, that’s right. It didn’t really matter whether you noticed and understood it or not, but I knew you would, Miss Maomao! And I’ve got to say, my life was a lot easier than it could have been thanks to you poisoning all the bandits. In fact, I’m awfully curious how you managed to do it. Care to share your secrets?”

Maomao wasn’t thrilled to have Chue praising her. Poisoning folks wasn’t really something an apothecary should be doing.

“It helped that most of the marauders don’t have very discriminating palates.”

Eating the tainted potatoes would cause tingling. Notwithstanding the spices she’d used to cover the sensation, she’d expected a few people to notice. Some of the bandits had had milder symptoms than others, and she suspected it was those who’d noticed how the potatoes tasted and refrained from eating too many of them.

“In addition to the potato peels and buds, I took the liberty of making use of the snake venom and some nutmeg. I mixed a bit of extra alcohol into the horse-milk drink, to get them drunk a bit easier, and for a secret ingredient I mixed in a few of those mushrooms that make you viciously drunk.”

Neither Chue nor Shikyou said anything.

“What’s with the looks?”

“Miss Maomao, you really pulled out all the stops on your poisoning attempt.”

“Well, it was my life on the line.”

If it was kill or be killed, even Maomao would choose the former.

“I’m impressed you were able to get so many poisons in one place,” Shikyou commented.

“There’s poison everywhere, sir. It’s only a matter of knowing how to use it.”

They were getting off topic. She decided to bring them back to the main subject. “Would you answer me two questions?”

“If we can, sure!”

“You said you handed over the dignitary. What form did that take, exactly?”

Chue smirked at that. “Don’t worry your pretty head. The dignitary isn’t anyone you need to be concerned about, Miss Maomao.”

That sounded a bit evasive, but at least the “dignitary” seemed to be safe. He might have been a selfish kid with a rotten tooth, but it would have left a bad taste in Maomao’s mouth if he’d met some foul end.

“What’s your second question?” Chue asked.

After a moment, Maomao said, “It’s about who attacked Master Shikyou.”

“Oh, Miss Maomao, I think you already know.”

Stupid Chue, being so perceptive. It was Maomao’s way not to speak of a thing even when she already knew it.

Besides, she had questions. Why had Xiaohong come to fetch her? How had she known about the secret passageway? She’d quietly asked Xiaohong how she had known that Shikyou was there. And the answer? “My uncle told me.”

Hulan. Gyoku-ou’s ever-humble third son. The only substantially younger child among the four siblings.

Finally, Maomao saw that they wouldn’t get anywhere if she didn’t come out and say it. “What did Master Hulan want out of this?”

“Good question! And the answer is surprisingly simple. It was a straightforward succession dispute,” Chue said. She made it sound almost banal, yet Shikyou looked conflicted. Chue went on, “Still, Miss Chue had other reasons for coming here.” She turned to Shikyou. “Why are you leaving those bandits alive?” She drawled just like she always did, but her words were uncommonly forceful.

“I’m not a civil official,” Shikyou snapped. “It’s not my place to hang them or lop off their heads.”

“Youuu’re gonna regret it! We’re here today because you let one of them off with just a gouged-out eye. Let’s pop those heads off their shoulders, whaddaya say? We can make it look like...well, anything we want, right now.” She made a slashing motion with her hand. A clowning touch on a cruel pronouncement.

“I broke their arms so they can’t try anything. We’ll hand them over to the authorities; that’s enough.”

“If you say so...” Chue cocked her head and turned away. “Not much I can do if you insist. Just make sure you’re ready for the consequences. There’s nothing more frightening than a wounded beast.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“Do you? A soft touch like you is never going to become successor.”

“Believe me... I know,” Shikyou said.

Chue didn’t respond, but stood and left the room.