The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 23

Chapter 23: The Road Home

“The answer is surprisingly simple. It was a straightforward succession dispute.”

Something bothered Maomao. It couldn’t be as simple as Chue said. Not that that was any reason for Maomao to go sticking her nose into things.

Okay, now.

Most of the problems Maomao was aware of had been solved, clearing the way for them to return to the western capital. There was no denying, though, that the wagon ride was awfully boring. Xiaohong, who was riding with her, was asleep, and Chue was on the driver’s bench, leaving Maomao without much to do except stare at the passing scenery.

Maybe I should take this opportunity to get my thoughts in order.

She didn’t know whether it would be any help to anyone, but she mentally reviewed the four siblings from the western capital.

There was Gyoku-ou’s oldest son, Shikyou. He’d received an elite education, but hadn’t wanted to do much with it, and now he ran a biaoshi agency. In Maomao’s opinion, Shikyou could have single-handedly resolved the succession dispute without much fuss if only he’d been of a mind to do so. He wasn’t as terrible a person as the rumors said, but he could stand to have it a little more together.

Then there was the oldest daughter—what was her name again? Yinxing, right. She was Xiaohong’s mother. She came across as a strong woman, but life in I-sei Province seemed to be suffocating her. Maomao had given their departed bodyguards a letter about Xiaohong; she wondered if it had reached Yinxing. She felt bad about sending the men on a busy errand—almost as bad as she felt about giving up the pearls she had used to pay them. Maybe she could get Shikyou to compensate her. As the lone woman among the siblings, Yinxing had been less than happy about the division of the inheritance.

Feilong was the second son. A diligent and serious man, it was almost as if he had taken his eldest brother as an example of what not to do with his life. Maomao had met him a few times but they had never really talked. If nothing else, she didn’t hear any unsavory rumors about him.

Finally, there was the third and youngest son, Hulan. He’d always seemed a bit suspicious, but recent events had cast his duplicitousness into sharp relief. Now that Maomao thought about it, she saw that virtually all the trouble she’d had since Gyoku-ou’s death had been brought on her by this one man. He always acted like he was just there to support Feilong—which might help explain why he would go after Shikyou’s life.

Miss Chue called it a simple succession dispute.

True, if it was really nothing more than a quarrel between the first and second sons over who would follow in their father’s footsteps, a lot of the pieces would fall into place. As a supporter of the second son, the youngest had tried to do away with the oldest. All well and good. And yet...

I feel like there’s something else going on here.

Chue didn’t always tell the whole truth.

Wondering and worrying, Maomao wrote a name on the floor of the wagon.

None of those four siblings have “Gyoku” in their names.

As far as she could tell, the “new You” clan had some unique rules regarding nomenclature in their household. The men were named after animals, the women—after colors, perhaps. It was a simple system and made a certain kind of broad sense.

It might still fit together, if the eldest son had chosen to throw away the Gyoku name. Otherwise you wouldn’t expect him to have a name like Shikyou.

Shikyou was another name for the owl, a common symbol of wrongdoers. One could almost think that the eldest son was seeking to take the role of villain upon himself. His father, Gyoku-ou, had seen himself as a hero—and his son, almost in reaction, had taken the opposite path. Yet in spite of his playacting at villainy, in Maomao’s opinion, Shikyou hadn’t been able to escape his own basic decency. He was more heroic than Gyoku-ou had ever been.

He didn’t deliberately wait until I was cornered before he burst in on Bear-Man, did he?

It had been almost like the climax of a play.

Then there was the second son’s name, Feilong. It was common enough; it meant “flying dragon.” It represented a wish that one’s son would soar like a dragon, or in more prosaic terms, that he would make it big in the world.

But what about the third son?

Hulan, “tiger and wolf.” Like Shikyou, it did not have a very favorable meaning. It seemed to symbolize greed and cruelty.

Maybe those animals don’t represent the same things in I-sei Province as they do where I come from? Maomao wondered. But, no—wolves couldn’t possibly be considered a very good thing in a land of shepherds who had to look after sheep and goats.

Maomao stuck her head out the window and looked at Chue, who was humming a tune as she drove along.

“Miss Chue, Miss Chue!”

“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao, what is it?” Chue asked. She didn’t even glance in Maomao’s direction, and the wind made it a bit hard to hear her.

“Is there some kind of tradition in I-sei Province of giving the youngest child an inauspicious name?”

“Hmmm, good question. A custom of giving a bad name so that the child doesn’t die too soon? No, I don’t think so!” she drawled.

In spite of how she acted, Chue was something of an expert. Maomao had heard whispers of that tradition. Some people feared that Heaven would grow fond of a child that was too sweet, and deliberately chose “unclean” names to discourage an early death. Some, it was said, even named their children after excrement.

“Why do you ask?” Chue said.

“I was just thinking about Hulan. It sounds like the name of a stage villain.”

“Oh, him? They say the wife picked the name, because she thought he was least suited to be head of the clan.”

The wife?

That would be Xiaohong’s grandmother, the woman Maomao had met once when she’d gone to check on the girl.

“She picked a rather unusual name, didn’t she?” Maomao said.

“She spent all those years in a foreign country,” Chue replied. “Maybe it messed with her idea of what’s normal.”

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

Was that why Hulan alone was so much younger than his siblings?

“I don’t think it’s the only thing about her that got knocked a bit out of whack while she was there. They say that after Master Hulan was born, she became a husk of a woman!” Still that same friendly drawl.

“Is that so?”

Maomao had a rather scandalous thought. What if Hulan isn’t Gyoku-ou’s son?

If he’d been conceived in that foreign land, it might explain why his mother had given him a “bad” name. For a moment, Maomao debated with herself whether to voice the question—then decided that if she were ever going to do it, this would be the moment.

“Is it possible, hypothetically, that Master Hulan isn’t Master Gyoku-ou’s real son?”

“Pffft!” Chue burst out laughing, louder than Maomao had ever heard her, although she didn’t know what was so funny. Chue was always grinning, but this was the first time Maomao had seen her hold her sides and guffaw—which she somehow managed to do while also still holding on to the reins. That was some driving.

“Ha ha ha! Sorry, sorry. That... That’s one thing I can tell you is definitely not the case.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He was born a full year after Master Gyoku-ou’s wife came back, so we know she wasn’t already carrying the child by some foreigner. Ah, of course, if you think someone sneaked into the house, it might be a different matter.”

Maomao’s idea must really have amused Chue, because she was grinning again at the thought of it. Maybe they had different ideas of what was funny. Maomao didn’t really see a child’s legitimacy as comedy gold.

Huh. Scratch one hypothesis.

She closed the window. There was a good, long stretch of bouncing along in the wagon ahead of her still. Maybe she should try to get some sleep.

It would take several days to get back to the western capital. The traveling party was much larger than the one had been on the way out, so instead of staying in towns, they camped out at night. Most of the group seemed used to this. They could put up simple tents in the blink of an eye—maybe some were former nomads. As Shikyou oversaw proceedings, Maomao, Xiaohong, and even Chue were left with nothing to do but watch, as if they were merely guests.

“Uncle, you’re amazing!” Xiaohong said, her eyes shining, as she watched Shikyou direct his people. Sitting there drinking a cup of warmed goat’s milk, she looked like the child she was.

I think Xiaohong might have had it the hardest of any of us on this trip, Maomao thought. She’d almost begun to wonder what the catch was, the way Xiaohong had listened so obediently all throughout their adventures. Xiaohong had done everything Maomao had asked of her, even things plenty of adults couldn’t have. Maomao was starting to think seriously (if rather naughtily) of spiriting the girl to the royal capital to train her as a medicine woman—an interesting possibility indeed.

“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao, you’re not plotting something, are you?” Chue asked. Maomao, for her part, tried to play dumb. Apparently she was not going to be allowed to just bring Xiaohong home like a puppy. Instead she said, “I have to admire your skills. I never expected camp food to be so good.”

There was perfectly browned bread, covered in cheese toasted over the fire. The salty flavor of the gooey cheese was the perfect complement to the bread. The soup didn’t have much in it, but the bone broth helped stimulate the appetite.

“Miss Chue only wishes she could offer bigger servings. None of us have been eating well recently!”

While in disguise as a biaoshi, Chue had eaten like an ordinary person. If she’d consumed her usual quantities, Maomao might have figured out who she was sooner. In fact, Maomao was starting to think that Chue’s panoply of quirky behaviors was, in part, precisely so that she wouldn’t be noticed when she was undercover.

“It’s hard to get enough to eat when you’re roughing it,” Maomao said.

“And dragging along all these bandits! Do we really have to feed them? Maybe their portions should go to Miss Chue!”

“Even criminals get hungry, Miss Chue—and we can’t have them starving before we get them in front of a magistrate, can we?”

“Aw, they’re just going to hang them. I think it would be easiest to just get them out of the way.” Once again, Chue’s cheerful tone belied the cruelty of her words.

They probably will hang, won’t they?

The outlaws had subjugated an entire town, killing and enslaving the citizens. Not to mention that they had conspired to kidnap a foreign dignitary. It would be hard to talk their way out of all that. As such, the grunts had been handed over to the authorities in the next town over, where they would be treated to swift executions. Bear-Man and a few of the other ringleaders, though, were being taken back to the western capital. Their crimes were too great to be dealt with by local officials.

“What will happen to the townspeople who were forced to help the bandits?” Maomao asked.

“Mmm. I guess they’re not exactly blameless, are they? You could argue for extenuating circumstances, to a degree, but still...”

I think their “laoshi” is going to have a particularly hard time.

It was thanks to him that so many of the townspeople had in fact survived—but to achieve that, he had chosen to save his fellow believers and condemn the nonbelievers. That wasn’t even mentioning how he had cozied up to the bandits in order to keep himself alive.

“What will happen to the man they called the laoshi?” Maomao asked.

“He’s hardly innocent, and even if he took his punishment and came back, there wouldn’t be a place for him there. I can’t see them returning him to his position after he left all those nonbelievers to die!” Chue chirped.

“I see...”

Maomao felt absolutely helpless. He’d done what he’d had to do, true enough, but the human heart was not so easily appeased.

“It’s nothing for you to get upset about, Miss Maomao. The laoshi did everything he could to protect his fellow believers, and he won’t regret that, no matter what happens to him.”

Chue sounded oddly like she knew the man. All signs seemed to suggest that she had been in I-sei Province before.

“The main point is, I think we can blame everything that’s happened on Shikyou and his soft way of doing things. He should’ve taken both eyes when he had the chance, not stopped at one. And what about this time? He should have lopped off Bear-Man’s head on the spot instead of handing him over to the authorities.”

“My uncle’s very nice,” Xiaohong said, giving Chue a bit of a nasty look. Maomao guessed she thought Chue was insulting Shikyou. “I think he’s definitely the best one to be head of the clan too!”

“You’re a big fan of your uncle, huh?” Maomao asked, sipping some goat’s milk.

“You’re not wrong. Your uncle is a nice guy, and he holds authority over others, so maybe he would make a good clan leader,” Chue said. “But he’s not cut out to be successor.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” Maomao asked.

“No. No, it’s not.” Chue licked the last of the crumbs off her fingers, clearly wishing she had more bread, and took a swig of goat’s milk.

The next day, the wagon took a road that was not one they had traveled while coming out.

“Isn’t this the wrong way?” Maomao asked Chue, who wasn’t on the driver’s bench today, but under the wagon’s cover with Maomao. Xiaohong was sharing a horse with her uncle. She must have been having a good time; it certainly offered better views than the back of the wagon.

“Not wrong, just different. We’re following the mountains today.”

Maomao would have guessed that going straight across the plains would be faster, but for some reason they were taking a circuitous route. “Why the change?”

“Because if we keep going straight, we’ll meet an uncle just about Shikyou’s age. Didn’t I tell you about them before? And how they get along?”

An uncle about Shikyou’s age? That had to be Gyokuen’s sixth or seventh son. Maomao realized she had heard about him. “You mean the one he fought in a duel using real swords?”

“That’s the one! The reason Shikyou showed up later than we did is because he took the long way around to avoid running into him. Since, in a way, you could say the two of them are closer than anybody.” She sounded completely earnest.

Does that guy ever stop causing trouble?

Maomao looked around. The landscape they were traversing was no longer grassy plains, but a kind of rocky desert. There were cliffs to either side. “And that’s why we’re going this way?” she asked.

“It’s actually the shortest route, distance-wise. We only had the one wagon when we were coming out, so we avoided it, but the big caravans all use this road.”

A road you couldn’t use if your traveling party was too small? That meant one thing: bandits. Certainly nobody would be stupid enough to attack them with the number of guards they had at this point.

Or at least, so you’d think. But Maomao couldn’t shake her anxiety. “I think I would have preferred the regular route,” she said. The mountainous terrain was no fun at all, since she had to endure the constant bouncing and rocking of the wagon. “Wasn’t there some other detour we could have taken?”

“The northern route is already snowed in at this time of year. The horses get very tired, and you need somewhere to camp and plenty of fuel.”

If, in Chue’s considered judgment, this was the best choice, then so be it. Yet Maomao thought she saw the slightest hint of darkness in Chue’s expression. “I do hope we get out of here soon,” she said, and gazed out from the wagon as the barren landscape rolled past.

They took frequent breaks along the way so as not to tire the horses too much. One of the wagons was carrying feed and water for the animals, and the horses dug greedily into the bucket of hay. Xiaohong had a handful of something white; she must’ve been feeding them too.

“She’s giving rock salt to the horses,” Maomao observed.

“Right! Those poor creatures do sweat so much,” Chue said.

It felt like a waste, but it was probably necessary. She’d heard that there were even huge deer that lived far to the north that liked to drink human urine.

“Hmm.” Chue made a bit of a funny face as she prepared the food.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. We’ve just got plenty of reasons to be anxious around here, and I can’t quite settle down,” she said, expertly wielding a small knife to slice some dried meat. If even the ever-upbeat Chue was openly worried, they might be in trouble. Watching, Maomao felt a nameless but undeniable fear creep over her.

“Miss Chue... Are you sure you should say things like that in front of me?”

Chue goggled for a second. “You’re right, that was careless of me. But my current job is to see to your safety, Miss Maomao. I’ll protect you no matter what—don’t you worry about a thing.”

It was strange for Chue. When even Maomao could tell she was on edge, it meant there was something big in store.

“You still look pretty worried,” Maomao observed.

“Miss Chue might not look it, but she’s a perfectionist, so she’d like to get rid of any sources of anxiety,” Chue said, drawling again.

“Such as what? Bear-Man can’t run away now, can he?”

“No, indeed. We bound him hand and foot and broke both his arms. That definitely rules out him wielding any weapons, but...” Chue furrowed her brow ever so slightly.

“That sounds like you were pretty thorough. What kind of trouble do you think he could get up to?”

“Under normal circumstances, even Miss Chue would never be able to beat him, Miss Maomao. Bound or not, a bear is still a bear. All it takes is one good bite and you’re done.” Chue mimed chomping at the air. “But there’s something scarier than fury like a tiger’s. It’s someone with the tenacity of a snapping turtle.”

I get what she’s saying.

“Bear-Man” had interfered with Shikyou’s jobs on more than one occasion in retaliation for his missing eye, and if they hadn’t apprehended him this time, he probably would have done it again. And now, he had plenty of reason to hate Maomao too.

“I really do doubt he can get away,” Chue said, but her tone didn’t inspire much confidence.

“I hope you’re right.”

The other woman set down her knife, while Maomao busied herself hoping that nothing would go wrong.

Chue’s intuition, however, proved correct.