The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 12 - Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Master and Pupil

“All right. Well, don’t force yourself to eat too much.”

Once Baryou was sure that Chue had eaten her food, he left. He’d stuck around during the meal, maybe in case he could help with something, but Chue had so little trouble using the chopsticks with her left hand that he could only sit and watch. Chue thought maybe she should have looked a little less capable, even if it would worry him, but packing food into her empty stomach had taken priority.

After she ate, she wanted to sleep. Those were the basics of getting better—but when you had a visitor, well, you had to postpone the sleep.

Chue slowly opened her eyes. Her arm might have been all but torn off and her stomach might have been nearly battered to a pulp, but as far as she was concerned, her instinct was as sharp as ever.

A man, about forty years old, stood there in the gloom. Lu, Vice Minister of the Board of Rites.

“What’s up?” Chue said. “I know you’re not here just to ask if I’m feeling better. You probably came to scold an incompetent pupil.”

“Have you stopped paying attention? I can hear your accent.”

“Oopsie! Pardon me very much,” Chue said in a pointed drawl.

She couldn’t sit up. She had at least one broken rib, she gathered; they had braced it. It had been a challenge when she was eating, but she’d lived with it.

“My right hand is pretty useless now. But I’ve still got a perfectly good left one!”

“I have no use for compromised competence.”

“Then, do I have no value anymore?” Chue’s face crumpled. Apparently, being three times as agile as Baryou was too much reduced. “Are you going to pick a new successor, Mentor?”

“Do you realize how long it would take me to find and raise one at this point?”

“Oh, certainly I do. Even someone of my abilities would need at least five years. No matter how talented they were, we’d be talking at least a decade total. Hard times!”

“I didn’t put all that effort into you so that you could be the crest of a human wave. His Majesty is more invested in your interpreting than anything else.”

“I’m very glad to hear that. But I won’t be able to do my cute little performances anymore, and that’s a problem! Maybe I could learn some entertaining stories?”

She’d have to start collecting jokes, like the ones Maomao told.

“Am I not going to be disposed of?”

“I can’t dispose of you. That’s my whole problem.”

“I’m very sorry about that!” Drawl, drawl.

“I want you to find a successor candidate. One even more distinguished than you are.”

“Distinguished, you say?”

Just for a second, Chue thought of Xiaohong. She was more than suited to the role, but it would be hard to pry her away.

“Well, in good time.” Chue grinned.

It was Vice Minister Lu who had drawn Chue into the Mi clan. Publicly, he was second-in-command at the Board of Rites. It was rare for a member of the clan to rise so high in the world—they preferred less conspicuous roles that provided greater freedom of action. However, the death of Vice Minister Lu’s older brother had resulted in him succeeding to his family’s headship.

When Vice Minister Lu had gone to the Imperial capital, Chue had followed him. That was where she had met Maamei and ultimately married Baryou. The marriage had not been her free choice. It had been strongly influenced by the purposes of Vice Minister Lu and the Ma clan.

That wasn’t such a bad thing, Chue thought, so long as she had value. Baryou was a decent person too; in fact, Chue thought he was quite a good husband.

Most people would probably not have been so happy to find themselves living and serving in a land so far from the country of their birth. Chue, however, had the talent and wherewithal to make an even better member of the Mi clan than her mother had. As her value rose, as her value was recognized, it would be shown in the form of rank.

Her mother had been part of the Mi clan. Sent to be His Majesty’s eyes in the western lands, her beauty had made her Gyoku-ou’s wife.

“But that’s all the woman was.” So Vice Minister Lu had told Chue in that mansion in the western capital so long ago. “Just a trophy, fit to be fussed over. Eyes she might have been, but she was never given any great task, and her rank within the clan is low.”

So she had rushed to achieve results. She’d gone to Shaoh, claiming it was for business—but those of compromised competence were...well. She’d screwed up, but just when it seemed her identity was about to be revealed there in Shaoh, she was in a very convenient shipwreck. She decided to infiltrate yet another country until things had cooled down a bit.

During her stay, Chue was born.

Deep down, Chue’s mother was something like what one might call a con artist. She did truly love Chue’s father as his wife, but when the job was over, she cut them loose. Chue and her father both.

The information about Chue’s father’s business contacts, she’d presumably taken as a bargaining chip to get back into Li. It was Vice Minister Lu’s own mentor who had aided her in her escape.

When Chue’s mother got back to the western capital, she pretended to have no memory of Chue or her father. She reunited with her husband and three children, and even gave birth to another child.

Gyoku-ou’s subsequent destruction of the Yi clan, however, probably owed something to her mother’s lack of ability. She wasn’t able to do what the Mi clan should have done, squeezing like a snake from the inside until he couldn’t move.

As a Mi clan member, she was simply too compromised. Chue’s mother knew that perfectly well. Instead, she endeavored to choose a distinguished successor.

It was too late for her three children, who had been poisoned by Gyoku-ou while she was away. That was why she decided to make that last child: Hulan, Gyoku-ou’s third son. She would raise him as befitted someone whose name meant “tiger and wolf,” and use him to remake the western capital according to her own designs.

The simplest way to do that seemed to be to expel Gyoku-ou’s recalcitrant eldest son and make Hulan the assistant to the much more pliable second boy. It was almost impossible to predict what might happen to the family if the eldest son ascended to the headship—but the second eldest? With him, they might be able to hope for some stability.

There was another possibility: maybe someone else, someone not of the Gyoku family, could be put in place in the western capital. The thought occurred to her. But then the eldest son learned Hulan’s secret. Learned what he was planning.

“That Master Shikyou sure is an interesting guy, huh? Who would have expected him to volunteer to be part of the Mi clan?”

Anyone could see he was hardly suited for covert operations. Maybe he’d given them the name Shikyou to demonstrate his commitment to joining the clan, but Chue found it almost comically misguided. If changing your name was enough to change your station in life, they could have made all the disposable Mi clan folk they needed.

Now that even Shikyou knew she was a member of the Mi clan, the esteem in which Chue’s less-than-competent mother was held was not likely to rise.

“I wonder how low Miss Chue’s rank will fall?”

“Not lower than hers.”

“No, I suppose not.” Chue smiled. Her mother had decided that Chue had no value—what would she think if that valueless thing stood forever above her?

Personally, Chue didn’t really care anymore—but her father had died without knowing the truth. For his sake, surely she could be permitted this much. Chue must make certain that she was forever valued better than her mother, so that the woman would never forget her—or her father.

It was for that modicum of vengeance that Chue had sworn fealty to the nation called Li.

“Mentor, will there be any change in Miss Chue’s work?”

“I doubt it.”

“That’s good to know.”

“It’s not very easy work to grasp. Do you understand what it means?” Her mentor’s expression was clouded.

“Yes, sir. The first and foremost mission I’ve been given is to make the Moon Prince happy.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

Neither did Chue. Finding someone, she knew how to do. Eliminating them—easy enough. But this?

Nonetheless, she believed she had made the right choice protecting Maomao, even at the cost of her hand.

“Sigh! I do hope Miss Maomao will heed Miss Chue’s advice!”

Her mentor gave her a strange look at that, but she pretended not to notice.