The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 14 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: A Flower Signature

Maomao requested a carriage to take her from the brothels back to the dormitory—partly because it had gotten late, and partly because she was carrying Joka’s jade and didn’t want anything to happen to it. She’d convinced herself that there was no point fretting over a few coins to take a carriage when—

“Miss Maomaaaooo! I came to get you!”

—she discovered that for some reason, the carriage was accompanied by Chue.

“You did, Miss Chue? Uh...why?” She was genuinely puzzled.

“Oh, goodness,” the other woman drawled. “Isn’t Miss Chue to your liking?”

“It’s just that Maamei told me you were away on other business.”

“Yes, and I finally finished it this morning. Phew! I’m just pooped!” Chue pounded her shoulders demonstratively. “Miss Maamei told me all about it—how Mister Lihaku carted you off. And then, well, Miss Chue’s extrasensory powers told her a lot must be happening, so she came to get you.”

Even by the standards of the ever-capable Chue, this seemed an improbable explanation.

“Heeey, madam!” Maomao called. “Do we have anyone who seems like a spy in there? Someone who might be leaking information to outsiders?”

“Oh, Miss Maomao, you’re always so suspicious!” Chue said and began to push Maomao toward the carriage. A one-handed push, since she couldn’t use her right arm. “As you can see, I’m not quite as nimble as I used to be, so I was released from service as the Moon Prince’s lady-in-waiting. I bet that means I’ll be seeing a lot more of you, Miss Maomao, so let’s be friends! I have a sick husband and a very hungry duck waiting for me at home, you see.”

That duck belongs to Basen, doesn’t it?

In any case, Maomao went ahead and got in the carriage, knowing that at least the fare would stay in her purse.

“Heading back to the dormitory?” Chue chirped.

“No. I mean—er, would it be possible for me to go to the Moon Prince? I’m afraid I didn’t contact him in advance...” Maomao sounded about as awkward as she felt.

“Ah, the Moon Prince, eh? Yes, the Moon Prince...” At last a leer spread over Chue’s face. “Would you like Miss Chue to lend you the sheer negligee she used to entice her husband?”

Okay, missing the point.

Maomao pulled on both of Chue’s cheeks at once. She wondered how much information Chue and Jinshi shared between them. It made things hard to navigate.

“Pleath leth go ob me,” Chue said.

“Well?” Maomao asked, releasing Chue’s cheeks. Chue rubbed at them.

“My, it was just a joke. You may have to wait a bit, but you can probably see him. Just leave it to Miss Chue!”

“If you don’t mind, I will, thank you,” Maomao said, and bowed to her.

Just as Chue had predicted, Maomao had to wait in the carriage while the other woman went inside. She didn’t come back for a long time.

Maybe she’s not able to get permission.

In that case, so be it, Maomao figured. The need to ask Jinshi for help and the awkwardness at doing so vied within her anyway.

Seize the initiative.

That had been the spirit in which Maomao had gone to see Jinshi the day before last, and she’d been rebuffed. The wind had been taken out of her sails—yet she’d also been relieved. She’d wondered how she should act when she saw him next, but she’d assumed that would be a little further in the future, not less than three days.

I guess if I think of it as business...

Maomao took a quick breath and then let it out again. She just had to act the way she always had.

“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao!” said Chue, finally coming back. She got into the carriage, holding something. “Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao! This is it! The sheer negli—”

“I said, I don’t want it!” Maomao grabbed the bundle Chue held out to her and smashed it. It might not be very polite, but this was Chue she was dealing with, so she didn’t really worry about it.

“Miss Maomao, don’t you think you treat Miss Chue rather shabbily?”

“No, I think I treat Miss Chue just right. Now, tell me—did you go all the way to get that? Is that why I’ve been waiting so long?”

Maomao had been sitting in the carriage for a solid hour.

“Eh heh heh!” Chue looked in a random direction and stuck out her tongue. She was very, very good at ticking people off.

Then she said, “But I also did my job, I promise. You can go see the Moon Prince now.”

Chue motioned the driver through the little window to continue, then picked up the bundle that Maomao had slapped down. “At least take this,” she said, handing Maomao something that looked like it was made of sheer cloth and rosary beads.

Maomao smacked it to the ground again.

That wasn’t enough to put Chue off her game, of course. “My my my, you are so cruel. I just wanted you to be able to feel this sheer fabric, Miss Maomao. And I was ready to offer you this underwear to go along with it...” This went well beyond brazenness.

“I suppose you meant rosary, not underwear?”

To be fair, I guess it’s not like I’ve never seen anything like it in the pleasure district. She didn’t have any serious objections to it—other than the fact that it looked like it would ride up.

“Please... The negligee! Just give it a little feel?” Chue was imploring.

“Fine. A little feel. Just of the negligee.”

“Here you go!”

“The weaving is very unique, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is! Have a close look!”

As they chatted, they arrived at Jinshi’s palace.

“Moon Priiiince! Loyal and wise Miss Chue has brought Miss Maomao to you!” Chue sang out. If anything, she seemed to be even more at liberty than she had been before. Previously, the fear of Suiren had kept her at least moderately in line; maybe she treated her injury as an excuse to relax a little. Or maybe it was just because she wasn’t Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting anymore.

“My, what a tone you take!” There was Suiren, emerging soundlessly from the pavilion, looking at Chue and smiling. A single bead of sweat ran down Chue’s cheek—even she knew she couldn’t afford to go too overboard.

So that’s Lady Ah-Duo’s mother, Maomao thought. When she remembered the story Maamei had told her, she felt conflicted. It wasn’t exactly a secret, but she tried not to let the knowledge show on her face nonetheless.

“Maomao, do come in,” said Suiren, ushering her inside. She recognized the soldier on guard duty. Maybe Taomei had gone home, because Maomao didn’t see her anywhere.

Jinshi was, as usual, seated in his chair, looking important. When he saw Maomao, though, his eyes darted away awkwardly.

Maomao, by contrast, found that as uneasy as she had felt on her way here, that all vanished when she arrived. Instead she felt a sort of fatigue, like one does when coming back to work after a vacation.

“S-So you have an urgent matter to discuss with me? What might it be?” Jinshi said. It was clear in his voice that he was nervous. Maomao might be surprisingly calm, but Jinshi was still feeling a bit awkward.

Maomao thought about how to broach the subject. Unsure where to start, she decided to show him the jade tablet Joka had given her. “Do you recognize this?” she asked.

“A jade tablet?” Jinshi squinted at it, then took it from her. “It looks like the front has been scraped off. And it’s broken in half.”

“I gather it was broken to begin with,” Maomao said.

Jinshi grunted and studied the tablet. Then he swept his bangs back. “Mmm. What’s this? Looks like it has quite a story behind it.”

“It...belonged to an acquaintance of mine.” Maomao thought again about how to tell this story. “The woman who gave birth to this acquaintance was a courtesan, and a customer gave her this tablet. The customer claimed that he was descended from the Imperial family.”

Maomao decided that she would tell the truth, but she wouldn’t use Joka’s name. True, Jinshi could discover it fairly easily if he investigated the matter, but he wouldn’t hear it from her.

“A common enough story.” Jinshi turned the jade and looked at it from another angle.

Picking her words carefully, Maomao explained, “This acquaintance of mine has no intention of declaring herself related to the Imperial family, nor of trying to extort anything from you. However, she worried that her possession of the tablet might expose her to unwanted suspicion, so she gave it to me.”

“The Imperial family... It doesn’t look like the possibility can be dismissed out of hand.” Jinshi’s face had taken on the aspect it had when he was hard at work. “Suiren.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jinshi raised his hand, and the old woman brought him writing implements.

“There’s some sort of pattern on the side,” Jinshi said, squinting again and taking a close look. Then he picked up a brush and made a sketch of the pattern. “Hmm.”

Suiren peeked at the stone as well. “Why, that’s...”

“Ooh, what? What is it?” asked Chue, bursting with interest.

Maomao didn’t know the answer to that question, but to her it looked like some kind of writing. “What is it, Master Jinshi?” she asked.

“A huaya,” he replied. “A kind of autograph.”

“A huaya?”

A huaya, or “flower mark,” was like a symbol that could be used in place of a person’s name. It was formed from a calligraphic version of the name’s characters, which was why it straddled the line between words and decorative pattern.

Jinshi had evidently recognized at least some part of the pattern along the side of the tablet as a huaya. A commoner like Maomao wouldn’t be familiar with such things; that was why she hadn’t recognized the writing entangled amid the motif.

“I’m impressed you spotted that,” Maomao said, and she meant it.

“Many people use huaya in lieu of a chop. I see dozens of them every day.”

Maomao thought of the piles and piles of papers that always towered on Jinshi’s desk.

“Maybe more to the point, there’s something similar carved into my jade tablet.”

Suiren went and produced a paulownia-wood box from somewhere. Inside was a tablet of jade.

“You see?” Jinshi said. He pointed to the side, where a pattern much like the one they were studying was indeed engraved. His tablet was a size bigger than Joka’s broken one, and carved in more delicate detail. It depicted a four-clawed dragon, but otherwise much resembled the broken tablet. Once Maomao had had a good look at it, Suiren put it back in the box.

“Do you know whose ‘signature’ it is?” Maomao asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t recall. However...” Jinshi pointed to the upper part of the huaya. “There are various ways to write huaya. An exaggerated version of the cursive ‘grass hand’ style, say, or a cursive version of one character of the name. Or you could join two characters of the name.”

All of this was completely new to Maomao. “And is this the two-character style?” she asked.

“I suspect so.” Jinshi wrote something beside the huaya he had copied out. “Huaya written with two characters are called twin-joins, and they often involve joining the left side of one character to the right side of the other. In this case, it looks to me like the top and bottom have been run together.”

“The top and bottom?”

The lines Jinshi had added looked like the “grass radical,” three short strokes at the top of one of the characters.

Maomao felt herself break out in a sweat.

“It’s a very common huaya among the Imperial family,” Jinshi said.

“Is... Is that so?”

It was true that Jinshi’s own jade tablet had a very similar huaya.

Yikes...

Maomao thought of Joka. She made her sales by giving the impression that she was somehow descended from the royal line—but if she really was, what would happen then? Maomao had known it might be the case, but being confronted with the reality, she couldn’t help panicking a little.

“If I may ask, who is the owner of this tablet?” said Jinshi. All his awkwardness had vanished. He, too, was a man of business, and he seemed to prioritize the issue in front of him over any lingering embarrassment.

“If you knew who it was, would you punish her?” Maomao asked, shivering at the thought. She knew Jinshi was not your average bureaucrat, but even so, she didn’t want to sell out a family member. She would hate for anything to happen to her sister Joka.

“The owner didn’t steal the tablet, did she?”

“No, sir. I told you the truth about its history.” Maomao had been told that Joka’s mother had received it from a customer. “However, she sometimes showed the tablet to customers and told them about it, and rumors occasionally circulate that she’s descended from the Imperial family.”

Joka herself never said as much; she claimed she simply let customers come to their own (mistaken) conclusions.

Maomao hoped she had put things in the best light, but Jinshi seemed to guess the truth.

“You’re telling me that because of that, this tablet has become a liability?” he said.

“Precisely, sir.” Maomao let out a long sigh. Jinshi didn’t seem to show any inclination to punish anyone for speaking of the Imperial family. “A burglar broke into the brothel looking for that tablet. My acquaintance thinks there’s a chance he may try to take it by force next time, and she decided the safest course of action would be to part ways with it.”

“Are you certain this tablet is what they were after?”

“Yes, sir. I’m told someone came by recently seeking to purchase it. And it was...” Maomao forced herself to remember the all-too-forgettable name. “...a soldier named Fang.”

“Fang? Wang Fang?”

“Yes, sir. The man who was killed in the freak strategist’s office.”

Jinshi was a smart person, and unlike Maomao, he had a grasp of human relationships.

“So Wang Fang was looking for descendants of the Imperial family, and you think he was killed as a result?”

“I don’t know. But it would be a better way to go out than simply being ganged up on by the three women you were cheating on. Maybe he was playing them in an effort to get information.”

Were the women who had killed Wang Fang still in jail?

“Hmm. Who is the owner of the tablet, then? You still haven’t actually said.”

“You’re telling me you won’t punish her?” Maomao pressed. Jinshi didn’t need her to tell him; with his information network, he could easily find out who the tablet’s owner was.

“You keep asking that. Do you really mistrust me so much?” A slight furrow appeared in Jinshi’s brow. Not wishing to upset him, Maomao thought this might be a good time to back down.

“You have your position to think of,” she replied.

Sometimes Jinshi’s position dictated cruel punishments. If Maomao didn’t specifically tell him Joka’s name, it might be easier to justify not inflicting one on her.

“I won’t do anything to harm you...or the person who gave this to you.”

Maomao suspected it was true, as far as it went. Jinshi would do everything he could to avoid breaking a promise, even if it caused him pain.

For a long moment, the two of them stared at each other.

“My, my,” said Chue, breaking in. “I know how much you love talking to Maomao about everything, Moon Prince, but I think she’s starting to feel like you don’t trust her.”

“Isn’t this what trust is?”

“I don’t think that’s trust so much as domination,” Chue said, and Jinshi could be seen to flinch. “If you want to know absolutely everything, that’s as good as leaving the other person naked and defenseless! You may think that it’s no problem for Maomao as long as she’s under your protection, but then, at that point, does she really have a choice? To play along with you here would mean having to stay by you forever.”

Jinshi went a little pale.

Chue drawled on. “And Miss Maomao, I know you’re trying to keep the Moon Prince from being overburdened, in your own way, but you’re a little too aggressive, methinks.”

“Aggressive...” Maomao narrowed her eyes.

“Admittedly, most people would probably say anything they had to say to get in good with the Moon Prince. Ah! Miss Chue won’t say another word now. She has no malice, so please don’t punish her!”

Having said her piece, Chue stepped back with a glance at Suiren. Suiren’s expression didn’t twitch, but she left Jinshi’s chamber. Chue put a relieved hand to her chest and let out a breath. “Miss Chue will excuse herself now,” she said, and followed Suiren out of the room.

Now Maomao and Jinshi were alone, but Maomao’s head was full of the jade tablet. For a moment Jinshi looked like he’d taken a bite of something sour, but a few seconds later his expression returned to normal.

“Has the owner of this tablet done anything worthy of punishment?” he asked.

“No sir, by no means.”

We’re safe...barely.

“Then there’s no problem. If need be, I was planning to assign a bodyguard to her.”

“I think she would turn you down on that, sir.”

“I’ll file the matter of this tablet away in my memory. And maybe I’ll increase the patrols around the pleasure district just for good measure.”

“I think that would be a very helpful way of approaching it, sir.”

Evidently Jinshi didn’t intend to press Maomao any further.

“I can’t make any judgments on the basis of a huaya alone. Let’s see what other distinguishing characteristics this thing has. It’s made of jade—jadeite, at that, and of a rich color.” He seemed to be enunciating the tablet’s unique features for his own benefit. “Knowing you, Maomao, I presume you’ve already considered the possibility that this tablet does belong to the Imperial family. Even if you didn’t recognize the huaya, you’re imaginative enough to have thought of it.”

“It occurred to me that it might belong to someone of very distinguished status.”

If the tablet was really Imperial in origin—well, the thought sent a shiver down her spine.

“From the way it’s been shaved and shattered, we can see a complicated history: Someone didn’t want it to be recognized in public, but found they couldn’t throw it away.” Jinshi seemed to have come to much the same conclusion as Maomao. “Maybe someone who really was of the Imperial line, but defaced the tablet so as not to get dragged into the family’s conflicts.”

“I think that’s very possible, sir.”

“If it’s true, the question becomes what era this tablet hails from. It’s hard to imagine that it’s very recent. Assuming, at least, that His Majesty hasn’t been roving the streets in disguise.”

Knowing the Emperor, it was conceivable—but it wasn’t possible.

“I don’t think it can be His Majesty,” Maomao said. “Because I was told it was given some thirty years ago.”

“Thirty years...”

Jinshi twirled the writing brush in his fingers. It was mostly dry, so no ink went flying from it, but it was horrifying to think if it had. Any one item of Jinshi’s personal wear would have represented a year’s salary for a commoner. Suddenly seized with fear, Maomao grabbed the brush from him.

“And I think the chances of it being the former emperor are vanishingly small,” Jinshi said.

“I’m aware, sir.”

The former monarch was infamous for his penchant for little girls, and it was almost impossible to imagine him with Joka’s mother. Besides, Joka’s vague descriptions of her father sounded nothing like the former emperor.

The man was supposedly handsome, but filthy, as I recall.

He didn’t sound very imperial.

“My acquaintance also told me that when the jade was given, it was already broken and shaved down. Considering that it is jade, perhaps it was passed down through generations?”

“That would have to be the former emperor’s time at the most recent, then. There are a handful of relatives still left from before they were forced to retire to monasteries and convents.”

That had been under the reign of the empress regnant. The former emperor had assumed the throne when all his half-brothers had died of illness. One heard, however, that after his accession, the surviving male relatives of the Imperial line had been shunted aside so that they would be no threat to the sovereign.

No idea how true that is, though.

If the tablet’s original owner had been one of the former emperor’s half-siblings, that certainly would mean getting dragged into a family quarrel. If its owner had defaced the tablet and renounced his Imperial heritage to avoid that outcome, well, maybe it had been a wise decision. Even if it might have been safer to simply throw it away.

“It’s hard to determine how old something made of jade might be,” said Maomao. If it had been cloth, it would have been easy to tell. Weaving techniques and patterns changed from age to age.

“You know, I think it may be possible,” said Jinshi, studying the tablet. “Only so many craftsmen are allowed to make Imperial jades. They should have records of these designs—kept so that no two Imperial huaya are the same.”

“Then...”

“Yes. I’ll keep this and look into the matter. By the way...”

“Yes, sir?” Maomao looked at Jinshi. Was there something else bothering him?

“I gather you were at the meeting of the named yesterday and today.”

“Yes, sir. Lahan roped me into it.”

“Ah, Lahan. Yes, I could see him wanting to drag you to that meeting.” It seemed to make sense to Jinshi. “I’m sure you’re tired of being forced to do so much lately,” he said placatingly.

“I suppose I did get to see a lot of different things. It was good experience, I’m sure. Master Basen was there too, you know.”

“Ah, yes. I would have liked to have gone myself,” Jinshi said, a bit sullenly.

“I’m afraid you’re not allowed there, Master Jinshi.”

“Why not? You don’t have to be named to attend, do you?”

“Master Jinshi, what would people think of a boss who popped up right when his subordinates were having a nice drink together?”

Jinshi pondered. Maomao suspected he was picturing the freak strategist as the boss in question.

“I suppose they might think...he wasn’t very perceptive?”

“I wouldn’t know. But the best bosses are certainly the ones who just dispense some money and get out of there.”

“That’s tragic!” Jinshi looked at her, pouting.

Maomao couldn’t resist a little smile.

Two sets of eyes were watching them as they chatted.

“They’re not getting anywhere at all!” the owner of one of the pairs drawled.

“They’re both such professional people, that’s the problem,” the other agreed.

Neither Maomao nor Jinshi ever noticed Chue and Suiren peeping into the room.