The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 15 - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: To Everyone a Purpose

Several years before, there had been a woman who had faked a suicide and fled the court.

Her name was Suirei, a member of the Shi clan-which was annihilated-as well as a granddaughter of the former emperor. As a result of the special circumstances of her birth and her past mistakes, her survival could not be made public, and she currently lived with Ah- Duo.

This young woman had medical knowledge-she and her mentor had devised a drug that could put people into a comatose state and then bring them "back to life." Among the drug's ingredients was thornapple.

As for Ah-Duo, she had stepped down from her position as high consort and had left the rear palace, and now she lived in an isolated villa.

I'm not sure I get how it's different from the rear palace.She just lives somewhere else now, Maomao thought, although she wasn't about to say it out loud. She was in a carriage, clattering along toward Ah-Duo's villa.

She heard children's voices:

"Ha ha ha!"

"Wait for meee!"

They were the children of the Shi clan, whom Ah-Duo harbored along with Suirei. Chou-u, the little troublemaker of the pleasure district, should have been here by all rights as well, but as a side effect of the resurrection drug he had lost his memory, and therefore could walk a different path from these other children. So long as the ones who were here remembered their former clan, they couldn't go out in public.

You have to take the really, really long view here.

From the perspective of lifespan, Ah-Duo would die before these kids-they would outlive her, assuming they didn't get sick or seriously injured. Was there someone who could and would look after them until the bitter end, keeping their secret safe all the while?

There were two men with the children-no, two women dressed like men. Ah-Duo and Suirei both frequently dressed in men's clothing, perhaps because it was easier to move in, or perhaps out of personal preference.

"Lady Ah-Duo, it's been ever so long!" drawled Maomao's guide, Chue. She bowed her head politely, and Maomao did the same. She felt a little funny, though: The last time they'd met was when Ah-Duo told her about her relationship to Jinshi.

"I'm not sure I would say ever so long," said Ah-Duo, instructing her ladies-in-waiting to shepherd the children away. The kids looked disappointed, but the ladies herded them off.

Maomao had the same thought every time she visited the villa: They really look up to her, don't they?

"Shall we take this conversation inside?" Ah-Duo asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Maomao said. Considering what they were there to discuss, she was eager to speak in private.

Maomao had come to ask Suirei about anesthetics. Dr. Liu and the other physicians were working themselves to the bone to implement better treatments for His Majesty, but anesthesia was one place where there was still room for improvement. The very fact that they were willing to entertain Maomao's suggestion was evidence that they would take all the help they could get.

Or in this case, maybe I should say they're grasping at straws.

The small company went to one of the rooms in the villa. It had a modest table and four chairs; an attendant prepared tea and then promptly left.

It was only Ah-Duo, Suirei, Maomao, and Chue in the room together. Ah-Duo gestured for them to sit, and they did so.

Ah-Duo folded her legs and turned to Maomao. "Now, I hear you have business with Sui. What is it you want?"

"I'd like to ask ... Sui ... for her medical knowledge," Maomao said. She wasn't sure it was appropriate to use the name Suirei, so she settled on using the shortened form as well.

"What do you think, Sui?" Ah-Duo asked.

"I have no opinion," the other young woman replied. "I'll follow your orders, Lady Ah-Duo."

"Ah, you're no fun." Ah-Duo took a smoking pipe in her hand and twirled it deftly. It didn't look like she actually smoked; she just enjoyed spinning it. It reminded Maomao of the way Jinshi would twirl his brush between his fingers.

"What, precisely, do you want Sui to do?" Ah-Duo asked.

Maomao took that as her cue to bring out the item she had brought with her. It was a chest of thin wood. She opened the lid to reveal a sheet of paper, along with some charcoal to protect it from humidity and something to keep bugs away.

"What's this?" Suirei inquired.

"Are you familiar with a medicine called mafeisan?"

Suirei paused, choosing her words carefully. "I've heard of it, just once. It sounds to me like something out of a fairy tale-a drug that puts you to sleep and keeps pain at bay." She seemed to be quietly scanning the reconstructed page.

"What would you do if I told you that drug exists?"

"I wouldn't do anything."

"Even if I said it contains thornapple?"

"I see that's what's written here. But that's not a medicine; that's poison, isn't it? What are you going to use it for?"

Ah-Duo observed this conversation closely but quietly; Chue was squirming like she could barely restrain herself from offering some piquant interjection.

"We would use it for surgery," said Maomao.

Suirei nodded: This, it appeared, made sense to her. "You're suggesting temporarily stopping the heart to prevent pain during surgery?" She was speaking of the resurrection drug she herself had made.

"We wouldn't go quite that far. Do you think it could be made mild enough to simply induce unconsciousness?"

"I think this is a road you'd be better off not taking." Suirei wasn't biting, not even a little. "Thornapple is an extremely potent poison. I understand wanting to make things easier on the patient by preventing them from feeling pain-believe me, I do-but the very fact that you're here seeking knowledge from a criminal like me tells me how cornered you must feel. Who do you propose to use this anesthetic on?"

Suirei was a sharp one.

"I can only say that it's someone very important," Maomao replied.

It wasn't her place to identify the person exactly.

Ah-Duo, however, was kind enough to guess. "Oh hoh. Has that poor boy's illness started up again?"

That's not very respectful, Maomao thought. "That poor boy" was probably Ah-Duo's way of referring to the Emperor.

The question is, how do I answer?

Maomao shot Chue a sidelong glance. She just grinned and didn't do anything to halt the conversation, so Maomao decided to go on.

"I don't know who you're referring to, but what was the nature of his illness before?" Maomao asked, careful not to use any names.

"Well, let's see. I remember he was unwell for quite a while. The physicians probably have records more precise than my memories. All I could really tell you about is the fights with his grandmother."

Ah-Duo seemed to remember it all quite clearly.

"Ahem ... Yes, his grandmother. She was a very strong person, so let's call her ... Oh, I don't know. Let's say 'the empress regnant."

That's not a code name!

Chue groaned quietly, but she made a circle with her hands, a sign of approval, so the conversation went on.

"So this man fought with this ... empress regnant?" Maomao asked.

"Ah, yes, I like that name. Much easier to work with. You want to hear the story? One of them was a lady more than eighty years old, who in spite of her age showed absolutely no inclination to step off the political stage, and the other was, let's say, a crown prince in his rebellious phase. They were at each other's throats so loudly that I could hear it all the way in my place, and the crown prince would always want me to listen to him complain about it afterwards. Somewhere in the middle of it all, though, he looked like he was in genuine distress."

She's straight-out saying "crown prince"! She's not even trying to hide it!

Chue made a disapproving X. "Now now, Lady Ah-Duo, we can't do that. I need you to be evasive about his identity," she drawled. "Otherwise, what is Miss Chue supposed to report back to everyone?"

"It's just us here; it's fine. I'm sure you can think of some way to talk around it, Chue."

"Hmph! Miss Chue is going to be working overtime ... "

"Do forgive me." Ah-Duo set down her pipe and sipped from her teacup.

"What kinds of things did they fight about?" Maomao asked.

"I wonder if I'm allowed to tell you ... Well, I suppose it's fine. In her twilight years, the empress regnant began to show signs of dementia."

That earned a jolt from both Maomao and Suirei. Chue alone looked unfazed, starting in on the snacks.

"But then, involvement in politics ... "

... would have to be impossible, Maomao thought.

"Don't misunderstand. It's not that she forgot everything she once knew. She was just inexplicably careless sometimes. But still ... "

"It sounds like something unpleasant happened because of it."

"Yes. If I said it involved I-Sei Province eighteen years ago, would you understand?"

Maomao didn't say anything, but she thought, Now, here's a subject I've had my fill of!

She and Chue, among others, had been over every inch of that area the previous year.

"At the time, I'm given to understand, a letter arrived regarding the Yi clan's rebellion. By some mistake, the former emperor's seal ended up affixed to it. That was the incident that led Yoh ... I mean, the current Emperor, to realize that something was wrong."

I'm scared out of my wits, here.

The Emperor and the empress regnant might have been family, but it wasn't like they had seen each other all the time. Worse yet, there were few if any who could remonstrate with the woman who was effectively the greatest power in the nation. Even if there had been signs, no one could have said anything.

With his grandmother holding the reins of power and his father a puppet, the crown prince had decided to do what he could-yes, that would be more than a little stressful.

"You said his symptoms subsided, though, didn't you?"

"Yes. I don't know if this was a good thing or not, but first the empress regnant and then the former emperor died, one after the other."

In other words, the source of the stress had been removed.

'The coronation kept him busy, but taking over the work itself turned out to be surprisingly simple. Besides, he was able to rest during the mourning period."

"I feel I have to ask: What was the cause of the empress regnant's demise?"

"You can relax. It wasn't an assassination. She simply died of old age."

"I figured."

The empress regnant had been an old woman; even the former emperor had been more than sixty years old. Maomao hoped their deaths had really been natural.

"If the old condition is bothering him again, I wonder if it means there's some new worry he's suffering from."

"Some new worry ... "

Maomao mentally reviewed the Emperor's non-empress regnant relations. There was one. The one who was officially the Emperor's younger brother, who had recently spent a year away from the royal capital engaged in a battle against the plague of insects.

The Emperor would have to be beside himself about his own son.

This person was Ah-Duo's child as well.

Does she know the truth?

Did she know that her precious little boy had burned a brand into his own side? Maomao suspected that accounted for a substantial percentage of the Emperor's stress.

Suirei let out a great sigh. "All the more reason I don't think my knowledge will be of any use."

She still wasn't biting.

"Didn't you say you would follow my orders, whatever they were?" asked Ah-Duo.

"I can't give poison to someone that important, not even at your command, milady. And the only thing I know how to make is a poison -it enables a resurrection in name only."

"It's not a poison," Maomao replied. "In the right dose, it's a medicine."

"Someone may be trying to entrap Lady Ah-Duo. What would you do then?"

There was some logic to what Suirei was saying-a lot of logic, in fact. Ah-Duo's villa was a veritable haven of dangerous elements, if anyone cared to look there. Ah-Duo herself was in a unique position, kept outside the rear palace even though she had been dismissed as a consort.

The wrong faction could easily see her as a political enemy.

So, what to do?

If only there were some way to convince them ...

That was when Maomao remembered, of all things, a name.

"Tairan," she said.

It was most unusual for her to remember someone's name. Maybe it was because she had heard it recently, or perhaps she remembered it for its associations with the episode with Suirei.

"Tairan ... " Suirei murmured, her dark expression becoming even darker.

"That's right. A physician at court. Three years ago, he was relieved of his duty and demoted because of you. I hear he used to be an excellent doctor."

Suirei wouldn't look at Maomao.

"He was especially gifted at formulating anesthetics, I'm told. Sui, you approached Dr. Tairan precisely to learn what he knew about that field, didn't you?"

Suirei was silent. Ah-Duo and Chue likewise said nothing, but only watched her.

"He's looking for you, you know. I don't know what's going through his head, but he's desperate enough to find you that he even asked me about it."

"I presume he wants to kill me," Suirei said.

"I don't think so. If you ask me, he looked like he was worried about you." Maomao, at least, hadn't sensed any desire on Tairan's part to do Suirei harm. "You took the wind out of his sails and left him in a proverbial ditch. It was so bad that he even failed a selection exam he should really have passed."

"And what? You want me to apologize to him?"

"No. I won't say a word to him about you."

"Miss Chue would be in very dire straits if you did!" Chue piped up, striking one of her trademark cute poses. "She'd have to destroy the evidence!"

"I promise I won't say anything, so don't say such unsettling things," Maomao replied.

"I do feel bad for Tairan," Suirei said. "I had immense respect for his knowledge."

Respect, huh?

So, Maomao realized, Suirei could be forthright about her feelings when she wanted to.

"Don't you think we could pass along your knowledge back to Dr. Tairan?" Maomao asked.

"I can't be sure it would help," Suirei replied.

"True enough. But one thing I think we can say: You've tried using thornapple more times than anyone else here."

Maomao knew that Suirei had sacrificed innumerable rats to her experiments-and of course, she had used the drug herself. The trembling in her hand was the result of her experiment.

"The more case studies we have, the better. The degree of danger would be vastly reduced in the experiments that we're about to do, Sui, if you would so much as offer us your records." Maomao stared hard at Suirei, unwilling to let her get away. "It's not like we're going to use it on the Emperor immediately. There must be other patients who would benefit from mafeisan. What if I simply told you we would use it for them?"

In addition to using it in the current drug trials, they could test whether it would be useful in surgery. It was hardly risk-free, but it might be better than not being able to do anything because of the pain.

The Emperor on the one hand, the lives of his subjects on the other. Maomao wasn't sure how she felt about that, but she had no choice except to close her eyes to it.

Suirei gave a defeated sigh.

"Does that mean you'll do it?" Ah-Duo pressed.

After a long moment, Suirei said, "Yes, I will. Give me a little while."

Maomao clinched a fist in triumph: She finally had Suirei's agreement.

"And so Miss Chue told her little brother that the duck would be especially tasty if we ate it now!"

"That's true. Ducks are most delicious when they're young."

While they waited for Suirei, Ah-Duo, Maomao, and Chue chatted together. Mostly it was Chue showing off her sleight of hand or gossiping about her family, which was all well and good in Maomao's eyes. All Maomao had to offer were jokes from the brothel, which tended to fall flat at court; meanwhile, if she tried to chitchat about social matters, she was afraid she might say something she shouldn't.

"But that duck of ours, she's too smart for her own good. She's got the children on her side. So I couldn't-"

"I'm back," Suirei said. She entered carrying a sheaf of paper. "These are all of the ingredients I could recall. I burned all of my past materials, so it's only what was in my memory. There may be some oversights. You'll just have to work with what's there."

She handed the notes to Maomao-it was a lengthy list of poisonous herbs, headed by thornapple.

"Deadly poisons all, eh?" Maomao said.

"Yes. The drug does cause death, after all, even if only temporarily."

"At least you wouldn't feel pain."

"Unless you were to wake up ... " Suirei didn't sound the least bit enthused, but she had written careful notes. "I've also added Shaohnese knowledge, although I haven't tested it yet."

Shaoh was the country bordering Li, and its former shrine maiden was among those hiding at Ah-Duo's villa.

"If the goal is to prevent the patient from feeling pain, I should think you could use some of these drugs as well," Suirei said, writing down another list of names.

"Probably not this one," said Maomao. Suirei had written cannabis.

"Why not?" she asked.

"It works well at first, but it creates dependency, and the body can become used to it, weakening the effect."

"I gather the standard way to administer it is with warm wine. It should work very well the first time, at least."

"I'm not sure we want to involve wine," Maomao replied.

"I see-because it would blunt the pain but increase circulation."

It was true, you could dull pain by making a person slightly drunk. There was no perfect anesthetic. The task was to find something suited to the situation and which had the fewest side effects.

"What about needles?" Suirei said.

"I gather they're already exploring that possibility. The effectiveness depends on the individual body." 

"True, needles alone don't inspire much confidence."

"You need something else if you're going to cut open their stomach. Maybe we could just knock them unconscious?"

"What if the person who went unconscious could have you beheaded for lèse-majesté?"

"We'd just have to explain the situation and tell them to suck it up."

"I tremble to think if they started thrashing from the pain."

"We'd just have to cope somehow."

"Even if you could, no one else at court would approve."

"Ugh. The Imperial family is such a pain."

"Agreed."

During the second half of the conversation, Maomao and Suirei both became quite garrulous.

"I didn't know you could talk this much, Sui," Ah-Duo said with amusement, sipping her tea.

"You know how it is, Lady Ah-Duo," said Chue, still working her way through the snacks. "When two aficionados get to geek out together, they can really get going!"

"I doubt we've mentioned anything the physicians aren't already trying," Suirei said, clutching the notes. "I assume any doctor worth his salt would have already done these things more than once."

"True enough," said Maomao.

In medicine, there were no shortcuts-only your quantity of case studies and trials got results.

"Medicine is tricky," Suirei said. "You might think that if you cut the amount in half, the person would be asleep for half as long, but it's not that simple."

"Yeah. The wrong amount sometimes doesn't have any effect at all," Maomao agreed. She would know; she'd tried it on her arm.

"May I offer my personal opinion?" Suirei must have been talking too much, for she drank some tea now as she spoke. "I don't know what kind of person the Emperor is. But is he really the sort to refuse surgery just because he's afraid of the pain? If you can work out an effective treatment, I have a sense that the anesthetic itself isn't that important. I think what's really going to matter is the before and after."

'The before?" Maomao asked. The "after" she understood: Many were the surgical patients who had died from infection after a procedure.

"I mean whether the Emperor has any inclination to undergo surgery to begin with. And whether the people around him will let him."

Maomao paused, then at length she said, "That's not our job." Jinshi or the other high officials would have to take care of it.

"Fair enough. In any case, I'll send you any new information I learn about the anesthetic. I think it would be more efficient for you to look into what drugs you'll use after the surgery."

"Understood." Maomao put the notes into the folds of her robes.

"Tairan might ask about me when he sees those notes," Suirei said- not just because of the content, but because of the handwriting.

"If he does, I'll tell him they're personal effects. You left them in your room."

"Please do."

It was most likely true that Suirei respected Tairan-which was exactly why she didn't want to be involved with him.

"All right!" Maomao said and smacked herself on the cheeks.

I'll do whatever I can do. And whatever I can't, I'll leave to someone else. She wasn't under any illusions that she could do it all by herself. She wondered, sometimes, just how skilled you would have to be to grow proud enough to think that you could.