The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 9 - Chapter Pr

Character Profiles
Maomao
An apothecary in the pleasure district. Downright obsessed with medicines and poisons, but largely uninterested in other matters. Has deep respect for her adoptive father Luomen. Twenty years old at the beginning of this year.

Jinshi
The Emperor’s younger brother. Inhumanly beautiful. He can’t get Maomao off his mind, but by hook or by crook, she always manages to evade him, and he’s getting desperate. Real name: Ka Zuigetsu. Twenty-one years old.

Basen
Gaoshun’s son; Jinshi’s attendant. Doesn’t feel pain as acutely as most people, which gives him far greater physical limits than most. He’s very serious, but that makes him easy to tweak. In love with Consort Lishu.

Gaoshun
Basen’s father. A well-built soldier, he was formerly Jinshi’s attendant, but now he serves the Emperor personally.

Lakan
Maomao’s biological father and Luomen’s nephew. A freak with a monocle. He’s a high-ranking member of the military, but his bizarre behavior causes people to avoid him. He loves Go and Shogi and is a formidable player.

Lahan
Lakan’s nephew and adopted son. A small man with round glasses, he has a soft spot for beautiful women and will try to chat them up anytime he sees one, never mind that his looks don’t match theirs. He runs a bunch of side hustles to try to pay off his adoptive father’s debts.

Luomen
Maomao’s adoptive father; Lakan’s uncle. Once a eunuch in the rear palace, he now serves as a court physician. He’s missing one kneecap, a punishment inflicted on him many years ago.

Empress Gyokuyou
The Emperor’s legal wife. An exotic beauty with red hair and green eyes. Twenty-two years old.

The Emperor
A real go-getter and possessor of prodigious facial hair. Prefers his women well-endowed. Thirty-seven years old.

Yao
Maomao’s colleague. She looks older than Maomao on account of being taller and better endowed. She despises her uncle, who’s forever trying to push her into political marriages. Sixteen years old.

En’en
Maomao’s colleague and fellow assistant in the court medical office, as well as Yao’s lady-in-waiting. She lives for Yao, and her rather lopsided love is frequently evident. Twenty years old.

Rikuson
Once Lakan’s aide, he now serves in the western capital. He has a photographic memory for people’s faces.

Gyokuen
Empress Gyokuyou’s father. Officially responsible for the western capital, but when his daughter ascended to the throne he moved to the royal capital.

Gyoku-ou
Gyokuen’s eldest son; Empress Gyokuyou’s half-brother. Currently leads the western capital while his father is away.

Suiren
Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting and former wet nurse.

Baryou
Gaoshun’s son and Basen’s older brother. Quick to develop a stomach ailment when confronted with another human being.

Dr. Liu
An upper physician at court. He and Luomen studied in the west together.

Tianyu
One of Maomao’s colleagues, a young physician. He can seem lackadaisical, and he has a thing for En’en.

Prologue

The nightmare refused to end.

Still slung under an arm, Maomao was dragged into the next room. She couldn’t even fight.

Her heart pounded. Jinshi, the one who was holding her, had a fresh burn on his side. Although she could well be in danger here, as an apothecary, Maomao was drawn to the injury.

It was a good, clean burn. No blood... She racked her brain, asking herself which medicines she would need. Purple Cloud salve, that might be simplest. Purple gromwell, touki, and beeswax, I think I can get those. Sesame oil, maybe not.

No, this was no good. Maomao shook her head. Purple gromwell was only effective on relatively minor burns, as she’d confirmed on her own arm. It could actually have the opposite effect with more serious burns, she recalled.

Things that work on burns. What works on burns?

At the very least, she would need a balm to prevent the skin from drying out. She would have to find more oil and beeswax.

As she was trying to decide how to treat Jinshi, he finally put her down.

“Master Jinshi,” she said. He had collapsed onto the bed, grimacing. “Does it hurt?”

“I must say it does.”

And indeed it would. It might be slightly numb now, but pressing a burning brand to your own skin was always going to be painful.

Jinshi’s pain, however, appeared to be something else.

“Feeling a wave of regret, sir?” Maomao found herself asking. The man who until moments ago had seemed in control of everything was leaning his forehead against the bed and weeping. Maomao could see no expression on his face in profile, and he himself might not have been aware of the tears pouring from his eyes.

Even as Maomao spoke, she went around the room, wondering what medicines might be available in here. She quickly found a mortar and pestle that she commandeered, along with several trays. She wanted to go to the brazier, try to warm some water, but she wanted to keep it as far from Jinshi as possible. In fact, she moved it to a far corner of the room.

“What would I regret?”

What? It was hard to put into words. Even Maomao understood that Jinshi had absolutely no interest in the throne. Otherwise, he would never have had such good relations with Empress Gyokuyou. If solidifying such relations had been one of his goals here, he had chosen a hell of a way to do it.

Neither did he appear to regret his injury. Much like when he had sustained the wound to his cheek, he had actually seemed pleased. He was not, in fact, as attached to his looks as people around him thought, and he seemed to resent their assumptions.

So why was he so depressed?

Maomao located a spoon and placed it on the table by the bedside. There was a pharmaceutical spatula for stirring medicine, but no bladed instruments.

“His Majesty looked less enraged than...sad. May I take it, sir, that grieving the Emperor was not your intention?”

“That’s right... I only needed him to get angry.”

So was it the Emperor’s bereaved look that had so disturbed Jinshi?

I suspect the Emperor...

Maomao thought this had to do with the relationship between Jinshi and His Majesty. And Ah-Duo as well. It was only a distant guess in her mind, but the more she’d had to do with all of them, the more certain she had become—even if she would never have spoken the secret aloud.

It hurts to have your father get angry at you.

Supposedly, one needed objective proof to change a hypothesis into a certainty. Maomao was trying to find that proof among human emotions. What a very vague and unscientific place to look.

And yet, having seen the Emperor’s eyes fill with sadness, and the way he hesitated in front of Empress Gyokuyou, Maomao could think only that Jinshi was the current Emperor’s eldest son.

I just keep learning things I’d rather not know, she thought. She sighed as she looked at Jinshi. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit, so she made to go to the other room. But Jinshi immediately grabbed her wrist. “Where are you going?”

“To get medicine. The ingredients are in the other room.”

Jinshi rose and began opening the drawers of a cabinet along one wall. There were enough medicines in there to make Maomao’s head spin, components of every conceivable kind.

“Ngghaa!” She thought she might devolve into waving and drooling. She wanted to burst into her happy dance, but she fought the urge and took a deep breath instead. Jinshi’s eyes on her were piercing. Among the variety of things in the drawers was salve, already prepared. She opened the large clamshell and took a sniff. She was greeted by the aroma of honey and the unmistakable scent of sesame. It didn’t seem to contain any other ingredients.

She also located disinfectant alcohol and bandages. Then she took the balm and stood before Jinshi. “Master Jinshi, I’m going to treat your injury now. Please let me see it.” She tried to get him to sit back down on the bed, but he spun around and sat her down instead. “What do you think you’re doing, sir?” She looked at him, hoping her displeasure was evident.

His fingers brushed her chin. She raised her head, trying to avoid him.

“You’re going to pretend you can’t imagine, when we’ve come so far? No one else can serve as my nighttime companion now.” Jinshi smirked, but fat droplets of sweat showed that he was reaching his limit.

Maomao simply refused to speak. Annoyed, she grabbed his robe, which he was still only half wearing.

“Which of us is it that lacks imagination? Did you think I wouldn’t be angry to be put in this position?” She stretched until they were almost nose-to-nose. “What you’re doing is tyranny, Master Jinshi. A damn, dirty trick meant to tell everyone what you want. You don’t care about anyone else. You don’t care about your status. What you’ve done is self-centered and masochistic and so deeply exasperating that I don’t even know what to say about it!”

Jinshi didn’t answer, but his face spoke clearly: You obviously do.

“Empress Gyokuyou’s son—the Crown Prince—and Consort Lihua’s son are both hardly a year old...”

Children were weak. Until they were at least seven, you never knew if they might die. Even if you weren’t using a poisonous face powder, they might succumb to illness. Some accident might befall them. They might even be assassinated.

“What exactly is your plan if something happens to the Emperor?”

“I’m working very hard to make sure nothing does.” Jinshi’s voice was low and rumbling, nothing like the syrupy nymph’s voice he sometimes used. His eyes were dark, and he was obviously clear on what he intended here. Maomao was about to say something else, but the words caught in her throat.

What Jinshi had done was insane. That, at least, was the only thing Maomao or Gyokuyou could have called it. She didn’t know what His Majesty must think, but it seemed to have been a bolt from the blue for him.

But then, was it any less mad, what Jinshi had been forced to live with? He had the power; he could have done any number of even crazier things. That he had the generosity of heart to listen to Maomao’s words made it hard to shout at him now.

Young women are sometimes described as sheltered, but Jinshi had been similarly isolated, packed into a little box until he had been crushed. Many might have simply died, smashed by the pressure.

I sure as hell wouldn’t have put up with it.

Neither, it seemed, would Jinshi. Just like Maomao, he would fight back, try to escape. But unlike Maomao, he would do more than simply let his emotions run away with him, let his feelings dictate his actions. He was a person who thought things through, and at the end of all his thinking, he had come to a most Jinshi-like conclusion—and had acted on it.

Maomao was a swirl of emotions. She didn’t know what to do. She wished she could have been someone more ignorant of the situation, of human nature. How much easier her life would have been if she could have just stood stupidly to one side and watched.

This son of a...!

She raised her hand, stopping it just in front of Jinshi’s forehead. She made a circle with her pointer finger and thumb, then tensed the muscles of her hand and...

“Yowch!”

...gave his forehead a good flick. She could have slapped him, but it would have left a mark, and she didn’t want that. She knew very well that this was the height of disrespect, and that it could cost her her head if she wasn’t careful. But she figured Jinshi would permit her this much.

Hell, I’m the one being generous, here!

Jinshi had a hand to his forehead and was looking at her, amazed.

“Shut up and let me treat you. Sir.”

Jinshi stuck out his lower lip. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, you know.”

“Well, that’s not my problem; I’m an apothecary. Let me do my work.” On this point, she wouldn’t budge. It had been Jinshi’s show earlier, but she wasn’t going to let him push her around now.

Maomao picked up the spatula she’d found. “I’m running out of time because you won’t leave me alone. I’d hoped I could give you some sedatives, but that ship has sailed.” She slipped past him, came around behind him, and pressed down firmly.

“Hrgh!” he said, a very un-nymphlike sound. Maomao somehow managed to flip him onto his side on the bed, a pretty good trick considering how large and heavy he was.

She breathed a long breath out as she heated the spatula in the brazier in the corner of the room.

“Please don’t move,” she said.

“What the hell are you doing? You’re not planning to grill me, are you?”

“I’m not grilling anything! I need searing heat to disinfect things.” She fluttered the spatula to cool it a bit, then wrapped it in a clean cloth. “We aren’t going to burn it away. We’re going to cut it.”

“Cut...?” Jinshi’s face twisted, and then he went pale. But it was too late. He’d done this to himself. Now he would have to live with the consequences.

“If we don’t get rid of the charred skin and flesh, the poison will spread from there. I wish I could get rid of all of it, to keep it from festering, but since there are no knives here, this will have to do.”

She would use the metal spatula to cut away the ruined flesh. It would be painful, but he would just have to bear it.

“N-Now, just a minute. Aren’t you more worried about some made-up excuse for a knife?”

“I don’t want to hear any complaining from the man who burned a brand into his own skin! I don’t have any knives here, and shaving the stuff away is the only effective first aid. We can do more long-term treatment later.”

She wasn’t actually sure that was true—whether she would be able to treat him once they left this room. She wanted to make sure she at least salved the burn to prevent poison from spreading in it.

It’s a question of whether we can make time for treatment later.

The night was already late. Maomao had work the next day, as did Jinshi. She had a suspicion he wouldn’t take the day off even if she ordered him to. After work tomorrow—well, really, today—she would have to get tools and medicines together and redo her treatment.

In her mind, the biggest question was whether Jinshi could really live his life without anyone discovering his scar. “Can you even change your own clothes?” she asked.

“I’m not a baby.”

“I’m sorry, but which of us gets help dressing themselves every day?”

Maomao dipped a bandage into the alcohol from the drawer and pressed it against the wound. The charred flesh had an unmistakable smell.

Maybe I can get some grilled meat for dinner tonight.

“Hey! Did you say something?”

“No, sir. Nothing.”

Jinshi winced as she disinfected the area around the wound.

“Keep a stiff upper lip, sir. You can bite on, I don’t know, a blanket or something.” She turned up the blanket on the bed and pushed it toward him. He reflexively backed away, his lovely countenance twisting in disgust. “You’ll bite your tongue,” Maomao said.

“I won’t,” he said. Suddenly—what was he thinking?—he was upon Maomao. He bit into her shoulder.

“Stop that, sir. My hand will slip.”

He made a noise that might have been a response. She no longer felt his teeth through the fabric, but he didn’t lie back down. She felt only a gentle tugging at her shirt.

“Just don’t get any drool on me,” she said.

“Mrn...”

Was that a yes? Or a no? She wasn’t sure.

Very well. Maomao took this as justification not to hold back. She pressed the spatula to the burned skin. A muffled scream came from right by her ear, but she conducted her work smartly and professionally.

I have to make sure no one else hears him yell like that.

The hand that sneaked around behind her gripped harder and harder. She kept working, even though he seemed bent on making it as difficult as possible.