Mi puoi tradurre questo testo in italiano per piacere?
"Chapter 13: Festival
Maomao was given a traditional-looking outfit to wear: a pure-white
jacket and a red skirt. She covered her face with her fox mask and carried a
lantern decorated with pampas grass and rice stalks. Thus attired, she was
told, they were going to walk to the shrine at the edge of town.
The men wore blue clothes, while the children had bundles of rice and
pampas grass draped behind them like tails. These people appeared to
worship Kosen, a fox deity. The fox was a spirit of abundance, venerated in
many places. It was only natural that there should be a major festival in
autumn, when so much came from the land.
Maomao heard the chiming of a bell. Beside her was someone who had
outlined the eyes of their mask in a way that looked faintly ridiculous, despite
its being a fox. The normal color to paint around the eyes of a mask like this
was red, yet this person had used green, and the corners of the eyes seemed to
droop down somehow.
“Looks more like a tanuki,” Maomao commented to the mask’s owner,
Shisui. Maybe she was better at drawing bugs than beasts. The thought
brought an unexpected smile to Maomao’s face. Guess this is hardly the time,
she said to herself. But she also knew that denying herself a pleasant thought
wouldn’t help her under the circumstances.
“You remind me of a cat, Maomao,” Shisui said. There was a bell on her
hair stick that jingled every time she laughed. It sounded oddly like the bugs
she’d once collected. Just on the end of the hair stick, Maomao could see a
small bug carved from a jewel. The girl really did like insects.
“Here, Maomao, make sure it’s nice and tight,” she said, and then
snugged down the string of Maomao’s mask. The string went right over
where Maomao had tied her hair, though, and Shisui couldn’t quite get it to
stay. “Hrm. Hang on, I’ll try again. Sit down.” She helped Maomao seat
herself on the railing of the inn. Then she brushed Maomao’s hair aside and
retied it.
“Hmm, it needs something else. It looks so lonely with just a hair tie.”

Page 115

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“I don’t mind.”
“Oh, I know! I’ll lend you a hair stick. I have one shaped like a spider’s
web. It’s really cute!”
Maomao wished there were some way to politely refuse. She dug into the
folds of her robes and managed to come up with the hair stick Jinshi had
given her. It looked plain, but the quality was fine. Maomao, who was
perfectly happy to get by with a simple hair tie, tended to leave it in her robe.
“Use this, if you would.”
“Aww...” Maomao didn’t have to turn around to picture the pout on
Shisui’s face. She pressed the hair stick into the other girl’s palm. “Gee, this
is nice, Maomao,” Shisui commented.
“Someone gave it to me,” she replied. Given it to her without much
ceremony, true enough, still.
“What if I asked you to give it to me? Would you do it?”
After a moment’s pause, Maomao said carefully, “I’m afraid not.” She’d
considered simply handing it off to someone once before, but hadn’t. If she
had then—or did now—she could barely imagine what the eunuchimpersonator would say. Whatever it was, she knew he would be angry.
You’d think I’d just need to keep my mouth shut.
But Jinshi was oddly skilled at reading Maomao’s expressions. Partly
because they’d now known each other for a fair amount of time, true, but
even by that standard he was quite sensitive to slight changes in her face.
Even though Maomao, for one, felt she wasn’t very deft at controlling her
facial muscles, and thought all of her looks manifested as little more than
scowls.
Then again, maybe she could give Shisui the hair stick; if she never made
it back to the capital alive, she wouldn’t have to worry about the
consequences.
“There, all done.” Shisui patted Maomao’s shoulder and she stood up. Her
hair was now tucked behind her right ear, making the mask much easier to
put on. When she looked out at the village through the small eyeholes, the
whole world seemed different. Maybe it was because it was night, or perhaps
it was the wavering flames of the torches, but the people walking around in
their masks really did look like foxes.
Except for the one standing next to her, who still looked like a green-eyed
tanuki.
Page 116

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Shisui, however, wasn’t the only one who had painted her mask in green;
once in a while they crossed paths with a green-eyed fox. Most of them were
men; their blue trousers gave them away. Maomao started to wonder if the
green eyes had some sort of significance.
“It’s otherworldly, isn’t it?” Shisui said.
“Uh-huh.” That much was certainly true.
“You’re not freaked out?”
“The point of which would be?”
She agreed, though, that it was unearthly. Instead of her normal shoes, she
was wearing wooden clogs that clacked with each step she took; and then
there was the bell ringing, and an owl that hooted from the forest. All the
noises came together into something uncanny, until she was almost
convinced she could hear foxes yowling in the night.
With the foxes’ voices in the background, they walked among the lantern
plants and the rice stalks and the firelight. They emerged from the forest and
made their way along a single narrow path winding among the rice paddies.
Their progress was accompanied by an occasional unpleasant hissing, the
sound of insects incinerating themselves as they flew into the torches placed
at intervals along the path. There seemed to be quite a few of them.
“Lots of grasshoppers this year,” Shisui said. That was exactly why the
festival had to be so lavish. That was the wish it carried. “Around here, we
venerate a fox deity who brings abundance. You know why?”
“No, why?”
Riiing, riiing. Shisui’s bell chimed as she walked and talked. “There was
once a tribe of native peoples who lived in this area.”
Then, though, a people from a different country came from the west. The
locals didn’t simply accept them immediately, of course. No one would be so
naive. Most villages chased them out, wanted them to go away. But a few
villages, a very small number, took those newcomers in.
“These people from the west, they knew things—and some people here
saw the value of that knowledge.”
The newcomers knew how to make fields more productive, how to
exterminate harmful insects. Valuable knowledge indeed. Many, however,
still didn’t smile on them. Around the time the newcomers had settled down
and begun to have children with the locals, their neighbors attacked, seeking
to steal their fields.
Page 117

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

After several such attacks, the people built a hidden village, so that their
children and grandchildren would be safe. They found a place where hot
springs bubbled forth from the earth, and there they built. Presumably, what
they constructed was the village where Maomao now was. And the foxes?
They represented the people from that foreign land, she thought. Referring to
those of other tribes as if they were animals was hardly uncommon.
In other words, the deity—or perhaps deities—of this village was the very
ancestor of these people, and the villagers were themselves fox-gods.
“They say the foxes here are white foxes. So that mask was pure white
when you picked it up, right? But by settling here, they became dyed with
color.”
White foxes. Did that symbolize pale skin? And could the dyeing be taken
to refer to intermarriage?
I feel like I’ve heard something like that before, Maomao thought, and at
almost the same moment Shisui provided the answer.
“The men of this village, a lot of them can’t tell colors apart,” she said.
“Can’t tell colors apart?”
“Yeah. It’s a lot less common among the women, though.”
Well, that explains it. That was why there were so many masks with green
eyes. And why so many of them were worn by men. And even why one of
them belonged to Shisui.
Shisui took the pod from the lantern plant attached to her lantern and
broke the orange skin, taking out the berries within. She wiped them briskly
against her sleeve and popped them into her mouth.
“They don’t taste very good,” Maomao informed her.
“I know.”
“They’re toxic.”
“I know.”
Prostitutes used lantern plant berries as an ingredient in their
abortifacients. The berries wouldn’t kill you, but they weren’t exactly
pleasant to eat.
Among those who had fled here from the west, some must have gone to
the area of the current capital and become the ancestors of today’s Emperor,
while those who put down roots in the north had founded this village.
Their wooden clogs tapped along the ground. The light of the lanterns was
lovely, and at the same time eerie, making Maomao feel as if, were they to
Page 118

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

continue to walk down this path, it might lead them to some other world.
The closer they got to the shrine, though, the more ordinary things felt.
Street stalls began to appear, and the aroma of meat on skewers perfumed the
air. There was the smell of some sweet candy, as well. The shopkeepers wore
fox masks like everyone else, but presumably they didn’t accept leaves as
currency, as foxes were said to do.
Shisui abruptly stopped, raised her mask, worked her jaws a few times,
and then spat the skins of the lantern-plant berries into the grass.
“Disgusting,” Maomao remarked.
“Hah, sorry!” Shisui trotted toward one of the street stalls. “How about
something to eat?”
“You’re buying.” Maomao followed her to a stall selling skewers of meat;
she started to drool when she saw the chicken dripping with grease. The
offerings, however, also included frog and locust. Maomao regarded them
silently.
“The locusts are plump and delicious this time of year,” Shisui explained,
and without a trace of hesitation she munched one of the bugs right off the
skewer.
“I think I’ll stick to chicken.” Sure, Maomao could eat locusts. But why
not have chicken if there was a choice?
“Not frog?” Shisui asked.
“I don’t want to eat any frogs for a while...”
“What’s with the glassy look in your eyes, Maomao?” Apparently it was
obvious even behind her mask. In any event, Shisui said, “Got it,” and took a
chicken skewer from the man running the shop, then handed it to Maomao.
Maomao pulled up her mask and dug in. It could have used some salt, but
maybe that was too luxurious to hope for. Instead, the meat had been rubbed
with herbs.
“Hm?”
“What is it?” Maomao asked. Shisui was frowning. Then she turned
toward the grass and spat something out again. “I told you, that’s gross,”
Maomao said, thinking that Shisui had some surprisingly rough edges. She
appeared to have spat out the locust she’d just bought.
“That sucks. That place mixes grasshoppers in with their locusts. What a
rip-off.”
“Uh... They all look the same to me.”
Page 119

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Well, they’re not. It’s hard to tell with the wings and legs pulled off, but
they taste nothing alike.” Shisui was munching on another insect to get the
flavor out of her mouth. This one must have tasted better, for she was
chewing thoughtfully.
Maomao sometimes ate snakes and frogs, but rarely bugs. In farming
villages, eating insects often doubled as a way of keeping harmful pests away
from the crops, but the pleasure district was more urban. Locusts were not a
very popular dish, considering how many more flavorful and delicious things
there were to eat. Sometimes, though, in years when the swarms were
especially bad, farmers struggling to make a living would show up selling
locusts in town.
The shrine sat on high ground, with a stone staircase leading up to it. That
allowed it to look down on everything around it, including the land past the
forest. The trees gave way to open plains, beyond which stood a mountain
range.
Another town? Maomao thought. The range glittered with light—and not
starlight.
“Maomao, over there,” Shisui said, bringing her back with a tug on her
hand. There was a line, and when people reached the front of it, they left their
masks at the shrine. A human figure could be seen within the shrine’s
vermillion interior: a child, wearing a white mask and white clothing and
sitting utterly still. Their face was hidden, but the mask looked familiar. It
belonged to that brat, Kyou-u. He looked like trouble, yet his brushwork was
delicate and his mask beautiful.
“Each year, children are chosen to sit there in lieu of the god,” Shisui
explained.
“I’m impressed he can manage.”
“Hee hee. Everyone wants to do it. It is tiring, though—so they switch
with someone else in shifts, before their legs go numb. I wonder if it’s a
pleasant memory for them.” For some reason, Shisui’s eyes had a distant
look. Then she said, “Looks like he’s almost done. Let’s go wait for him.”
She led them around the back of the shrine.
There they found three more children, chatting, presumably waiting their
turns.
“What’s going on?” Shisui asked, inserting herself in the circle of kids.
“Look at this,” one of the youngsters said, displaying his rice-stalk tail.
Page 120

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

On close inspection, one could see that the fruit was in fact still unripe. “I got
a bad one.”
“That’s because you didn’t look carefully when you chose,” Shisui said,
exasperated. “Some people are stingy, you know.”
That is to say, feeling that it was a waste to offer a good, full ear of rice
for the festival, they would give one that was poorly developed instead.
Maomao looked at the stalk of rice. It had leaves, sure enough, but the ear
was hollow—empty. It looked immature; not like it had never fruited, but
rather as if it simply hadn’t had time.
“I got it from the village chief,” the kid said.
“Well, there’s your problem,” one of the other children responded with a
shake of the head. “A part of the chief’s crop always comes in late. And
because he’s such a tightwad, those are the only parts he ever donates for the
festival.”
“What? Bah. The fox’ll curse him for that.”
“All the kids around here know about it,” one of them told him. “You
don’t because you just came to the village last year. Live and learn!”
The boy’s shoulders slumped. Maomao looked at the ear of rice she was
holding. The fruit was full and ripe. She detached it from her lantern and
gave it to the boy.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. She wasn’t exactly deeply religious; it didn’t matter to
her how nice an ear of rice she had.
The boy, meanwhile, bowed to her, his eyes sparkling.
“How’d I do, Sis?” Kyou-u asked the moment he saw Shisui after coming
out of the shrine. Another child, holding a fresh ear of rice and glowing, took
his place.
“Very nice, very nice.”
“Hee hee!”
Maomao didn’t know what was so nice about it—he’d just sat in one
place in the shrine—but she kept her peace.
“I wish my mom could’ve seen me,” Kyou-u said, somewhat sadly.
Shisui patted him on the head. “I know. Go make your offering, and then
let’s go see the fire, okay?” She pointed to a watchtower beyond the shrine,
down the opposite direction of the stairway they’d come up. But it was in a
Page 121

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

very strange place.
“Is that...a spring?” Maomao asked.
“Maybe more of a pond,” Shisui said.
The watchtower stood upon a body of water; it seemed to be mounted on
a raft.
Kyou-u quickly came back from offering his mask and they headed down
the second set of stairs. Plenty of other people who had offered their masks
were already there. Straw was packed around the base of the watchtower, and
when she looked hard, Maomao could see what seemed to be white masks by
the light of the lanterns.
“After the masks have served as an offering for a whole year, we burn
them along with the watchtower. It’s said that once the masks have been
consumed by the flames, the wishes written on them are carried up to heaven,
and whatever you wished for will come true,” Shisui said.
“I didn’t write anything,” Maomao said.
“Do you even believe in a superstition like that, Maomao?”
It was a good question, Maomao thought as she gazed at the watchtower.
Instead of wishing fervently, it would be faster to simply fix your eyes on
your goal and get moving.
“It’s not a superstition!” Kyou-u protested. “The wishes do come true. I
made real sure to paint my mask nice and write my wish real neat, just like
last year. It has to come true.” He was getting excited. Had he wished for
something so important to him?
“What’d you wish for?” Maomao asked.
“You can’t tell, dummy!”
“Okay. Fine.” She’d just asked to be polite; she didn’t actually care.
Kyou-u, though, seemed bothered that she’d dropped the subject so readily.
He kept glancing furtively at her.
“Look, here comes the flame,” Shisui said, pointing at a young child
holding a torch. A “tail” of rice bobbed behind him; he appeared to be the
child with whom Maomao had traded rice stalks.
“You didn’t want that role, Kyou-u?” Shisui asked.
“Hmph. I decided to let someone else handle it. I’m not a kid.” Despite his
protestations, there was a hint of envy in his eyes.
An adult wearing a mask accepted the torch from the child, put the flame
to an arrow, and passed the arrow to another adult standing nearby with a
Page 122

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

bow. The second person drew back the bowstring audibly, then let the
burning arrow fly in a lazy arc until it dropped down precipitously—directly
at the base of the watchtower. A peerless shot.
The watchtower must have been soaked in oil, because it caught with a
whoosh and the flames spread quickly. They could hear the wood crackling.
“It’s so weird,” Shisui said. “How the watchtower burns, but the raft right
under it doesn’t.”
That was probably because the raft was in contact with the water, keeping
it cool enough to prevent it from burning. In any event, the watchtower
turned into a pillar of flame, taking with it the fox masks around it. The
smoke, then, must carry the wishes to the sky.
“Oh...” Kyou-u mumbled. The tower was collapsing, and some of the
masks dropped into the water; he looked at them intently, trying to see
whether his own mask was among them. But there was no way to tell from
this distance. Not even half the masks were completely consumed by the fire
and taken up to the heavens.
“The wishes that don’t come true sink down to the bottom and nourish
future blessings,” Shisui said, almost to herself. “Insects don’t survive the
winter; all they leave behind are their children.” She was focused on the
distant spectacle of the conflagration of the watchtower.
Maomao didn’t understand the meaning of her words. Not then.

Page 123

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 14: The Worksite
When they got back to the inn, Suirei was waiting for them. She’d left in
the middle of the day to go somewhere, and they hadn’t seen her since then.
Now she was sitting at a table with several books on it, reading. When she
noticed Maomao and the others, she closed her book gently, the lamplight
flickering with the breath of air.
“Dinner?” she asked.
“We’ll eat, if there’s anything,” Shisui replied, and Suirei took a basket
from the shelf. Inside was fried youtiao bread. She poured out two glasses of
soy milk; the fact that she put one of them in front of Maomao seemed to
mean it was acceptable for her to eat. Maomao took a piece of the cold,
slightly hard bread and dipped it in the milk before eating it. The soy milk
was sweet; it seemed to have a luxurious touch of honey in it.
Soy milk was a simple byproduct of the production of tofu, but the
unpleasant smell meant most people didn’t like it very much. The aroma of
this milk, however, had been attenuated by the addition of fresh ginger, and it
was quite drinkable.
The three women sat around the round table as if at three points of a
triangle, Maomao eating silently, Shisui relating the events of the festival.
Suirei gazed impassively at her book. For a moment, Maomao thought it
looked like the book might be about medicine, and she took a keen interest in
it—but it turned out to be an encyclopedia of insects. It wasn’t a printed
volume, and it bristled with handwritten comments, so many that it looked
more like a notebook than a proper book.
Maomao stared hard at Suirei.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking it was about time I held you to your end of our
bargain.”
“You mean about the resurrection drug?” Ah, it was always nice to work
with someone who was quick on the uptake. “Do you understand the position
you’re in?” Suirei demanded. Maomao was, in effect, a hostage, although she

Page 124

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

was treated awfully well for all that. Reasonable enough: if she tried to run,
they would almost certainly catch her more or less immediately. And if she
were to somehow escape, there were no towns or villages nearby where she
could go for help. And she didn’t know how to ride a horse, at least not
quickly. Even so, she would have expected to at least be confined
somewhere, or maybe tied up. The way the two women were acting didn’t
seem to make any sense. If she asked them what they were after, they might
actually tell her—but she had more important things on her mind at the
moment.
“Is it thornapple and blowfish? And what’s the ratio? What else do you
add? How much do you need?”
Suirei didn’t answer immediately.
“Tell me about what it’s like right after you revive. I assume you’re not
able to move immediately.” Without realizing what she was doing, Maomao
had slid closer to Suirei, provoking a scowl from the other woman. Her hand
was twitching. It hadn’t done that before.
After another moment Suirei said, “I don’t think you need thornapple.”
“You don’t?” Maomao said.
“It was written in a formula from another country. But I think the
intention was to sustain a catatonic state in order to artificially produce
slaves. I’ve heard that was the drug’s original application.” Then she held up
her shivering left hand—a limb that had worked perfectly well before. The
shaking was a result of the resurrection drug. “I got off with no worse than
this, but a serious mistake could have cost me my memory.”
She didn’t talk as though that were speculation; she sounded sure—so
there must have been other test subjects besides Suirei. Creating a drug
demanded a commensurate price. Trial and error was the only means to
figure out the proper way to proceed. Maomao was well aware that this
involved human testing—but she couldn’t suppress her other feelings about
the subject.
“What about the revised formula, then?” Maomao asked, leaning slowly
toward Suirei, her eyes widening, feeling gooseflesh all over her body.
“We’ve only tried it on animals,” she said. Not humans, then. After all,
for all they knew, they could be wrong: it might turn out that without the
thornapple, the subject never revived at all. Of course one would try it on
animals first.
Page 125

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Maomao’s eyes sparkled, and she leaned in so close that she was
practically nose-to-nose with Suirei. She placed her hand on her own chest,
indicating that here, right here, was the perfect experimental subject.
“We’re not trying it on you.”
“Why not?! Be my guest!”
“You’re our hostage,” Suirei said flatly. Maomao had to resist the urge to
grab her by the collar and shake her until she acquiesced to giving her the
drug. She couldn’t waste this chance to find out more about it. Instead she
simply backed down.
“Hee hee! It’s so nice to see you two getting along,” Shisui chirped,
taking a bite of fried bread. “After all, you and Maomao could both use some
more friends, Big Sis.”
“Shut up,” Suirei snapped.
“Quiet,” Maomao said at the exact same time.
They certainly hadn’t meant to speak in unison, but there it was.
Maomao was sleeping in the same room as Suirei, while Shisui took the
other room, the one with just a single bed. She whined that she wanted to
sleep with the other girls, but Suirei chased her out and she went away
muttering to herself.
It wasn’t as if Maomao and Suirei were spending the night chatting and
gossiping. They hadn’t last night, and they wouldn’t tonight. Frankly, there
wasn’t much Maomao wanted to say to Suirei, but even if there had been, she
doubted Suirei would have responded much.
Maybe Maomao should have started by asking what the girls were after,
but she never had. Finally, she thought maybe she should—but when she
opened her mouth, she found a completely different question coming out.
“So you’re pretty close with Shisui, it seems?”
“You think so?”
“Looks that way to me.”
That was the end of the conversation. Well, then. It showed how much of
a social buffer Shisui provided for Suirei.
When she got up the next morning, Maomao discovered a profusion of
books on the table, lavishly illustrated encyclopedias of medicinal herbs.
There were even some foreign volumes mixed in among them, depicting a
Page 126

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

wide variety of plants Maomao had never seen before. She was unable to
read most of these books, but here and there papers were tucked among the
pages with notes or translations.
“I’m going out. There’s a guard outside, so don’t get any ideas about
running away,” Suirei said as she left the room.
“I wouldn’t worry. I don’t think she’ll want to,” commented Shisui, who
was already up and having some congee for breakfast.
“What’d you do to get a guard posted on you?” asked the little shit, Kyouu, who was there for some reason. He was dipping some fried bread in his
congee. He was annoying, yes, but Maomao wasn’t bothered; she was more
interested in reading through the treasure trove of books in front of her.
“Huh? Not gonna eat?” Shisui asked.
“Later. I can wait,” Maomao said, intent on at least flipping the pages.
Shisui, however, shoved some congee-softened bread in Maomao’s mouth.
She chewed obligingly.
“How about a change of clothes? You’re still in your sleepwear.”
“Later. I can wait.”
“It bugs me.” Shisui loosened the belt of Maomao’s pajamas; Maomao
obediently stretched out her arms and kept reading while Shisui slid an
overgarment onto her.
“Geez, lookit this girl. She must think she’s hot stuff. She acts like Lady
Shenmei,” Kyou-u said.
Shenmei? Maomao was wondering who that was when Shisui smacked
her in the small of the back. She rose out of her chair so Shisui could slide a
skirt on her.
“Yeah, thanks, Kyou-u. Go clean up your bowl.”
“Aw, why should I? Isn’t that what servants are for?”
“So you can’t do anything without the servants? My, still such a child, I
see...”
She knows how to press his buttons, Maomao thought; and indeed, the
little boy who wanted so much to be seen as a grown-up did an about-face,
noisily picking up his bowl and putting it on a tray and carrying it out of the
room. Maomao half watched him, then nodded appreciatively. “He’s from a
decent family, isn’t he?”
“He he. In the land far to the east, they have a saying: ‘the mighty must
wane.’” She seemed to be saying that everyone, no matter how strong,
Page 127

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

eventually got old. That any house, no matter how great, would ultimately
fall.
Maomao paged quickly through the books while Shisui moved on to her
hair. “Where’s your hair stick from yesterday, Maomao?” Maomao pointed
silently at the bedroom. Shisui jogged in and took the hair stick from beside
Maomao’s pillow. Then she combed Maomao’s hair and tied it up. She let
one bunch drape beside each ear, holding them together with hair ties. “This
is a really nice hair stick,” she said. “You have to be careful with it. You
wouldn’t want someone to steal it and sell it.”
“Think it would be worth much?”
“Worth much?” Shisui flourished the hair stick in front of Maomao’s face.
“Whoever made this was a very talented craftsperson. There aren’t many of
them in the capital. If an expert looked at this, they would know who had
made it, and from there, who was likely to have placed the order. Just look at
the care they put into the design they carved in it, all the little details you
won’t even see.”
Maomao remembered once when a courtesan had sold off an accessory a
customer had given her as a gift, only to have the same customer buy it from
the pawn shop and give it to her again as a present. It hadn’t been
comfortable. And she knew how persistent the giver of this particular hair
stick could be, leaving her with the uneasy sense that it would one day come
back to her.
“I can’t sell it,” she said finally.
“Only thing to do is to melt it back down for the metal, then,” Shisui said,
but somehow Maomao thought that felt wrong too. “It’s still...lacking
something,” Shisui said. She reached up and pulled the hairpin off her own
head, placing it in Maomao’s hair instead. “There, that’s perfect.”
“You’re used to this.”
“You get pretty good at it when you’re beaten for being too slow,” she
said, the words sounding as natural as anything.
“Beaten?”
“Uh-huh.”
It was hardly uncommon for a maid’s employer to discipline her, but this
sounded strange to Maomao.
“If I couldn’t give a decent massage, I got boiling water poured over my
hands. I was so scared of it,” Shisui said.
Page 128

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“That is scary. Sounds like your mistress was a terrible person.”
The old madam had meted out discipline to Maomao more than once, but
even that old bag knew where to draw the line. Hit ’em where no one will see
it; slap ’em so it won’t leave a mark. Sure, she was probably thinking at least
in part of making sure she didn’t lower the value of her merchandise, but it
was still a kind of mercy.
“Heh! That was my mother!” Shisui said, laughing.
“Hope I never meet her,” Maomao said, wondering what kind of mother
would treat her daughter that way. No... I guess some are worse, she thought,
looking at the disfigured pinky finger on her left hand.
“I get that. And that’s why you have to be sure to just do what you’re
asked, Maomao.” Shisui began putting away her comb. “I’ll be going out
today,” she added. Then she left the room.
It had been perhaps six hours. When Maomao got hungry, food was
brought to her from the inn’s kitchen. And there were so many books to read.
The only thing she really had to frown about was that when she used the
bathroom, her guard—a man—had to accompany her.
When she had gone through the books from cover to cover and learned all
that was in them, Maomao gave a big yawn. She was sore from sitting so
long. She poked her head out the window to get some fresh air. Her room was
on the third floor of the inn, the uppermost story, and as there were no taller
buildings around, it provided a spectacular view.
She could see steam drifting up from hot springs here and there. No, she
couldn’t peep down on anyone from her elevated vantage point—the baths
were suitably covered—but even so, she could see most of the village.
Beyond the palisade, a river flowed among rice paddies, and she could see
the forest surrounding it all. The harvest was mostly over, the paddies bereft
of their crop, which was now hanging out to dry.
Hm?
She spotted one field that hadn’t been harvested. Just a corner of it,
actually: there, the rice still hadn’t ripened. It was standing smack in the
shadow of a building, maybe a storehouse for the crop or something. It was
quite an impressive piece of architecture.
She recalled what the children had said the day before about a place where
the rice didn’t grow well. Maybe that patch was going unharvested while the
Page 129

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

owner waited for the crop to mature. Maomao stroked her chin: Hmm.
The plot didn’t appear to be malnourished. And it was strange: the
leftover part of the crop occupied a perfect square, tucked just within the
shadow of the building. Could it be...?
She leaned out, staring intently at the patch of rice—when there was a
huge crash. Maomao almost tumbled out the window in her surprise. She
managed to grab hold of the window frame, though, and then took a second
to steady her breathing.
“What’re you doing?”
It was the little shit! He’d come into the room, throwing the door open as
hard as he could. Maomao marched over, stopped in front of Kyou-u, and,
without another word, gave him a noogie.
“Ow! That hurt! What’s wrong with you?”
“You should learn to enter a room more quietly.”
True, she’d struck him partly out of sheer spite, but it was his fault too.
Maybe if he could have watched his mouth.
When she finally let him go, Kyou-u looked at her reproachfully. “All
right, you. Where’s my big sis?”
“Not a clue.” Shisui hadn’t told Maomao where she was going.
“You should’ve asked her!”
Maomao wasn’t sure Shisui would have answered. Anyway, the field was
of more interest to her at the moment.
“Why d’you keep looking outside?”
“Do you have any idea what that building is? Is it a storehouse?”
“Huh?”
Maomao pointed to the structure on the edge of the village. It was the
biggest of several around it.
“Aw, that’s the chief’s storehouse. I guess all the fields around there
belong to him.”
“So I was right...”
“Uh-huh. But they don’t use it much,” Kyou-u said, opening his mouth
with its ridiculous gap in his front teeth. “We’ve got these other storehouses
with high floors, to keep the rats out, and that’s where they put everything.
That building over there, I don’t think they’re even using it right now.”
“But it’s still there.”
“Yeah, ’cause the chief’s a skinflint. He won’t even pay to have it
Page 130

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

knocked down.”
Maomao’s response was a heartfelt: “Huh.”
Huh? She stepped away from the window and began to page frantically
through the book she had just finished. I’m sure it said...
She found one of the pages with a piece of note paper stuck to it and
swallowed heavily.
No doubt Shisui and Suirei had assumed that having so many books to
read would keep Maomao quiet, but they had failed to reckon with the nature
of her curiosity. It was an emotional force that bubbled up from within her,
filling her entire body. She found it almost unbearable to be just sitting in this
room reading.
“H-Hey, what’s going on? You look...scary,” Kyou-u said.
No! Damn. Her personal quirks were showing themselves again—and
when she got like this, she couldn’t stop them, even if she knew intellectually
that she should. Even if they were about to cause her to do something
impossibly foolish.
But if she had been any other way, she wouldn’t have been Maomao.
“What, you want to go there?” Kyou-u asked.
Yes, but there was a guard outside. And she couldn’t get out the window;
they were three stories up. Actually, getting out wasn’t impossible: she could
use sheets to make an improvised ladder, or even work her way down
clinging to the wall if she really wanted to. But it would have been much too
obvious. The window faced the street, and she would have been noticed and
recaptured immediately.
“Can I get there?” she asked, not really expecting much.
Kyou-u smirked at her. “It’s not impossible.”
“Tell me how.” Maomao’s eyes were round. Kyou-u, evidently pleased by
this reaction, trotted over to the adjacent room, the one Shisui slept in.
“C’mon, help me,” he commanded. Maomao wondered what she was helping
with—it turned out to be pushing a chest of drawers. She pushed, not entirely
sure why, but then with a heavy scrape the chest began to move, revealing a
door behind it. “This actually goes to the room next door,” he said. “That
one’s mine.”
Placing a large chest of drawers was certainly one way to divide off the
rooms in whatever manner was desired.
“And there isn’t another chest on the other side of the door?”
Page 131

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“It’s fine. I moved it already. I thought maybe I could give Sis a good
fright, but this thing was in the way.” Then Kyou-u opened the door. It
wasn’t even locked; it must have been assumed that no one would actually
bother to move the chests on both sides of it.
Kyou-u’s space was laid out the same way as the sleeping chambers
Maomao and the women occupied. The bed was covered with a mess of
paper and brushes. She was reminded of a thought she’d had when they were
painting the masks—that in spite of appearances, the brat was quite the little
artist.
“C’mon, this way,” Kyou-u said, but he wasn’t pointing at the exit. The
bedroom looked the same as in Maomao’s space, but the living room was a
little different. Unlike the decorative window in her room, this one had a big
door that led onto a balcony. The balcony ran past the next room over, and
the room beyond that; there were dividers, but they were just decorative bars
that it would be easy to slip past.
“Go as far as you can, and you’ll see the roof of a covered walkway that
leads to a separate building. Jump down and you can get away, no problem.”
The separate building was behind the inn, so she would probably escape
notice as long as she was careful.
“You really know your way around.”
“Heh heh. I’m the only one who doesn’t have any studying to do.” In
other words, he’d been sneaking out of here every day. The brat seemed
awfully knowledgeable about this town for someone living in a travelers’
lodge; he must have been here quite a while. At bath resorts, it wasn’t
uncommon for people to stay for long stretches as they sought to cure an
illness. Kyou-u, though, didn’t appear weakened by any kind of condition.
Maomao, not particularly interested in pursuing the subject anyway,
slipped through the bars, grateful that she was such a twig. Kyou-u followed
her. She looked at him as if to ask what he was doing, and he said, “If you’re
gonna go to all the trouble of sneaking out, I figure I might as well come with
you.” He sounded awfully condescending.
Bah, fine.
And that was how Maomao finally escaped.
Once Maomao was out of the inn, the rest was easy. Unlike when she’d
entered the village, the guard was more than happy to let her out (maybe
because it had been dark when they’d arrived). The fields, empty after the
Page 132

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

harvest, gave her a good view of whether there was anyone around, and she
didn’t expect any trouble with wild animals in broad daylight.
“So, uh, what’re we doing?” Kyou-u asked.
“There’s something I want to check,” Maomao answered, and then they
were there: standing in front of the as yet unharvested patch of rice.
Kyou-u tore off an ear of the crop. “Think they just aren’t getting enough
nourishment here?”
“Unlikely.” Maomao looked at the storehouse next to the field. There was
a big window in the plaster wall—a simple opening without bars or anything,
though at the moment it was shut tight. Maomao picked up a twig and used it
to compare the width of the window with that of the patch of rice. The rice
patch was slightly larger.
“I think this rice gets light on it all night long,” Maomao said.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
A growing plant could be influenced by changes in the environment. Just
as Maomao had induced her blue roses to bloom out of season, something
external might have affected this rice. Generally, plenty of light was
beneficial for plant growth—but there were times when it could be just the
opposite. Maybe the constant light, even during the night, had caused this rice
to mature slowly. Something similar sometimes happened near the pleasure
district, itself a place that never slept.
“You mean the rice didn’t grow because it’s always bright?” Kyou-u
asked.
“Just my guess,” Maomao replied.
Judging by the location and size of the window, though, she seemed to be
on the right track. Since it had no bars, it was probably left open all during
the long, hot summer days of work. That, however, raised a question: why
would there have been a light on all night in a supposedly disused
storehouse?
Maomao had a thought about that. “I assume there are rats here.”
“Oh, yeah. Doesn’t matter how many traps we set, they keep coming.”
“In other words, you could catch as many as you wanted.”
She thought back to what Suirei had said. About how the new drug hadn’t
yet been tested on human subjects. It had, however, been tested on animals—
and what kind of animal might it have been tested on? Something small and
easily caught, perhaps? Moreover, the books Maomao had been given
Page 133

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

contained several marginal notes detailing the results of experiments on rats.
There had been too many books in the room for Suirei to have been
carrying them all around by herself. They must have been brought from
somewhere in the village. Maomao did a quick circuit around the storehouse.
In addition to the window, there was a single door, but it was locked.
“Move.” Kyou-u suddenly had a piece of wire in his hand; he worked
noisily at the lock for a moment, and soon undid the simple latch.
This kid’s trouble, Maomao thought. But she was also grateful for his
help. They entered the storehouse to find it divided into two rooms. Maomao
decided to start with the one with the window.
She found both exactly what she expected—and much more. What she
expected was the rats in cages; they were accompanied by a veritable pile of
papers covered with notes, not to mention the bones of mysterious animals,
dried herbs, and what appeared to be some kind of innards. They carried a
very distinct smell.
There was a shelf lined with small bottles. A piece of paper was posted by
each one with a date, the ingredients, and the amounts thereof. Kyou-u was
looking at them with interest—but it distracted him from the far more
shocking thing in the room.
It looked like a metal tube, but it was in pieces; it would have been
impossible to tell what it was from the individual bits. But Maomao
recognized it. It was a feifa gun, like the ones the assassins had used in the
attempt on Jinshi’s life.
What are these doing here?
Their presence would explain a good deal—but there was no time for
Maomao to gather her thoughts, for there was a loud click from outside.
Maomao slapped a hand over Kyou-u’s mouth and hid in a corner of the
room.
“Hm?” said a woman slowly. “Is anyone here?” Her footsteps went clackclack-clack. “Perhaps someone forgot to lock the door?”
“No, ma’am, I highly doubt it,” a man’s voice replied. But there were
more than two sets of footsteps.
“And yet it was open. Who was it who was supposed to lock up?” The
words were slow, almost languorous, yet for some reason, her tone sent a
shock of fear through Maomao. And it seemed she wasn’t the only one.
Kyou-u was shaking in her arms. Very slowly, she took her hand off his
Page 134

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

mouth.
“—ad...” he whispered. She gave him a questioning look. “This is bad.
It’s her...” His face was twisted.
The footsteps came closer, and with them came another new aroma,
mingling with the unmistakable smell that already filled the room. There was
a rustling of cloth that suggested the woman was looking one way and then
the other, but Maomao could only see her feet. Or rather, their feet: there
appeared to be six women’s feet and four men’s. Or was that just two feet
belonging to men? The other pair was dressed in a man’s outfit, but Maomao
thought she recognized it—it was the one Suirei had been wearing that
morning.
“Any problems?” one of the women asked. She had a distinctive accent—
something else Maomao recognized. She began to shake all over, sweat
pouring off her, but she saw it: the woman’s eyes were covered by a veil. It
covered her hair, too, but it couldn’t conceal the color of her eyes. A piercing
sky blue—a foreigner’s eyes.
“No, it’s nothing. It seems I was imagining things.” The woman turned
and made to leave the room. Maomao was just about to let out the smallest
breath of relief—but then the woman reached for the waist of the man, whom
Maomao assumed was a guard.
The next instant, Maomao caught her breath again as a bit of her hair went
drifting to the ground. A sword was lodged in the wall beside her, still
vibrating audibly. It had happened so quickly that she’d hardly seen it. The
next thing she knew, however, the curtain had been pulled aside and an older
woman was staring down at her. She was in her fifties, perhaps, dressed in
ostentatious makeup and clothing—she was beautiful, but age would have its
way with her in time.
The woman wore hair accessories as garish as her outfit, and there were
nail caps on her pinky and ring fingers that extended the nails by a good two
sun. Her rouged lips curved gracefully as she stared down at the puny girl
curled up in front of her.
“It’s just another rat,” she said, and she did indeed look as if she were
staring at a filthy rodent. “Suirei.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Suirei took a step forward—and the woman struck her
hard with the folding fan she was holding. Maomao privately gasped.
“You need to at least keep your rats under control.”
Page 135

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” Suirei said, her eyes on the ground.
“Hmm? This boy, I know him.”
“L-Lady Shenmei, I’m s-s-sorry...” Kyou-u was trembling violently; it
was all he could do to squeeze the words out.
“That’s honorable Shirou’s son,” Suirei said, even as she pressed a
trembling hand to her face.
“Hm,” was all Shenmei said. Then she turned to the other woman with
her. This person was about the right age to be her daughter, and like the
woman called Shenmei, she was wearing garish makeup.
“Mother, dear, it’s only the mischief of some little children. Let’s hurry
and go,” this other woman said. There was no trace of the innocent lilt that
normally characterized her speech. She’d put aside her village-girl outfit in
favor of a lavish dress. Her hair was tied up high, and decorated with an
accessory in the shape of a bird from a foreign land.
So that’s what was going on...
Maomao had deliberately decided not to pursue the matter. She’d been on
the verge of asking back when the connection with Suirei had first become
apparent, but then she’d chosen not to. She’d been so sure that it wouldn’t
matter what she knew or didn’t know—but now it seemed perhaps she should
have taken things a little more seriously.
Now who’s the tanuki?
“Heh heh. I’ve got an idea. Since they’re here, why not bring them
along?” said Shenmei. Age had somewhat dimmed her beauty, yet in her time
she must have been astoundingly lovely. She was smiling, but Maomao felt
that smile grasp her heart like an iron vise.
“You don’t mind, do you, Loulan?” Shenmei said—to Shisui.

Page 136

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 15: The Stronghold
They left the hot-springs town and bumped along in a carriage for half a
day, until they arrived at some kind of fortress. Maomao was deposited in one
of the rooms.
“I never intended to bring you here,” Suirei informed her. Her cheek was
red and swollen. She’d always seemed quiet and serious, but her expression
was darker than ever now. She’d never exactly been the cheerful type, but a
cloud seemed to hover over her. Maomao understood why, having observed
the exchange in the storehouse.
Maomao had snuck into the storehouse, where she’d been discovered by a
middle-aged woman called Shenmei. And Shenmei had called Shisui by the
name Loulan.
I see it now, Maomao thought. She’d had an inkling—it would have been
strange if she hadn’t noticed anything. Maomao had met Consort Loulan only
once, when she gave a special class to the Emperor’s four favorite ladies and
their ladies-in-waiting. Loulan, dressed in garish apparel, had taken in the
lecture with hardly a twitch of her face. Consort Gyokuyou—having a
perfectly pleasant time—and Consort Lihua—ever studious—had asked
questions. Consort Lishu had been in no condition to ask anything, as
Maomao recalled. But Consort Loulan not only hadn’t asked anything, but
had hardly spoken at all the entire time.
Maomao hadn’t given it much thought—of course a noble wouldn’t feel
obliged to speak to a mere serving woman like her—but now she understood.
Maomao had realized Shisui—no, Loulan—was well-bred by her possessions
and the nuances of her behavior. She’d hidden from the Empress Dowager so
she wouldn’t realize who Shisui really was. Probably the same reason she’d
gone to another consort when Lishu had appeared in the bath. Maomao,
meanwhile, hadn’t noticed anything amiss when they’d first met over
Maomao, the cat, so Loulan hadn’t been particularly careful around Maomao
after that.
She’s quite an actor, though. Other than her notable predilection for bugs,

Page 137

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Loulan was a perfectly ordinary young woman. She could munch on snacks
with Xiaolan and chat about the latest gossip. She was like a tanuki, fabled
for its ability to transform itself. Her disguise had fooled them all.
“Let’s put her to the whip,” Shenmei had said upon finding Maomao. She
sounded almost cheerful; her voice had all the gravity of someone suggesting
a tea party in the garden. “Do you suppose a hundred lashes would do? Go
ready a whipping post.”
“Lady Shenmei...” Suirei began. Shenmei’s hand moved the instant she
began to speak, the folding fan she was holding connecting with Suirei’s
cheek once again. Suirei took a step back, but remained expressionless and
looked at the ground. She was pale and her hand was trembling slightly; her
breath was coming in the same quick pants as it had after their encounter with
the snake.
This is bad, bad, bad, Maomao thought, feeling herself start to sweat all
over. She understood now why Kyou-u was shaking so hard: this woman was
dangerous. There were certain nobles you never wanted to meet, and this
woman was one of them. Worse, Maomao was less than an insect in her eyes.
She’d been discovered sneaking around where she didn’t belong; of course
the woman would have her finished off under the guise of “disciplining” her.
“And what about this little child? What shall we do with him? I suppose
he does need to be taught some manners.”
Kyou-u, terrified, clung to Maomao.
“Honored mother...” Loulan, the ostentatious hair stick bobbing in her
hair, stepped forward, her voice like the chill ring of a bell. “Didn’t you say
that we needed a new apothecary?” Then she looked at Maomao, but her eyes
were vacant, like they belonged to a porcelain doll.
Shenmei’s face contorted for a second, but then she hid her mouth with
her folding fan and studied Maomao. “She doesn’t look like any apothecary
I’ve ever seen.”
“I agree. But believe it or not, she’s more than thirty years old. She’s
spent her days testing medicines on herself, until she’s come to age more
slowly than normal people.”
Loulan took Maomao’s left hand and rolled up her sleeve, revealing the
bandage-wrapped arm. “I know not which concoction it is. But one of them
seems as if it may be connected to the elixir of immortality. She may find it,
Page 138

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

presuming she doesn’t fail and die as the last man did.” Loulan sounded
downright nonchalant.
Elixir of immortality? “The last man”?
Shenmei knitted her brow, clearly disappointed by this. “If you say so. I
suppose that’s that, then.” She flipped the shawl of her dress back and turned
to the foreign emissary watching from behind her. “Shall we resume our
discussion, then, Lady Ayla?”
Shenmei somehow managed to sound condescending despite the
respectful term of address. The foreign emissary with the veil over her head
followed after her. Both, however, were women of no small pride, and each
looked less than friendly toward the other as they walked along.
Maomao was once again about to breathe a sigh of relief when Shenmei
stopped. “This apothecary of yours can’t possibly do proper work in this
place. Let’s bring her back to the stronghold with us.” A nasty little curl came
over her rouged lips.
Which brings us to the present moment.
Maomao found herself in a storage space that was, she was told, the room
the previous apothecary had been using. It was a bit of a mess, but there was
certainly apothecary-ish stuff lying around, and a wicker trunk crammed to
bursting with books.
Maomao looked at Suirei. “You’re half-sisters? Different mothers?” She
wasn’t asking so much as confirming.
“She’s the only one who treats me like her older sister.”
What was there to say except that this helped everything make sense?
She’d heard Loulan was Shishou’s only daughter. Considering how fearsome
his wife was, she hardly seemed like the type to afford equal treatment to a
child she hadn’t borne herself. Indeed, it seemed she hardly wanted Suirei to
exist.
“Lady Shenmei despises me. It drives her to these things,” Suirei said,
rubbing her red, swollen cheek.
Maomao had a thought. “May I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Is it possible that Shisui was your name first?”
Loulan seemed inordinately fond of the name Shisui. It was a perfectly
ordinary name, but it combined the Shi of “the Shi clan” with the sui of
Page 139

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Suirei.” Far too simple as pseudonyms went. Anyway, the more common
versions of the name would have used the character “purple” for shi, or
perhaps “offspring.” Loulan had chosen some unique characters, but the
name sounded the same.
“That’s right,” Suirei said. “But when Lady Shenmei came back from the
rear palace, she couldn’t bear the thought of me. And she hated that one of
the characters in my name was related to the clan.”
First Shenmei had chased the young Suirei and her mother out of the
mansion, then treated them like servants. Finally she’d taken even Suirei’s
name, giving it to her own blood daughter as if it were a simple childhood
moniker. As if she had done it out of spite.
Thus Shishou had two daughters, yet one of them had been raised in the
lap of every courtly beauty, to be offered as a flower to the Emperor, while
the other was shrouded in darkness to sow discord in the rear palace. Now
Maomao saw why the assassins had made that attempt on Jinshi’s life—if
they were Shishou’s agents. Even Maomao had heard more than once about
the sharp difference in opinion between the two men about how the rear
palace should be run.
But something still bothered Maomao. She took the hair stick from her
hair and looked at it. Shisui—no, Loulan—had told her it was valuable. Yet
there was someone who could afford to simply give it away. Someone who
wielded great influence even outside the rear palace despite his youth.
Jinshi. The man who was more than just a eunuch—indeed, who wasn’t
even a eunuch. Maomao stared at the hair stick—but then she stopped.
“What is it?” Suirei asked, watching her.
“When you entered the rear palace as a eunuch, how did they examine
you?”
“Bit of an abrupt question, isn’t it?” Suirei said, looking at the ground.
One might almost think she was embarrassed. But then she said, “It’s a
physical exam. They feel you, just over your undergarments. You don’t even
have to take anything off.”
That was how Suirei had been able to get in. She’d never had what they
were looking for—and it probably never occurred to them that a woman
might sneak in disguised as a eunuch. But it was easier than getting a man
past the same hurdle.
“Any chance an uncastrated man could do it?”
Page 140

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Three officials check you, from three different departments. It would be
tough to bribe everybody.”
If any one of the three didn’t take the bait, the others could expect worse
than a little beating when it came out that they had let a man into the rear
palace. Too much risk for a little pocket change. You’d never get all of them
to go along with it.
So then—how had Jinshi gotten in?
“Only a few men can come and go in the rear palace as they please...”
Namely the Emperor and his immediate relatives. No... The ages don’t match
up. But...
She’d often thought that Jinshi was younger than he looked. Not a child—
she wouldn’t go that far—but he gave a distinctly youthful impression.
Although she suspected all too few other women in the rear palace would
agree with her.
Maomao didn’t say anything for a long moment. “What are you
thinking?” Suirei asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
All right, better set that aside for now.
Come to think of it, she felt like Jinshi had been trying to have some kind
of important conversation with her when they’d been on that hunt—might it
have had something to do with this subject? If she hadn’t noticed, it was his
fault for having such superb ox bezoars around. Ox bezoars made people
insane. Fearsome things!
But anyway, she had to think about the situation she was in now. They’d
traveled about a half day by carriage from the hot-springs village. Judging by
the position of the sun as she’d been able to make it out through the curtain,
they’d gone north. Partway through the journey the landscape had turned
white, and snow had begun to fall.
So we’re either well to the north or up in the mountains, Maomao thought.
Shenmei had spoken of a stronghold. And indeed, this place had high walls
all around and a cliffside at its back. More a stronghold than a castle. That
courtly-looking woman...in a stronghold? She didn’t seem like the type to set
foot in such a place. Then again, that could just be Maomao’s bias; she knew
from experience how tough and stubborn noblewomen could be. But this
seemed like pushing it.
It was almost as if Shenmei saw herself as at war.
Page 141

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Wait...!
Maomao thought of the feifa she’d seen in the storehouse. She thought
about how unusual it was that a foreign emissary like the woman called Ayla
should even be in a place like this. So that’s what’s going on...
There’d been rumors for some time now that the emissaries had been in
secret talks with someone or other. What if it had been the Shi clan? What if
that was how the brand-new feifa had arrived?
And what if the gun had been disassembled in order to understand it—so
that more could be produced?
“Are you planning to start a war?”
Suirei, who had been about to leave the room, stopped. “It’s not my
decision to make. Considering what Lady Loulan said, I’d suggest you get
started on the medicine.”
“Oh, you don’t have to ask me twice. You don’t have to ask me at all.”
“Good. There’ll be food. There’s a toilet in the next room down the hall if
you need it. And whatever you do, don’t make Lady Shenmei mad.”
Yes... Whatever I do...
Maomao didn’t know what kind of discipline would await her if she failed
to heed this advice. But Suirei left the room without a backward glance.
All right, what to do now? Maomao looked around the room, thinking.
The entrance was locked; there were bars on the windows, and the ground
outside was piled with pure, white snow. Suirei hadn’t bothered to tell her not
to try running away. Was that because escape was impossible? Or was it her
way of saying: If you’re going to do it, at least do it right?
She opened the door to find a narrow hallway, at the far end of which was
the restroom. Such facilities were normally located outside, or at least on the
first floor—but she was on the third floor here. It couldn’t be easy to keep the
thing clean. But evidently they were less concerned with convenience than
with preventing any opportunity for escape.
They said there was another apothecary here before me... Had he been
confined too? They said he’d died trying one of his own concoctions. Hrm. It
almost made sense, and then...it didn’t. Maomao crossed her arms and
decided to let the subject lie for the time being. There were more important
things to do.
Yes—things like...
Maomao began to smile as she approached the packed wicker trunk and
Page 142

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

opened the lid. It was all but overflowing with books. She was curious about
the medicine cabinet along the wall, as well, but this could come first.
“Ah... Ahhh!” she exclaimed without meaning to. To her, the wicker trunk
may as well have been a treasure chest. She began rifling through the
contents, cackling like a madwoman.
It was always Suirei who brought her meals, which consisted of soup and
a side vegetable—not bad, even if they did tend to be a little cold. There were
a lot of dried ingredients, though; they could almost have qualified as field
rations.
Maomao sat on her bed with her legs crossed. She’d had a look through
all the books in the room. She thought it had taken about five days, although
it was hard to be sure. It wasn’t exactly good manners to rest her chin on her
hands and her elbows in front of her, but there was no one here to scold her.
A war. What a thing to stumble on.
Maomao glanced out the window for a moment. Everything was white
outside—she suspected the harvest was over, and they were approaching the
time of year when there would be no farming to do. She thought she’d heard
it said once that war was something that happened when the farmers had too
much free time.
From what she could see through the window, they appeared to be on very
high ground with a mountain at their backs. Not a bad location for a
stronghold. She sketched a map on the tabletop with her finger. If they were
in the northern lands, Shihoku-shu, then this stronghold must have been
located right on the country’s border.
Maomao tossed herself back on the bed, grabbing her hair. She tried to
picture a half circle to the north of the capital. Ten days by boat. Then
walking to the hot-springs village, and then another half day by carriage.
Were there any mountains in that range?
If I’d known things were going to turn out like this, I would have studied!
The exam for court ladies had included some questions about geography,
she seemed to recall. But every time she’d opened the book to study, she’d
only ended up falling asleep, so she hardly remembered any of it. She did
remember Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting Suiren jabbing her awake.
I even miss the jabbing, now.
Just then, Maomao heard raised voices from the hallway. She recognized
Page 143

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

one of them. Curious, she hopped off the bed and put her ear to the door.
“Young master, you mustn’t play there!”
“Aw, why not? I haven’t explored over here yet!”
It was Kyou-u. They must have brought him here along with Maomao—
she remembered Suirei frowning at the idea. She could hear other children
behind him.
Wait... There are other kids here?
“What’re you doing? You’ll miss out on your snack!”
“Whatever! Hey, save some for me!”
Maomao, rocked by the realization that there were children in the
stronghold, slid down against the wall and let out a long breath. This place
might be built like a fortress, but it was all too obvious what would happen if
it came to a siege.
As far as Maomao was aware, the current Emperor was a relatively
merciful ruler. But there were still lines that were not to be crossed. One
palace woman who had attempted to kill a high consort had been sentenced to
hang, and her family mutilated. Some such measures were unavoidable if the
Emperor was to maintain his authority.
Just imagine, then, what would happen if a rebellion on this scale were to
be discovered. No member of the clan would be left alive. Not even children
and infants. Was that why the children were here? Because someone who
understood the stakes had brought them?
Maomao sighed again. She hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin
on them. She should just forget about everyone else. She didn’t have time to
be thinking about things like this.
And yet her heart was unbearably, inescapably heavy.

Page 144

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 16: Lahan
Sometime after noon, a diminutive, fox-eyed man showed up at Jinshi’s
office—Lahan. Gaoshun and Basen were at the office along with Jinshi, and
they were dealing with an even larger mass of paperwork than usual.
“So that’s what’s happened,” Jinshi said.
“It’s only a guess, but yes—that’s what I think.”
Lahan was a remarkable man. Being eccentric, but extraordinarily good at
one particular thing, seemed to be a La family trait. By closely analyzing the
movement of goods and metal, he had discovered that the Shi clan was up to
something.
Lahan indicated a point on a map: a disused stronghold. For anyone, even
a family whose loyal service stretched back to the days of Wang Mu, to
rebuild an abandoned fortress for their own use could only be considered an
act of treason. Jinshi wanted to clutch his head in his hands—but in deference
to the fact that there was already a father-and-son team present with profound
furrows in their brows, he refrained.
Just as he was telling himself that he had to focus on thinking about what
to do, there was a jingle of the doorbell. He could hear footsteps approaching,
and then the door was thrown open.
“Might I ask what you’re doing in here?” The question came from none
other than the monocled strategist.
“Ah... Father.” Lahan, who had looked so confident until a moment
before, frowned, folded up the map on the desk, and pursed his lips.
“Lahan, you can’t just go barging into the offices of noblemen! People
will get the wrong idea. Strange ideas!” So saying, Lakan helped himself to a
spot on the office couch, the one he’d had brought here himself on one of his
previous incursions. He had yet to take it back, and so it still sat there.
“Particularly when no one can tell if the noble you’re visiting is a man or
a woman,” he went on maliciously. Basen, standing beside Jinshi, was about
to step forward and offer a few choice words of his own, but Gaoshun held
out a hand to stop him.

Page 145

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

They understood why Lakan was angry. His daughter had been abducted
from under their noses, right out of the rear palace. This was a man who had
smashed his way into the rear palace to find his girl; the only surprise was
that it had taken him this long to come to Jinshi. Very well; Jinshi would
submit to his slings and arrows. That was his responsibility. But he doubted
Lakan had come here merely to abuse him.
Lahan stepped back dejectedly and worked his way behind Gaoshun. So
there were things even this young man had trouble coping with. He seemed to
be whispering something to Gaoshun; Basen was eyeing him skeptically,
clearly wondering who this abacus-wielding interloper was.
Gaoshun summoned a messenger. Whatever he was doing seemed to hold
no interest for the strategist, who stretched out on the couch and gave Jinshi a
cold stare.
“I understand what you’re saying, Master Strategist. It was my own
fecklessness that caused this,” Jinshi said. And he did understand: even if this
was the first he was learning about the secret passage, even if no one had
known about it before, it had been used for kidnapping and escape, and the
responsibility lay squarely with him.
“Truer words were never spoken,” Lakan said. “What I want now is for
you to rescue my daughter—immediately.”
Ah, how simple things would have been if only he were capable of that!
At this moment, Jinshi was clearly Lakan’s enemy—and everyone at court
knew you didn’t want to make Lakan your enemy. Yet even the strategist
must have realized that open feuding with Jinshi at this point would serve no
one. He had another foe—not Jinshi, but Shishou.
Jinshi thought about what had brought the strategist to his office. The man
before him wasn’t interested in apprehending the culprits of a would-be
rebellion against the throne—his priority was to rescue his dear, sweet
daughter. Jinshi couldn’t fathom exactly what the man might be thinking, but
he had obviously decided that the quickest way to get what he wanted was to
come to Jinshi.
A lower official came in with tea, but when he saw the people present—
and registered the tension among them—he set the drinks down quickly and
showed himself out. Nobody touched the steaming tea, which gradually went
cold. If only their heads could cool off so easily—but it was not to be.
“You do a sorry job in your sorry state. And you think things are just
Page 146

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

going to work out for you like that?”
Jinshi understood exactly what Lakan thought was “sorry” about him. He
realized the strategist saw through him. Saw that Jinshi had carved out this
position for himself in order to run away, because he had no confidence in
what was supposed to be his true place.
The eye behind the monocle narrowed. Perhaps Lakan was hoping to
make himself feel better, even the smallest bit, by cornering Jinshi in his own
office. Basen looked ready to launch himself at Lakan, but Gaoshun held him
back. Lahan looked on, distinctly and obviously uncomfortable.
Other sounds seemed to fade into the background; Jinshi heard clearly
only the words of the strategist. “What more do you think you can do in the
sorry guise of a half-man?” His voice was ruthless and cruel.
There was a long moment in which Jinshi was unsure how to respond.
Finally he opened his mouth—but another, calmer voice spoke before he
could.
“My apologies. I had no idea you took such a dim view of us.”
They discovered a stooped old man standing in the entryway. Behind him
were some eunuchs, breathing heavily; they carried a palanquin in which they
had evidently brought him at a dead run. The old man, Luomen, nodded to
them, then entered the office, dragging one leg.
“Not, of course, that it was my personal preference to become a eunuch,”
he said.
Lakan waved his hands in a mild panic in the direction of the huddled old
man. “H-Honored Uncle! I meant nothing of the sort. I wasn’t talking about
you!”
“No? And yet here I am, a sorry half-man. Can’t even walk properly.
Reduced to riding around in a palanquin like a prince! In any case, am I not
also culpable for my failure to have kept a proper eye on Maomao?” His
aspect was almost grandmotherly; his mild gaze was upon the fox strategist.
The military man with his monocle was so cowed he looked almost
ridiculous.
“Phew. Just in time...” mumbled Lahan from behind them. When he
whispered to Gaoshun, it must have been to suggest he summon Luomen.
Lakan, Lahan, and Luomen together made quite the spectacle. Lakan,
imperious until a moment before, now acted like a young boy trying to soothe
his distraught mother. Jinshi could almost have laughed out loud, but with a
Page 147

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

struggle, he refrained. He glanced behind himself to see Gaoshun with deep
furrows on his brow—probably also restraining laughter. Only Basen seemed
oblivious to what was going on, the question mark all but floating over his
head as he listened to this exchange between uncle and nephew.
“You always have tended to get aggressive when you’re angry. But you
must think of who you’re dealing with when you act.”
“I understand that, Honored Uncle. Even I know that much. I was simply
responding in kind to what was said to me. I didn’t come here with the
slightest intention of going so far.”
Jinshi had hardly said anything to Lakan, but he chose to remain quiet on
that point for now. It was the politic thing to do.
“I should hope not. Perhaps you could tell him what really brought you
here, then. Politely.” Luomen patted Lakan on the shoulder.
Silently, Lakan turned toward Jinshi. Then he got up, knelt before Jinshi,
and pressed his fist into his palm in a gesture of respect. “I come in
supplication. I humbly request that you mobilize the army to strike against
the rebel, Shishou.”
Lakan was a grand commandant, in other words, a secretary of military
affairs. Jinshi understood what it meant for such a person to ask for the army
to be mobilized.
“The Shi clan appears to have been manufacturing feifa of the newest kind
for years,” Lahan added. “We have more than enough evidence of their
treachery.” He once again spread the materials he had shown Jinshi earlier on
the desk. And that was not even to mention the attempted assassination of
Jinshi or Loulan’s flight from the rear palace.
“Corruption ought to be rooted out and destroyed as quickly as possible,”
said Luomen—even though he winced as he spoke. The kindhearted doctor
was cut to the quick by the thought of war, even against rebels.
Moreover, he knew what it meant for Lakan to make this request of Jinshi.
Why the strategist had upbraided him as a “half-man.”
For the government to move against the Shi clan would mean bringing to
bear the Forbidden Army—a force commanded directly by the Emperor. It
was not a senior captain like Lakan who would command these troops, but
the one who stood at the very zenith of this nation.
The Emperor, though, could not simply jump up and march out of the
capital. As such, a substitute would be necessary.
Page 148

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“How long do you mean to deceive us with that assumed form?” Lakan
said, watching Jinshi through his monocle. Or rather, watching the man Ka
Zuigetsu, who wore “Jinshi” like a second skin.
Zuigetsu swallowed heavily. He’d always known this moment would
come. Now it had.
It was time for him to face it.

Page 149

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 17: Taibon
“Tell me, if you would: is my medicine ready yet?”
Exactly once per day, Maomao was permitted to leave the room in which
she was confined—in order to be taken, under guard, to Shenmei.
Shenmei’s room was so luxurious, one would never have believed it was
in the middle of a fortress. The floor was covered by a thick rug of foreign
make, and the furniture was likewise exotic. Aromas of tea and flowers and
honey drifted through the air.
The mistress of the room was reclining in an easy chair, a lady-in-waiting
polishing the nails of her left hand. A young man knelt nearby, massaging her
feet. The room was thick with the smell of incense. Behind Shenmei was a
large bed on which some women were rolling around and giggling. There
was another odor in the air too: alcohol. The room was redolent of sheer
decadence.
Maomao sniffed audibly. It’s some kind of mixture, she thought. A base of
musk water, cut with several other ingredients. The women lounging on the
bed looked oddly lethargic—hard to tell if it was drunkenness or something
else.
Loulan was behind Shenmei, munching on a snack. Suirei was combing
her hair. In some other setting, they might have looked like two sisters
sharing a sweet moment. Here, they looked only like master and servant.
“I believe it will take a little longer yet,” Maomao replied.
“Gracious. Is that so?” With a wave of her fan, Shenmei sent Maomao
back out of the room.
Once she was safely back in the hallway, Maomao let out a deep sigh.
Then she saw a familiar face looking in her direction.
“Hey, apothecary.” That smart-aleck tone—it was Kyou-u. (She’d never
specifically told him her name, and he hadn’t actually been introduced to her,
hence why he simply called her “apothecary.”) Behind him was a lady-inwaiting she took to be his minder, along with four other boys.

Page 150

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Yes? How can I help you?” she asked politely.
What she wanted to say was: Yeah, what is it, you little shit? But this was
hardly the time or place. Even Maomao had a sense of self-preservation, and
with the lady-in-waiting—and her burly guard—present, she couldn’t afford
to level any abuse at him.
“Ew, creepy!” he exclaimed.
I want to smack him so bad. Maomao privately promised herself that the
next time they were alone, she would give him the noogie of a lifetime.
Although, sadly, it didn’t seem like she was going to have the chance anytime
soon.
“If you don’t need anything from me, sir, I’d like to go back to my room.”
Maomao’s situation was far from ideal, but she didn’t object to what she was
actually doing. She was provided with a supply of drugs that would have
served admirably even in a proper medical office—even if many of them
were getting old. And she was thrilled to have so many written materials to
work with. Whoever the apothecary before her had been, they were quite
talented.
“Hey, were there any other women in there?”
“Yes, sir.”
I mean, for what it’s worth. They hadn’t been in much of a state to be seen
by a young child. Such dissolution was not for the eyes of little boys. True,
by the time she was Kyou-u’s age, Maomao had been more acquainted with
the copulation of men and women than that of, say, cats or dogs, and any
blushing embarrassment she might once have felt at the thought was long
gone. But this was different.
“So, uh, my mom’s in there. Did she look okay? I know she’s been busy
with work...”
After a second, Maomao replied, “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you. I don’t
know which of the women you mean.”
“Oh.” Kyou-u looked downcast. There wasn’t much Maomao could say.
She thought she knew which woman was his mother—but she hadn’t been fit
to tell him about. “Guess that’s how it goes, huh? I mean, Mom’s busy.
Maybe I should’ve waited back at the village for her.”
So that’s his story. She didn’t know whose idea it had been, but it had
been a wise choice. Better to have him stay at the hot-springs town than see
his mother here. Maybe it had even been his mother’s idea.
Page 151

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said.
“Oh, uh, hey!” Kyou-u looked like he was about to say something to
Maomao, but then he glanced around and was silent. Whatever he’d wanted
to say, evidently this wasn’t the place for it.
“If I may, then.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Maomao went back to her room.
Several more days passed, each much the same as the others. The one
thing that seemed really strange to Maomao was how she could hear
children’s voices outside her door. Kyou-u and the others, maybe? Each time
they approached, a lady-in-waiting would scold them and lead them away.
Evidently they were supposed to steer clear of this room.
I guess I understand. Small animals were brought into Maomao’s room
for experimental purposes. She kept the place as clean as she could, but it
couldn’t exactly be called hygienic. It does sort of stink in here. The smell
came partly from the rats, but sometimes there was a whiff of something else,
something vile. A smell not unlike animal dung or rotten eggs. She often
caught the smell drifting up from the stairs when she was taken to Shenmei’s
room; maybe they were doing something on one of the lower levels. She
thought back to the disassembled feifa she’d seen at the village. Maybe they
were researching the weapons here too.
I hope nothing explodes, she thought. But at the moment, she had no time
to worry about such things.
The materials left by the previous apothecary showed that in pursuit of an
immortality drug, many experiments had been done regarding a resurrection
drug as well. Her predecessor hadn’t been far from either, but neither had
they been precisely close. Yet Suirei had successfully revived on the basis of
these experiments—so they’d had their worth.
As for the drug that really mattered—the elixir of immortality—there
were only the most basic remarks: beauty products and things that might help
purify the body’s systems. Well, what else could one expect? There’s no such
thing as a panacea, after all. Nothing cures all ills.
In the same way, the deterioration of the human body could be slowed,
but it could never be stopped. Live a decent life, eat nutritious foods, and
exercise regularly—that was the best method. But Shenmei wanted
Page 152

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

something she could simply take a sip of and make herself ten years younger.
And there is no such thing. Maomao understood that perfectly well, yet
she had her pride as an apothecary—and doing nothing was clearly not an
option.
“I guess this isn’t any easier for you than it is for me,” she said to the rats.
Then, too, while they might be there purely to have drugs tested out on them,
they were being fed regularly, so they were plumper than your ordinary rat.
They had one pair for breeding, and kept the rest separated, lest the fortress
be overrun with ratspawn.
She considered the fact that to judge whether an immortality drug had
worked, she would have to observe the rat for at least the duration of its
natural life. It’s enough to make me light-headed... According to the last
apothecary’s materials, rats generally lived about three years; maybe four in
some exceptional individual cases. And I’m sure as hell not going to be here
for four years.
Nonetheless, she set about making the chubby rats’ food.
That was what she was doing when she heard a voice outside. There were
footsteps too; it was time for the changing of the guard. Maybe that means
I’ll get to eat soon. She knew by now that breakfast and dinner usually
arrived after the guard was changed.
She set down her mortar and pestle, yawned widely, and stretched her
arms, making little circles with them.
Then there was a thump.
Uh...
She saw something on the ground by the doorframe. When she got closer,
she discovered a scrap of paper that seemed to have gotten wedged under the
door.
She opened it and found a message in a child’s messy scrawl: “Run for it.
I’ll draw off the guard.” The message included a piece of wire, wrapped into
a circle to fit.
Kyou-u? Maomao thought. Maybe he realized she was a hostage, or
perhaps he saw that even being at this stronghold was a dangerous
proposition—she didn’t know which. But she saw that in his own way and
despite being a brat, he was thinking of her.
Unfortunately, the thin piece of wire wasn’t going to be nearly enough to
open the door to this room. For one thing, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have
Page 153

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

plenty of wire, and better, right in here with her. As for the plan itself, it was
as simple and childish as the handwriting.
She heard Kyou-u’s voice on the other side of the door. “Leggo! Let me
go!”
Whatever he’d thought he would do to take care of the guard, he had
obviously failed.
“What did you think you were doing?”
Kyou-u was in a formal seated position on the floor, his clothes slightly
disheveled by his little rampage. The guard had called Suirei, who’d come in
a hurry when she heard there had been an attempt to free Maomao. Maomao
had likewise been dragged out of her room again.
“Whaddaya mean?” Kyou-u said, trying to play dumb.
Suirei gave him a cold look, then turned to Maomao. “You put him up to
this, didn’t you?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Maomao asked, discreetly crushing the piece
of paper in her hand.
“Oh! That’s it—I was just playing like usual when I saw that guard there
was slacking off. That’s what happened.” Kyou-u was totally unrepentant,
and Maomao figured her best bet was to play along. Even Suirei seemed to
acknowledge as much. The only one who seemed to have dug in his heels
was the guard, the same one who had stood at Maomao’s door ever since
she’d arrived here.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Kyou-u demanded.
Suirei ignored his protest, but gave him a withering stare. “So it was really
nothing? Then listen: I never want nothing to happen again.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
The guard still looked less than pleased, but all was well that ended well,
as long as they could agree that all was, in fact, well.
At least it’s over, Maomao thought.
Except it wasn’t.
“Goodness, what’s all this?”
Maomao felt a shock of fear raise gooseflesh all over her body. A tak, tak
of footsteps sounded through the hallway. The owner must have been
wearing wooden clogs for them to echo like that.
Suirei’s color got worse and worse as the sound approached, and she
Page 154

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

wasn’t alone—Kyou-u and the guard both went pale as well. This was why
Suirei had been trying so hard to wrap things up quickly.
And then Shenmei was there. She must have just gotten out of the bath,
for her hair was damp, tied up but not very elaborately. She was wearing
makeup, but thinner than usual, giving the impression that she was blushing.
Behind her were two ladies-in-waiting, and Loulan.
Kyou-u’s eyes sparkled for an instant when he saw them. His mouth
twitched, but he didn’t make a sound. Maybe one of the ladies was his
mother.
“Nothing that warrants your attention, ma’am.”
“No, by all means, tell me. I’m most interested as to why the apothecary is
not in her room.”
It was obvious that half-baked excuses weren’t going to fly with Shenmei.
Suirei, bowing to reality, said brusquely: “I’m given to understand that Kyouu was playing outside this room here and distracted the guard. Purely for
form’s sake, I was asking the apothecary for her perspective on events.”
“Oh? Have you been a bad boy?” Shenmei’s gaze settled on Kyou-u,
whose eyes began to brim with tears. “That won’t do. If you don’t behave,
then we’ll have to discipline you.” She stood in front of Kyou-u and stroked
his cheek, the sharp jade nail caps on her fingers jabbing his soft skin.
“Perhaps a little smack on the bottom?”
“Lady Shenmei—” Suirei began, but she stopped mid-sentence.
“Hmm? Go on.”
“Kyou-u is only a young child. And he did nothing of any consequence...”
She trailed off, her voice growing quieter and quieter.
Kyou-u was still watching the lady-in-waiting behind Loulan, Suirei, and
Shenmei. The woman had a vacant look in her eyes.
Shenmei cocked her head. “Well, but that must mean someone here made
a very big fuss out of a very little thing.” Her gaze moved to the guard.
“Certainly not, ma’am,” he said.
“No? And yet it seems you’re the one at fault here. And that means you
have to be disciplined.”
In her mind, Maomao could almost see the cruel twisting of Shenmei’s
mouth where it was hidden behind her folding fan. Was it possible this
woman derived sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others?
“Perhaps some time in the water prison to think about what you’ve done?”
Page 155

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Ma’am...!”
Geez! That’s outrageous. Maomao didn’t know exactly what the “water
prison” was, but it was much too cold to be forcing someone to stay in
standing water.
Maomao doubted Shenmei cared about the reason—she just enjoyed
tormenting people. Maomao wanted nothing more to do with her. But at the
same time, people like Shenmei pissed her off. Maybe that’s why she was
speaking before she could stop herself. “You old witch.”
The words slipped quietly from her mouth, but Shenmei seemed to hear
them quite clearly. She was, after all, the oldest person there.
Almost before she knew what had happened, Maomao was flying
sideways, her ear and temple throbbing. When she fought back the pain
enough to open her eyes, she saw Shenmei, beet red, her fan upraised.
This confirms it. I’m an idiot, Maomao thought. But her idiocy wasn’t
over yet.
“I told the boy to do it,” she said.
Shenmei’s face contorted with rage; she looked like a mythical warrior
demon. Someone less stout of heart might have wet themselves at her
expression at that moment. But Maomao had plenty of experience with cruel
old women.
Her problem was that this cruel old woman knew no restraint. Next, the
fan came down hard on her shoulder.
“Another worthless apothecary, I see!” Shenmei spat at her, while
Maomao held her shoulder. Shenmei took a breath, but her anger obviously
hadn’t abated. “Very well. Perhaps we can inspire some repentance. Put her
in the water prison.”
Yep. I’m in trouble now.
She’d brought it on herself. Bought and paid for. Maybe she should have
kept her mouth shut, not worried about Kyou-u or the guard.
But there was another idiot there just like Maomao.
“But Lady Shenmei, then we’ll be without an apothecary again.”
“Hm?” Shenmei grimaced at Suirei’s words. Suirei stepped forward as if
to say more, but the fan came down promptly on her shoulder. “Don’t move
without being told.”
“My sincere apologies, milady. However—”
The fan came down again, this time on her forehead, where it split the
Page 156

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

skin, producing a trickle of red blood. Shenmei grabbed Suirei’s hair and
dragged her close, so that they were face-to-face. Just as Maomao was
wondering what she might do, she licked the blood flowing from Suirei’s
forehead. Maomao wasn’t sure what to think.
“However noble the blood might once have been, once sullied, it can
never be clean again.” Shenmei spat the combination of blood and saliva into
a piece of scrap paper, then flung it at Suirei. “I can’t use this any longer,”
she said, throwing away the folding fan she had been holding. One of the
ladies-in-waiting immediately held out another one to her. Did they just carry
a supply at all times? Did Shenmei beat people bloody that often?
Suirei dabbed at her forehead with a handkerchief, but she didn’t move.
She simply stood there, her eyes fixed on Maomao.
It seems like she has a strong sense of duty, Maomao thought. Suirei acted
like she felt somehow responsible for Maomao. True, it was partly due to her
own curiosity that the apothecary was now trapped in this fortress, but
nonetheless Suirei was obviously trying to protect her. But she was facing far
too evil a force.
Loulan stepped up behind her mother, her face impassive as she said,
“Dearest Mother...”
Shenmei didn’t look up from playing with her new fan. “Yes, what?”
“Since we went to all the trouble of having it made ready, I want to use...
You know. It’s been so long since we put it to good use.”
What’s “you know”? Maomao wondered. The way Loulan spoke made it
sound deeply significant.
“Ahh. The taibon,” Shenmei said. Suirei cringed visibly.
Taibon? It sounded vaguely familiar, but Maomao couldn’t quite
remember what it was.
“It’s a bit on the small side, but certainly large enough for one person. I do
seem to remember our last test of it being quite...effective.” This time she
looked at Suirei, whose face grew even more bloodless, and who clenched
her fists so hard her knuckles turned white. “Yes, let’s go with that today,”
Shenmei said with a smile. She glanced at two guards with her; they each
took one of Maomao’s arms and dragged her away.
Maomao found herself taken to the basement of the stronghold, down a
staircase of angular stone steps to a place that was rather humid. There was a
Page 157

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

wooden door into a circular room about two kan (3.5 meters) across. The
floor was sunk by roughly two shaku (60 centimeters), but otherwise there
appeared to be nothing in it. The guards shoved Maomao into the room and
hung a lamp along one wall. The ceiling was high over her head; there was a
single window, well out of reach.
“Sorry, kid. Lady Shenmei’s orders,” one of the guards said. He sounded
sympathetic, for all it was worth.
A large wooden box was brought into the cell. The guard looked at it,
profoundly uncomfortable. Then he opened the lid and immediately ducked
out of the room and closed the door.
Something squirmed and writhed inside the chest. Something trying
desperately to crawl out into the light.
Ahh... I see now.
Yes, she had heard of the “taibon.” It was a form of punishment invented
by a mad king in some ancient era. One dug a large hole and put a criminal in
it. A hole occupied by creatures like those now squirming inside the box.
Maomao shivered, feeling goosebumps all over her flesh. She knew now
why Suirei was so terrified of snakes.
The writhing thing raised its sickle-shaped head from the box. A long, red
tongue flicked out of its mouth. It watched her with moist eyes, looking for
all the world like a living rope. Some small bugs scuttled out of the chest,
followed by a croaking frog.
Maomao began to laugh. “Hah... Ha ha ha!” Her eyes brimmed; a grin
split her face from ear to ear. What beautiful creatures. She hadn’t seen their
like for a long time.
Still laughing, Maomao took the hair stick from her hair and produced the
hairpin from the folds of her robe.
From the box exploded an innumerable parade of snakes and poisonous
bugs.

Page 158

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 18: Feifa
This really came in helpful, Maomao thought. Several pieces of something
resembling fish meat were stuck on the end of her hairpin—the hair ornament
Shisui had given her could be split in two, and the pointy part made for an
ideal skewer.
Maomao swallowed audibly as she watched the grease drip from the
sizzling meat. I just wish I had some salt. Or soy paste! Yeah, if I could have
anything I wanted...
Once the meat was good and cooked, she blew heartily on it, her cheeks
puffing out. It looked a little bony, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
It tasted sort of like chicken, but there was a distinct savor of fish—
because the fire had used fish oil. The meat was juicy and full of nutrients—it
was almost hibernation season, after all—and the grease flecked Maomao’s
lips.
As she chewed, she became aware of some kind of commotion outside.
She wanted to grill up her catch before the fire went out, though, so she
ignored the noise, skewered another piece of meat, and started cooking. She
couldn’t help mumbling, “I really want some salt...”
That was when she realized there was a man standing before her, looking
flabbergasted. “What are you doing?”
“I’m eating. You wouldn’t happen to have any salt, would you?”
“Of course I don’t have any damn salt!”
Well, it had been a bit of a long shot, admittedly.
The man looked around the room, then put his hand to his mouth with a
“Hrgh!” Trying to keep himself from vomiting, it seemed. Something about
him rang a bell with Maomao—a close look revealed that he was the guard
who’d been part of her argument earlier. What was he doing here?
“What are you, uh, eating?”
“Snake, sir.”
“...I wish you’d just said fish.”
This guard said the strangest things, Maomao thought. But it was all right.

Page 159

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

She stuffed the rest of the cooked meat in her mouth and swallowed.
“I thought this was supposed to be a torture chamber,” the guard said.
“And I suppose for some it would be a living hell.”
Many might have wished never to set foot in the room, but for Maomao it
was a treasure trove. The cramped chamber had nearly a hundred snakes and
poisonous insects in it. Some had been chopped up, or were missing their
heads. The rest were crawling around dully, on account of the temperature
being rather low.
How stupid can you be? Maomao wondered. What had they expected,
using snakes in winter? Normally, these animals might even have been
hibernating by this point—of course they moved slowly. For someone as
experienced at catching snakes as Maomao was, it couldn’t have been
simpler to grab them and wring their necks. And the bugs weren’t moving
any faster. Wouldn’t you expect the snakes to eat the bugs, anyway? Some of
the dumb frogs went greedily after the toxic insects, then fell flat over from
the poison.
Using the hairpin like a gimlet and the hair stick she’d received from
Jinshi as if it were a dagger, Maomao had first killed the dangerous
venomous snakes. They must have struggled to catch enough of them at this
time of year, though, because most of the serpents in the box were harmless,
nonvenomous creatures. Even of the insects and frogs, only about half were
poisonous.
Maomao yearned to sample a few of those poisons, but this wasn’t the
time. Once she had dealt with the obviously venomous snakes, next came the
ones she wasn’t sure about. The harmless snakes she left alone. Snakes didn’t
go out of their way to attack people, and again, they weren’t exactly moving
quickly.
Nonetheless, Maomao wasn’t eager to have snakes wrapping themselves
around her in the cramped quarters, so she sat on top of the box they’d been
held in and scattered ashes around it. She always carried medicine with her in
the folds of her robes; that was her way. She really would have preferred
tobacco, but under the circumstances, the best she could do was burn some
particularly pungent herbs and scatter them. (She borrowed the lamp in lieu
of a proper fire.)

Page 160

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Page 161

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

The guard was looking at her as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“I didn’t even need to show up,” he groaned.
“Yes, why are you here, anyway?” she asked.
He looked a bit sullen. “Miss Suirei and...and the brat, they asked me to.
They said it was because you were stuck in here that we weren’t being
punished. The brat wouldn’t shut up about me rescuing you—he said he’d
give me this.” The guard was holding a jade ornament. A fairly rich reward,
as a matter of fact. Then he looked around, and his face was pale. “I’ve got to
hand it to you. I would’ve gone nuts in here. Don’t think I would have lasted.
Miss Suirei said I ought to get out of here, quick. Sounds like something
dangerous is going to happen.”
The folds of the guard’s robes were noticeably puffed out, like he’d just
come from looting a burning building. When Maomao looked outside herself,
she discovered a man unconscious on the ground—apparently the work of her
former guard.
“I think you should run too,” her rescuer said. “The smoke signal’s gone
up already.”
“Smoke signal?”
“Yeah. The sign that an army of vengeance is coming from the capital.
That’s what all the noise is about.” And why the guard had been able to reach
her so easily.
“Thank you. You’ve helped me very much,” Maomao said with sincere
gratitude. If she’d been stuck in here, things could have turned ugly.
“All right, well, I’m out of here,” the man said. “One last word of advice,
if you’re open to it. Directly across from here there’s a stairway that leads
down—but you want to avoid it. Lots of bad stuff happens down there, and
it’s well-traveled. If you’re going to run, stay clear of the stairs. Work your
way to the stables and steal a horse or something.”
“Bad stuff?”
“I think they’re making fire powder. You’ll know it right away—it stinks
to high heaven.”
Maomao’s eyes glinted. “Thank you again. I’ll be going.”
“Hey! Were you even listening to me?” the man shouted, but Maomao
ignored him and headed directly for the basement.
Maomao worked her way down the stairs, keeping one hand against the
Page 162

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

cold wall. The stones carried the vibrations of whatever was going on deeper
down. When she finally got a glimpse of the lower level, she discovered
several dozen men at work. Their outfits left their shoulders bare, and she
detected a distinctive aroma—​not the burning of sulfur so much as the
fermentation of animal feces. So this was the source of the odor that had
occasionally drifted upstairs to her.
There was a pile of black clumps. Farm animal dung? Maomao
wondered. But it was too small for that, closer to the size of rat pellets, or
some other small creature. She’d heard wild animal droppings could serve as
a component of saltpeter—​was that what they were doing with it?
The basement was warmer than she’d expected; they were probably
keeping the temperature up to help dry out the fire powder they made. It was,
frankly, terrifying. They had a fire pot at a distance, surrounded by a curtain
to keep sparks away, but what if one of them caught anyway? Were the men
down here knowing full well how dangerous this environment was? Even if
nothing exploded, breathing this air for too long would eventually be toxic in
and of itself. It was not a very good place to work.
The finished fire powder was being carried out via another exit. As she
stood watching, Maomao heard footsteps behind her. She quickly hid behind
a nearby shelf, heart pounding in her ears so hard she was afraid whoever was
passing by might hear her.
When she finally saw who it was, she could only stare: it was Shisui,
looking grim. Then again, perhaps it would have been more appropriate to
call her Loulan, dressed as she was in an ostentatious outfit much like her
mother’s. She looked wildly out of place in the gloomy basement reeking of
excrement.
“Loula—” Maomao started to call out to her, but Loulan didn’t seem to
hear; there was something fierce in her eyes as she walked into the basement.
The men began to murmur as they noticed her. One of them stepped forward
uneasily—​he must have been the foreman. “Young mistr—”
“Get out of here, now,” Loulan said, her voice ringing around the
underground room. The men looked at each other, unsure what was going on.
“This fortress will fall soon. I want you men to leave before it does.”
She produced a large pouch from the folds of her robes and tossed it to the
ground. Silver coins spilled out of it, drawing the men’s attention; they
started jostling each other to grab the money. Once Loulan was satisfied that
Page 163

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

all the coins had been claimed, she took the lantern she was holding, raised it
above her head—​and flung it as hard as she could.
She can’t be serious.
The lamp arced through the air and landed square in the drying fire
powder.
“All right, get out of here. If you can,” she said, that innocent smile on her
face. Maomao immediately covered her ears and flung herself on the ground.
Her palms were hardly enough to blunt the roar that assaulted her eardrums.
Several of the men kicked or stepped on her as they scrambled to escape.
The explosions spread, first the charcoal and then the animal dung
catching fire.
I’ve got to get out of here, fast, Maomao thought, but at just that moment,
she saw someone take a dramatic sidelong stumble. Several pairs of feet
stepped on the exquisite cloth of the figure’s outfit, sullying it. Maomao
grabbed the person’s hand and pulled.
“Oh? What are you doing here, Maomao? I thought you were in one of the
cells.” Loulan, her hair thoroughly disheveled, looked at her in perplexity.
No, it didn’t seem like Loulan—​in this moment, her innocent demeanor made
her look like Shisui.
“I’d like to ask you a similar question,” Maomao said with a touch of
annoyance, whereupon Loulan reached out and brushed her cheek, her right
ear.
“Are you all right? You’re not hurt?”
“My guard helped me. And the snakes were delicious, thanks.” Maomao
understood that it had been deliberate, the way Loulan had suggested the
taibon as punishment; it ended up a part of her plan in its own small way.
And Maomao hadn’t had snake meat for a while; she appreciated it.
“Um, I’m not sure what you mean by that. Although I did expect the
punishment would suit you.”
She didn’t know what Maomao meant? This from the girl who happily ate
bugs, Maomao thought. But it didn’t matter; at the moment, they had to hurry
up and get out of there.
“We’re getting out of here, fast.” Maomao pressed her sleeve against
Loulan’s mouth and started looking for some way to sneak out of the
basement. Intending to escape the fortress as quickly as she could, she tried to
drag the other woman along. Loulan, though, went to start up the stairs.
Page 164

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“The fire’s only going to spread,” Maomao said.
“That’s all right. I have to go up there.”
Then Loulan ascended the steps, her battered skirt trailing behind her.
Smoke was billowing now, flooding Maomao’s nose and making her eyes
water. If the fire didn’t get them, toxic fumes would.
“Wait. You’re coming?”
I can’t believe I’m this stupid, Maomao thought, then said, “I guess.”
It would have been simple enough for Maomao to escape on her own; the
men from earlier were already heading for the stronghold’s exit, pushing and
shoving to be the first one out.
“If my mother finds out, it won’t be pretty. I know her. She’ll want to
know how this happened, even if it means sticking around. We’ll be lucky to
get off with a little whipping.” Loulan looked downcast; she didn’t seem like
someone talking about her own mother.
“It looks like she treasured you growing up, at least, Loulan.”
Loulan had said something before about being beaten if she couldn’t tie
hair or give a massage properly. But it was hard to imagine that happening to
someone of her status.
“My mother... She can’t even remember my real face.” Almost as far back
as she could recall, Loulan had been painted with rouge and face-whitening
powder. Whatever happiness or grief she had shown had been for her mother,
like she was a doll. Like she was wearing a mask.
Before she was ten, she learned of the existence of her older sister when
one of the maids died after an especially vicious beating by Loulan’s mother,
and her father took in the woman’s child. When Loulan saw her mother
confront her father about it, her hair everywhere like an enraged devil’s, she
was convinced she was seeing hell itself.
“Mother was always cruel to my older sister,” Loulan said. She realized
that Shenmei must have been equally brutal to Suirei’s mother, leading to the
woman’s death. And then she learned why Shenmei hated her older sister so
much. “She asked if he intended to make a fool of her with mother and child
alike. She said the daughter was like her mother, a whore who would do who
knew what. It was the strangest thing, to see someone in such gorgeous
clothing say such filthy words.”
“Could it be Suirei is...?” Maomao remembered what Shenmei had said
when she’d licked Suirei’s blood.
Page 165

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Didn’t you hear any rumors about it at the rear palace? There was a
palace woman, the former emperor’s first victim—​her child was taken from
her. That woman was my older sister’s grandmother.”
That woman had died alone and forlorn in the rear palace. In her later
years, her one pleasure was said to be gathering spooky stories.
“Remember when everyone almost suffocated telling scary stories? It
might have been that old lady’s doing. After my mother did such terrible
things to her, how could she not revile me, her daughter?” Loulan chuckled.
“We can’t even say if ghosts really exist,” Maomao replied. There was no
way to know. At least, not as far as she was concerned.
“Why am I not surprised you’d say that?” Loulan said, grinning. “I so
wanted to see my older sister. Sometimes I would sneak over to her place
dressed as a maid. Mother never recognized me, and made me work.”
Loulan, though, naturally wasn’t trained in these tasks, and often felt the sting
of Shenmei’s folding fan. Despite the blows, she still went to see her sister.
And somehow, Shenmei never realized whom she was “disciplining.” She
saw only a lowly servant girl, not her precious doll who heeded her every
word.
“You know why my mother and father got married?” Loulan said. “They
just wanted to make me. My father carried the blood of the hidden village—​
supposedly the same bloodline as Wang Mu.”
Maomao thought back to the fox masks. Loulan had painted a pattern on
hers like a mercurial tanuki. Perhaps for her, the world of colors was the
same as it had been for Wang Mu.
“Mother kept telling me that what they wanted was for me to become a
new Wang Mu.” With that, Loulan stopped in front of a room on the third
floor. If Maomao parted ways with her now, she’d never find out what
Loulan was planning—​and she wanted to know.
“Hey...” Maomao paused for a second, unsure how to continue. Was she
speaking to Loulan, or Shisui? She wasn’t sure, but in her own mind, she
knew who this woman before her was. And so she said, “...Shisui.”
“Yes?” Shisui asked, smiling, her hand on the door.
“I know there were substances floating around the rear palace designed to
induce a miscarriage. Did you keep some on hand too?” Shisui was still
smiling. “To use on yourself?”
Shisui’s expression didn’t change. She simply opened the door. “You
Page 166

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

really are a sharp one, Maomao. I knew it was the right choice to bring you
here.”
Maomao thought back to the scary story Shisui had told, about the insects
with the bell-like cry. They were a kind of bug Shisui had caught at the rear
palace once. And the previous apothecary here had written extensively about
them in their books. You could keep them in a cage; they made the most
beautiful sound. But come autumn, the bugs would eat each other. The
female would eat the male. It was part of their reproductive cycle.
That seemed to have been the point of Shisui’s story, but why had she
chosen to tell that tale at that time? Maomao thought she knew now. She was
talking about herself.
If she became pregnant, she would devour the child’s father.
The cage was the rear palace; the male and female insects, the Emperor
and his women. It wasn’t a very respectful allegory, but it certainly fit. Shisui
had feared it. Near the area where she’d been catching bugs, there had been
lantern plants and whiteblossom—​ingredients for an abortifacient.
They entered the room. There was a large bed with children sleeping on it.
Kyou-u was there too; he alone was on the floor.
Must’ve rolled off, Maomao thought. She hated to wake them, but they
had to get the kids out of there. She went over to the bed—​and stopped.
“What is this?”
Something was wrong. Saliva was running from the kids’ mouths, and
their hands clutched at the sheets. Their skin was cold. Maomao took one of
them by the wrist and felt for a pulse. “He’s not breathing.”
On the table by the bed there was a pitcher, and enough cups for all the
kids. Shisui, her eyes full of compassion, came over to the bed, reaching out
to touch the children.
Maomao, furious, raised her hand dramatically upward, but fought the
urge to bring it down on Shisui. “You poisoned them?”
“It was medicine...”
Maomao squeezed her trembling hand into a fist.
“We’ve shown our hand now,” Shisui said. “Can’t you see it? Our entire
clan will be executed.” Including even the little children. They, too, would be
led to the gallows, not understanding what it was their parents had done. “I
mixed it with some nice, sweet juice for them. In a nice, warm room, after
we’d all enjoyed looking at a picture scroll together. I wonder if any of them
Page 167

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

were upset about it. If maybe they wanted to sleep with their mothers. I’m
sorry, little ones. But your mothers were friends with mine. Kyou-u came
late... It must have been because he was trying to help you, Maomao.” The
hint of a smile appeared at the edges of her lips. “Him, I think he might have
known. I saw him bite his lip—​but he drank all his juice anyway. I really
didn’t want to bring him here.”
“And why did you bring me here?”
Shisui smiled as if to say Maomao ought to know. “I’d hoped there would
be another way to get you here, but it just didn’t work out.”
So that’s how it was. Maomao let her hand drop. There was a heavy thud
from outside, but she couldn’t look away from Shisui’s face.
“They say Mother never used to be that way, but I wonder. It’s how she
has been ever since I was born, at least. She would torment my older sister
every time she saw her, and the young ladies-in-waiting too. She taught her
female relatives to drink and debauch themselves with men. Father never said
anything to her; he never could go against her. He was just waiting for her to
forgive him.”
Shisui’s mother, this Shenmei, was insane. It was clear to see.
“She’s like an insect, consuming her husband when a child is born. In
fact, the bugs are better. At least they do it so their children can survive.”
Shisui hated the idea of becoming a mother—​so much so that she would
concoct and consume her own abortifacients. Maomao could sense she was
learning the most important reason for this. Not all mothers were like
Shenmei. But Shenmei was the only mother Shisui had.
“I took the liberty of learning a little something about your background,
Maomao. It seems like your upbringing wasn’t that different from my
sister’s.” Meaning, perhaps, that she had been raised by a former physician,
or that her birth father was a high official.
“I don’t have a father or a mother. Just my adoptive father,” Maomao
said.
“Hee! My sister says the same kind of thing. Well, I guess it makes sense.
She keeps swearing she’s not my big sister.”
What was Shisui getting at?
“I guess she’s right. There’s no way she can be my sister. Our father is a
tanuki. I’m sure he’s got some grand plan, trying to get his hands on the
Emperor’s bloodline.”
Page 168

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Not Shisui’s sister? Was that her way of saying that she had no connection
to the Shi clan?
What a liar.
Shisui was in fact much like Suirei—​particularly with the expressionless
look she now wore. Shisui adored her older sister, yet at this moment she
denied that the relationship existed.
“If only these little ones were bugs, they might have been able to sleep
through the winter,” Shisui said, her hand brushing the children once more.
Yes, if they were bugs...
Maomao understood. She knew now why Shisui had wanted her here.
Maomao looked at her without saying anything. There was just a suggestion
of tears in Shisui’s eyes. Maomao was about to reach out, but Shisui shook
her head.
She could run away too! Maomao thought. But even Maomao had no idea
what Shisui could do after that. Maomao knew nothing about politics; she
couldn’t have cared less about the subject. She just wanted to learn as much
as she could about medicine, research and study it, and invent different drugs.
That was all she wanted out of life.
It should have been enough.
Forget about other people. Put yourself first. What had they thought
would happen, bringing her here?
And yet Maomao reached out her hand.
Shisui rebuffed her. “I have my own part to play. Please, don’t stop me.”
“Is there some meaning to this?” Maomao didn’t know where Shisui was
headed—​but the outcome was easy enough to imagine.
“Stubbornness. Mine.”
“Just forget about that!”
Shisui smiled mischievously. “Think of it this way, Maomao. Say you
were presented with a poison you’d never seen before, and you were told you
only had one chance to try it. What would you do?”
“I’d drink it down to the last drop,” she replied immediately. What other
answer could there be?
“Thought so.” Shisui stood up, smiling, and went to leave the room, her
steps as light as if she were simply going out to go shopping.
She’s leaving...
Maomao didn’t know what to do; she had no idea what this moment
Page 169

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

called for. She tried to find the right words, but nothing came out. She could
only reach out and grab Shisui’s hand. “At least let me offer a prayer.”
“A prayer? That’s not like you, Maomao.”
“Every once in a while. Every once in a blue moon.” Maomao took the
hair stick from her own hair and placed it in Shisui’s collar.
“You know that’s not my hair, right?”
“If I put it in your hair, you’d just be too pretty.” Shisui’s head was
already bristling with hair sticks. These accessories were said to keep away
evil spirits, but so many at once seemed apt to attract them instead. “Give it
back to me sometime. It was a gift.”
“You’re silly. I’m going to sell it.”
“That’s fine, then.” This particular hair stick was plain, yet of
uncommonly fine make. The one who had given it to her could be especially
obstinate, so there was every possibility that just like its original owner, it
would somehow manage to find its way back to her.
“You’ve got some soot on you.” Maomao held up a mirror from beside
the bed.
“Oh, you’re right. I look like a tanuki.” Shisui laughed. She laughed, and
then she looked at Maomao. “You know what you need to do.” She turned
away.
The door shut with a clack. Her footsteps got softer and softer in the
distance.
Maomao found herself looking at the ceiling without really knowing why.
Just leaning her head back and staring. The building shook with an
increasingly loud series of explosions.

Page 170

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 19: The Army Marches
Let’s turn the clock back a little.
Jinshi was in a rocking, jolting carriage, sitting across from a man with a
sour look on his face. But maybe “carriage” wasn’t quite the right word.
Pulled by no fewer than ten horses, this was more of a house on wheels. The
floor was covered with an animal pelt, and there was a table in the middle of
the cabin.
Lakan, a man renowned for his unrelenting smirk, was now glaring at a
map with evident annoyance. Behind him, his adopted son was studying
Lakan’s and Jinshi’s expressions and tucking a receipt into the folds of his
robe. This man, Lahan, was the second most tightfisted person Jinshi had
ever met after the madam of the Verdigris House—​but on this occasion, he
was more than happy to acknowledge that Lahan had saved his neck.
He felt like he might be attacked at any moment. The intervention of the
eunuch Luomen had successfully soothed the worst of Lakan’s rage, but it
still smoldered. Attending behind Jinshi, Gaoshun was prepared to draw the
sword at his hip at a moment’s notice. That was the kind of reprisal one
risked in raising a hand against Jinshi, but at the moment Lakan probably
didn’t care. Jinshi suspected he would have been just as happy to jump on top
of Jinshi and beat him senseless.
The man was just that worried. Lahan, however, was proving a helpful
check on him. “Father, I ask purely hypothetically, but if a man were to do
violence to a member of the Imperial family, the crime would not fall on him
alone, would it?” It was a roundabout question, to be sure, but it was enough
to keep Lakan from doing anything rash.
To attack Jinshi would be the end of a person’s family. Even Lakan’s
daughter Maomao wouldn’t be spared. Lakan wasn’t easy to fool, and he
knew exactly who Jinshi was—​that was why he had asked him to mobilize
the army. He suspected Lahan had guessed the truth as well. Why? When he
asked, he received the most La-clan-ish of answers: “Because your height,
weight, chest, and torso are all the exact same number. Such people are very,

Page 171

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

very rare.” As ever, Lahan’s way of looking at things was more or less
inscrutable to others. “You’re terribly lovely; it’s only a shame you weren’t
born a woman,” he added.
That gave Jinshi gooseflesh. True, Maomao’s cousin looked and acted
much like she did, but unfortunately, Jinshi didn’t swing that way.
Still, he knew talent when he saw it, and he had obtained special
permission for this civil official to accompany him on this military
expedition.
Today, Jinshi was not the eunuch Jinshi. His hair was held in place by a
silver hair stick, and he wore not his usual black official’s outfit, but armor
and a helmet of bluish-purple, with thick cotton underpadding.
“I hope he can distinguish victory and defeat better than we can
distinguish whether he’s a man or a woman.” That was Lakan. He was right
about one thing: the time had come for Jinshi to shed his eunuch’s skin. They
were leading an army and trying to coordinate several plans at once.
“Are you quite sure about this?” Jinshi asked.
“There won’t be any problems,” Lahan assured him. The map before them
showed a stronghold with mountains at its back. The map was older, since the
fortress hadn’t been used in quite some time, but they had found soldiers who
had once been stationed there to update it and make sure it was as accurate as
possible.
It was Lahan’s belief that firearms were being produced in that
stronghold. The northern reaches had timber aplenty. Many wished
desperately to control the place in hopes of capitalizing on its lumber
resources, but the Shi clan defended it stoutly.
There were hot springs nearby as well. An excellent source of sulfur. But
there was one more ingredient that would be necessary to create fire powder.
“What would they do about saltpeter?”
“Small animals like to hibernate in the area, perhaps because of the hot
springs. There are large caves in the vicinity.” That implied the presence of
substantial quantities of bat guano. It would be possible to create saltpeter
from the excrement.
Jinshi grunted. If the defenders had firearms, they were unlikely to bring
individual feifa to bear on an attacking force. No, they would have something
on the stronghold walls designed to ravage an advancing enemy en masse:
cannons. Cannons; that would be the real danger.
Page 172

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

But if Jinshi could think of it, he could be confident that Lakan was
already well aware of the possibility. To him, the map probably looked like
nothing more than a Go board. He pointed to the cliffside behind the
stronghold.
“It is theoretically possible to overpower them before they can use their
cannons,” Lahan said firmly.
“You heard abacus-brain,” Lakan said, bopping his adopted son on the
head. The fire powder necessary to make a cannon work easily got wet.
Powder might be kept near the guns at all times, but if so, it would be in an
armory to keep it dry. The stronghold was at a high altitude, and snow fell
there frequently. Scouts reported that this very night, the stuff was coming
down heavily.
If Jinshi’s forces simply advanced on the stronghold, they would be sitting
ducks. Thus it was Lakan’s suggestion that they should take out the powder
depot to deny the enemy the use of their cannons. And the way he came up
with to do it was bizarre. Bizarre—​but possible. That was what made him so
fearsome.
“I think it will be a very economical way to handle things,” Lahan said. It
had probably been that one word, economical, that had convinced him to buy
into the plan. In their relatively short time together, Jinshi felt he’d gotten an
impeccable handle on how the man thought.
“We must force our way in and find Maomao. Daddy will save her!”
Jinshi suppressed a grimace at the word “daddy.” He couldn’t be seen
making faces like that.
He bit his lip as he thought of the diminutive young woman. Had she been
taken as a hostage, or was there some other reason? Had she even, perhaps,
gone along of her own free will? Whatever it was, she was there in the enemy
camp, and he wanted to rescue her as soon as he could.
Jinshi clenched his fist. “We’ll do that, then,” he declared.
“Wait one moment, please,” said Gaoshun. Furrowing his brow, he knelt
before him. “I see a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Lakan and Lahan looked as perplexed as Jinshi.
“Have my good lords forgotten the nature of this army?”
They were leading a force more than large enough to handle a stronghold
of this size. If they followed Lakan’s plan, they could expect virtually no
casualties.
Page 173

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Are you, sirs, suggesting that the Forbidden Army would stoop to an
ambush?”
Jinshi swallowed heavily and reached up to touch the hair stick on his
head. It was sculpted in the shape of a qilin—​a symbol of the Imperial
family.
He had spent so long as a eunuch that sometimes he felt he was at risk of
forgetting his true identity. At this moment, though, he was not Jinshi, and in
light of who he was, it behooved him to subdue the enemy boldly and openly.
He understood all this. And yet the words that came out of his mouth
betrayed him. “I’m in agreement with the grand commandant.”
“Understood, sir,” Gaoshun said, and obediently stepped back. His eyes
were on the man behind him, and his piercing gaze made the hair on the back
of Jinshi’s neck stand up.
“Most excellent. Not interested in making a drinking cup out of my own
skull,” Lakan said. Then he snorted and exited the carriage, past the curtain.
True, they weren’t moving terribly fast, but it was still a jump. Jinshi thought
Lakan looked as if he crumpled slightly on hitting the ground—​was he okay?
Lahan was working his abacus furiously, making sure there were no
mistakes in the calculations.
Jinshi’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice. “—getsu.” It was Gaoshun,
calling him by his true name. The crease in his brow seemed to have gotten
deeper. “You’re going to have to change how you interact with the young
lady after this.” He sounded as if he were admonishing a child.
“I know.” Jinshi sighed deeply, his breath fogging in the cold air. He
shivered, and pulled his white hooded cloak up over his head.
○●○
It was just past midnight when he heard the explosions. Wondering what
was going on, Shishou got up, grabbing the sword he always kept by his bed.
He’d been in bed, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. The court might regard
him as “the old tanuki,” but even he had little things that kept him up at night.
Indeed, how could he possibly sleep? For a decade and more now, he had
tried, and had found it impossible.
He heard shouting in the next room—​surprise at the noise, perhaps—​but it
soon quieted. The voices of the women enjoying themselves returned to their

Page 174

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

usual burble. Just one wall away, his wife must have been enjoying her wine.
She seemed to revel in leading the clan women into lewdness, cavorting with
paid men. It was how she had behaved almost every day since their daughter
Loulan had been born, being sure to lose herself in pleasure where Shishou
would know it.
The women with her had been reluctant at first, but by now they enjoyed
these diversions. His wife always chose women who were already married,
who had borne children, fulfilling their familial duties. She took pleasure in
seeing these virtuous wives debauch themselves.
She hadn’t always been like this. Shishou went out on his balcony and
looked into the distance. An enemy attack, he thought. The lights of the army
—​perhaps the Forbidden Army—​were still far away. From this stronghold on
its high perch, it was possible to see many li into the distance. He still had
time to catch a few winks.
Then Shishou scrunched up his nose—​there was a strange smell in the air.
Was that...sulfur? They were making fire powder in the basement. Had it
exploded?
Of course. He tightened his collar. He had to do something, he thought—​
but he didn’t move. It was pathetic, but the strength simply wouldn’t come.
The cunning old tanuki, favored by the empress regnant, and whom even the
reigning monarch could barely look in the eye—​that was not who Shishou
was at this moment. Even he himself recognized it.
Holding his stomach (it had started to protrude abruptly and dramatically
after his fortieth birthday) he proceeded forward, one step after the next. To
get outside and find out what was going on, he would have to pass through
his wife’s room. That pained him more than anything.
The woman gifted to him by the former emperor—​or rather, his betrothed,
whom he had waited twenty years to have returned to him—​had grown
thorns in her time at the rear palace. When she had finally come back to
Shishou, he already had a wife, and a child—​Suirei.
He had never intended to get married to someone else. Even the woman
who became his wife probably hadn’t wanted it. She had been born in the
rear palace, then banished as an illegitimate child—​even though her father
was none other than the former emperor.
It had been the former sovereign’s wish. A request when his health
suddenly began to decline twenty years ago. “Please, care for my child,” he
Page 175

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

had said.
Shishou’s wife came to have not only thorns, but poison.
He had to do something, and quickly. He kept repeating this to himself
and finally managed to open the door. The male prostitutes looked startled,
and the women, with their remaining modicum of modesty, scrambled to
cover themselves with the sheets.
His wife, meanwhile, lay on a couch, taking a long drag from her pipe.
Her eyes were sharp and full of contempt. “What was that noise?” she said
languorously, purple smoke drifting from her mouth.
Shishou was just about to tell her he was on his way to find out when the
door to the hallway flew open. Loulan stood there, covered in soot.
“What are you doing here in such a pathetic state?” Shishou’s wife said.
“You’re the last person who has any right to ask me that,” Loulan shot
back, with a pointed look at the women fighting over the covers. “All of you,
who abandoned your children so you could lose yourselves in a life of
excess.”
One of the women, shocked back into remembering her own child by
Loulan’s words, made to flee the room, but Loulan slapped her across the
cheek. As the woman crumpled to the ground, the male prostitutes made a
break for it, realizing how desperate the situation had become.
Shishou could hardly believe he was seeing his own daughter. He’d
always believed his Loulan was a prim and obedient child. She put on the
outfits her mother told her to put on, like a little doll.
Meanwhile, Loulan strode into the room, sliding open the doors of the
wardrobes that stood against the wall. When she opened the biggest one, she
found a young woman crammed inside of it.
“My dear sister. I’m sorry. It took me a little longer than I meant.”
The trembling young woman was bound hand and foot—​she was being
disciplined. Closely resembling Loulan, she was Shishou’s other daughter,
Suirei.
Loulan freed Suirei, rubbing her back gently. It was obvious from how
smoothly and easily she did everything that this was not the first time this had
happened. Or the second. Shishou felt his stomach plummet at the realization
of how profoundly he had failed.
And then Loulan turned and looked at her father, Shishou. She smiled at
him. “Father. At least take responsibility here in these last moments.” He
Page 176

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

didn’t have time to ask responsibility for what, for she went on: “You’re the
old tanuki, the transforming trickster, of the fox village. Let’s play our parts
to the very end.”
There was another roar, and this time the entire stronghold shook. Shishou
grabbed onto the wall for support and worked his way back to the balcony to
find out what had happened this time.
He saw flakes of snow floating everywhere. Everything to the east of the
stronghold was completely white, and he couldn’t see anything. At first, he
didn’t understand what had happened. As the haze of snow began to clear,
though, he saw it: the building that should have been there was buried. The
armory, as he recalled. It was now half inundated with snow.
As he stared stupidly, Loulan said, “You should have known this was an
opponent you could never beat. Please, take responsibility.” She, she added,
would deal with her mother.
Then his daughter, her slightly scorched hair bobbing, walked over to her
mother, looking downright regal, and stood before her.
Take responsibility, his daughter had said. Shishou clenched his fist,
resolved.

Page 177

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 20: The Ambush
These guys had to be crazy, Lihaku thought.
In front of him, Shishou’s private troops cowered, overwhelmed by the
intruders. They’d grabbed spears in a hurry when the attackers had appeared,
but they were no match for Lihaku and his men, who had prepared
thoroughly.
Lihaku was here to take the treacherous Shi clan into custody. It had to be
treason: how else were they supposed to interpret the rebuilding of an
abandoned fortress sixty li north of the capital? The presence of actual
soldiers? It was as good as open rebellion.
Despite the size of the stronghold, to plot rebellion with nothing but this
was the height of foolishness. The Shi clan leader, Shishou, was a person of
considerable influence at court. He held so much sway over the Emperor that
he had even been able to chase out one of the former high consorts and have
his own daughter installed in her place.
Lihaku tilted his head in puzzlement as he swung his club. Had Shishou
gone mad with greed, or just plain mad? Cornered though he might have felt,
disappearing from the capital and holing up in a place like this was as good as
asking to be treated as a rebel. Lihaku wondered if the man known all over
court as “the old tanuki” would really do something so stupid.
But in any case, Lihaku was a military official. He could leave the
pondering to others; he simply had to do his job.
He brought his club down on an enemy soldier’s foot, then swept the
man’s legs out from under him. Behind him, subordinates in white cloaks tied
up the overpowered enemies. Lihaku had been wearing a white cloak like
theirs, but he’d tossed it off a few minutes ago because it kept getting in the
way. Anyway, blood spatter showed up all too conspicuously on white. It
wasn’t really an appropriate thing to be wearing into battle.
It did, however, allow them to blend in with the snow. Perfect for hiding
in plain sight. Especially on a moonless night.
Lihaku and his troops advanced without torches. The squadron itself had

Page 178

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

split into two as they approached the fortress: one forward infantry unit, full
of men who knew how to handle themselves in the snow and were confident
of their abilities; and a second group, several li back.
It went something like this: the stronghold guards noticed the lights of the
rear group, but completely missed the closer unit creeping forward in the
dark. They believed the enemy was much farther away than they were.
Lihaku and his troops had a problem too, though. For several li, they had
to cross an open, empty field. It might have been doable with some stars out,
but with the sky black, it would be all too easy to lose their sense of direction.
Lihaku finished tying up an enemy and let out a breath. Something
dropped from his collar.
“Neat idea, these things,” he remarked, picking up the fish-shaped
wooden object where it had fallen in the snow. It would allow him to
ascertain the location of the fortress.
The little fish contained a magnet. Put it in a bucket of water and it would
help you determine which direction you were going. It was a common
implement on ships. The surface of the fish had been dusted with strange
glowing particles, so it could be read even in the dark of night. The particles
supposedly came from some mushroom that glowed in the dark.
There was another aspect to the ambush as well. Lihaku looked at the
avalanche that had come down from the cliffside with no small amazement.
“Whoever came up with this plan must have been crazy... Crazy like a fox.”
This was one reason this stronghold had been abandoned: areas in the
vicinity of hot springs tended to experience a lot of earthquakes. There had
been a major one a few decades before, big enough to alter the local
geography. It had shaved off part of the mountain, so that now avalanches
sometimes occurred during winter. They weren’t large and they weren’t very
frequent, but it was not a promising feature for a defensive position.
This avalanche just happened to be human-made. It was colder than usual
this year, and the snow was deep. Several of the most experienced
mountaineers among the vanguard had moved off, carrying fire lances.
Lihaku had wondered why—this must have been the reason.
He was just crunching his way over the filthy snow when he spotted
someone entering the fortress. A man, his white cloak and long black hair
lovely in the night. Lihaku, who had never expected to think of any man as
“lovely”—let alone in the middle of a battle—smiled wryly to himself.
Page 179

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

One would never have expected to see this man on the battlefield at all.
With his flawless features, he was at once the groundskeeper of the garden
that was the rear palace and, arguably, one of its flowers. But with him,
“flower” might be taken to refer to something else: the meaning of the name
Ka. The man’s hair, partially tied up, was held in place with a silver hair
stick. Anyone who saw the design would have thrown themselves flat on the
ground.
The name of their country, Li, was written by repeating the character for
sword three times. But above those swords was a symbol meaning grass—or
flower. In the whole country, there were only two people with the name Ka.
And he was one of them.
He should never have been here, not normally. He shouldn’t have been on
a night march, walking several li in complete silence. Even this group of men
chosen specifically for their physical strength were showing the strain by the
end. But that man, the possessor of a face as beautiful and delicate as a
celestial nymph’s, clutched a willow-leaf saber and wore bluish-purple armor
to indicate to those around him who he was.
It was the eunuch Jinshi who stood there, in what should have been a
man’s position. The young eunuch with the emperor’s favor, so handsome
that sometimes unsavory rumors began to circulate. There must have been
more than a few slack jaws when he had stepped forward to take command,
and several officials had gone positively pale. The young master was popular
with both sexes, so much so that even men occasionally tried to talk him up.
Lihaku had been as shocked as anybody. Recently Gaoshun, who always
served closely with Jinshi, had made a series of requests of him. One of them
had been to select men from among his subordinates and colleagues who had
plenty of stamina and coped particularly well with the cold. Now he knew
what it had been about.
The young man no longer used the name Jinshi, but Lihaku couldn’t speak
the name Ka. One might write it, yes, but those who could actually say it
aloud were few indeed.
Jinshi entered the stronghold, and Lihaku came up behind him so as not to
be left behind. Gaoshun was nowhere to be seen, but in his place a sternlooking young warrior stuck close to Jinshi. Lihaku followed them both
inside.

Page 180

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

The interior of the fortress was pervaded by a nose-prickling smell,
something like rotten eggs. Lihaku was just wondering what it could be when
he saw men carrying armloads of snow downstairs. Had there been a fire on
the lower level? He quickly inquired with one of the men, who confirmed
that was exactly what had happened: there had been an explosion.
“I-If we don’t handle this quickly, th-the mistress will...” The man
trembled uncontrollably, unable to meet Lihaku’s eyes. Lihaku let him go.
Was it the smoke that made the man’s color look so bad, or fear of this
“mistress”? Maybe it was that unexpected turn that had left the stronghold
defended by fewer soldiers than the attackers had expected.
Lihaku, covering his mouth, came up to Jinshi and knelt respectfully.
“You have counsel?” Jinshi asked; Lihaku was grateful that he had
initiated the conversation. “Speak freely.”
“As you command, sir.” It was at times like this that Lihaku always
wished he had learned more proper diction. “I don’t believe we can stay here
long with all this smoke. And I expect those inside will be in a hurry to get
out.”
“I realize that,” Jinshi said. Lihaku cursed himself for, apparently, only
stating the obvious. “However, there may be someone inside who cannot be
allowed to escape.”
“Then, sir, I’ll have all my troops look for them. Please head outside.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Lihaku resisted the impulse to frown, glad he was looking down toward
the ground. It would not be good for Lihaku if Jinshi was injured. He wanted
nothing more than to get the young man out of there, to where he could watch
the operation from somewhere safe.
At the same time, though, this was the Forbidden Army, and that meant
that Jinshi’s place was at its head. The fact that they were essentially
launching an ambush seemed to make him even less interested in
relinquishing his position.
To stand proudly at the front of this force was to throw away his identity
as the eunuch Jinshi—and that would shatter the balance that had reigned at
court. The Shi clan, which had been one part of that balance, was already in
shambles; Lihaku could see it himself. Members of the family might be
hiding amongst the captured enemy soldiers. And capturing them was all well
and good, but their guilt was already clear. Those who conspired against the
Page 181

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Emperor could expect the extermination of their entire families at best. The
sovereign’s personal mercy might temper the outcome to some extent, but the
Shi clan had little hope to cling to.
“Grand Commandant Kan’s daughter is a prisoner here,” Jinshi said.
“Sir...”
Kan was a very, very common name. But only one official in the land
bore it: the eccentric strategist. Before the mission, Lihaku had been informed
about her—first, that she existed (one more surprise on a day full of them),
and second, that no one knew why she had been abducted.
“Can you abandon her?” Jinshi asked.
He could not. That much, at least, was certain.
“It would make me a new political enemy...” Lihaku said without
meaning to.
For a second, he thought he saw something mingle with Jinshi’s hard
expression. “Yes, I believe you’re right.” He looked agonized, as if he was
going to be torn apart—but he moved forward.
Lihaku stood up, pulling at his hair. But the only thing he could do under
the circumstances was to complete his assigned task as quickly as possible.
○●○
Along with the blast there came a great rush of snow. She knew
intellectually that this was called an avalanche. But it was like a snow dragon
descending upon them from the cliff at their backs. It didn’t reach Maomao,
but a building she took to be some kind of storehouse was obscured by a haze
of white.
She observed all this from the balcony. The explosions had scared off
most of the workers from the basement, and the few remaining were
attempting to fight the fires. They would have to split their efforts once again
to deal with the avalanche. She saw soldiers come leaping over the outer wall
and stare in amazement at the scene before them.
Then there were those who couldn’t escape. Something white came
flashing over the now thinly defended walls; the color blended in and she
couldn’t see very well at this distance what it was. But she saw some
panicked soldiers confront it, and then a flash of red erupting through the
night.

Page 182

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Blood landing on the pure, white snow.
The white thing was an intruder. He cast aside his white cloak to reveal a
full set of armor.
Come to bring the rebels to heel?
For an upper consort to flee the rear palace was as good as rebellion. And
with her family making their stand in a fortress like this—well, there would
be no excuses.
Am I safe here? Maomao wondered. She stopped when she saw the
invaders in the distant light of their torches. She wasn’t sure how she knew,
but she knew: she was sure she had seen him. A man whose nymph-like
beauty hardly seemed fit for a battlefield. Clothed in armor of an expensive
color, he cut a dashing figure, like a real soldier.
Could he possibly be here to rescue her?
No way. Even he doesn’t have that kind of time to kill.
Her eyes must have deceived her. Anyway, the form soon vanished as the
invading forces continued to flood into the stronghold. They would be here
soon, and Maomao had no idea how they would treat her.
The smell of sulfur was everywhere—from the explosion? She pressed the
sleeve of her robe to her mouth so that it wouldn’t poison her.
I really should just run...
One thing was for sure: she wouldn’t have a leg to stand on when it came
to criticizing Shisui after this.
What was she, some kind of idiot? She must be an idiot, she thought as
she stopped in place.
She could hear footsteps coming closer. Her heart was pounding. They
wouldn’t finish her off right then and there... Would they?
Whoever it is, I hope they’ll at least hear me out.
At that moment, someone kicked down the door. A soldier wearing
bluish-purple armor stood in the entryway.
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything. Neither of them said
anything. After a long moment, it was Maomao who spoke first: “I’m sorry,
but might I ask you to protect me, Master Jinshi?”
“Are you hurt?” the soldier—Jinshi—asked. He could see the blood on
Maomao’s clothes.
“I’m all right. It’s just spatter.”
“That’s not all right!”
Page 183

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“It’s snake blood.”
Jinshi didn’t look like he thought this was any better, but Maomao found
his exasperated expression oddly reassuring. It was so familiar. She felt the
corners of her own mouth softening into a smile.
“Hey, is that—” Jinshi stepped closer and was about to say something, but
they were interrupted by another set of approaching footsteps, and his
expression changed abruptly. The look on his face was neither that of the
eunuch with his delicate, nymph-like smile, nor the somehow childish young
man.
“Milord heir,” a rough-looking man said as he entered the room.
Heir?

Page 184

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Page 185

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“That title no longer belongs to me,” Jinshi said. “A royal son has been
born.”
So Consort Gyokuyou had safely delivered her child—and it was a boy.
So that’s who he really is, Maomao thought. For a man who wasn’t a
eunuch to enter the rear palace was a serious crime. Only those who shared
blood with the Emperor, or who had his specific orders, could do so.
“You seem to have aged a good deal, Master Jinshi.” She spoke rather
softly, yet he glanced in her direction with what she took to be annoyance.
“Is Lihaku here?” Jinshi asked the soldier. The big, doglike man soon
bounded into the room. “I’m leaving this in your hands,” Jinshi said, and then
he left.
Lihaku tilted his head, crossed his arms, and furrowed his brow. “Forgive
me, but you look an awful lot like a young lady named Maomao who works
in the palace.”
“That would be because I am.”
Lihaku might be making silly remarks, but instead of his usual robe of
military office he was dressed in proper armor and carried a club.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I seem to have been kidnapped.”
The angle of the tilt of Lihaku’s head increased further, until it was
practically horizontal. “Say, your, uh, dad...”
“...is probably exactly who you’re thinking, so please, don’t say his name.
Just call him ‘the old fart’ or something; I’ll know what you mean.”
Bowing to Maomao’s wishes, Lihaku didn’t go on, but he did tremble
visibly, after which he smacked his fist into his palm as if everything made
sense. Maomao didn’t know exactly which dots he thought he was
connecting, but she wasn’t sure she liked it.
Lihaku pointed to Maomao and said, “Her! It’s her!” A subordinate of his
gave him a dubious look, but pulled a whistle out of the folds of his robe and
blew on it. Lihaku said to Maomao, “Hey, I’m sorry about that. If you say so,
I’m sure it’s true. Boy, you look a fright, though! You’re covered in blood.
You hurt?”
“It’s spatter.”
Lihaku was as rude as ever, but he looked at her with genuine concern.
The worst of Maomao’s injuries consisted of a scar where Shenmei had hit
her with her fan. The soldier—whom Maomao couldn’t really bring herself to
Page 186

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

dislike despite his manner—must have gotten some blood on himself too, for
when she got near him, she smelled iron.
“Well, please don’t be hurt,” Lihaku said. “The old fart insisted on
coming along even though he can barely move, and wouldn’t you know
it...now he can’t move.”
The old fart. He’d said it. He’d actually said it. The fart was probably the
one who had dreamed up this whole ambush, Maomao thought. Probably
found some way to start the avalanche too.
Lihaku didn’t look too worried, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t taking his
job seriously. “What’s this? Sleeping children?”
He clomped over, but Maomao threw out her hands to block his way.
“They aren’t breathing. They were given poison.”
Lihaku grimaced, probably registering what a terrible thing he was seeing.
But if the kids had survived, the only thing waiting for them would have been
the gallows. Even an attempt on the life of a single high consort could lead to
the conspirator being hanged and their family’s assets being confiscated—if
not worse. And the crime afoot here was far, far more grave. Everyone could
expect to be punished, including women and children.
Maomao studied Lihaku’s agonized expression. “What happens to those
who are executed?” she ventured. “Are they simply abandoned?”
“No, no. They’re laid to rest in a special cemetery. But they’ll be
cremated.”
“Can’t they at least be buried with their mothers?”
Lihaku gave her an inarticulate look, but scratched his head and groaned
painfully. “I’m afraid I don’t really know. That stuff isn’t my job.”
Nonetheless, Lihaku approached and took one of the children in his arms. He
took the covers and tore them in two, wrapping the child with them as if in
swaddling clothes. “It’s almost like they’re just asleep. Thought maybe I
could carry all of them at once, but this kid’s pretty heavy.”
He wrapped the next child in the remainder of the torn covers. Then he
tore the sheets as well and continued swaddling children. Just as they were
thinking there wouldn’t be enough to carry the last child, the soldier standing
guard at the door took off his cloak and brought it over.
“Somebody call a couple more men,” Lihaku commanded, and then he
hefted one child in each arm.
“Master Lihaku?”
Page 187

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“We can’t bury them together, but I’d feel a little sick just leaving them
here. We could at least bury them somewhere close to the graveyard.
Quietly.” He smiled, showing white teeth.
“You don’t think you’d be charged with a crime for that?”
“Don’t know. If I am, you’ll just have to figure out a way to save my
skin.”
“Yes, I’m sure it’ll be just that easy.” Maomao folded her arms, somewhat
annoyed, but then Lihaku looked as if he’d had a flash of inspiration.
“That’s it! That’s a great idea!” he said, grinning.
“What is, sir?”
“If you called the old fart ‘Daddy,’ he’d do anything you asked, right?”
We need hardly say how Maomao responded to that suggestion.
“Uh... Sorry, pretend I never said anything,” Lihaku said, averting his
eyes. Apparently her face had been just that terrible.

Page 188

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 21: How it Began
There was a piercing whistle. Jinshi felt his anxiety ease a little bit. The
whistle was the signal that the mission had been carried out: several short
tweets if there was a problem, one long one if all was well. Lihaku must have
gotten Maomao safely out of the fortress.
Jinshi emerged from a long hallway. He thought back to the blueprints
he’d studied on the way here: ahead of him there should be a large, open
room, an office, and then the living chambers.
Basen was right behind Jinshi. Normally, this would have been Gaoshun’s
place, but Gaoshun had his own job to do. But Basen had a habit of getting a
bit out of sorts when standing in for his father.
“Don’t get too tense,” Jinshi advised him, speaking softly so that only
Basen would hear. Two other officers followed them.
“Allow me to go in front, then,” Basen said. Jinshi understood what he
meant—he wanted Jinshi to be protected both ahead and behind. Jinshi
chuckled, then went to push open a heavy door, but he was suddenly seized
by a bad feeling. He told the others to step back, to not stand in front of the
door. Then he pushed it open and immediately flattened himself against the
wall.
An almost deafening roar passed by him.
“What was that?!” Basen demanded, scowling.
“Nothing I didn’t expect.”
If they were producing fire powder here, one could at least assume they
would use feifa in the fighting. There were constraints on where such
weapons could be used—they were vulnerable to inclement weather, and
even when in good working order, feifa took time to reload. And one needed
at least as much space as there was here in this stronghold.
It was just as Jinshi had predicted—in the large room beyond the door,
some men were frantically trying to reload their guns. “Let’s go!” Jinshi
shouted. At the same moment, the men in the room tried to abandon their
guns and draw their swords, but it was too late.

Page 189

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Feifa were fundamentally intended to be used with several people
switching off firing. These men had missed with their first volley, and there
was no time to reload fresh bullets. There were about five of them, all dressed
in gorgeous clothing. Jinshi recognized several faces. The distinctive smell of
fire powder suffused the large, flagstone-floored chamber.
“Where is Shishou?” he asked. He assumed everyone in this room was a
member of the Shi clan. Their soldiers had abandoned them when they saw it
was a losing battle; the feifa were a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide. “Not
feeling talkative?”
“W-We don’t know! This was never our plan!” one of the men blurted,
his eyes fixed on Jinshi. He was shouting so excitedly that spittle flew from
his mouth. Basen quickly moved to restrain him, afraid that he might throw
himself at Jinshi. “We were tricked! We were just dupes!” the man cried from
where Basen pressed him to the floor.
“You brazen—!” Basen, enraged, shoved the man’s face even harder into
the ground. “We have proof, proof, that you scoundrels embezzled national
funds to rebuild this fortress! And you stood here with weapons drawn
against us—even if that were your only crime, you know what it would
entail!” Basen pressed the blade of his naked sword against the man’s neck.
The man, now practically frothing, looked utterly desperate.
“I s-swear, we didn’t know! I didn’t know! He said this was for the
country’s benefit. We did it all for our nation...”
Whoosh. The sword fell—and sparks flew as it struck against the stone
floor. The man, his eyes practically popping out of his head, ceased his
jabbering. A dark stain spread across the floor underneath him. The other
men stayed silent, perhaps not wishing to be put in the same ignominious
situation, but the fear in their eyes was complete.
Jinshi wished he could tell them not to look at him like that—but how
could he? They could beg him for mercy with their eyes, but the judgment
upon them was irrevocable. All that Jinshi could do for them now was to
stand firm and let the speartips of their emotions lodge in him.
“Do be kind. The sword now or the scaffold later. Surely you could have
the decency to simply end it for him.”
Basen and the other soldiers took up fighting stances as a voice
approached, accompanied by noisy footsteps. A portly man shuffled slowly
into the room: Shishou. He held a feifa in his hand.
Page 190

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Jinshi looked at the man known as the old tanuki. “You seem quite
relaxed, Shishou.” He produced a scroll from the folds of his robes. Sealed
with the Emperor’s personal insignia, it instructed him to apprehend the
entire Shi clan.
Still moving slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, Shishou
leveled his gun.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” one of the soldiers asked in a
quiet voice. Shishou carried no flint, and the man seemed to assume that that
meant he couldn’t fire the gun.
Jinshi, though, grabbed Basen with one hand and another of his
subordinates with the other and pulled them both down onto the ground. The
explosion came next. The bullet bounced off the wall and hit the Shi man on
the ground in the leg. A most unfortunate fellow. His scream echoed around
the room.
“Oh, you’re embarrassing yourself. Didn’t you shoot an animal with this
thing, just to see how it felt?” Shishou said to the screaming man. “And I was
so eager to try it out on a real human. Truly, a shame.”
Jinshi registered the complete lack of emotion in Shishou’s voice, as if he
were reading from a script. Or was Jinshi simply imagining things?
“Hmm. It looks like this is the end. What I wouldn’t have given for a little
more time...” Then Shishou cast the feifa aside. He looked at Jinshi, and for
just an instant, his face softened. What was he trying to say?
Jinshi never had the chance to ask him. Maybe Shishou wouldn’t have
told him, even if he had.
“Go!” Basen shouted, still on the floor.
Blood flew.
Three swords lodged almost simultaneously in Shishou’s plump belly. He
didn’t even cry out, just looked upward. A red froth foamed around his
mouth, and his eyes were bloodshot. Yet he didn’t collapse, but only gazed at
the ceiling, his arms spread wide. Was that laughter, or was he cursing?
There was nothing special on the ceiling. Perhaps he was looking through
it, to something higher still. Jinshi didn’t understand; he felt like he was
watching a performance, as if this place was Shishou’s theater and this
moment was his stage.
Without ever revealing what it was above him that so fascinated him,
Shishou expired. Anticlimactic, perhaps. But he was gone.
Page 191

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Beyond the great room was a hallway full of thinly clothed women and
outrageous men. The women were babbling ceaselessly, eager to tell him
who was within in exchange for their lives. The men kept insisting that they
weren’t members of the Shi clan, unlike the women. Jinshi understood the
impulse to save one’s own life, but he couldn’t bear the spectacle of everyone
selling out everyone else to save themselves. He left it to his subordinates to
apprehend the lot of them.
The former consort Loulan and her mother Shenmei were in the innermost
room, he had been told. But when they arrived, Basen, who entered first,
exclaimed, “There’s no one here!”
All they found was a large bed in the middle of the room and some
couches. There was clothing everywhere, along with scattered wine and
pipes, and some sort of clinging aroma. It was easy enough to guess what
they had been up to in here. Basen’s face was red, but not from anger.
Jinshi, in something of a daze, tossed aside the incense burner. Some kind
of dried herbs spilled out. If the apothecary girl were here, she would know
what they were, what effect they had.
“Where did they go?” There was no one on the balcony in the next room
either. “Did they jump down?”
As they surveyed the balcony, Jinshi puzzled. The room they had passed
through and the one they were in now were supposed to be about the same
size according to the blueprints—but something seemed off. The second
room felt smaller. He went back and forth between the two rooms. There was
only one door into the innermost room, and on the far side was the balcony.
The relative lack of furniture made it feel more spacious, but the distance
from the wall to the balcony was noticeably less than the dimensions of the
other room.
He went back again, and this time he inspected a chest of drawers by the
wall. It exactly matched the missing dimension of the other room.
Silently, he opened the chest. He reached in, past a panoply of gaudy
clothing. Despite the chest’s seemingly solid construction, the backboard felt
oddly thin. He found that with just a gentle push, it raised up.
He leaned into the chest, getting down on all fours to peer inside. Where
he would have expected a wall, there was an open space. A secret tunnel.
And he could see a dim light.
Page 192

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Bang!” a voice said playfully. Jinshi discovered the muzzle of a gun held
right up to his face. Loulan was there, in the tunnel, and she was holding
some sort of firearm far more complex than the feifa Jinshi knew. It was like
the one Shishou had fired earlier, but smaller, more portable; it could fit even
in a cramped space like this. He was shocked to realize they hadn’t just been
producing fire powder here, but also the newest firearms.
“Allow me to call you Master Jinshi. For convenience,” Loulan said, still
holding the gun on him. She was covered in soot, and her hair was scorched.
The candle in the candleholder she carried flickered each time she spoke.
“Would you be so kind as to come with me?”
“What if I refuse?”
“If I was willing to let you do that, I wouldn’t be threatening you.”
Jinshi was almost impressed by her audacity. He looked at the currentmodel feifa, taking in all the things about it that were new and different. He
raised his hands. “Understood.”
And with that, he followed Loulan into the tunnel.
The blueprints Jinshi had studied hadn’t shown any secret tunnels. Maybe
that would have defeated the purpose of making them secret. Or perhaps
Shishou had added this passage only recently.
The tunnel was narrow, and Loulan walked backward so she could keep
the gun on Jinshi. It might have been easier with Jinshi walking in front and
Loulan holding the gun at his back, but she was probably wary of the
possibility that he would attempt to take the weapon from her as he went to
walk in front of her.
“I’m a little surprised you’re just coming with me,” Loulan said.
“And yet you’re the one who told me to,” he replied, almost nonchalantly.
Loulan giggled. Strangely, he found that she seemed much more human than
she had in the rear palace.
“Surely it would be easy enough for you to take this from me?”
Yes—Jinshi couldn’t be certain, but he suspected he would be more than
able to overpower her. But he didn’t say that, just remained silent.
There must not have been much air in the tunnel, for the candle kept
flickering. Just before it guttered out, though, they arrived at a secret room.
The candle flame regained its strength—some opening must have been letting
in air—and its light illuminated two other women. One was a young lady
Page 193

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

who looked much like Loulan, although there was a dark bruise on her face.
“Oh, Suirei, my dear sister. She hasn’t done anything awful to you
already, has she?”
The other woman shook her head in short, staccato twitches. Suirei—that
was the name of the palace woman who had come back from the dead. And
this was the face of the eunuch who had entered the rear palace not long ago.
Then Jinshi looked at the third woman in the room, middle-aged and
wearing what struck him as outrageous clothing and makeup, without any
sense of the dignity that was appropriate to her age. It reminded him of how
Loulan had been back in the rear palace.
The only furniture in the room was two chairs and a single desk.
“Loulan,” the middle-aged woman began, “is this man...”
“Yes, Mother. I brought him here to make your wish come true.”
Loulan’s mother, Shenmei, glowered at Jinshi with undisguised fury.
But Loulan went on: “I know how much you’ve always hated him. His
appearance. Is it because of who he reminds you of? Or simply because
you’ve always been jealous of him, always resented how much more
beautiful he is than you?”
“Loulan!” Shenmei snapped at her daughter. Loulan, though, didn’t so
much as flinch—instead, Suirei trembled. She seemed so much different than
Jinshi had been told.
“I’m sorry. That was going too far for a joke, I suppose. Then allow me to
put on a little performance for you. A warm-up before the main event.”
Then she set down the candle, tucked the feifa into her sash, and calmly,
clearly, began to tell a story.
Loulan’s story took place during the time of the previous emperor.
The imbecilic ruler had been his mother’s puppet when it came to
conducting politics. (This was an awfully disrespectful way to talk about the
former emperor; what kept Jinshi from getting mad about it was the
knowledge that it was all too true.)
Jinshi had never thought that the man he called Father was frightening.
But the woman who stood behind him, the empress regnant—she was
terrifying.
Jinshi chased a wisp of an old memory. What the end of the empress
regnant’s life had been like, he didn’t really know. All he remembered was
Page 194

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

that the former emperor had passed on quickly, as if hurrying to follow his
mother into the next life.
Ever more impatient with her son’s lack of interest in grown women, the
empress regnant had larded the rear palace with the most beautiful ladies.
And then she had instructed the chieftain of one of the northern families to
offer his daughter, who was to be set up—at least outwardly—as one of the
ruler’s high consorts.
“What are you saying, Loulan?” Shenmei asked, puzzled by her
daughter’s tale. The story wasn’t going quite the way she knew it.
Loulan covered her mouth with her sleeve and giggled. “Is this the first
time you’ve heard this story, Mother? My grandfather mumbled it like a
mantra on his deathbed as he wasted away from illness.”
There was nothing new in the idea of nominally making a high official’s
daughter a consort in order to effectively hold her hostage. It had happened
throughout history.
“Do you know why the rear palace got so large?” Loulan asked Jinshi.
“I’ve heard it was at the instigation of your father, whispering in the ear of
the empress regnant.”
That was the general view within the court: that Shishou had wormed his
way into the notoriously cagey empress regnant’s inner circle. Shishou had
originally been nothing more than the unremarkable son of a branch of the
Shi family, but by dint of his own cleverness and the blood in his veins, he
had gotten himself adopted by the main house, which lacked an heir, and
been given the name Shishou.
The main house: that was Shenmei’s family. She had been betrothed to
Shishou since before she had been gifted to him by the emperor.
“That’s right,” Loulan said. “I believe he suggested the expansion of the
rear palace as a new public works program.”
A nice way of putting it, Jinshi thought. A way of sidestepping the issue
any time the question of the diminishing size of the rear palace came up.
“He proposed it in connection with the slave trade.”
That caused Jinshi’s eyes to widen. Shenmei looked as surprised as he
did. Suirei, meanwhile, remained expressionless.
Loulan giggled at Jinshi. Then she looked at Shenmei. “You really didn’t
know any of this, did you, Mother? You don’t know what Grandfather did to
draw the empress regnant’s ire. Why he had to offer his daughter to the rear
Page 195

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

palace to keep him in line.”
Slavery had been alive and well at that time; the palace had even been
staffed by enslaved eunuchs. But Loulan had referred to the slave trade.
Li’s system of government-sanctioned slavery operated on similar
principles to its brothels: when a person had worked long enough to repay
their purchase price, or fulfilled a set term of service, they could be
considered emancipated. But that held true only within the nation’s borders.
The export of slaves to other countries was supposed to be forbidden, and
yet...
“It seems slaves are quite a profitable commodity. Forbidden or not,
there’s no end of people eager to get their hands in that particular till. At the
time, it seems young ladies brought an especially high price.”
With one of its most prominent daughters now held hostage, the Shi clan
had been forced to scale down its slave-trading operation. The trade didn’t
disappear entirely, however, and what remained was said to center around the
rear palace. It involved not just young women, but often men, who were
frequently castrated before they were sold off as slaves.
This had been Shishou’s suggestion: use the rear palace to shelter the
women who would otherwise have been sold abroad. His thinking matched
up neatly with that of the empress regnant, who saw his proposal as a way to
kill two birds with one stone—politically, and with respect to her son.
Parents felt guilty having to sell off their daughters, and given the choice,
they would rather see them serve in the rear palace than be carted off as
slaves. Two years of service would also be likely to leave them with some
skills or education that would lessen the chance that they would fall into
slavery afterward. Above all, serving in the rear palace was a distinguished
qualification in its own right. Unfortunately, with the dramatic expansion of
the rear palace, the plans for education and so on had come to little.
“But of course, the empress regnant had more than one iron in the fire—
and so did my father.”
By gaining the empress regnant’s trust, he hoped to repair the reputation
of the Shi clan. And if that proved impossible...
“I know things have been hard for you, Mother. If this was where it was
going to end, then I wish you had run away before it all started. After Father
went to all that trouble to give you the chance.”
Was she referring to the secret passage out of the rear palace? Was that
Page 196

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

what it had been for? Jinshi wondered.
Shenmei’s face was like a storm.
“Was it that you couldn’t trust a man who said he would throw away his
position to leave with you?”
“Loulan, you little...” Deep creases formed on Shenmei’s face as she
looked at her daughter, yet it was not Loulan but Suirei who looked
intimidated. Shenmei seemed to notice this; she turned a look on Suirei as if
glaring at some filth on the ground. “Of course I didn’t trust him. How could
I? My father’s body was hardly cold before he took over headship of the
family and married the mother of this wench!”
Suirei was watching Shenmei, still shivering.
Loulan giggled again and went over to Suirei. She took the hand of this
sister from a different mother, placing her other hand at Suirei’s collar and
tugging at something that dangled around her neck. Something very similar
to Jinshi’s own silver hair stick hung from a string. But where Jinshi’s
depicted a qilin, Suirei’s was in the shape of a bird. Those who recognized it
would have known it was a phoenix. Like the qilin, only a select few were
entitled to wear that symbol.
“I guess His Former Majesty must have felt guilty. Worried about the
baby he’d expelled from the rear palace. Because it seems he visited her
rather frequently, by Father’s good offices.”
It was Shishou who had secretly sheltered the doctor and child who had
been banished from the rear palace. In time, the child had grown up; Shishou
took over headship of his family, and the young woman had reached an age
to be married.
“The emperor had denied his daughter once, but in time he must have
come to terms with the fact that she was his. Because do you know what he
said to Father?”
Would you be so kind as to take my daughter as your wife?
Shishou, trusted by the empress regnant and almost like family to the
former emperor himself, must have seemed an ideal son-in-law to the
sovereign. The former emperor vowed to grant any wish Shishou might have
—how then could he refuse?
So the former head of the Shi clan, who had attracted such scrutiny from
the empress regnant, died on his sickbed, and leadership passed to Shishou,
whom the empress regnant trusted. There was no more need to keep Shenmei
Page 197

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

as a hostage. It was the emperor who had ultimate discretion as to what
happened to the flowers of the rear palace. Shishou had married the
sovereign’s daughter, and a child had been born to them. They named her
Shisui, granting her the clan name, Shi. This was the woman now known as
Suirei.
“And thus you, Mother, were graciously bestowed upon Father.”
The former emperor was a fool of a man, and had completely failed to
understand the effect this choice would have on his daughter. Suirei’s mother
died of “illness” soon after, and Suirei was taken in by the former rear-palace
physician. That man would later be hired and brought to this very fortress to
create an elixir of immortality—but that’s another story.
About the same time the doctor took Suirei in, the former emperor took to
secreting himself away in his room, and for the more than ten years from then
until he died, there was no word from him. Left with only a single piece of
silver jewelry, the girl now known as Suirei never learned that she was the
former emperor’s granddaughter, and after Loulan was born, she was treated
as no better than the child of a concubine. Even her name was taken from her
and given to her newborn little sister.
“You— You’re lying. That’s enough mindless drivel from you!”
Shenmei, faced with the truth, backed away.
The story must have been shocking for Suirei as well, but she appeared
virtually unmoved. Only, she kept looking uneasily at Shenmei. Perhaps
Suirei had known all along.
Loulan, still smiling, approached Shenmei. “Drivel, Mother? And after
Father labored the rest of his life for you. Knowing all the while that it could
only end in destruction. You don’t even know why Master Jinshi is here, do
you?” She looked at her mother contemptuously, then turned to Jinshi. “Tell
us about the end of my father’s life.”
“He died...laughing,” Jinshi said. He didn’t know what the laughter had
signified, as he didn’t know anything Shishou might have been thinking.
Having heard Loulan’s story, though, he started to think he could sense a
different perspective. He even began to wonder if he had been looking at the
Shi clan’s rebellion the wrong way all along.
“That man... Power was all he ever wanted. I’m sure the only reason he
even married me was so he could lay claim to the family headship.”
Shenmei’s face contorted.
Page 198

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Loulan, though, smiled again. “And yet, within the clan, it was you who
held sway, was it not, Mother? Do you understand what kind of people they
were, the family members who worked so hard to flatter you?”
They were fools, taking bribes and embezzling money, but they sucked up
to Shenmei, knowing that if they had her favor, Shishou, the nominal head of
the clan, would say nothing. He was just an adopted son, after all, a little boy
who’d stumbled into the family; as much influence as he might wield at
court, within the clan his power was minimal. Shenmei systematically chased
out anyone who said things she didn’t like—until finally, there was nothing
to check the rot. And this was the source of a pernicious misunderstanding.
What had been the motivation behind the expansion of the rear palace on
the one hand and the embezzlement from the national treasury on the other?
The two should be viewed separately, not as all the doing of the Shi clan.
Loulan looked at Jinshi and smiled, for she could see that he grasped what
she was trying to say.
The slave trade had been abolished on the accession of the current
Emperor—yes, it continued underground, but it was the groundwork laid by
Shishou and the empress regnant that had allowed the system to be ended
more or less easily. Now Jinshi was looking for something to conceivably
replace it as the rear palace shrank again—and even in this case, the Shi clan
had managed to interfere.
“Everyone always called my father a tanuki, but they forget that tanuki are
cowardly creatures. It’s because they know they’re secretly so small and
weak that they try so hard to trick everybody.”
With that, Jinshi understood. He knew why Shishou had died laughing:
because the cowardly tanuki had succeeded in deceiving everybody right to
the very end.
“Did Father play his part properly? Was he the villain he needed to be?”
Loulan asked, a smile flitting across her face.
Jinshi at last understood what Shishou had been aiming for. He sought to
become the necessary evil, bringing all the country’s corruption together in
one place. A role that could never be rewarded, for which he would never be
celebrated.
Jinshi clenched his fist so hard that his fingernails bit into his palm,
drawing blood. “Do you have any proof that any of this is true?”
“Was the corruption consuming the court from within largely eliminated,
Page 199

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

or wasn’t it?”
“How could you know your plan would work?”
“If it didn’t, we could always simply fall back on a coup d’état. If a nation
is weak enough to be dragged along by corruption like that, then better that it
not exist.” Loulan sounded almost offhanded.
“You... You were plotting this all along?!” Shenmei demanded, her voice
trembling. “You and him—you’ve been deceiving me this entire time?!”
“Deceiving you? I did exactly what you said, Mother. Didn’t you say this
nation deserved to go to dust? Then you chased out every fellow clan
member who didn’t march to your tune, and surrounded yourself with
sycophants who hung on your every word. Did you really think that a rabble
like that could defeat the country’s own army?”
Shenmei looked furious at her daughter’s hard words. Finally, she jumped
at Loulan, her nail caps leaving two long, red streaks down the side of her
daughter’s cheek.
“Is that not what these are for?” Shenmei demanded. She had grabbed the
feifa.
“That’s more than you can handle, Mother. Give it back, please.”
“Be quiet!”
But Loulan only chuckled mockingly.
“What’s so funny?” Shenmei snapped.
“Mother... You sound like a two-bit thug.”
Shenmei’s face twisted horribly, and she fired the gun. Jinshi threw
himself to the ground. Something went flying past him, accompanied by the
earsplitting roar.
“I’m such a bad daughter. If I really wanted the same thing as Father, I
could never have done this.”
Loulan’s face was streaked with blood. Across from her, though, Shenmei
was absolutely covered in it. In her hand was what remained of the exploded
feifa.
“These new feifa are very complicated. That one was a prototype.” She’d
only brought it along in order to intimidate Jinshi. It might simply have had
stuffing inside it. “Didn’t it ever occur to you to take it from me, Master
Jinshi? Surely there would have been any number of chances, if you’d been
looking for them.”
“I assumed you had something you wanted to tell me.”
Page 200

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Hee hee! If only your pretty head were as empty as it looks.” Laughing
(and still being rather rude), Loulan plucked the feifa out of Shenmei’s bloodsoaked hand and threw it away. Then she gently laid her mother down,
holding her shaking hand. “Father is dead. You could at least shed a tear for
him. He was waiting for you all his life. If you had cried...I wouldn’t have
said what I did.”
Until the former emperor had made his request, Shishou had remained
completely chaste, not taking so much as a single concubine. It was the sort
of purity that could only have been mustered by a man whose heart still beat
solely for the woman to whom he had been betrothed when he was young.
Shenmei didn’t speak—she couldn’t. Flying shards of metal had ravaged
her face in the blast. No shadow of her former beauty remained, just a red
mess.
Suirei observed all this with trembling.
“There must have been another way,” Jinshi said, getting to his feet.
“Maybe,” Loulan replied. “But it’s hard to give everyone what they want.
We aren’t wise enough for that.”
Shenmei was simply mean-spirited. She’d wanted to destroy the country
that had made such a fool of her. Shishou; everything he had done had been
for Shenmei’s sake. Even if it had backfired on him, he had done it all out of
his feelings for her. Yet at the same time, he was a loyal retainer unable to
abandon his country. And thus he had spent decades upon decades playing
the villain, all the way to the end.
Jinshi couldn’t tell what Suirei was thinking. For her, had this been about
appeasing the spirits of her mother and grandmother? And did she look
somehow relieved as her empty gaze settled upon Shenmei, gasping for
breath? Or was that simply Jinshi’s imagination?
As for Loulan...
“I know I’m in no position to make demands, but perhaps I could request
two favors of you?” she said.
“What are they?”
“Thank you,” she said first, bowing deeply. She knew she had no reason
to expect that Jinshi would listen to her. Then she produced a piece of paper
from the folds of her robe and handed it to him. He caught his breath when he
saw what was written on it, for what it said was unimaginable.
“Truthfully, I was hoping to use this to bargain for my life. But I don’t
Page 201

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

think it would get me very far now. That paper reveals what’s going to
happen to this country. If the Shi clan still existed when it did, they might
have compounded the situation and destroyed the nation.”
Written on the piece of paper was a prediction of something far worse
than this rebellion.
Loulan’s fingers brushed her mother’s skin. Shenmei’s breath was rapidly
fading.
“Any members of our clan with any sense abandoned the Shi name long
ago. And my older sister is the same. They’ve already died once...so perhaps
I could ask you to overlook them.”
There was a beat. “I’ll do what I can,” Jinshi said.
“You’ll let the ‘dead’ lie, then?” Loulan repeated, seeking confirmation.
“I appreciate it.”
Suirei, as someone with a connection to the former emperor, could not be
wholly ignored.
“Thank you very much.” Loulan bowed her head again and took
Shenmei’s hand. The deformed nail caps were still clinging to it, just barely.
Loulan stuck them on her own fingertips.
At the same moment, Jinshi thought he sensed someone. Basen and the
others had finally realized he was missing, and had eventually succeeded in
finding the hidden passageway. Did Loulan realize they were coming?
“My second wish, then.” She reached out toward Jinshi, stretching toward
him with the hand decorated with the long nail caps. She seemed like she was
moving so slowly. He could easily have dodged her, had he wished to. And
yet Jinshi didn’t move, but accepted it.
The terrible nail cap bit into his cheek, tearing skin and flesh. A few drops
of blood flew into his eye; he squeezed it shut, but with his open eye, he
looked at Loulan.
“Thank you very much,” she repeated, and bowed for the third time. She
had done what her mother, unable to escape death, had not had a chance to
do, and scarred the face Shenmei had reviled so much. It might seem a
pointless act now, but it sealed Loulan’s fate.
“I wonder if I could be an even better actor than Father,” she quipped, and
then she turned to look at Shenmei. “Dear Mother, I’ve done everything I can
do.” Still smiling, she opened the door across from them, revealing blowing
snow. They were on the roof of the fortress. Loulan twirled out the door,
Page 202

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

sleeves waving, black hair flying; the dancing flakes surrounded her.
Basen and the others were in the narrow passageway, looking for their
moment. Basen, his eyes full of fury, leapt forward, hardly understanding
what had happened. When Loulan was sure he was in the room, she raised
her long-nailed fingers high. Even in the faint moonlight, you could see the
blood on them. Loulan, blood streaks on her face, almost appeared to float
above the snow. And behind her was Jinshi with a fresh wound on his cheek.
Suddenly Loulan laughed, loud and long. “Ahhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Her voice rebounded off the snow. She sounded wild—but in her eyes, at
least, you could see that she was still sane.
The faces of Basen and his companions turned to sheer fury.
The light had gone out of Shenmei’s eyes. One could think only that she
reaped what she had sown.
Suirei, still trembling, stretched out her hand—but she couldn’t reach
Loulan.
Jinshi could do nothing but witness Loulan’s last moments, clutching the
piece of paper she had given him.
In the snow, her sleeves flapped and her hair whipped. Her laughter was
suddenly accompanied by the crack of gunshots. Loulan danced along even
as the bullets brushed past her sleeves and grazed her cheek. Finally, Jinshi
was sure: this was her stage. And all those around her were merely
supporting actors drawn into her performance.
The rear palace was a stage, and the country itself, and perhaps she saw
her role as the villainess who would overturn them. If her father Shishou had
been a tanuki, then maybe Loulan was a fox. After all, in the stories, the
villainess who proved a country’s undoing always turned out to be a vixen.
Loulan continued to dance lightly along. How could she move so
delicately among such deep snow? The soldiers, brought up short, were more
occupied with firing their feifa than with chasing after her.
Should he have stopped her?
No, he couldn’t.
He couldn’t mar the performance of the great villainess of her time.
Couldn’t even take his eyes off it.
Another shot—how many was that?
There was a thump, and Loulan stopped moving. The unmistakable, noseprickling smell of fire powder drifted through the air.
Page 203

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

The bullet had hit Loulan in the chest. She reeled backward, pain
spreading over her face.
“Arrest her!” Basen shouted to his men. To Jinshi, the idea seemed
repugnant. It wasn’t the wrong thing to do. But he felt like someone had told
him the end of a story he’d been enjoying before he got to it.
The smile returned to Loulan’s twisted face. Then it vanished again...
No, it only seemed to vanish. She had tumbled backward, and there was
nothing behind her. Except the fall from the roof.
That was the last he saw of Loulan.
His body felt impossibly heavy, like all the fatigue of the past several days
had finally caught up with him.
The moment they’d gotten out of the stronghold, they’d linked up with a
reserve unit and he’d received first aid, with someone stitching up his cheek.
He was the one getting the stitches, so why did everyone else look like they
were in such pain from it? Was it because he had gone without anesthetic?
They finally saw Gaoshun again as well, who promptly told Jinshi to get
some sleep. Of course Gaoshun was there—the story was that Jinshi had been
with the rear unit all along, so Gaoshun had to be seen there.
Truth be told, it was only just now that Jinshi was realizing he really
hadn’t slept for the past several days.
“How’s the girl?”
“She’s fine—so go sleep.”
Did he really look so tired? Maybe he did, but he couldn’t bring himself to
rest. Gaoshun, clearly sick of Jinshi’s intransigence, pointed at a carriage.
“I’d recommend keeping your distance.”
Jinshi promptly ignored him and entered the vehicle. There he discovered
a diminutive young woman, soot-stained and blood-stippled, lying asleep on
top of several blankets. She was curled up like an infant, making her look
even smaller than she usually did. She was surrounded by a collection of
objects wrapped in white cloths.
“The dead children of the Shi clan,” Gaoshun explained.
“Why is she sleeping with them?”
“You know it’s impossible to talk her out of something when she gets an
idea in her head.”
He was right; this young woman, Maomao, had a distinct stubborn streak.
Page 204

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Was there some reason she wanted to be there?
“She looks awful.”
“Speak for yourself, sir,” Gaoshun said, grimacing. It pained Jinshi to
remember the sight of Gaoshun beating Basen after they had returned. Jinshi
had been injured, yes, and he knew that a soldier who failed in his duty must
be punished—but it was only because Jinshi had acceded to the wish of that
vanished vixen.
“Forget about me,” he said brusquely. “In any event, you made the right
choice not to let the strategist see her.” From what Jinshi heard, the man had
not made a very graceful landing on leaping out of the carriage and had
injured his back. He couldn’t take a step on his own.
Jinshi climbed into the carriage. “Wait outside.” Gaoshun nodded slowly.
Jinshi gazed at Maomao’s face. There was blood on it, and her left ear
was swollen, although it had been smeared with ointment. None of this would
have happened to Maomao if she had never gotten involved with him. The
thought made his heart ache.
Other than her ear, she had no injuries to speak of, but he could see a dark
bruise on her neck. Had someone hit her? And the blood, it must have come
from somewhere.
Slowly, Jinshi reached out his hand. And then...
“Excuse me, Master Jinshi, but may I ask what you’re doing?” Maomao
looked at him just like someone trying to drive away a nasty little housefly.

Page 205

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Chapter 22: In the Clutches of the Fox
When Maomao opened her eyes, she found a lovely nobleman in front of
her. For some reason, he was leaning over her and reaching toward her collar.
She gave Jinshi a glare, causing him to exclaim, “W-Well, I—,”
stumbling over his words and waving his hands as if to protest his innocence.
Normally, she might have held the glare a little longer, but she couldn’t
help noticing a bandage on his face. “Master Jinshi, what’s that?” she asked,
straightening her collar.
“It’s nothing. A graze.” He tried to hide it with his hand. Maomao looked
annoyed.
“Let me see it.”
“It’s hardly worth showing to you.”
That, of course, only made Maomao more interested. She pressed
forward, leaning toward Jinshi so fast that he backed up slightly.
When she finally had him with his back to the wall, Maomao reached out
slowly. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. His perfect jewel of a face
now had a wound, mended with stitches, running diagonally down the right
cheek. It was more than just a superficial scratch; something had torn through
the flesh.
The stitches were uneven; it would be best if they were redone as soon as
possible. Maomao would have liked to do it herself right then and there, but
her hands were shaking with immense fatigue.
“You were in the fighting,” she said.
“I could hardly sit back and watch while others put themselves in danger,
could I?”
“Why not? You’re important enough.” Her annoyance was beginning to
show in her tone. “I wish you wouldn’t go running into danger. If you get
yourself hurt, it will only cause trouble for everyone around you.”
He scratched his head and smiled somewhat bitterly. “Yes, I confess it
was most unfair of me to do that to Basen. It’s surprising how strong
Gaoshun can be when he wants to.” He began awkwardly to reattach the

Page 206

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

bandage, but Maomao took it from him.
“I certainly didn’t intend to get hurt,” Jinshi said.
“Who does?”
“It’s just... Someone made a most unusual request of me.” He wrinkled
his brow. There was sadness in his obsidian eyes. “Were you close with
Loulan?”
The question seemed rather abrupt. “Relatively,” Maomao said.
“Were you friends?”
“I’m not sure I know.”
She really didn’t. She’d thought the relationship had been something close
to friendship, or at least it had felt like it to her. But as for what Loulan had
thought, she couldn’t say. Chatting with Xiaolan and Loulan—or rather,
Shisui—hadn’t been such a bad feeling.
“There were many things I didn’t know about her.”
“The same, it seems, was true of me.” The pain on Jinshi’s face
intensified. “And now we’ve lost the chance to understand her.”
Maomao took his meaning. “I see, sir.”
Of course. Maomao had known it would be this way. For when Shisui had
left that room, she’d entrusted something to Maomao—and then gone out
knowing she was to meet her destiny. All Maomao could do was honor what
had been entrusted to her...
“Master Jinshi, don’t you want to rest?”
“Yes... I really am terribly tired.”
His complexion was not good. Jinshi was probably in far worse shape
than Maomao, even though she was the one who had been kidnapped. He had
unmistakable bags under his eyes, and his lips were dry and dull.
The obvious thing would have been for him to return to his own carriage
and sleep, but to Maomao’s amazement, he lay down on the pelt in her own
vehicle.
Maomao let her frustration show on her face. “I must ask that you not
sleep here, Master Jinshi.”
“Why not? I’m tired.”
“Surely I shouldn’t have to explain?” Maomao looked around. There were
five bundles in the carriage with them—the children of the Shi clan. “This
place is impure.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Page 207

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Then why—”
Before she could finish speaking, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her
close. His hand felt very cold.
They found themselves lying facing each other on the animal skin.
“Then why are you here?”
“Even I know to take pity on children,” she said, reciting the words she’d
rehearsed.
“Do you? I wonder.” Still lying there, Jinshi cocked his head. “Didn’t
your teacher in medicine forbid you from touching dead bodies?”
Curse him for remembering that! Maomao fought the urge to scowl
openly.
“Considering he felt the need to issue such a stricture, I don’t think you
would last very long in a place like this,” Jinshi said. He picked the worst
times to have sharp intuition.
Maomao struggled to think of some way to escape the eyes that now
studied her so intently. While she was frozen in thought, Jinshi reached out
again. He turned her collar back. “And what happened to you?” he asked,
frowning. The skin under her collar bore a dark, ugly bruise where Shenmei
had hit Maomao with her fan.
Maomao was a little embarrassed, but decided it would be best to move
things along promptly. “I met someone who was less than nice.”
“You were attacked,” Jinshi said, his voice icy.
“It was a woman,” Maomao made sure to add. Jinshi seemed awfully
concerned about everyone else’s chastity. She flinched as he ran his fingers
along the bruise.
“You don’t think there will be a scar?”
“What, from this? It’ll be gone before you know it.” Discomfited by the
feeling of his fingers on her skin, she backed away, but Jinshi only reached
out farther. Finally, Maomao resorted to sitting up and straightening her
collar.
“Don’t go getting a scar,” Jinshi said.
“I could say the very same thing to you, sir.”
Jinshi frowned. “I’m a man. What’s it matter on me?”
“Oh, you quite surpass ‘a man.’”
“As if I cared.”
“Then I don’t care either. If one scar is enough to obliterate my value,
Page 208

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

then so be it.”
“And after you gave me such a piece of your mind.” Jinshi didn’t sit up,
but he didn’t let go of Maomao’s wrist either. Some of the warmth was
beginning to return to his hand. “Am I such that one scar would obliterate my
value?” he asked, his hand tightening on her wrist. “Am I nothing more than
my face?”
Maomao instinctively shook her head. “Frankly, a bit of a scar might do
you good,” she said, more honestly than she had meant to. Jinshi was too
beautiful; he could only put those who saw him out of sorts. And those
around him focused too much on his looks. Even though he wasn’t as flowery
and delicate as he appeared, Maomao thought; he was made of sterner stuff.
In her opinion, only a small handful of people around him understood that.
“Don’t you think it makes you look more manly than before?” she said.
She noticed his lips tighten when she said that. He looked around uneasily,
blinked, and shook his head.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
Jinshi scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. “Considering the
circumstances, I thought maybe I’d simply grin and bear it...”
“No need to bear anything. If you’re tired, hurry up and—”
—and get out of here and rest, she had been about to say. But it seemed
sleepiness was not what Jinshi was trying to endure. He pulled on her wrist
again, and when she sat down facing him, he grabbed the upper part of her
other arm.
“When I looked at your injury, I meant to act as calm as I could,” he said.
His unsettling face got closer and closer to hers; she could feel the heat of his
breath on her skin. “I’m surprised... I mean, I think I seemed calmer than I
expected.”
“Huh?”
At that moment, she remembered: they’d been in a situation much like
this one before, hadn’t they? And hadn’t it been really rather compromising?
Her back was pressed to one of the carriage’s support posts; she had nowhere
to run.
“Master Jinshi, hadn’t you better get some sleep?”
“I’m still all right.”
How could he say that with those giant bags under his eyes?
“I’ll re-stitch your wound, sir. Let me go get some painkillers...”
Page 209

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“I can live with it another half hour.”
“Another half hour, indeed!”
Jinshi ignored her. Maybe it was the fatigue that made his eyes look like a
feral dog’s.
This isn’t good... She twisted and pulled, but he was stronger than she
was.
Jinshi kept getting closer and closer, and when their noses were almost
touching...there was a clatter.
Jinshi all but jumped into the air. “Wh—What was that?” When he
realized the noise had come from where the children were resting, he looked
even more stunned. That was perfect for Maomao, who shoved past him and
toward the source of the sound. She felt the wrists of the swaddled children
one by one.
No... No... she thought, and then she felt the wrist of the third child.
The small lips fluttered; there was an almost imperceptible hush of breath.
She found a pulse, faint but detectable.
“If only these little ones were bugs, they might have been able to sleep
through the winter,” Shisui had said. Those insects that made the bell-like
sound—the females ate the males, and then they died too. Only their
offspring survived, hibernating through the cold months.
Shisui had compared her clan to insects—and she’d given Maomao one
other clue, as well.
There was another country where, sometimes, the drug was used in secret
practices. It could kill a person, and then bring them back to life. It killed
them with poison, but with time, the poison dissipated, and when it was
completely neutralized, the dead person was revived.
Suirei had taught Maomao about the resurrection drug. Had that been part
of Shisui’s plan too?
“They’re alive?” Jinshi asked from behind her, but Maomao didn’t have
time to entertain his question. She was massaging the children’s bodies,
desperately hoping to make the resurrection effect work. That was the whole
reason Shisui had brought her here.
Maomao didn’t know what Jinshi would do with the revivified children—
but she didn’t have time to explain, either herself or them. “Hot water!
Master Jinshi, please, get some hot water. And something to warm them up.
Clothes, food, it doesn’t matter.”
Page 210

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“Let the ‘dead’ lie, eh?” Jinshi chuckled. “She got me. The vixen got what
she wanted.”
“Master Jinshi!” Maomao shouted. He seemed to be muttering to himself,
but she didn’t have the time to care.
“Yes, of course,” he said, and she couldn’t shake the impression that there
was almost a cheerful tone to his voice. His expression was much softer than
earlier—though it carried some disappointment, as well.
Maomao was focused completely on the children, who were slowly
starting to breathe again. When Jinshi returned with blankets and a bucket of
hot water, he leaned over and whispered in her ear: “Can we continue this
later?”
“Sure, whatever,” Maomao replied, too busy to think much about it. She
had the little ones to worry about.

Page 211

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Epilogue
The capital was in an absolute uproar that day. For the Emperor had
finally taken an Empress, and at the very same time, a new Crown Prince had
been presented. The celebratory atmosphere, building on the anticipation of
the new year that had already been brewing, even reached the pleasure
district, and the young apprentice girls were beside themselves with
excitement.
The Empress’s name was Gyokuyou, and the Crown Prince was her son.
The child had been delivered safely.
As joyous as that was, it also meant that Maomao was now without an
occupation—and so we find her back in her tumbledown apothecary’s shop,
grinding herbs.
“Yo, Freckles, how about a snack?” A boy, young enough that his voice
hadn’t changed, opened the door and came in. His name was Chou-u: a brat
of a kid with a dumb gap in his front teeth. They’d abandoned his old name.
The fact that his new one sounded somewhat like it was a tactic of
desperation, for the boy seemed to have a faint memory of what he was once
called.
It was clear to see that he was still an unruly kid, but it had only been a
few days earlier that he had finally been able to get up and about. He’d been
in a sort of torpor until then; it was impossible to say whether it was down to
his youth or simple good luck that he was able to be this active again.
Eventually, all five of the children had revived. Maomao had expended
every effort to keep them breathing—including having Suirei, who had been
moved elsewhere, summoned to assist with the “resurrections.” She’d said
the experiments hadn’t been finished. No doubt she would have wished to
wait until the effects of the drug were better understood before doing
something like this. But circumstances had left no choice except to give the
children the medicine. As a result, several of them suffered side effects.
Chou-u had been the last of the five to awaken.
These children, who would otherwise have gone to the gallows with their

Page 212

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

parents, were given new names and taken in by a new home. Chou-u, though,
remained in the pleasure district. For better or for worse, he had lost his
memory. He was also left with mild paralysis in half his body—but under the
circumstances, one had to say he was lucky. For a while, it had looked as if
he might not wake up at all.
No one seemed to know quite how it was that the children had survived,
but in any case, they were to go to live with the former Consort Ah-Duo.
Some argued that they should be sent to different places, but Ah-Duo felt that
would be needlessly cruel.
Maomao was amazed when she saw the former consort: she was wearing
men’s clothing, for some reason, but she seemed far more alive than she ever
had when she was living in the rear palace. What really startled Maomao,
though, was the former consort’s resemblance to Jinshi.
I did wonder. Could it be—
No, no. Let’s drop that train of thought. Maomao forced the fantasy she’d
once entertained out of her mind.
Ah-Duo had taken in not just the children, but Suirei as well. Yes, she had
been something of a thorn in the side of the rear palace, but allowances could
be made for her circumstances; and above all the fact that the former
emperor’s blood flowed in her veins argued in her favor. She would be
watched closely, certainly, but her life would be spared.
Chou-u had been sent to the pleasure district because it was felt that,
lacking his memories, it would be best if he were raised separately from the
other children. Maomao thought that might be a mess in the making, but it
was nothing to do with her. Or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be—so what
was the nasty little brat doing in her shop? They had insisted that this was
really the safest place for him—but Maomao was damned if she knew how
so.
The brat began to rifle through the medicine cabinet, and Maomao gave
him a sound knuckle to the top of the head.
“Yowch! What’d you do that for?!”
“That is not for you to eat,” Maomao said, snatching back from him the
packet of expensive rice crackers one of her sisters had given her. Instead she
tossed him a piece of brown sugar from the same drawer. That seemed to be
enough to satisfy Chou-u, who walked out of the shop munching on it. There
was a good-natured guard who sometimes played with him; that was
Page 213

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

probably where he was going.
They say children are highly adaptable, and Chou-u was living proof.
Instead of getting all depressed about having amnesia, he reveled in having
lovely ladies to dote on him and a friendly guy to be his playmate. In fact, he
hardly seemed to have any complaints at all for the moment. The old madam,
meanwhile, had been well compensated for taking him in, and nothing
warmed her cockles like a financial windfall. In other words, it would be a
while before she felt any need to get upset at him.
Maomao lounged lazily on the floor, munching on the salty rice crackers.
She folded a raggedy old cushion and put it under her head, then lay back and
gazed upward.
Her old man, Luomen, wasn’t going to be coming back to the pleasure
district; for the time being, it had been decided that he would stay at the
palace. He’d been banished—on dubious grounds, yes—but he was a man of
consummate talent. No doubt the Emperor was loath to let him go.
And why was Maomao here, instead of serving Jinshi again? There was a
reason for that too.
Seki-u had visited Maomao at one point. (Although she’d known Maomao
was an apothecary, she’d been surprised to discover that the pleasure district
was her base of operations.) “I wasn’t going to be able to sleep if I didn’t at
least get these to you,” she said, and gave Maomao two letters written on
crude paper. The name of the sender was one they had practiced again and
again, writing in the dirt: they were from Xiaolan.
Xiaolan was pretty lonely, Seki-u informed her, what with how Maomao
and Shisui had both disappeared at the same time. Apparently, the public
story was that both of them had been dismissed from the rear palace.
“She was really down about it,” Seki-u said. “You could have at least said
goodbye to her.” She went on to describe how Xiaolan was doing in rather
detailed terms; Maomao started to sense that, unable to leave Xiaolan
completely alone, Seki-u had taken up the mantle of being her friend.
“There’s not that much work she can do, but being cheerful like she is goes a
long way.”
Xiaolan hadn’t been able to get herself retained at the rear palace, but one
of the lower consorts had taken a liking to her, and had written her a letter of
introduction; she was now a serving woman to the consort’s younger sister at
their family home. Maomao didn’t doubt that the charming Xiaolan would
Page 214

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

soon be fully integrated into the household.
One of the letters was addressed to Maomao, but the other was for Shisui.
Maomao opened the one addressed to her. The penmanship left something to
be desired, clearly the work of someone still learning her characters, but the
effort she had put into this note describing her current situation was evident.
There were mistakes and revisions in a few places, but paper was still too
luxurious a resource for Xiaolan to rewrite the letter afresh; instead, she
simply blotted out the errors.
At the very end, she had written: “I hope I get to see you again sometime.
I want more ice cream!”
As for the letter for Shisui, Maomao took it, but didn’t open it. She
suspected, though, that whatever else it said, that last line was probably the
same.
She felt something warm roll gently down her cheek. Ploop, it went,
falling onto the paper and distorting the characters.
They hadn’t found Shisui’s body. She’d been shot with a feifa and then
fallen off the stronghold roof, yet no matter how they pawed through the
snowbanks below, they came up with nothing. They said they would look for
the body again when the snow melted in spring. Maomao, for one, hoped
they never found it.
I’ll have to go find more medicinal ingredients.
Maomao had her work cut out for her in the pleasure district, probably far
more so than she ever had in the palace. Her old man had made a supply of
medicines before he left, but that was long gone, and she suspected the fields
were dead by now too.
She hadn’t seen Jinshi since they’d left the Shi stronghold. Even if she’d
wanted to, he wasn’t exactly the kind of person you could waltz up and ask
for a meeting with.
There was no way a man who had taken command of an army—and had
the scar on his face to prove it—could continue pretending to be a eunuch in
the rear palace. Jinshi must have finally gone back to being whoever he really
was. Maomao didn’t know his real name; she couldn’t have used it even if
she did. The worlds they lived in were simply too different.
As for his injury, there were plenty of perfectly competent doctors around;
he didn’t need Maomao. Hell, her old man was there at the palace. Maomao
Page 215

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

couldn’t have done anything to help even if she’d been present.
Anyway, now that Jinshi was no longer a eunuch, he couldn’t get away
with keeping some lowborn girl around him. He wouldn’t have to sneak and
spy anymore, anyway. So it was best, really, that Maomao had come back to
the apothecary’s shop in the pleasure district. At least with her father no
longer there, the madam would probably stop trying to sell her off.
Ugh... So tired...
She’d been up all night the night before making medicines. Creating new
drugs was a challenging endeavor. You could mix several ingredients trying
to increase the potency of an effect, but sometimes you accidentally ended up
with a poison instead. She’d made several new wounds on her left arm to test
some of them out, but she just couldn’t quite get the outcome she wanted.
She’d even tried rubbing some of her concoction onto the wound on her ear
(why let it go to waste, after all?), but it didn’t tell her much. After all these
years, she seemed to have developed a pretty high tolerance for pain.
Got to cut deeper if I want to be sure. Maomao looked at her left hand,
then tied some string firmly around her pinky. She stood and took a small
knife from a cabinet. Here goes!
Just as she was about to bring the knife down, a beautiful voice
interrupted her: “What are you doing?”
Without a word, she turned to see a man in an unusual mask standing in
the entryway of the shop. Behind him were a familiar, middle-aged man who
looked distinctly overworked, and the madam, rubbing her hands and
offering them an ingratiating smile.
“Done with all your work?” Maomao asked, undoing the string around her
finger and putting the knife back in the cabinet.
“Isn’t a person entitled to a break every once in a while?”
The madam poured tea and said, “Please, relax,” still wearing that smile.
The drink was made from her best white tea leaves, and was accompanied by
small pieces of finely sculpted sugar—the sort of expensive accommodations
usually reserved for the Three Princesses’ guests. “Are you quite sure this is a
suitable meeting place, sir?” she inquired, although for some reason she was
asking Gaoshun. He nodded, and the old lady, looking slightly disappointed,
backed out and closed the door with another “Relax. Take your time.”
What’s going on here? Maomao wondered.
Jinshi finally removed his mask, revealing his face, like a perfect jewel—
Page 216

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

except for the scar that ran down one cheek. Maomao gave the folded
cushion a smack to straighten it out and set it in front of Jinshi, who sat down
promptly and without undue grace.
“I’m sure you’ve been working hard, sir,” Maomao said, next placing the
tea and snacks before Jinshi.
He took a sip of the drink. “I won’t pretend it’s been easy. Dealing with
personnel has been a nightmare, and on top of that there’s the issue of the Shi
clan’s territory to contend with.” He let out a long sigh, his brow furrowing.
Was it just Maomao’s imagination, or was Gaoshun rubbing off on him?
She had heard that the members of the Shi clan had already been executed
—most of them had been at the stronghold, anyway. Their territory would be
put under government control, and with the richness of the timber resources
in the north, it could be expected to produce a handsome addition to the
nation’s coffers. Without the Shi clan serving as middleman, they could
lower the tax rate in the area and still make plenty of profit. And there were
so many things one could do with timber.
I hope they turn it into paper. Maomao smiled, hoping they had the right
kind of trees up north to make decent sheets. She was just thinking how the
country’s failure to start up a paper industry to this point had probably been
due to the Shi clan’s interference when she realized she was grinding
medicine in a mortar.
“Don’t pretend I’m not here,” Jinshi said.
“Sorry, sir. Old habit.”
“Never mind. Don’t worry about it.” Jinshi took a bite of the snacks and
drank down the rest of his tea. When Maomao got up to make more, she
found Jinshi grabbing her wrist.
“Yes, sir? What is it?”
He tugged, obliging her to sit back down. He was studying the side of her
face most intensely, gazing at her ear. She was fairly sure the bruise from
where she’d been struck was gone by now.
He smells...sweet. It wasn’t the smell of the snacks, but of his perfume.
Suiren always did have good taste, Maomao reflected, an image of the
slightly mischievous serving woman flashing through her mind.
“Perhaps it’s time I asked you to make good on your promise,” Jinshi
said.
Promise? Maomao looked at the ceiling, trying to recall, and Jinshi
Page 217

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

scowled.
“You can’t pretend you’ve forgotten. I got you the ingredients for your ice
cream, didn’t I?”
Oh! Geez! That! She almost clapped her hands as she remembered. But
then her gaze returned to the ceiling as the exact nature of that promise came
back to her.
“What is it?”
“Oh, er, nothing. It’s about—ahem—your hair stick.” Maomao’s voice
grew so quiet it almost disappeared. “I, uh...gave it to somebody.”
Jinshi didn’t say anything, but his face grew tight—less, it seemed, from
anger than from disappointment. Maomao knew this was bad; she struggled
to think of some way of placating him. “But they might find it in spring!”
“Why would that be?”
“Well, and then again...they might not.” It was better if they didn’t. For if
they didn’t find it... “It might make its way back to one of the shops in the
capital eventually.”
“You sold it?!”
“No, sir, I didn’t!” Hmm. This was proving tricky. What should she say?
“I gave it to Shisui...I mean, to Loulan. I did tell her to give it back
someday.”
“So that’s what you’re talking about,” Jinshi said, and then he looked
squarely at her. “In that case, perhaps I’ll ask you to fulfill your other
promise.”
Other promise. Other promise. Ah!
“You mean to listen when someone is talking to me?”
“That’s the one,” Jinshi said, pleased.
Maomao faced Jinshi and adopted a formal sitting position. “All right
then, sir. Go ahead.” But Jinshi didn’t say anything.
“Go ahead,” Maomao repeated. Still he didn’t speak, but only gazed at
her. “Didn’t you have anything to say?”
“I did, yes. But on reflection, I’m sure you already know the thing I was
about to tell you.” He was probably alluding to the matter of his real position,
but Maomao was already aware of it. There would be no point in his telling
her about it now.
“Something else, then?” she suggested.
“Something else...” Jinshi began, but then he said nothing further. Neither
Page 218

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

of them spoke, the silence stretching on.
What, he didn’t have anything to say after all? Maomao thought. She was
about to get up, eager to get back to work on her medicines, when suddenly
Jinshi was coming closer, then wrapping himself around her neck.
“May I ask, sir, what exactly you’re doing?”
She felt something damp and warm brush her neck—no, surround it. She
felt teeth; she realized she was being sweetly, gently bitten.
“Do you know what it means now?” Jinshi asked.
“Well, human saliva can be toxic.” Just as a bite from a wild animal had
to be carefully disinfected lest it fester, the same precautions had to be taken
with a bite from a person.
Jinshi said absolutely nothing.
“I’d like to get back to my work, sir.”
“I know it takes more than a little toxin to bother you.”
He bit harder. It started to hurt a little, and she smacked him on the back.
He only bit down harder still, and before she could stop herself Maomao
pounded him soundly on the shoulders. Finally she felt his lips move away
from her neck. A string of saliva stretched between them for a good shaku
before it finally snapped.
“What, are you going to bite me to death?”
“I’ve wanted to at times.”
Maomao was just wondering what was with this man when she found him
embracing her.
Jinshi smirked. “Now, where were we?”
Up close, she saw the stitches hadn’t come out of his cheek yet, although
they were neater than they had been before, suggesting they’d been redone.
Wonder if that’s my old man’s handiwork, she thought. She found herself
reaching toward Jinshi’s face. His eyes softened in a smile, looking somehow
innocent.
“And are you poisonous as well?” Jinshi was just reaching out for
Maomao’s chin when:
“Freckles!” There was a crash as the window across from the entrance,
where customers could pick up medicines, was thrown open. “Check this out!
I know you wanted one of these!” There was Chou-u, looking terribly pleased
with himself. He was holding a lizard above his head.
“Ooh! You got one!” Maomao slipped past Jinshi, whose head drooped
Page 219

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

dejectedly, and grabbed the lizard, depositing it directly into a jar.
“Huh? What’s that guy doing on the floor?”
“He’s very tired from work. Here, your reward.” Maomao gave him a
chunk of brown sugar. Chou-u went running off again.
From the floor, Jinshi could be heard to growl, “Knew I should’ve sent
him to the gallows...” He sounded like a feral dog indeed. Maybe it was the
scar on his cheek that made Jinshi seem less androgynous than before; it was
as if he were drawn in bolder lines now.
Maomao realized she could see a tiny crack in the door, and an eyeball
peering through it. She opened the door noisily, discovering a very startled
old madam and Gaoshun.
“Grams, get a bedroom ready. Pick an incense that promotes sleep.”
“Yeah, sure,” the old lady said with a disappointed click of her tongue.
As the old woman left, Maomao looked back at Jinshi, still lying on the
ground. “You seem most fatigued, Master Jinshi,” she said. He only stared at
her vacantly. “I think you had better rest.”
“Yes, fine. I’ll do that.”
That’ll be for the best, Maomao thought—but Jinshi didn’t move.
“Master Jinshi?” She crouched down and shook his shoulders. Huh, she
thought, actually, maybe I can just call him Jinshi now.
While she was thinking it over, though, Jinshi said, “This will be my
pillow”—and put his head smack on Maomao’s knees. The crown of his head
was pressed up into her stomach, and his arms were wrapped around her
back.
“Master Jinshi...”
He didn’t say anything. Was he asleep, or just pretending?
The madam quietly placed a fine cushion and some incense in a corner of
the room, then showed herself out. Maomao sighed, then reached for her
pestle. The smell of the medicine she was crushing mingled with the incense,
and the sound of the pestle working was accompanied by Jinshi’s even
breathing.
My legs are going to fall asleep, Maomao thought, as she began working
on a new medicine.

Page 220

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Page 221

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

○●○
Days after the start of the new year, the man still hadn’t had time to rest.
There had been some sort of commotion in the capital, but here in this distant
port town, whatever it was seemed unimportant—no skin off his nose. What
really mattered to this man was selling his wares while the festive atmosphere
lasted. During a celebration, men wanted to show their best side to their
women. Every merchant knew that, and every merchant took advantage of it.
This man’s open-air stall had everything from rings that looked like
children’s toys to fancy imported necklaces. It was a motley collection of
goods, but it suited a moment when the firecrackers were going off.
“Thanks for your business!”
Ah, another sale. Another man with no eye for value. This customer was
walking away with a pair of earrings that would have embarrassed a child
playing dress-up. He was going to go back to his village and give them to his
beloved, he said, but when she saw what passed for his taste, he would be
lucky to get anything but a scornful laugh.
Still, the merchant was, well, a merchant, and it was his job to talk up the
merchandise—even the crappy stuff. Convince the customer that it was worth
parting with his hard-earned coins.
The merchant’s most recent customer was practically skipping away when
a young woman appeared at the shop, someone he didn’t recognize. A lookieloo if he’d ever seen one. Her outfit was scruffy and a little dirty. The
clothing was made of good stuff, though, in a style they favored far to the
north of here.
He was just about to shoo her away, lest she interfere with his next
transaction, when she looked up at him. “Hey, mister, is this a cicada?”
“Ah, yes. Made from jewels in ancient times.” He hadn’t meant to simply
answer her question—the girl’s looks, which were far more refined than her
clothes, must have thrown him for a loop. There was a vestige of some
innocence in her expression, but her body was clearly that of a grown
woman.
“Huh, that’s neat! Jewels, huh?” She jabbed the jeweled bug with her
finger.
“Hey, I’m trying to sell that! If you’re not going to buy it, then don’t

Page 222

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

touch!” The cicada wasn’t delicate, but he wasn’t about to let her put her
grimy fingers all over it. After a moment he said, “Are you going to buy it?”
“Hmm... I don’t have much money...”
“Then forget it, kid.” It didn’t matter how pretty she was. You had to draw
the line somewhere.
The cicada must have really captured the young woman’s attention, for
she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off it. He wondered how she’d react if he
told her it had supposedly been made to be placed in the mouth of a dead
person. Yeah, that would probably spook her enough to get her to go
somewhere else. He was about to inform her of the fact, when:
“Here.” The young woman took a hair stick from the folds of her robe.
“What’s this?”
“Payment in kind. You want it?”
“Hmmm...” The man squinted at her and took it. Whatever this hair stick
was, it wasn’t likely to be worth much. Then again, its beauty and fine
craftsmanship showed that it was not the sort of thing one would find at the
average jewelry shop. There was some damage to one part of it—that was a
shame; it would bring the price down significantly. But that was the only
flaw. It was strange—the flat part of the hair stick showed a trace as if it had
been bored through. Almost like there was something round stuck inside.
“How about it?”
“Sure, this’ll do just fine.”
The merchant considered asking where it had come from, just in case, but
he thought better of it. No, he should simply thank his lucky stars to have
come into possession of such a thing. The crest on this hair stick was superb
in and of itself. He could use the patterned base and replace the decoration
with something else, and it would still sell for a pretty sum.
“I’ll take this, then!” The young woman held the jeweled cicada up to the
sun, making it gleam, and laughed. Her guileless smile made even her grimy
outfit seem to shine. The merchant thought of the Emperor’s garden of
flowers, the rear palace—this young woman must have been the sort of
blossom that bloomed there.
Drawn in by her smile, the man found himself talking to her before he
could stop himself. “A pretty thing like you—if you were to be part of the
Emperor’s flower garden, you could have all the luxuries you wanted. You
know, His Majesty’s favorite consort—what was her name? Err...”
Page 223

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

“You mean Consort Gyokuyou?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. They said she’s the Empress now.”
Sometimes the bookseller sold pictures of her. Too expensive for
commoners to afford, but they served nicely to draw in customers.
“Oh, Gyokuyou...” The young woman, with one eye still on her prize,
looked around until she spotted something: a fisherman separating out the
fish and the seaweed from his net. “Say, mister. My name—it’s Tamamo.”
“Tamamo? That’s a fancy word for seaweed, right? Sounds like a name fit
for the blessing of the ocean.”
“I know, right? I’m really curious what’s across the sea.”
The girl called Tamamo grinned and looked at a boat docked at the port, a
ship that had come all the way from a far island country. Several of the trade
goods it had brought had even made their way to this very stall.
The girl hopped into the air and smiled brightly. “Okay, thanks. Bye!” She
waved gaily to the merchant and ran off toward the dock.

Page 224

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Sign up for our mailing list at J-Novel Club to hear about new releases!
Newsletter
And you can read the latest chapters (like Vol. 5 of this series!) by becoming
a J-Novel Club Member:
J-Novel Club Membership

Page 225

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

Copyright
The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 4
by Natsu Hyuuga
Illustrations by Touko Shino
Translated by Kevin Steinbach
Edited by Sasha McGlynn
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is
coincidental.
Kusuriya No Hitorigoto
Copyright © Natsu Hyuuga 2015
All rights reserved.
Originally published in Japan by Shufunotomo Infos Co., Ltd.
Through Shufunotomo Co., Ltd.
This English edition is published by arrangement with Shufunotomo Co.,
Ltd., Tokyo
English translation © 2022 J-Novel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976,
the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book
without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the
author’s intellectual property.
J-Novel Club LLC
j-novel.club
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not

Page 226

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: January 2022

Page 227

Goldenagato | mp4directs.com

"