The Apothecary Diaries

Chapter 15: Covert Operations

When Maomao and Jinshi arrived at their destination, she found that he had brought them to the office of the Matron of the Serving Women. The middle-aged woman was inside, but at a word from Jinshi, she quickly left the room. Let us be honest about how Maomao was feeling: the last thing in the world she wanted was to be alone with this creature.

It wasn't that Maomao hated beautiful things. But when something was too beautiful, one started to feel that the remotest blemish was like a crime, unforgivable. It was like how a single scratch on an otherwise perfect, polished pearl could cut the thing's price in half. And though the exterior might be lovely, there was the question of what was within. And so Maomao ended up looking at Jinshi like some kind of bug crawling along the ground.

She sincerely couldn't help it.

I'd rather just admire him from afar. This was how Maomao, the simple commoner that she was, truly felt. It was, then, with some relief that she greeted Gaoshun, who replaced the woman in the room. For all his taciturn disposition, this servant eunuch had become something of a refuge for her of late.

"How many colors like this exist?" Jinshi inquired, lining up the powders he had brought from the doctor's chambers.

They were just medicines as far as Maomao was concerned, so there might be more that she didn't know about. But she said, "Red, yellow, blue, purple, and green. And if you subdivide them, there are arguably more. I couldn't give you an exact number."

"And how would a wooden writing strip be made to acquire one of these colors?" The powder couldn't simply be rubbed on it; it would just rub off again. It was all very strange.

"Salt can be dissolved in water to color an object. I suspect a similar method would work here." Maomao pulled the white powder toward her.

"As for the rest, some might dissolve in something other than water. Again, this is outside my field of expertise, so I can't be sure."

There were any number of white powders out there: some that would dissolve in water and some that wouldn't; others that might dissolve in oil, say. If some of the stuff was to be impregnated into a writing strip, a substance that would dissolve in water seemed a reasonable assumption.

"All right, enough." The young man crossed his arms and lost himself in thought. He was so lovely, he could have been a painting. It almost seemed wrong for heaven to have given a man such unearthly beauty. And to then cause that man to live and work as a eunuch in the rear palace was deeply ironic.

Maomao knew that Jinshi had his hand in a great number of proverbial cookie jars in the rear palace. Perhaps something she'd said had caused the pieces of some puzzle to fall into place for him. He seemed to be trying to figure them out.

Could it be a code...?

They had probably each come to the same conclusion. But Maomao knew better, much better, than to say so out loud. The quiet pheasant is not shot, went the proverb. (Which country had those words supposedly come from, again?)

Feeling that she was no longer needed, Maomao made to leave.

"Hold on," Jinshi said.

"Yes, sir, what is it?"

"Personally, I like them best steam-boiled in an earthen pot."

She didn't have to ask what "they" were. Found me out, eh? Perhaps it had been a little bit much, eating the matsutake mushrooms right there in the doctor's quarters. Maomao's shoulders slumped. "I'll try to find some more tomorrow."

It seemed her agenda for the next day was set: she would be going back to the grove.

When he heard the clack that assured him the door was shut fast, Jinshi gave a honeyed smile. His eyes, however, were hard enough to cut diamond. "Find anyone who recently suffered burns on their arms," he ordered his aide. "Start with anyone with their own chambers, and their serving women."