Chapter Text
Working in the medical office near the training gounds spelled long and busy days, though today, it was blissfully slow.
Maomao had only been back for a month after her eventful year in the western capital and was stationed near the soldiers training court. This was both a blessing and a curse in one. On one hand, many soldiers came through here because of training accidents, meaning more work and experience for Maomao to gain. She was basically doing a doctor’s work already—though no one would say that aloud. On the other hand, it meant more work and being stationed closer to the freak strategist’s office.
The old fart was currently trying to conspicuously sneak glances through the window, while acting like he was just hanging around. Perhaps he was the reason of their smaller workload today, he worked like a very effective bug repellent.
Maomao wasted no attention on him as she continued mixing some medicine.
There were some new people around as well. It wasn’t a surprise—she was at a new place after having been gone for a whole year. It was still a little difficult to get used to, though. She worked under an older physician whose name she kept forgetting and Dr. Li, as well as Tianyu. Tianyu had, after his laboring in the western capital and their latest dissections, earned himself the title of middle physician, rather than apprentice. It was a bit of a surprise, and it irked Maomao to no end, since she wouldn’t—couldn’t rise above the station of ‘court lady’.
Because of his promotion he was more often than not called out for emergency treatments. He was the youngest of the three doctors after all; he would have to run the errands.
Besides the three physicians and Maomao, there were two new court ladies in training at this medical office, as well as two assistant physicians. The two new men worked interchangeably between this medical office and the one on the western side of the court. They’d joined two months ago and were still in their early days, namely learning by watching the others work and taking care of chores like washing bandages.
Maomao hadn’t yet learned their names, but there was a tall lady with a short name, a short lady with a long name and the new assistant with a half-burnt arm. All three were younger than her, she recalled. The other new assistant physician was a plain man with round eyes. He didn’t talk much, but he seemed to be in his late twenties.
“Excuse me,” it was Mister Burns, peeking his head into the sideroom, “I’ve finished washing the bandages.”
Maomao was about to respond when Dr. Li beat her to it, appearing behind the young man. “Take over from Maomao. We still need more painkillers and sedatives, make those.” He said, before focusing on Maomao. “You, come with me.” He said little else as he ducked out of view.
Obeying easily, Maomao wiped her hands and followed Dr. Li. The physician grabbed his bag before heading out, not bothering to see if his charge followed. The old fart wasn’t outside anymore— he had been herded back to work, it seemed.
A carriage was waiting for them and Maomao’s expression turned sour as she got in.
“Niangniang! Have you heard? There’s ghosts about.” Tianyu was already there, lounging in the carriage without a care in the world.
She didn’t bother to respond as she took a seat.
“They say the ghost of the rear palace is back.”
That gained Maomao’s attention. The previous ghost of the rear palace was simply a consort that feigned sleepwalking. Lady Fuyou had managed to get herself down the ranks of consort’s, and danced atop the rear palace wall’s, praying for the savety of her soon-to-be husband. She was one of the few that managed to get out of the rear palace and was happier for it. Maomao had visited her on their way to the west, last year. She certainly seemed to be doing well.
Another ghost story would be the one in the Gyoku family annex, back in the western capital, where the ‘ghost’ had merely been an owl and her keeper.
All this to say, ghost stories never lasted long, as they would soon be disproven. Still, depending on what this new ‘ghost’ did, it might be worth looking into.
“Really? A ghost?”
“Mhm, was seen floating on top the rear palace wall, or so they say.” Tianyu said it like he didn’t really believe it himself, but it must have peaked his interest, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up. “There’s already talk of it being an omen, seeing as we’re going to inspect a body.”
Ah, that’s why Dr. Li took her. After the last ‘strange’ body, which had been a hanged man and not very strange at all, it seemed their current trio had adopted the task of inspecting bodies and identifying their cause of death. Of course, other upper physicians might take a look themselves, but they were often too busy. They were there to save people before they died, not to figure out what happened after the fact.
Maomao didn’t mind. If they were summoned for it, that meant there wasn’t a clear cause of death, which could mean there were poisons involved.
“D’you think I could carve open a ghost?”
He’d barely finished his sentence before being rapped on the head by Dr. Li and his ferocious knuckles.
—
The body in question was a young woman, a court lady under the ministry of revenue. She had been found in one of the lesser used offices, where she had apparently stayed late to get some more work done. They only found her just now, late morning.
Considering she was still here, rather than here again, it would mean the body was likely at least eight hours old. Rigor mortis had all but claimed her, stiffening the body. It could be rather annoying, to examine such a cold corpse.
To make matters worse, the woman had died slumped over her desk, which did not leave a lot of space to examine her. Still, they did what they could.
The dead court lady’s face was pale, her lips slightly parted as if caught mid-breath. It was a small mercy that her face was turned sideways, like she had fallen askeep while working. There were no obvious wounds—no bruises, no signs of struggle. Just a woman slumped over paperwork, ink staining her sleeve where her brush had fallen.
Dr. Li motioned for Tianyu to check her pulse—a formality, she was long dead—, while Maomao’s eyes roamed the scene. The desk was orderly, the documents mundane. Her color was normal, as were her fingernails, her lips. There wasn’t anything strange about the smell of the excrement that covered the chair either. No immediate signs of poison.
Tianyu, annoyed at the unmoving body, grunted. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, lay it down?”
“Of course not.” Dr. Li looked ready to bring down a knuckle to the young man’s head.
“No, I mean, I get that! But we know there’s nothing on the outside that killed it, so shouldn’t we open it up?” There was a spark in Tianyu’s eyes as he suggested it, though it disappeared as he knuckle came down on his head at last.
It wasn’t a bad idea, but it would require dancing around some legalities that might be difficult to explain.
Tianyu and his scary corpse examing eyes were right, though. There were no contusions or dents, definitely no lacerations.
Dr. Li frowned as he directed Maomao to feel around the corpse’s head, to be sure there had been no trauma to the head. “Rigor mortis won’t allow for it,” he told Tianyu, “and if it did, her family most definitely wouldn’t. No autopsy without permission!”
Maomao moved her fingers through black, silky hair. It was well kempt, the lady was obviously from a rich family. Other than the fine quality of hair, Maomao could feel nothing but a couple of moles. No head trauma.
Tianyu, rubbing his sore head, leaned in. "Find anything?"
"No," Maomao admitted, deciding to put her dissatisfied feeling away. Perhaps she’d been hoping for an exotic poison to reveal itself, hence her feeling slightly strange.
“No apparent bleeding, no contusions, no signs of poison. We’ve come all this way for a natural death.” Dr. Li sounded neither disappointed nor happy about it, it was just as he said. That it was a fact didn’t make it any less weird, though.
‘How is a young woman dying suddenly natural?’ Of course, heart failure could occur in any one person, but it was often older folks. It was simply strange to see a healty young woman collapse without clear cause.
It left the three of them uneasy as they left the office, though all three for different reasons.
—
The strange death was quickly left behind them. They were busy enough, so they weren’t privy to much time to ponder. A couple days passed before talk started again.
“Have you seen the ghost?” It was the taller of the two court ladies, talking the apprentice with burns. “Some guard tried to shoot her, but they say it went right through her.”
It was still all the talk, that ghost story. No proof had been found, only scant sightings of a lady in white walking so slowly atop the palace walls that people thought she was floating.
“Mh… I wonder if the consorts are alright.” Mister Burns looked melancholic. It wasn’t unusual for family or friends of consorts to work at the court as well. If it wasn’t familial affection that led him to worry though, he would have to take care of his words, or he might be punished for fantasising about the emperor’s wives. Or perhaps he simply had a bleeding heart.
Not that it was Maomao’s problem.
“A couple have fallen ill. I’m supposed to go with the rear palace physicians on the check ups in a few days.”
Maomao strained to listen to their conversation then, as she was treating a soldier in the main room of the office, her interest peaked as they mentioned the rear palace physicians—her father.
‘Maybe I can ask pops to tag along.’
Maomao’s fingers twitched slightly as she wrapped the soldier’s sprained wrist, her mind already drifting toward the rear palace. If consorts were falling ill, and a ghost was sighted near their quarters, it was too coincidental to ignore.
Behind her, the conversation between the tall court lady and the burned apprentice continued.
"—heard the ghost only appears when someone’s about to die," Tall Lady said. "They say the last time she was seen, that court lady from the ministry dropped dead the next morning."
Mister Burns paled. "Surely that’s just superstition. Wasn’t she in the ministry of revenue? That’s opposite the rear palace. And hasn’t the ghost been spotted more than once?”
It was true. At least four separate reports had been officially made, three guards and one bureaucrat who had spotted the ghost. With the superstitious logic that would mean at least three more deaths, if you only counted official reports, since there were many more who claimed to have seen it.
“I suppose… maybe it’s not—“
Maomao failed to catch whatever else Tall Lady was saying, as a nuisance popped into the office. “Niangniang, there’s another one.”
Having finshed with the soldier, she watched him leave and debated whether or not she could get away with ignoring Tianyu. Dr. Li was out, but maybe she could get the old doctor to babysit Tianyu for this one instead.
A glance at the man found him shaking his head, having read her mind. With a sigh, Maomao looked back at Tianyu. “Another body?”
“Yup! We’re gonna have a look for formality’s sake.” Which meant it was the same as the last, a body without any obvious cause of death.
The second body was a middle aged rear palace guard, who seemed to have collapsed on his way back after a shift change. It had happened earlier that morning, two hours ago, and the strangest part was, the other guard claimed to have seen it happen.
“I walked past him and thought he looked a little tired, but that’s nothing new, you know? I was by the gate we guard, he was a hundred metres from me, when I looked over his steps became twitchy and then he just fell over!”
The guard’s description was vivid—his comrade had been walking normally one moment, then his steps faltered, his body jerking slightly before he crumpled to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. No gasping, no clutching his chest, just sudden collapse.
Maomao knelt beside the body, her fingers pressing against the guard’s neck. He’d long gone cold, but not stiff, rigor mortis not yet set in. His face was slack, lips slightly parted, eyes half-lidded as if drowsy. No foam, no discoloration. Just like the court lady.
The only mark on his face was from where it had hit the floor, after he had presumably already died.
Tianyu hovered, vibrating with curiosity. "No marks, right? No poison smells?" He was feeling along the guard’s chest for anything unusual.
Maomao shook her head. She parted the guard’s hair, scanning his scalp. Again, nothing—no head trauma. “Was anyone around? Did you hear anything?”
“Well…” the living guard looked uncertain and he glanced at the rear palace wall, across the moat.
“Any information helps.”
He hesitated, his shoulders slumped. “There was crying on the other side of the wall, very faint, but that’s not… necessarily unusual.” The man looked awkward as he said it.
It was hardly uncommon for consorts to be in the rear palace against their will, but it was never openly mentioned or shown. Would one be crying, simply for being there? It didn’t seem likely. The consorts were strong in their own ways.
“Do you often hear someone crying?”
“Yeah, more and more these days. It started a month or so ago.” The guard shifted uncomfortably, his fingers clenched. "It's always around the same time—a litte while before dawn. Some of us thought it was the ghost at first, but... well, it's definitely a woman. One of my buddies said he’s also heard one cry the other night, up on the northern side.”
It didn’t really explain anything about the body they were dealing with, though. She wrote down what she could, but still had to call it a death by ‘natural causes’.
When they returned to their medical office, the Tall Lady was replaced by the short one and the apprentice was gone. Dr. Li had returned and looked troubled by their conclusion of the cause of death.
Tianyu was visibly annoyed by it. “I say we slice it open. I bet it was a poison.”
His comment was a clear try to get Maomao interested as well, and it worked. While she knew a lot of poisons, there was some even she wasn’t too familiar with. If there was some new kind at play, she wanted to know about it.
Dr. Li sighed, giving the young man a look. “We’ll ask the family if we can do an autopsy, but I wouldn’t count on it. Put it out your mind for now, Tianyu, and you can sew up the next open wound that comes through here.”
“Yes, sir!” It was apparently a good compromise, because he started sorting the medicine cabinet without complaining.
It could still be a coincidence, and perhaps it was better not to linger too long on any possibilities. Maomao shook her head and got back to work, she wouldn’t get paid for worrying about this, after all.
—
Maomao was the last one in the medical office—other than the old doctor sleeping in the other room—when Chue popped in, bearing a letter.
Chue was still covered in bandages, and the best movement with her right arm she could manage were small twitches of her fingers. There was little hope if the mobility of the limb would ever increase, which Maomao still felt a little guilty for. Had someone else been there—Dr. You or Luomen, heavens, even Tianyu—she would probably have had better chances. But Maomao had only been able to do a mediocre job at sewing her back together.
Chue lived, though, which was also only thanks to Maomao.
“Miss Maomao, Miss Maomao!”
“Miss Chue, Miss Chue!” Maomao was tired and stank of sweat from working the whole day, but she could always manage a little energy in response to Chue.
“Miss Chue comes bearing a summons!”
“For tonight..?” Any summons Chue would carry would come from Jinshi, no doubt. Maomao felt a little bashful as she recalled her last meeting with him.
He had summoned her then, too, some days after they’d returned from the west—after she’d finally responded to his feelings, sharing a kiss. Of course, she knew what it had entailed, such a summons. She had prepared accordingly—she had not eaten for most of that day, taken the right measures to make sure nothing would come from it.
She had even taken the lead, thinking her first time would be easier if she was in control of the situation. And yet, she’d left no more than half an hour later, slightly relieved and a bit confused. She knew Jinshi was considerate, but for him to hold himself back for her sake came as something of a pleasant surprise.
‘Of course, he’s been holding back for years’, she thought with a a little smile.
“If you want!” Chue said cheerily, which meant that it was not that kind of summons.
Opening the letter, she saw it did indeed come from Jinshi, for tomorrow morning, rather than tonight. That was far better, because she didn’t have any time to prepare anything if it had been that kind of summons. He’d written her, funnily enough, not about the strange deaths, but about the consorts.
A work summons, then. While a little unexpected, this was familiar. Easy. This, she could do.
She hummed as she put the letter in her sleeve, reminded of what the guard had told her earlier that day, of crying consorts and ghosts on walls.
Chue tilted her head. "Something wrong, Miss Maomao?"
"No," Maomao said, though her fingers drummed once against her thigh. "Just thinking about ghost stories."
Chue’s eyes sparkled. "Oh! The one on the wall? They say she’s beautiful—long hair, pale robes. Like a vengeful spirit!"
"Vengeful against whom?"
Chue shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe a man who betrayed her." Like that wasn’t the widest scope possible.
Maomao hummed again. Ghosts didn’t exist, but people pretending to be them certainly did. “Have you seen her?”
“Mhm! But Miss Chue is not as nimble as she used to be, I don’t know where she went!” Which meant that Chue had also realised something more was going on, but had yet to figure out what. A woman that managed to not only climb the wall, but also outrun Chue and dodge an arrow was a threat. Especially when no one knew what her objective was.
The best possible outcome would be that it was sinply another consort, like Fuyou then, who was climbing the wall on nightly escapades.
It was far worse if it was someone from the outside, trying to get to the consorts. That also begged the question how she managed to get over the moat and onto the wall.
It was almost as difficult to fully understand as the other issue.
Seeing as the information hoarder herself was already here, Maomao decided to take advantage of it. “Have you heard about the people dropping dead?”
“Why, yes! Miss Chue took particular interest when she saw a flaw in one of the accounting documents Xu Mojie had been working on. Turns out she has been filtering money to her family for quite some time.”
“From where?”
“Both from families at random and fallen families that have no relatives left. Her father is a merchant, so it didn’t surprise people to see him get rich quick. The man has been questioned but says he had no idea what his daughter had been doing. It’s been decided that the death of his child was punishment enough.”
Maomao’s fingers stilled as she listened to Chue’s words. The court lady who had died—Mojie—had been embezzling funds while working for the government. A crime punishable by death, if discovered. Yet she had died before her crimes had come to light. Had someone found out and took matters in their own hands? Had she been killed over something else? Or had this simply been the Heavens’ judgement?
The latter didn’t seem likely.
“What about the guard?”
“Lan Huan, married into the Jia family. He was a hired sword before his brother-in-law got him a job here.”
“Hm? Nothing else?”
“My! Miss Maomao, the man only died today, and you expect Miss Chue to already know the ins and outs!”
‘Jia, who was that again?’ Maomao thought it sounded familiar. “The brother-in-law, is that a minister?”
“Yup! Minister of Personnel.”
Maomao’s fingers twitched again—this time in recognition. The Ministry of Personnel handled appointments, promotions, and disciplinary actions within the bureaucracy. If the dead guard’s brother-in-law was the Minister of Personnel, that meant he had connections to powerful figures who could manipulate records, assign posts… or cover up crimes.
“Do the two dead have any connection to each other?”
“Nope!”
Chue’s cheerful denial made Maomao’s brow twitch slightly. The lack of an obvious link between the two deaths was frustrating—but then again, if there was a connection, it wouldn’t be something as simple as shared acquaintances.
Then again, this was all on the presumption that they were killed.
“Miss Chue, what way would you kill someone that leaves the least amount of evidence?”
“Oh me, oh my! What do you think Miss Chue’s hobbies are, Miss Maomao? I’m a delicate, married woman!”
It was one of the things Chue often liked to say. She loved to emphasise her marital status—Maomao suspected she was more in love with her husband than one might glean—and her below par physical prowess—which is only true since recently. Of course, before her horrible injuries, Chue was a biaoshi—a well-trained travel guard. She knew many a ways to kill a person, especially since she was also very clever.
After receiving a flat look, Chue gave a little chuckle and produced a little string of flags from her sleeve with a flair. “Suffocation or a well-placed hit to a pressure point in the side of the neck! Problem with those techniques is that they take quite a while to accomplish. Suffocation depends on the person, and the pressure point takes at least ten seconds before it will induce heart failure. Of course, Miss Chue is a good housewife and has never killed someone!”
Maomao shook her head with slight exasperation, but tucked the information away. If the deaths weren't poison—and she'd found no trace of it yet—then something like a pressure point or suffocation was possible. But the guard had collapsed mid-step, twitching, but not suffocating. That didn’t fit.
‘This is far too much trouble’, she thought as she and Chue left the medical office. She decided not to worry about it for now.
Maybe they were really just coincidental deaths.