Chapter Text
The rear palace, home to the emperor of the Li kingdom. It was a sprawling complex, a veritable city unto itself. Even the lower class peripheries were of good quality; sturdy stone and wood structures of better quality than the mud walled farmhouses he'd passed in crossing the fields and hills on the way here. The palace was peaceful like its kingdom. Prosperous. A sign of stability.
It stank.
A lone peddler stood at the very outskirts of the city that extended out from the palace. The rattling inside the heavy box housing his wares told him he needed to go deeper, but not today. It was never good to rush.
To his left was the flamboyant red light district. Here they called it the “Hanamachi”, a district full of beautiful flowers all available for a price. The peddler had no interest in the flowers or what they were selling, but he did know that beauty and excess was conducive to the flow of information. Even during the day, this part of the city was bustling with activity. Men came and went, both as customers and as deliverymen carting food, alcohol, tea, tobacco, flowers, incense, and other accoutremont to the lovely flowers’ trade. The flowers themselves lounged on balconies to offer a glimpse to the men below, smiling and waving or carefully withholding favour for their admirers to aspire to.
It was all the same.
Except.
The peddler’s tall wooden geta sandals came to a stop before one of the larger houses. It was a tall, grand structure with many stories. A number of patrons milled about the entrance, while a young girl dutifully swept the stoop at the front entrance. From inside drifted voices, laughing, singing, an elderly lady arguing with someone who didn’t have enough money for her services, the sound of music, clinking of glasses and teacups… and something very curious.
Hmm…
This brothel also smelled faintly of very well-kept and skillfully made medicine.
“Master Jinshi!”
At the sound of his name, Jinshi paused and carefully schooled his face into a pleasant smile. He turned to face the consort who’d called out to him… her name was Keshi if he recalled correctly… and nodded in acknowledgement.
The pink on her cheeks deepened and she turned her gaze to the ground demurely. “What brings you here?”
“Merely doing my rounds, checking in on how everyone is doing,” Jinshi replied. “I received a missive from another of the ladies requesting an audience.”
“Really?” Keshi touched her fingertips to her bottom lip in a show of concern. “Is everything all right?”
“Of course.” Jinshi radiated calm. “It’s nothing to be concerned about, I assure you.”
“Then…” Keshi’s voice pitched upward hopefully, “perhaps on your way back you might stop in for some tea?”
When Jinshi couldn’t immediately think of an appropriate polite excuse, he was saved when Gaoshun murmured something in his ear. Nothing really, something about the weather. The words didn’t matter so much as the out it provided Jinshi. To outsiders it appeared that Gaoshun had told Jinshi something important that excused him immediately to attend to a different matter.
The icy glare that Keshi directed at Gaoshun a fraction of a second for interrupting did not miss Jinshi’s notice.
“Excuse me, I have some work to attend to,” Jinshi turned to go.
“Perhaps another time,” Keshi called after him.
Jinshi and Gaoshun continued down the hall, their footsteps on the polished wood floor mingling with the quiet sounds of women talking and going about their days. This was one of the long dwellings that housed lower consorts and their maidservants. The women here were all beautiful, many of them educated and from noble families. Some of them were unfortunate girls who had been sold to the palace and were deemed beautiful or of status high enough to appeal to the emperor’s interests. At most the emperor only came to the lower consorts as a diversion, or if the ministers and nobles who were preoccupied with the lack of an heir pestered him enough.
Jinshi didn’t envy him in the slightest.
He and Gaoshun reached their destination, a set of rooms that was still and silent within. A meek maidservant met them at the door. “This way.”
The air inside was stagnant. Heavy. Painfully familiar.
“How long has the lady been ill?” Jinshi asked.
“Three days now.” The head lady in waiting also had dark circles under her eyes and sunken cheeks. “We’ve all been sick. The medicine brought to us by the doctor helped, but…” She trailed off.
Jinshi nodded solemnly. “Please tell the lady we’ve received word from her family. They’ve also generously offered to take in her ladies-in-waiting. The lower servants will continue to receive treatment here before being reassigned.”
“Thank you.” The lady in waiting bowed deeply.
Jinshi and Gaoshun accepted a short audience with the lady herself then took their leave. Out in the corridor, the unnerving quiet of the ill gave way again to a more welcoming quiet. The distant voices and other sounds of day-to-day goings on, a slight breeze through the leaves… but there was a chill this time. Jinshi got the distinct feeling he was being watched. But that wasn’t unusual. He probably was.
The door to Keshi’s quarters, for example, was cracked open when he passed by on the way out. And before he reached the entrance two more ladies also tried to make conversation.
Once they were out in the open, Gaoshun said, “It’s good the medicine seems to be working.”
“Unsurprising.” Jinshi grinned with pride. The medicine was hand-made by an expert, after all.
Another day, another empty coin purse, another decent cup of tea with a young girl who was cute but she was no Pairin. Lihaku sighed. At least the girl had agreed to deliver his letter and modest gift of sweets that a certain unfriendly friend (of sorts) informed him were Pairin’s favourite.
On his way out, Lihaku caught sight of the proprietress scowling angrily over something and quickened his steps. The last thing he wanted to be was collateral damage to whatever put that scary old woman in a bad mood. His fast escape was derailed the moment he approached the gate, however, by a rather unusual sight.
There was a foreigner standing outside the gate. That in itself wasn’t terribly unusual. The city was a trading hub, with travelling merchants coming and going rather frequently. Once a year a caravan came from far out west. This foreigner did not look like the tall, golden-haired foreign emissaries or the dark-skinned merchants or jade-eyed nobility. He had pale flaxen hair and wore simple clothes, but his face was painted in the colours of camellia and violet. On his back he carried a sturdy box, marking him a peddler of sorts. The box was large, as wide as the man himself and as tall as to reach from his shoulders to the backs of his knees.
He was just standing there.
Lihaku didn’t think the old granny back inside would have any interest in accepting a dusty travelling peddler as a customer. But that was none of Lihaku’s business. He continued on his way.
The peddler stayed where he stood, but Lihaku heard a definite hm as he passed by, halfway between a laugh and an affirmation, laced with something else entirely unreadable. He also smelled of something familiar. That question preoccupied Lihaku all the way back to his barracks. It was only as he was passing by the road leading to the rear palace that it clicked. The odd foreign peddler didn’t smell of something familiar, he smelled of someone.
“Maomao!”
Maomao looked up at the sound of her name. Yinghua had found her in the kitchen, standing at the stove in a fragrant cloud of scented vapour. “Yes?”
Yinghua crossed the room to peer into the wok Maomao was stirring. “Master Jinshi’s calling for you. What are you making now?”
“A mint cordial. It helps promote better sleep.” Maomao put the wooden lid over the wok and stooped down to put out the fire until she could come back. “Is everyone waiting in the drawing room?”
They were. Maomao followed Yinghua to the drawing room.
A familiar scene greeted them upon arrival. Gyokuyou sat in all her splendor in her usual spot. Hongniang stood behind her with little Lingli in her arms. This was a familiar sight, a safe sight. It was the couch to Gyokuyou’s left that radiated resplendent danger.
Maomao folded her hands into her sleeves before her face. “Good day, Lady Gyokuyou… Master Jinshi…”
Even with faint circles under his eyes, Jinshi was gorgeous. If only he could just sit there and be pretty all the time, Maomao’s life would be so much more boring better. Maomao wasn’t terribly concerned with the circles, she knew why they were there. It had only been a fortnight prior when he came to her about a number of the lower consorts and their maidservants falling ill. Maomao had been to the rooms of the first consort, observed the symptoms and listened to what the maidservants had to say. The cause was simple, dried and powdered poisonous mushrooms secreted into the sweets the ladies had with their tea. Maomao had borrowed the Quack Doctor’s supplies to make a simple antidote. It hadn’t even been that difficult. The mushrooms weren’t all that interesting compared to other, more rare poisonous mushrooms.
The only mystery left was just who had done the poisoning, and that was none of her business. Maybe they even found the culprit. Jinshi would look more upset if he were here with bad news. Gaoshun would look more ruffled if it were bad news. Which only left good news, that, as already stated, was none of her business. Maomao honestly didn’t care either way. She didn’t ask for an update. But then again, wasting Maomao’s time was Jinshi's favourite pastime. Far be it for her to deny him that pleasure. He was so busy, and it wasn’t like he could blow off steam the way men usually did. Such a shame.
Frankly, Maomao didn’t hear the majority of Jinshi’s update. Some of the lower consorts were going to be sent back to their families to recouperate. One had already been promised to a high-ranking military official for marriage even before she fell ill. Some eunuchs had been sent to the overgrown orchard in the north section of the rear palace to look for more mushrooms. Maomao paid attention to that part of the story… until she was told in no uncertain terms that no she was not allowed to keep any mushrooms they found.
Not even one.
Monsters, all of them. Unappreciative monsters.
Within a week, everything was back to normal.
The only problem was, the new normal included another lower consort falling ill.