Maomao was quiet. In other words, he was arguing with the empress regnant. That would give anyone enough stress to cause an ulcer or two.
Maomao had never actually met the former empress dowager, popularly known as the “empress regnant,” so she couldn’t say for certain, but from what she’d heard, the woman had been a force of nature. Word on the street likewise held that in her twilight years, she had often clashed with the man who was the crown prince at the time and was now the Emperor.
“Also—and I don’t know how you’ll feel to hear this, Xiaomao...”
“Yes, sir?”
“The one who was always at His Majesty’s side at that time was Sir Lakan.”
Maomao’s mouth hung open. “Not good news!”
“Your true feelings are showing,” Jinshi remarked before he could stop himself.
Nonetheless, now that Gaoshun had mentioned it, it made a lot of sense. Seventeen—no, eighteen—years ago, the monocled freak head returned from the western capital. He would have needed a powerful backer to rise in the world as he had after that. Given that the crown prince was both younger than him and had been at odds with the empress regnant, an alliance could have strengthened both their positions.
It might at least explain why a man who took matters into his own hands to the extent of smashing through the walls of the rear palace got away without so much as a slap on the wrist.
He’s got a finger on the Emperor’s weakness.
Yes, it made sense...almost too much sense.
“You don’t think the old fart with the monocle might have been the source of the stress?” said Maomao.
“I prefer to refrain from commenting on the matter,” Gaoshun said. So he was running away.
“All right. So the Emperor is now showing the same symptoms he did back then?”
“That’s right. As far as Dr. Liu and Dr. Kan can discern, the situation isn’t yet critical.”
Dr. Kan: in other words, Maomao’s old man, Luomen.
“But it also doesn’t look like it’s going to fix itself, huh?” said Maomao. “If anything, it must be gradually getting worse.”
Gaoshun nodded.
If the condition didn’t seem to be responding to drugs, they would have to do surgery.
Wounding the “jade body”? Yikes.
Even Maomao understood that those who would take such an action must be prepared to die for it, even if they did it in the name of surgery. Even if the procedure was successful, who knew what people might say? Someone might find some excuse to put them to death anyway. They were dealing with someone who lived “above the clouds,” which automatically made this a vastly weightier matter than even the cutting open of the Empress Dowager’s stomach.
Maomao unconsciously scratched her head. It would be ridiculous for her father Luomen, not to mention Dr. Liu—both excellent doctors—to suffer unjust punishment over something completely beyond their control.
“Why has the condition relapsed? What could cause—” Maomao began, but then she happened to look at Jinshi. Specifically, his flank.
It’s this son of a—!
Jinshi bit his lip and pressed a hand to his side. At least he seemed to know.
Maomao tried to put herself in the Emperor’s shoes. Officially, Jinshi was his younger brother, but in reality he was his son. And that young man had abruptly burned a brand into his side and asserted that he would not take a consort, and then he’d disappeared to the western capital and not returned for a solid year—yeah, that would cause some pretty unimaginable stress.
There were probably plenty of other things weighing on the royal mind as well, but Maomao had a suspicion that Jinshi accounted for a pretty good percentage of it.
However, from Jinshi’s perspective, the Emperor was his older brother, not his father. He still didn’t know the secret of his own parentage, she was pretty sure. That misapprehension was a big part of what had allowed him to do something as rash as burning a brand into himself.
All right, no point pursuing the cause of the illness at this moment, then.
“Master Gaoshun,” Maomao said. “What purpose does it serve to hear the opinion of the likes of me?”
“One wishes to get a variety of perspectives, Xiaomao.”
“A variety, sir?”
Gaoshun of all people should be able to hear about His Majesty’s condition from the highest-ranking physicians in the land. By the same token, however, hearing from any of the lower physicians would be difficult. She supposed he wanted the viewpoint of a minion like her to avoid becoming too biased in his thinking.
Then again, perhaps he was considering the possibility that the upper physicians were lying to them. Whether from good motives or bad, it was hardly unusual for a doctor to conceal the extent of a patient’s illness.
“If you’re involved, Gaoshun, then I take it we can assume it’s not good,” Jinshi said.
“No, sir, it’s not. I think it will soon be hard to cover for His Majesty’s condition. We’ve been careful to conceal his poor pallor with whitening powder, but I think people will soon begin to notice anyway.”
“And once they do, it’s going to be a big deal,” Maomao said.
Ordinarily, one wished to worry only about the sick person themselves. With the royal family, however, matters were different. The state of their health could provoke a great deal of talk.
“If anything should happen to His Majesty, the country would be thrown into chaos,” Jinshi muttered, and he was right. The Crown Prince wasn’t even five years old. If he were to have a regent to rule in his stead, it would be Empress Gyokuyou’s father, Gyokuen.
Many of the Emperor’s subjects disliked the Crown Prince, in whose veins flowed distant western blood. Many others no doubt would wish to put Consort Lihua’s son, who was the same age as the Crown Prince, on the throne.
And there was one other candidate: the twenty-two-year-old younger son of the Emperor’s own mother. Jinshi.
Chaos! Chaos wouldn’t even begin to cover it.
Jinshi himself might not have any interest in the jade throne, but that wouldn’t dissuade anyone else. Crying that he simply couldn’t because he had a brand in his flank wouldn’t pass muster.
Just when it seemed the discord between the Empress’s faction and the Empress Dowager’s was calming down, an even bigger bomb was poised to go off.
This isn’t going to make him less stressed out, Maomao thought. Trying to conceal his illness so as not to worry those around him would only make it worse. The Emperor has to be the Emperor before he can be a sick man.
Whatever the illness, so long as one was in the position of majesty, one had to simply get through it. One could not just beg off and relax for a while to recover.
The Emperor was said to live above the clouds; he was not like those who lived on the earth.
Gaoshun might be worried about the state of his milk brother, the Emperor, but he was also a vassal of the same man. What was it that he, a vassal, wanted Maomao to do?
“Master Gaoshun. Are you sure you should be quite so forthcoming with me?”
“Are you the kind to blab to others, Xiaomao?” he replied promptly—the back-and-forth felt familiar.
“Surely you don’t need to go so far as to tell me the Emperor’s actual condition.”
“It would be rude to ask for information without offering any.”
It sounded as if Gaoshun were talking about simple give-and-take, but that wasn’t really true.
“I have faith that the physicians will tell you only what is true,” Maomao said. It was all she could say.
“Understood,” Gaoshun replied, and left.
It had been so long since the three of them had had a chance to talk together, but this conversation had only reinforced to her how different their positions now were. Nonetheless, Maomao decided to take a positive view of things: This was certainly better than if the Emperor had no allies at all.
Be that as it may...
Maomao watched Gaoshun leave, then glanced at Jinshi. “What are you going to do, sir?” she asked.
“I can’t say I know what you mean.”
Maomao crept up to Jinshi and poked him in the flank.
✦ ✦ ✦
