“Lady Ah-Duo, it’s been ever so long!” drawled Maomao’s guide, Chue. She bowed her head politely, and Maomao did the same. She felt a little funny, though: The last time they’d met was when Ah-Duo told her about her relationship to Jinshi.
“I’m not sure I would say ever so long,” said Ah-Duo, instructing her ladies-in-waiting to shepherd the children away. The kids looked disappointed, but the ladies herded them off.
Maomao had the same thought every time she visited the villa: They really look up to her, don’t they?
“Shall we take this conversation inside?” Ah-Duo asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Maomao said. Considering what they were there to discuss, she was eager to speak in private.
Maomao had come to ask Suirei about anesthetics. Dr. Liu and the other physicians were working themselves to the bone to implement better treatments for His Majesty, but anesthesia was one place there was still room for improvement. The very fact that they were willing to entertain Maomao’s suggestion was evidence that they would take all the help they could get.
Or in this case, maybe I should say they’re grasping at straws.
The small company went to one of the rooms in the villa. It had a modest table and four chairs; an attendant prepared tea and then promptly left.
It was only Ah-Duo, Suirei, Maomao, and Chue in the room together. Ah-Duo gestured for them to sit, and they did so.
Ah-Duo folded her legs and turned to Maomao. “Now, I hear you have business with Sui. What is it you want?”
“I’d like to ask...Sui...for her medical knowledge,” Maomao said. She wasn’t sure it was appropriate to use the name Suirei, so she settled on using the shortened form as well.
“What do you think, Sui?” Ah-Duo asked.
“I have no opinion,” the young woman replied. “I’ll follow your orders, Lady Ah-Duo.”
“Ah, you’re no fun.” Ah-Duo took a smoking pipe in her hand and twirled it deftly. It didn’t look like she actually smoked; she just enjoyed spinning it. It reminded Maomao of the way Jinshi would twirl his brush between his fingers.
“What, precisely, do you want Sui to do?” Ah-Duo asked.
Maomao took that as her cue to bring out the item she had brought with her. It was a chest of thin wood. She opened the lid to reveal a sheet of paper, along with some charcoal to protect it from humidity and something to keep bugs away.
“What’s this?” Suirei inquired.
“Are you familiar with a medicine called mafeisan?”
Suirei paused, choosing her words carefully. “I’ve heard of it, just once. It sounds to me like something out of a fairy tale—a drug that puts you to sleep and keeps pain at bay.” She seemed to be quietly scanning the reconstructed page.
“What would you do if I told you that drug exists?”
“I wouldn’t do anything.”
“Even if I said it contains thornapple?”
“I see that’s what’s written here. But that’s not a medicine; that’s poison, isn’t it? What are you going to use it for?”
Ah-Duo observed this conversation closely but quietly; Chue was squirming like she could barely restrain herself from offering some piquant interjection.
“We would use it for surgery,” said Maomao.
Suirei nodded: This, it appeared, made sense to her. “You’re suggesting temporarily stopping the heart to prevent pain during surgery?” She was speaking of the resurrection drug she herself had made.
“We wouldn’t go quite that far. Do you think it could be made mild enough to simply induce unconsciousness?”
“I think this is a road you’d be better off not taking.” Suirei wasn’t biting, not even a little. “Thornapple is an extremely potent poison. I understand wanting to make things easier on the patient by preventing them from feeling pain—believe me, I do—but the very fact that you’re here seeking knowledge from a criminal like me tells me how cornered you must feel. Who do you propose to use this anesthetic on?”
Suirei was a sharp one.
“I can only say that it’s someone very important,” Maomao replied. It wasn’t her place to identify the person exactly.
Ah-Duo, however, was kind enough to guess. “Oh hoh. Has that poor boy’s illness started up again?”
That’s not very respectful, Maomao thought. “That poor boy” was probably Ah-Duo’s way of referring to the Emperor.
The question is, how do I answer?
Maomao shot Chue a sidelong glance. She just grinned and didn’t do anything to halt the conversation, so Maomao decided to go on.
“I don’t know who you’re referring to, but what was the nature of his illness before?” Maomao asked, careful not to use any names.
“Well, let’s see. I remember he was unwell for quite a while. The physicians probably have records more precise than my memories. All I could really tell you about is the fights with his grandmother.”
Ah-Duo seemed to remember it all quite clearly.
“Ahem... Yes, his grandmother. She was a very strong person, so let’s call her... Oh, I don’t know. Let’s say ‘the empress regnant.’”
That’s not a code name!
Chue groaned quietly, but she made a circle with her hands, a sign of approval, so the conversation went on.
“So this man fought with this...empress regnant?” Maomao asked.
“Ah, yes, I like that name. Much easier to work with. You want to hear the story? One of them was a lady more than eighty years old, who in spite of her age showed absolutely no inclination to step off the political stage, and the other was, let’s say, a crown prince in his rebellious phase. They were at each other’s throats so loudly that I could hear it all the way in my place, and the crown prince would always want me to listen to him complain about it afterward. Somewhere in the middle of it all, though, he looked like he was in genuine distress.”
She’s straight-out saying “crown prince”! She’s not even trying to hide it!
Chue made a disapproving X. “Now now, Lady Ah-Duo, we can’t do that. I need you to be evasive about his identity,” she drawled. “Otherwise, what is Miss Chue supposed to report back to everyone?”
“It’s just us here; it’s fine. I’m sure you can think of some way to talk around it, Chue.”
“Hmph! Miss Chue is going to be working overtime...”
“Do forgive me.” Ah-Duo set down her pipe and sipped from her teacup.
“What kinds of things did they fight about?” Maomao asked.
“I wonder if I’m allowed to tell you... Well, I suppose it’s fine. In her twilight years, the empress regnant began to show signs of dementia.”
That earned a jolt from both Maomao and Suirei. Chue alone looked unfazed, starting in on the snacks.
“But then, involvement in politics...”
...would have been impossible, Maomao thought.
“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that she forgot everything she once knew. She was just inexplicably careless sometimes. But still...”
“It sounds like something unpleasant happened because of it.”
“Yes. If I said it involved I-sei Province eighteen years ago, would you understand?”
Maomao didn’t say anything, but she thought, Now, here’s a subject I’ve had my fill of!
She and Chue, among others, had been over every inch of that area the previous year.
“At the time, I’m given to understand, a letter arrived regarding the Yi clan’s rebellion. By some mistake, the former emperor’s seal ended up affixed to it. That was the incident that led Yoh... I mean, the current Emperor, to realize that something was wrong.”
I’m scared out of my wits, here.
The Emperor and the empress regnant might have been family, but it wasn’t like they had seen each other all the time. Worse yet, there were few if any who could have remonstrated with the woman who had been effectively the greatest power in the nation. Even if there had been signs, no one could have said anything.
With his grandmother holding the reins of power and his father a puppet, the crown prince had decided to do what he could—yes, that would be more than a little stressful.
“You said his symptoms subsided, though, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I don’t know if this was a good thing or not, but first the empress regnant and then the former emperor died, one after the other.”
In other words, the source of the stress had been removed.
“The coronation kept him busy, but taking over the work itself turned out to be surprisingly simple. Besides, he was able to rest during the mourning period.”
“I feel I have to ask: What was the cause of the empress regnant’s demise?”
“You can relax. It wasn’t an assassination. She simply died of old age.”
“I figured.”
The empress regnant had been an old woman; even the former emperor had been more than sixty years old. Maomao hoped their deaths had really been natural.
“If the old condition is bothering him again, I wonder if it means there’s some new worry he’s suffering from.”
“Some new worry...”
Maomao mentally reviewed the Emperor’s non-empress-regnant relations. There was one. The one who was officially the Emperor’s younger brother, who had recently spent a year away from the royal capital engaged in a battle against the plague of insects.
The Emperor would have to be beside himself about his own son.
This person was Ah-Duo’s child as well.
Does she know the truth?
Did she know that her precious little boy had burned a brand into his own side? Maomao suspected that accounted for a substantial percentage of the Emperor’s stress.
Suirei let out a great sigh. “All the more reason I don’t think my knowledge will be of any use.”
She still wasn’t biting.
“Didn’t you say you would follow my orders, whatever they were?” asked Ah-Duo.