Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ The Apothecary's Other Diary ❯ Return To The Jade Palace ( Chapter 10 )

“I need you to return to the inner palace. You will be looking after Lady Gyoukuyo again. She is with child, and this is a secret. When she was pregnant with Princess Linli, she was poisoned twice, and someone placed needles in one of her garments,” Jinshi explained to me. I sighed and nodded acceptance. I gathered up my various personal items and my curing herbs and went through the usual process of entering the inner palace. The guards knew who I was and gave me little issue. Out of three thousand people, two thousand of them women, and I was known to the guards. That bodes.

“Maomao! You’re back!” cheered the girls on my entrance to the Jade palace. Lady Gyoukuyo greeted me with a smile of relief. I could see she was in pain or at least discomfort. The princess was being minded by the head maid, and the little girl was waddling around in the way of the small child she was. I was like that once. She was a happy child, which was a bit of a relief. Not much for crying or temper tantrums. I greeted the Lady, then the maid, and finally the princess who peered at me briefly, then wandered around some more.

I conferred with the head maid regarding the Lady’s diet, making sure she’d get more green leafy vegetables to increase a particular nutrient she would need while pregnant. Otherwise I was poison tasting every meal and various tasks around the palace. The girls were amazed at my arm scar being healed and I refused to elaborate on how that came to be. I couldn’t tell them the Great Sage was my brother. That was a state secret.

All the maids are talking about the new consort, Lou Lan. She was secretive, rarely speaking out loud where strangers could hear, and her large eyes really reminded me of someone. She also cosplayed in many different outfits, which explained why she arrived with so much baggage. She changes her hair and clothes and makeup and jewelry every day, which apparently causes the emperor confusion, since he isn’t sure if she’s the consort or someone else. He still visited her every ten days, but whether Lou Lan will be bearing any children or not only the two of them will know. And I’m not that curious. Not yet.

I spent a couple days cleaning and inventorying the court quack doctor’s herbs and medical supplies. It was that time of year. He objected, until I told him about the pay cut that the outer court doctor suffered for letting medicine (poison) get into the hands of a spy. I left out the part about the spy, only he’d been fined for mismanagement. This was sufficient motivation. We spent quite a bit of time on this, including replacing the papers used to store the medicines and the charcoals within that prevented water and rot of the ingredients. The paper was interesting. We even used some for a plate for the sweet bun he served with tea. After an explanation about making paper in his family, and the woes of paper production risking his court supplier status, I noticed the problem with cow saliva and the paper pulp, which cows digest, meaning their saliva probably contains something that can break down cellulose. I explained this carefully without saying it outright and the poor man was stunned when he finally understood, then rushed off to send a letter to his family. I must not be smug. But I’m SOOO smug. On the inside.

Another day, another poison tasting. I swear I am gaining weight. I think my brother fixed a bunch of things wrong with me I didn’t realize, but I’m developing hips, buttocks and… bosoms. I look like I might be fourteen instead of twelve, even though I’m eighteen now. Jinshi is currently nineteen, though he pretends to be twenty-five while playing eunuch.

“How much does it cost to buy a courtesan?” demanded the extremely nervous and nearly panicked Lihaku of me one day. He’d done me a favor or two, so I agreed to hear him out.

“It depends,” I said, then explained at length about pricing, rarity, bidding wars, and what it would take to get Pairin, which is who he’s aiming for. Eventually this got to the point of needing him to strip down, including the final covering because I know my sister’s tastes. She likes men with muscles and stamina, and he had both. If he was big enough she would choose him, possibly at a lower price. Granny would want as much as she could get, of course, but the gold for me, and for mother, this might go either way. Granny’s greed might be more. Or might be less.

Naturally while I’m examining Lihaku, Jinshi storms in full of jealousy and drags me away.

“What were you doing?” he demands in his private office, Gaoshun looking very amused.

“He wants to buy my sister,” I answered, cutting off whatever head of steam he’d been building up. Yes, I know that steam engines are centuries away. As Tanya I rode a number of steam trains, so I have a certain sympathy for them, a sense of nostalgia.

“But… why was he naked?” he wanted to know.

“My sister has particular tastes. How he looks will affect what price he has to pay to redeem her,” I explained. His raised eyebrow was giving that Spock guy a run for his money. Then he pouted. I opted to use my feminine wiles and climbed onto his lap, getting my face very close to him.

“Didn’t we go over this before?” I asked him quietly. He was frozen. “That time I went home to see my uncle?” He nodded without saying anything. “So you understand that I was returning a favor from before. And he’s got a bad crush on Pairin neesan. He heard a princess sold, but that was probably either me or mama. Has Lakan been bothering you lately?” I asked.

“Yes, he keeps poking at me on various topics, or wants to see you, or is bragging about his lovemaking with your mother using board game metaphors,” Jinshi complained. I paused.

“That’s probably not a metaphor. They were both crazy about Go and Shibo. Pairin said they used to decide who would be on top based on who won the last game.”

“Maomao. That is already more information than I want to know. Have you gained weight?” he asked suddenly, hands wrapped around my bottom and squeezing. My brain sort of fuzzed out then and when I came back to my senses I was breathing hard and felt tingly all over.

“Huh. Did you just have a moment?” Jinshi asked. I shivered against him.

“Hurry up and marry me already,” I complained.

“Once I figure out who is the root of our troubles,” he promised.

“Or you get me pregnant and I can’t hide it anymore,” I reminded.

“Or that. I suppose,” I agreed.

“Don’t make the Great Sage unhappy. He’ll make you grow a beard and drop your voice two octaves,” I warned him. He froze, picturing that and shuddered. This set me off again and when my brain started working once more I knew I needed a bath. Damn hormones. I never realized that regular healthy women felt this way.

I later heard that Jinshi offered Lihaku a loan of ten thousand silver to buy out Pairin. He turned him down, out of pride. Both seemed content with their decisions.

“A blue rose, you say?” I confirmed.

“Your father was taunting me with it.”

“Roses don’t turn blue. They can be a red so deep they’re almost black, white, or yellow. Even pink. But not blue.”

“What about green?” he asked.

“Flowers are never green. They have to stand out to attract bees. This does imply that bees can see in color,” I pointed out.

“So how could he see blue flowers?” Jinshi asked me. I pursed my lips in thought, then remembered something.

“I know how it is done. However, roses won’t bloom for another two months,” I pointed out.

“Guh. I guess this means I’ve lost this one. He seemed sure he’d seen such a thing in time for the feast,” he said. Oh, that again. It has been a year since the flower party in winter, hasn’t it?”

“Is this important to you?” I asked him. He eyed me curiously.

“You have some plan?” he confirmed.

“I need to use the steam room. And its going to take a huge amount of labor. I will probably want some help, maybe Xiaolan would be willing. I need around fifty white roses.”

“Why white roses?” he asked.

“Because blue ones don’t exist. I’ll show you if this works. Just make it happen,” I insisted.

In my main diary I explain the entire effort, the labor, the nights worried over temperatures, carrying the plants out on sunny days and warmer nights with careful management of the fire to heat just enough to trick the plants into blooming two months early. A few days before the feast, I had a result and did the next bit by hand, watching the process work like I’d read about in that Western book. I am amazed, but it worked. And I presented the roses, which included pink, yellow, red, and white as well as blue to Jinshi, who showed it to the Emperor while interrupting Prime Minister Shi’s smug proclamation over his daughter, the cosplay consort. She looked, as she often did, expressionless. Watching the blue roses presented to the court by Prince Ka Yue, the fake eunuch Jinshi, and my future husband.

After that I went and took a long nap.

“I think it is time to allow Linli to go outside, with supervision. Maomao, you supervise. I’ll assign a couple guards to keep her safe with you,” Consort Gyoukuyo announced after the Emperor visited them. He actually shows good affection to the little princess, so maybe he’s not a lecherous old man after all?

The little toddler princess Linli meandered around in the courtyard in front of the Jade Palace, not very far. A number of eunuchs and maids and ladies peered at her, leaving different impressions on their feelings about her. As a princess she would someday be married off to a prince or a rich merchant in some foreign land, probably once she was thirteen. I consider this a cruel practice, but I’d do what I could to give her a good life as long as I was here to help raise her. She was a sweet child, after all.

“Meow!” cried a kitten somewhere nearby.

“Mao! Maomao!” replied the princess, scuttling towards a gap between buildings where the little kitten peered out at us. I gently stopped the Princess going in between these buildings and went in myself. The cat scuttled back and out, then was snatched up by a maid.

“Oh!” she said. “Is this what you were after?” She handed the kitten to me gently and I examined the dirty thing.

“Thank you,” I said and returned between the buildings to emerge once more.

“Maomao!” cried the little princess, reaching up with her tiny arms to seize the filthy kitten.

“No, no. I have to take it to the doctor first. Give it a bath. A bath!” I explained to the disappointed child. She looked ready to cry, so I ushered her back to the Jade Palace and the ladies took over getting the girl a snack, a bath, and a nap. I went to see the doctor, who turned out to really like animals. We examined the female kitten, he washed it, and we fed it milk from the kitchens using a length of beef intestine, carefully washed, to act as the nipple. The kitten bore up and once eating began to purr in happiness. I can relate. To be fair, I had the most happiness in the lives I remember as Komachi, though the rich girl Kuberu E. Pastillage had it pretty good. Leagues better than Madoka the betrayed sacrifice or Tsuyu Asui, the frog superhero. Mami Nanami was so emotionally needy it didn’t bear thinking about. And the black knight who ended up losing a fight to some high level healer… that was embarrassing. Especially finding out that girl was a masochist. And ending up a trainee healer, which should have been perfect since healers learn to tolerate pain while healing. It should have worked. But failure comes in many flavors. And I’ve lived so many lives as this or that woman/girl. Sometimes a hero. Sometimes the sidekick. Sometimes the comic relief.

A few days of care found the kitten to be sufficiently clean and healthy to present to the little princess, who immediately doted on the furball, which then proceed to either follow the girl around or nap somewhere, to the point you had to look before sitting down anywhere warm or sunny.

The part that upsets me is they named the cat Maomao. They spelled it different into palace guard. Still, even the Emperor felt enjoyment teasing me about this.