The Apothecary Diaries

Chapter 246

The Weeping Wind (Part Two)

~Φ~

His mother had often said to him, “When you grow up, you’ll become the wind.”

When he came of age at fifteen, he would go out into the world—but until then, she told him, he must study all that the world had to offer. Two more years of this learning lay ahead of him…

Become the wind, she told him, and blow so that the air of the western reaches might stay clear.

It was a memory from the time before Rikuson was called Rikuson.

The women protected the town while the men roamed across the plains: this was what he had been taught. He was sad to know he would have to leave home someday, but if he could become the wind, if he could be of help to his mother and his older sister, then he was glad of that.

He enjoyed his afternoon walks, trying to decide how he could best use the pocket change they gave him, how to get something good for it and not waste it. What should he spend it on that would be satisfying? That was its own kind of study. Many of his male relatives who went out on their own became merchants, and Rikuson expected that was the path he, too, would choose.

He went from shop to shop, comparing flavors and prices and quantities, until he found the best dried fruit or goat’s milk and bought it. Then, he would go to the Shogi hall.

It was full of adults with time to kill jawing with each other—and there was much information to be had there. Rikuson might be able to hear even more talk at the tavern, but he wasn’t yet of age and they wouldn’t let him in.

There were plenty of drunks at the Shogi hall too—but once in a while you could run into a true master.

“Oh, hey there, kiddo. Back again?” asked an old man sitting at a Shogi board. He was a former secretary at the administrative building. He was mostly retired now, but he was collecting materials for some sort of new history he was compiling. He was the best Shogi player in the western capital. Everyone called him Big Lin.

“Uh-huh.” Rikuson seated himself beside Big Lin and studied the board. Sticking close to him would keep the nastier drunks away.

Then Rikuson tilted his head. “Huh?” Big Lin was losing this game. You didn’t see that often. Rikuson looked at his opponent and saw a man still more or less in the bloom of youth, but ragged, filthy. His face bore a fine stubble, his clothes were grimy, and his hair was barely tied in place. His outfit was nice enough, but it seemed his circumstances weren’t. He looked feeble, and had no tan; he didn’t seem to be a resident of the western capital. But his eyes—his eyes glinted like those of a fox.

“I see you have a little Pawn with you,” the man said—a Shogi piece. He wore a monocle over one of his fox-like eyes, an imported piece, but on this guy everything looked crude instead of fancy.

What did he mean by that? He seemed to be talking about Rikuson. He bristled at the expression, his hands balling into fists. “Who are you calling a Pawn?” he demanded.

“Don’t get upset, kid. Lakan’s just that kind of creature,” Big Lin said calmly.

“But he called me a Pawn!”

“What’s wrong with that? Most people, he just calls ’em Go stones.”

“Go stones…”

Rikuson wasn’t sure what the difference was between a Go stone and a Pawn. He looked at the board as he pondered the question. This “Lakan” might look suspicious and might mock everyone he met—but he backed it up by being a tremendous Shogi player. This was the first time Rikuson had ever seen Big Lin losing a game. Even if Big Lin wasn’t quite the player he had been in his youth, at the peak of his powers, people still called him the Shogi sage; it almost didn’t seem possible that he could lose. But this visitor seemed to be holding him to fifty-fifty in their games.

Curious, Rikuson came back the next day, and the day after that. Lakan was always there. (Did he even have a job?) When he wasn’t at the Shogi hall, Rikuson found out, he was at the Go hall. All he did was play games.

One day, Big Lin wasn’t there; Lakan was playing with some other people, but he looked awfully bored by it.

“It’s him again,” someone said. “The Yi boy!”

No one would have dared to say such a thing in the presence of Big Lin, but they felt no need to restrain themselves when Rikuson was alone.

Yi boy. A child of the Yi clan; that was what they were calling him. The Yi clan ruled the western capital, but there were many who resented their unique system of inheritance and were all too ready to speak ill of them.

Generation to generation, the Yi clan was ruled by women; any boys who were born left their homes when they came of age. Yi women did not have husbands, and didn’t know who the fathers of their children were. Like animals, some sneered.

Rikuson knew that such contempt was to be expected. Many members of the nomadic tribes passed through the western capital, and those tribes had always had a strong patriarchal bent. They even denigrated children of unknown fathers as “Yi spawn.”

For all that, Rikuson still felt the pride of knowing that the Yi had protected these western reaches for centuries.

Without Big Lin there, he did the next best thing and sat down beside Lakan. They’d met several times now, but the other man had made no effort to remember Rikuson. In fact, he made no effort to remember anybody. He just sat in front of his Shogi board; if someone put a few coins on the table, he would play. That was it. The most he might do is compare someone to a Shogi piece based on whether they were weak or strong, or perhaps by some other standard.

“Mister, don’t you remember faces?”

“I don’t get people’s faces,” Lakan said. He might be a grown-up, but he didn’t talk like one.

“What’s to get? You see them a few times, you remember them, right?”

“I only see Go stones. Or Shogi pieces if I’m lucky.”

This made no sense to Rikuson, but he didn’t think Lakan was lying. Distinguishing people’s faces was probably no easier for him than telling livestock apart was for most people. Among the nomadic tribes, it was said that some herdsmen could distinguish each and every one of their sheep—but Rikuson could never do that. Maybe Lakan saw people’s faces the same way Rikuson saw sheep.

“Well, what do you do when you really need to remember who someone is?”

Lakan was silent for a moment. As he mulled over Rikuson’s question, he continued a merciless game of Shogi. His opponent blanched, acknowledged he was defeated, and put some coins on the table. Maybe Lakan was supporting himself by wagering on Shogi games?

Finally he said, “I remember them by the shape of their ears, or their height. I look at the quality of their hair. Memorize the stink of their sweat. Or I listen for the pitch of their voice…”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just remember their face?”

“I don’t get faces. I can see people have eyes and a nose and a mouth, but when I try to put them together, they get all tangled up and all I can see is a Go stone. Now, the size of a person’s nostrils, the length of their eyelashes—those, I can understand.”

So he didn’t remember an entire face, just specific details about it. That sounded exhausting. No wonder he only did it for the most important people.

“Did you come from the central region, mister?” Rikuson asked.

“Yeah, and one of these days I’ll go back. I’ve got to.” Lakan casually smashed his next opponent as he spoke.

“The central region,” Rikuson murmured. His mother had told him to become the wind and blow on his way, but would she approve of him going as far as the royal capital? If wind he was to be, he wanted to travel as far as wind might.

“Mister,” he said. “If I become big and famous in the central region, will you give me a job?”

“Hrm? You move up from being a Pawn, sure.”

“All right. It’s a deal.”

His sister had taught him that it was always a good thing to make connections. Rikuson didn’t know if he would become a merchant or not, but it couldn’t hurt to get to know everyone he could.

In the evenings, the whole clan ate together. Rikuson was surrounded by women. The bloodline produced a lot of them to begin with, and since the only other boy had come of age last year, Rikuson was the only male child left.

There were three little girls, though, sisters born in successive years. Cousins of Rikuson. They looked much alike—the same father, perhaps. They were three, four, and five years old, and while the oldest had proved quite smart, the younger two couldn’t really talk yet, and Rikuson often found himself obliged to look after them.

His older sister was already past the age of adulthood and was accepted among the grown-ups.

He listened to the adults talk as he fed his cousins. They spoke of food provisions, imported goods, and Li’s exports.

Rikuson’s mother was a central figure in the clan. Her younger sister, Rikuson’s aunt, was the current ruler of the Yi; she had not borne any daughters, and as things stood it was Rikuson’s older sister, well qualified by age and ability, who was next in line to lead. So people went out of their way to include Rikuson’s sister in their discussions.

From what he overheard, Rikuson gathered that foreign trade was in a bad place right now. They had been in the red for years, to the point that the central region was giving them a hard time about it. Long ago, they had produced copious quantities of high-quality paper, but these days there was only inferior stuff to be had. Paper, light and convenient to transport, had been a major product for them, and Rikuson’s mother and the others struggled to find a replacement for it.

Worse, there had been an insect plague in I-sei Province. The increased farmlands, themselves the natural result of the western capital’s burgeoning population, were to blame. All the royal capital could see was the harvest numbers, and since those remained high, they refused to send any support. But the extra people meant even less food to go around.

“We should bring out the black stone,” his aunt said. His mother, and his sister, and his mother’s older sister, and all the women of the clan could only nod their assent.

Rikuson did not know what the black stone was; he just continued feeding bread to his three-year-old cousin.

In the evenings, his sister and mother would teach him the history of I-sei Province.

When the nation of Li was founded, they said, the three children from the belly of Wang Mu, the Mother Royal, became the leaders of the three provinces.

At first the Yi clan, which ruled the west, struggled terribly. In this land, the tendency to put men ahead of women was especially strong. People mocked the Yi because their progenitor was a woman; people took advantage of them and at one point it seemed the clan might fall apart. Sycophants tried to steal their name with flattery, while others sought to do it through force.

So, in order that their clan might not be seized from within, they adopted a matriarchal system. They did not bring husbands into their houses. All their successors were women.

Special roles emerged for men of the Yi clan. One of them was to become the wind. The wind—or again, hearers of things.

They went here and there in I-sei Province, gathering information. As merchants, as nomads. Those who became nomads later came to be known as the Windreader tribe, and could employ birds and keep the bugs at bay.

Only, there had been a miscalculation. The Windreader tribe had been destroyed decades ago.

There had been several Windreader tribes, and one of them ceased their regular communication with the Yi. For years, decades, then centuries, they maintained their separation from the clan. The Yi would occasionally send a boy to try to strengthen the bonds of blood, but there were no guarantees that the tribe would swear allegiance to a former clan leader indefinitely. Eventually, there appeared some who sought to profit by communicating with other countries.

Then came the attack. The Windreader tribe that was no longer communicating with the Yi was tragically annihilated by another tribe. Some idiot had decided that the ability to control birds must be passed down by blood and had kidnapped one of their women, trying to gain the power for himself. Then, in order that he would have a monopoly on the power, he killed the others and sold any survivors into slavery.

The Yi could not abide the Windreaders who had spurned to communicate with them. They broke up the remaining Windreaders as well, sending those with any useful abilities to live in town. Once in a while, Rikuson understood, they also quietly disposed of anyone who would misuse the tribe’s avian practices.

If the Windreader tribe had continued to exist, another choice would have been open to Rikuson. He could have wandered the plains as one of their members.

Rikuson’s mother and sister never did teach him how to handle the birds, but they taught him how to ward off the insects, and told him about how things worked in the farming villages that continued to dot the area. If another plague broke out, the Yi men who lived around the province would be better prepared than anyone.

One of the men who had left the Yi clan often visited Rikuson’s house. He was a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man with a gentle smile. His name was Gyokuen. In the western capital, he was sometimes called “the new You.”

He had a full, kindly face, and he often gave Rikuson candy.

“He looks like a very intelligent boy. Might I take him as my son?” he asked Rikuson’s mother.

“Please. You’re joking,” she replied. “People already laugh at you, say you have too many wives. You old womanizer.”

“Ahh, so long as I can keep my wives and children in style, there’s no problem.”

Rikuson found he was surprised by this revelation: for all his modest looks, Gyokuen loved women.

Gyokuen was an important merchant in the western capital. He had begun producing textiles and pottery to export instead of paper, and controlled the importation of glassware. He began making grape wine in I-sei Province and sold it alongside the foreign kind. Some people with highly cultivated tastes preferred the imported wine, but there was also a market for the much cheaper, less acidic local variety.

“And there you have it. I’m going to be taking a visit to Shaoh to do some buying, in order to support my wife and children.”

“Well, well. Can the household survive with its master gone for so long?”

“My children are now mostly grown. My eldest has a wife and child of his own. Anyway, so long as my quick-witted wife is around, everything will be taken care of.”

“I’ve heard about your oldest son. They say he’s very capable.”

“Ah, yes. He’s an excellent worker. But I do have some misgivings about him.”

“Like what?”

“He’s set on helping the western capital flourish, and I applaud that, but at the same time he has…an exclusionary bent. He hates foreigners.” Gyokuen’s normally composed face darkened.

“This eldest son of yours, he’s Seibo’s child, isn’t he? Surely you don’t need to worry about her boy?”

“Seibo? Only my family uses that name, and only in private. How do you know it?”

“Hah. People talk, you know. They say the ‘new Mister You’ has many concubines, but treasures his true wife most of all. Rumor is that he disregards the western chieftain and calls his wife Seibo, ‘the western mother.’”

Rikuson’s mother grinned at Gyokuen, who couldn’t help but smile in response. “It seems you’ve got me there,” he said. “But enough about my family. There’s something more important afoot. Have I heard correctly that you’ve begun giving out the black stone?”

There was that phrase again, Rikuson thought.

“Yes. The poor harvest, you know—no other choice. I think you’ve got a bit of a hand in that particular trade yourself,” Rikuson’s mother said. His older sister listened silently. Rikuson seemed to be the only one who didn’t know what they were talking about.

“Yes, but I’m doing it on the up-and-up. If you’re having trouble, I should be able to give you at least some support.”

Rikuson’s mother and sister both looked grave.

“It’s time for you to go to sleep,” his sister said, trying to shoo him out of the room.

“But I’m not tired,” said Rikuson.

“It’s late enough. Time for bed.”

She chased him into the bedroom next door. Frustrated, Rikuson pretended to go to sleep, but soon he had his ear pressed to the wall, listening.

“And what would we have to do to earn your support?” He heard his mother’s voice, slightly muffled by the wall.

“Please. You make me sound uncharitable.”

“Yi men are raised to give nothing away as merchants. And you are an Yi man, aren’t you, Gyokuen?”

“Got me again.” After a brief pause, he said, “I want you to let me borrow the family register.”

The family register. That was a record of where the people in I-sei Province had come from and when they had arrived. There were those without a register, but if they wanted to do business in the western capital, they would have to make one—have to prove who and what they were.

“Absolutely not. That’s an official document. If you want to ‘borrow’ it, I can only assume you want to change something. That would explain why you’re talking to me and not the chieftain.”

“You won’t budge on this?” Gyokuen asked.

“No. Anyway, the family register is already on loan—to Big Lin, as reference material.”

“Oh…” Gyokuen sounded disappointed.

“Why would you want to change the family register, anyway?”

“It’s about that eldest child of mine.”

“Your son?”

“Yes. Gyoku-ou. The register contains the honest truth about his origins. I think he hates foreigners because he realized where he comes from.”

Rikuson continued to eavesdrop, although he was somewhat lost by this conversation.

“There’s no end of former Windreaders who come to make demands of me on my wife’s account. My business has grown considerably. Imagine what people would say if my own successor had no blood connection to me. If you believe that the western capital needs the ‘new You’ family, then please, help me.”

Although he couldn’t see him, Rikuson could almost picture the distress on Gyokuen’s face.

“Your first wife, Seibo… She came from the Windreaders herself, didn’t she?” Rikuson’s mother asked.

“Yes, that’s right. From the traitor tribe of Windreaders that I was supposed to join. I should have been her husband there. Should have deepened and strengthened our ties.”

This was the Windreader tribe that had been destroyed so long ago.

“Yes, my wife was from the tribe that betrayed us. But it was the adults who committed that treachery. The children knew nothing of it. Whenever I saw her after that, she always looked just as she had those years ago. We did see each other a number of times, you know.”

Rikuson wanted to hear more, but he sensed his sister coming over to the bedroom and quickly dived into bed.

“Sister… What is the black stone?” he asked, trying to sound sleepy.

“It’s not something you need to know about yet,” she said.

“But you told me… You told me to study. That I shouldn’t be ignorant.”

His sister paused, then said, “The black stone is coal. A rock that burns. We have to dig and dig and dig in the western mountains for it.”

“What makes it…so special?”

“When there’s a bad harvest, many families barely have enough to eat and can’t buy fuel, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We give it to those families.”

“Huh…”

That didn’t sound like such a bad thing.

“But it’s hard to dig up the stone, right?” Rikuson asked.

“Yes, very hard. We use slaves.”

“‘Slaves’?”

His sister didn’t look very happy about it. “We don’t want to, but we do. The more they mine, the quicker they’re freed. I’ve heard that the quickest workers get out in five years.”

“What about the slowest?”

“Decades. Some of them used to be Windreaders, you know.”

“And them… You won’t let them go?”

His sister shook her head. “They betrayed us. Your late grandmother happened to find them as slaves and heard the story. They said they’d planned to take the secret of how to use the birds and go to another country with it. They said it was foolish, having women rulers and making the men leave. Over such a long time as nomads, I guess they started to think that other lands were right to put men ahead of women.”

“And that’s why Grandma sent them to the mine?”

“Yes. She thought that if they dug well, she could free them. She bought several more former Windreader slaves. But those people said they’d been tricked. Apparently they thought Grandmother would free them even if they sat around doing nothing. Gyokuen, he’s too soft on people. He frees slaves as soon as he buys them.”

Rikuson’s sister seemed to see this as a problem. Rikuson wanted to ask more questions, about Gyokuen and his wife and his eldest son, but he refrained. It would be too obvious that he had been eavesdropping.

“But if the slaves work hard in the mine, eventually they can be free and leave, right?” he asked.

“Yes, but it’s dangerous work. The ones who have been there for decades, maybe that shows they aren’t doing anything. Maybe they think we’re the ones who are evil and wrong.”

They, she added, must hate us.

They must hate us.

At whom had his sister’s words been directed?

He didn’t know. He did know, however, that the Yi clan was held in contempt by a great many.

There was a commotion that day, starting first thing in the morning. People surrounded the mansion; they seemed to be voicing some kind of complaint. Rikuson held his terrified cousins and tried to comfort them, but he didn’t know what was happening any more than they did.

“Elder Sister, what is this? What’s all the noise outside?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. Everything is fine,” she said. But it clearly wasn’t. Her face was bloodless, pale.

Their mother came and spoke to his cousins’ mother. A different aunt from the one who led the clan, the cousins’ mother was the youngest sister of Rikuson’s mother, well separated in years.

“Go out the back. Take the children with you,” Rikuson’s mother said. The children included him. “The house of Gyokuen’s newest wife—the new You family, you know them—isn’t far. I’m sure you remember her. The former dancing girl? Her children are almost the same age as yours. You’re close with her.”

“B-But—”

“No buts! Take them and go!” Rikuson’s mother said, her tone commanding. She all but chased her sister out of the house, and Rikuson along with her.

His mother and his other aunt, the leader of the clan, went out front. They stood there talking to the mob, which looked like it was at a breaking point. Rikuson understood that they were buying time.

“Let’s go, while we have the chance.”

Rikuson, his aunt, and his cousins slipped out the back of the house. When they went to the house of Gyokuen’s newest wife, they found a woman with red hair and green eyes. When she saw Rikuson and the others, she gestured them around to a back entrance.

“Wh-What in the world is going on?” the cousins’ mother asked. Unlike Rikuson’s mother and other aunt, she was an easygoing woman, and was rarely included in the household discussions on even terms with his mother and the others. She didn’t fully grasp what was happening.

“They’re saying the Yi clan has been dishonest—and that it’s been reported to the central government!” The red-haired woman looked down as she spoke, her eyes shaded by long eyelashes.

“Dishonest?” Rikuson’s aunt asked.

“Yes… They say they’ve been lying about the amount of coal we mined.”

“The black stone? Now they have a problem?” his aunt said, incensed. She sounded like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“It gets worse,” the red-haired woman said.

“Worse?”

“They say the clan is making claims beyond its station—that it claims to have within the clan a man descended from the Imperial lineage, and that they Yi say this makes them the rightful heirs to the throne. And so an Imperial edict was issued…for the destruction of the traitors who would usurp the Imperial family.”

“No… That’s not possible.”

Rikuson’s aunt and the red-haired woman glanced at him.

“Surely the charges are false,” the woman said.

“Of course they are!”

“But who is the father?”

“W-Well…”

The Yi clan had a custom of not being explicit about who a child’s father was. This had been the way of their clan ever since, one time, a man had appeared claiming to be the father of the chieftain’s child in a bid to take over the clan. Even Rikuson didn’t know who his father was.

“It’s true that my sister went to the royal capital sometime before the boy was born, but the times don’t match up. He can’t be an Imperial child, and we certainly can’t insist that the father identify himself!”

His aunt was right: the Yi clan would never force a father to come forward and identify himself. Rikuson had relatives who were suspected of being the children of actors or foreign dignitaries, but no one said anything publicly. That was how the women of the Yi clan did politics.

“I can’t believe the central government would be foolish enough to take such a claim at face value—and to threaten to destroy us over it! Who even sent them such bogus claims?”

“I heard…” the red-haired woman started, and then she paused. “My family’s… Master Gyokuen’s seal was used in the letter.”

“What?” The aunt’s eyes went wide. Rikuson’s little cousins, distressed by their mother’s outburst, began to cry. He could do nothing except try to comfort them.

“Are you okay?” asked a little girl, coming over to them. She had red hair and green eyes herself. She began to comfort the young cousins.

“You, dear, would you take the children inside and entertain them?”

“Yes, Mother,” the red-haired girl said, taking the cousins by the hands. She tugged on Rikuson’s hand too, but he shook his head, refusing.

“Then you’re saying Master Gyokuen did this?!” Rikuson’s aunt demanded.

“No. My honored husband is on a trip to distant Shaoh. I’m sorry. I really don’t know anything else about it,” the red-haired woman said.

“Then… Then…”

“Come, you must change. I have a nursemaid’s outfit; you can use that. The way you’re dressed now, everyone will know you’re from the Yi clan.”

Rikuson’s aunt crumpled. The cousins were led away to a children’s room.

Rikuson wondered if it was safe to trust this red-haired woman.

And then he understood which one of them should absolutely not be there.

“N-No, stop!” the red-haired woman said, trying to hold him back, but he brushed her hand away and returned to the mansion. To talk of the mines was to talk of the black stone. Everything his mother and the others were doing, they were doing for I-sei Province. But the royal capital, which judged everything purely on the basis of superficial numbers, didn’t understand that.

The second problem, the false charges—Rikuson was key to it.

If I… If I’m there…

Even if he went to them, there was nothing he could do. And yet he had to go. An inexplicable sense of duty compelled him.

The mob was pressing in around the mansion. The people had knocked down and jumped on top of the guards, beating them with all their pent-up fury. Some onlookers hooted and shouted. Others looked pained by what was happening—but no one moved to help.

You never know what people will do in extreme circumstances.

That was something his mother had told him.

The atmosphere was almost festive. At times, people found violence pleasurable, and there were those who found the Yi clan repugnant, disgusted by the women who dared to rule the western capital.

Rikuson heard a shout like rending silk.

Was that—? No. No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t his older sister. Nor his mother.

He recognized some of the voices, but as terrible as it seemed, Rikuson had his priorities.

Pushing past men fixated only on violence and looting, he headed for the room where his sister and mother always were. Female clan members reached out, but he went by, silently repeating, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Now that these men had an excuse, they had turned into devils given over to their hunger.

Rikuson was bathed in sweat. His clenched fists were soaked; he panted and his tongue hung out of his mouth like an actual dog. The more water his body excreted, the more parched his throat became.

Each time he seemed about to cross paths with someone, he quickly hid. Despite his efforts, though, he was pinioned just outside his mother’s room. Rikuson kicked his feet, struggling.

“What are you doing here?!” someone whispered. It was his sister. Her face white, she clapped a hand over Rikuson’s mouth before he could shout. She looked different, somehow, from usual. She’d bundled up her hair and tied it with a scarf and was wearing men’s clothing.

“Older Sister. Where’s our mother? Why are you dressed like that?”

“Mother’s inside. And I’m just borrowing your coming-of-age ceremony clothes.”

“What?”

It was the outfit they had made for Rikuson’s coming-of-age two years hence. Assuming he would grow, they’d made it a little large; his mother had been planning to spend a long time embroidering it.

Hardly knowing what was going on, Rikuson found himself dragged into another room. His mother had a sword in her hand, the tip soaked in blood. Men lay dead all around her.

“Mother!” Rikuson said, but before he could speak further something was shoved into his mouth. His sister had torn up some cloth and rolled it up as a gag. Rikuson almost choked.

“Shut up, be quiet,” his sister commanded. “You talk too loud.”

“You mustn’t be noticed. You absolutely must not,” added his mother.

She and his sister bound Rikuson’s hands and feet and stuffed him into a large chest. Then they closed the lid and placed a heavy stone weight on top.

“You must protect the western lands. That’s what the Yi men do. Employ any means, use any people you must.” His sister smiled. He could see her teeth.

“Are we safe from fire here?”

“Yes, I should think so. There’s not much that will burn—and I’m sure they want to use the building again, anyway.”

Rikuson didn’t know what they were talking about. He could only stare out through the woven mesh of the chest.

“This doesn’t look half bad on me, does it, Mother?”

“No, not at all. I think that’s exactly what he’d look like in a few years. Now, don’t speak.”

“I know.”

Rikuson understood then what they were going to do. At that moment, he was the only male child in the Yi clan. If it was true that the mob believed the clan were Imperial pretenders, they would come after Rikuson.

His sister meant to serve as his body double.

Rikuson made another choked noise, but the gag kept him from crying out. His hands and feet were bound and he couldn’t move. But he could hear the mob drawing in, the bestial yells and the smell of oil and blood.

His mother brandished the sword.

Her swordsmanship was like a dance, the tip of the blade tracing perfect arcs through the air—but the strokes were light, ephemeral. They only nicked her opponents.

Stop! You have to stop this!

Rikuson bit down on the gag. Spit spilled around the edges, the bottom of the chest growing slick with saliva and tears.

He couldn’t do anything, and it agonized him.

He didn’t want to remember what was about to happen to his sister, to his mother. But the face of the man who would perpetrate that outrage—his face, alone, Rikuson had to commit to memory.

He couldn’t blink.

He knew that face. A member of the “new You” family he’d seen just once, on a visit to their household.

Gyokuen’s eldest son.

The front teeth glistening with saliva. The tanned skin. The bony hands. The shape of his ears and the quality of his hair. His voice, which carried like an actor’s. Rikuson didn’t just remember his face. He used all five senses to drink in as much information as he could, packing it into his brain. So that he would never forget…

As this man did his violence, there was righteousness in his eyes. An egoistic, worthless justice prepared to do anything, even evil, if it was necessary.

But also, a justice that would do anything to protect what mattered to him.

The Yi clan was about to be destroyed on a twisted pretext.

Rikuson’s emotions boiled within him; he felt as if a hot stone were being pressed against him. All the water seemed to be evaporating from his body, and yet he was still so hot that he felt he might begin to steam.

Him. He did this!

The man grabbed Rikuson’s sister by the head, dragging her along by her hair.

Rikuson wanted to beat the man. He wanted to kill him. But he couldn’t. Even if he could get out of this chest, the man would slaughter Rikuson before he could land a blow.

His sister and mother had known. That was why they had shut Rikuson in here. Why they had tied him up so he couldn’t do anything.

No more tears came to Rikuson’s eyes. He only cursed himself for his weakness, for being small and stupid and unable to do anything.

The rage and the curses were too much for Rikuson’s mind, and at some point he lost consciousness. He was brought around by a sound.

Were the men, the mob, still there? He couldn’t bear it any longer. Whatever it took, he would kill them.

Rikuson began to flail in the chest like a potato bug. Eventually, he succeeded in causing the stone weight to fall off the lid. He crawled and shuffled and pressed his face into the ground until he managed to get the gag out of his mouth; then he shouted in a hoarse voice, “I’ll gill you!”

Rikuson glowered as hard as he could at a man in front of him who was kneeling before the battered corpse of Rikuson’s mother and weeping.

“How could it turn out like this?” the man asked. He was plump; Rikuson remembered seeing a soft smile on his face.

It was Gyokuen.

Rikuson pitched forward, crawling toward Gyokuen and grabbing onto his feet. Normally, he might have been able to deal with things more rationally. The tears in Gyokuen’s eyes were of pity and regret; this was not a man on whom Rikuson needed to take revenge.

Yet at the same time, he was the father of the man Rikuson hated more than any other.

Gyokuen said nothing, only comforted Rikuson as the boy bit at him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

He didn’t care that Rikuson’s teeth sank into his leg; he didn’t care that the blood flowed. Gyokuen only kept trying to offer Rikuson comfort.

Gyokuen took the battered, filthy Rikuson to the home of the woman with red hair.

His aunt and cousins were still there. Unlike his mother and sister, his aunt had never come out front, and no one knew she belonged to the Yi clan. She was dressed as a nursemaid, hidden.

“You’re leaving, brother?” asked the oldest of the trio of sisters, Haku-u, tugging on his sleeve.

“Yes. I’ll be going a bit far away.”

Rikuson couldn’t stay in the western capital anymore. If he did, he was sure he would forget his mother’s and sister’s words. He could never forgive Gyokuen’s eldest son, Gyoku-ou, or those who had joined him in attacking the Yi. He could only harm the people who lived in this city. Though it took every ounce of his strength, he turned his back on his cousins.

“Hey…” A red-haired child called out to him. She was the one they called You, he thought.

“Yes, what?” Rikuson didn’t have time to be sweet and gentle just because she was so young.

“Do you hate Brother Gyoku-ou?”

“I don’t even want to hear his name.”

“Really? He hates me too. I wonder, will he come after me someday?”

Rikuson paused. “If he does, maybe I’ll help you. If I feel like it.”

With that, Rikuson boarded his carriage.

The carriage clattered along, carrying Rikuson to the port.

Much as it angered him, he had no choice but to turn to Gyokuen for help. A child of thirteen had no way to support himself on his own. There was someone in the capital, he was told, who’d once belonged to the Yi clan. This person had just lost a son Rikuson’s age, a boy who looked much like him, and this person was willing to take Rikuson in.

“Don’t worry about the family register. You can simply take over his name,” Gyokuen said. He didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice.

Rikuson still held a grudge against Gyokuen. This man had called himself the source of it all—so Rikuson thought he had a right to know why he and his had been attacked.

“Someone from the You family did it—while you were away! Why?! Was it your oldest son?!” Rikuson demanded.

Gyokuen, distressed, whispered, “Yes. Ou, it was Ou. My other sons had no hand in this.”

“Why! Why?! Why would he do something so awful?!”

“The register. I think he wanted to bury the truth. The uprising was a perfect cover. That boy, he’s not mine by blood, you see. His mother was a former slave, and his father is a foreigner. As a survivor of a former Windreader tribe, maybe he hated the Yi clan.”

“I know what you mean…” Rikuson remembered the talk about lending the family register to Gyokuen, about changing it, and he tried his best to put it all together in his head. “You think you can escape the blame, just because he’s not your child?”

Gyokuen shook his head. “All the blame lies with me. I should have acknowledged Ou as my son from the start. I should have made sure everything was in order so that nothing would trouble him.”

“Then you shouldn’t have kept collecting concubines! No wonder they call you Womanizing You!” Rikuson spat. Gyokuen shrank into himself. “Gyoku-ou wasn’t your real son, but you kept giving him little brothers and sisters! Isn’t that why he thought it was worth instigating a rebellion over a stupid family register?!”

“You’re right. Yes, you’re right. But it’s not just Ou. None of my other children are mine by blood.”

“What?” Rikuson was set back on his heels. When the man had so many wives and offspring…how?

“I think it may just be that I’m not physically able to produce children. My first wife gave birth to Ou, yes, but she and I were never able to conceive a child together. I feel terrible, but though I tried with others, it was never any use.”

Rikuson worked his mouth open and shut. “So… So all of the others are…? What about that girl, the one they call You?”

“A merchant with no offspring could never hold his head up. I sought out widows who were already pregnant—the most intelligent women I could find.” Gyokuen looked out the carriage window. “Life in the western capital is hard for a mother and child with no husband or father to care for them. But that vulnerability was also an opportunity. As a merchant, I offered an absolute contract. I guaranteed to provide for them and their children, and in exchange the mothers would furnish me with their skills in a particular field. Moreover, Ou alone was to be my true son, so that no one would get any ideas of taking over the family from him. That part was a secret from my children.”

“So you…”

“They all believe I’m their real father. Or at least they did. But Ou found out. He discovered he wasn’t my son by birth. And there were many who threatened to use the truth of his circumstances against him.”

Rikuson looked, and saw only a plump man holding his head in his hands.

“Money shut most of them up, but some wanted more. It was my intention to simply always treat Gyoku-ou as my true son.”

But all Gyokuen’s work had been in vain.

“Even once he knew I wasn’t his father, Ou continued to act as if I were. So I taught him things. Told him things that would help him.”

“Huh.” Rikuson could not have cared less. If he found room to sympathize, then he would have to forgive—and if that happened, then he would prefer never to have heard any of this.

“In the course of conducting business alongside me, Ou began to fixate on the black stone. Many of his supporters in this rebellion were people who bore a grudge against the Yi clan—including many former Windreaders. Many of them had been working in the mines, you understand.”

That must have been where Gyoku-ou had learned of the deception around the quantity of black stone being extracted.

“So the whole reason he brought down the Yi clan was because of the Windreaders’ misplaced resentment? Aren’t you going to punish your ‘son’? If you’re an Yi man, if you’re a protector of western capital, then you can at least do that much!”

“Yes, a desire for revenge as a member of the Windreaders was one of his reasons. Destroying the family register was another. But there was a third.”

“How many reasons did he need?”

Gyokuen looked at Rikuson. “Ou was under the misimpression that a child of the Yi clan was my true son.”

At that, Rikuson bit his lip.

“He looks like a very intelligent boy. Might I take him as my son?”

Gyokuen had wanted to take in an Yi child. Rikuson had heard him negotiating with his mother himself. Had that offhanded joke motivated the destruction of his entire clan?

That was why Gyoku-ou had invented the talk about the Imperial bloodline: to wipe out Rikuson.

His sister had been a fool. It was she who should have survived, not him. She was so much more important.

Why had she let Rikuson live?

And why should he speak to Gyokuen now?

Rikuson was seized by the desire to throw himself at Gyokuen and beat him to a pulp. They were in a carriage; maybe Rikuson could fling him out of it. Gyokuen still had the wound on his leg from where he had bitten him; even a child like Rikuson could kill one portly man like Gyokuen, if he was willing to go down with him.

He remembered what his sister had said.

“You must protect the western lands. That’s what the Yi men do. Employ any means, use any people you must.”

Rikuson couldn’t let himself die here. In order not to harm the western lands, he would go to the central region, to a place where no one knew who Rikuson was.

He bit his lip and let his nails dig into his knees. Somehow he managed to swallow the killing urge with the saliva in his mouth.

“Was the last reason the central authority? That stupid Imperial edict?”

He remembered the red-haired woman talking about it. The Emperor must be incompetent. He thought he remembered hearing that the Empress Dowager was in such thorough control of politics that people called her the Empress Regnant. Without the fig leaf of that edict, Gyoku-ou, even Gyoku-ou, wouldn’t have been able to destroy the Yi clan.

“I’m given to understand that that edict wasn’t what the government really wanted.”

“Excuse me?” Rikuson said, aghast. What, had they somehow accidentally issued the wrong edict?

“It bore the Emperor’s seal, but not that of the Empress Regnant—ahem, I mean, the Empress Dowager.”

So it had been issued by the puppet, not the puppeteer? Was that the problem?

“His Majesty’s health has been poor for some years now, and his mother, the Empress Dowager, is no longer a young woman herself.”

“And with one poorly conceived edict, they…”

“Yes. They knew the accusations of imperial bastardy were unfounded, but the deception about the quantities of black stone that had been mined, that couldn’t be hidden forever.”

“Y-Yes, but…”

So the Yi clan bore fault as well. The way they had shored up poor harvests and bad circumstances with the black stone had worked until now, but it was bound to fall apart eventually.

“That’s why I am going to take this opportunity to seize mining rights from the central government,” Gyokuen said.

“What?”

The pudgy, frail man had fire in his eyes. “The government doesn’t understand coal’s true value. In the royal capital, it fetches a mere fraction of what it’s worth here. And therein lies an opportunity.”

“You mean…”

“I will use that poorly conceived edict as my bargaining chip. It left a power vacuum in the west—and that is a grave problem.” Now Rikuson saw in Gyokuen’s eyes the assurance of a merchant in his element. “When I bring you to the central region, I will also appear at court as a member of the former Yi clan, to formally protest. This was done under my seal, so I bear responsibility.”

“But that would mean defying the government. What… What would happen to you? To your family?” Rikuson didn’t care in the least what happened to Gyokuen’s idiot son Ou, but then there was his wife, the woman who had harbored his cousins. She might not be related by blood, but he didn’t want to see her dragged into this.

“Here, look at this.” Gyokuen produced a basket from the floor by his feet. Inside were several pigeons. “This is why I sought to expand my business. He who controls the information controls the markets. They can hang me for my remonstrance; it won’t matter. The birds will let my family know before anything can happen to them, and not one of my wives is a weak woman, to be easily undone. We will not be snuffed out.” He pounded his belly as if it were a great drum. “Still not convinced?”

“No… Not yet.” Rikuson’s mind and emotions couldn’t keep up. He was still a child. He couldn’t tell whether an adult was lying.

“In that case, allow me to suggest some paperwork.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a businessman. And I favor those who will help to make the western capital great.”

A results-oriented mindset—he was a businessman indeed.

“At the same time, I flirt with danger. Almost by definition, my life will be shorter than my children’s. I fear that, when I am gone, one of them may grow greedy and try something.”

That seemed like something the man Ou would do, Rikuson thought. In fact, he already had.

“Should that happen, I want you to eliminate that child. And then you must protect the western capital.”

“What the hell…?”

Didn’t that still work out to him becoming Gyokuen’s successor after all? He would sooner die.

“After all this, now you’re going to ask me to wipe your ass?” Rikuson demanded.

“That’s not what I’m doing. This is the fate of men who become the wind.”

“Men who become the wind…”

Gyokuen, Rikuson realized, was just the kind of man his mother and sister had said he was.

It was a low-down, dirty way to get him. When he put it like that, Rikuson had no choice but to accept. No choice but to learn the same stubbornness under a gentle smile.

Rikuson would take his craggy heart and hone it with a polishing stone, working and working until it was smooth and beautiful. And then he would make himself sharp as a sword, prepared to strike down anyone, anyone at all, when the need arose.

“I believe we’ve arrived.”

Rikuson climbed out of the carriage to find himself at the port. There he saw a man behaving very strangely.

“No ships! No! You can’t make me get on one!” There he was, a full-grown man, clinging to a post and throwing a tantrum like a child.

“You have to get on the ship or you can’t get home. Come on, we finally found one to take you…”

“But—ships! I can’t! No ships!”

Rikuson recognized the man—it was Lakan. “Mister? What are you doing?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“Hrm? Who’re you? A shrimpy Pawn…”

Lakan had completely forgotten about Rikuson. He was used to that by now, but it was still annoying.

“You’re going back to the capital, aren’t you? Well, I think you’d have a better time on a boat than going overland.” Lurching around in a carriage and lurching around on a ship weren’t that different, so better to go with the quicker trip, Rikuson thought.

“Gnrr,” Lakan grumbled, but he shuffled onto the boat.

“You really can’t remember people’s faces, can you, Mister? Are you going to be all right?”

“Hrm… I guess it might be a problem when I make it in the world.”

“Then when you make your fortune, hire me! I’ll remember everyone’s faces for you and never forget. It’ll be good for you.”

“Hm, yeah, all right.”

It was the simplest of conversations—he never imagined that a decade later, it would actually come true. By then, the man who had come to be known as the freak strategist had completely forgotten about Rikuson.

In the end, the Yi clan was destroyed. Even in the face of a formal protest, the central government didn’t acknowledge that the Imperial edict had been mistaken, but they seemed to have reached a compromise.

Witness:

Item. Survivors of the Yi clan would not be hunted down.

Item. The name I-sei, the Western Yi, Province would be retained.

Item. Gyokuen, not “of the Yi clan” but “formerly of the Yi clan,” would rule the western capital.

Item. I-sei Province would not pay taxes on the coal it mined—as a form of hush money. Unofficially, of course.

The Yi clan remained disgraced, but Gyokuen had chosen the flourishing of I-sei Province over honor. As much as it pained Rikuson to admit it, Gyokuen was his foremost model of a man who sought the good of the western capital before all else.

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Chapter 246

The Apothecary Diaries

Chapter 246

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