The Apothecary Diaries Book 3

Mirrors

One hot afternoon, Maomao was told that a strange object from a foreign land had arrived in the Jade Pavilion and that she should come and see it. When she arrived in the main room, she found a large, full-length mirror. Consort Gyokuyou was standing in front of it, gleefully holding the clothes she'd bought from the caravan up to herself. Hongniang was carefully folding away the cloth in which the mirror had been wrapped.

One might wonder about such fuss over a mirror, even a full-length one, but when Maomao saw it, she was surprised, and not just by the size.

Now, that is something you don't see every day, she thought. Typically, mirrors were made of bronze, like the polished sheet of metal Maomao used. This mirror, though, wasn't metal at all, and it reflected Gyokuyou's image far more clearly than any bronze surface.

"Ho ho. I wonder if you know what it's made of," Gyokuyou said.

"Perhaps glass, milady?"

Gyokuyou pouted. Evidently, she'd guessed right.

Yinghua and Guiyuan were ecstatic:

"Oh my goodness! It really is like there's two of you standing there, Lady Gyokuyou!"

"Yes, it's amazing!"

"We had a mirror once before, but Yinghua broke it."

"Aw, don't bring that up!"

Glass mirrors were unusual but not unheard of. Making them was a difficult endeavor, though, and the only examples were those brought over from the west, so they were enormously expensive. A lady-in-waiting who broke one could well expect to lose her head. It was Yinghua's great good fortune that Consort Gyokuyou was as kindhearted as she was.

Looking at the new treasure, Maomao began to understand the excitement. A bronze mirror inevitably muddied colors, but this mirror was different. The glass had been stretched long and thin, yet there were no imperfections in the surface; the reflection was perfect.

Yinghua smirked when she saw Maomao staring intently into the mirror. "So it's got even your interest, Maomao."

"Yes. How do you think they produce material like this? If we could figure it out, I bet we could sell them for a small fortune."

"Er... Yeah, sure," Yinghua said, patting Maomao encouragingly on the shoulder. Maybe she'd been hoping for an appraisal from some other perspective.

"Was it a gift from His Majesty?" Maomao asked.

"No, from the visiting embassy," Gyokuyou said, passing the clothes to Guiyuan and sitting down on her couch.

"Embassy, ma'am?" Come to think of it, the doctor had mentioned something of the sort in passing. He'd said the recent caravan had been especially large in part because it was laying the groundwork to welcome these visitors.

"That's right. They gave mirrors to the other consorts too." Yinghua sounded distinctly put out. Hongniang scolded her to speak more politely, but in her heart she must have felt the same way.

In principle, Gyokuyou ranked exactly as highly as the other three upper consorts, so the diplomatic mission would be obliged to treat them all equally. Still, to bring such rich gifts must have taken quite the effort, Maomao thought. Whether it traveled across the sands or across the sea, glass was easy to break. It would have to be treated very carefully to avoid any impacts that might shatter it.

Maomao looked at the mirror and thought: if the visitors were giving such exquisite gifts even to the consorts, they must be looking to land a major trade deal or something. What could it be that they wanted?