The Apothecary Diaries Book 3

The Empress Dowager

Maomao was thrilled. Indeed, she could hardly have been happier. Behind her, Hongniang and Yinghua stood looking intimidating.

"Really? Right here?" Maomao asked, watching Hongniang carefully.

"Yes! Have a good, hard think about what you did," the chief lady-in-waiting replied with a snort. Maomao's eyes began to brim with tears, and she clasped Hongniang's hand.

"Thank you so much!" she said, bowing deeply.

"Er—?"

"Wait... Maomao?! Ooh, this is the exact opposite of what we wanted!"

Maomao, paying no heed to Hongniang and Yinghua's dismay, veritably flew into the storage shed. This was to be her room from today forth.

"Don't you think that's a little harsh, Yinghua?" Guiyuan asked as she poured some tea, which she offered along with a snack to Yinghua.

"I thought so too, but it's her own fault," Yinghua replied, managing to purse her lips and sip her tea at the same time. Today they were having a sweet-smelling fermented tea from the west. "We kept telling her to stop, but she wouldn't! We know she was out collecting bugs again..." She glared at Maomao. Hongniang, it seemed, had thrown out all the fruits of Maomao's efforts.

Maomao only cocked her head. She'd stopped trying to gather lizard tails, recognizing that work couldn't get done around the Jade Pavilion if the ladies-in-waiting kept fainting. "What are you talking about?" she asked Yinghua, genuinely surprised. "I stopped after the thing with the lizard."

"There's talk! We heard a weird lady was going around the rear palace collecting bugs and laughing like a maniac."

Maomao didn't say anything, but Yinghua—and now Guiyuan too—both looked scandalized.

This was clearly some sort of misunderstanding.

"I don't do that," Maomao said earnestly. Yes, she'd collected moths one time recently, but that had been for work. She hadn't gone after a single other bug since then. Or lizard. "And if I did do something like that, it wouldn't be bugs I was after. It would be herbs."

"But you admit you would be maniacal about it?"

Yinghua and Guiyuan looked thoroughly exasperated as they studied Maomao. Of late, they had finally started to grasp her true nature.

Grr. She knew that look. They didn't believe her.

But it was true. Maomao had only been laughing because she'd found some medicinal herbs, not because of any bugs. She did have some measure of common sense. She understood perfectly well what would happen if she tried to cultivate insects in that cramped room. It was summer; it would be a catastrophe.

Maomao frowned and balled her hands into fists. This was a very grave situation. But she thought she knew who was really responsible.

"Huh? Hihui's beeb booing whah?" Xiaolan asked, her mouth full of peach bun. Maomao offered her a bamboo cylinder full of sweet tea and nodded. They were chatting and snacking behind the laundry area, as usual. Maomao had made Xiaolan write a few characters in the dust to satisfy herself that the girl was paying attention in class. She certainly was.

"That Shisui... She's the most mercurial creature," Xiaolan said, drinking some tea. Maybe it was her recent academic bent that had introduced difficult words like that into her vocabulary. She hopped down off the barrel she'd been sitting on and trotted toward some palace women chatting near the well. "Hey, you don't know where Shisui's been lately, do you?"

Maomao went after her. The three palace women answered Xiaolan with a friendly greeting, although they stiffened a bit when Maomao approached. Their reaction wasn't unusual; Xiaolan and Shisui were about the only women with tastes strange enough to enjoy talking to Maomao.