The Apothecary Diaries Book 3

The Hunt (Part 2)

The soldiers serving as bodyguards were clearly distressed. The officials were discussing something amongst themselves, with occasional exasperated glances at Basen. It had now been two full hours since his master had left his seat. Well beyond a reasonable amount of time to answer the call of nature.

Basen knew it was too late to regret his decision not to accompany Jinshi. Anyway, Jinshi had specifically told him to stay behind. Basen had seen his father give some sort of instructions to that maid who was always with them.

Basen grunted and furrowed his brow. Everyone told him he looked like his father when he did that. At this moment, though, his father—Gaoshun—remained expressionless, simply observing what was happening. Basen was directly involved, but today, Gaoshun was a bystander. He was just acting like the other officials. Basen was desperate to ask his father what he should do, but he couldn't approach him under the circumstances. Instead, he tried to imagine where his master might be even as he tried to ignore the distraction of the other officials' annoyance.

He'd already sent one of his subordinates out to search, but truth be told, he wished he could have gone personally. Sickened to be stuck in a role that seemed purely formal, all he could do was wait for his man to get back.

One of the servants claimed to have seen Jinshi leave the building, saying he was going to get some air. He'd told the guards not to follow him, but a petite lady-in-waiting had gone after him with some water. Basen knew who that must have been—and it only made him more certain that something had happened.

He shouldn't have just waited here.

At the moment, there were two distinctly different attitudes among those present: those who were worried about their missing master, and those who were openly amused that he had disappeared for so long with a serving girl. Basen was particularly furious at the idiots in this second group. He restrained himself from arguing openly with them—That would never happen! he wanted to exclaim—but the result was a compulsive tapping of his foot against the floor.

The atmosphere at the banquet was quickly turning sour. Basen felt as if Shishou could have put things back on the right footing with just a word, but their host was too busy pouring wine into his portly, tanuki-like belly. Basen couldn't imagine what he was thinking. Shishou would never have gotten where he was without being who he was, but from that perspective, there was one man who might have been able to surpass him: the strategist, Lakan. Yet it was widely understood that Lakan had no such ambitions. The man people called eccentric, strange, bizarre—he'd recently bought out a courtesan, and he was shut up somewhere with her instead of attending this hunt. His absence wasn't particularly remarkable; what had the court chattering was the realization that the monocled eccentric had actual human feelings.

All this being said, Shishou was the host of this banquet, hardly in a position to carry out any plots personally. Basen dearly hoped that nothing untoward would happen while he was the one attending his master. If anything did occur, he suspected it would be instigated by someone other than Shishou, that their host wouldn't be involved.

It was then that a soldier, muscular and still young, ran up, his footfalls pounding on the floor. "Pardon me, sirs," he said as he entered the banquet hall and stood in front of Basen. It wasn't quite proper, but nobody stopped him. The soldier knelt before Basen, who bade him look up.

"What is it?" Basen asked.

In response, the soldier glanced around the room, then passed Basen a piece of cloth. He recognized the damp, shredded fabric immediately. He took in the soldier's expression. He was desperate to glance over at his father to see what he might be thinking, but he suppressed the urge, clutching the cloth tighter.