The Apothecary Diaries Book 5

The Western Capital-Day Two

The next day, Maomao found herself summoned by none other than Lahan.

"True, true, I did neglect to mention," the fox-eyed man with the tousled hair said as he sipped some tea. Beside him sat the mild-mannered Rikuson. They were in a bower at the mansion, the nearby oasis making the place breezy and cool. The entire house seemed built to maximize the opportunities to cool off. "I was ordered to come here, myself, for a number of reasons. There are, I guess you could say, business matters to attend to."

Everyone had their talents, Maomao supposed, and Lahan could be expected to come running any time hard numbers were involved. As for why Rikuson was with him...

"My superior doesn't want to leave the capital, so I've come in his place."

"Huh," Maomao observed. "He sounds like a most useless superior, sir, I must say."

"I do appreciate your frankness, Maomao, but here and now I think a modicum of discretion is in order." It was one of those rare things: a serious-minded comment from Lahan. Anyway, Maomao understood that perfectly well; that's why she'd been careful to adopt a polite tone.

It had been late after her encounter with Basen and then Jinshi, so Maomao had gone straight to bed—but apparently everyone else had stayed up, and the results had not been pretty. It all sounded like it had been a lot of trouble, though, and Maomao had done her best to ignore it. She still had red marks where Basen had grabbed her, and her main interest at the moment was getting rid of them.

Speaking of Jinshi and Basen, they had a meeting this afternoon. All this stuff about conducting politics over dinner and constantly trying to sound each other out seemed like a massive headache to Maomao. It would be bad enough dealing with Gyokuen, who now had an empress for a daughter, but throw outlanders into the mix and the thought only became more depressing.

"So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?" Maomao asked.

"Yes, that." Lahan slid his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with his pointer finger. Then he took out a piece of paper from the folds of his robe. It turned out to be a finely detailed wanted poster.

"Huh..."

The picture showed a woman, still relatively young, with graceful features. That in and of itself made her little different from many women, but the poster also bore further description: "Red eyes; white hair; pale skin." That narrowed it down quite a bit. In fact, Maomao could think of only one person who fit the description.

"The White Lady? We went to see her together."

"Yes, we did," Lahan said, and proceeded to show her a second piece of paper.

"Who's this?"

Another wanted poster, this one showing a man. Unfortunately, an illustration never quite looked like the real thing—and Maomao rarely bothered remembering the faces of people who didn't interest her, anyway. In short, she had no idea who the man was.

Lahan lined up the wanted posters next to each other.

Hm? Something teased at the edges of Maomao's memory, a sense that maybe she had seen the man somewhere.

"We found this man several days ago," Lahan said.

"That's right," Rikuson added, "I'm sure of it."

"Sir Rikuson never forgets a face."

"Perhaps my one skill," he said modestly. All right, so he still didn't seem exactly suited to soldiering. But given that the eccentric strategist who served as Rikuson's boss couldn't distinguish one face from another, having someone with a talent like Rikuson's around couldn't hurt. That freak with his monocle had a talent for judging other people's uses that seemed almost superhuman.