The Apothecary Diaries Book 7

Before the Celebration

It was high summer, and there was a festive atmosphere in the capital. Visitors from foreign parts meant money flowed freely. Events and happenings would naturally build until there was a spontaneous, unofficial party in swing.

Celebrations were not inherently bad. They made everyone lively and happy, in the court as much as beyond it. And how did that liveliness manifest itself within the palace walls?

"Overwork." Such was the one-word verdict the physician rendered on the pale-faced bureaucrat. The man had bags under his eyes and a thousand-yard stare. "Be sure you get some sleep. You'll work yourself to death, literally."

Sleep was so important. People thought they could go without it for a day or two, but it would catch up with them—come back to haunt them—as they got older. At one point, Jinshi had been getting dangerously little sleep himself. Every time he came to the pleasure quarter, Maomao had made him take a nap.

Setting up shop in the capital meant getting the bureaucracy's permission. Street stalls might appear on a whim, but a proper storefront demanded permits, for tax purposes if nothing else. If you were caught evading the necessary red tape, the best you could hope for was a heavy fine—you might even be thrown in prison.

Festivals always attracted crowds. Foreigners were coming, which meant trade goods would be more readily available, and plenty of people had come to the capital hoping to get their hands on some. All of which meant the civil officials were doing paperwork morning, noon, and night.

The soldiers had been busy as well. The frequency of the freak strategist's visits declined, for which Maomao was grateful. Then again, it might have been more accurate to say that after the food-poisoning incident, his subordinates had set up something of a dragnet for him.

More people meant more potential for crime, and it was the soldiers' job to shore up public safety. Between the fact that they could simply allocate training time to work instead and the fact that they were generally muscle-brains, there was much less collapsing among the soldiers than among the unfortunate bureaucrats. There were, however, more injuries.

"Hfff! Can't you be a little more careful?!" demanded a soldier as Yao daubed some medicine on a cut a good three sun long.

It's just a flesh wound, Maomao thought. The soldier had sustained it, he said, when he'd confronted a man who'd opened a stall without a permit and was selling dodgy medicines. When they'd tried to shut down his shop, he'd pulled a knife on them.

"I'm sorry," Yao said steadily, although Maomao could see her lips purse. She didn't look angry so much as like she was holding back tears.

En'en discreetly went to help out. She offered the soldier a cup. "This should numb the pain," she said, although Maomao was fairly confident she'd simply picked up a cup of cold barley tea.

The physicians still only rarely let the young women handle patients, but they thought quite highly of En'en's small, thoughtful touches like that. Complaints about the medical office had allegedly diminished.

And what was Maomao doing? She was busily making medicines. The doctors had felt that she could at least be entrusted with preparing simple balms, and if she suppressed her desire to work on more exotic concoctions, it wasn't so bad. It was the right place for her: she had neither the attitude nor, compared to the other two, the looks to be dealing with patients.

"Maomao, balm?" Since the incident with the cookies, En'en had taken to speaking to Maomao in a distinctly more informal tone. Her change in attitude had prompted Yao to start talking to Maomao a little more herself, so maybe En'en had done it in order to change her mistress's childish behavior. Maybe.