The Apothecary Diaries Book 9

Kada's Book (Part 3)

Maomao went back to the library and looked around again. Haven't I seen this design somewhere? she wondered. The two-tone pattern on the walls tugged at something in her memory, but she couldn't quite think of what.

Yao and En'en, like Maomao, were ignoring the bookshelves and instead looking at the walls and ceiling.

"If what you said is true, Maomao, there's no point checking the shelves," Yao said. She must have told En'en what the two of them had talked about together, because her servant was studying the walls intently.

"I can't shake the sense that that wall looks familiar," Maomao said. The pattern was slightly different from those on the other three walls—although it was also mostly hidden by the bookshelves. "So... A book on human anatomy." That, she surmised, was what the missing volume was, given its number.

Her muttering was interrupted by a crash. She looked over in surprise to find that Yao was flat on her bottom and one of the bookshelves had fallen over.

En'en paled and rushed over to her. "Lady Yao!" Her mistress didn't seem to be hurt; she got to her feet, patting away dust.

"Looks like you're all right," Maomao said. "But what happened? How did you manage to knock over a bookshelf?"

Chances were nothing was damaged—the books were sturdy enough—but the shelf was heavy. It would take an effort to stand it up again.

"Here, look at this," Yao said. She held out a book with the code 一-2-I. It was the number before the one that was missing.

"What about it?" Maomao asked.

"Look at the last page," Yao said. She opened the book to show them a small circle drawn on the edge of the final page. It was divided in two: half black, half white.

"Is that a taiji symbol?" Maomao asked.

A taiji symbol: a diagram of the Great Ultimate, sometimes called the yin-yang, and sometimes taken to look like a black fish and a white fish swimming after each other. It was a common image in fortune-telling, and it had a connection to "five elements" theory—which, yes, was related to medicine, although Maomao, being of a more pragmatic bent, didn't know much about it.

"But what's it doing there?" She gave it a perplexed look.

"There's another one," En'en said. "Here." She brought over a book numbered 一-2-III. "Here, it's written on the first page."

Maomao lined the two books up and pondered them. "And the book we're missing is the one that belongs right between them."

"That's right. So I had an idea," Yao said, giving the wall a confident smack. "I think the missing book is hidden."

"What makes you say that?"

Maomao wanted an explanation. En'en, however, clapped her hands, her eyes wide. "Of course! Lady Yao, you're brilliant!"

Even En'en wouldn't flatter her mistress simply because she was adorable. What was so brilliant about her suggestion?

"These walls show the eight trigrams!"

"Yes! That's what I thought!" Yao said.

"The eight trigrams?" Maomao, puzzled, searched her mind. She ate...a gram of what? I guess you could...try... No... Oh! "You mean those diagrams?" she said. They had something to do with the taiji, she recalled, but unfortunately she didn't remember what. This wasn't her specialty—and her ability to remember things dropped precipitously when she wasn't interested in them. At least it explained why the patterns had looked so familiar.