Chapter 3: The Prescription
"It's mine, isn't it," Maomao said.
Lady Gyokuyou clapped her hands. "Oh, you're no fun. I wanted to watch you work it out."
"There was nobody else it could be. He doesn't know any other women well enough to annoy them on purpose." Maomao realized she was gripping the edge of the low table and made her hands let go. "My lady, he can't. I'm the daughter of a courtesan. I was a laundry maid. I'm not on any register a ministry would recognize."
"You're the daughter of the Grand Strategist," said Gyokuyou, sweetly.
Maomao's face did something that made Hongniang, behind her mistress, wince in sympathy.
"I'm the daughter of an apothecary," Maomao said. "Luomen raised me. That's the only father I'm claiming."
"Of course, darling. But the ministries don't care who raised you. They care whose blood's in you, and that blood belongs to a man who commands half the army and would set fire to the Board of Rites if anybody called you unsuitable." The Empress poured her tea herself, which she only did when she was enjoying something enormously. "Jinshi's very clever. He's been clever about you for years. It's taken him this long to stop being clever and just write it down."
Maomao stared at the teacup in her hands. A single chrysanthemum petal turned slowly on the surface.
"What did His Majesty say?"
"His Majesty laughed until he had to sit down," said Gyokuyou. "Then he said the boy had been staring at that freckled apothecary since before he could admit it to himself, and it was about time." She tilted her head, red hair sliding over one shoulder, and her green eyes softened. "He also said it has to be your choice. He won't order you. Neither will I. Neither, I suspect, will Jinshi, though he'll do everything short of it, the dear, ridiculous man."
"He hasn't asked me."
"No," agreed Gyokuyou. "I imagine he's terrified."
Maomao did not go to Jinshi. She went to the medical office and spent the rest of the afternoon making a list.
It was a good list. It had numbered points. She wrote it on her best paper in her best hand, and every time she finished a point she read it back and found it unanswerable.
One. She was not of rank. Two. She would make a poor wife for a prince, since she did not embroider, could not play the qin, and had once been asked to leave a poetry gathering for correcting the host's description of a flower. Three. She would refuse to stop testing poisons on her arm. Four. She would refuse to stop going to the pleasure district to visit her old man and the Verdigris House. Five. She would refuse to stop being an apothecary at all, actually, and the wife of the Moon Prince would not be allowed to keep a workbench. Six. The Grand Strategist would become her family by marriage in the eyes of the court, which was intolerable, and would turn up at dinners, which was worse. Seven. She did not like beautiful things that people fought over. They brought trouble. She had grown up among them.
Eight, she wrote, and then stopped, and looked at the brush in her hand for a long while.
Eight. When he had sat in this room for three days while she had the fever, she had woken once in the middle of the night, half-delirious, and seen him by the brazier with a memorial forgotten in his lap, watching her. He had not looked like the Moon Prince. He had looked like a man who did not know what he would do if she stopped breathing. And she had closed her eyes again and pretended she hadn't seen, because it was the sort of thing that, once seen, could not be put back in its jar.
She did not write that down. She put the brush away.
When the bell for the evening meal rang, she rolled up the list, tucked it in her sleeve, and went to find him.
He was on the moon-viewing terrace at the back of his residence, which was where Gaoshun said he went when he wanted to brood without an audience. The Moon Festival was still a week away, but the moon was nearly full anyway, round and white over the palace roofs, laying long silver bars of light across the boards. Jinshi stood at the balustrade with his back to her, his hair loose for once, his outer robe off and folded over the rail.
He heard her step and turned. He did not look surprised. He looked like a man who had been bracing for something since dawn.
"Gyokuyou told you," he said.
"Her Majesty told me."
"I was going to tell you myself."
"When?"
"I was building up to it," Jinshi said, with great dignity. "Over several years."
Maomao pulled the list out of her sleeve, unrolled it, and held it up. "I've prepared some objections."
He looked at the paper, then at her face, and something in his own face loosened, the corner of his mouth tugging up despite itself. "Of course you have."
"There are seven."
"Read them to me."
She did. She read them clearly, with the flat precision she used for dosage instructions. He listened without interrupting, leaning back against the balustrade with his arms crossed, and when she finished, he held out his hand.
She hesitated, then gave him the list. He read it through again, slowly, under the moonlight.
"One," he said. "Rank can be arranged. It already has been, in fact, three different ways, and Gaoshun has drafted all the paperwork, and is very tired. Two. I don't want a wife who plays the qin. I've heard the qin. Three." He looked up. "You may test anything you like on your arm, so long as you let me buy the bandages. Four. I'll come with you to the pleasure district. I'd like to meet your father properly. Your real one."
Maomao opened her mouth and shut it again.
"Five," Jinshi went on, "I'm having a workroom built in the east wing of my residence. Shelves to the ceiling. A brazier that draws properly. A window facing north for even light, which I'm told is important for judging the color of a tincture. It was started in the autumn."
"Autumn," Maomao said faintly.
"I told you. I was building up to it." He turned the page toward the light. "Six. The Grand Strategist will turn up to dinners whether you marry me or not. At least married to me you'll have a residence with a back door and a guard who's been told to say you're out." He paused on the last line and read it twice. His voice, when it came, was quieter. "Seven. You don't like beautiful things people fight over."
"They bring trouble," Maomao said.
"They do." He lowered the paper. "I've hated my face for most of my life, you know. It made people stupid around me. Gave them ideas. Made them send honey cakes full of marsh root." His eyes met hers. "You're the only person who's ever looked at me like I'm a slug that crawled out from under a rock."
"I don't—"
"You do. It's the most restful thing in the world."
The night wind moved through the eaves. Somewhere far off in the palace, a lute was being played badly. Maomao stood with her hands empty, and found that she did not know what to do with them, and that her heart was going at the quick, light, uneven rhythm she would have described in a patient as cause for mild concern.
"There's no eight," Jinshi said, looking at the paper. "You started an eight."
"I changed my mind about it."
"What was it?"
She could lie. She was good at lying; she had grown up in a brothel, and lies there were as common as rice. But he would know. He always knew. And she was so tired, suddenly, of watching her own heart in a jar on a shelf like a specimen she was too careful to open.
"When I had the fever," she said, "you didn't leave."
He went very still.
"I saw you. Once, in the middle of the night. You were watching me like," she searched for it, "like you'd been given a dose of something and didn't know if it would kill you." She swallowed. "I closed my eyes and pretended I hadn't seen. Because if I'd seen it, I'd have to do something about it."
"And now?" Jinshi said. His voice was rough.
"Now I'm an apothecary," Maomao said, "and I've been watching the same patient for four years, and the symptoms aren't improving."
He took a step toward her. She did not step back.
"What would you prescribe," he asked, "for a case like that?"
She thought about it honestly, because it deserved honesty. Then she reached into her sleeve, found the little brush case she always kept there, pulled the list out of his hand, turned it over, and wrote on the blank back of it in small, firm characters.
She handed it to him.
He read it under the moonlight. She watched his face as he did, which was a mistake, because she saw the moment it changed: the guard dropping, the careful princely composure falling clean away, leaving only a man of twenty-four standing on a terrace with a piece of paper in his hand, looking as if someone had just told him he would live.
Prescription, she had written. Daily. Indefinitely. Administer in person. Side effects: the apothecary.
"Maomao," Jinshi said.
"It's a long course," she said. "There's no guarantee of results. The apothecary is stubborn and hates being told what to do, and she's going to be rude about your hair."
"What's wrong with my hair?"
"It's too nice. It's unsettling."
He laughed, the real one, the one she had heard perhaps four times in four years. Then he cupped her face in both hands as if it were something rare that might spill, bent his head, and kissed her.
She had read about kisses. She had heard dozens described in the Verdigris House, in clinical and less than clinical detail, by women who were professionals in the field. None of them had mentioned that it would feel like the moment a difficult diagnosis finally comes clear: a long blind stretch of symptoms, and then all at once, the answer, simple and obvious and right there all along. His mouth was warm and careful. His thumbs moved once along her cheekbones, over the faint freckles she no longer painted on. She curled her fingers in the front of his robe to keep him there, and felt rather than heard the small, helpless sound he made.
When he lifted his head, his forehead stayed against hers.
"That's a yes," he said. "I'm taking that as a yes."
"It's a trial dose," said Maomao.
"I'll take a trial dose."
From somewhere behind them, at the far end of the terrace, came the very soft, very deliberate sound of Gaoshun clearing his throat. Neither of them turned.
"Master Jinshi," Gaoshun said, to the ceiling. "Forgive me. But a message has just arrived from the Grand Strategist's household. He has heard. He is at the gate. He says he has brought a Go board and he will not leave until the Moon Prince plays him for his daughter's hand."
Maomao closed her eyes.
Jinshi, against her forehead, began to laugh.
"How good," he said, "is he at Go?"
"He's never lost," said Maomao.
Jinshi straightened, smoothed back his unsettlingly nice hair, picked up his outer robe from the rail, and offered her his arm, as he had a hundred times before.
This time she took it.
"Then I suppose," he said, "I'll have to cheat."