The Apothecay Diaries Book 2

Book 2

Prologue

"Are you quite serious?" Jinshi asked. Across from him, a man reclined on a couch. A middle-aged ruler with a prodigious beard, who now nodded slowly.

They were in a particular pavilion in the outer court. Small, but with excellent visibility; a mouse couldn't have crawled in without them seeing it. The ruler leaned on his ivory-bedecked couch and poured grape wine into a glass vessel. Although he was sitting with the most august personage in the nation, Jinshi had also been quite at his ease. At least, until a moment ago.

The Emperor stroked his beard and grinned. Would it be rude of Jinshi to suggest he didn't like it? But the beard looked very good on His Majesty. Jinshi couldn't beat him in the facial hair department.

"So, what are you going to do now, O groundskeeper of our garden of lovely blossoms?"

Unwilling to rise to His Majesty's bait, Jinshi held back a wry smile, instead offering one like that of a heavenly nymph—an expression that could have melted any heart he chose. It might not sound very humble, but Jinshi was confident in his own looks if nothing else.

What a great irony, then, that the one thing he truly wanted, he could not get. No matter how he strived, his aptitudes were hardly more than ordinary. Yet outwardly, if in no other way, he was utterly exceptional.

It had always used to eat at him, but he had come to accept it. If his intelligence and physical prowess were to be irredeemably average, then he would do all he could with the one advantage he did possess. Thus he came to be the gorgeous overseer of the rear palace. His looks, his voice, seemed too sweet to be those of any man, and he would employ them to the fullest.

"Whatsoever you wish, sire." Jinshi, with a smile at once graceful and determined, bowed to the Emperor.

The Emperor sipped his wine and grinned in a way that invited Jinshi to do his worst. Jinshi knew full well that he was no more than a child. A child dancing in the Emperor's great palm. But he would do it. Oh yes, he would. He would entertain even His Majesty's most outrageous wishes. That was Jinshi's duty, as well as his wager with the Emperor.

He had to win that wager. It was the only way Jinshi would be able to choose his own path. Perhaps other ways existed. But a man of ordinary intelligence such as Jinshi couldn't imagine them.

Thus he had chosen the road he now followed.

Jinshi brought his cup to his lips and felt the sweet fruit wine wet his throat, the heavenly smile never slipping from his face.

"Here you go. Take this, and this—oh, and you'll need one of these."

Maomao winced at all the stuff that came veritably flying at her. The one flinging the rouge and whitening powder and clothes in her direction was the courtesan Meimei. They were in her room at the Verdigris House.

"Sis, I don't need any of this," Maomao said, taking the cosmetics one by one and returning them to their various shelves.

"Like fun you don't," Meimei said, exasperated. "Everyone else there is going to have even better stuff than this. The least you could do is try to look decent."

"Only courtesans get this tarted up to go to work."

Maomao had just glanced aside, privately wishing she could go mix those herbs she'd collected the day before, when a bundle of wooden writing strips came flying at her. Her esteemed older sister was solicitous, but sometimes short-tempered. "You finally get a job worth having, and you won't even try to act like you belong there? Listen, the world is full of people who would kill to be in your place. If you aren't grateful for what you've got, your hard-won clientele will run out on you!"