The Apothecary Diaries Book 7

Lady-in-Waiting to His Majesty's Younger Brother

For days after their shopping expedition, Maomao found herself doing the same thing day in and day out: washing and disinfecting bandages. The medical assistants were all getting pretty tired of it when a message happened to arrive. Specifically, a message for En'en.

"Just for me?" she asked.

"I wonder what it could possibly be," said a most intrigued Yao, taking a peek. Out of the three of them she was the most fully developed, but her behavior, including her bouts of unabashed curiosity, reflected her age more than her looks did.

"It would appear to be notice of a new assignment," En'en said. When they saw what it said, all three of them scowled.

They looked at the physician who had brought the notice. "Well, you all saw it. En'en's going to have other work to do for a while."

En'en scowled hardest of all. "I'm sorry, sir, but I must say I'm loath to be separated from Lady Yao."

"This assignment comes from someone you don't say no to," the physician replied. His tone was still friendly, but there was clearly no room for argument.

What was written in this disturbing notice?

"So...she's ordered to serve the Emperor's esteemed younger brother? At least, for a while?" Yao said, taking the paper and reading it over again. So she was going to be babysitting Jinshi.

"May I ask something, sir? Why me? If this is about our exams, Lady Yao achieved better marks than I did."

Yeah, because you deliberately flubbed it, Maomao thought, but she was decent enough to resist the impulse to say it out loud.

"And I hardly think my family background makes me suited to this service," En'en continued. Yao came from good stock, but En'en was a commoner. Normally, one would have expected the royal family's ladies-in-waiting to come from halfway respectable households. Maomao, though, thought she had an inkling as to why En'en had been chosen.

"If anything, I think he's avoiding ladies whose status is too high," the doctor said, looking somehow pleased to know this. "Pick someone of high status, and there's every chance she'll just be angling to make him her husband."

Jinshi was twenty, a year older than Maomao, and he looked older still. Certainly a reasonable age to find himself a wife or consort. Indeed, it was starting to seem odd that he hadn't.

"With that face of his, the wrong person could make his life a living nightmare," the doctor said.

As Maomao had suspected, then. En'en could be warped in her own particular ways, but she was unstintingly devoted to her mistress. She wouldn't pull anything outrageous with Jinshi. She was so dedicated to Yao, in fact, that it was written plainly on her face that she had no interest in taking up this position. How rude of her.

"Word is that Maomao was in the running..." The physician glanced outside, where a freak with a monocle was pressed up against the window. Evidently he was back from his hiatus. Everyone seemed to be used to him by now. "...but some highly ranked individual insisted she wasn't fit for the position, so she was dropped from consideration."

Just as the freak was staring his hardest, two of his subordinates came up from behind and peeled him away from the window, dragging him off. Maomao wished he wouldn't come back, but she knew better than to hope for more than a few minutes' respite.

"They want you there tomorrow. I know it's sudden," the physician said.

En'en didn't respond. Even her face remained impassive, but she somehow still managed to give off an aura of absolute disgust with the idea. She glanced at Yao, looking for help, but Yao simply said, "If it's a matter of family background, there's not much we can say." Maomao had thought she might be jealous, but she was surprisingly willing to come around when confronted with that logic. Maybe it was because she knew just how good En'en was at her job. "They could send you just about anywhere, En'en. I hope it goes really well," she said and flashed the other woman a brilliant smile. Maomao briefly thought that it might be her little way of getting En'en back for leading her around by the nose all the time, but it didn't seem so. Yao was truly giving her blessing to this personnel transfer, completely oblivious to how En'en felt or what she was hoping for. Classically naive, Yao was.