The Apothecary Diaries Book 11

The Meeting

How many times had Jinshi heard that something was "for his own safety"? For more than a month now he had led a life that bordered on house arrest. He wasn't to go anywhere outside of Gyoku-en's annex. Occasionally he might be invited to the main house or the administrative office, but at such times he would be accompanied by a panoply of soldiers. Certainly enough to keep him from doing anything unscripted.

Even from the brief glimpses he got out of his carriage as he went from one building to another, he gained a sense of the destruction—but he knew that, in any other case, it would have been much worse.

Jinshi had come to the western capital in part on the assumption that this insect plague was going to occur. He'd looked into old records about past plagues. They described entire crops annihilated, people so desperately hungry that they resorted to cannibalism. It was no exaggeration when people said that a plague of insects could destroy an entire country.

Naturally, the dissatisfaction and anger were directed chiefly at the Imperial family, which stood atop the national hierarchy. That was why Jinshi continued to submit to his confinement.

At the moment, Gyoku-ou controlled what he could do. Nobody in Jinshi's entourage liked it—some of them even regarded Gyoku-ou as a half-baked stage hero. But Jinshi had his position to think of. As the Emperor's younger brother, he was supposedly here to survey things in the western capital. As such, he was, ultimately, a guest. If he did anything to contravene that role, it could come back to haunt him later.

Or at least, so he had believed.

"I think you're letting them upstage you a bit too thoroughly, Moon Prince," Chue said, although her face betrayed nothing. She sat across from him in the carriage, which was also occupied by a bodyguard and a second lady-in-waiting, although it was neither Suiren nor Taomei.

He'd chosen his most capable people in response to a very unexpected situation. In this case, Gaoshun accompanied him as his bodyguard—that would normally be Basen's role, but Basen would not have meshed well with the person they were going to meet. Basen was angrier than anyone at the way Jinshi had been treated in the western capital. He might be physically strong, but right now Jinshi needed someone who could keep their emotions in check.

"At this rate, people are going to think a helpless princeling bumbled in from the royal capital just to play a supporting part to Master Gyoku-ou." With a dexterous flick, several small pieces of jade appeared between Chue's fingers. Her hand worked busily: more emerged, then a few disappeared.

"I know," Jinshi said. That was precisely why he was on his way to the administrative office.

Yes, Jinshi was there as a guest, but he liked to think he had done all he could for the western capital. He'd offered them provisions that he had brought specifically for that purpose, and they had promptly been distributed. He'd sent messengers to nearby villages to help ascertain the extent of the damage, and then calculated how much food each location would need based on those assessments. He was glad he had brought a capable civil official like Baryou.

The reason help had been so quick in coming from the royal capital was because Jinshi had dispatched a post-horse the moment he'd heard from Lahan's Brother. If, at that point, nothing had happened—if there had been no swarm—it would have been easy to dismiss as a mistake on the part of the Imperial family.

The possibility of a swarm of insects had been a topic of conversation among the Emperor and some of his closest advisors and subordinates, and they had been aware of the possibility that it would strike in the western capital. But the decision to request support had fallen to Jinshi alone. He'd had no guarantees that the swarm would arrive—in which case, the supply ship might even have been refused permission to dock.