The Apothecary Diaries Book 11

In the Shadow of the Ritual

The eightieth day.

The ritual Jinshi would perform, Maomao gathered, was to be a middle rite. She didn't know much about the niceties of state ceremonies, but she was given to understand that the rituals performed by the Emperor could be divided into great rites, middle rites, and lesser rites, and that the exact nature of the ceremony varied with the scale.

The officiant has to purify himself for three days before a middle rite.

She remembered Jinshi doing this once when she'd been assigned to him as a lady-in-waiting. It had involved him eating ascetic meals and performing some sort of ritualistic gestures before he got in the bath. She also remembered Jinshi, who'd still had some growing to do, looking rather disappointed by the quantity of the meals.

"So the festival's to be tomorrow," said the quack doctor with his typical lack of concern as he rolled up a strip of torn sheet.

"I suppose you could call it a festival, but you know there won't be any food stalls or anything, right?" Maomao made sure the pills that had come out of their wooden mold were all perfectly round, then placed them neatly on a wicker tray. It was stomach medication, made with substitute ingredients because there was nothing like enough actual medicine around. If they ran into the freak strategist's aide, she intended to give him some.

The ceremony would be performed in a large open plaza in the middle of the western capital. There was a shrine there; it was a very prominent spot.

"Master Lihaku," Maomao said.

"Hm? Yeah?" The big-mutt-like soldier was cutting a sheet into neat strips with a knife.

"Are we sure that having a festival at this moment won't backfire and cause violence instead?"

"That's a real tough question. Our one saving grace is that everything I've seen of that plaza makes it look easy to defend. It's circular, so we can surround it, and it's big, which will make it hard to fire an arrow into it." So it wasn't, from his perspective, a dangerous location. "The one real potential problem is if the people turn into a mob and just pile past us."

"Yeah, there wouldn't be much you could do about that."

Even impeccably trained soldiers could only do so much to resist sheer numbers.

Maomao hoped there wouldn't be any injuries, but who knew what the day would bring? It was even possible that an unruly mob would rip off Jinshi's robes and discover the burn on his flank.

"What I can say is that there's been less violence the last few days," Lihaku said, handing the shredded sheet to the quack doctor. "The mob that night seems to have helped things calm down, at least a little bit."

"You mean because Master Gyoku-ou spoke directly to the people?"

"Uh-huh. And it sounds like his younger brothers have been trying to talk people around as well."

That must come from the brother Jinshi talked to.

Gyokuen's family held control of every industry in the western capital. Anyone who went against them would find life in the city very, very difficult.

"Security's still tight, though. There are still people around claiming that it's the Imperial younger brother's fault that that swarm broke out." As a soldier, Lihaku was kept abreast of each day's security preparations.

Then Maomao asked the question that was bothering her most. "How do you expect Master Gyoku-ou to act during the ceremony?"

How would he behave, this man who lusted for war? Maomao didn't think he would just stand by quietly, checked by his younger brothers. She only hoped that he wouldn't launch into his speech in the middle of the ritual.