After Rifa, it was the Saō woman who had recently become a mid-ranking consort. Three upper-level consort palaces remained unused, and like the other mid-ranking consorts, she had been given a separate building. It was situated in the central-eastern part of the rear palace — nothing special in terms of treatment — but the building appeared to have been unoccupied for some time, and the surroundings were rather barren. The garden trees had been recently planted, and the soil still bore the color of freshly turned earth.
The maids who came to greet them smiled warmly and ushered Maomao and the others inside. There were about five of them, neither too many nor too few for a mid-ranking consort. However, their movements were so flawlessly mannered that there was a distinct air of docile, obedient maids having been deliberately assigned.
"Hello."
The new blonde consort arrived wearing what must have been an unfamiliar style of large-sleeved garments. Her skin was almost translucently white, her eyes the color of a clear sky, her figure voluptuous, and she was tall. She reclined lazily on a long chaise, watching the maids prepare tea.
(The Emperor's
type,
obviously.)
But given her position, he probably wouldn't make a move on her so easily. The Emperor was vigorous at night, to be sure, but Maomao knew he was also shrewd. With two young sons growing up healthily, there was no need to rush into producing more heirs. Besides, if a woman who had arrived as an exile bore a child, it could become a diplomatic flashpoint down the road.
(There are already plenty of those.)
Maomao had seen the woman who had boldly stood her ground against Raban in the western lands. Right now she was playing meek, busying herself with tea and whatnot, but who knew what she was thinking beneath the surface.
The maid beside her tasted the tea for poison, then distributed it to those present.
"Have you settled into the rear palace?"
Her father spoke slowly. Airin was fluent in their language, but speaking slowly would probably make things easier to follow.
"Yes, everyone has been very kind."
She picked up the cup with her long, slender fingers. The teacup was an exotic style with a handle. Her long fingernails were carefully painted with lacquer. The tea gave off a sweet fragrance, so it was likely a fermented tea from the West. Maomao wanted to try a sip, but only enough had been prepared for her father and the quack doctor.
(They served it at the Crystal Palace, though.)
That was probably Rifa's consideration.
Her father conducted his examination and took the consort's pulse. What distinguished him from the other imperial physicians was probably his practice of recording everything as numerical values. Not to the extent of Raban, but he placed great weight on numbers as clear indicators of one's physical condition.
He spread his portable writing instruments across the table and began scribbling away.
That was when Maomao noticed his handwriting was different from usual.
(Western script?)
At first glance, the characters were squiggly and worm-like. In the past, her father had written all his medical notes in this script. Since Maomao would frantically try to decipher them, he had switched to a different writing system.
Why was he doing this again, she wondered — but there were people craning their necks to peek. The quack doctor simply said he had no idea and handed over the instruments as directed. One of the maids, while freshly steeping some tea, kept stealing curious glances. And one more person.
En'en was watching with a perfectly composed expression.
The contents were nothing remarkable. Even Maomao could read them to some extent. The pulse is normal, health condition is good—just simple phrases like that.
"There are no particular abnormalities."
"Is that so, ka?"
Airin, who usually spoke fluently but occasionally produced a strange pronunciation at the end of her sentences. She seemed to remember Maomao, occasionally glancing over this way.
When nothing particularly unusual came up and she was about to finish her work and leave, Maomao was called back by Airin.
"Since you've come all this way, please have some sweets."
Baked treats were wrapped in a pretty cloth package. They were oddly shaped
cookies
that gave off a fragrant smell of
cheese.
Only the court ladies had received them, and since the quack doctor was eyeing the unfamiliar sweets enviously, she would have to share a few when they got back to the medical office. Couldn't they have found matching cloth wraps? Only En'en's was patterned.
By the time she finished visiting the remaining mid-ranking consorts, it was nearly evening. Even Maomao, who ate little, was getting hungry. She considered coaxing the quack doctor into having tea at the medical office.
"Today it's only the mid-ranking consorts, but next we'll need to go through the lower-ranking consorts, and then the ladies-in-waiting—there's no shortage of examinations ahead."
Father said this in his gentle way. Before, he had only been examining up to the mid-ranking consorts. And since it was the quack doctor conducting the interviews, it was questionable whether the results had been of any use at all.
Father would be returning as the medical official, and more attending court ladies would be added. Given his age, he couldn't keep doing this forever, so he probably intended to have the court ladies take the lead before long. By then, the rear palace might have been further reduced from its current size and be easier to manage.
"Well then, shall we call it a day?"
"You're welcome to stay a while longer, you know."
"I can't do that. I've still got work left."
The quack doctor watched her go with a look of reluctance. He probably had few tea-drinking companions—only the occasional eunuch stopping by. Xiaolan, who had been Maomao's junior friend, was gone too, so he must have been lonely.
I wonder how she's doing.
She thought of that charming girl who had nicely found employment in the city. Perhaps she would write her a letter sometime.
She had been planning to share some of the sweets she'd received, so she took them out from her bosom. She opened the package and was about to pick up a cookie when Maomao suddenly noticed something. The oddly shaped cookies were in a peculiar tube-like form. There was something inside that tube. When she pulled it out with her fingertips, she found a small piece of paper. Every single cookie had one tucked inside.
Hm?
Maomao tucked the sweets she had considered giving to the quack doctor back into her bosom and left the rear palace once more.
She pretended not to see the disappointed quack.
Once her work was done and she returned to the dormitory, Maomao brought out the sweets she had received. She spread out a cloth and placed the sweets on top. There were seven cookies. Each one had a roughly same-sized slip of paper tucked inside.
(...What on earth is this?)
Serpentine, earthworm-like characters. They were the same Western script the old man used to scrawl, but they were individual characters, not connected into words. Unlike the language Maomao used, Western letters did not carry meaning on their own — several characters had to be combined to form a single word.
But she could not decipher the fragmented characters. Was there some meaning to them? Unfortunately, even piecing together the slips of paper she had, they did not match up neatly.
(She's testing me.)
As expected, this was a piece of work. A woman with enough nerve to enter the inner palace as a single attendant.
Knowing she was being tested was infuriating, but what stung even more was not being able to solve it.
Maomao lined up the cookies and the papers. The number of characters written on each slip ranged from two to three. They were cut haphazardly — not clean rectangles, but slanted or crooked.
"Sloppy cutting."
The paper had absorbed oil from the cookies in places, leaving faint stains. It was good-quality paper, though. None of it was torn.
(Playful, yet deliberate.)
What was she trying to do? Maomao held the paper up to the light.
As she tilted her head, she heard a knock at the door.
Wondering who it could be, she stepped out still holding the slips of paper. Yao and En'en were standing there. The two of them also lived in the same dormitory. Of course, they never spoke to Maomao, so their presence or absence made no difference.
"Is something wrong?"
Yao, scowling, answered Maomao's question.
"You received sweets from the consort today at noon, didn't you? Hand them over to me."
She spoke in a commanding tone. It was a curious thing — even Maomao, who had little attachment to sweets, felt unwilling to comply with someone like this. Of course, Maomao understood perfectly well that this woman was not coveting them out of gluttony.
So she decided to be a little mean.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I ate them in place of dinner. The Western-style ones had a rather crumbly texture. Could they have contained wheat germ or something?"
She deliberately emphasized the strange sensation in her mouth. Yao's face turned beet red and she pressed in close.
"Spit them out! Spit them out right now!"
She was shaken. Sure enough, it seemed the cookies Yao had eaten also had slips of paper tucked inside, just like Maomao's.
"The rest of them! Don't tell me you ate every single one without noticing!"
"Yao-dono."
The one who stopped Yao from shaking Maomao's shoulders was En'en.
"Maomao-san's face seems like it's smiling. She has the sort of expression you'd make when you've made a fool of someone, so perhaps she's the one being teased?"
En'en had apparently remembered Maomao's name. On top of that, she had also managed to read the expression on Maomao's face, which was said to be perpetually blank.
"Being teased — you mean it's true!"
(She saw through me.)
Maomao straightened her collar and looked at Yao.
"I may have been playing around a little, but isn't it you who's being rude? I don't know if you hold some grudge against me, but if you're going to try to seize someone else's belongings without warning, that's no different from robbery."
What Maomao said was perfectly reasonable. Yao would probably think her cheeky, but this was one thing she couldn't back down on. And sure enough, Yao didn't push back on it.
Yao took a deep breath and let it out, then looked straight at Maomao.
"Was there anything unusual about the baked sweets you received earlier? If there was, I'd like you to hand them over. I'll pay you for the sweets in exchange."
"What do you mean by 'anything unusual'?"
"Something unusual. Like if something strange had been mixed in."
Getting a little extra in return wouldn't be bad, but Maomao was also curious about the mystery of that strange piece of paper. She didn't want to just hand it over easily.
Were Yao's baked sweets hiding something inside them too? But she doubted Yao would tell her so readily.
Maomao glanced briefly at En'en. She was an attendant serving Yao in an official capacity, but she still seemed to be watching Maomao with a calm, composed demeanor.
(Should I try turning it her way?)
Maomao opened her mouth while considering how to steer the conversation.
"If you're asking what was inside the sweets I received, that would mean something was inside yours too, correct? If you tell me, I'll share my information as well."
"..."
Yao looked thoroughly displeased. En'en, meanwhile, was carefully watching her mistress's every move.
Maomao took out the slip of paper she had been holding.
"If you show me yours, I'll show you the rest of this."
What was written on the paper was a different character each time. If they held some meaning, they would all need to be collected. So showing one wouldn't be a problem.
"What about the others?"
"If you show me yours, I'll show you mine."
At the end of the day, Maomao and Yao were equals. They had taken the same exam and passed, so status differences meant nothing. Many people might think otherwise in practice, but here and now, they were on equal footing.
"Yao."
"…Fine, I understand."
Yielding to Yan Yan's words, Yao nodded with reluctance.
"But we can't just stand around chatting in the hallway."
"Then, my room—"
"No, my room."
Maomao didn't particularly care either way, but if she simply went along with what the other side wanted here, they'd end up seizing the initiative.
"Then how about using the conversation room? I'll go borrow it now."
It was Yan Yan, as expected, who broke the deadlock. The dormitory had a conversation room designed for discussions about work and such matters. For a private talk, it was certainly more convenient.
"Very well. I'll go prepare."
Maomao agreed and returned to her room.