Airin
The sweets she had received from Airin contained no riddle this time. They simply told her to wait at an eatery near the dormitory. Since all three had received the same message, it seemed that passing the test required all three of them together.
*Tch.*
Maomao headed to the meeting spot with the other two, who both wore smug expressions on their faces.
The northern part of the royal capital was home to many upscale establishments. The restaurant where Maomao and the others had been summoned was a high-end tavern as well. It catered to bureaucrats, and private rooms were provided accordingly.
"We certainly stick out."
A tavern was, as the name implied, a place that served alcohol. The tall building was luxurious, and while it had a certain refinement, for a sixteen-year-old girl like
Yao,
it was certainly unfamiliar territory.
Not the kind of place three women would casually stop by.
Inside, most of the patrons were adult men, and apart from the serving girls, women were virtually nonexistent. The general consensus was that such establishments were no place for women. That said, having grown accustomed to the drinking parties in the pleasure quarter, Maomao didn't care even if the looks from those around her were cold. At least there were no drunken men here who had lost all sense of reason.
A serving girl with elegantly applied makeup approached them.
"May I help you?"
She didn't regard them as customers. There was even a possibility she had mistaken them for job seekers.
"We're guests from the west."
Maomao said exactly what had been written in the message. The server seemed to understand and led Maomao and the others toward the back.
The moment they entered the room they had been led to, Maomao was overcome by an immense sense of relief from the tension.
"Well, hello there."
A man with curly hair despite his small frame, wearing round glasses, was sipping fruit wine — or perhaps it was water.
It was Raban,
the eccentric strategist's nephew and adopted son.
There was another man present, but he was a bodyguard Raban occasionally brought along who never said a word in their conversations, so he could be safely ignored.
"I'm glad you made it safely. I was wondering what would happen if you didn't show up."
"I'd go home."
Maomao spun around—
and En'en
firmly grabbed her arm.
"What do you mean you'd go home? More importantly, you know them?"
Yao looked back and forth between Maomao and Raban, question marks practically floating above her head.
"Maomao is the daughter of Grand Commandant Kan,"
En'en said. That was the eccentric strategist's proper title.
"We're just acquaintances."
Maomao replied in her usual flat manner.
"My, you knew that well."
When Raban said that with admiration, En'en replied with a perfectly nonchalant expression.
"When someone shows his face as often as he does, you naturally look into him. It seemed to have become something of an unspoken understanding among certain circles."
(That freak.)
Maomao cursed inwardly. He never did anything worthwhile, anyway.
"And this one is the son of Grand Commandant Kan."
"Her brother?"
Yao reacted to En'en's words.
"That's right."
"Not at all."
"So which is it?"
Maomao thought that at the very least, they needed to bring Yao onto their side here.
But Yao glared at Maomao.
"So what you're saying is, they're your family—which means this was all a setup from the start?"
She'd been misunderstood in a completely different direction than expected. Still, it was understandable—if you learned that your acquaintance was the mastermind, you'd think the same thing.
"That's not what I meant."
It was Raban who denied it.
"If someone can't even solve a mystery like this, I don't want them around, even if they're family. Sending in someone incompetent only invites more trouble."
The round spectacles narrowed his fox-like eyes even further as he spoke. He wasn't trying to shield Maomao—this was Raban's honest opinion. The man who had betrayed his own blood and cast a good-for-nothing out of the family. That was Raban.
En'en had curled her lips slightly. It might have been a smile, but there seemed to be a note of sarcasm woven into it. She'd probably heard rumors about what kind of person Raban was. Compared to Yao, who kept tilting her head in confusion, En'en was far more worldly.
(Though maybe he paired her with someone sheltered precisely for that reason.)
As an HR decision, it probably wasn't wrong.
"Standing around talking is no good. Why don't we sit down and chat over a meal?"
Maomao took her seat, her displeasure plain on her face. Given the hierarchy, Raban would presumably be treating. The most she could do was order the most expensive items on the menu.
"So here's the thing."
Raban spoke in a casual tone, but the content was actually quite involved. There was a reason he'd gone out of his way to choose a private room at a restaurant frequented by VIPs. This was a conversation that required discretion.
To break it all down: Airin's entry into the rear palace had been orchestrated by Raban. The reason, he explained, was that Airin's political enemies were consolidating power, and he'd sensed a genuine threat to her life.
Asking for help with food imports could, in a sense, be seen as building a lifeline. Controlling food during a famine was an enormous lever. He'd tried to use that as leverage against them.
"And even that, they ignored."
He felt guilty about thinking of the common people, but being assassinated first would accomplish nothing. So he'd decided to have her enter the rear palace of the emperor of Li. On the surface, it wasn't defection—if anything, it demonstrated connections to another country.
Maomao tilted her head.
"Is something unclear?"
"No, I was just wondering why
Saō
seems to have so many women in prominent roles."
That was almost unthinkable in this country. Within the rear palace, perhaps, but outside it, women rarely held higher status than men. Even becoming a court lady was framed as part of bridal training.
Granted, she might have value as a tool for political marriages, but it was hard to imagine someone with as much sway as Airin.
"You didn't even know that?"
Yao looked unusually smug, her nose in the air with a little "hmf." She was clearly delighted that there was something she knew but Maomao didn't, and could barely contain herself from explaining. Gradually, Maomao was starting to find the girl's personality rather endearing.
"The nation of Saō is built on two pillars. One is the king. The other is the shrine maiden."
Maomao had heard a bit about the shrine maidens. They issued various directives based on divination.
"
"
"The final authority over governance rests with the king, but recent developments have changed things."
Normally, a shrine maiden serves only a few years at most, perhaps a decade. The reason is simple: the position is held by a young girl who has yet to reach her first moon, sometimes barely more than a small child.
She exists, so to speak, as a symbol—an idol.
"But the current shrine maiden is already over forty. If she's older than the king himself, then she's sticking her beak into matters where she has no business sticking it. What's more, that has given the women greater power to meddle in politics."
"I see."
Some of this she had already known, but hearing it laid out again brought fresh understanding.
(Menstruation hasn't come even past forty?)
That was the part that interested Maomao more. It was rare, but apparently such cases existed. There were several possible causes. Sometimes it was due to an intersex condition. How the individuals themselves felt about it, she couldn't say, but from Maomao's perspective, it was fascinating to a cruel degree.
"Had there been similar cases in the past?"
"That connects to the main topic, so allow me to explain."
Rahan spoke while picking at a slice of pickled pig's ear.
"There appear to have been a few similar cases historically. However, even when the expected successor did not come, the maiden was transferred to the next generation once she passed twenty."
That would be better both politically and symbolically.
"Then why has the current shrine maiden continued in her role?"
"The current shrine maiden is special."
He produced a sheet of paper from his breast pocket. It resembled a portrait of a beautiful woman, but the hair color was rendered in a pale wash.
"The current shrine maiden is"
"an albino."
"Among the children chosen as shrine maidens, there are many conditions, and the one considered most sacred is said to be a child born white."
An albino, rare even among shrine maidens. Ignoring all precedent, she had remained in her position to this day.
"......"
Now it finally clicked into place.
*'Do you want to know the true identity of the white girl?'*
The beautiful painter had seen a white beauty in the West. Perhaps that beauty had been the shrine maiden — their ages would align perfectly.
Those with albinism supposedly lack something that produces the colors a person should normally have. White babies can be born by chance, or they can be born through bloodline. The same was true in Ly, and it was surely exceedingly rare in Saou as well.
Did Lady Bai have some connection to this, too?
"That shrine maiden is currently gravely ill. They've come requesting the aid of our country's physicians, but apparently, even if the practitioner is a former eunuch, a shrine maiden must not be touched by a man."
"So you need a court lady with medical training."
"Exactly. Given the location, it means a long journey, and above all, it could develop into an international issue. We need someone who can handle things with considerable flexibility."
So that was why this particular selection had been so different from the usual.
"Was there a possibility that no one would pass?"
En'en spoke.
"If that had been the case, we would have sent someone else. It would have been a last resort, nothing more."
Maomao wondered what sort of person that might be, and suddenly recalled a striking beauty who looked remarkably good in men's clothing.
Suirei.
If they stripped away her origins, she might be the most suitable person for the job. Though being held captive, she would no doubt want to avoid it.
"Reading between the lines, I take it that Consort Airin's concern for the shrine maiden's illness serves to keep her political rivals in check?"
"That's more or less correct."
It was an evasive way of putting it. Certainly, nothing Rahan said contained any contradictions. But something about it nagged at Maomao nonetheless.
A good lie contains cleverly mixed truth. In Rahan's case, he hadn't told a lie, but he hadn't told the whole truth, either.
The "white girl" — she couldn't possibly be talking about a shrine maiden who was well past forty.
*(Should I press him on this?)*
No — if she did something clumsy, she might not just alert Yao but tip off En'en as well.
For now, Maomao decided to keep quiet.