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Chapter Text

Jinshi continued to resist any notion of confining Maomao to the Rear Palace and was working hard every day to lay the groundwork for one of his legal nephews to become emperor. Maomao appreciated the sentiment and was more than happy to support these efforts and take up residence in the outer court instead, so long as that remained an option without leaving his side. After her third tenure in the Rear Palace, Maomao was fairly convinced she had seen it all anyway. The outer court offered her a wider variety of interesting medical cases and court affairs on which to consult in her official capacity as a physician.

Once recovered from childbirth and upon drying up her meager milk supply, Maomao returned to her duties on a so-called part-time basis and was almost immediately welcomed back with a string of nighttime dog maulings against drunk mid-ranked officials, made more troubling by the inability to hunt down the potentially rabid culprit. This affair was shortly followed by a mild venereal disease outbreak that incidentally exposed a web of sexual liaisons and conflicts of interest across military divisions and bureaucratic departments. This web furnished modes, motives, and opportunities for an array of smaller mysteries that baffled the court while Maomao was in the Rear Palace and then pregnant. There were also opportunities to go on short trips outside the capital to investigate provincial corruption scandals, failing infrastructure projects, and botched assassination plots. On such occasions, even if her specific medical expertise was not required to solve the case, Maomao could usually identify and collect one or two herbal specimens not yet housed within her greenhouses to make the trips more worth the sacrifices. 

All told, Maomao actually found herself less home-bound than she might have preferred. Maomao did not lack at all for mental enrichment under the arrangement she and Jinshi had bartered with their circumstances to achieve.

What Jinshi failed to consider in his efforts to keep Maomao out of the Rear Palace was how much more available space the Rear Palace had for greenhouses versus his palace’s grounds.

“We’ll be off now,” Maomao announced as she trod past Suiren in the direction of the gate.

Suiren looked up from her sweeping, Zulin mirroring her thwarted expression at the lady of the house’s appearance. Since becoming the Moon Prince’s consort, Maomao spent a fair share of her time dolled up in fine materials with silver affixing her hair, even when ostensibly appearing on a scene as a medical investigator. Chue regularly shadowed her with a change of clothes for when a messy situation invariably arose. At home, she could afford to be both much more relaxed and practical. Going out to gather ingredients in the Rear Palace was a bit of a gray area. Maomao likely didn’t look much different from her days as Lady Gyokuyou’s poison taster in her cotton garments, laden with baskets, both in hand and on her back. Perhaps she had filled out a bit between years of Suiren’s cooking and the recent childbearing.

“Lady Maomao,” Suiren entreated her. “When appearing in the Rear Palace, you should take more care how you represent yourself and your husband.”

“I’m wearing his hair sticks,” Maomao pointed out, turning her head slightly so the silver must have glinted in the sun. She reached up and felt a poppy flower’s petals. The hair sticks were the sole impracticality of her attire. Wearing them was almost a habit now since she dressed so finely and had no excuse to tuck them amongst her things. The eunuch guards and Chue would keep her from being mistaken for a servant and harassed too badly, whether she wore the hair sticks or not.

“It might be better to try to come and go without being noticed by the consorts,” Maomao dismissed the thought almost as soon as she voiced it. “It would be obvious who I am based on my company anyway.”  

Chue popped up then to protest. “Lady Maomao, Lady Maomao, I’ll have you know Miss Chue can be quite discreet!”

“Hm? Miss Chue, Miss Chue,” Maomao replied. “What does that matter? My other companions are quite recognizable.”  

“Oh! Those companions,” Chue exaggerated.

Suiren, sharp as ever, exclaimed, “You couldn’t mean! How do you intend to manage them? Where are they?”

Zulin only tilted her head at a quizzical angle.

Maomao blinked and first set down the basket in her hands next to her feet and then shifted the basket from her back. No sooner had the basket touched the earth than two pudgy infants, hardly toddlers, spilled out in a mess of gumption and poor coordination. Ziwan alone remained sat in the basket. Her wide, curious eyes barely peeked over the wicker brim to watch the scene as she sucked on her thumb.  

“Lady Maomao,” Suiren attempted to chide even as her sensibilities were overwhelmed by cuteness. “Oh my,” she laughed, holding out her arms to intervene in case Xiyu attempted to lift himself up onto two feet rather than two feet plus two hands, bum in the air. “Are the children perhaps a bit young to learn herbalism?”

“Yes, but fresh air is good for them.” Maomao plucked Yulan up before she could crawl too far. Perched on her hip, Yulan immediately reached for Maomao’s hair sticks. Maomao caught her hand and feigned a crisp bite. Yulan squealed and wisely backed off, quickly distracted by the much more brightly colored flowers blooming at the edge of the walkway. “And they like plants.” This was spoken with quiet pride that her junior royals were, so far, distinctly not pampered shut-ins. Honestly, her kids ought to be likened to piglets more so than kittens, the way they gravitated toward messes and never stopped eating.

Case in point…

Xiyu had found a patch of green clovers to marvel over. He plucked a single stem between his tiny fingers. His dark eyes shone. Chue swiped it from his hands the very instant it looked like he was about to swallow it whole, replacing the sprig of green with a more appropriate treat for such a small child. Xiyu fell back on his rear in the dirt and smacked his lips happily, saliva dripping down his chin. 

Suiren was immediately at him with a handkerchief.

“But all the way in the Rear Palace?” Suiren asked. There were, after all, greenhouses and a standard herb garden installed at Jinshi’s palace.

Maomao had already returned Yulan to the basket with Ziwan, giving her a limited window to settle Xiyu in with them before his eldest sister made another break for it. She answered Suiren somewhat evasively. “There’s a plant I’ve been cultivating in the Rear Palace that may have a part to play in a recent case. But I won’t know until I run a few experiments in my lab this evening.”

“And the children’s role in this investigation?” Suiren asked as she surrendered a suddenly much cleaner Xiyu into his mother’s rightful arms.

Maomao thought she had answered that already. They had no such role in anything. They were infants. But the way Suiren, Chue, and Zulin were looking at her…Maomao hastened to resituate the basket on her back and get going. “It’s been a demanding case. I need to be efficient with my time.”

With that, Maomao and her cooing basket were off to the greenhouses, Chue and her eunuch guards dashing after.

Chapter Text

Just wait till they’re teenagers.

Those were Maomao’s cryptic words, spoken to Jinshi as he admittedly gushed over how sweet and cute their sleeping newborns were. Their sleeping forms were strewn across the bed next to Maomao, right within her reach. Maomao, in fact, had been idly toying with Yulan’s foot as they spoke, testing the strangely dexterous curling reflex of infant toes.

Trust me, they won’t be this cute forever.

Jinshi knew this was true intellectually. He had caused his own fair share of heartache for those who raised him. Maomao had also alluded to some Verdigris House horror stories involving kamuros in the pits of puberty. Zulin and the Shi clan girls laundered into his staff to attend Maomao were also younger teenagers and somewhat frightening with the force of their emotions and unique talent to conjure up personal and interpersonal crises in their limited downtime.

But at that moment, Ziwan gripping his pinky with her whole tiny hand, Jinshi could not fathom anything that could ever make him cross with her.

Thirteen years on, Maomao clearly disagreed.

“My daughters have betrayed me,” Maomao croaked out over the paper in her hand. He had only just watched her pluck it from a stack of morning missives for review at their breakfast table.

Jinshi immediately set down his tea. “What’s happened?”

Fortunately, Maomao’s wording immediately ruled out anything truly heinous. His mind raced for offenses against their mother that might be tallied as betrayal.

Their daughters had long been guilty of having zero interest in medicine itself. Yulan only knew plants enough to snack while out on a hunt or to better track game. She could dress a minor wound in an emergency. Ziwan was interested in medicine as much as it overlapped with her own hobbies. She could be counted on for an earnest discussion of treatments for various types of bites from various creatures that slithered and skittered. Both girls utterly lacked remorse for their disinterest, and Maomao had begrudgingly accepted this might never change.

Had they traded guarantees of Maomao’s visitation to their grandfather and uncle Lahan for more spoils? No, the scolding from that first time was borderline traumatizing. Xiyu, an uninvolved bystander who retreated to his room for the occasion, had ringing ears by the end.

Jinshi could not think of anything else his daughters could do that would personally offend Maomao. He watched her, hunched over that piece of paper like it was announcing someone’s death. She still had not answered him.

“Well?” He pinched the corner of the paper and tugged.

Maomao continued to seethe in silence, but released the paper so her hands were free to bury her face in. Jinshi snorted at her behavior and read the paper.

“Yulan and Ziwan need new clothes again. New sets of jackets, skirts, trousers, and footwear are all required, in the measurements of…” Jinshi’s eyes widened.

Since they were born, Maomao had kept track of the children’s measurements. In their first days and weeks, it had been a matter of medical treatment and research. It kept her sane during their shared confinement. In the coming years, it was a more practical matter of ordering new garments, keeping up with growth spurt after growth spurt. There was sentimentality, too, of course, etched into the very walls of their family home, year after year.

Jinshi had always been glad to see those notches rise higher and higher on the beam. He never thought once about them getting too high.

But all these years, Maomao must have been watching them as one did a waterline in a teacup being filled, anxiously bidding it not to overflow.

Jinshi grinned at Maomao’s pout. “The girls have surpassed you in height,” He pronounced with no small part fatherly pride, at least some part childish provocation of his wife.

Maomao jolted like his words lanced her through the heart. She muttered something under her breath suspiciously like, “We fed them too well…”

Jinshi rolled his eyes as he set the attendant’s report aside. “This only confirmed what we could all see.” True, it was difficult to tell unless mother and daughters were standing directly next to one another, and Maomao was often given the illusion of a few extra centimeters by wearing her hair up with ornate pins. But this illusion was a fragile parlor trick these days, revealed by the slightest shifts in perspective.

“Isn’t it still treason to speak certain uncomfortable truths aloud?” Maomao complained.

“What about Xiyu?” Jinshi teased. “He’s been a half a head taller than you since he came back from camp.” And still growing. Jinshi felt a chill run through him, imagining having to look up at his teenage son. Perhaps Maomao has a point…

Maomao persisted in refusing to look at him. “You cannot be betrayed by someone who was never on your side,” She answered matter-of-factly.

“Huh?” Jinshi rolled his eyes at her buttoned lip. “Come now, you can’t just make such indictments about your own children and not explain. Maomao!” She refused him again. Turned her back on him even. So, he traced a finger up her spine and tortured a response out of her.

“Guuuuh!” Maomao gasped. She attempted to flee the table, but Jinshi hauled her into his lap. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a lady-in-waiting take one step into the room and then turn on her heel without a word. “H-he’s your su-soN!” Maomao choked out through peals of forced laughter. Jinshi mercifully let her catch his breath as he digested this equally baffling statement.

Maomao glared at him with teary eyes. “Xiyu was always going to be needlessly tall,” she panted.

Her expression roused something in Jinshi’s core like an invitation, despite the long day ahead, but her words stung like an undeserved attack.

As she began to shift back toward her own chair, Jinshi clamped one hand on her hip and the other around an unsuspecting ankle. Maomao appeared to rapidly understand her predicament. “As opposed to being needlessly short?” Jinshi shot back. And he proceeded to tickle her captive foot mercilessly, for lack of a desperately desired object to hold out of her reach.

Chapter Text

The only grandparent Maomao grew up with was, by a technicality of blood, the Madam of the Verdigris House. The chances she ever doted on the newborn grandchild that disgraced her establishment were slim to none. Unless one counted not dropping the extra mouth to feed into a trash heap as particularly doting behavior. In her role managing a brothel, her granny had never erred in her authority over the courtesans and serving men by going soft on Maomao. The old accounting books spoke to that fact.

Granny, I can’t imagine you ever acting like this.

Before Maomao, two of the highest-ranking men in the country – far above the likes of a pleasure district madam in both standing and responsibilities – were perched expectantly in their seats, quite like dogs on their hind legs, waiting for a treat. They had not even seen hide nor hair of the children yet.

Since the one-hundred days ceremony, the Emperor was obviously busy with important state matters and had a duty to allocate most free time to the business of heirs in the Rear Palace. Lakan meanwhile had tried and failed a half hundred times to slip his handlers and come scratching at Maomao’s doors, pleading to see her and his “beloved grandkids.” Basen usually made quick work of him but recently the weirdo nearly slipped through security. As in, Basen swore up and down that the Commandant was literally slippery – covered in some substance.

Maomao had had Basen wash his hands thoroughly and cut a square from his soiled sleeve to experiment with the substance’s flammability. Before she could get very far, Jinshi came home and announced the Emperor had a task that required Lakan in one piece.

Maomao ought to have clarified if that included charred bits that might flake off.

Tensions were high at the farthest northwestern border. Famine was propelling roving bands farther south and making them more desperate and willing to take risks. Victimized villages and military scouts reported that the aggressors were not foreign military troops by all appearances, but they were organized enough to be troublesome. The Emperor was certain Lakan could handle the problem with a few well-placed shogi pieces without even leaving the Central Province. Problem was, Lakan would not – could not, allegedly – work until he saw his grandchildren again.

“Technically, he only asked to see the children,” Jinshi had tried to give her the out right before she entered the sitting room.

Maomao had given him a flat look in return. “Even if he signed a contract with the Emperor himself with that exact stipulation, do you think that would keep him from complaining?”

Also, Maomao did not think setting a precedent of sacrificing her children to the weirdo in her stead was a good idea. True, her children would likely have no reason to be particularly scared by, envious of, or annoyed with Lakan. In fact, Lakan might be better suited to the consequences-free pampering of a more traditional grandparent than he ever was to fatherhood. Even she had found people more worthy of her ire than her blood father in recent years. But Maomao still didn’t want his worst habits to rub off on her children if left unsupervised. 

So, she had volunteered for that duty.

The Emperor’s presence in the sitting room had been a surprise, for all of half a moment. Of course, he’d want to see the terms of his deal with the Grand Commandant met. That way, he could extract the needed insight from Lakan as soon as possible. Maomao wouldn’t be shocked if Gaoshun had a rolled-up map tucked up his sleeve. And be he an uncle or a grandfather, Maomao’s infant children were still the newest additions to the Emperor’s family.

So, there the two men at the pinnacles of power sat before Maomao, ready to trade cuddles with babies for national security.

“Your Majesty……They just woke from their nap. It will only be a few moments,” Maomao greeted the men.

“Maomao~,” Lakan burst out. “That’s okay! Tell Papa how you’re doing while we wait for your precious babies! Are you well? Is that man leaving you alone now finally? The imperial family better be letting you rest-”

“Actually, I’ll ask my ladies to hurry up. Excuse me.”

“MAOMAO!”

Maomao eventually did return with Xiyu in her arms, Yulan and Ziwan being carried by her ladies behind her. Xiyu was going absolutely nowhere. His tiny hands were in a death grip on the front of her jacket, with his face pressed against the wall of her chest. At least the Emperor and Lakan, the solicitor and intended target, found the sight endearing.

“Turn around, please, please,” Lakan begged. “Let Grandpapa see your little face!”

“Is he always so shy?” The Emperor laughed. “Or is he simply above greeting his elders properly? How arrogant!”

“His sisters are more friendly,” Maomao replied. As she spoke, each man was offered a granddaughter to hold. They seized greedily on the opportunity.

“What a pretty little girl,” The Emperor observed. “No, handsome more like. Eh, Lakan, feel the grip on this one. We should give her a sword and have her lead the Forbidden Army one day.”

Maomao wondered idly if the Emperor thought he was holding Yulan, the feistier of her daughters by all accounts, when actually he had Ziwan. Jinshi said he spent at least one-tenth of every official meeting with the Emperor detailing the intricacies of their children’s growing personalities. But the Emperor had only seen the girls twice before that day, and to the untrained eye…

Lakan was hardly even cuddling Yulan – such would require him to hold her close enough not to see her face. Instead, he held Maomao’s daughter practically at arm’s length and stared at her with snot and tears dripping down his face. Yulan didn’t seem to know quite what to do with this.

Lakan could not seem to tear his eyes from Yulan though he desperately wanted to. Finally, he said, “Let me have Ziwan, too! It’s unfair I can’t bask in both my granddaughters’ cuteness at the same time!”

The Emperor was puzzled. “You have…” He shook himself. Technically, this playdate was a matter of state business.

Maomao watched uneasily as the Emperor himself helped arrange both infants to sit up on the couch between himself and Lakan. The strategist – very carefully, because the old fart was legitimately getting along in years now – got to his knees so he could rest his chin in his hands and make lovesick faces at the babies.

It was then that the Emperor finally seemed to catch on. “My word, they really are identical. It used to be that Ziwan was so much smaller than Yulan, but now they look like proper twins. Thanks to your skills, I assume,” His Majesty said this while looking at Maomao. His cheeks colored slightly. “I didn’t mix them up, did I?”

Maomao bowed her head. “If Your Majesty feels one daughter is better suited to a name than another, we can always switch them around.”

As expected, the Emperor laughed. He was never one to snatch back and dole out names freely anyway.

“Well, Lakan, satisfied yet?”

How he responded appeared to have little to do with the Emperor’s question. “I don’t even care if it’s the same face,” Lakan declared, never tearing his eyes from the infant girls giggling under this weirdo’s intense, snot-faced adoration. “I’m just glad to see it at all!”

Chapter Text

“Miss Ziwan, Miss Ziwan,” Chue sing-songed. “Look at these flower coins! Aren’t the patterns interesting? Take one, it’s auspicious!”

Maomao lifted her head from her herb garden to watch what was surely a doomed endeavor. Chue was prancing after Ziwan, jingling from the sheer quantity of yansheng coins with which she meant to entice the princess. “Maybe later, Miss Chue!” Ziwan politely declined. She was moving briskly enough toward the palace gate to be recognizable only by her soft, wispy voice. The rest of her daughter was a mulberry blur.

“Coin collecting…” Maomao murmured over her skullcaps.

I wonder whose desperate idea this was.

Because they were her children, the Moon Prince’s household (and a not insignificant percentage of the imperial government) conspired to introduce Maomao’s son and daughters to as many and as benign interests as possible, starting at a tender age. Maomao was only slightly offended.

She maintained that it was perfectly practical to educate her children in medicine. Lady Gyokuyou had wanted Maomao to tutor Lingli for a reason. But her blood relatives’ tendency to hyperspecialize crossed with Jinshi’s own single-mindedness was a scary combination. More frightening and probable than a future emperor, Maomao and Jinshi might just produce the next Kada between them, left unchecked.

Thus, not long after the triplets were walking and talking, Suiren, Taomei, Maamei, and Chue were parading potential passions before the toddlers’ wide, curious eyes. This process was conducted with much the same rigor that Maomao might expect from professional matchmakers.

Following that same metaphor, Yulan was the type of handsome, socially astute, and monied young master who hardly needed outside help to find a wife. Her hobbies came to her naturally by way of her endless stock of energy. She had learned to run before she ever walked because crawling just didn’t get her across the room to welcome Jinshi home fast enough. From then on, Yulan never stopped moving. All interests curated for her were clever ploys to expend as much energy as possible in a day to get her down for bedtime with Ziwan and Xiyu in the evenings. Shuttlecock and ball games were only the start. Many vases in the Moon Prince’s palace and potted plants in Maomao’s greenhouses suffered for this.

Xiyu was the type of picky client that matchmakers fired after the fourth failed set-up. They started him out with fairly innocuous, nonpolitical stuff: music. It was a promising start, with Xiyu diligently attending each lesson arranged for him and rapidly attaining proficiency in the qin and erhu. Only for their son to come to Maomao and Jinshi confessing profound disinterest in the subject he had spent years on...This cycle repeated with board games, martial arts, and even herbalism. Xiyu developed a variety of skills but passion and mastery did not come easily to him in any one area. “I guess the resemblance goes further than skin-deep,” Jinshi had lamented more than once, like it was his fault. Only Meimei’s iron-fisted tutelage and a popular misconception prevented Xiyu from ever fully escaping the Go board. Which amounted to a political match, essentially, as far as hobbies went. 

Ziwan then was the romantic bachelor poised for a perfectly suitable match with a well-to-do girl – who then promptly up and eloped with the most scandalous option available the night before the wedding. Now, every day was a new fruitless attempt to lure the youth back from folly and into the loving arms of propriety with a nice girl, like poetry, philosophy, or now, coin collecting. 

But here was Ziwan, racing toward the true object of her desires, full tilt.

Maomao sighed and rose from her weeding. Her joints did not click at all. That was just a twig snapping somewhere in the garden.

She caught up to Chue and Ziwan at the palace gate where a eunuch was waiting with a package in hand, right on time. The Crown Prince had given careful instructions for the fragile contents to be safely delivered, so his letter explaining the gift arrived days ahead of the gift itself. The staff was in despair of it, supportive smiles sliding right off their faces the moment Ziwan’s back was turned. Ziwan greeted the package with a radiant smile that lit up her moon pale face.

She didn’t wait to catch her breath to tear the package open. And then she was hopping and dancing around so much Maomao grew concerned she’d trigger an asthma attack.

“A fine specimen, I take it?” Maomao inquired.

“Mom!” Ziwan exclaimed, breathless but not dangerously so. “Look what the Crown Prince sent me from his travels west!” She held out her treasure for Maomao’s inspection. “It’s as delicate as a spider’s web and just as beautiful.”

The contents of the elegantly carved wooden box would give an unsuspecting recipient a heart attack. The live equivalent would be no stranger in a Taibon. Even knowing it for what it was, the Crown Prince could easily be misinterpreted as harassing his cousin rather as the not-quite-like-minded-but-certainly-sympathetic figure he played in Ziwan’s life. From her own scientific standpoint, Maomao acknowledged that a perfectly intact scorpion molting was an intriguing find, even if Ziwan found it interesting for vastly different reasons.

Scorpion stings had theoretical uses in medicine, though the application was very risky in its own right. Maomao might be tempted to keep a few live ones on hand for study if Ziwan wanted another pet. But Jinshi had drawn a trench-deep line in the sand after three snakes, a fuzzy spider, and the cheeky mimic bird that loved making ominous sounds in the middle of the night.

Ziwan had no practical purpose in adoring anything. The only thread of logic connecting the beasts was her daughter’s unique sense of “cute” and “beautiful”.

Maomao recalled the day a four-year-old Yulan shrieked so loudly, it about shattered the greenhouse’s glass windows. The next few seconds were a blur, but Maomao’s ears were ringing when she batted aside a curtain of heavy frond to find her brave, loud Yulan cowering while frail Ziwan gently scooped up what could have easily been mistaken for a dead vine.

“It’s a good a find,” Maomao assured Ziwan, as she had years before. “Be sure to send the Crown Prince your thanks and encourage him to keep such a keen eye out for gifts for his aunt, too.”

“Of course.” As Ziwan bobbed her head, the little skulls hanging from her hairstick rattled like real bones. Another “cute” accessory her daughter just couldn’t resist and wore proudly. 

“Where will you keep it? You’re running out of room,” Maomao cast a sideways glance at Chue. “Certainly, you have none for a coin collection.” Chue feigned perfect ignorance as she one-handedly juggled two of the patterned coins and whistled.

Ziwan hummed thoughtfully. “Well, maybe if I could pick out my own burial coin charms ahead – ow ow ow! Mother -!” Maomao silenced any protest of her harsh pinch to the ear with a cold glare. Ziwan went limp, allowing herself to be tugged half a head lower, bowed in apology. “I meant to say…I was thinking of displaying this scorpion molting next to my snakeskin shedding. There should be space if I nudge over my figurines...”

Maomao released her daughter’s ear and petted the top of her head while it was within reach. “That sounds like a good idea. Let’s go rearrange things now. Chue, will you help?”

“Of course, Lady Maomao!” Chue chirped, the coins disappearing seemingly into thin air.

Chue did not jingle at all as the three made their way to Ziwan’s chamber. There was only Ziwan’s quiet chatter about her scorpion husk and the dainty clatter of amethyst skulls.

Chapter Text

It was an everyday occurrence that Maomao would be minding her own affairs around the palace when suddenly she was met with a request from a helpless royal. In this way, her life hadn’t changed much since serving as Lady Gyokuyou’s poison taster.

These days, four out of every ten imperial requests came in the form of Yulan throwing herself bodily at her mother’s waist, a thorough account of what brought the girl to this moment issuing past her daughter’s lips with a force to rival eastern medicine’s most powerful emetics.

“-playedwithLingliandLingxiaandIsawalittlecloudinthegrassandchaseditroundandroundandroundbefore I CAUGHT IT, and it was a BUNNY RABBIT andit’ssososocuteMommacanIpleasekeepit? Can I? CAN I?”

The upside of giving birth to certain royals was that Maomao felt much more empowered to tell them no. The downside of having these royals by Jinshi was their wounded faces afterward.

But one thing Maomao and Jinshi had determined early on – as early as when Jinshi pressed his face against the barest of curves, thinking he was whispering to just one child – was that any child of theirs would understand when and where lines are drawn.

So, Yulan would make her frequent and enthusiastic requests for candy, toys, ponies, and whatever else caught her fancy. But she learned to take no for an answer and, with time, even how to negotiate for something more acceptable.

“It’s fluffy like a real bunny!” Yulan would cheer upon receiving a plush rabbit she could cuddle as fiercely as she pleased without fear of separating it from its rabbit family. “Thank you, Momma!”

It was important that the triplets learn to be aware of their ranks and status while not leveraging these things unfairly against others to do as they pleased. This lesson started at home, in hopes it would extend outward into the court and wider world. Ziwan and Xiyu underwent similar teaching moments as Yulan, if on a less frequent basis.

However, it was also important to both Maomao and Jinshi that the triplets also learn to draw their own lines and not to accept anyone crossing them. In a typical family, Yulan and Ziwan might be the chief recipients of such a lesson. Being Master Jinshi’s son, Xiyu was encouraged to remain fussy with strangers and to be loud about unwanted touches.

The consequences of these lessons were as such. In time, the Rain Prince developed a stormy reputation, starting from his toddler days. There were other factors involved, but by the time her son was veering on nine years old, Xiyu was already considered a forbidding figure around the court. The closest any peer and some adults could manage was the width of a game board.  

Thus, the sight of Xiyu twitching and jerking with the force of his giggles could only be found within the trusted walls of the Moon Prince’s palace.

Xiyu gasped out, “Mom-ma!” His hands were firmly anchored on Maomao’s sleeves as she dug her fingers into his armpits, his weakest area after his back and the bottoms of his feet. Yulan was actively trying to wrench off one of his shoes as Xiyu flailed his legs.

“Pardon?” Jinshi leaned over the edge of the couch and held a hand up to his ear. He smirked down at Maomao on the floor with their son. “Did you hear something, dear? I’m afraid I'm going deaf in my old age.”

“I-I did-n’t say-”

“Oh yes, you did,” Maomao corrected, voice even where her son’s rasped with laughter. “You said you weren’t a little boy anymore, yeah? Isn’t that the same as calling your parents bags of bones?”

“N-no!”

“‘No’, what?”

Her son took a deep breath between laughs. “I’m done now,” Xiyu announced, and at once the tickling ceased.

Poor, Yulan. Right as she wretched off Xiyu’s shoe finally, too. She surrendered it back with a pout before fleeing back to Jinshi’s lap on the couch.

“You nearly broke your record,” Ziwan helpfully informed her brother from her perch. She had quietly observed the proceedings while nibbling on an herbal jelly dessert and apparently counting how many seconds Xiyu could endure his tickle punishment.

Xiyu pointedly ignored his sister as Maomao helped him to his feet and back into his missing shoe. “You and Dad aren’t old,” He muttered under his breath.

"I know," Maomao sighed, petting the top of his head and running her fingers through his loose black hair to tidy it. Pouting like that really does make the family resemblance more pronounced, she noted, not for the first time and likely far from the last.

“Your record for Momma, not Daddy,” Ziwan sought to clarify.

The clouds parted. Xiyu’s face immediately lit up. “Oh, that makes a world of difference!”

Maomao’s eyes traveled over to Jinshi. Yulan was impressed with her brother and congratulatory, but the atmosphere around the couch had certainly dampened. Yep, Maomao thought, like father, like son.

Chapter Text

Not long after the triplets were born, Luomen’s eyesight took a sharp decline. In his own words, his field of vision was reduced to a pin hole. While a full retirement was made impossible by the continued good faculties of such a master physician’s mind, the imperial family insisted that Luomen step back from active duty to focus on teaching, consulting, and dictating his knowledge for future generations of court physicians. For his slightly more abundant leisure time, he was also provided as cushy accommodations in the outer court as her father’s humility would allow.

Maomao tried to visit him regularly with the children.

“They really are enamored with that basket,” Luomen observed. It wasn’t as if he could see the triplets taking turns tumbling in and out, but it was plain by the din of squeals, shrieks, giggles, and baby babble just how amused the infants were by the basket. In Maomao’s experience, the basket was her children’s favorite toy in the world anytime she didn’t actually need them in it to go somewhere.

“It’s sturdy, they won’t break it.”

“Of course. Nothing less than the highest quality weavers service the court.” The way Luomen huffed a laugh made Maomao’s cheeks burn. He likely meant Nothing less than highest quality baskets are provided to a prince’s sole consort.

“I’m sure you’re being very careful and not letting them get into your other baskets as well.”

Maomao had brought a separate basket of fresh herbs to share with her dad. It wasn’t anything special, just some things to have his serving man add to his meals and tea for extra flavor and nutrition. Her dad ran a sprig of green between his fingers, which remained rather deft despite Luomen’s own complaints. Unsurprisingly, he had been able to identify everything Maomao brought by smell and touch alone and had been able to remark on the good quality of Maomao’s gardening.

“They do put their mouths and hands on everything,” Maomao admitted. “We try to watch them closely.” Easier said than done without three sets of eyes, ears, and hands. Every day vindicated Maomao in quashing the whole ‘fake our deaths and run away like in that play, but successfully’ plan. Even if they managed to be born, she and Jinshi could never have managed triplets alone. They were always getting into something.  

Just that morning, while sneaking in a quick cuddle before he was dragged off like a condemned criminal to attend state affairs, Yulan had stuck an entire finger up Jinshi’s nose and tried to eat the booger she came away with. Ziwan kept trying to pull buttons and clasps (perfectly sized choking hazards) off people’s clothes and crying furiously at her own failures. And Xiyu had recently been caught teething on the corner of one of Suiren’s romance novels that Zulin left out. Maomao hoped he didn’t develop a taste for them.

Luomen reached out. His hand whished down once, almost brushing Maomao’s nose before lifting again and planting atop her head. “They’re curious like their mother.” There was that gentle puff of air past his lips again.

Maomao allowed herself to enjoy the head pats, even though she was certain she was being made fun of again. Luomen had joined the ranks of imperial authorities and former high-class courtesans who fawned over the triplets’ antics while smiling too pleasantly at Maomao and Jinshi, as if to say enjoy a taste of your own medicine.

A tingle shot up Maomao’s spine and she tore her eyes from Luomen’s vaguely amused smile back to the basket. “Ah Lan,” Maomao scolded. “Don’t touch that.”

Yulan froze, pudgy hand still reaching for a small acupuncture model on a shelf. Maomao rose to her feet and collected a cloth tiger from the depths of the basket to distract her. Even though Ziwan had been sitting the basket for a while and had every opportunity to play with the toy before then, she chose that moment to babble outrage at Maomao.

“Mama! Nuuh!” Ziwan whined. She reached so forcefully for the toy that the basket nearly tipped before Maomao grabbed the edge. “Ah wa wa, ah wa! Hghhh!”

Apparently, this was a very articulate accusation in the primitive language the triplets had developed between themselves over many months. Yulan toddled forward on uneasy feet, statue thankfully forgotten, to press her hands to either side of Ziwan’s red face. “Di wa, nuh nuh!” Yulan said quite gravely. Whatever she said, her sister seemed to reluctantly accept. She then turned to Maomao and grasped her hands in the air by way of requesting the toy. “Muhmuh!”

“My, they’re quite the conversationalists,” said Luomen as Maomao gave the toy to Yulan and searched for one of the others to pacify Ziwan. Chue stepped forward and produced two more cloth tigers. Right, Xiyu might get jealous.

Her son had crawled over to Luomen’s feet and was currently using his robe to lift himself onto two feet. “Does this one speak yet?” Luomen asked as he put a supportive hand to Xiyu’s back.

“He and his sisters have frequent tea parties at home.” Sometimes, Maomao would simply watch the triplets just sit in a circle among their toys and babble at each other like they were having a true, intellectual conversation comprised entirely of two to three repeating syllables. “But no, Xiyu’s said nothing clearly yet.”

Our wager still stands, Maomao thought with a surge of determination.  

Yulan was always a lost cause. Some ineffable father-daughter bond had been forged when she was placed in Jinshi’s arms as his firstborn child, possibly his only child to survive that night’s ordeal. Yulan took her first steps into Jinshi's arms, so of course her first clear, enunciated word was ‘Dada’. Jinshi had still crowed victory with absolutely none of the decorum befitting his station.

Ziwan was a sure win. Maomao tended Ziwan through life-threatening illness for weeks and nursed her at her own breast. Ziwan was only days behind Yulan in articulating her first real word, a discernable ‘Mama’ amidst a string of gibberish. That’s a tie, Maomao had announced smugly with Ziwan on her hip when Jinshi returned home.

Now, everything rode on Xiyu, who could truthfully go wherever the wind blew. He was a shy baby with strangers and easily provoked to fits of tears, but that also meant he craved comfort from those he trusted. Xiyu was no quicker to cling to or more readily soothed by Maomao versus Jinshi. Since she returned to work, Maomao had even lost the edge of overall time spent with their son.

Whether Maomao won her rhino horn or Jinshi won his nebulous ‘IOU’ might just depend on an eleven-month-old’s mood.

“Hm,” Luomen hummed as he helped Xiyu climb onto the couch, taking Maomao’s spot. Her son reached for the top of his grandfather’s cane, but Maomao stepped in with the remaining cloth tiger. Luomen reached out and felt Xiyu’s face with his hand as the boy played.

Maomao’s brow pinched. She tried to apply a more critical eye with Xiyu, following the motions of Luomen's hand. Had her dad noticed something suspicious even with his poor eyesight? Did Xiyu look pale or jaundiced? Was he feeling for swollen glands in the neck? 

“Dad?”

“He has full cheeks like his mother,” Luomen diagnosed.

Maomao’s shoulders sagged. “It’s just baby fat…” Beneath it, Maomao was sure her son strongly resembled his father. She already saw it everyday in his expressions. 

“He’s a good weight for his age despite being born premature,” Her dad insisted. “You’re taking excellent care of your patients.” Maomao felt that praise more keenly than she had Pairin or Suiren’s compliments of her motherhood.

Xiyu, however, was offended by the pinching of his fat. He could tolerate it not a moment longer. Her son let out a whine as he pushed Luomen’s hand away. “Ganma!” He warbled, looking directly at Luomen as if he’d been betrayed.

A nasty draught passed through the otherwise warm and comfortable accommodations the imperial family had arranged for an elderly physician, long in their service. A physician who had been made into a eunuch not by his own choice and later lost a kneecap, too. Who, as a result of these misfortunes and his own mannerisms, rather resembled an old woman.

Luomen broke the silence with a dry laugh.

“I’ll have to apologize to Lady Anshi at her next visit.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Maomao sighed as she gathered Xiyu into her arms to soothe his latest fit.

Later, she and Jinshi would agree that, technically, Xiyu only needed to say some variation of 'mama' before 'dadda' or vice-versa. Maomao's vision of a pristine rhino horn all her own hadn't crumbled to dust and been carried away on the winds of toddler caprice just yet. 

Chapter Text

After Lihaku whisked Pairin away from the Verdigris House – quite possibly saving her from any risk of being infected with a plague skulking around the lungs of an unsuspecting patron like a dastardly villain – Maomao confided in Jinshi that the only thing keeping Pairin childless was likely a desire to wholeheartedly enjoy being a wife for a good while first. Maomao hadn’t been able to visit the couple to check in because she was assigned to the Rear Palace right after the wedding, but Jinshi had reported to her what he heard through his own channels. That Lihaku missed a decent amount of work in those early months of marriage. That he’d send letters ahead from his home cautioning that he had a cough or a fever, so he would not risk his comrades catching a terrible illness from him. Of course, it was also important to Maomao’s sister that her husband be an upright individual going places in life, so Lihaku did eventually return to his duties on a regular basis. Fortunately, neither half of the couple ever fell ill. No cradles or swaddling clothes were commissioned by the Li household during or immediately after the epidemic either.

Motherhood seemed to be catching, however. After Maomao gave birth, Pairin itched to follow, and Lihaku was happy to scratch that itch. In the five years after the triplets were born, Pairin bore three children of her own, daughters she and Lihaku called Ai, Mimi, and Zong. Of the girls, Jinshi and Maomao’s elder daughter Yulan was closest to Mimi who, while nearly two years younger, was most like her in spirit. Which was to say, Jinshi could point at a fine wrinkle and name the incident perpetrated by those two that caused it.

When Yulan was seven and Mimi was five, the pair embarked on their first misadventure involving a game of flower sticks, seed oil pilfered from the kitchen, and a hunt for an open flame with which to light the sticks on fire like a showman Mimi glimpsed in town. When Yulan was eight and Mimi was six, Mimi brought over her mother’s face powder and other makeup for the girls to experiment with. What started off so innocently somehow ended in a minor explosion that left Maomao strangely nostalgic after they were finished haranguing the girls. When Yulan was ten and Mimi was eight, they saddled a horse and jumped a fence, initiating a small troop mobilization to track the girls down and drag them back. At twelve and ten, the girls recruited Basen’s son into a scheme to enter a young noblemen’s archery tournament in disguise.

As the girls entered their teens, Mimi trailing Yulan closely as ever, Jinshi braced himself for calamitous displays of hormonal nonsense. When such nonsense failed to materialize, it felt like watching the clouds overhead after hearing a thunderclap while remaining bone dry.  

“At what point do I shelve my relief and grow concerned?” Jinshi asked Maomao, not entirely in jest.

She lifted her eyes from the slow drip of her lab’s distillery. “You would have to allow yourself to be relieved first. Which I don’t suggest, by the way.”

Jinshi raised an eyebrow. “So, you do think they had ulterior motives, asking to use one of the military’s archery ranges?”

“I didn’t say that. But it’s not like either of us were at all interested in sex or romance at Yulan’s age.” Maomao met Jinshi’s palpable anguish with a flat look. “Don’t get any ideas about shipping her off to a nunnery either. I only mean we shouldn’t get too comfortable with the idea she’ll always be disinterested in such things. You were right to refuse her and Mimi.”

Jinshi didn’t doubt that Yulan would appreciate the opportunity to compare her marksmanship to that of their empire’s brightest up-and-coming military officers. Mimi was not necessarily the competitive type, but she, too, took pride in her physical capabilities. But even if their intentions were entirely pure, there were several reasons Jinshi had to give the girls an emphatic no.

First: “It’s not a good idea for you to be mingling with random officials, even with a chaperone. There are security risks involved.”

Second: “With your ranks, even if you don’t speak a word to them, your mere presence can be an imposition on those officers, for whom martial arts are a duty more so than a pleasure.”

Third: “Your grandfather will sniff you out and cause a ruckus, and then no one will get anything done. It’s an unnecessary disruption of military affairs.”

Yulan had grimaced, looking very much like her mother being denied a rare fungus, but obediently traipsed off to one of the royal family’s private fields with Mimi and her lady-in-waiting in tow. Their small party had returned just a bit ago, and now the girls were giggling together up in Yulan’s room, biding their time till their next engagement.

Jinshi paced the lab as Maomao attended her experiment. “Do you think they were trying to meet up with someone?” Mimi may be younger, but she had more freedom to socialize and took advantage of it. She was the type of social butterfly that truly blessed an up-and-coming family at court. She could make all sorts of introductions between her friends.

“If so, they weren’t trying that hard.”

 “What if Ah Lan thinks we’ll stand in her way?” Jinshi knew something of the daring and the caution that even a vague wish could inspire in a youth. “I’d rather she not see us as obstacles. If the time comes, that is.”

Maomao paused in her work and looked over her shoulder. “That’s a good point, Jinshi. Why don’t you go reassure her?”

Why not just politely ask him to leave her lab already? Jinshi felt queasy. He pointed at the alcohol she was distilling. “Will that be strong enough to quell my mortification afterwards?”

“It will be able to disinfect your wounds.”

Despite Maomao’s clear jesting, Jinshi decided it was best to just get the conversation out of the way. He made his way up to his elder daughter’s chamber. He was not at all mollified by how the girls jumped in their seats when he stepped into the room. Surely they can’t be up to too much mischief with the door open.

Jinshi returned to Maomao’s lab shortly, bearing a psychological wound that no antiseptic could cleanse. Maomao took one look at him sagging against the doorway and immediately pulled up a chair. Once he was draped across the furniture like a maiden experiencing a fainting spell, Maomao searched around.

She returned with a fan and asked, haltingly, “Does Yulan actually like someone?”

What a difficult question to answer. “When I asked, Yulan could only respond ‘bleghk’. But I heard Mimi dissolve into a fit of giggles out in the hall, so I thought I hit upon something. Still, Yulan acted horrified at the mere suggestion of romance.” Involving herself, at least.

“Did you only ask about men and boys?” Maomao asked.

Jinshi groaned. “I kept it open-ended. I’m not naïve to such things.” And neither, it seemed, was their elder daughter. He reached into his sleeve and handed off a thin book to Maomao before it could burn his skin off.

“Ah,” Maomao pronounced with vaguely amused understanding.

Jinshi leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling in despair as Maomao causally flipped pages. “I need to put that back where I found it. It fell from a hiding place on the underside of her table right after the girls left for their kite-flying party.” Jinshi would never forget the dull thump nor the haunting sight of that little book plopping onto the toe of his shoe.

Jinshi lifted his head in surprise at the disapproving noises issuing past Maomao’s lips as she scrutinized the book.

“I thought my sister’s daughter would have better taste than this," Maomao named Mimi as the supplier without hesitation. "It’s one thing to be tame, but this author doesn’t appear to actually know what goes on between men anatomically. These illustrations are also not of good quality. I mean, look at these proportions –”

He slapped a hand over his eyes. “I saw!”

It was nothing lascivious, but Jinshi still felt deeply uncomfortable with Yulan and Mimi’s apparent fascination with strapping military officials tenderly cradling the faces of doe-eyed bureaucrats.

“You should confiscate this,” Maomao said plainly. She was visibly mentally cataloging more worthy replacements. 

“I don’t want Yulan knowing that I know this book even exists!”

“And am I solely responsible for ensuring the imperial family enjoys healthy habits and appetites?”

Jinshi merely lacked the heart to explain what he’d learned in his own words. It was easier just to show Maomao the book. He didn’t expect her to blink twice at Yulan owning the same sort of materials that they both once helped distribute to consorts not much older than her. He should have anticipated that a physician and the scion of an elite brothel would be offended by the poor production quality and overall medical inaccuracies.

Jinshi snatched the book out of Maomao’s hand and stowed it in his sleeve again. “Let’s just put it back. If we breathe a word of this, even you won’t be able to treat the emotional scars left behind.” That warning seemed to overcome Maomao’s distaste for Yulan’s preferred reading material, though it lingered on her face until dinner.

A week later, at the spring garden party, both parents diligently kept straight faces when Yulan and Mimi burst into sinister little giggles at the sight of Baryou’s son leaning in close to chat with his friend from the Department of Waters, flower petals raining from the branches above the young men. Even as Lakan cried foul, threatening career trajectories, and Lady Gyokuyou whispered conspiratorially, “They're at that special age, yes?”, Jinshi and Maomao let nothing slip, for their daughter's sake. 

Chapter Text

“This is buckwheat,” Maomao informed the triplets. They stared at the small clump of noodles in her chopticks with matching sets of wide eyes. “It may kill you.”

“May I try?” Ziwan chirped as her sister loudly gulped and her brother tilted his head to one side, awed by the noodles’ power over life and death.

Maomao smiled slightly at their varied reactions.

Feeding her children was just one trial among many in a long-running experiment.

Maomao had gone to bed (well, couch) with Jinshi understanding that, however slight the odds, that night may make her a mother. That particular night ultimately served only to break the seal on their bottled feelings and desires. After that, other things – things that did not make a child – seemed less taboo and were more often favored. Yet, when it came time for the medical court ladies to exit the Rear Palace, Maomao bled but two or three drops. Lady Anshi deemed that sufficient to release Maomao into the custody of the La Clan and the Emperor awarded her the title of physician rather than consort for her services in the Rear Palace, but Maomao had known she was pregnant far earlier than most women.

She could have ended the pregnancy – Lady Anshi’s intervention seemed to imply a tacit approval, a willingness to let the pregnancy never be known and thus its termination never be punished. A sudden letter from an eastern island country, passed through Xiaolan and then the Verdigris House, offered a fantasy of self-imposed exile, a permanent solution to growing concerns over how they were meant to protect themselves and others in the future. Jinshi’s own letters had expressed a frightening willingness to achieve any outcome Maomao so desired. He would even mourn her death and find a way to follow without leaving a royal body.

In the end, Maomao wanted to be recognized as a physician. She wanted to visit with her sisters to catch up on their new lives and be at her dad’s side in his old age. She wanted to be with Jinshi and not leave him alone or have him be hurt trying to follow her. And she had wanted to experience pregnancy and giving birth. The evening Maomao was meant to accidentally poison herself to death, she instead appeared at a banquet hosted by the royal family and initiated a different experiment. One that lasted nearly a decade later and was still on-going, long past the trial of labor.

“You already tried it, you just don’t remember,” Maomao explained to Ziwan. “We started slowly introducing allergens to your diets when you were infants. Like me, none of you reacted well to buckwheat.” Her exact notes from that day were to the point. It was an unpleasant day to think back on. Today’s lesson was necessary to ensure those results never repeated outside a controlled setting.

“We’re just like Momma!” Yulan took from her explanation, face returning to its usual healthy flush. Ziwan shared in her cheer at this discovery.

Xiyu raised his hand high above his head. “What’s an allergen? Is that a type of poison?”

“Close,” Maomao answered, pleased he was catching on quickly. “It’s poison for you but not always others. You know how Suiren and your father and I like you to try new foods after they’ve been tested for poison?” She watched her children bob their heads up and down. It was always fascinating to watch the three of them fall into sync like that. “Well, an allergen is something you must always refuse to eat, even if a taster says it’s fine. It’s called being allergic to that food.”

“Ohhh,” The triplets were in perfect harmony as well.

Predictably, the trio of fairly intelligent seven-year-olds followed shortly with confident declarations of all the other foods they were certainly allergic to. Cabbage, bean sprouts, tofu, many varieties of mushrooms; the list went on, often inspired by their siblings’ additions.

“Wow,” said Maomao. “I’m shocked you’re all still kicking around. And I thought I was tough.” She was in no way shocked by this turn of events in their lesson on basic survival skills.

Sustaining the triplets was difficult even when they were in the womb. Maomao had suffered deficiency in iron which drove her shoveling soil in her mouth, overcome with temptation while driving stakes into the earth to mark out where she wanted her greenhouses. After the triplets were born, Maomao hardly produced enough milk for one infant, let alone three. A prodigious producer like Pairin might have been able to keep up, but she lacked the social standing to be a royal wet nurse, so two rotating nurses were brought on to feed the triplets. Once solids were introduced, rice porridge seemed to be the only dish the triplets could unite around, which remained a fact to that very day.

Through trial and error, she and Jinshi had learned the necessary tricks to keep their kids well-nourished.

“Let’s focus on buckwheat for now. Here, each of you take a big whiff of this. Remember that smell. It may save your life one day.”

The lesson passed uneventfully. Maomao also had each child taste a noodle before spitting it out into her hand. Only Xiyu resisted her somewhat, tragically finding the deadly dish quite tasty.  “It’s tingly, blep,” He remarked later, poking out his tongue and proving the allergy was still potent. Her son did not sound totally upset with the sensation. Maomao tried not to seem too overtly proud as she administered his treatment.

The kids were all recovered enough from any mild reactions by dinner to taste their food again and protest it. Jinshi and Maomao shared a glance and set to work to keep things on track for bedtime.

Jinshi made quick work of Ziwan. “Look here, Xiaowan. These vegetables are pickled in a brine.” With a few choice words, Jinshi elevated the ordinary into the morbid. He grinned and whispered down to Ziwan’s tiny ear, “Remember the book we read about mummification when I tucked you in?”

Ziwan gripped the edge of the table. She whispered back, “Mummified carrots!” and giddily accepted a portion sizable enough to balance out the rice and pork she’d been favoring.

This fortunately transpired quietly enough not to ruin their other children’s modest appetites for pickled vegetables.

Yulan was still more of a carnivore. Getting anything dark green in her stomach counted as a victory and fortunately Suiren and her kitchen trainee fielded several options for Maomao to work with.

Yulan sensed Maomao looking at her bowl and peeked over her shoulder.

Maomao met her daughter’s eye and sighed, “I guess you aren’t so tough after all.” She made a show of lifting a weighty portion of cabbage to her mouth.

Yulan was aghast. You’d think Maomao had swallowed arsenic. “But you said…”

“You already tried and are absolutely allergic to buckwheat, so I encourage you to turn your nose up at it,” Maomao told her daughter. “But how will you know you’re allergic to cabbage unless you actually try it?” She may just be provoking Yulan to an acting performance, but then Maomao would just show her daughter her collection of emetics and ask what she’d like to try next.

Fortunately, her first instinct about Yulan was correct.

“I’m tough!” The little girl declared to the table before allowing Maomao to feed her a heap of cabbage from her own chopsticks. Yulan chewed for a long time. Ziwan and Xiyu watched on, shoveling food into their mouths to keep from laughing. “Momma~” She complained after. “It’s poison!”

“Really?” Maomao took a bite for herself and sighed in disappointment. She patted Yulan’s head. “No, this is safe. But we’ll watch you for an allergic reaction. Enjoy your pickled vegetables for now. Thank you for being brave.”

Yulan leaned into the touch, pouting as she reached for the “mummified carrots”.

Maomao and Jinshi shared another look. Two down, one to go. They turned their attention to Xiyu, who sat between his sisters.

They were both astonished to find Xiyu craning a decent portion of dark greens to his mouth, already working something fiercely between his teeth. Maomao flinched a little in shock at how her son snapped up his next bite without his characteristic hesitance. She and Jinshi shared another look, with far less aplomb than previous exchanges. Was Meimei’s “perseverance training” working its way into life outside of Go? Was their son finally growing out of his finickiness?

Xiyu swallowed his food and sat there a moment, straight-faced.

Then, he heaved a great sigh. “No tingles.” And he reached for another plate of vegetables with his chopsticks.

Maomao pressed a hand to her heart, feeling a sudden tightness in her chest. Perhaps concern for such unsafe tasting procedures, perhaps pride? Next to her, Jinshi struggled with whether or how to reprimand this behavior on the spot, aborted sentences stumbling past his lips. After a moment, Jinshi simply fell silent and concentrated his discontent into a dark look that certainly left the side of Maomao’s face tingly. Maomao didn’t turn to see it, busy observing Xiyu’s own little experiment, but she imagined her husband’s expression mirrored their daughter Yulan’s disgust at her brother’s sudden gluttony for all dark leafy greens on the table. 

Chapter Text

I’ll show your daughter all manner of interesting insects! She’ll never be bored here! 

Maomao read the promise again, and then once more after that. Finally, she fed the secret letter to the flames. 

It would not enter the official archives. History books would never capture the whole truth of this event. 

The official records would read as such: 

It would all start twenty years removed from the Shi rebellion. Though scholars would never think to link the two events directly, so they'd go by the twenty-sixth year of the Emperor’s reign.  An envoy from an eastern feudal lord had arrived at the imperial court of Li that summer. They came seeking closer trade ties with their Lord's closest mainland neighbors and a bride to seal the deal for at least a generation. The Emperor made the envoy comfortable, set them up to be closely watched while they enjoyed tea parties and courtesans, and instructed his own personnel to investigate the prudence of such an alliance. 

It was already known that the archipelago off Li’s eastern coast had been embroiled in a series of civil wars for nearly a century. Their central government had lost its grip on power, allowing local lords to act with impunity and openly war against each other for territory and influence. In turn, lords had been routinely overthrown in peasant revolts and betrayals by their own retainers. Only in the last two decades had the situation stabilized with the emergence of a new, authoritative centralized government backed by overwhelming military might. The old royal family was nothing but a relic, useful only to divinely sanction the authority of the actual governing officials in the land. 

The Moon Prince, with help from agents of the Ma and the Mi Clans, was able to confirm the envoy had this new central government's authentic approval to make the overseas trip. Official sources also gathered that the lord they represented, the Lord of San’in-San’yo, was a young man who had come to power at an even younger age than their former emperor. His mother and elder sisters had done the work of ruling till recently. The land had thrived under their stewardship, bringing in bountiful harvests, expanding trade out of their ports, and fending off attacks from neighboring lords before peace had settled in. Now the lord was of age, and he was interested in forging diplomatic ties outside the country, since one of his sisters did the work of strengthening their clan’s domestic position by bearing a son for the man who was now emperor over the islands in all but name. 

On paper, the Emperor had been offered a decent trade deal, and the nation had princesses to spare. Not counting the Moon Prince’s daughters, there were six unwed and unpromised at the time of offer. That it was Ziwan who became destined for the East would seem a coincidence of her relative age and dynastic importance. 

Maomao turned from the brazier to join Jinshi on the couch. He turned over, welcoming her to his side. They laid there, curled into one another, warm drinks forgotten. It took a long time for either of them to speak.

“Suppose this is Fate righting itself,” Jinshi whispered. “It could be that Xiaowan and this boy were meant for one another.”

“Or,” Maomao posited. “We and Lord Otori have the same friends.” In that way, this international political marriage wasn’t too different from the neighborhood matches brokered everyday in this country by meddling aunts and family friends.

Back then, when they had been contemplating a dramatic ruse to escape the imperial succession, it hadn’t been unlike how Xiaolan found a job outside the Rear Palace either. They had a connection, Shisui – Tamamo, who was willing to recommend them to a prospective employer. It just so happened that, instead of maids, the Boy Lord of San’in-San’yo needed bureaucrats, healers, and problem-solvers.

Future scholars might liken Lord Otori’s proposal to a thunderbolt in the blue sky. In reality, Maomao and Jinshi had known of the boy lord for years. They might have ended up his retainers, had they made different choices.  The envoy’s arrival coincided with a carefully passed along letter from the long dead, in which Shisui had bragged up a storm about the young lord she helped raise and asked Maomao to do her the favor of ensuring Li matched him well. It was all very neighborly.

Jinshi rested his chin on Maomao’s shoulder as he cradled her from behind. Outside, clouds were blowing in. At this time of year, in early spring, it could snow as easily as it could rain. “Do you trust her?” He asked Maomao. It was too simple a question, heavy enough to make her squirm.

“It’s all but settled.”

His arms squeezed her waist tight. “Don’t give me that. This is our daughter’s future we’re discussing.”

Maomao sighed and covered one of his hands with hers. They rested together over her that place where she bore a scar. “Tamamo…I’ve never known that person. I couldn’t say if I trust every word she’s written,” She answered. Decades had passed. Even if she foolishly kept using the same name, Shisui would be a different person now.

“I do trust Ziwan’s judgment, generally. And she’s made up her mind to become ‘Lady Murasaki’.”

“‘Lady Murasaki’,” Jinshi repeated. A foreign interpretation of a character in their daughter’s name that they’d heard repeated several times in recent weeks. “I won’t begrudge my own child to forge their own identity. In fact, I think ‘Murasaki’ suits her. It’s the titles of ‘Lady Otori’ and ‘Lady of San’in-San’yo’ that concern me.”

Jinshi had led the official investigation into the envoy, their lord, and his land. There were merchant and scholarly contacts, even old, retired mercenaries, who could attest to basic facts. It was once a land in strife, then the Otori Clan had seized power and transformed it into a land of peace and plenty. The young lord was full of promise.

Tamamo was just as good a storyteller as Shisui, however, and painted a more intimate picture of San’in-San’yo’s distant landscape in two secret letters than twenty reports had accomplished.

A Linese wanderer had merely been galivanting around island to island at first, dedicating herself to catching and cataloging unique insect species. She made her way working odd jobs till she stumbled her way into a beetle-fighting tournament. In this tournament, she became intense rivals with the princess of a very minor local clan, a branch family to the clan ruling the region. Not well, by any account. Rivalry became friendship and friendship became steady employment with that branch family.  

Armed revolt seemed to follow Shisui into her new life as Tamamo, because her employer and friend's father resolved to displace his lord. Shisui resolved to help him. 

Her letters made the politics of it appear sound. The old ruling clan was simply incompetent, and the civil war era was, in Shisui’s words, defined by ruthless meritocracy. Those on top who could be so easily defeated from below didn't deserve to rule. She also plainly respected the previous Lord Otori. He raised his two daughters to be warriors and diplomats. He honored his wife, a woman worthy of such esteem. He looked after his people, foreign Tamamo included. And he was a famous breeder of champion horned beetles.

With the aid of a small cache of rudimentary feifas, Tamamo saw the Otori Clan take power in San’in-San’yo around the time Maomao and Jinshi were coming back from the Western Capital for the second time. Around the time Maomao left the Rear Palace for the third time, the old Lord Otori had been assassinated, leaving the three-year-old butterfly-loving boy Susumu as the new Lord Otori.

At first, the dowager Lady Otori was dangerously depressed. She even contemplated killing herself and her children to avoid the inevitable collapse of their house over their heads; she asked Tamamo to join them on their journey to the afterlife. Tamamo had instead served as support for her old rival Princess O-gin as she defended the family’s territory on the field of battle and for O-gin’s sister as she defended the family’s interests politically. During this period, much of the new lord’s education was structured by his foreigner retainer under the guise of his mother’s orders, until that woman became well again.

After more than fifteen years, all the hard work of the Otori Clan women paid off. San’in-San’yo was thriving. The boy lord had been raised well enough that Tamamo could sit back most days to enjoy her vast menagerie of insects and drink with Princess O’gin without interruption. Lord Otori was even capable enough to build his own faction to counter the isolationists in his country. So, for various reasons, he was interested in taking a wife from the same country as his life-long retainer.

Whether the Otori family and its young lord were everything Shisui made them seem, Maomao and Jinshi couldn’t know for certain. Lord Otori could not very well cross the sea for a marriage interview in his position. He could only send letters over the past several months while his envoy handled the daily work of trade and marriage negotiations.

“You’ve read their letters,” Maomao reminded Jinshi. His breath caught and Maomao could tell without looking that he was being sheepish for no reason. She’d read the letters, too. Them, and every other adult member of the imperial family, plus the actual Prime Minister and other officials. “He’s not made Ziwan any lofty promises. Not about how welcome she’ll be in a foreign land, nor the luxury in which she’d be kept as a feudal lord’s wife. The only thing of his that he’s exalted is the beauty of his territory.”

“And his pets,” Jinshi reminded her dully. 

Maomao nearly rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, ‘his’ pets.” She envisioned a tiny boy being indoctrinated into adoration of insects, first by a goofy dad and then by a spirited sister and the strange foreign lady they dragged home one day. “He did speak fondly of them to Ziwan.”

Jinshi lifted his head and shifted their position on the couch so he could look Maomao in the eye. “You’re not concerned at all by what he said specifically about the butterflies?”

Maomao shrugged beneath him. “It was factual, from what I know. Ziwan found it intriguing.”

Jinshi continued to stare down at her for a moment before sighing and dropping his head to rest on her chest. He was careful not to crush her, but Maomao could feel the fight leaving his limbs. Her fingers combed through his hair. “Ziwan certainly knows her own tastes,” He conceded.

It rained rather than snowed, and the next day was fairly balmy.

The relevant members of the imperial family gathered to meet with the eastern envoy around midday. The envoy was in a cheery mood, explaining that a gift forwarded along by Lord Otori had arrived right on time for the meeting.

Today, Ziwan was meant to give her consent to the match, so there were many curious eyes on the perforated box that the envoy presented. What gift had Lord Otori sent to cinch this trade deal?

Baryou’s son examined the box first in a separate room to preserve the surprise. Maomao analyzed his expression when he returned but that kid always had an easy-going smile on his face. He gave away nothing.

“Your Majesty, a small token of what my lord’s ships are capable of bringing to your shores and of San’in-San’yo’s natural beauty.”

The Emperor accepted the box but did not open it. Instead, he placed it in front of Ziwan with a soft touch to her cheek. “My niece will be the judge of its worth,” His Majesty announced.

All eyes fell on Maomao’s daughter but Ziwan gave no hint of discomfort or anxiety. She opened the box with perfect dignity. Her smile at its contents decided everything. They hardly needed Ziwan to pronounce her judgment. "It is a most excellent offering, Your Majesty." 

Every body in the room relaxed somewhat, triumph and bittersweet feelings welling in the eyes of onlookers. Months of research, negotiations, poetry -- it had all led up to this deciding moment. In the coming years, Li would strengthen its trade relations with the East and send a princess to guard their interests overseas. Maomao felt Jinshi's thumb brush over the top of her hand. Until that instant, she had not realized the vise she had his hand in. It was a good thing the envoy could not see their intertwined hands where they stood adjacent to Ziwan. 

“Oh my!” Lady Gyokuyou exclaimed as a butterfly took flight from the box in Ziwan's hands. 

It fluttered about the room, landing on several perfumed individuals, Jinshi among them. It was then that Maomao got a closer look at its wing pattern, which certainly wasn’t something found in the Central Province of Li. “It’s beautiful,” was remarked enough that even Jinshi might get jealous. But it was also something of a menace. There was no catching it without acting foolishly in front of the envoy.

Only Ziwan remained more preoccupied with the box than its escapee. Maomao was also interested to see how the box might have been rigged to safely transport such a creature overseas at this time of year.

Maomao stepped up closer. “Xiaowan?”

Ziwan startled, then hastily held up the box for Maomao’s inspection. “Look at this chrysalis, Mother,” She whispered in awe. Inside the box was a perfect specimen affixed to a small tree trimming, among other accommodations for the animal, like flowers and tree sap. It was a scene of nature in a box.

Maomao nodded her head, approving. “This will certainly last longer than the butterfly.” The chrysalis could join Ziwan’s collection and return east with her one day. Maomao turned her head to find the envoy apologizing for the butterfly landing square in the middle of the Emperor’s back, where His Majesty couldn’t reach and everyone else was hesitant to make a quick grab. “It may just escape at this rate.”

“Oh,” Ziwan finally noticed what was going on. Maomao watched her daughter hold up one hand and, pinching her pale face tight, drive one of her dyed nails into the skin of her finger.

A scolding welled at the back of Maomao’s throat. “What are-”

A red droplet, vivid as the color of her nails, welled from Ziwan’s finger. “There, let’s see.”

The butterfly abandoned the Emperor not a moment later, floating across the room to perch right on Ziwan’s finger. It helped itself to her nectar as she smiled upon the little beast with delight, to the horror – but not the surprise – of those around her.

“Xiaowan,” Jinshi got about as far as Maomao had.

“Look, Father. It’s as Lord Otori said,” Ziwan cheered softly, as if that should explain everything.

And it really ought to. Because everyone in that room had been tracking this courtship-by-courier. And just a few short months ago, Shisui’s protégé had written to Maomao’s daughter: Lady Murasaki, did you know that some butterflies feed on blood? Such fearsome and beautiful creatures!

Maybe Jinshi had the right of it, Maomao thought faintly, looking upon her daughter’s lurid enthusiasm for her intended's unorthodox bridal gift.

Chapter Text

Ziwan was able to return the butterfly to the box and make a new home for it in her bedroom. Among her collection of moultings, animal teeth, funerary objects, monstrous figurines and masks, and other grotesqueries, a beautiful butterfly fluttered about, landing on each until real food arrived. Jinshi forbade feeding the creature any more blood as long as it lived, so some potted early-blooming flowers were brought up from Maomao’s greenhouse.

“I won’t turn down aid from a natural pollinator,” Maomao said to Ziwan.

“Dad should just buy a hive of beesss-” Her daughter hissed at the sting of alcohol on her self-inflicted wound. “-already. Renting them each season is not very economical.”

It was a very small wound, if somewhat savage. Maomao had it bandaged up by the time Ziwan was finished speaking.

“I think he’s afraid of what I might do with unfettered access to bee stings and poison honey…”

Ziwan hugged her knees to her chest and smiled at her bandaged finger. “What if I sent you a fleet of butterflies after I become Lady Otori? You couldn’t turn down a diplomatic gift.”  

Maomao watched her daughter’s pale face. Ziwan was smiling but there was something behind her eyes, too. It made her uneasy.

“That’s still years away. We might wear down your father in the meantime and get that hive, after all,” Maomao replied. She set about packing up her supplies. “You should write to Lord Otori and thank him for his gift.”

“Oh, yes!” Ziwan touched her fingers to her lips, looking quite concerned. “I really should right away. He’s probably been awaiting a response for weeks now. He might be worried that the butterfly didn’t survive.” Although, Maomao thought Ziwan still would have received the gift well, had it dropped dead during the journey. It may just make Lord Otori’s trade logistics look unimpressive.

Ziwan flew over to her writing desk, which Maomao took as her queue to leave. She was at the door when Ziwan called out, “Mom?” Maomao turned to her daughter and found her sitting with hunched shoulders, eyes downcast, that pesky butterfly slowly batting its wings on her head like a hair accessory.

“Yes, Xiaowan?”

Ziwan fidgeted a moment longer. “I know Dad has his duties at court, but the Crown Prince is taking more on each year, and you have many capable students. So…would it be possible for you and Dad to come visit me in the East after I’m married? Not every year, but perhaps every other year?”

Maomao set her supplies down on a crowded table of ugly statuettes near the door and crossed the room to stoop in front of Ziwan’s chair. Fortunately, her joints didn’t make any embarrassing sounds. She took her daughter’s hands in hers.

“You’ll need to have this discussion with Lord Otori first,” she told Ziwan in no uncertain terms. “But if he consents and travel conditions are good, then I won’t pass up the opportunity to force your father on a holiday or research foreign medicinal ingredients.”

Maomao expected Ziwan to cheer up and smile. Instead, tears streaked down her face as she nodded her head. “Thank you. Thank you, Momma.”

Maomao furrowed her brow at this. Ziwan had seemed smitten with Lord Otori since his first letter formally introducing himself to the most viable princesses. She hesitated but it needed to be asked. “Do you want this match, Ziwan?” If not, her asthma could make a timely resurgence.

But Ziwan only nodded her head again, the tears still coming. “No – I mean, yes! I think so! I was…I was just really, really scared that I’d never see you all again.”

I see. Maomao released one of Ziwan’s hands only to reach into her robes for a handkerchief. She wiped Ziwan’s face and covered her nose. “Blow,” She commanded and Ziwan obeyed. With that, her daughter looked half-way presentable again. Her eyes were red and her cheeks blotchy still. Maomao couldn’t help but recall Ziwan when she was very small following a tiff with one of her siblings, and further back, when she was often sick as a baby. Neither of those things was very long ago. She’s still very young.

“We’ll see you as regularly as we can. Your father will probably find a way to turn it into work anyway, hashing out trade and diplomatic issues,” Maomao assured Ziwan. Maomao imagined she would spend a lot of her time mixed up in whatever was occupying Shisui these days. Princess O-gin sounded like a decent drinking buddy, at least. “After a few visits, we’ll be a regular pair of overbearing in-laws always in yours and Lord Otori’s way, and you won’t be able to get us back on a ship fast enough.” She patted Ziwan’s head for good measure.

Ziwan did manage to hiccup a small laugh. “No, no, I’ll welcome all the help I can get. I have a lot to learn still about managing estates, politics, and trade.” She started ticking off fingers. “And then there’s the local customs, language, and history!”

Maomao fought down the sly gin tugging the corner of her mouth. “In that case, how about you start helping your mother out with some of her duties around the palace?”

She departed Ziwan’s bedroom having tricked the girl into shouldering more household responsibilities in preparation of her future marriage. The envoy indicated that teachers would be sent to help the princess learn the specifics of San’in-San’yo in the next few months. Starting tomorrow, Ziwan would take a more active role in managing the household budget and staff as part of her more generalized training.

She should shadow Jinshi’s work like Yulan and Xiyu as well, Maomao thought as she drifted toward the wing that held Jinshi’s office to discuss just that. She expected to find Jinshi plowing through piles of paperwork that piled up while they were in the meeting with the envoy. Yet she wasn’t surprised to arrive to many of his aids meandering outside his office door or to open that door to find yet another crying teenage girl seeking comfort.

“Maomao,” Jinshi greeted her quietly as she quickly shut the door again. She moved closer to the couch where Jinshi sat with Yulan quaking, face hidden in her father’s chest.

In another family, when the choice of bride came down to two daughters of the same age and so alike in appearance, it was easy to assume heartbreak and jealousy on the “loser’s” part. Indeed, Yulan had been stewing over Ziwan and Lord Otori’s correspondence since the start. Maomao knew her daughter, however.

At Maomao’s touch, Yulan’s head snapped around, tearful eyes wild. “Mom, are you really going to let Ziwan be taken halfway round the world?”

Behind her, Jinshi looked grim. He had likely spent the time Maomao had been attending Ziwan doing the same for Yulan, with less success. Maomao didn’t think she stood better odds. Fundamentally, they both had to give Yulan the same answer.

“It’s not halfway around the world. Lord Otori’s land isn’t necessarily as far as some provincial capitals and vassal kingdoms,” Maomao answered her. “And Ziwan has consented to the match. She likes Lord Otori.”

“She doesn’t know him!” Yulan shot back. “All she knows are letters and poems – not very good ones, mind. He hasn’t even sent a portrait – he could be bald, for all we know! And the politics! Wasn’t his land ravaged by civil war for a century till not very long ago? Who knows if this peace will hold! We shouldn’t be sending any princesses there at all. Not Ziwan, not Lingxia, Lingran, nor any of the others.”

She sat between Jinshi and Maomao, tears evaporated with her mounting fury. Besides a recent case Yulan assisted with involving overhunting and a man-eating tiger in the south, this was her first personal encounter with the unfairness of the world. They were lucky that one of the princesses was truly excited for the proposition.

“Yulan,” said Jinshi. “Your sister won’t marry until she’s at least twenty for her health. Your mother and I have been insistent on this stipulation from the start. We haven’t only been thinking of childbearing but also of the situation in the East. The trade deal only stands if the region remains politically stable.” Jinshi leaned in close and made certain Yulan looked him in the eye, a gentle hand beneath her chin. “If we don’t like the look of things over there in four years’ time, no army could come and take your sister from us.”

Yulan’s face collapsed, a fresh round of tears springing forth. “But if it’s fine, you’ll let her go, just like that?”

Jinshi flinched. Maomao couldn’t claim she was left unfazed by the accusation. They were lucky Ziwan was so willing but if she changed her mind, it could end up politically messy to untangle, even with poor health as an excuse. Their children weren’t aware of the scary lengths their parents had and had almost gone to in the past to overcome politics in the name of personal desires and aspirations. Sharing such information could be dangerous. If Yulan only knew how Ziwan had been crying up in her room a few moments ago, she might do something insane to prevent the marriage.

Wait, Maomao thought, touching her chin. She felt Jinshi’s eyes on her as she thought back on Yulan’s brooding these past several months. And then, what their elder daughter said just then. ‘You’ll let her go, just like that’?

“Yulan,” Maomao ventured cautiously. Her daughter turned to her, wiping her eyes desperately. “Are you upset in part because Ziwan’s made the choice to marry overseas?”

Yulan looked as if Maomao struck her, reeling back and stiffening up, then she deflated. Maomao might even say she looked embarrassed, though she had no reason to be. Her arguments hadn’t been unsound, even if they were rooted in primal emotions.

“Ah Lan,” Jinshi consoled. “You and your siblings have been together nearly every day since birth. It’s understandable that you would be frightened about living your adult lives far apart, especially given the circumstances. But you three are individuals who are responsible for your own choices about the lives you live. What if you decided you wanted to marry that southern governor’s son last summer? Should we have refused you because it was far away and there was formerly a man-eating tiger loose in his father's territory?”

Yulan stuck out her tongue. “Ew, the governor’s son? You couldn’t have picked a less odious hypothetical, Dad?”

Jinshi pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bear with me. Would that have been fair?”

After a moment, Yulan shook her head. Yet again, tears were falling.

“Ziwan wants visitors,” Maomao interjected. Jinshi and Yulan both stared at her. “I was just coming to tell your father that. Ziwan wants us to visit at least every other year if Lord Otori permits.”

“So…I can see Ziwan again after she gets married?” Yulan asked. 

Maomao gave a measured response. “As your responsibilities allow."

Jinshi reached around and gave Yulan’s shoulder a fatherly shake. “That means you should think hard over the next few years about what you want to do in the future. And spend lots of time with your sister and brother while you see them every day.”

Yulan nodded, her head tucked under Jinshi’s chin. “I will.”

“Did we miss a family meeting?” Xiyu called through a crack in the door. Maomao watched his eyes comb over Yulan, noting her swollen eyes and damp cheeks. He carefully said nothing. Maomao wondered if that had anything to do with his own red-brimmed eyes and rougher-than-usual voice. “Chue said we might be needed.”

“ ‘We’ ?”

Xiyu opened the door further and he and Ziwan both stepped into the office, hand in hand. Ah. Maomao wondered how she would go about contriving to replenish her kids’ water and salt levels without implying they were a bunch of crybabies.

“Nothing official,” said Jinshi. He and Yulan stood from the couch, more or less recovered. Maomao followed. She supposed they’d all need to clear out soon so actual official business could be done. “We were just discussing how much busier all your schedules will be from now with your lessons and new responsibilities. So perhaps we should all take a holiday soon, to enjoy our time together while we can.”

Maomao watched all her kids smile at Jinshi’s words and readily agree. Yulan, resilient as always, threw out a few suggestions that Xiyu couldn’t help but counter with his own. Ziwan giggled and expressed merely “Anywhere with cute souvenirs!” as her brother and sister played tug-o-war with their father.

Her chest ached, and she was, by then, experienced enough to diagnose the affliction in an instant. Maomao was missing something that wasn’t gone yet. There was only one treatment: Cherish this while it lasts, Maomao thought as she stepped into the fray to swiftly settle their family's holiday plans. 

Chapter Text

Maomao took one look at him that morning and promptly informed his staff that the Moon Prince was ill and would spend the day recuperating. Jinshi wasn’t properly sick, of course. Just a bit worn thin. The Crown Prince was old enough to be looking for his first consorts, who Lady Gyokuyou was taking every care to evaluate, but there was no accounting for human foolishness. One prospective consort’s cousins were already running amok because the Crown Prince had shown interest in their relation. It had fallen to Jinshi to clean up the aftermath while Lady Gyokuyou systematically removed the girl from her son’s consideration. In Maomao’s words, Jinshi was left doctoring broken bones and gashes for an endless queue of whiny patients while Lady Gyokuyou worked wonders with a scalpel that the victims wouldn’t even be aware of till the drugs wore off.

“You can keep Ziwan company this afternoon,” Maomao said on her way out for the day. It served its purpose in killing any notion of resting that morning and just going to his office late. “Yulan has a dancing lesson and Xiyu has a Go match. Bayo is going with him. Lihaku will be around to pick them up right after lunch. Baryou’s son will be trailing Meimei and the boys at a distance.”

Jinshi felt vaguely insulted. “I know all this…” He had his children’s schedules memorized days in advance and arranged for their security, as a matter of fact.

“I know,” Maomao said. “I’m just reminding you that the rest of us still have things to do while you and Ziwan are recuperating. Let me go, Jinshi.”

Jinshi abruptly realized he had been hugging Maomao right in front of the door for an unknown length of time. Likely a while. Chue and Zulin were watching them. “Right.” He gave Maomao one last squeeze and a kiss to the corner of her mouth to sustain him until dinner.

Being at home with the children wasn’t very restful but it was rejuvenating in its own way. Jinshi took his breakfast with Ziwan in her and her sister’s room, as she had woken much later than her siblings. He read with her awhile, from a book of tragic foreign histories, before she dropped off again. Yulan and Xiyu were in lessons with their literature and arithmetic tutors much of the morning, but Jinshi was able to sit in. The children were diligent if unenthusiastic students. Jinshi, for one, walked away feeling reassured in Maamei and Lahan’s recommendations of the instructors. Lunch was noisy. Without Ziwan for a buffer, Yulan and Xiyu went to war over side dishes and had a smart remark for each other’s every sentence. Jinshi took to snatching any pieces they were fighting over for himself, just for a moment’s peace as his kids united to call their dad a glutton. The appointed time snuck up on them.

“Xiyu, come now. It’s time to get changed.”

“Can I help?” Yulan asked, grinning.

“I’m not your doll,” Xiyu protested. 

But Maomao’s ladies-in-waiting certainly seemed to get a girlish kick out of putting on his disguise. First came the clothing, cotton garments fit for a son of a middling merchant-class family and a rough cloth to put up his hair. His frame was padded out with a fur-lined vest that also suited the wintery weather. Makeup came next. The ladies applied a foundation to give Xiyu a slight tan on his face and hands. A misleading reddish-brown, flower-like birthmark was painted on the back of his neck and allowed to peek out ever so slightly from his collar. Finally, Jinshi’s personal favorite part of the transformation…

“Freckle freckle freckle!” Yulan jeered as she dotted her brother's face with dried clay. The glower Xiyu radiated, combined with the mess of freckles across the bridge of his nose, really brought out his mother’s essence in his features.

Xiyu was all smiles when his own favorite part of the process came around. Yulan pouted as they packed her brother into a crate of old garments Maomao was sending to Lihaku and Pairin’s house for their girls. Their eldest Ai was always just trailing behind Yulan and Ziwan in height, with her two sisters not far behind. “Why can’t I be smuggled out?” Yulan asked Jinshi.

Jinshi patted her head and whispered conspiratorially, “Because you play the all-important role of the distraction, Ah Lan.” It did the trick of making Yulan feel included on the plan.

Everything was prepared just in time for Lihaku’s arrival by carriage to collect Yulan for her dance lesson. Yulan skipped happily into Lihaku’s custody, squealing in delight to find Mimi waiting for her in the carriage already.

“Oof, he’s getting big,” Lihaku muttered under his breath as he lifted the crate. It was no trouble for Lihaku truly. It might as well have been a crate of old skirts and trousers for the ease he carried it. Still, there was a soft laugh from inside the crate. The two fathers shared a fleeting smile as Lihaku lingered in the door just a moment longer. 

“How’s Ziwan?” Lihaku inquired more seriously.

“Still recovering from an asthma attack,” Jinshi sighed. It had come out of nowhere days earlier during a visit with Suiren and Ah Duo. They were still investigating the trigger. “I’ll keep her company today. Tell Pairin and your girls that she can’t wait till she’s well enough to dance again.”

“Will do!” Lihaku promised before carting the crate and Yulan off to his home. Jinshi watched the carriage go for a moment before turning to check on Ziwan.

Jinshi meant to spend quality time with his younger daughter but somehow ended up finally resting. A lady-in-waiting roused him from a nap he couldn’t recall slipping into. He was on a couch with Ziwan snoring against his chest. “What time is it?” He croaked. It felt like he could have been asleep three hours or three days.

“The prince and princess aren’t home yet, but Master Bashu is here to report.” Closer to five hours then.

Jinshi sat up carefully so as not to disturb Ziwan too much. He contemplated waking her to tuck back into bed, but – “I’ll hear it now.” Baryou and Chue’s son smiled the slightest fraction wider than usual at the sight of the little princess sleeping against the Moon Prince’s shoulder.

“Bashu, I take it the Rain Prince traveled safely to and from his match?” Jinshi asked by way of greeting.

The smiling, easy-going young man dipped his head behind his sleeves and answered: “He and Princess Yulan are in route to your palace as we speak, under the guard of Senior Officer Lihaku. While Princess Yulan enjoyed a lovely visit with Lady Li and her three daughters, the Rain Prince and my cousin Bayo successfully traversed the city with Mistress Meimei.”

“That’s good to hear.” Jinshi wished he could have seen it. These days, it’d be impossible for him or Maomao to sneak out for a whole afternoon in disguise. The best they managed was a trap they laid in a fake opium den for a corrupt official a few summers back. They’d never get the experience of shepherding three boisterous kids through a bustling marketplace while dressed as commoners, or even low-ranked nobility. Jinshi was glad that Xiyu enjoyed even a fraction of that experience thanks to Meimei.

Because he was Commandant Kan’s grandson – by the famous Go-playing courtesan, no less – Xiyu received many invitations to play Go since the start of his “career”. But the pomp and circumstance of such meetings quickly proved too much. It was disrupting city traffic. Granting access to their family residence and the outer court to challengers also entailed a level of trust in and responsibility for their conduct that Jinshi and Maomao just couldn't take on politically at the moment. All matches needed to be attended clandestinely or not at all. Shockingly, Xiyu had insisted on the former. Since then, they had engaged an elaborate methodology to facilitate these matches.

First came the disguise and smuggling Xiyu out of the palace unseen to Lihaku and Pairin’s residence. This was the only phase Jinshi and Maomao could directly assist with, and they took it very seriously. Maomao actually needed to be held back, otherwise Xiyu wouldn’t be presentable for his opponents. As Lihaku arrived home, Meimei would be departing from tea with Pairin. Apparently, many neighbors suddenly appear in their windows as these beautiful women exchange farewells.

All the better for a distraction. Inside the house, Xiyu would be transferred from one hiding spot (a crate, a rolled carpet, baskets) to another and then slipped into Meimei’s carriage as a parting gift. “Have these bottles of oil!” “This rug is so soft you could just roll around on it all day!” “So many useful herbs are in season!” Pairin was perhaps a touch too cheeky with these reported excuses. 

Once secure inside the carriage, Meimei would open her “gift” and make any necessary touch-ups on Xiyu’s disguise before the pair changed carriages once more in an alley and eventually disembarked for their “date”. Amid the market crowds, Meimei appeared to be just another aunt out spoiling her nephew. If anyone inquired about the infamous courtesan-turned-Go-instructor’s companion, he was just one of her students, a boy named “Yushi” -- who did actually exist but was too sickly to spend much time out of doors. On this occasion, Bayo would have been waiting for them at the market, playing the role of “Yushi’s cousin”. Jinshi could just imagine him standing there, all of ten-years-old, a little solider at the ready.

“How did Bayo do as their ‘bodyguard’?” Jinshi asked Bashu, grinning.

Bashu had the grace to cover his laugh with a cough. “My little cousin did a fine job, I’d say. He even seemed to notice me following at one point and hurried Mistress Meimei and the Rain Prince along from a jewelry counter they were perusing!”

“Amazing. Did you hear that, Basen?” Jinshi called toward the door.

Faintly – perhaps sniffly – Basen replied, “Yes, Master Jinshi. I'll let Lishu know.”

“So, Meimei showed the boys a good time at the market. They had fun?” Jinshi asked Bashu next.

Bashu nodded. “Heaps of fun. I observed the three of them enjoying street food. The Rain Prince went straight for the spicy and sour stuff, of course. Mistress Meimei dirtied her handkerchief wiping grease from their faces – which turned very red, mind you – so the Rain Prince repaid her by using his allowance to purchase her a new one. Of course, he also used it to purchase firecrackers for himself and Bayo, so I’d be on the lookout for that, Moon Prince.”

“Duly noted,” Jinshi said with some trepidation.

“Fortunately, Mistress Meimei was able to pull them into the third carriage before the Rain Prince found the heavy-duty fireworks on offer. They were off to Gao Manor for the match after that. No one in the street blinked twice at their arrival or departure from the side entrance. The Gao family are truly a discreet bunch.”

“That’s good. Thank you, Bashu. That will be all.”

“You don’t wish to know the match’s outcome, Moon Prince?”

“No,” Jinshi answered. “I’ll ask my son that myself when he gets home.”

Xiyu arrived home not long after, smiling ear to ear. After scrubbing his face with a provided towel, he looked quite fresh. Yulan, by contrast, was practically scraped off the carriage floor and dragged by the ladies-in-waiting straight up to her and Ziwan's room, boneless. Pairin was a merciless dance instructor.

“How did your match go, Xiyu?” Jinshi asked. They met in the sitting room, where Jinshi remained trapped with a snoring Ziwan heavy on his shoulder.

“Terrific,” Xiyu answered. “I lost!”

“Oh?” Jinshi wasn’t so much shocked by his son’s attitude as mildly confused. “I thought you couldn’t lose for the sake of Meimei’s Go academy?”

Since Maomao gave their son over to her sister for instruction, while no subject or pursuit gripped him body and soul, Meimei had instilled in Xiyu an admirable resolve for an eleven-year-old boy. He’d make fair trial of almost anything nowadays. Xiyu had explained himself thusly: Few things are really ever that bad. A lot of things are really underwhelming though. Of all the interests that had been shopped to the boy, only Go had been elevated to the level of responsibility in Xiyu’s eyes, something he couldn’t simply discard because it ultimately bored him. As Meimei’s most prominent student, his performance reflected back on her as a teacher, which was how she made her living. So, Xiyu continued to accept challenges to a game he didn’t much care for, week after week, year after year. 

“I can’t lose easily for the sake of Aunt Meimei’s Go academy, Dad,” said Xiyu. He plopped down on the couch, loose-limbed and carefree. “If I lose to another one of Meimei’s students, that’s okay because Aunt Meimei wins either way. I just have to put in effort out of respect for my opponent. I have to fight tooth and claw if my opponent belongs to another school.”

“And did you?” asked Jinshi. These Go matches sounded more like cat fights, going by Xiyu's turn of phrase. 

Xiyu nodded vigorously. “It was close, but I lost. Aunt Meimei can hold her head up high still, and Gao will quit pestering me for rematches for a little while.”

“In that case, congratulations are in order.” Jinshi empathized with Xiyu’s stew of feelings around the board game that somehow dominated his young life. It was not something Xiyu was chasing success in, nor willing to run away from completely. “How will you spend the extra free time?”

Xiyu’s relaxed smile slipped down his face into a frown. “The Crown Prince will probably summon me for another match before long,” He muttered under his breath. 

Xiyu didn't have a perfect win-loss record, but things were decidedly slanted in his favor against the Crown Prince. The Emperor had advised his son to focus on utilizing Xiyu’s talents rather than surpassing them, but he was still a young man, full of fragile pride. Xiyu, for his part, had long sought the Crown Prince as Meimei’s newest student and his own replacement as her most famous pupil. 

Jinshi wished he had received his clan name long ago and never made his troubles those of his son, too. Hopefully, the birth of the Crown Prince's son would change things for the better. 

“I wouldn't be so sure,” said Jinshi. “He'll be taking a few consorts soon and I'm sure will lose all interest in rivaling over board games with a little boy.” 

Xiyu let out a long sigh, looking like a lump on the couch. He said to the ceiling, “I hope the Crown Prince has lots of little boys of his own soon and forgets all about me. I'll go up north and gladly never trouble him with my existence again.” 

Jinshi felt vaguely snubbed. “The north? You don't want a position here in the capital with me and your mother when you grow up?” 

Xiyu blinked up at him. His head was now in Jinshi's lap. Between him and his sister, parts of Jinshi were going numb.

“I want sulfur and saltpeter deposits when I grow up.”

“Son…what on earth do you want the key ingredients in gunpowder for?”

“To make my own fireworks, of course,” Xiyu replied, smirking sadistically at the rise he got out of his poor, beleaguered father. Jinshi noticed his face, an unscratched mirror of his own, still bore a stray freckle here and there.