Chapter 10: The Jar

Each jar was the size of a fist, sealed with red wax, and marked on the base with a year in Gao Shun's careful hand.

There were nine of them.

Su Ming picked up the first and held it to the lamp.

The wax carried a small stamp, a curling plant and two characters, and he knew the stamp from the lid of the physician's medicine chest.

"The winter solstice night," said Gao Shun. His voice was thin. "The year His Majesty took the throne."

"I stood by the bed while he drank the new decoction. In the morning I took the empty bowl to the kitchen."

"I scraped what was in the bottom into a jar. I do not know why."

"You knew," said Xiao Jue.

"I did not know anything, Majesty," said Gao Shun.

"I only knew you slept well, and then you did not, and then you were not the same." His eyes were wet.

"A physician of the first rank prescribed it, on the Empress Dowager's word. A eunuch who says the physician is wrong is a dead eunuch."

"So I kept the bowl."

"Every year," said Xiao Jue.

"Every solstice. To be sure."

"Sure of what?"

"Whether I was an old fool," said Gao Shun.

Xiao Jue put his hand flat on the table.

It was a very still hand.

"Su Ming," he said.

"I need a clean spoon," said Su Ming.

Gao Shun brought one.

Su Ming broke the seal of the first jar and scraped up a crumb of brown dregs the size of a grain of rice.

He put it on the tip of his tongue.

He closed his eyes.

It was honey and licorice and poppy, as before.

Under those, very faint, was the low green cellar taste.

He took the ninth jar, last winter's, and tried that one.

He opened his eyes.

"Wakeroot," he said.

"What is wakeroot?" said the Emperor.

"It grows on the northern slopes, in damp ground," said Su Ming.

"My old nurse showed me a shred once, when I was eight, and made me smell it."

"She said it was the cruelest thing in the world, because it does not kill." He set the spoon down.

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