The Lady Physician And The Hellion

Someone I had not expected to see was standing there.

Namgung Mu-baek, in the apothecary of all places.

The shop was large and thick with customers, so he had no idea I had come in. His eyes were fixed elsewhere, and he had no attention to spare for anyone in the room. He was pacing back and forth in front of a woman, fussing about at her feet like a mutt wagging its tail. Every bit of it his own way of saying: look at me.

“Hmm.”

There’s a saying about eyes flying open, and that was exactly what mine did, quite literally.

Well, well. So Hefei has beauties like that in it.

No wonder Namgung Mu-baek was whining at her side like a dog in heat. I had met no end of beautiful women at the Murim Alliance, and courtesans besides who earned the old phrase about a face like a flower and a form like the moon, but of every woman I had ever laid eyes on she stood among the three finest.

I cut the interest off soon enough. There is no rose without thorns, and I had never once met a beauty whose nature was the equal of her face.

“That’s the one they call the Saintess of Anhui, isn’t it?”

A merchant buying herbs beside me muttered it.

“That’s her. Come to Hefei recently and been treating people, from what I hear.”

“Treats them for nothing, so she’s earned the name Saintess right enough.”

“They say she treats dozens of patients in a single day. Where does she get the money to cover the medicine?”

“I hear she charges the rich grandees and the high officials an outrageous fee. That’s the money that covers the medicine.”

“Ah, then she really is a physician who looks after have-nots like us.”

“And a great beauty besides, so the matchmaking offers from the grandees never stop coming, apparently.”

“Look over there. That man. Isn’t that Namgung Mu-baek?”

“Now even the hellion is trailing after the Saintess. Oh dear, what’s to be done. The Saintess has trodden in shit.”

“Let’s hope that hellion doesn’t do her any harm.”

“Still, he’s been doing some good of late, by the look of it. Helped out the merchants who’d been paying stall fees to the Du-sik Gang.”

“Listen, friend. A mad dog doesn’t only bite people. It bites other dogs too. He happened to bite a dog the once, that’s all. Don’t get your hopes up. People don’t change so easily.”

“All the same, he doesn’t carry on with his hellion tricks the way he used to.”

The pair of them drifted slowly away from me.

I looked at the physician they called the Saintess. She paid not the slightest attention to Namgung Mu-baek fussing at her side. She knew what happens when you meet a mad dog’s eyes.

Life had taught me that no kindness comes without a price, so I watched the Saintess with a suspicious eye.

Nobody goes about like that unless they have some purpose in it. Least of all a beauty like her.

The lady physician attending her was loading herbs into a basket, and dropped some.

“Allow me to pick them up.”

Namgung Mu-baek pounced on the chance, scooped them up and set the herbs in the Saintess’s basket.

“Thank you.”

Obliged to acknowledge him, the Saintess met his eyes. Half an hour he had spent hovering around her, and only now had he managed at last to catch her eye. He spoke up boldly.

“Not at all. I am called Namgung Mu-baek. The youngest son of the Namgung Clan. And what might your esteemed name be, Miss?”

There was something comical in watching a hellion mind his manners. A hellion did not play the hellion at every hour of the day; set in front of something he liked and cherished, he would show a perfectly ordinary face. This was one of those times.

Unable to shake off his pestering, the Saintess answered quietly.

“I am busy, so I shall take my leave.”

She made to withdraw and he stepped into her path, speaking politely all the while, with no idea how close his politeness came to a threat.

“Tell me your name and where you are staying and I shall step aside. To meet a beauty like you here in Hefei and simply let her go, I would be beaten to death for it.”

The Saintess let out a deep sigh.

“I am a physician.”

Namgung Mu-baek clapped his hands at that.

“Ah, then might you be the Saintess everyone says has been treating people for free in Hefei of late?”

“To be called a Saintess is uncomfortable to hear. I only practice medicine.”

“That’s it. That’s it. What was your name again. I heard it once. Ah. Jong So-bin. Is that right?”

“Yes. That is my name.”

The Saintess wore the look of someone who had given up.

“Miss Jong. There is not a part of me that does not ache. I shall be coming to Miss Jong for treatment often.”

Having got Jong So-bin’s name and her lodging out of her, he stepped aside wearing the smile of a general home from a victory.

On her way out, Jong So-bin glanced at me. I looked back at her evenly, and she turned her head away and slipped out of the apothecary. Her steps were quick, as though she feared Namgung Mu-baek might come after her.

“Ho ho ho. At last Namgung Mu-baek has met a beauty worth admiring.”

I went over to him and asked.

“What brings you to the apothecary?”

“Eh? What’s Scholar Cheon doing here?”

“I came to buy some herbs I needed.”

The greedy look he had worn while gazing at Jong So-bin curdled into disgust in an instant.

“I came to have some medicine made up for myself.”

“What medicine? Surely the clan’s Medicine Hall would do.”

“It’s medicine for private use.”

I stole a glance at the two prescriptions in his hand. The names of the herbs alone were enough to tell me what they were for. One of them held no surprises.

How much screwing around does the little bastard have planned, that he needs a potency tonic compounded.

The other I had not expected.

A Bright Mind Decoction, is it.

A Bright Mind Decoction settled the mind and body and raised the memory and the powers of concentration.¹

What does he need a Bright Mind Decoction for?

And him going at his books and his martial arts alike with the same lazy shuffle.

“Scholar Cheon, have you got anywhere with the formula I gave you? Should you be out strolling about at your leisure like this? You’ll be short of time as it is, decoding that formula.”

“I was in the middle of it and needed herbs, so I came out. I have interpreted a few passages, but it is considerably difficult.”

“Hm. And here I had my hopes up, hearing Scholar Cheon was a scholar of metropolitan-graduate standard.”

The disappointment on his face was so genuine that it startled a snort of laughter out of me.

“Given time, though, I believe I shall interpret all of it.”

“Is that so?”

Watching him brighten again, I felt less irritation than pity.

“Go on, tell me whatever you’ve managed to interpret. Let me hear it.”

“Is it wise to speak of it carelessly in a place like this?”

“It’s the reading of a line or two of a formula. Nobody who overhears it will make anything of it.”

He had a point, so I quietly gave him the reading of a line or two. Namgung Mu-baek listened to my interpretation and nodded.

The truth was that inwardly Namgung Mu-baek was utterly astonished.

He had put that same formula in front of all five of the scholars who had come to serve as his master of letters, and not one of them had read it the way Scholar Cheon just had. More than that, the scholar’s interpretation agreed with the reading his own family held to be the nearest thing to orthodox yet achieved.

So it was true, what they said about a scholar of metropolitan-graduate rank.

The formula was said to demand broad and deep learning before a man could read it at all, and that reading had been tested over hundreds of years by any number of scholars and martial artists. He had arrived at the same reading within a few days, which made it no exaggeration to call the man a genius.

Then I had better make more use of this scholar. If I am to surpass my brothers.

Seeing what Scholar Cheon had done with it, Namgung Mu-baek wanted more.

“What I worked out is much the same as Scholar Cheon’s.”

Having talked his nonsense, Namgung Mu-baek gave me a long, steady look. The hostility he had aimed at me all this time was missing from it, and that threw me a little. He was about to ask me for something that mattered.

“Is there something you wish to say?”

“The day after tomorrow we’ll have guests from the Jegal Clan.”

The remark came out of nowhere.

“And?”

“Mm. One of them’s a friend about my age.”

I picked up the thread.

“You mean Young Master Jegal Do-won?”

“You know him?”

Know him, indeed. How could I not know that hellion. A hellion famous even at the Murim Alliance, named in the same breath as Paeng So-un.

“I saw him a few times when I was at the Alliance. Though Young Master Jegal Do-won will not know me.”

He was a hellion, so I had taken an interest, but he carried none of the energy of the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper that I was looking for, and I had left him alone.

“Well, it’s a regular visit, more or less.”

I answered him in my head.

A regular meeting of hellions. Hellions have nobody at their side, so they hold their gatherings among themselves at least.

Only then did I think I understood why Namgung Mu-baek was suddenly having a Bright Mind Decoction compounded. He was flailing. Drink down a Bright Mind Decoction, so the reckoning went, and he might muster concentration enough to stand against Jegal Do-won.

Namgung Mu-baek sank into thought for a moment, then spoke.

“When they come, Scholar Cheon is to sit in with us.”

His intention was so plain that I snorted with laughter.

“I would rather not. Why should I attend a gathering of the clans’ young masters?”

“But you were at the Murim Alliance. You must know him well, no?”

I knew perfectly well why he wanted me at that table. Jegal Do-won had a better education than the young masters of the other clans, and his house had always prized scholarship above martial learning, which was why they were famous for their esoteric formation arts as well. At gatherings of young masters he liked to bring poetry, calligraphy and painting forward and show himself off with them, and the other hellions did not care for it.

The scheme was easy enough to read. He meant to use me to spoil that preening of his.

“Don’t be like that. Sit with us. There’ll be good drink and good food.”

“I would still rather not.”

At my flat refusal Namgung Mu-baek’s cheek twitched. He normally threw a fit when things did not go his way; this time he had the look of a man fighting down a tantrum.

“What do you want?”

“Two things.”

“Two whole things?”

He scowled and spat the words out.

“Say them.”

“Grant me the first and I shall tell you the second.”

“Fussy. What is it?”

“Permit me to take Young Master’s pulse at the wrist.”

Namgung Mu-baek eyed me suspiciously.

“Why?”

“You mean to have a Bright Mind Decoction made up, so I should like to see whether the ingredients suit your body.”

“What harm could a mere Bright Mind Decoction do.”

He still looked doubtful, so I went on.

“A Bright Mind Decoction is medicine that rouses the head, and taken wrongly it can injure the brain. That is why I wish to see that you are safe.”

By rights the wrist meridian was an important one, and a martial artist had to keep it guarded. Should true qi enter it wrongly, the result was an internal injury.

But Namgung Mu-baek put his hand out without hesitation.

“Fine. Take a look. Better than damaging my brain.”

He fell in with it so readily that I was the one left doubtful, and I asked.

“How can you trust me enough to hand over your wrist meridian so easily?”

“I’m a man of filthy reputation, so I’d know. That Scholar Cheon isn’t the sort of bastard who’d do me harm. I’ve that much of an eye on me too.”

Before he could change his mind I took his wrist meridian and let spirit energy flow in. The instant it went through, I felt the energy of my Pojun Star answer, and I knew on the spot, by pure instinct, that Namgung Mu-baek carried the Wuqu Star.²

Ah. And here I had been worrying it was all wasted effort. Just as I thought. Namgung Mu-baek carries the energy of the Wuqu Star.

Inwardly I whooped for joy. All at once that odious face of his was looking handsome to me.

“Something wrong?”

He asked, having seen my face.

“The energy of your head is strong. You may take the Bright Mind Decoction without any harm.”

“All that fuss over nothing.”

Grumbling or not, Namgung Mu-baek looked nothing but adorable to me.

“What’s the second one?”

“To watch Young Master at his training.”

Namgung Mu-baek might neglect his letters, but he never once skipped the martial training allotted to him each day, which meant that in his own way he knew what it was to be of the clan’s direct line. A direct-line son of a great clan whose martial arts amount to nothing is given no respect wherever he goes, and he knew that well enough.

My answer was not the one he had expected, and he stood there blankly for a while.

“Watch my training? Why?”

“A school or a clan with a long history has symbols peculiar to itself. And so, if I am to interpret the formula Young Master gave me accurately, I must know the formulas of other martial arts. I want to read the formula of the art you are training now, watch your movements, and confirm whether my interpretation is correct.”

Looking at the scholar, whose eyes burned with a genuine enthusiasm, Namgung Mu-baek was startled on two counts.

The first was that the scholar sincerely wished to interpret the formula he had been given. Scholars as a rule had no interest in martial arts. A lofty breed, they would not spare a glance if you ran through sword moves at their elbow, and martial arts were vulgar, they said, a lifeless flailing of the body. On top of which he had all but forced this formula on the man as an assignment, for the express purpose of leading him into qi deviation. And yet here the scholar stood, saying he would watch something so tedious.

The second was that he had given him the formula to send him into qi deviation, and far from falling in, the man was interpreting it correctly. Most scholars set in front of this formula went wandering off somewhere hopeless on some absurd reading, which was why the ordinary scholar tended to fall into scholarly anguish rather than into qi deviation.

Qi deviation was, properly speaking, dangerous only to martial artists who had built up internal force. A man with no internal energy who fell into it merely ailed as though with a cold, a few days at the shortest and a few months at the longest. Now and then one was left crippled, as though struck by palsy, but such cases belonged among the genuinely rare ones.

Good. If you sink deeper and deeper into that formula, so much the better for me. Let’s take the long view on this one.

The scholar was clever enough not to have fallen into qi deviation straight away, so Namgung Mu-baek made up his mind to lead him deeper into the formula still.

“A martial artist’s training looks like meaningless movement to a scholar’s eye. You’ll be bored. That all right with you?”

He said it with a face that showed not the slightest concern, which robbed the words of any force.

“I should rather ask you the same. It is said that watching a martial artist train is a breach of manners. Will that be all right?”

The hellion was less interested in the murim’s unwritten rules than in tormenting and doing harm to the scholar who had humiliated him.

“If I’ve no problem with it, what’s the problem? Watch all you like. And if there’s something you don’t follow, ask.”

Dead set on crippling a man, Namgung Mu-baek was positively kind about it.

“Understood. Then I shall come to your training once the guests from the Jegal Clan have gone.”

“Never mind that, let’s start tomorrow. Today I’ve urgent business, so it’s no good. You have to come every day. You’ve promised.”

Namgung Mu-baek, of all people, went so far as to extract a pledge in case Scholar Cheon should fail to keep his promise.

“Understood.”

Watching Namgung Mu-baek leave with a satisfied look on his face, having made so strange a promise, I smiled.

Absorb that one’s energy too and my span should stretch by a few years. Before that I have to train him properly and grow a fine Wuqu energy of the Northern Dipper in him. With Namgung Mu-baek’s Dipper energy following Paeng So-un’s, I can breathe a little easier.

I was still smiling as I watched him walk off toward the spot where the physician they called the Saintess had disappeared.

The next day, before he went out to the training ground, Namgung Mu-baek called me over and set the oral formula of the martial art he was training at present in front of me.

I looked at the title and was appalled.