Visions in the Ship's Smoke

The village felt different once you knew how many people in it were quietly waiting to die.

Maomao walked with her hands tucked into her sleeves, the morning mist curling around her like breath. The air smelled of damp earth, woodsmoke, and fear. It sat in the corners of doorways, in the way conversations cut off when she passed, in the way eyes slid away from hers and then dragged back, desperate.

Beside her, Penguin and Shachi kept a respectful distance. They had been assigned as her escorts by Law—or her guards, depending on how one chose to read it. In practice, they served mostly as translators for dialect she didn’t yet understand, and as a visible sign that the demon doctor had an interest in this curious woman.

She didn’t mind. It made doors open that might otherwise stay shut.

“Again,” she said as they approached the first house. “You will let me speak first. You will not mention curses. You will not say ‘the Captain wants to know if your father is dying the same way as the others.’”

Penguin winced. “I said that once,” he muttered. “One time.”

“And the old woman nearly hit you with a broom,” Shachi said. “We’re learning. Slowly.”

“Mm,” Maomao said. “Learn faster.”

They stopped at a low house with a sagging roof. The door creaked when Penguin slid it open. Inside, the air was heavy with stale incense and human breath.

The patient here was an older woman, lying on a thin futon laid close to the hearth. Her breathing was shallow, but her eyes tracked Maomao’s approach with sharpness that belied her weakness.

“You again,” the woman rasped.

“Yes,” Maomao said. She knelt beside her, noting the faint discoloration creeping along the woman’s neck. Early stage, compared to the man they’d lost. “I told you I would return.”

“Tch. Most doctors say their prayers and run,” the woman said. Her gaze flicked to the pirates hovering awkwardly at the edge of the room. “And you brought the demon’s men.”

“They open doors,” Maomao said. “I open people.”

The woman snorted, which turned into a cough. Maomao waited it out, then offered a small sip of water.

“We need to know more about the days before you fell ill,” Maomao said gently. “Not just what you ate. Everything. Humor me.”

“Why?” Suspicion, but also curiosity.

“Because the men with the strange ship can see what the poison does inside you,” Maomao said. “But I see what happened before it reached your organs. Together, we might untangle it. Unless you would rather leave it to curses.”

The woman’s mouth twisted.

“I’ve had enough of curses,” she muttered. “Ask, then.”

Maomao did.

She asked about meals: rice, fish, vegetables, sake, sweets. Nothing unusual there—except that the rice came from a particular merchant who prided himself on its whiteness.

She asked about medicines: powders for sleep, for pain, for old aches in the joints. The woman admitted to taking a “strengthening tonic” from the same merchant’s wife.

She asked about shrines and prayers: which ones the woman had visited, which incense she had lit, which charms she had bought and pinned to her clothes or door.

A pattern emerged, faint as smoke.

Rice from that merchant. Tonic from that house. Incense from one particular shrine, burned on one particular day of the week.

“And the charm?” Maomao asked. “May I see it?”

The woman’s fingers fumbled at her pillow and produced a small cloth sachet, faded at the edges from handling. Maomao took it, weighed it in her palm, then lifted it to her nose.

The scent was faint—old herbs, a trace of ash. But under the dust, something sharp and metallic pricked her senses.

“Thank you,” she said. “Keep it by you. Don’t burn it.”

The woman gave her a look. “You think it’s this?”

“I think whoever made these knows something about herbs,” Maomao said. “I intend to know more than they do.”

Outside, the light had grown stronger. Maomao stepped into it, blinking once as her eyes adjusted.

“Well?” Shachi asked.

“We will visit the rice merchant, the tonic seller, and the shrine,” Maomao said. “In that order.”

Penguin scratched his head. “You think all three are involved?”

“I think poison likes company,” Maomao said. “And ambitious men like layers.”

They exchanged a glance and followed.

***

The **rice merchant**’s shop was bright and tidy, sacks stacked in neat rows. He greeted them with the hearty cheer of a man who knew his product was in demand and who had not yet connected it, in his mind, to death.

“My rice is the finest in the district,” he boasted, slapping a sack with pride. “Soft, white, pure. Even the sick can eat it without trouble.”

Maomao smiled politely.

“I’m sure,” she said. “What do you do to make it so soft and white?”

He puffed up.

“A special treatment,” he said. “A trade secret. Harmless, I assure you. The gods themselves would bless it.”

“Mm,” Maomao said. “Show me.”

His smile faltered.

“It’s…a trade secret,” he repeated. “I can’t just—”

Penguin shifted his weight, letting his jacket fall open enough to show the symbol on his chest. Shachi’s grin showed a little too much tooth.

The merchant’s eyes darted between them and Maomao, who continued to smile in that bland, unthreatening way that made people want to talk.

“Of course,” he said weakly. “For…the Captain’s people. Come to the back.”

In the storeroom, he produced a small jar very similar to the one Maomao had found in her own world, though the stopper was ordinary cork. Inside, a cloudy liquid clung to the glass.

“Just a little mixed with the washing water,” he said. “It lifts the husk. Makes the rice shine.”

Maomao took the jar, tipped it, watched how the liquid moved.

“So soft,” she echoed. “So white.”

She uncorked it and inhaled—just once.

There it was: that faint metallic note, that whisper of wrongness.

“Harmless,” the merchant insisted. “My family has eaten it for months. We are fine.”

She glanced at his hands. The skin around his nails was slightly discolored. His eyes were a bit yellower than they should have been.

“How fortunate,” Maomao said.

She took a tiny sample with a wooden stick, wiped it into a folded paper, and slipped it into her sleeve.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” she said. “Do not change anything yet. If you do, we will know.”

His face went pale.

“Y–yes,” he stammered.

***

The **tonic seller** was less cooperative.

A narrow-faced woman with sharp eyes and sharper tongue, she tried at first to wave them off with talk of busy work and existing prescriptions. Maomao let her prattle until she mentioned a particular ingredient that should not have been in a “strengthening tonic” for the elderly.

“A stimulant?” Maomao repeated. “For old bones and weary hearts? How bold.”

“It wakens the spirit,” the woman said defensively. “My customers feel better after taking it.”

“For a while,” Maomao said.

Law’s crew flashed just enough steel and pirate reputation to loosen her tongue further. She confessed that the stimulant was expensive and imported, purchased through a contact in the port—a contact who, conveniently, also provided her with incense blends for the shrine up the hill.

By the time they reached the **shrine**, Maomao could feel the outline of the system pressing against her mind.

Base in the rice. Stimulant in the tonics, to push the strained body. And in the shrine…

Incense smoke drifted down the stone steps, carrying a smell she recognized from the charm sachet. Resin, herbs, and something that did not belong at an altar.

The shrine keeper was old, with clouded eyes and a tremor in his hands. He seemed genuinely surprised when Maomao asked about the incense.

“I only burn what the merchants bring,” he said. “They say it pleases the gods.”

“They say a great many things,” Maomao said.

She watched the smoke coil and settle along the edges of the small shrine hall, imagining lungs drawing it in, blood carrying it along those already primed pathways.

Layer one: the body prepared. Layer two: the heart pushed. Layer three: the breath choked in the name of piety.

Elegant. Cruel. Infuriating.

She collected ash, scrapings from the burners, a sample of the unburnt sticks, thanking the old man with a polite bow.

As they descended the steps, Penguin exhaled loudly.

“So?” he asked. “You think these three are working together?”

“No,” Maomao said. “I think someone clever uses all of them without telling them why. The rice merchant wants profit. The tonic seller wants stronger customers. The shrine wants offerings. Someone else wants data.”

“Data,” Shachi repeated. “You mean…they’re testing this?”

Maomao’s jaw tightened.

“Yes,” she said. “On peasants. On old women. On men who collapse in markets.”

She thought of the man on the table, his body jerking under her hands, the bruises flowering along his skin even as they tried to pull him back.

“If I had a lab,” she said softly, “I might think of doing such a thing. But I would never do it without consent.”

Penguin shuddered. “Glad you added that last part,” he muttered.

Her lips curved without humor.

“I am not your enemy,” she said. “I dislike wasting materials.”

***

By the time they returned to the Polar Tang, the sun was edging toward evening again. Maomao’s sleeves felt heavy with folded papers and collected samples. Her mind buzzed with connections.

Law was waiting in the infirmary, sleeves rolled up, ink smudged faintly along one wrist from the notes he had been taking. He looked at her hands first, then at her face, as if searching for signs of new failure.

“Well?” he asked.

Maomao laid her findings out on the metal table: the folded scrap with the rice additive, the ash from the shrine, a tiny vial with residues from the tonic bottle.

“The base is in the rice,” she said. “A mild compound, harmless in small amounts, but it binds along certain vessels over time. The tonic adds stress to the heart and liver, pushing a body already burdened. The incense contains a volatile that, when inhaled, reacts with what’s in the vessels and triggers the cascade.”

Law’s eyes darkened.

“Three sources,” he said. “None of them fully aware of what they’re part of.”

“Yes,” Maomao said. “Which means the one who designed this is behind them all. A merchant who travels between them. A supplier. Someone with enough knowledge to combine these effects and enough cowardice not to test it on himself.”

“And enough reach to keep doing it,” Law said. “If we stop it here, they can move on.”

“For now,” Maomao said, “we need to stop people here from dying.”

She gestured to the samples.

“If we can develop a protocol that clears the base compound from the vessels before they’re exposed to the incense again, we might prevent the cascade. And if we can disrupt the reaction in those already exposed, even better.”

Law nodded slowly.

“You’re sure about the combination?” he asked.

“As sure as I can be without rebuilding it in a volunteer,” she said.

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

She blinked.

“Even I have lines,” he added, more quietly. “We don’t cross them unless we have no choice.”

The we was new.

Maomao inclined her head, accepting it.

“I can adjust the mixture we used,” she said. “Less forceful. Something that encourages the body to release bound compounds gradually, while supporting the liver and kidneys. Your…ROOM can monitor whether it’s actually clearing or just moving the problem.”

“And if the incense is the trigger,” Law said, “we tell the villagers to stop burning it.”

“Not as a curse,” Maomao said. “As a contamination. They respect sickness more than they fear gods right now.”

His mouth quirked.

“You have a low opinion of gods,” he said.

“They’ve done nothing for me,” she said.

He understood that more than he wanted to admit.

For a moment, the room grew very still. The ship’s hum faded to a background throb. Outside the small porthole, the sky bruised toward twilight.

“You did good work,” Law said at last.

It was not effusive praise. It was, however, more than he had offered many.

Maomao felt an odd warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with herbs.

“You did not autopsy me for it,” she said. “So I suppose we are even.”

He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh.

“Not yet,” he said. “We still have to keep the next one alive.”

“Then we should start mixing,” she said.

He nodded, and together they turned back to the table—two minds tracing the same pattern from opposite ends, circling closer not just to the truth of the poison, but to each other.