Suirei

Background

Raised and taught medicine by her adoptive grandfather, a former court physician, she grew herbs in the Outer Court's medicinal garden and used them to prepare the resurrection medicine, which mimics death for a time. Her stepmother Shenmei abused her all her life, and on Shenmei's orders she served as a court lady in the Outer Court and contrived a chain of seemingly unconnected incidents - a minister poisoned with extra salt, a theft from the ritual-implement warehouse, faulty implements made from a dying metalworker's alloy - meant to kill the Imperial Brother during a ceremony.

Maomao saw the conspiracy behind them and foiled it. Before she could be arrested, Suirei took the resurrection medicine and was carried to the morgue as dead; she woke with a paralysed left arm and was smuggled out. Returning to the Inner Court disguised as the eunuch Tian, she forced Maomao to come with her by pretending to hold the servant girl Shisui hostage, and took her north to Shenmei, while trying to shield Maomao and the boy Kyou-u from Shenmei's wrath.

After the clan's fall, her descent from the Former Emperor made her too valuable to execute, and she was sent with four other Shi clan children to live with Ah-Duo at the Southern Imperial Villa.