Sect Year 1 · eleventh month · day 4 · Qingliu dry hills, Mother Rusk’s inn
The tea at the Lower Gourd was kept in a clay pot on the hearth, and in the grey light before the sun cleared the hills it was the only thing in the common room that was warm. Lin poured from it into a row of thick cups.
He filled the last one to the brim and stopped with the pot tilted, waiting for his wrist to give. It didn’t give. He set the pot down, and the tea lay level and bright against the rim, and he looked at it for longer than a cup of tea deserved.
His hands had been steady since the life ended. He hadn’t decided yet whether to trust it.
Mother Rusk came through from the back with a horn cup in one fist and counted the pots on the shelf with the other. She was a broad woman with grey braids pinned flat, and she sold water the way other innkeepers sold wine, by the cup and never on credit.
Behind her, in the passage to the yard, the water barrel stood under a wet cloth. It was a third full. The wagon drivers had hauled it up from the valley in the dark, and she had told every one of them the price before they set it down.
