Sect Year 1 · twelfth month · day 9 · the capital, the Imperial Archive
Lin poured the tea in the copy hall before the brushes were out. He had carried the cup down from the lodging in both hands, a plain clay cup with a chip at the lip, filled at the kettle in the copyists’ kitchen. He had walked the length of the hall with it as carefully as if the wet boards were the flat ground at a gate. He set it at the corner of the last desk, where Shen Ruo sat with the morning’s board propped in front of her. He turned the handle toward her fingers. Then he stood back, and did not say anything, and did not ask her to drink.
Ruo looked at the cup for some time. Her pen stayed where it was, lifted an inch above the page.
“Am I to drink that?” she said.
“No,” said Lin.
She considered the answer as if it had been put to her in a copying dispute. Then she set her pen down in its rest, looked back at her board, and left the cup where it was. She didn’t move it while the copying went on.
