The city had not yet chosen a color when Lin Xun woke. The room was the cool grey that comes before light, the kind that makes every edge look softer than it is. He lay still for a breath, listening to the house settle around him, the quiet sighs wood makes when it remembers it is not a tree anymore. Somewhere beyond the shutters the river moved, though it did not say so out loud.
He rose and lit the small brazier in the kitchen. The first thread of steam climbed from the kettle, thin as a hair, then grew into a ribbon that folded back on itself as if deciding what kind of day it wished to become. He measured leaves into a small pot, nothing heavy, nothing sharp, a blend meant to make words sit comfortably on the tongue… and to make other words refuse to stay.
Shen Lan stepped in as the water reached its soft song. She had already tied her hair, and there was a faint brightness to her eyes that meant she had slept less than she should and was not bothered by it.
"You are early," she said.
"The man at the arch will be earlier," Lin Xun replied, pouring the rinse, warming two cups in patient circles. "The woman at the pavilion said to buy him a cup across from the arch. She said he would talk to the cup, not to me."
"Then make the cup worth talking to," Shen Lan said, which was her way of blessing the brew.
They drank a modest half cup before leaving. It was not for strength. It was for steadiness. The steam touched their faces and left a feeling like a quiet hand at the back, guiding without pushing.
The street outside held more shadow than stone. Lanterns at doorways had not yet given up their small gold. The sky above was a pale slate just beginning to soften along the eastern line. They walked toward the old quarter where the river bends closer to the walls, where the city still remembers it was once smaller. The stone arch stood there, a leftover from a wall that had been moved outward long ago, its surface worn smooth by rain and time, its curve gentle enough to make children want to run under it for luck.
Vendors were setting up in the half light, their motions quiet, their cloths folded with the care of people who do the same task each day and still respect it. A woman stacked bamboo baskets like small hills. A boy carried a stack of wooden trays with both arms and still looked as though he could carry one more. From beyond the corner came the smell of rice porridge and pickled greens, a comfort that belonged to mornings regardless of what they held.
Across from the arch stood a stall that had no sign of its own. It did not need one. Everyone who needed to find it knew where it was. A row of cups rested upside down on a damp cloth. A pot of water sat in its small nest of coals. The stall owner was a woman with hair tied back in a plain cord. She was not old, she was not young. She moved with the clean economy of someone who had learned exactly how much effort each motion deserved.
Lin Xun greeted her with a nod and asked for three cups. He set his small pouch of leaves on her counter and waited for her permission with his eyes before untying it. She looked once, then gave the smallest nod. He measured without speaking. The water was a breath cooler than his own at home, but it had the sweetness of good river draw, so the cooler breath would not harm the leaf.
The first cup was for the stall owner. Respect first, always. The second was for himself. The third waited in the line of rising steam.
A man arrived from the shadow at the base of the arch. His steps were soft, though his boots were not. He carried a basket of fish wrapped in fresh reed leaves, and he had the loose gait of someone who had learned to keep his weight where boards were rotted underfoot. His hat brim was pulled low, but the set of his shoulders said he was awake even before he slept.
He stopped at the stall as though he had meant to do so all along and not as though he had been asked by a stranger under a lantern the night before.
"Morning," he said to the owner.
"Morning," she said back.
Lin Xun slid the third cup toward the edge. The man did not look at Lin Xun. He looked at the cup, which is not the same thing and sometimes is better. He lifted it, breathed in once, then drank in three small swallows. He did not sigh after, but the line at the corner of his mouth eased, which was the same without the sound.
He set the cup down and took a reed leaf from his basket. He turned it in his fingers, then put it back and folded the basket cloth more carefully than it needed to be folded.
"You brew honest," he said.
"I do my best," Lin Xun replied.
The man glanced at the arch, then at the street as it began to admit people. He did not look at Lin Xun. He did not look at Shen Lan. He looked at the steam from the pot and spoke to it as if it were a third person in the conversation.
"Eastern Cloud bought a weight of high ridge leaf that never reaches their counter," he said. "They paid the farmer to stamp another name on the sacks. They paid the weigher at the south scale to be asleep. The leaf goes to a storage room that used to be a lacquer workshop near Crane Lane. The room smells like varnish still. Tea should not smell like that."
Shen Lan shifted just enough to show that she was listening now as one listens to footsteps in an alley that is supposed to be empty.
"They bought kettles," the man went on. "Not for their shop. For hands they keep behind the shop. Kettles with thin bottoms and narrow spouts. That is a kettle for speed, not for taste. They mean to pour in places where people do not stay long."
The stall owner set a bowl of porridge at the edge of the counter without asking who it was for. The man drew it closer without thanks or surprise, as if the bowl had walked there by itself because it knew where it was meant to be.
"They bought a share of the water," he said. "Not the river. The water on the way to the cups. They paid three carriers to take from a north well and say it is from a south one. The south well tastes softer. The north well carries iron. Iron sits heavy in the mouth. If you are not paying attention, you would call it strength."
Lin Xun let the words settle where words go when you do not rush them. He did not feel anger rise. He felt a patience that sharpened, a line becoming finer at the edges as a blade is honed. He thought of the Circle's warning, of a woman at the pavilion who stepped into mist as if it were a hallway, of Zhou Ren's smile that did not try very hard to be a smile.
"Why tell me this," he asked, because sometimes a cup needs to hear itself being poured before it can cool.
The man shrugged with one shoulder. "Because a woman told me to. Because I sell fish that were not caught today, and I prefer tea that was brewed with today's hand. Because Eastern Cloud is not buying fish, but they are buying the path fish walk on. The river does not like that. It kicks in a slow way. You cannot see it until a boat notices it has drifted."
He set the empty cup down and looked at the stall owner. "One more."
She poured. He drank. He spoke again, low and even.
"There is a guest from the Northern Peaks," he said. "The one your elder mentioned at the pavilion. He travels with a porter who smells like pine and old blood. The guest drinks only hot water when others are watching. He drinks something else when they are not. The porter carries a small tin in his right sleeve. Tin, not clay. Whoever trusts tin trusts speed over breath."
Shen Lan's gaze cut to Lin Xun for a beat, then returned to the street. A cart rolled past with sacks of rice, and the man pulling it nodded to the stall owner and kept moving, as if he had nodded to the stall owner every day of his life and would nod the same on the day he did not pass here anymore.
The man at the arch lifted his basket. He looked at Lin Xun for the first time, not long, not hard, only enough to make the point that he could have looked earlier and had chosen not to.
"I have said more than I meant to," he admitted, a touch of surprise in it, as if the cup had done the talking and he was only now hearing the words. "If anyone asks, you did not buy this from me. You bought porridge."
"I did," Lin Xun said gently. "And it was honest."
The man made a motion that might have been a bow if he had let it finish. He walked away along the wall, his basket balanced just so, his hat brim catching the first hint of color that had decided to show itself in the sky.
The stall owner wiped the counter once and set the cloth aside. She did not ask what had been said. She did not need to. She reached for Lin Xun's pouch again, and with a small motion that was almost nothing, tied it closed as if to say, keep this where it belongs.
Shen Lan left a coin under the edge of the cloth, not where payment is usually put, but where a person who had once needed a meal would think to hide their thanks.
They walked back through a city that was reminding itself how to be awake. The rooftops began to brighten, not with light, but with the suggestion that light was on its way. People spoke in the soft voices of morning. Dogs reconsidered their opinions of each other and decided to bark later.
Lin Xun carried the silence the way one carries a pot that is full enough to slosh if you hurry. At the shop door he paused, not because he needed to, but because the habit of pausing before entering had begun to feel like a way to greet the room properly.
Inside, the air still held the memory of their early cup. He set fresh water to warm and opened the windows by a hand's width. The street's cooler breath drifted in, mixed with the warmth until the room felt like a place where decisions could be made at the right temperature.
Shen Lan leaned her sword against the wall and unknotted her cloak. "They are buying paths," she said. "Not only leaves."
"Yes," Lin Xun said. "And they are buying a face to pour from when they need a smile to bring to a door."
"Zhou Ren," she said.
"Or someone standing just behind him," Lin Xun answered. "Someone who prefers tin to clay."
He took down two jars and set them on the counter. One held a bright leaf that opened quickly, eager to make itself known. The other held a slower leaf that asked for patience and gave back twice what was asked if it received it.
"For the Northern Peaks guest," he said, touching the slower jar, "I will bring this. It rewards second thoughts."
"And for the porter," Shen Lan said.
"A small cup that refuses to hide a lie," Lin Xun replied. "He may not drink it, but he will smell it. Sometimes that is enough to make a hand decide to do nothing."
They brewed a pot for themselves and another for the first customers who would wander in soon. The day learned its steps as they poured, and the shop took its familiar shape. The old herb seller came with his cane and his smile that did not move his mouth much but still filled his eyes. Two students came to argue about the cost of paper and forgot to argue after their second cup. A mother came with a child who refused to be carried, then fell asleep with a cup held between both hands like a small warm bird.
Between customers Lin Xun wrote a short list on a slip of paper. Not leaves to buy. Faces to remember. A weigher at the south scale. A lacquer room near Crane Lane. Water carriers who had been asked to lie to their own shoulders. Names would come. Names always came if you brewed long enough for them.
By midday the rhythm of the shop had steadied into the beat he preferred. He set the kettle to hum at a level that made the clay's old glaze sing back, a sound no one else heard but him, like a friend under a blanket trying not to laugh.
The door opened and Bai Ruyin stepped in. Her cloak carried the smell of river stones warmed by sun that had not yet arrived. She scanned the shelves without hiding it and then looked at Lin Xun, her eyes clear as they were on mornings when she had trained before breakfast.
"You look like someone who has learned something," she said.
"I learned that the river does not like to be told where it came from," Lin Xun said. "And that tin cannot remember what clay remembers."
She considered this and accepted it as an answer. "Word reached me that a guest from the Northern Peaks will be in the city."
"It reached me as well," he said. "Along with the scent of pine and old blood."
Her eyebrow lifted at that. "Old blood is a strong scent for a tea house."
"Sometimes tea keeps company with strange stories," Lin Xun replied.
Bai Ruyin ordered a cup without naming it. He poured a leaf for clarity and watched her breath settle along the rim in a way that made the steam look like writing. She drank and placed the cup down as someone places a stone carefully on a cairn at a mountain pass.
"I will be near the pavilion on the day he arrives," she said. "If a hand is needed to move a conversation aside, I will lend it."
"Thank you," Lin Xun said.
She looked toward Shen Lan and nodded once. Shen Lan returned the gesture. It was not agreement. It was the line drawn where agreement would stand if it were needed.
The rest of the afternoon moved like a good story that knows not to hurry when the listener is leaning forward. A pot for a courier who had walked too fast. A lighter cup for a tailor with eyes sore from fine work. A heavier brew for a watchman who needed to remember that his feet were his and not the street's.
Near sundown, as the room cooled and took on the tenderness of evening, Lin Xun drew out the small lacquered box he had chosen for the Northern Peaks guest. He opened it and let the scent move through the shop like a thread of music. It was not loud. It was honest. If a truth stood near it, the truth would stand a little straighter.
Shen Lan watched him close the box again and tie it with a plain cord. "When he comes," she said, "he will not ask for what he wants. He will wait for you to guess, and he will decide whether to respect you based on how close your guess stands."
"Then I will pour what he needs rather than what he says," Lin Xun said. "If he respects that, we will not waste each other's time."
They closed a little early. Not enough to be noticed. Enough to breathe. Lin Xun wrote a short note and tucked it under the counter, a reminder to check the Crane Lane room from a distance and to greet the south scale weigher by his first name if he had one that could be found.
As the last light left the frames of the windows, he and Shen Lan shared one more cup. It was a simple green, the kind that has nothing to prove and still manages to prove that nothing is not an empty word.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Tomorrow," she answered.
The city darkened to the soft blue that makes lamp flames look like small harvest moons. Somewhere the river made that sound it makes when it rises just a finger's width against the bank. The kettle cooled to quiet. The leaves in the last pot lay still, their work for the day complete, their stories carried in the mouths and minds of those who had visited.
Lin Xun cleaned the cups and set them in their row, the same row as always, and yet somehow they looked more ready than usual. A guest was on the way, a porter with tin in his sleeve, a name that would try to drink before tasting. Eastern Cloud had bought paths and smiles, and tomorrow the city would see if paths and smiles could be brewed around as neatly as a leaf can be brewed twice.
He took the shop's key from its hook and let the weight of it sit in his palm for a moment. It felt like what it had always felt like. It felt like responsibility shaped into metal.
He locked the door. The bell gave a small sound, the kind of sound that says, yes, we will be here in the morning.
Outside, the street held the cool a little longer and then surrendered it to the night. The stars were late, as they often are over roofs that have much to think about. The river moved, and whether anyone watched or not, it kept its own counsel.
In the quiet that followed, a plan steeped. Not a scheme, not a trick. A plan made of clay and water and leaves, a plan that would meet a guest from the Northern Peaks with a cup that asked him to tell himself the truth… even if he tried to forget to do so.
Lin Xun breathed once, the way a kettle breathes just before it sings, and the house answered, small and steady, the way it always had.