Lanterns floated from the eaves like small moons. The barge's wood was dark and old, the kind that keeps the sound of footsteps inside itself so the night can hear the river. Music moved in a thin line across the deck, a string touched lightly and left to speak on its own.
The attendant led them forward without hurry. His lantern lit a soft path along the rail where willow shadows lay over the planks. The river slid past, patient and sure. Far off, a fisherman's call rose, then folded into the water and was gone.
Shy Lin kept a half step behind Lin Xun, hands folded, eyes open to everything. Sparrow Chen walked to the left, quiet as a cat that has decided the world can be trusted for a moment. The old pot rested in Lin Xun's hands. It felt warm though he had not yet lit a flame.
At the center of the deck a man in river green sat at a low table. Two cups rested before him. A kettle stood nearby on a ring of smooth stones that held a low banked heat. The man's hair was tied back with plain cord. His robe was clean, not rich. He looked up as they approached and rose with an easy motion.
"Thank you for coming," he said. His voice was steady, not loud, not soft, the voice of water that knows where it will go. "Bring what the willow heard."
Lin Xun inclined his head. He set the cloth from the pavilion on the table and placed the pot upon it. The cloth seemed to remember the scent of the room it had lived in. A breath of straw, a note of old wood, a trace of bamboo. The deck felt calmer at once.
The man in river green watched the cloth settle. "I am called the patron," he said without pride. "Better to use a role than a name. Names here try to do more than their share of the work. Tonight we will let the cup do it."
"Thank you for the invitation," Lin Xun said.
"Thank me if the cup is good," the man said, and a smile touched his eyes.
Two attendants placed a shallow bowl of river water near the stones. The water caught lantern light in small pieces and gave it back. The heat from the stones rose in a slow curl you could only see if you looked beside it. There was no brazier. There was no coal. The river and the stones had made an agreement between them.
A soft scuff sounded at the far side of the deck. A man in pale silk stood with his hands behind him, the kind of hands that liked to count. Sandalwood walked with him. He did not smile with his eyes.
"An audience," Sparrow Chen said under his breath.
The patron did not turn his head. "This is a public deck," he said mildly. "Anyone may watch if they can do it quietly."
The man in silk inclined his head as if every word spoken by someone else were a coin he could accept or refuse. He took a place where the wind could bring the steam to him first if it chose.
Lin Xun untied a small paper twist and let two threads of Quiet Reed slide into the warm pot. He added Bright Lotus for a clear line that would not push, then a breath of his own roasted oolong to give the cup a place to rest when it reached a tongue that had argued all day. He set the metal petal from the willow man on the lid. The clay seemed to know it. The lid took the petal's weight and the weight turned into a soft calm that sat across the mouth of the pot like a kindly hand.
He dipped the ladle to the bowl and drew river water without sound. The lip touched and tilted, the air left, the water entered. A single drop formed and stayed where it was told. He poured in a thin stream along the inner wall, then the center, then nothing. Calm Pour. The cup and the kettle did not speak. Only the river spoke, and even that was the kind of speaking a friend uses when sitting late and watching boats.
He lifted the lid and set it once… again… again. Three small moves, three breaths. The steam rose, pale and true. It went out as a ribbon and found the willow shade. It held its shape when the small deck wind tested it, then settled as if it had been given a seat.
The patron leaned toward the ribbon. His eyes closed and opened. There was no change in his face except the easing of a line at the corner of the mouth that had not been tight, only busy.
He did not take the first cup. He nodded at the rail where the river ran close. "Let the water listen before we do," he said.
Lin Xun carried the cup to the rail and set it there, a hand's width from the edge. The steam laid itself over the water. The current lifted it and took it a little way, then turned it back. For a breath, nothing else happened. Then the hull made the smallest sound as if old wood had remembered a story and wanted to hear the end again.
"Now us," the patron said, and Lin Xun poured.
He set the cup before the man in river green. He set a second cup for Shy Lin and Sparrow Chen to share, because they had walked the path with him and the cup would not mind two mouths if the two did not try to be loud. The patron lifted his cup and did not blow on it. He breathed with it. He drank.
It was not a dramatic thing. He did not close his eyes. He did not give a speech. He drank the way a man drinks when he has been waiting to drink and has found the right moment at last. He set the cup down. His hand rested on the table without pressing.
"The willow heard well," he said. "The cup remembers."
A breeze came along the deck carrying something spiced and heavy. The man in pale silk had brought his own pot. He waved a servant near and opened a jar. The scent walked ahead of the steam. It was strong and quick and asked for attention the way a bell asks a crowded hall to face the front.
The patron did not look at him. He looked at Lin Xun. "Pour again," he said. "Do not answer noise with noise."
Lin Xun warmed the pot a breath longer and listened for the moment when heat and clay had decided to be together. He lifted the lid and set it once. This time he left the lid a finger open, just enough to let a very small part of the breath escape and meet the night before the night asked. He poured. The steam rose and met the spiced wind and did not argue with it. It did not run from it either. It held its line, soft and clean. The strong scent went past like a loud cart that does not notice the lane. The quiet scent stayed where it was needed.
The man in silk smiled with his teeth. "Customers like to be impressed," he said. "The market rewards a strong hand."
"The river rewards a steady one," Sparrow Chen said, still looking at the water. His tone was easy. He might have been speaking to the willow.
Shy Lin watched the corners of the deck where small movements start. Twice she set her eyes on a place and the place decided it could rest.
The patron drank again. He set the cup down and folded his hands. "I have invited you because the Pavilion is growing tired of tricks," he said to Lin Xun. "People come to settle things with words, then try to pour smoke instead. I want a cup that lowers the voice without humbling the mouth. I want a cup that lets a hard thought consider being softer without feeling it has lost a fight."
"You want a cup that makes a room honest," Lin Xun said.
"I want a cup that reminds a room how to be itself," the patron said.
An attendant in grey moved to the side of the deck near the lantern rack and adjusted a shutter. The wind changed direction by a small degree. Steam from the man in silk drifted back into his own face. For a moment his eyes watered. He blinked and smiled again, but the smile had to work harder now and did not care for the effort.
The patron nodded at the shallow bowl. "Brew once more from the river. Then carry a cup to that rail post," he said, pointing to a carved post wrapped with a length of faded ribbon. "If the steam can turn the ribbon toward the cup, we will not need to speak more than once."
Lin Xun measured the water with the same careful ladle, three quiet pours. He placed the small scale from the quiet pool on the lid beside the metal petal and watched the clay take both without strain. He set the lid and lifted and set it with the slow rhythm his breath had found under the willow. He poured a cup and carried it to the post. He did not set it close. He set it a little away, where the steam would have to walk.
The ribbon hung without interest. Then the steam reached it and did not push. It rested against it the way a hand rests on a shoulder to say I am here. The ribbon moved. It did not flutter. It turned. A finger of cloth pointed toward the cup and stayed there as if it were happy to have found work that fit the size of its strength.
The deck grew very quiet. Not silent, quiet. A kind quiet. People breathed as people do when they realize they have been holding their breath without meaning to.
The man in silk tapped his jar with a fingernail, just once. The sound was small and sharp. The ribbon did not mind. It kept its small job.
The patron dipped his head. "You will pour on the new moon," he said. "I will set the time. I will choose the room. There will be men there who have forgotten how to speak without climbing on their own words. Help them step down."
He took a small object from his sleeve and set it on the cloth. It was a token carved from river stone, polished by thumb and time. The carving was a simple willow branch with three leaves. A thin groove crossed the middle leaf. It looked like the mark stamped on the note that had called them to the river.
"Present this at the outer arch when the moon has thinned to a thread," he said. "Bring your pot. Bring the cloth. Bring a simple leaf and a quiet one. If you bring a crowd, I will turn them away at the plank."
"We will come as we are now," Lin Xun said.
"Good," the patron said. He looked past Lin Xun at Shy Lin. "You hold rooms steady. There is a gift in that. It does not want applause. Do not feed it applause."
Shy Lin lowered her eyes in thanks.
He looked at Sparrow Chen. "You hear when a place pulls. Keep learning when to lean out of that pull. You leaned out twice tonight. The deck liked you for it."
Sparrow Chen's smile was the quiet kind that fits inside the mouth and does not push at the cheeks.
The man in silk stepped forward a finger's width. "Our guild could help protect such gatherings," he said to the patron in a sweet tone. "Protection has a price, but the price is never more than the value given."
"Protection that needs to tell its own story every time it walks into a room is not protection," the patron said. "It is a parade. I have no interest in parades."
The man in silk held his smile where it was and let the rest of his face grow tired around it. He bowed as if he were receiving thanks. He turned and walked away with steps that did not quite belong to the deck. Sandalwood faded toward the stern.
A bell somewhere near the bow rang once, clear and small. The attendants began to close the shutters on the lanterns one by one. The music did not stop, but it moved farther into the dark, as if it had found a seat.
The patron stood. "You have given me what I asked," he said. "I will ask again. Not tonight."
He stepped back from the table. An attendant gathered the kettle and bowl. Another folded the cloth under Lin Xun's pot a hand's width and laid it flat again as a courtesy, then withdrew without a word.
A shadow stood by the far rail, a little apart from the light. The scent of clean iron and pine spoke in one clear line, then was gone. The shadow did not move. It seemed content to be a mark on the edge of the night.
Lin Xun lifted the pot and bowed. Shy Lin and Sparrow Chen did the same. They turned toward the gangplank. The attendant who had brought them raised his lantern and let the soft circle of light walk beside them.
At the head of the plank a figure waited with a small bundle wrapped in cloth. It was the street brewer from the night market, the one with the battered copper kettle, hair tied back with twine. He held the bundle with both hands and looked embarrassed.
"I laughed last night," he said to Lin Xun without preface. "Then you made a cup and I stopped laughing. I thought about it all day. I brought this. It is not much. My father's stone. He used to set it by the coals to keep the kettle even. The stone likes honesty. It cracks under shouting. If it cracks in your hands, the fault is mine."
Lin Xun took the bundle and felt the weight through the cloth, old and friendly. "Thank you," he said. "If it cracks, we will set the pieces side by side and teach them to be useful again."
The man blinked, then laughed once, real and quick. "You are a strange tea man," he said with happiness, and trotted off into the night.
They stepped down to the pier. The river made its steady sound. The willows by the mooring whispered to each other and did not share what they said. The lantern on the attendant's pole went dim, then bright, as if the air around it had drawn a breath.
They walked the lane back toward the lodging house. The city was mostly asleep. A dog lifted its head, listened, and fell back into its dream. A girl's giggle came through a window and turned into a hush. The world did not press.
In the room, Shy Lin lit the small lamp. Sparrow Chen set three plain cups on the table, then thought better of it and set one more. He left the fourth empty.
Lin Xun untied the small bundle. The stone inside was smooth and gray with a faint band of white running through it like the line a wave leaves on sand. He set it on the table and rested his palm there. The stone was cool, then warm, then quiet.
"New moon," Sparrow Chen said. "We will pour for men who stumble over their own words."
"We will pour for a room that wants to be itself," Shy Lin said.
Lin Xun placed the river token beside the metal petal and the quiet scale. He looked at the three small things together, each with its own voice, each asking for nothing but honest use. He covered them with the cloth so they could sleep.
He did not feel tired, not in the way that asks for a bed at once. He felt that kind of tired that is a clean table at the end of a day. He closed his eyes and let his breath match the river's line, slow and sure.
Outside, the barge bells tapped once as the attendants finished their work. The sound crossed the water and reached the room like a visitor that knows when to leave. The night moved a step nearer. The river carried the soft shape of a promise… and somewhere past the willow bend, sandalwood tried to cover the smell of worry and did not quite succeed.