“It’s an underappreciated part of tea service, and it’s why we call it skillful tea, not ‘tea in tiny pots that you have to keep refilling from the kettle and make everyone wait while you keep brewing more and more cups.’” Brother Fu explained.
“I remember the soldiers I met brewed their tea in big iron kettles. Just… lumped it all in there when the water boiled, let it steep far too long, then slopped it out into cups.” Tian didn’t sniff. He was concentrating on the pour.
“Try making tea for twenty people at a time and see if you don’t find short cuts. It’s a good way to make sure the water is safe to drink too. They don’t need fancy, they need fast and strong and safe. Aim for the back wall, yes, just like that. See how the leaves tumble?”
Tian had offered his sect siblings, and his father, his very best. He dug out Suneater’s Heavenly Realm tea leaves, the ancient clay teapot, the equally ancient copper kettle, set out the magic basalt tea tray, everything. His tea pets were carefully arranged, awaiting their share of the good stuff. Brother Fu had taken it as an opportunity to teach Tian something new in the art of tea making. Namely, where to aim the hot water when you were pouring it into a teapot or lidded cup. Certainly you could just douse the leaves, but there were options.
“It’s an aged white, and will need a longer first steep to open up. If you aim for the back wall, the leaves will tumble, gently helping the compressed leaves open up while ensuring they won’t scald.” Bother Fu smiled as he watched Tian serve. A long way from the somewhat ugly child he sat with in West Town Outer Court, who had to be told that you couldn’t use any old leaves for tea, and that boiling them wasn’t always best.
“Now?”
“You tell me.” Brother Fu raised an eyebrow.
“It’s now.” Tian nodded decisively, and poured the tea over the pets. He was almost ready to swear they were shivering in happiness. Thousand Layer Ice had been melted for the water. It wasn’t quite at the Heavenly Realm, but the difference was paper thin. The basalt blazed into color, as the hidden veins within it glowed from the tea qi. It made the tea pets look quite magical, a lotus floating on a magic pond, a five colored phoenix ready to take flight, a rotund pig radiating an air of righteousness and quiet authority as he suppressed all chaos on the tea tray.
Tian refilled the tea pot with water from the kettle. Brother Fu continued. “Skillful tea. Every part of the service is an opportunity to find refinement. There is no universally perfect way to serve tea, appropriate to every occasion and situation. One must consider every element- environment, tea, tools, guests, water, fire, atmosphere, time, relationships, yourself, and do what is best in context. I’d rather you threw out every part of the ‘right way’ to do things so long as you followed the core principle of a tea service. Which is?”
Tian had to think about it. A lot of words popped into mind, but it was hard to pick a single thought as the core principle.
“The comfort of the guest is the priority."
“That is a good try. I prefer to think of it as ‘Harmony.’ The coming together of myriad elements and people, and finding a moment of comfort and satisfaction together. Happiness and satisfaction are welcome outcomes too, but they aren’t the core. The core is harmony. Welcoming the guest, making them feel wanted and respected, showing that you respect yourself. Coming together over the finest drink known to man or beast. Tea.”
Tian smiled and bowed his head in thanks for his father’s teachings. He poured, putting everything he had learned into the tea, filling the cups. He didn’t use a pitcher, and poured directly from the tea pot. He knew Brother Wang had lighter tastes, while Sister Hong liked her tea to steep a little longer. It was no hardship to give everyone what they preferred.
Everyone raised their cups in a silent salute, then drank. The cups went back on the table a little harder than most intended, though Brother Fu set his down gently enough. Everyone else was sighing, experiencing the tea as it rolled through their mouth and down their throat, the aroma filling their nose, the tea qi soothing and revitalizing them.
“Damn. Suneater was right. That was lousy tea I served him.”
“Heavens, it’s almost syrupy. Sweet, spicy, medicinal, and there is some darker flavor in there I can’t put words to, but the whole thing just coats the mouth and throat.” Lin murmured.
“Mmm. It really is very good tea leaves, and the water adds some interesting depth.” Brother Fu nodded. “How much ice did you bring out?”
“Just what’s in this kettle. Liren and I didn’t need more than that, and… there is a lot of value to completing the trials as designed.”
Brother Fu looked into his tea cup, admired the color and aroma, then took another sip. His eyes half closed, looking like an old man relaxing with some juniors, the same as could be found anywhere in the Broadsky Kingdom.
“You learned something new. Your fire is different. Still warm, but…” Brother Wang trailed off, groping for the right word.
“Bolder. And the water in you still flows, but now it races.” Su’s mouth twitched, approaching a smile. “And I found the metal. It was hidden, but I think it was there all along.”
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Lin nodded. “Yes. Tea served by someone with a sheathed blade, not a hidden one.”
“I have no idea how you get that from my tea. But I’m glad.” Tian nodded.
“Son? Is there something you want to tell me?” Brother Fu raised his eyelids and looked straight at Tian. The table went quiet.
Tian looked over at the crane, who nodded. Tian stood and bowed. “Brother, Sisters, I am sorry for the trouble, but could I ask you to go on ahead? The crane will take you back to the Monastery, if that’s all right?”
Brother Fu subtly nodded. The others finished their tea in a gulp, cupped their hands and made swift farewells. Liren caught his eye, but he silently motioned her to keep her seat. Once the crane had soared up out of sight, Tian sat again.
“Looks like I have good news?” Brother Fu asked with a slight smile.
“No, not really. Or not yet. We… need to have a conversation about that.”
“Brother?!”
“Later.” Tian caught Brother Fu’s eyes. “I have been hiding from this conversation. I want you to know that you are the only person I think of when I think of the word father. And I was hiding, because of all the things I don’t want in the world, hurting you is right at the top of the list.”
Brother Fu went still, but didn’t speak. He watched, and waited. Tian tried to think of how to say what he wanted to say without rambling, and his mind blanked.
“I didn’t figure it out until Liren told me what happened to her family. What… really happened. And I connected it to things from my childhood. I was born six years old in the West Town dump. I did live in the jungle for a while, but for four years I lived in the trash heaps. I still have no recollection of who I was before I was six. I call that person the Dead Boy, and truly, it is a previous life, mercifully forgotten. But I know the name of the family that bore the Dead Boy, now.”
Tian set the memorial tablet on the table. Carved on it was a single word. “XIA.”
“Liren had to tell me which character to use. I… really didn’t know.”
Brother Fu closed his eyes, drawing in a breath with a pained gasp. His eyes squeezed, his knuckled whitened. Tian felt the elements convulse into chaos around his father, a sudden madness, a raging storm of emotions made manifest in the world’s qi.
“I asked the gate guard at the Hong compound- who do I owe a filial duty to? The ones who bore me or the one who raised me? He said both. You can never be too filial. I thought you would approve, and I agreed with him. I don’t really care about the Xia, Father. It’s cold, and ugly to say, but I’m selfish. I care about how I hurt, not who hurt some people I never knew. But I care about you. I want to sincerely struggle with what to get you for your Thousand Year birthday, wondering if it will make you smile. And I know what happens to an undrained cyst.”
Tian smiled, tiny and fragile. “My father arranged for me to study medicine, you see. It changed my whole life for the better.”
Tears rolled down Fu’s old face. He was convulsing, his hand shaking as he wiped his face.
“How.” Choked, thick. “How can you just-” The old man couldn’t find the words.
“Forgive you? Because I don’t want to hurt, and I don’t want you to hurt. So we will both hurt for a while, and then we will heal. Maybe a bit scarred up.”
“I’m used to that.” Brother Fu smiled, uglier than crying.
“A certain sister once told me that merit and sin aren’t weights on a scale, they are burdens you carry, and you carry both all the time, until you resolve them. I thought this was… about like that.”
How could Tian put who Fu was to him on a scale? How could he weigh a blood feud for a clan he didn’t remember, or four years of sickness and starvation and living covered with burns and being eaten by rats while he slept in heaps of rotting trash? What scale could hold it? What could possibly carry that? What could be weighed against it?
Tian forced his hands to be steady, and poured water from the kettle into the tea pot. He did the very best job he could, and refreshed all their cups. “How do I weigh it, against everything you are to me? You know what I decided?”
Tian smiled, and his heart blazed within him. “I decided that a father’s love is heavier than a mountain. No scale can weigh it. I’ll just carry both.”
He gently pushed forward the tea cup. “You once told me that those who walk along the river’s edge must expect to get their shoes wet. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out what that meant. I had to ask a lot of people. But I learned. Well, your shoes are wet. And right after you told me that, you showed me the heart of tea in a cup raised with bloodstained hands. Now I’m serving you. I’m showing you my heart.”
Brother Fu reached for the cup with shaking hands. “And… Liren?”
“We need to have a good talk. But I know this. There is no immortality for me without her.”
“The Hongs?”
“May have some future troubles with their wine jars, and I have privately pledged to beat the absolute shit out of Granny Hong, but that’s mostly for being a shit grandma.”
“Language! She is your grandmother!”
“The hell she is! My only grandparent is Grandpa Jun and he’s dead! I got one dad, a lot of good brothers and sisters, and I have one Liren, and that’s plenty enough for me. Who the hell does that old savage think she is, that she’s good enough to be in my family?!”
“That’s no excuse for a lack of filial behavior, let alone a disgraceful breakdown in manners and composure!”
“I’m filial as anything. Drink the damn tea.”
“Utterly disgraceful.” Brother Fu slurped the tea, then took a second, slower sip. In a heavy voice, he continued. “By forswearing vengeance and your name, you kill the Xia a second time.”
“I guess my shoes will be wet too. But you know what I think? From everything I learned about them, little as it was? I think what they truly wanted, from the bottom of their hearts, was for the dead boy to live well. I think if they had to choose between that and vengeance, they’d pick a happy life every time. I am Tian Zihao, and no one else. Drink up, Dad. It’s just us murderers here. No need to be fussy.”
Liren snorted at that, necked her tea, and put the cup down on the stone tray upside down with a firm click. But she didn’t disagree.