Chapter 4: The Twelfth Cup

The wine in the Regent's cup tasted like biting a knife.

It was a dry, cold bite at the back of Linyuan's tongue, and it went numb before he could blink.

He held his tin cup in his hand, and the Regent already had his porcelain one halfway to his mouth.

Linyuan hit it out of his fingers.

The cup flew across the dining room and cracked against a pillar.

The wine ran down the red lacquer in a dark stripe.

Every servant in the Pavilion went still.

"Tiger-bane," Linyuan said. His lips had started to tingle. "It isn't mine. Nobody touch the tray."

The Regent looked at his empty hand.

Then he looked at the cupbearer, a mild young man in violet who stood by the wall with his eyes fixed on the floor.

"Take him to the guard room," Duan Shiyan said. "Do not let him speak to anyone."

They took him away.

Three days had passed since the Hu scroll came.

In that time Linyuan had taught a sixteen-year-old to read an edict without yawning at every line.

It had never occurred to him that someone would try for the Regent first.

The Regent stood quite still in the middle of the room, paler than Linyuan had ever seen him.

"Out," he said to everyone else.

When the room had emptied, he took Linyuan's wrist.

Linyuan thought he was going to be thanked.

He should have known better.

"This way," the Regent said, and pulled.

The Pavilion's tea store was a narrow room behind the dining hall, stacked to the ceiling with chests and smelling of jasmine and camphor.

The Regent shut the door behind them, turned, and pressed Linyuan against the nearest chest so hard that the lids rattled.

"You tasted it for me," he said.

"It's my job."

"It is not your job. Your job is the Emperor's table."

"Then the Emperor's table can wait, my lord, because you were about to drink it."

"I know what I was about to do."

His voice shook, and it was plain, honest rage.

"That was the twelfth time in two years," he said. "I lived through the other eleven because I have no appetite."

His mouth twisted. "Not once did anyone taste for me."

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