Chapter 14 · Untitled Chapter

I put the cup back on the tray without drinking from it.

Not drinking is a sentence too. In that majlis it is louder than anything I could have said standing, and I watched it land. The Finger's courtesy did not move, but his hand came off the arm of his chair and settled again, and the row behind him read the tray the way they read everything: quickly, and for advantage.

Twenty years, I had thought, standing there with the porcelain warm in my palm. Twenty years of evenings, and all of it bought with one swallowed mouthful of cardamom. Now I had refused the cup and kept nothing, and the refusing had cost me nothing either. That was the trouble with refusals made in someone else's hall. They are free, and being free, they purchase nothing.

"Sayyidati," the Finger said, kindly, which in his mouth is a lever. "The gahwa will be cold."

"It was cold when they poured it," I said. "I did not want to waste the cup.