Sunday morning. She was making the Hold's terrible tea with the precision of someone who had been making it for thirty years.
Nara came into the kitchen and found her there — standing at the counter with the same methodical attention she brought to everything, measuring the tea leaves with the specific competence of someone who understood that the correctness of the process mattered even when the outcome was going to be terrible regardless.
"You know it's bad," Nara said.
"I know the recipe," Serin said. "The recipe is correct. What the recipe produces is a matter of opinion." She poured. Held out a cup. "Forty years of opinion agrees it's correct."
"Forty years of opinion," Nara said, "has calibrated to the wrong standard."
Serin almost smiled. "That's what Davan said. Every time." S
