The Butler and the Baker

The cup is heavier than it looks.

People never believe that. They see the gold and they think of gold, thin and bright and easy, the way a bracelet is easy. But the king’s cup is thick at the base and the weight sits low in it, and a man who has not carried one before will tip it in the first six steps.

Ipi has carried it for nineteen years.

He knows the weight the way he knows the length of his own arm. He knows where the wine sits in it when the cup is full and where it swings when the cup is half. He knows that the floor of the great hall dips one finger’s width near the third column and that a careless man will chase the wine with his wrist there and lose three drops on the stone. He knows because he did it once, in his first month, when he was nineteen years old and his hands still sweated, and the chief of his department looked at him afterward without saying anything at all.

He does not lose drops anymore.