Predictable death. Yes, maybe that's the point. The Paintress lost her child in a violent, unexpected way. The painted numbers on the Monolith, the warnings, they're a kindness. Death in Lumière is gentle and foreseen.
All the same: "You're right. It is intolerable." Fuck, is it intolerable. He lets a hand dangle over the railing, musing darkly, "And you're right that— sometimes you need to burn the whole thing down to start anew."
Is that what she said? Well, it's what he took from it. Sometimes, the mistakes made with thoughtless flicks of a paintbrush can't be easily undone. Sometimes, you need to pour turpentine on the canvas and scrub until it's blank and pure again. He's fantasized about that a hundred, a thousand times.
Silence stretches, and then he laughs.
"I thought you were going to comment on our art and culture." Instead, she chose Lumière's most depressing—although admittedly also its most defining—feature to focus on: the Gommage. Maybe, he thinks, because she finds it relatable to her own circumstances in some way. "Maybe its propensity to produce dreamy musicians with stomachs of iron."
He still hasn't thrown up. That's worth bragging about.
Jasnah's lips press together — not disapproving, just thinking. Deeply. When she answers, it's with that unsettling blend of precision and softness she sometimes slips into when his darkness brushes too close to hers. Moments like these, considering the undercurrent of his words, she suspects Lumière breeds fortitude as much as it does musicianship.
"Art and culture are the surface." Her voice is quiet, level. "Beautiful. Necessary. But they often flourish only because something beneath them is... cracked."
Jasnah thinks about the stories she's been told and angles her head, studying him — not his bravado, not the quip, but the line he crossed without noticing.
"Burning the whole thing down,” she echoes, tone neither alarmed nor impressed. Mostly sounding tired. "Most people don't reach for that metaphor so easily."
She watches his hand dangling over the sea. Fascinated, somehow. Or maybe it's merely a focal point while she thinks. If she has her way, she'll be the last Alethi monarch. It isn't quite like burning the whole system down, but... it's close.
She lets the wind fill the silence for a heartbeat before continuing:
Realizing that perhaps that was a little bit of a crazy thing to say (and feeling no less belief in it for that), Verso crosses his arms, staring out at the watery expanse. "No. They"—they, not we—"have a Council. Elected by the people."
"A council? Elected by the people." She says it like she's tasting a rare spice. Then — candidly — she exhales a soft huff and actually grins. "How refreshing."
She slinks a foot closer, leaning the small of her back into the railing. This position turns her away from the sea, focused all the more tightly on him.
"Power granted by choice rather than birth... it's the direction Alethkar should move. If I have my way, I'll be its last queen."
Her expression brightens further with something like ambition sharpened by conviction.
"Oh," he says, very attuned to this sudden interest in him. Well, not him. A sudden interest in democratically-elected leaders. It feels like the same thing, though, when she's stepping closer and looking at him like that.
A stall: "Um." He's not really sure. It's been so long since he was back in Lumière, and getting involved in local politics had never been his interest in returning there. "I don't know."
But he can't just leave it at that. "Every few years, maybe. Since the Gommage started, they'd have to elect them more often." Seeing as the Council would be wiped out semi-frequently.
Jasnah inhales, slow and thin, the way she does when she's trying very hard not to say something beyond civility. But the silence doesn't save him.
"Every few years...maybe."
Her gaze continues to pin him — cool, assessing, a touch incredulous. Inside, something tightens, the same pinch she feels when a junior scholar hands her a dissertation built on sand. Storms. He truly doesn't know?
She turns back toward the water, but her thoughts bristle. He remembers a world's creatures, monsters, tragedies...but not how its leaders are chosen? Her expression crumples into a frown. When she speaks again, her voice is deceptively mild.
"Perhaps if you'd spent less time at dance lessons and more time attending to current events, you'd have something firmer than maybe to offer."
Her tone is dry, but there's something beneath it too. Curiosity, edged with suspicion. Instinct tightening around a loose thread.
Ah, merde. She thinks he's an idiot who doesn't know how his own government works. He can feel that interest she'd just shown him wilting away like a tulip in the heat.
He's quiet for a moment, fingers plucking at the loose fabric by the elbows of his shirt. Either he doubles down here and really, actually lies about living in Lumière— or he risks her ire (but also her interest again) by admitting that, no, he hasn't actually lived there in 67 years. Oh, and also, he's over 67 years old.
It's not like he actually hid it from her. Technically, she just never asked. So, he lands on aggressively gaslighting her into thinking it just never came up. "As it turns out, it's been a long time since I've been to Lumière."
Jasnah goes absolutely motionless. Not stiff. Not startled. Just...still — like an axehound scenting something unexpected among the rockbuds. Her eyes narrow, but only slightly. Enough to signal that a dozen thought processes have begun running in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
A long time since he's been to Lumière. A phrasing so vague it’s practically an admission.
"Is that so," she says. Quiet, flat, unhappy.
Inside, her thoughts sharpen: he never said he lived there recently. She assumed. Even after he admitted to being an Expeditioner. But even that had felt like it should have been a recent development. And why did he let her believe otherwise? She can't trace it back to a lie. Only omissions. Jasnah feels a familiar frisson of annoyance.
She studies him openly now, head angling just slightly, as though adjusting the focus on a lens. It's a closer inspection than she's given him since (perhaps) she first met him.
"It appears," she says with unnerving calm, "that we have a misunderstanding."
"Um," he says again, trying and failing not to look like a guilty dog who's just torn up her slippers. Telling the truth always makes him feel uncomfortable. Still, he does his level best to keep his tone light, casual. Like there's no reason to be upset with him at all.
"A while."
Technically, it hasn't been too long. Technically, he's been back to Lumière semi-recently. Clea had entered the Canvas once more and told him that Alicia—her Alicia, the real one—had fallen into it in an attempt to get their shared mother to leave. Maman's chroma had overtaken her, she'd said, repainted her into a denizen of the Canvas without memory of who she was. I don't have time to deal with this. Do something useful for once and make sure she doesn't get into any trouble.
But his scarce visits over the last sixteen years hadn't really been living there. It'd barely been existing there. He'd kept to himself, watching Alicia from afar. Burning with jealousy as he watched her with her foster brother, smiling up at him the way his Alicia used to smile at him before the fire mangled her face and stole her joy.
"I'm a bit older than I look," he says, like it's just good genetics.
Jasnah blinks once as if Verso has just presented her with a puzzle she did not request and does not appreciate. Namely, a puzzle that's a little too simple to solve.
"Older than you look," she repeats, voice flat as a polished blade. She does so enjoy turning a man's words back against him.
Inside, her reaction is sharper Storms. Not another one. Not another ageless worldhopper with selective honesty and a talent for being inconveniently charming and annoyingly interesting.
She maintains the same proximity. She doesn't withdraw; she doesn't shift onto a back foot; she doesn't so much as lean away. He tells her he's older than he looks and she makes a careful spectacle of examining his features. Like she's one errant syllable away from grabbing his chin with her palm and holding him in place.
"Very well," she eventually says. "You realize I now have questions."
She turns fully toward him — poised, regal, absolutely done with plausible deniability.
"And I expect real answers. Can you do that for me?"
Real answers. Not whatever fiction he thinks will go down easier. It isn't personal. He's merely reaping the consequences of another man's habitual lies. Perhaps that transference shows in the way she first confirms whether he considers himself capable of giving her what she wants.
Questions. Verso stiffens almost imperceptibly, mind flashing with memories of being abducted, interrogated— why couldn't you just let it go? Julie raising her sword against him, accusing him of betrayal. Holding her body close in some sick facsimile of an embrace, feeling the life drain from her body as his blade buried itself in her gut. Laying her down on the grass, promising her: it won't be forever. Maman will bring you back.
How unhelpful of her, then, to take yet another step closer . Nearly so close that it could be mistaken as a precursor to an embrace. In reality, she wants their conversation to stay hushed and private between their bodies. One hand steadies on the rail.
"How much older, Verso?"
Than you look.
She will take his assertion literally. If he is to be an open book, then she will be the avid reader creasing pages and leaving indelible marks in margins as she attempts to extract meaning from him.
"Well," he says, "that all depends on how old you think I look." Not a day over 21, right?
He turns his head to look at the ship behind them, eyes darting around before he leans in closer to Jasnah, voice lowered. "I don't know why," he lies, "but after the Fracture, some of us stopped aging." There's an almost pre-rehearsed feel to the words, like he's had to make this explanation before, and that it's been perfected through trial and error. "And the Gommage can't touch us."
Like he's trying to cut any questions off at the pass, he rattles off, "I didn't tell you earlier because it wasn't relevant, and you didn't ask." Another lie. He didn't tell her because he was worried about how she'd react. Like how he's worried about being thrown over the side of the ship right now.
Her posture may be stiff and still, but not to the point where she can't fervently roll her eyes when he sidesteps her first question. Storms! Her lip curls, and a measure of impatience settles across her shoulders.
His explanation doesn't phase her. Perhaps she misses its rote nature because she's already written off the 'why.' To her, the conclusion is almost painfully obvious: he's a Cognitive Shadow, like the Heralds. Unless...
"I'm asking now. How old?" She hones in on the piece of information she wants, but he hasn't yet provided. "One hundred? A thousand? Five thousand?"
Trying—but not quite succeeding—at hiding his irritation at the questions: "Does it matter?"
One hundred is the same as one thousand. Both of them are unnatural. Besides, it's not like she's going to be celebrating his birthday any time soon. He sighs, grinding his teeth a little before replying.
"Closer to one hundred than one thousand. The Fracture was 67 years ago now."
Does it matter? Whether asked in irritation or otherwise, Jasnah gives the challenge it's due process. She chews thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek.
"Yes, it matters."
It matters because it's a data point and she collects data points. It matters because it's something real about him. It matters because the last ageless man she spent this much time was over 10,000 years old (if Wit's own word can be trusted) and those milennia had thoroughly compromised his ability to function person-to-person with a mortal like herself. She'd felt it in every game he played. Every slanted response.
But closer to one hundred? Jasnah nods. She can work with one hundred. Although she doesn't return the favour and tell him why it matters.
Instead, she makes inferences: "You go on the Expeditions. And you survive them."
And sometimes not, when he can't bear it anymore. But he's been a part of more Expeditions than he hasn't been, whether helping or hindering them.
Matter-of-fact: "I join the Expeditions, and I guide them. Immortality is—" A moment of waffling, here. "A curse from the Paintress. I have a vested interest in the Expeditions' success."
He holds her gaze for just a moment, then steps away, creating a little distance. "That's all."
...The Paintress continues to sound suspiciously Shard-like. Cultivation, the third Shard with partial dominion over Roshar, has only recently become known for her boons and curses. Jasnah opens her mouth, prepared to ask something about Her again. But...
She recognizes the ways in which he's withdrawing. Jasnah doesn't feel guilty, but she does ease up. Just a little. Now might be a more appropriate moment to file observations rathet than chase them.
Intolerable. Predictable death. She rethinks some of their conversations, and many of her assumptions. In the pit of her stomach, she feels a strange-nauseus desire to admit that he's fascinating. She pries because she wants to pop his soul open and trace its line. It's causes and effects. The only immortals she's known have long since gone mad. Or are Wit. Bastard.
"I see." Calm, again. Less like a scholar finding a rare book. Gently, and with perhaps a rather misapplied attempt at comfort: "You aren't the first...long-lived person I've met."
She doesn't say immortal. In many respects, immortality can't be proven. It's just death thag hasn't yet stuck. The bastard taught her that.
This is really a conversation they should be having in the privacy of their locked cabin, but clearly, Jasnah does not have a sense for which subjects should be private. And, admittedly, he finds the idea of her having encountered another immortal before him interesting. Relieving, even. Everyone else he's ever told has found it... alarming.
After all, it's hard to trust someone when he's somehow the only person among you who isn't affected by the annual mass killing. He gets that.
Where to even begin? She ought to explain the Ten Heralds, but she knows there are gaps in the story she simply can't fill. She could explain Wit, but... No. For all her granstanding over honesty, there are truths she would also like to keep to herself.
Jasnah has to remind herself (even now) that everything he's saying could yet be false. Not all the Heralds are yet accounted for. What if this was one of them? Addled by his years of torture on Braize. Delusional, creating a whole new world to hold his denial.
No. Ivory would have been able to distinguish a Herald. Oh, she'd like to ask the spren to pop into the Cognitive and give her a better read on Verso's presence there.
"The man whose position you're auditioning for. Oddly enough. He... well, he'd been alive long enough to witness the first founding of our cities."
Her turn to carefully navigate the truth and omit details. She's mentioned her former Wit and she's mentioned her former lover. But she's never drawn a line between the two aloud.
Also oddly enough: "He, too, came from elsewhere."
Hehe, he's auditioning for both of Wit's positions, actually. 😇
"Yeah?" It wouldn't be right to say that Verso perks up, but it is good to hear that Jasnah's familiar with someone else who shares his— affliction. Perhaps to an even greater degree; witnessing the first founding of Rosharan cities must mean he's older than Verso, maybe even older than Esquie.
It's good to hear. And yet, on another level... isn't it odd? It's such a ridiculous coincidence that he might think it isn't a coincidence at all. That there's something inherent to him, something written in his very cells that screams replacement.
That's crazy, of course, so he doesn't say anything about it. Just lets it make him feel kind of like shit.
"You said he was unpopular. What happened to him?"
A petty vicious streak in Jasnah wants to answer: does it matter? Feeding his own protest back to him. But... of course it matters. She's just revealed the existence of not only another immortal, but another world-hopper too. Why shouldn't he be curious?
Even so, it isn't as if she can tell the whole truth. So Jasnah ponders her answer, not bothering to hide how she considers her next words.
"He left."
After she dumped his ass, sure. But he did indeed leave! That's accurate.
"Being from elsewhere, he had business and priorities that took him away from Roshar. I released him from his service."
Not that it was ever required. Sure, Wit had been her servant. But in many ways he was something beyond the courts of kings and queens. His loyalty had never truly been to her or her world. Although she likes to think he had an uncommon fondness for it.
She exhales through her nose - almost a sigh, steeling herself for something unpleasant.
"One more question. About logistics, or...body mechanics."
She looks across him. Head to toe. Thoughtful. Yes, she wants to know about what (exactly) this immortality means to him. Simple agelessness? Healing? Has he died and returned?
But after his earlier reactions, she intends to ease into any more questions about it.
Oh. Okay. It's better than what Verso had feared, at least: that maybe they turned on him and locked him in a steel box that they threw in the ocean, or chained him up somewhere, or— look, he's had a lot of time to contemplate things that could one day happen to him.
There's still a lot of ways you can harm someone who can't die. So, of course, his eyebrows raise at her question, slightly wary. "Body mechanics." Very euphemistic. Voice lowered again, he asks, "You mean you want to know what will happen if you stab me?"
Another cautious glance back at the few sailors milling about on the deck. Two of them are leaned against the railing opposite them, shooting the shit. Another is attempting to clean a mysterious stain. All of them look like people to whom he really, really doesn't want to have to explain why his immortality is perfectly normal and harmless.
Honestly, it's not any of her business, but he finds himself in a rather precarious predicament at the moment, not only stuck at sea with her now but stuck under her rule after, too. He pushes off the railing, taking a few steps away.
"Not a conversation to have in front of company, I think." He doesn't put his foot down about much, but he's putting it down about this. If she wants to know the gory details, she'll have to talk about it with him in private.
As if proving why they absolutely should not be having this discussion here, one of the sailors from across the way calls out, "Lovers' spat?"
The subject makes him uncomfortable. And his discomfort is by itself an interesting phenomenon. Does he resent it? Why? Has this backfired on him before? It doesn't occur to her that perhaps her means of approach might be too harah, too direct, too impersonal. The issue isn't with her, she supposes, but with someone else's thin skin.
He insists they retire to their small cabin to contunue. And Jasnah almost argues - or else almost dismisses the topic altogether in favour of staying on the deck. But then the sailor calls out about a lover's spat and Jasnah can't quite keep the faint flush off her cheeks. Anger or humiliation or both.
But what does she do when she encounters a challenge? She scales it. She strides into it head-on. She hooks an arm firmly around his elbow, erasing the space between their bodies - as if daring then sailors to still think the lovers are fighting.
"Back to the cabin, then," she directs. Soft in volume but not in tone.
Back to the cabin, then. He's too hassled by the semi-interrogation to even really appreciate having someone's arm around his, and once they enter the cabin he withdraws to lock the door, then check that it's locked again. Just in case. When he's confident that it is, he turns to Jasnah, arms crossed.
"Yes, I die. Then I get better."
Close enough to dying, anyway. He's been eaten, bisected, poisoned— it hurts, but it doesn't take. Not permanently.
"It's a real annoyance to die"—extremely unpleasant, actually—"so I try not to."
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All the same: "You're right. It is intolerable." Fuck, is it intolerable. He lets a hand dangle over the railing, musing darkly, "And you're right that— sometimes you need to burn the whole thing down to start anew."
Is that what she said? Well, it's what he took from it. Sometimes, the mistakes made with thoughtless flicks of a paintbrush can't be easily undone. Sometimes, you need to pour turpentine on the canvas and scrub until it's blank and pure again. He's fantasized about that a hundred, a thousand times.
Silence stretches, and then he laughs.
"I thought you were going to comment on our art and culture." Instead, she chose Lumière's most depressing—although admittedly also its most defining—feature to focus on: the Gommage. Maybe, he thinks, because she finds it relatable to her own circumstances in some way. "Maybe its propensity to produce dreamy musicians with stomachs of iron."
He still hasn't thrown up. That's worth bragging about.
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"Art and culture are the surface." Her voice is quiet, level. "Beautiful. Necessary. But they often flourish only because something beneath them is... cracked."
Jasnah thinks about the stories she's been told and angles her head, studying him — not his bravado, not the quip, but the line he crossed without noticing.
"Burning the whole thing down,” she echoes, tone neither alarmed nor impressed. Mostly sounding tired. "Most people don't reach for that metaphor so easily."
She watches his hand dangling over the sea. Fascinated, somehow. Or maybe it's merely a focal point while she thinks. If she has her way, she'll be the last Alethi monarch. It isn't quite like burning the whole system down, but... it's close.
She lets the wind fill the silence for a heartbeat before continuing:
"Does Lumière have a king? A queen?"
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Realizing that perhaps that was a little bit of a crazy thing to say (and feeling no less belief in it for that), Verso crosses his arms, staring out at the watery expanse. "No. They"—they, not we—"have a Council. Elected by the people."
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"A council? Elected by the people." She says it like she's tasting a rare spice. Then — candidly — she exhales a soft huff and actually grins. "How refreshing."
She slinks a foot closer, leaning the small of her back into the railing. This position turns her away from the sea, focused all the more tightly on him.
"Power granted by choice rather than birth... it's the direction Alethkar should move. If I have my way, I'll be its last queen."
Her expression brightens further with something like ambition sharpened by conviction.
"How often are your Council members chosen?"
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A stall: "Um." He's not really sure. It's been so long since he was back in Lumière, and getting involved in local politics had never been his interest in returning there. "I don't know."
But he can't just leave it at that. "Every few years, maybe. Since the Gommage started, they'd have to elect them more often." Seeing as the Council would be wiped out semi-frequently.
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"Every few years...maybe."
Her gaze continues to pin him — cool, assessing, a touch incredulous. Inside, something tightens, the same pinch she feels when a junior scholar hands her a dissertation built on sand. Storms. He truly doesn't know?
She turns back toward the water, but her thoughts bristle. He remembers a world's creatures, monsters, tragedies...but not how its leaders are chosen? Her expression crumples into a frown. When she speaks again, her voice is deceptively mild.
"Perhaps if you'd spent less time at dance lessons and more time attending to current events, you'd have something firmer than maybe to offer."
Her tone is dry, but there's something beneath it too. Curiosity, edged with suspicion.
Instinct tightening around a loose thread.
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He's quiet for a moment, fingers plucking at the loose fabric by the elbows of his shirt. Either he doubles down here and really, actually lies about living in Lumière— or he risks her ire (but also her interest again) by admitting that, no, he hasn't actually lived there in 67 years. Oh, and also, he's over 67 years old.
It's not like he actually hid it from her. Technically, she just never asked. So, he lands on aggressively gaslighting her into thinking it just never came up. "As it turns out, it's been a long time since I've been to Lumière."
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A long time since he's been to Lumière. A phrasing so vague it’s practically an admission.
"Is that so," she says. Quiet, flat, unhappy.
Inside, her thoughts sharpen: he never said he lived there recently. She assumed. Even after he admitted to being an Expeditioner. But even that had felt like it should have been a recent development. And why did he let her believe otherwise? She can't trace it back to a lie. Only omissions. Jasnah feels a familiar frisson of annoyance.
She studies him openly now, head angling just slightly, as though adjusting the focus on a lens. It's a closer inspection than she's given him since (perhaps) she first met him.
"It appears," she says with unnerving calm, "that we have a misunderstanding."
Dangerously polite.
"How long has it been?"
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"Um," he says again, trying and failing not to look like a guilty dog who's just torn up her slippers. Telling the truth always makes him feel uncomfortable. Still, he does his level best to keep his tone light, casual. Like there's no reason to be upset with him at all.
"A while."
Technically, it hasn't been too long. Technically, he's been back to Lumière semi-recently. Clea had entered the Canvas once more and told him that Alicia—her Alicia, the real one—had fallen into it in an attempt to get their shared mother to leave. Maman's chroma had overtaken her, she'd said, repainted her into a denizen of the Canvas without memory of who she was. I don't have time to deal with this. Do something useful for once and make sure she doesn't get into any trouble.
But his scarce visits over the last sixteen years hadn't really been living there. It'd barely been existing there. He'd kept to himself, watching Alicia from afar. Burning with jealousy as he watched her with her foster brother, smiling up at him the way his Alicia used to smile at him before the fire mangled her face and stole her joy.
"I'm a bit older than I look," he says, like it's just good genetics.
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Jasnah blinks once as if Verso has just presented her with a puzzle she did not request and does not appreciate. Namely, a puzzle that's a little too simple to solve.
"Older than you look," she repeats, voice flat as a polished blade. She does so enjoy turning a man's words back against him.
Inside, her reaction is sharper Storms. Not another one. Not another ageless worldhopper with selective honesty and a talent for being inconveniently charming and annoyingly interesting.
She maintains the same proximity. She doesn't withdraw; she doesn't shift onto a back foot; she doesn't so much as lean away. He tells her he's older than he looks and she makes a careful spectacle of examining his features. Like she's one errant syllable away from grabbing his chin with her palm and holding him in place.
"Very well," she eventually says. "You realize I now have questions."
She turns fully toward him — poised, regal, absolutely done with plausible deniability.
"And I expect real answers. Can you do that for me?"
Real answers. Not whatever fiction he thinks will go down easier. It isn't personal. He's merely reaping the consequences of another man's habitual lies. Perhaps that transference shows in the way she first confirms whether he considers himself capable of giving her what she wants.
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He shoots Jasnah a glance.
"I'm an open book."
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"How much older, Verso?"
Than you look.
She will take his assertion literally. If he is to be an open book, then she will be the avid reader creasing pages and leaving indelible marks in margins as she attempts to extract meaning from him.
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He turns his head to look at the ship behind them, eyes darting around before he leans in closer to Jasnah, voice lowered. "I don't know why," he lies, "but after the Fracture, some of us stopped aging." There's an almost pre-rehearsed feel to the words, like he's had to make this explanation before, and that it's been perfected through trial and error. "And the Gommage can't touch us."
Like he's trying to cut any questions off at the pass, he rattles off, "I didn't tell you earlier because it wasn't relevant, and you didn't ask." Another lie. He didn't tell her because he was worried about how she'd react. Like how he's worried about being thrown over the side of the ship right now.
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His explanation doesn't phase her. Perhaps she misses its rote nature because she's already written off the 'why.' To her, the conclusion is almost painfully obvious: he's a Cognitive Shadow, like the Heralds. Unless...
"I'm asking now. How old?" She hones in on the piece of information she wants, but he hasn't yet provided. "One hundred? A thousand? Five thousand?"
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One hundred is the same as one thousand. Both of them are unnatural. Besides, it's not like she's going to be celebrating his birthday any time soon. He sighs, grinding his teeth a little before replying.
"Closer to one hundred than one thousand. The Fracture was 67 years ago now."
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"Yes, it matters."
It matters because it's a data point and she collects data points. It matters because it's something real about him. It matters because the last ageless man she spent this much time was over 10,000 years old (if Wit's own word can be trusted) and those milennia had thoroughly compromised his ability to function person-to-person with a mortal like herself. She'd felt it in every game he played. Every slanted response.
But closer to one hundred? Jasnah nods. She can work with one hundred. Although she doesn't return the favour and tell him why it matters.
Instead, she makes inferences: "You go on the Expeditions. And you survive them."
Storms.
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And sometimes not, when he can't bear it anymore. But he's been a part of more Expeditions than he hasn't been, whether helping or hindering them.
Matter-of-fact: "I join the Expeditions, and I guide them. Immortality is—" A moment of waffling, here. "A curse from the Paintress. I have a vested interest in the Expeditions' success."
He holds her gaze for just a moment, then steps away, creating a little distance. "That's all."
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She recognizes the ways in which he's withdrawing. Jasnah doesn't feel guilty, but she does ease up. Just a little. Now might be a more appropriate moment to file observations rathet than chase them.
Intolerable. Predictable death. She rethinks some of their conversations, and many of her assumptions. In the pit of her stomach, she feels a strange-nauseus desire to admit that he's fascinating. She pries because she wants to pop his soul open and trace its line. It's causes and effects. The only immortals she's known have long since gone mad. Or are Wit. Bastard.
"I see." Calm, again. Less like a scholar finding a rare book. Gently, and with perhaps a rather misapplied attempt at comfort: "You aren't the first...long-lived person I've met."
She doesn't say immortal. In many respects, immortality can't be proven. It's just death thag hasn't yet stuck. The bastard taught her that.
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After all, it's hard to trust someone when he's somehow the only person among you who isn't affected by the annual mass killing. He gets that.
"No?" he asks, worrying his lip. "Me, neither."
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Jasnah has to remind herself (even now) that everything he's saying could yet be false. Not all the Heralds are yet accounted for. What if this was one of them? Addled by his years of torture on Braize. Delusional, creating a whole new world to hold his denial.
No. Ivory would have been able to distinguish a Herald. Oh, she'd like to ask the spren to pop into the Cognitive and give her a better read on Verso's presence there.
"The man whose position you're auditioning for. Oddly enough. He... well, he'd been alive long enough to witness the first founding of our cities."
Her turn to carefully navigate the truth and omit details. She's mentioned her former Wit and she's mentioned her former lover. But she's never drawn a line between the two aloud.
Also oddly enough: "He, too, came from elsewhere."
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"Yeah?" It wouldn't be right to say that Verso perks up, but it is good to hear that Jasnah's familiar with someone else who shares his— affliction. Perhaps to an even greater degree; witnessing the first founding of Rosharan cities must mean he's older than Verso, maybe even older than Esquie.
It's good to hear. And yet, on another level... isn't it odd? It's such a ridiculous coincidence that he might think it isn't a coincidence at all. That there's something inherent to him, something written in his very cells that screams replacement.
That's crazy, of course, so he doesn't say anything about it. Just lets it make him feel kind of like shit.
"You said he was unpopular. What happened to him?"
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Even so, it isn't as if she can tell the whole truth. So Jasnah ponders her answer, not bothering to hide how she considers her next words.
"He left."
After she dumped his ass, sure. But he did indeed leave! That's accurate.
"Being from elsewhere, he had business and priorities that took him away from Roshar. I released him from his service."
Not that it was ever required. Sure, Wit had been her servant. But in many ways he was something beyond the courts of kings and queens. His loyalty had never truly been to her or her world. Although she likes to think he had an uncommon fondness for it.
She exhales through her nose - almost a sigh, steeling herself for something unpleasant.
"One more question. About logistics, or...body mechanics."
She looks across him. Head to toe. Thoughtful. Yes, she wants to know about what (exactly) this immortality means to him. Simple agelessness? Healing? Has he died and returned?
But after his earlier reactions, she intends to ease into any more questions about it.
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There's still a lot of ways you can harm someone who can't die. So, of course, his eyebrows raise at her question, slightly wary. "Body mechanics." Very euphemistic. Voice lowered again, he asks, "You mean you want to know what will happen if you stab me?"
Another cautious glance back at the few sailors milling about on the deck. Two of them are leaned against the railing opposite them, shooting the shit. Another is attempting to clean a mysterious stain. All of them look like people to whom he really, really doesn't want to have to explain why his immortality is perfectly normal and harmless.
Honestly, it's not any of her business, but he finds himself in a rather precarious predicament at the moment, not only stuck at sea with her now but stuck under her rule after, too. He pushes off the railing, taking a few steps away.
"Not a conversation to have in front of company, I think." He doesn't put his foot down about much, but he's putting it down about this. If she wants to know the gory details, she'll have to talk about it with him in private.
As if proving why they absolutely should not be having this discussion here, one of the sailors from across the way calls out, "Lovers' spat?"
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He insists they retire to their small cabin to contunue. And Jasnah almost argues - or else almost dismisses the topic altogether in favour of staying on the deck. But then the sailor calls out about a lover's spat and Jasnah can't quite keep the faint flush off her cheeks. Anger or humiliation or both.
But what does she do when she encounters a challenge? She scales it. She strides into it head-on. She hooks an arm firmly around his elbow, erasing the space between their bodies - as if daring then sailors to still think the lovers are fighting.
"Back to the cabin, then," she directs. Soft in volume but not in tone.
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"Yes, I die. Then I get better."
Close enough to dying, anyway. He's been eaten, bisected, poisoned— it hurts, but it doesn't take. Not permanently.
"It's a real annoyance to die"—extremely unpleasant, actually—"so I try not to."
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i lied, sends this tag in another direction
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a short but very meaningful tag
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my turn for a short but effective tag.
mom said it's my turn
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