Jasnah lies very still on the narrow ship's cot, her hands eventually settling and folding neatly atop her stomach, eyes fixed on the wooden beams above her as though studying their grain will keep her spine rigid and her thoughts orderly. It doesn't. Nor is it particularly conducive to sleep.
At his list of titles — strange names, sharp consonants, florid vowels — her brow furrows lightly. Emperor. Flowers. Sleeping Beauty. They sound less like musical forms and more like myths she has yet to categorize.
But when he reaches the last one — a song for his sister — something inside her stills. As though he has placed a careful weight in the room and she's afraid to move lest it shift.
"Hmm." A soft sound. Almost thoughtful. Almost gentle.
"It seems..." Her voice dips, less precise than usual, as though she were reaching for words in the dark. "It seems you have many more to choose from than I realized."
The cabin is yet lit by the goblet of glowing spheress. The stormlight contained within gives the room a soft blue cast. She considers breathing some in just to dim the space, but resists.
"Did it help?"
The one for his sister. When she was sick or upset or had trouble sleeping. Like a clumsy chicken vying for flight, Jasnah takes a few practice runs at the question she actually wants to ask.
"Not to brag," he says, bragging, "but it did. Yeah."
She's not looking at him, but the smile in his voice is evident. There's nothing in the world he speaks of with more warmth than Alicia. Clea had seemed a bit put-out when she came, like she didn't like the idea of yet another responsibility that was certain to be thrust upon her, but Verso had been overjoyed to be a big brother. Like he'd always been waiting for her his entire life, to make him into something he was meant to be.
"It's not really a waltz," he admits. So maybe he shouldn't have brought it up among the waltzes at all, but it had seemed more relevant to the goal here than any of the others. "More like a... lullaby."
A pause. He leans back, palms pressed against the bench. He knows what it sounds like when someone is dancing around the thing they really want to say. (I hate prevarication, he kindly doesn't remind her of saying.) If she's too embarrassed to ask, he'll gladly take on the burden. "The difference will be more obvious if you listen to it. Mind if I show you?"
A lullably. Jasnah doesn't answer immediately. She's thinking about... she's thinking about Evi, actually. Adolin and Renarin's mother. Her uncle Dalinar's first wife. Dalinar had married her for political reasons. Namely, to secure the plate and blade that then passed to their children. Jasnah only thinks about her now because she wasn't Alethi. Nor had she ever quite adapted to the cold, buttoned down ways of her husband's people. Evi had been overly affectionate with her children. It's why Adolin was more physically affectionate than most Alethi. But, most importantly for this moment, she also sang her boys lullabies. Jasnah was already a teenager by then, but she'd been around for some of those rambunctious years. She'd basked little in Evi's glow, fascinated by a woman whose homelands didn't require big sleeves or hidden hands. Evi had seemed...kind. Warm. Motherly. So very un-Alethi. Jasnah stops that train of thought cold before she can think too long or hard on how she died. How she actually died.
Instead, shifting her shoulders, she weighs then cost of agreeing to his offer - the one he so generously phrased as mind if I show you? As if Verso was skimming dangerously close to understanding what she needed in that moment. Plausible deniability. And, yes, prevarication.
"No, by all means." She doesn't mind. Of course she doesn't, considering how she asked without asking. She's managed to dodge the word please yet again.
"Show me."
It's a little like a dance, isn't it? She doesn't ask, putting him in the position to offer. Putting her in a position to command it. Something decompresses along her spine.
Verso almost says something snarky like if the queen commands it, but Jasnah might take it the wrong way, might shrivel up and turn away if he teases. So, he leaves her command unnoted.
He fumbles a little at the start. There's no piano in front of him to rely on, and he's halfway across the room from Jasnah. Were he singing Alicia to sleep, he would sit on the edge of her mattress and stroke her hair. Obviously, that's not going to happen here, considering that he doesn't want her to quite literally bite his hand off.
"All right," he says, shifting in his seat. "It goes something like—" His finger taps a gentle metronome against the wood, as he hums a soft, slightly wistful song.
She makes the most of their narrow, hard cot. She tries not to recoil from the thinly padded mattresses when it makes her think of another bed. She catches herself looking for meaning in the wood grain, so she shuts her eyes. Her mind drifts to Herdazian lullabies, a curated collection of which she once read while looking for folkloric mentions of Voidbringers in Rosharan history.
With a soft and exasperated breath, Jasnah tries to simply listen.
His music seems to follow a convention and cadence just different enough to what's familiar that she finds herself getting lost in the notes she things ought to happen but never do. Or maybe that non-resolution is intentional. Either way, he's right that she can hear the difference from his waltzes. His. She suspects he's named composers in the garble of vowels and consonants when he talks about music from home, but ultimately Jasnah labels them all as his: music genres - comma - Verso's.
Again. She tries so hard to simply listen! But questions sneak in between notes and measures. Would it annoy him to know she finds the predictable beat of his makeshift metronome more comforting than the song itself? Or would he preen if she complimented his sense of rhythm? Were the lullaby's origins from before or after his sister's difficult recovery?
(Would her own time in seclusion and darkness been improved if anyone had thought to inject melody into her treatment?)
She doesn't speak. She doesn't really sleep either. But she does rest. However long it takes for him to tire of humming, she listens. She latches on to his voice in a way that absolves her from any effort spent decoding meaning or subtext or negative space.
For her, at any rate, it's a starkly companionable silence. And if she manages to dip briefly here-and-there into a light snooze...? Well. Good job, Verso.
He keeps humming until the song ends, and when it ends, he starts up again. The humming continues through several more songs, until he's relatively certain that she's fallen asleep (or is at least relaxed enough to look as if she's sleeping). For the rest of the night, he busies himself as best he can.
Since reading is apparently still off the menu, he conjures his parrying dagger with chroma and practices knife tricks instead. Carves a little V into the underside of the desk. Every once in a while, he starts up humming again, just in case Jasnah has woken.
He's used to insomnia, but all night is a long time to stay up, especially without anything to entertain himself. By the time sun rises, he's got his arms crossed on the desk, temple pressed against his forearms, humming a significantly more sluggish tune.
She lies there as the room slowly pales with dawn, listening to his increasingly sluggish humming, her eyes still closed, her hands folded in identical positions whenever she wakes from the brief, sharp jolts of half-sleep. Once or twice in the night she had startled — just slightly — shoulders tightening, breath catching, as if surfacing from a cold depth. Nothing so dramatic as thrashing or gasping, but unmistakable signs that whatever dreams she skimmed were not kind.
By the fourth such startle she had begun keeping her breathing shallow, as if refusing to descend far enough to dream again. But, eventually, she reaches the limit of how long she can pretend the mattress is tolerable.
With a soft exhale, Jasnah pushes herself upright. Her hair, ordinarily so immaculate, has flattened oddly on one side and rebelliously lifted at the crown on the other. She smooths it once, twice, then presses her lips together and smooths it a third time with far less patience. The result is no better. The state of her appearance prickles at her nerves like raw wool on skin. She hates this grimy, lived-in feeling.
She stands fully then, and crosses to where Verso has all but collapsed forward at the desk. There's a stripped-down sincerity to the way he's slumped, temple resting on his arms, humming something that barely qualifies as melodic anymore. Something tender steals over her as she witnesses how he's made good on his promise. Her sleep might have been poor, but it had felt markedly less...paranoid.
Her knuckles rap gently on the desk. A dull thock thock thock. Then, rather matter-of-factly:
"I'm going to find a sailor willing to provide a basin of water and soap."
The rap of Jasnah's knuckles makes his head hurt a little bit. He stops his off-tune humming, raising his head to look at her. She looks incredibly fetching like this, with her asymmetrical hair, a few rebellious strands sticking out. It's nice to see her look something less than perfectly presentable for once. He feels the ridiculous urge to reach out and mess her hair up more, which of course he instantly squashes.
He's tired enough that he's only sort of half-listening to what she says, not out of a desire to willfully tune her out but because he's still blinking himself back into awareness. "Soap?" he says ploddingly, staring at her as he tries to make his brain useful for anything other than imagining what it would be like to tousle up her hair.
"Oh," comes after a moment. "All right. —Although I'm not sure those sailors look as if they've seen soap recently."
Before she can turn around and leave, he adds, "Hey. How did you sleep?"
He stares at her. She stares back, unflinching. And while she can't begin to guess what's happening behind those light grey eyes of his, she does kinda...pull a face as he chugs up to speed with the morning's first conversation.
Only to roll her eyes. Yes, no, he's right to call the sailor's hygiene into question. It doesn't bear explaining that uhm, actually she only needs a hunk of something whose constitute axi can be coaxed into becoming soap. She'll start by asking for soap, though, because she'd rather not expend the stormlight if she doesn't need to.
Gathering her hair back into the scarf she's been wearing any time she steps outside the cabin, Jasnah pauses and entertains his question. Sleep, huh? How did she sleeps?
"Not bad."
Relatively speaking. She still slept like shit — plagued by disquieting thoughts and dreams the moment her subconscious wrestled control away from her logical, ordere conscious. But, compared to other nights? Not bad.
She doesn't thank him. But she does flash him a tight-lipped smile before walking out the cabin door.
So, apparently they're not speaking any more about last night. Good to know. She's gone before he can say do you want me to come with you, and he sits there alone in the room for a moment, feeling a little disoriented. But he's nothing if not adaptable, so he stands and follows after a second, catching up with some long strides.
Running after her as she marches away isn't exactly great optics. "By the time we dock, the entire ship is going to think our marriage is over," he points out casually.
Oh, was there something else to say about last night? If he's waiting on a thank you then he'll be waiting a damned long time. Verso made good his word and rendered the service he said he would render. And now it's on Jasnah to weigh the cost-benefit analysis on whether she dares to partake in that service again. Not tonight, though. Tonight, the cot is his. Silently, unilaterally, she's decided they'll have shared custody.
She's a few feet past their door, paused at the foot of a narrow staircase up to the deck, when he invokes the status of their marriage. Jasnah turns, drowning at him.
"...Why do you say that?"
Oh. She really doesn't see the same risk as he does. But she's willing to hear him out.
Jasnah turns and frowns at him, so Verso crosses his arms, and— now they look like they're having a domestic again. He uncrosses them, choosing not to say Torreth already does think you're plotting to leave me, and has in fact given me questionable advice to save our failing relationship.
Her teeth set hard and gritted behind her customary frown. Jasnah simply doesn't see the value in play-acting a beautiful, tender marriage when (to her mind) their existence is that much rarer than a simple, practical partnership. What is Verso expecting from their ruse? A love match? Surely that's less believable.
You could try asking, she prods. Although she'd been avoiding asking too many questions ever since the fuss yesterday. But she supposes this is a different kind of questioning. Less personal? More actionable.
After a sharp exhale, Jasnah retreats back in Verso's direction. She stands close. Close enough that they should be able to whisper and not be overheard. Close enough that she feels his body heat as a soft, slight contrast to the colder sea air tunnelling through the narrow ship corridor.
"Alright. How do you propose we should act instead?"
It's been a long time since someone has been this close to him. He has the absurd thought of Wema and Brightlord Sterling caught in that little stairwell during the highstorm, and his skin prickles all over. It's not that he means to make this into something it isn't—Jasnah has no issue commanding him to do anything else, so he's dubious that she wouldn't have already demanded he do something if she were in any way attracted to him—but he is, at the end of the day, a human being. Red-blooded and lonely. His gaze wanders to the curve of her lower lip, her shapely jaw, her neck.
He is as good at self-restraint as he is at everything else, so his eyes flick back up very quickly. If he leans in a little closer than is strictly necessary to speak quietly with her, then clearly it's on accident. After all, he's tired and still vaguely seasick.
"Usually," he says, trying not to sound like his throat has gone dry, "wives act as if they like their husbands. Just a suggestion, though."
The sudden proximity — initiated by her, maintained by her — is something she weathers with what can only be callled neutrality. Jasnah clearly isn't upset or bothered by the breach in what might be considered propriety. But equally, she doesn't seem to chase it.
Her expression is entirely too cool and unbothered when a rogue wave knocks her nearer. Storms, she even grabs him by the bicep to steady what might have been a full-on stumble as the next wave swells unpredictability after it's brother.
The results are almost (almost!) laughable. Jasnah's thoughts are nowhere near Wema, Sterling, and the storm. Jasnah's thoughts are right here — curling around his 'suggestion' with a spark of confusion and a bucket of... something. Indignation? Frustration?
Anyway, she grips his arm and leans in and channels all that frustration and/or indignation into a single hissed question — asked inches from his ear.
"Do you think I dislike you?"
This time, she can't help herself from asking for the question she wants to ask. The one that, scalpel-like, hones in on the illogical shifting sand she sometimes glimpses between his words. Sometimes, listening to Verso was like reading someone else's correspondence. She felt like she was trying to scribble best-guesses in his margins, all while avoiding interrogating aloud the premise of whatever he's said.
Well. She's back to interrogating. He'd only suggest what he's suggesting if she's already failed to keep up appearances. Except in her mind, Jasnah doesn't have to fake liking him. She likes him. He's interesting and useful and can actually hold a conversation with her that doesn't make her want to tear her hair out from boredom. She figured that was obvious.
Not dislike. That implies a level of attention that he's not yet received from Jasnah. He imagines she regards his existence not dissimilarly to the way she regards their current physical closeness: with neutrality. Saying so seems somehow childish, though, and he hadn't been complaining, only pointing out that endless scowling at him might not sell the story that she'd been fond enough of him to marry him.
He forces himself to focus on the conversation at hand and not the fact that she smells nice, even after two days at sea.
"I don't think I'm presumptuous enough to guess at your feelings," he says diplomatically. "But some of the sailors might be."
Objectively, she knows he's right. She knows it because two years ago aboard the Wind's Pleasure she'd given Shallan what ended up being her last lesson. That lesson had been on on authority and perceptions of power but objectively she understands the same principle applies to any assertion.
You say I have authority as the sister of a king. I do. Jasnah has told Shallan. And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king.
So! Yes! Jasnah understands the principle. She understands it intimately. After all, her often carefully arranged appearance adhered to that principle. What she doesn't understand and where she doesn't agree is that she doesn't believe she's given the sailors any reason to doubt their solid Alethi marriage. The illusion she's been casting against their perception feels utterly realistic to most marriages. Hasn't it? Her parents. Elhokar and Aesudan. Even Lirin and Hesina, the tower surgeon and the wife whose name she stole!
Jasnah's grip shifts on Verso's arm. Half stability, half stress ball. She has him sort of...caged against the corridor. It hadn't been intentional. Just a means of being near enough to speak softly, clandestinely.
But she keeps him there while she considers the others. The outlier marriages. Her mother's second marriage to her uncle; Adolin and Shallan. The ones that people whisper about and shaken their heads. Well, fair enough, they shook their heads but didn't doubt the depth of feeling involved.
Her grip loosens. Her hand travels down to take his hand. It's her right hand, her free hand, that interlaces with his.
"Let's try it your way." She offers. Although her tone of voice suggests she's none too confident in the experiment. However, to her credit, she is willing to experiment.
Verso can't help the way his hand twitches a little at the feeling of her palm sliding against his. He hadn't been suggesting that she needed to show him any sort of physical affection—or even verbal affection—just that smiling at him every once in a while probably wouldn't go amiss. But her hand is slightly cooler than his, a pleasant feeling, and he can't bring himself to pull away.
He has half a mind to think that she's doing all of this to torture him, but that would require a level of investment beyond neutrality that, again, he's not confident she has. Besides, she can't possibly know that it's been decades since somebody held his hand. So, no. He's just torturing himself.
"Excusez-moi," he says, carefully stepping around her.
As they step onto the deck — hands linked in holy matrimonial performance — Jasnah tests the contact the way a scholar tests a hypothesis. Her grip begins firm, deliberate, each finger placed with intention. She tracks the shifting pressure between their palms as though charting a physical equation: resistance, transfer of warmth, shared balance on an unstable deck.
A dozen paces later, she alters a variable. Her hold loosens; her fingers reposition. The grip shifts from constant to intermittent, from held to holding. She notes the difference with clinical acuity. Nothing nervous in it. Merely an experiment executed with a living subject she trusts to be at least clever enough to notice he is being studied.
They complete a slow arc around the deck — visible long enough to justify the fiction of a couple who rises early to admire the dawn before requesting water and soap.
Portside, the world is nothing but water and light—pink-gold under the newborn sun, impossibly wide and unbroken. Starboard, a faint smear of cliff holds the horizon steady. Jasnah finds herself unexpectedly relieved. Open water is too vast, too volatile, too indifferent. Systems bounded by land are easier to predict. And control.
She inhales, the sea wind tugging at her scarf and at the loose strands of hair that have escaped it. Then — without loosening her grip on Verso’s hand — she turns her head just enough to study him. Not smiling, not yet, but unmistakably focused. Whatever else may be true, he is at least the solitary object of her attention in moments like these. Intense and undivided.
She wants to ask him about his planet's oceans after the disaster he'd already described. Were there bodies of water outside the city? Tides, moons, winds? She wants to ask how many suns rise there, how many seas he's crossed (few, she guesses, based on his seasickness,) and whether they smell the same. But with a sailor shimmying down a mast scarcely eight feet away, she swallows every question.
Instead, she pitches her voice just loud enough to be overheard, just wry enough to pass for a wife ribbing her sociable husband.
"Have you learned any of the crew’s names?" she asks. "Made any friends yet?"
Dry, but not cold. A gentle implication that of course her gregarious husband charms every soul he meets. It maintains the fiction neatly — and besides, after last night's dinner, he may indeed know which sailor is easiest to approach for a basin, sparing her another conversation with the captain.
The testing doesn't go unnoticed, although he finds it a little odd, as if she's never held anyone's hand before. Perhaps she's just seeing what will be the most—in her eyes—believable and tolerable way to do it. He keeps his hand relatively slack and loose, grip purposefully easy to wrench out of.
He can tell, too, that she wants to ask him something. She only gives him that laser focus when there's something scientific on her mind. When she does ask, though, it's unexpected; his brow furrows for a moment, visibly confused. He cannot imagine her giving a single shit whether he's made friends with the crew.
His eyes flick to the side, to the sailor nearby. Ah.
"Yann," he says, because of course he's spoken to the crew. A cant of his head toward the aforementioned Yann across the deck; one of the youngest members of the crew, a little awkward and lanky. "He'll be happy to help you." He'd made a comment about your pretty wife at dinner and then immediately turned bright red.
Joke's on him! She hasn't held anyone's hand before. Not like this: prolonged and in public. Wit had never presumed except behind closed doors. And before Wit...well. Those experiments remain locked behind doors she has no intention of opening.
She flicks a glance toward Yann — young and earnest — and then back to Verso with a small, assessing tilt of her head. She knows perfectly well that he'd have just as much luck with this errand than she will. It might even be more efficient to let him handle it.
But she recognizes that if she hides now — if she stays conveniently absent — she will only teach herself the wrong lesson. She refuses to be someone who lives behind a closed cabin door because the world is unpredictable.
Her chin lifts a fraction, something faintly defiant in the line of her spine.
"Gemheart," she says, borrowing the endearment she'd used when they first embarked — dry, composed, but coloured with something warmer beneath the surface. "I'll be right back."
Only then does she withdraw her hand from his, careful, precise, like disengaging from an experiment she intends to resume later. She smooths her glove, squares her shoulders, and steps toward Yann with the calm, unassailable confidence of a woman who fully intends to acquire water, soap, and dignity in one fell swoop.
Verso resists the urge to ask if she'd prefer he handled the talking. She chose, so he leans against the railing as she walks away, watching her with a raised eyebrow and trying not to focus on the tingly feeling in his hand.
"Miss Hesina!" Yann says as she approaches, dropping the mop in his hand out of a mixture of excitement-horror at speaking to her. He's already blushing. Verso suppresses an eyeroll. "We all missed your presence at dinner last night— that is, I mean, it was a pleasure to have a woman there— not in a strange way, just..."
Oh. Well. This is... inconvenient. Jasnah flicks a glance over her shoulder at Verso — pointed, narrow-eyed:
did you aim me at this boy on purpose? She would not put it past him. Although it may be unfair of her to think so.
This — this wide-eyed, lanky creature blinking at her as though she's the first woman he's ever seen — is exactly why she prefers libraries. Whatever their theological baggage, the ardents at least possess the sense (or perhaps the terror) to avoid flirting and flattery in the workplace. And more to the point: most men learned early that "attempt to woo Jasnah Kholin" belonged on a list with "jump off a chasm" and "drink chasmfiend venom." Not that this poor boy was flirting. More like fumbling.
"Yann, was it?" She asks, her voice even, giving him a beat to marvel that she knows his name.
"I suspect my husband mentioned it, but I wasn’t feeling well last night."
Only then — deliberately, a practiced stage cue — does her free hand drift toward her stomach. She hates this part of the fiction. Despises it. But she grudgingly acknowledges that Verso's spontaneous invention of an unborn child was, strategically, a stroke of genius.
"I'm still a bit unwell," she continues, mild. "I was hoping to find a washbasin. A stiff-bristled brush. Possibly even some soap...?"
The upward lilt on soap conveys she knows it's unlikely. So be it. If necessary, she'll try soulcasting it herself — she has never soulcast soap, but she is unreasonably confident she can bully the Cognitive Realm into cooperating.
Yes, it was on purpose, and no, it wasn't in order to irritate her. People are much easier to manipulate if they're attracted to you. He knows this well, has extensive experience with casting particularly soulful gazes across the campfire at poor, unsuspecting women—or, if their predilections were obvious enough, men.
Verso watches her touch her stomach and shakes his head in exasperation. Look who doesn't mind Geneviève now.
"Oh! Of course," Yann says, scrambling to go find her a basin. As he does, he calls, "You know, Miss Hesina, I'm flattered that you chose me of all people to ask—" As if getting her washing supplies is a Herculean task. Only a moment passes before he's returning with a basin and brush in hand—and the teeny, tiniest bit of soap anyone has ever seen. Very pre-used. There might be a hair in it.
He holds the supplies out for her to take. "And about your husband," he adds, leaning in just slightly. "If you ever need someone to talk to..." About what he really hopes is her ailing marriage, given the dinner conversation last night. Guy's gotta shoot his shot.
Jasnah accepts the basin and brush with a graceful incline of her head — nearly regal, despite the miserable stub of soap. She notices the hair. She chooses not to react.
But when Yann leans in with that tentative, conspiratorial tilt — if you ever need someone to talk to — her posture stills. Not stiffens. Stillness. Was the sailors' suspicion really that far gone?
She responds to him with a composure so warm it almost hides the razor's edge beneath it.
"How generous of you to offer," she says. "But my husband is..." A beat — she searches for the correct phrasing, something that fits both fiction and truth. "...remarkably steadfast."
She lets the adjective settle. Steadfast. Not charming, not sweet, not romantic. Something firmer. Something earned. He'd earned it last night. All night.
"If I ever need someone to talk to, I have him."
A subtle praise. Not effusive. Not coy. But undeniably loyal in tone — the kind of tone that closes doors gently but irrevocably. Jasnah knows that if she ever needs someone for safe silence, well, she's got Verso for that too.
Her gloved hand adjusts its grip on the basin.
"But thank you, Yann," she adds, with an edge of wry amusement he's hopefully too young to decipher. "If I require counsel about maritime hygiene, I know where to find you."
And with that, she steps back toward Verso — composed, unbothered, and radiating the settled certainty of a woman whose marriage (real or not) is not up for discussion.
To really hit the illusion home, she offloads the entire armful onto Verso with a gentle, affectionate pat on his shoulder.
Edited (omg mobile tagging line break havoc ) 2025-11-29 23:20 (UTC)
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Jasnah lies very still on the narrow ship's cot, her hands eventually settling and folding neatly atop her stomach, eyes fixed on the wooden beams above her as though studying their grain will keep her spine rigid and her thoughts orderly. It doesn't. Nor is it particularly conducive to sleep.
At his list of titles — strange names, sharp consonants, florid vowels — her brow furrows lightly. Emperor. Flowers. Sleeping Beauty. They sound less like musical forms and more like myths she has yet to categorize.
But when he reaches the last one — a song for his sister — something inside her stills. As though he has placed a careful weight in the room and she's afraid to move lest it shift.
"Hmm." A soft sound. Almost thoughtful. Almost gentle.
"It seems..." Her voice dips, less precise than usual, as though she were reaching for words in the dark. "It seems you have many more to choose from than I realized."
The cabin is yet lit by the goblet of glowing spheress. The stormlight contained within gives the room a soft blue cast. She considers breathing some in just to dim the space, but resists.
"Did it help?"
The one for his sister. When she was sick or upset or had trouble sleeping. Like a clumsy chicken vying for flight, Jasnah takes a few practice runs at the question she actually wants to ask.
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She's not looking at him, but the smile in his voice is evident. There's nothing in the world he speaks of with more warmth than Alicia. Clea had seemed a bit put-out when she came, like she didn't like the idea of yet another responsibility that was certain to be thrust upon her, but Verso had been overjoyed to be a big brother. Like he'd always been waiting for her his entire life, to make him into something he was meant to be.
"It's not really a waltz," he admits. So maybe he shouldn't have brought it up among the waltzes at all, but it had seemed more relevant to the goal here than any of the others. "More like a... lullaby."
A pause. He leans back, palms pressed against the bench. He knows what it sounds like when someone is dancing around the thing they really want to say. (I hate prevarication, he kindly doesn't remind her of saying.) If she's too embarrassed to ask, he'll gladly take on the burden. "The difference will be more obvious if you listen to it. Mind if I show you?"
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A lullably. Jasnah doesn't answer immediately. She's thinking about... she's thinking about Evi, actually. Adolin and Renarin's mother. Her uncle Dalinar's first wife. Dalinar had married her for political reasons. Namely, to secure the plate and blade that then passed to their children. Jasnah only thinks about her now because she wasn't Alethi. Nor had she ever quite adapted to the cold, buttoned down ways of her husband's people. Evi had been overly affectionate with her children. It's why Adolin was more physically affectionate than most Alethi. But, most importantly for this moment, she also sang her boys lullabies. Jasnah was already a teenager by then, but she'd been around for some of those rambunctious years. She'd basked little in Evi's glow, fascinated by a woman whose homelands didn't require big sleeves or hidden hands. Evi had seemed...kind. Warm. Motherly. So very un-Alethi. Jasnah stops that train of thought cold before she can think too long or hard on how she died. How she actually died.
Instead, shifting her shoulders, she weighs then cost of agreeing to his offer - the one he so generously phrased as mind if I show you? As if Verso was skimming dangerously close to understanding what she needed in that moment. Plausible deniability. And, yes, prevarication.
"No, by all means." She doesn't mind. Of course she doesn't, considering how she asked without asking. She's managed to dodge the word please yet again.
"Show me."
It's a little like a dance, isn't it? She doesn't ask, putting him in the position to offer. Putting her in a position to command it. Something decompresses along her spine.
no subject
He fumbles a little at the start. There's no piano in front of him to rely on, and he's halfway across the room from Jasnah. Were he singing Alicia to sleep, he would sit on the edge of her mattress and stroke her hair. Obviously, that's not going to happen here, considering that he doesn't want her to quite literally bite his hand off.
"All right," he says, shifting in his seat. "It goes something like—" His finger taps a gentle metronome against the wood, as he hums a soft, slightly wistful song.
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She makes the most of their narrow, hard cot. She tries not to recoil from the thinly padded mattresses when it makes her think of another bed. She catches herself looking for meaning in the wood grain, so she shuts her eyes. Her mind drifts to Herdazian lullabies, a curated collection of which she once read while looking for folkloric mentions of Voidbringers in Rosharan history.
With a soft and exasperated breath, Jasnah tries to simply listen.
His music seems to follow a convention and cadence just different enough to what's familiar that she finds herself getting lost in the notes she things ought to happen but never do. Or maybe that non-resolution is intentional. Either way, he's right that she can hear the difference from his waltzes. His. She suspects he's named composers in the garble of vowels and consonants when he talks about music from home, but ultimately Jasnah labels them all as his: music genres - comma - Verso's.
Again. She tries so hard to simply listen! But questions sneak in between notes and measures. Would it annoy him to know she finds the predictable beat of his makeshift metronome more comforting than the song itself? Or would he preen if she complimented his sense of rhythm? Were the lullaby's origins from before or after his sister's difficult recovery?
(Would her own time in seclusion and darkness been improved if anyone had thought to inject melody into her treatment?)
She doesn't speak. She doesn't really sleep either. But she does rest. However long it takes for him to tire of humming, she listens. She latches on to his voice in a way that absolves her from any effort spent decoding meaning or subtext or negative space.
For her, at any rate, it's a starkly companionable silence. And if she manages to dip briefly here-and-there into a light snooze...? Well. Good job, Verso.
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Since reading is apparently still off the menu, he conjures his parrying dagger with chroma and practices knife tricks instead. Carves a little V into the underside of the desk. Every once in a while, he starts up humming again, just in case Jasnah has woken.
He's used to insomnia, but all night is a long time to stay up, especially without anything to entertain himself. By the time sun rises, he's got his arms crossed on the desk, temple pressed against his forearms, humming a significantly more sluggish tune.
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Jasnah lasts longer in the cot than she expects.
She lies there as the room slowly pales with dawn, listening to his increasingly sluggish humming, her eyes still closed, her hands folded in identical positions whenever she wakes from the brief, sharp jolts of half-sleep. Once or twice in the night she had startled — just slightly — shoulders tightening, breath catching, as if surfacing from a cold depth. Nothing so dramatic as thrashing or gasping, but unmistakable signs that whatever dreams she skimmed were not kind.
By the fourth such startle she had begun keeping her breathing shallow, as if refusing to descend far enough to dream again. But, eventually, she reaches the limit of how long she can pretend the mattress is tolerable.
With a soft exhale, Jasnah pushes herself upright. Her hair, ordinarily so immaculate, has flattened oddly on one side and rebelliously lifted at the crown on the other. She smooths it once, twice, then presses her lips together and smooths it a third time with far less patience. The result is no better. The state of her appearance prickles at her nerves like raw wool on skin. She hates this grimy, lived-in feeling.
She stands fully then, and crosses to where Verso has all but collapsed forward at the desk. There's a stripped-down sincerity to the way he's slumped, temple resting on his arms, humming something that barely qualifies as melodic anymore. Something tender steals over her as she witnesses how he's made good on his promise. Her sleep might have been poor, but it had felt markedly less...paranoid.
Her knuckles rap gently on the desk. A dull thock thock thock. Then, rather matter-of-factly:
"I'm going to find a sailor willing to provide a basin of water and soap."
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He's tired enough that he's only sort of half-listening to what she says, not out of a desire to willfully tune her out but because he's still blinking himself back into awareness. "Soap?" he says ploddingly, staring at her as he tries to make his brain useful for anything other than imagining what it would be like to tousle up her hair.
"Oh," comes after a moment. "All right. —Although I'm not sure those sailors look as if they've seen soap recently."
Before she can turn around and leave, he adds, "Hey. How did you sleep?"
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He stares at her. She stares back, unflinching. And while she can't begin to guess what's happening behind those light grey eyes of his, she does kinda...pull a face as he chugs up to speed with the morning's first conversation.
Only to roll her eyes. Yes, no, he's right to call the sailor's hygiene into question. It doesn't bear explaining that uhm, actually she only needs a hunk of something whose constitute axi can be coaxed into becoming soap. She'll start by asking for soap, though, because she'd rather not expend the stormlight if she doesn't need to.
Gathering her hair back into the scarf she's been wearing any time she steps outside the cabin, Jasnah pauses and entertains his question. Sleep, huh? How did she sleeps?
"Not bad."
Relatively speaking. She still slept like shit — plagued by disquieting thoughts and dreams the moment her subconscious wrestled control away from her logical, ordere conscious. But, compared to other nights? Not bad.
She doesn't thank him. But she does flash him a tight-lipped smile before walking out the cabin door.
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Running after her as she marches away isn't exactly great optics. "By the time we dock, the entire ship is going to think our marriage is over," he points out casually.
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Oh, was there something else to say about last night? If he's waiting on a thank you then he'll be waiting a damned long time. Verso made good his word and rendered the service he said he would render. And now it's on Jasnah to weigh the cost-benefit analysis on whether she dares to partake in that service again. Not tonight, though. Tonight, the cot is his. Silently, unilaterally, she's decided they'll have shared custody.
She's a few feet past their door, paused at the foot of a narrow staircase up to the deck, when he invokes the status of their marriage. Jasnah turns, drowning at him.
"...Why do you say that?"
Oh. She really doesn't see the same risk as he does. But she's willing to hear him out.
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"You keep making that face at me, for starters."
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Her teeth set hard and gritted behind her customary frown. Jasnah simply doesn't see the value in play-acting a beautiful, tender marriage when (to her mind) their existence is that much rarer than a simple, practical partnership. What is Verso expecting from their ruse? A love match? Surely that's less believable.
You could try asking, she prods. Although she'd been avoiding asking too many questions ever since the fuss yesterday. But she supposes this is a different kind of questioning. Less personal? More actionable.
After a sharp exhale, Jasnah retreats back in Verso's direction. She stands close. Close enough that they should be able to whisper and not be overheard. Close enough that she feels his body heat as a soft, slight contrast to the colder sea air tunnelling through the narrow ship corridor.
"Alright. How do you propose we should act instead?"
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He is as good at self-restraint as he is at everything else, so his eyes flick back up very quickly. If he leans in a little closer than is strictly necessary to speak quietly with her, then clearly it's on accident. After all, he's tired and still vaguely seasick.
"Usually," he says, trying not to sound like his throat has gone dry, "wives act as if they like their husbands. Just a suggestion, though."
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The sudden proximity — initiated by her, maintained by her — is something she weathers with what can only be callled neutrality. Jasnah clearly isn't upset or bothered by the breach in what might be considered propriety. But equally, she doesn't seem to chase it.
Her expression is entirely too cool and unbothered when a rogue wave knocks her nearer. Storms, she even grabs him by the bicep to steady what might have been a full-on stumble as the next wave swells unpredictability after it's brother.
The results are almost (almost!) laughable. Jasnah's thoughts are nowhere near Wema, Sterling, and the storm. Jasnah's thoughts are right here — curling around his 'suggestion' with a spark of confusion and a bucket of... something. Indignation? Frustration?
Anyway, she grips his arm and leans in and channels all that frustration and/or indignation into a single hissed question — asked inches from his ear.
"Do you think I dislike you?"
This time, she can't help herself from asking for the question she wants to ask. The one that, scalpel-like, hones in on the illogical shifting sand she sometimes glimpses between his words. Sometimes, listening to Verso was like reading someone else's correspondence. She felt like she was trying to scribble best-guesses in his margins, all while avoiding interrogating aloud the premise of whatever he's said.
Well. She's back to interrogating. He'd only suggest what he's suggesting if she's already failed to keep up appearances. Except in her mind, Jasnah doesn't have to fake liking him. She likes him. He's interesting and useful and can actually hold a conversation with her that doesn't make her want to tear her hair out from boredom. She figured that was obvious.
... Wasn't it obvious?
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He forces himself to focus on the conversation at hand and not the fact that she smells nice, even after two days at sea.
"I don't think I'm presumptuous enough to guess at your feelings," he says diplomatically. "But some of the sailors might be."
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Objectively, she knows he's right. She knows it because two years ago aboard the Wind's Pleasure she'd given Shallan what ended up being her last lesson. That lesson had been on on authority and perceptions of power but objectively she understands the same principle applies to any assertion.
You say I have authority as the sister of a king. I do. Jasnah has told Shallan. And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king.
So! Yes! Jasnah understands the principle. She understands it intimately. After all, her often carefully arranged appearance adhered to that principle. What she doesn't understand and where she doesn't agree is that she doesn't believe she's given the sailors any reason to doubt their solid Alethi marriage. The illusion she's been casting against their perception feels utterly realistic to most marriages. Hasn't it? Her parents. Elhokar and Aesudan. Even Lirin and Hesina, the tower surgeon and the wife whose name she stole!
Jasnah's grip shifts on Verso's arm. Half stability, half stress ball. She has him sort of...caged against the corridor. It hadn't been intentional. Just a means of being near enough to speak softly, clandestinely.
But she keeps him there while she considers the others. The outlier marriages. Her mother's second marriage to her uncle; Adolin and Shallan. The ones that people whisper about and shaken their heads. Well, fair enough, they shook their heads but didn't doubt the depth of feeling involved.
Her grip loosens. Her hand travels down to take his hand. It's her right hand, her free hand, that interlaces with his.
"Let's try it your way." She offers. Although her tone of voice suggests she's none too confident in the experiment. However, to her credit, she is willing to experiment.
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He has half a mind to think that she's doing all of this to torture him, but that would require a level of investment beyond neutrality that, again, he's not confident she has. Besides, she can't possibly know that it's been decades since somebody held his hand. So, no. He's just torturing himself.
"Excusez-moi," he says, carefully stepping around her.
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As they step onto the deck — hands linked in holy matrimonial performance — Jasnah tests the contact the way a scholar tests a hypothesis. Her grip begins firm, deliberate, each finger placed with intention. She tracks the shifting pressure between their palms as though charting a physical equation: resistance, transfer of warmth, shared balance on an unstable deck.
A dozen paces later, she alters a variable. Her hold loosens; her fingers reposition. The grip shifts from constant to intermittent, from held to holding. She notes the difference with clinical acuity. Nothing nervous in it. Merely an experiment executed with a living subject she trusts to be at least clever enough to notice he is being studied.
They complete a slow arc around the deck — visible long enough to justify the fiction of a couple who rises early to admire the dawn before requesting water and soap.
Portside, the world is nothing but water and light—pink-gold under the newborn sun, impossibly wide and unbroken. Starboard, a faint smear of cliff holds the horizon steady. Jasnah finds herself unexpectedly relieved. Open water is too vast, too volatile, too indifferent. Systems bounded by land are easier to predict. And control.
She inhales, the sea wind tugging at her scarf and at the loose strands of hair that have escaped it. Then — without loosening her grip on Verso’s hand — she turns her head just enough to study him. Not smiling, not yet, but unmistakably focused. Whatever else may be true, he is at least the solitary object of her attention in moments like these. Intense and undivided.
She wants to ask him about his planet's oceans after the disaster he'd already described. Were there bodies of water outside the city? Tides, moons, winds? She wants to ask how many suns rise there, how many seas he's crossed (few, she guesses, based on his seasickness,) and whether they smell the same. But with a sailor shimmying down a mast scarcely eight feet away, she swallows every question.
Instead, she pitches her voice just loud enough to be overheard, just wry enough to pass for a wife ribbing her sociable husband.
"Have you learned any of the crew’s names?" she asks. "Made any friends yet?"
Dry, but not cold. A gentle implication that of course her gregarious husband charms every soul he meets. It maintains the fiction neatly — and besides, after last night's dinner, he may indeed know which sailor is easiest to approach for a basin, sparing her another conversation with the captain.
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He can tell, too, that she wants to ask him something. She only gives him that laser focus when there's something scientific on her mind. When she does ask, though, it's unexpected; his brow furrows for a moment, visibly confused. He cannot imagine her giving a single shit whether he's made friends with the crew.
His eyes flick to the side, to the sailor nearby. Ah.
"Yann," he says, because of course he's spoken to the crew. A cant of his head toward the aforementioned Yann across the deck; one of the youngest members of the crew, a little awkward and lanky. "He'll be happy to help you." He'd made a comment about your pretty wife at dinner and then immediately turned bright red.
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Joke's on him! She hasn't held anyone's hand before. Not like this: prolonged and in public. Wit had never presumed except behind closed doors. And before Wit...well. Those experiments remain locked behind doors she has no intention of opening.
She flicks a glance toward Yann — young and earnest — and then back to Verso with a small, assessing tilt of her head. She knows perfectly well that he'd have just as much luck with this errand than she will. It might even be more efficient to let him handle it.
But she recognizes that if she hides now — if she stays conveniently absent — she will only teach herself the wrong lesson. She refuses to be someone who lives behind a closed cabin door because the world is unpredictable.
Her chin lifts a fraction, something faintly defiant in the line of her spine.
"Gemheart," she says, borrowing the endearment she'd used when they first embarked — dry, composed, but coloured with something warmer beneath the surface. "I'll be right back."
Only then does she withdraw her hand from his, careful, precise, like disengaging from an experiment she intends to resume later. She smooths her glove, squares her shoulders, and steps toward Yann with the calm, unassailable confidence of a woman who fully intends to acquire water, soap, and dignity in one fell swoop.
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"Miss Hesina!" Yann says as she approaches, dropping the mop in his hand out of a mixture of excitement-horror at speaking to her. He's already blushing. Verso suppresses an eyeroll. "We all missed your presence at dinner last night— that is, I mean, it was a pleasure to have a woman there— not in a strange way, just..."
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Oh. Well. This is... inconvenient. Jasnah flicks a glance over her shoulder at Verso — pointed, narrow-eyed: did you aim me at this boy on purpose? She would not put it past him. Although it may be unfair of her to think so.
This — this wide-eyed, lanky creature blinking at her as though she's the first woman he's ever seen — is exactly why she prefers libraries. Whatever their theological baggage, the ardents at least possess the sense (or perhaps the terror) to avoid flirting and flattery in the workplace. And more to the point: most men learned early that "attempt to woo Jasnah Kholin" belonged on a list with "jump off a chasm" and "drink chasmfiend venom." Not that this poor boy was flirting. More like fumbling.
"Yann, was it?" She asks, her voice even, giving him a beat to marvel that she knows his name. "I suspect my husband mentioned it, but I wasn’t feeling well last night."
Only then — deliberately, a practiced stage cue — does her free hand drift toward her stomach. She hates this part of the fiction. Despises it. But she grudgingly acknowledges that Verso's spontaneous invention of an unborn child was, strategically, a stroke of genius.
"I'm still a bit unwell," she continues, mild. "I was hoping to find a washbasin. A stiff-bristled brush. Possibly even some soap...?"
The upward lilt on soap conveys she knows it's unlikely. So be it. If necessary, she'll try soulcasting it herself — she has never soulcast soap, but she is unreasonably confident she can bully the Cognitive Realm into cooperating.
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Verso watches her touch her stomach and shakes his head in exasperation. Look who doesn't mind Geneviève now.
"Oh! Of course," Yann says, scrambling to go find her a basin. As he does, he calls, "You know, Miss Hesina, I'm flattered that you chose me of all people to ask—" As if getting her washing supplies is a Herculean task. Only a moment passes before he's returning with a basin and brush in hand—and the teeny, tiniest bit of soap anyone has ever seen. Very pre-used. There might be a hair in it.
He holds the supplies out for her to take. "And about your husband," he adds, leaning in just slightly. "If you ever need someone to talk to..." About what he really hopes is her ailing marriage, given the dinner conversation last night. Guy's gotta shoot his shot.
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Jasnah accepts the basin and brush with a graceful incline of her head — nearly regal, despite the miserable stub of soap. She notices the hair. She chooses not to react.
But when Yann leans in with that tentative, conspiratorial tilt — if you ever need someone to talk to — her posture stills. Not stiffens. Stillness. Was the sailors' suspicion really that far gone?
She responds to him with a composure so warm it almost hides the razor's edge beneath it.
"How generous of you to offer," she says. "But my husband is..." A beat — she searches for the correct phrasing, something that fits both fiction and truth. "...remarkably steadfast."
She lets the adjective settle. Steadfast. Not charming, not sweet, not romantic. Something firmer. Something earned. He'd earned it last night. All night.
"If I ever need someone to talk to, I have him."
A subtle praise. Not effusive. Not coy. But undeniably loyal in tone — the kind of tone that closes doors gently but irrevocably. Jasnah knows that if she ever needs someone for safe silence, well, she's got Verso for that too.
Her gloved hand adjusts its grip on the basin.
"But thank you, Yann," she adds, with an edge of wry amusement he's hopefully too young to decipher. "If I require counsel about maritime hygiene, I know where to find you."
And with that, she steps back toward Verso — composed, unbothered, and radiating the settled certainty of a woman whose marriage (real or not) is not up for discussion.
To really hit the illusion home, she offloads the entire armful onto Verso with a gentle, affectionate pat on his shoulder.
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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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look i couldn't find a way to make him taking another card more interesting
FAIR.
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