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[recreatable]

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[elsecall]

"My apologies," she says, not sounding sorry at all. "Inexperienced."

A step back, a step back, a step back, and her shoulders touch the cabin wall. It isn't personal — but in the aftermath of her slight surprise, she'd prefer to have her back against something solid.

"I wonder why not. Stormlight," her eyes cut to the dimmed brazier, "could almost certainly be burned to soothe an upset stomach. Even Radiants who have only sworn their order's first oath can access that kind of healing. If your immortality allows you to recover from fatal wounds but doesn't alleviate the mundane aches and illnesses..."

Hmm. She considers her words carefully.

"That strikes me as cruel."

[recreatable]

Verso raises his eyebrows, first because of the admission that she has healing abilities (that she decided not to use when he was suffering of seasickness) and then because of the accusation of cruelty. It's hard to argue against it, although he does feel the urge to. Not cruelty, just— thoughtlessness. Painters rarely seem to think of anyone but themselves, he thinks, although he feels a bit guilty for it right after.

"As cruel as letting me hold in vomit all night when even a first oath Radiant"—whatever that means—"could have soothed my sickness?"

It's a call-out, but a very light one. He lets it roll off of his shoulders.

"Well, I told you. It's a curse."

[elsecall]

— A light call-out, sure, but something approaching indignation crosses her face. It doesn't stick. It doesn't last. But she does feel compelled to correct him.

Of course she does.

"Only Edgedancers and Trutwatchers can heal others."

And by the way she says it, he can certainly surmise that she belongs to neither of those orders.

"With enough Stormlight, I can heal myself — up to a fatal blow to the head, I'm told. Fortunately, I haven't had to test that particular limit yet."

[recreatable]

Oh, she's irritated, is she? Good that they're in the confines of their cabin, because that makes two of them. She lectures him on her abilities to heal herself, and Verso listens as his right eyebrow steadily rises.

"I thought that you were worried about an assassination attempt."

[elsecall]

— Look. He's not wrong. In so many ways, he's quite right. But she vividly remembers what happened on the Wind's Pleasure two years ago. Ghostbloods (or mercenaries hired by them) snuck into her cabin, tried to knock her out, and — when she was playing unconscious on the floor — stabbed her. She can still feel the phantom memory of the blade grinding against her ribs, exaggerate further by time and fixation. The little bit of Stormlight she'd had in her body had kept her alive, yes, but they'd left the knife in her. She'd laid there, curled into a ball, playing dead until she could escape to Shadesmar. She swears she glimpsed death. Helplessness, panic, darkness. Whatever she'd experienced in that moment, it fueled a maelstrom of neuroses that followed.

"It's not—" she grinds out a protest, stammering in a manner so deeply unlike her. She drives one hand against the other, as if the punctuation helps make her point. "Stormlight is finite. I can't hold it in my body indefinitely, always. And I can't — I can't hold it when I sleep."

Ah.

There, the shoe drops. Yes, she can heal. But for fatal blows, the Stormlight needs to already be in her system. And it requires active, conscious effort to hold Stormlight without it leaking, steaming, misting away. An effort she can't make if she's asleep. No wonder she doesn't. She has managed to sharpen all her fear, all her dread, into what happens when her brain shuts off to rest and restart.

Even the fits and snatches of it last night — drifting to the background sound of his humming — where a gift.

[recreatable]

"You could have said something," he says, although he knows it's hypocritical. After all, it was only yesterday that he admitted his immortality to her, and there's still so much he hasn't shared. But she had misled him, perhaps deliberately, into thinking that there was nothing she could do if someone decided to attack her in the night, and—

He's really, really tired now. The dark circles under his eyes are even darker than usual, which he thankfully doesn't have a mirror to see.

"Are there any other abilities of yours worth mentioning?"

[elsecall]

At first, Jasnah simply nods. Yes, I could have said something. But she didn't. Why not? She could play dumb and suggest that it's such common knowledge what even the lowliest squires can do that she didn't think to mention it. Or she could admit to a years of feeling safer, more secure, keeping those cards close to her chest.

She chooses to say nothing. At least, not in defense of her omission. She's thinking along similar lines to him: this behaviour has cut both ways, and neither of them will come out looking clean if they start slinging those particular accusations around.

So, instead! His question. Any other abilities? Her cheeks puff out with a sigh. This would have been easier if she'd assigned him Words of Radiance for casual reading back in Urithiru rather than an Alethi history.

Her voice slips into a a curt, teacherly tone.

"Elsecallers have access to the Surges of Transformation and Transportation. You've experienced Transformation already — colloquially known as Soulcasting." She trusts he remembers his wine back in the Shattered Plains. "As for Transportation," she huffs, speeding into an explanation before he gets the wrong idea and thinks she's also put them on this boat needlessly. "It allows me to leave the Physical Realm and enter Shadesmar. In theory, I should be able to create my own Oathgates — although they are restricted with fixed beginning and end-points."

If possible, the tone of her lecture turns even more clipped. A little self-conscious, maybe.

"Unfortunately, although I can Elsecall to Shadesmar, my ideals are not sufficient enough to reliably return. Last time, I was stuck on the other side for nearly a year. When we fled Kharbranth, I concluded the risk of getting lost there wasn't worth it — which is why we're on a ship."

...It's entirely possible that she's purposefully seeded her explanation with more jargon than was strictly necessary. Petty! And also willfully leaving out the bit about being able to summon a suit of armour alongside that sword she's already shown him.

[recreatable]

Verso does typically enjoy listening to Jasnah's educational tangents; there's something very appealing about the confidence with which she speaks, every word crisp and clear. He can easily imagine her as a teacher back at the academy, rapping her blackboard pointer against a sleeping student's desk and humiliating them in front of the entire class. That's oddly appealing, too.

This is less enjoyable than usual, though, because she's not attempting to describe things in a way that she thinks he'll understand. She hardly defines anything, moves quickly past concepts before he's even gotten a chance to wrap his head around them. He'd almost think it was on purpose.

"Right," he says slowly. "What do you mean, your ideals aren't sufficient?"

[elsecall]

She almost winces. Storms, of course he would seize on that — the part she allowed to slip, the part about not yet being enough. Ivory murmurs something soft and fervently disagreeable near her ear, oily silhouette flickering at the edge of her perception, but she silences him with a too-sharp shake of her head.

"You’ve met Ivory."

The reminder lands like a stone. She rarely speaks of him aloud. The shy one. Her little streak of oil and shadow who prefers corners over company.

"Knights Radiant gain their abilities through the bond with their spren," she continues, tone measured, as if pacing herself through dangerous terrain. "Spren...choose us. And in choosing, they grant the ability to make certain oaths, via Ideals."

Her thumb brushes once over the back of her safehand glove — an unconscious, grounding glide. Slow, cautious.

"The first Ideal binds all Radiants. Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination."

A quiet recitation. Almost ritual.

"Those words are the threshold. The point at which a spren becomes a living bond rather than a passing curiosity. The first Ideal allows us to summon them. Blade, shield, tool — whatever shape the pact permits."

She pauses there. Lets the silence sit. Ordinarily, she might summon Ivory in demonstration. But she can hear the little spren protesting.

"The Ideals that follow..." Her jaw tightens minutely. "They're not uniform. Each Order shapes them differently. Some Ideals are declarations of what you will be. What you intend to uphold. Others," a thin breath, almost a laugh without humor, "are confessions of what you refuse to be."

Her gaze fixes on some indeterminate point on the cabin wall, as if the wood grain might spare her the vulnerability of eye contact, for once.

"Every Ideal spoken deepens the bond. Strengthens the spren. Strengthens the Radiant. Opens more of what we can do. But failing to live up to your Ideals? That can...harm a spren. And deprive the Radiant of her abilities. Regardless, the Ideals must be spoken at the right time. For the right reason. Truths spoken too soon are lies in another shape. And I—"

She catches herself before the confession overshoots. Ivory flickers again, a sympathetic pulse of light that she ignores.

"I have not spoken all of mine." She draws the last words with clinical precision.

Because she won't swear what she can't stand on. Other Radiants rush headlong, claiming the words as if the recitation alone makes them honest. It does not.

i lied, sends this tag in another direction

[recreatable]

It's interesting what Jasnah is willing to share extensively about and what she isn't. A reflection of Verso, in a way; he's more than willing to exposit about Esquie and travel across the Continent, but far less eager to share anything personal about himself. If he were in Jasnah's position, he'd probably do the same. Talk at length about the things that don't actually reveal anything, then clam up when it becomes too close for comfort.

Despite his best efforts, he laughs.

He can't help it—he would if he could! Obviously, he knows that laughing in response to Jasnah sharing something so serious will go down like a lead balloon. He tries his best to suppress it, but it bubbles up anyway, and perhaps his attempts to resist it even make it stronger.

"Sorry," he says, and he is. "It's just— you've told me all of this in great detail, but I don't even know your favorite color."

All of this, and you won't even call me your friend.

[elsecall]

Verso might be disappointed to learn that little of what she's shared thus far would count as personal details. Maybe a year or two ago, her status as a Radiant would have been considered a secret. More people know about it, these days. The powers of an Elsecaller are detailed, albeit in annoyingly florid language, in Words of Radiance. And the Ideals...

Well. He never asked about her Ideals. She can be storming grateful for that. Instead he asks — well, actually, he doesn't actually ask — about her favourite colour.

Jasnah blinks, taken aback.

"Why would I have a favourite colour?"

She responds, instinctively dismissive. As if it would be childish, superficial, frivolous. Except...except he's got one, doesn't he? And if she doesn't quickly say something else, she can already sense the squabble they'll have.

"I — I like purple. Violet, actually. And if I had to choose. I like my food spiced, although they never serve it that way at the women's table."

Look! A spare personal detail, thrown in for free!

[recreatable]

The food thing is less important to him, primarily because he's still getting used to eating food that isn't foraged mushrooms slightly warmed over a campfire, but the color is very interesting! Verso has never quite had the passion for art that Maman, Renoir, Clea, or even Alicia do—but he does appreciate the power of color.

"Purple," he echoes with a little dry amusement. "Because it's the color of royalty?"

Is it the color of royalty here, too? He'd just assumed, with how much of it she wears.

[elsecall]

Storms. Jasnah truly has never pulled so many subtly confused expressions in all her life before meeting this man. It's not him who's to blame, honestly. More like the small-and-not-so-small mismatches between their expectations, their norms, their touchstones.

"No." Simple, matter of fact. "I suppose the colour for royalty is blue. For Alethkar, at any rate. It's the Kholin colour."

Wait, it occurs to her he likely? probably? most certainly? doesn't know this next fact, so she elides it smoothly onto the conversation — gently nudging it away from topics that might tread back around to her favourite anything.

"The Alethi monarchy hasn't existed long enough to have a traditional royal colour. My father was the first king of a unified Alethkar in centuries."

Since the Sunmaker — the first Alethi king, a genocidal tyrant, and Gavilar Kholin's rolemodel.

[recreatable]

Funny, actually, that Jasnah would consider speaking of her family to be anything but personal. As far as Verso is concerned, family is the most personal thing there is—complex, messy, impossible for outsiders to ever understand. So, of course he latches onto this small mention of her father. He's still working through the earlier chapters of that history book (sorry), so he raises his eyebrows as if this is new information to him because, well, it is.

"Oh," he says. "That's nice." Maybe? A unified Alethkar sounds nice. "Sounds like he brought people together."

Honestly, he's talking out his ass. He has no clue of the political intricacies of Alethkar.

"You must have learned a lot from him," he ventures.

[elsecall]

Oh, Gavilar had brought people together. For one brief reign all of the other highprinces had been threatened, manipulated, cajoled, or convinced to submit to his rule. Jasnah had been reared on stories of her parents, her uncle Dalinar, their confidant Sadeas — the tight knit group of them conspiring and then succeeding in conquering the ten princedoms.

Hard to say when she realized Gavilar Kholin had been the villain in more stories than just her own. Except...except it's hard to study a history like Alethkar's and then swallow your own family's part in it.

Regardless. She does not hold Verso accountable for the conclusion to which he leaps. Her father was a king; she is a queen. It might be natural of him to assume there was some effort spared in educating a young Kholin princess in politics, strategy, and rule. But Jasnah was never meant to inherit. All that expectation had fallen on poor Elhokar, ill-suited to the throne and crown. Jasnah's value was in her perfect performance of Vorin femininity and a convenient betrothal to Highprince Amaram. Gavilar was still trying to convince her to accept the marriage the night he died.

"I learned enough," she answers.

Learned not to look to her parents for help or comfort when she couldn't trust her own mind. Learned not to fall for propaganda buried in military reports. Learned that a crown is cruel in its neutrality, terrible or wonderful all depending on the head where it rested.

"I'll be the last one." She explains, simple and calm. Her hair is a little drier now than it was, and her fingers busy themselves with a thick, single braid. "The Alethi monarchy will end with me."

[recreatable]

Oh. He doesn't say it aloud this time, biting it back because he's starting to sound like an idiot. It's just surprising to hear Jasnah say; admittedly, he has very little political knowledge, particularly about monarchies. Lumière is run by a democratically elected head councilor and their council members, which does seem more fair than a monarchy, but Jasnah also seems like a dedicated queen. Not exactly worth overthrowing.

"You don't support the monarchy?" he asks, because that's what he's picking up here. "That's..." A tilt of his head. "Counter to expectations."

Again, he's not an expert on monarchies, but one would think a monarch would be a little more interested in keeping their bloodline on the throne.

[elsecall]

Maybe now her detour interrogation into the political system of Lumière makes a bit more sense. She's shopping around. Trying to determine what can replace her once she inevitably, ideally steps down.

"Monarchy makes for benevolent tyrants at best. Dreadful ones at worst."

Storms, she might be a benevolent tyrant. Although she tries, so often, to gild her legal amendments in precedent. Her ban on dueling had been proposed in the aftermath of a duel she herself had fought — much to her opponent's humiliation.

"I intend to leave this nation better than how I found it. Better for its everyday people."

...For such a hard and realistic woman, she does indeed have a bright idealism that shines through from time to time. There's almost a smile as she says it. Sorry, Verso. Little Geneviève won't be a princess.

"My father would be disappointed. A grand legacy was all he wanted."

She doesn't sound too cut up about that fact.

[recreatable]

Despite the fact that poor little Gen-Gen will be crownless, he finds himself yet again charmed by Jasnah, although this time for an entirely different reason. Since the moment he first met her, she's been icy and invulnerable. It's like her entire body is covered in some impenetrable protective shell, with no way to get through to her heart.

This sentiment, though, is nearly soft. Almost a little starry-eyed. He would have expected her to have an entirely detached, dispassionate opinion on monarchies, something about their stability or lack thereof, with cold, hard facts about whether the economy fares better under monarchic or democratic rule. But no— she wants to make the world a better place.

It's a desire he can relate to. He'd wanted to make the world a better place, too. It's just that the only better place he could imagine was oblivion.

No point in ruminating on that now, when it's likely that Maman has already left the Canvas and Renoir has burned it and all of its inhabitants to the ground—although he'll certainly spend his time at night ruminating on it regardless, as he is wont to do. For now, though, he focuses on the subject at hand: her father.

I'm sure he would be proud of you is the obvious thing to say. He would understand where you're coming from. Platitudes meant to make someone feel better without any real thought behind them. Verso's tempted, but he knows Jasnah will see right through it.

Instead, he shrugs. "Well, parents can be... critical."

[elsecall]

Yes. Gavilar could be critical. Critical of many things, but most of all of his wife, Navani — though never in public. That was the trick of it. The deception. Perhaps her parents assumed she had been too young to notice; perhaps everyone did. But through her teenage years Jasnah had been quietly astonished by how no one else seemed to register the pattern. Her father would leave the full, grinding labour of political maintenance to her mother — then demean her for it afterward. He never once admitted that his grandeur rested on the scaffold of Navani's shrewd diplomacy and social acuity.

And Jasnah, younger, far less wise, had once mistaken her mother's endurance for complicity.

She knows better now. Understanding, unfortunately, does not make any part of it easier. Love does not inoculate against harm. Harm does not preclude love. And in those final months before his assassination, she had — strangely, disturbingly — related to Gavilar more than she ever had. The work he pushed onto her. The evenings when he would ask her to read The Way of Kings aloud to him, obsessed with the lessons laid down in that text. But always for the wrong reasons.

Nevertheless.

"I know criticism. I'm comfortable with criticism." I can handle criticism. Jasnah's posture straightens, the familiar steel settling into her voice. She is criticism incarnate — methodical, incisive, the cold scalpel of expertise carving the weak arguments from the worthwhile. "But criticism without evidence...without rigor...without any intent to improve—"

Her mouth has gone dry. She realizes it only when she drags her tongue across her lower lip, catching on a cracked corner. The soap, she tells herself. Cheap. Drying. Irritating.

"It isn't critique. Critique refines," she finishes softly. "His variety merely diminished."

Gavilar only ever punched down to push himself up. Watching that — enduring that — drove her to flee as far from his methods as a daughter can. Jasnah is not kind, not gentle, not warm or lovely or conventionally supportive. She knows this. She inherits more of her father's temper than she would ever admit aloud.

But her doctrine has never been his. She cleaves to the Philosophy of Aspiration: the most good possible for the most people. If she cuts, she cuts to remove rot. If she judges, she judges to refine. Her ruthlessness is not for grandeur; it is scaffolding for a world that will not need a monarch at all. Or so she insists.

She exhales — soft, decisive. "No matter. It isn't as though he gets a say in it."

[recreatable]

Hm. Verso takes in the description of Jasnah's father—cold, it seems, and harsh; he perhaps understands a little why her armor is so thick now—and the flippant comment she makes at the end. An attempt to distract from something unpleasantly personal, he imagines, because that's the same reason he'd say something glib like that.

Sincere, he says, "It must have been tough to deal with that." Someone who only wanted to 'diminish'. It's strange, really. He's not sure he's ever met someone less diminished than Jasnah. Maybe that's her form of rebellion.

"Is that why you don't want children?"

An insane question, a very presumptuous question, and he realizes it right after asking. "Sorry. I just assumed, with the way you reacted earlier." You know, about Geneviève. She'd been pretty pissed.

[elsecall]

Jasnah is too stunned to speak. At least, for a heartbeat or three. She stares at Verso — unnerved by the audacity of his question, but also equally caught up in asking herself whether he’s right. A child would be inconvenient. For so many reasons. A child could be used against her. A child could become the rallying point of royalists keen to restore a defunct crown. A child could be...could be...

(—is there anything hereditary about one’s ability to use Stormlight, to attract spren...? Considering all but Adolin in the Kholin family eventually bonded one, maybe. And there’d been a time where she wondered whether all the additional Invested Arts practiced by Wit might...)

No.

A child could be another way in which history repeats itself. Endlessly circling the same errors in judgement. Years ago, she'd decided against that path. Not because she didn’t like children — children, not yet browbeaten out of their curiousity, often ask the best and most natural questions. No, Jasnah likes children. Cherishes them. But given her ambitions, her goals, and the frameworks she must work within...? Well. She'd decided against that path because a child deserved better.

The silence has held out too long. She needs to say something.

"Earlier," she starts — slow and careful as she picks her way through her words, "I was surprised. Your...plot twist. It caught me off guard."

It doesn't answer his question. Ask me again after the enemy is defeated. After my homeland is reclaimed. After Roshar is secured. It all tastes like ash in her mouth.

"I'm many things, Dessendre. Motherly is not one of them."

[recreatable]

Ah, there it is again: Dessendre. He wonders if she does it on purpose to create distance between them, or if it's unintentional. She only seems willing to use his first name when she's in an advantageous position in their conversation, correcting him for something he's done or said wrong. Otherwise, it's Dessendre.

Allowing the clearly uncomfortable subject to pass, he laughs a little, shaking his head. "You know, I don't think anyone has called me that in seven decades."

They'd had no reason to, once it became abundantly clear that he was not and never would be a real member of the Dessendre family.

"You sound like one of my old academy chums." Simon, maybe, or Claude. A playful Dessendre, you dog as they'd shoved him on the shoulder. Even 67 years later, he misses that.

[elsecall]

Storms, but it's odd to feel so — what? Managed? It's like she can sense a current-shift in the air when he sidesteps anything like a direct confrontation. Sometimes, even on sensitive topics of her own, it makes her want to dig in her heels. It makes her want to plot the edges of his conflict avoidance. An unhealthy desire. Likely something else she’s inherited from Gavilar Kholin.

(That said. Seven decades? She tucks the number away in a corner of her mind. Another data point to be scribbled down later. Alongside Academy, question mark. It's a wonder she doesn't ask about it straight away.)


"—Would you prefer if I didn’t?"

Oh, look, an olive branch! Or whatever they call it on Roshar because they probably don't even have olives.

[recreatable]

You've heard of crabapples, now get ready for crabolives.

That's not a question he knows the answer to off the top of his head. Would he prefer if she stopped? He doesn't spend an awful lot of time ruminating on his preferences in general; it's been a rather pointless endeavor to have things like wants and needs up until very recently. Verso doesn't feel particularly attached to the name Dessendre, doesn't feel like somebody who really belongs to that family. He'd never belonged to the real family, and it's been 25 years now since he truly belonged to the Painted one. He feels the scar across his eye burn at the memory.

"I didn't say that," he says after a second of thought. "But that reminds me—what should I call you?"

He's avoided calling her anything at all, for the most part. Seems like a bit of a minefield. She is a queen, although she isn't technically his queen—although she might soon be his employer, so he probably should show her some level of deference.

"Her Majesty? Mademoiselle Kholin?" A huff of a laugh, wry. "...I'm guessing mon amie is off the table."

[elsecall]

He didn't answer. Jasnah exhales through her nose, mildly annoyed. Even if it's a tactic she's employed herself. Or maybe she's mildly annoyed because now she has to actually draw a kind of odd, thoughtful distinction. A boundary around what level of formality and when.

Having just declared her intention to end the monarchy, being constantly referred to by her title simply feels wrong. But she acknowledges that she can't simply let him call her anything in mixed company.

"Your Majesty when you must — in public, in front of others." A wrinkle of her nose. "When it's only us...? Jasnah will do."

Really, she ought to insist on Brightness or Brightlady. But even those terms are antiquated, based on eye colour, and belong to a system meant to be dismantled.