Her fingers thump against the map, and Verso follows up by plunking out shave and a haircut, two bits with his own index before withdrawing his hand from the map entirely and turning to lean his hip against the edge of the table.
"Yeah?" He might sound a little bit skeptical. It's hard to imagine Jasnah being the sort of person who indulges in precious little petit fours or delicate tarts. But— "I miss pastries. I used to have this apartment right above the patisserie."
Again, seven decades ago.
"Fresh croissants every morning, and the whole block smelled like vanilla."
Might be a bit easier to imagine it when they reach the city, navigate to the shop in question, and Verso realizes the pot-bellied baker in his sixties is secretly a colleague of Jasnah's who masquerades as a woman in his published work. Jochi's cheese-and-onion swirls pair perfectly with an afternoon of chatting about legendary accounts of the Siah Aimians without the intermediary of a spanreed between them.
But! We're getting ahead of ourselves.
"Was this before, after, or during your time at the academy?"
Of course there are more questions. Luckily, this one doesn't offend in the slightest. All Lumièrans go to school; at least, they did when Verso was a child. (Was he ever a child, or are his memories of childhood nothing more than an appropriate backstory? He's spent ample time ruminating on it, and no answer has proved satisfactory.) Things sound different nowadays, so unlike the idyllic Lumière in which he spent his time.
He laughs. "No, this was during my time at the conservatory." Which he just assumes she'll understand was postsecondary education after the academy, because of course she will. That's how school works.
With an expectant look, he asks, "Did you want to get something to write all of this down?"
Ignorant of the way in which her curiosity again and again and again scratches at the superficial gilded silver of his personal history, Jasnah leans most of her weight on the palm of her hand — pressing it down like an anchor against the map, against the table.
And it happens again. Jasnah seems to subtly thrive under the precise correction of her assumption. Like getting it wrong about the academy is worth it if it means chaining on an education about something else. Something new. The conservatory. Her mouth opens, she's about to ask directly what it is, and then...
Did you want to get something to write this all down?
Her eyes snap to the trunk. Where she's stowed her notebooks — at least, the ones she'd taken with her on their original trip to Kharbranth. Her Verso notebook is back in Urithiru. But she could reorganize the pages later and—
Oh. Merde. There's an almost hopeful quality to that yes; he can't say he was being sarcastic now. No, he has no choice but to allow her to take notes like this is a lecture at, well, the academy.
He gestures to the wooden trunk. "...Vas-y, ma étudiante."
And, once she's started gathering her things (but before she's actually even opened the notebook), he says, "The academy is for children. I'm sure you have something like it—it's compulsory to earn an education until you reach adulthood, at which point you would attend postsecondary education or join the workforce."
All said like this is just how it is. He has little concept of how privileged this life is.
"I took the former path, rather than the latter." Of course. He was the 1%.
Whatever he said, his gesture is more than communicative enough for her to straighten from the table and — breezing by Verso — go digging in the trunk. One notebook, originally earmarked for notes on dawncity cymatics. One thin travel pencil, a little less reliable than pen and ink but infinitely more portable.
Returning, she pushes the map aside and takes a seat. Naturally, this takes her back into his sphere of immediate influence — sitting just inches off from where he's leaning against the desk.
Jasnah rifles the page open, starts with a scribbled not to herself roughly approximating the phonemes he'd said once again in a language she can't speak — while she assumes some quirk of Connection allows him to understand hers — before committing in full to the topic at hand.
"—I don't know," he says after a moment, because he's never had to think about it before. No one in Lumière had ever really seemed to have an issue with going to school. Maybe a few truants here and there, but nothing truly serious. After all, Lumière had been near-perfect.
"It just is." Not a great explanation, he knows, so he adds, "It's the law, but I'm not sure anyone ever tried to fight it."
Why would they? It's not like there was ever anything else to do. Children hadn't needed to drop out to join the workforce then, not like now.
"At least, not when I was around. Things may be... different now." A conceding tilt of the head. "From what I understand, everyone in Lumière is apprenticed at a young age so that the trades can live on after their masters are Gommaged. And instead of university, there's an Expeditioner Academy to attend."
Jasnah flips to a second, blank page — seemingly employing a system where categorial headers organize different threads across similar-but-not-quite topics. Here, she loosely marks a headline with something akin to gommage / socioeconomic consequences. She jots down a thought or two.
"Here, instruction happens in the home. Up to a certain age. Then, a young girl might apply for a wardship with an established scholar. Social compulsion rather than legal. By contrast, your system sounds positively...Azish."
Complimentary.
Her words function almost like an annotation. As if Verso was a fresh, fascinating text and she was writing in him her marginalia. A brief, comparative note.
"You mentioned a conservatory. How is it different to the academy? One of those...postsecondary spaces, I take it."
Verso has no fucking idea what Azish means—a comparison to another country he isn't yet familiar with? A slang term? Who knows!—but it sounds positive, so he assumes it's a good thing. So far, all of this is a good thing. He can't deny that he enjoys having all of her attention focused solely on him, even if it's only because he's currently acting as an information dispenser. It makes him feel... useful. He likes to feel useful. Like maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can counteract the sin of his existence.
"Postsecondary, yes," he says, encouraging, teacherly in an entirely different way from Jasnah. He might as well be sticking a gold star sticker on her forehead. You figured out how to use 'postsecondary' from context clues! A+!
Now, the conservatory is a little bit more personal, but it's worth mentioning if it keeps Jasnah looking so enthralled with him and what he has to say. "The conservatory is for the performing arts. Music, primarily." So, of course, he'd studied piano. After a second of thought, he deflates a little. "I'm sure it's not around anymore."
There's no reason to dedicate your life to the perfection of an instrument when death is constantly looming. It would have to feel terribly frivolous compared to more practical pursuits.
Wow, Verso! He just spent the better part of the last however-long-it-took to explain the Kholin family tree above a map with a whole kingdom labeled Azir. You didn't figure out how to use Azish from context clues! F!
Her chin tips. She examines his morose contemplation, leaps easily to the conclusion of its source, and counters: "Hard to say. Music, songs...they are the cultural touchstones that survives hardship and devastation when others don't."
To be clear, Jasnah isn't trying to be comforting. Merely accurate. But she's not not trying to be comforting, either. Admittedly, the litmus test to understand the difference is kinda obscure.
"I'd thought it a — hobby, I suppose." Hmm. She doesn't say I'm sorry, but she does sound a little...rueful. "I didn't realize it was more like a vocation."
Verso grins. "Oh, so you didn't realize that I had crowds of adoring fans."
Well. He had crowds. Whether they were filled with adoring fans is questionable, but it hadn't been difficult to draw an audience for his performances. He realizes now that it might have had less to do with the music lovers of Lumière appreciating his talent and more to do with the fact that Aline wanted to keep him happy.
All the same, he jokes, "Please, Monsieur Pianiste, may I have your autograph?"
He jokes. She can see, hear, intuit that he jokes. All the same, something fundamental shifts in the way she considers Verso and his piano. It isn't the implication of fame or fawning that does it, but rather...rather, the bones-deep understanding that what she'd mistaken for a pastime or skill must have felt more like a calling. After all, Jasnah isn't a historian merely because she enjoys learning about the past (although she does!) but rather there is an inexorable pull. A hunger, even.
Tap, tap, tap goes the pencil lead on the edge of her notebook. She hasn't scribbled anything since an empty header for post-secondary institutions. She's a little stuck on asking herself whether she prefers him grinning or grousing. Both of which, she realizes, she prefers to when he's insincere. Avoidant. Evasive.
Smoothly, before her brain catches up to her wrist, Jasnah turns her notebook to face Verso. She tilts the pencil towards him, like a challenge. Her mouth is a composed line. Her eyes, though! Her eyes are fixed and inquisitive.
Please, Monsieur Pianist, may I have your autograph?
A flicker of confusion crosses his face for just a moment as he tries to determine what Jasnah is suggesting. Is she trying to show him something she's written down, or is she asking him to start taking notes instead? Then— his eyes drift to the offered pencil, then the expanse of paper left blank. Slowly, it dawns on him, and that grin of his widens into something crooked and boyish.
"Anything for a fan," he quips as he reaches for the pencil, carefully plucking it from between her fingers. It's been ages since he's signed his name, and he briefly worries that he's forgotten cursive entirely, but once he puts lead to paper it all comes back. With a flourish, he signs his name: Verso Dessendre, with skilled—if rusty—penmanship.
It's the first autograph he's ever signed, in case that wasn't clear.
He flips the pencil around, the point facing him as he offers it back to her. "Sixty-seven years ago, that might have been worth something."
Slowly, thoughtfully, she reclaims the pencil from his temporary custody. It's agonizing not to snatch it, flip the page, and record this more precise accounting of years. Sixty-seven. But she doesn't...why? Hard to say. Maybe it was the way his smile changed, and the mystery behind it. Or maybe it's just that even now, despite what she's seen in nations outside Vorin influence, there's something thrilling and unsettling about watching a man write anything. Even just his own name. In his own script — something she can't read, but sorely sorely wants to.
Jasnah's too caught up in that thought process to care or suspect or wonder whether it's his first autograph or his five-hundred-and-first. It was never about the autograph.
"It's so...coiled." She settles on an adjective after considering and dismissing half-a-dozen. Tangled, looped, curling, turning! So different from women's script.
"Yeah, it's a... loop-forward name," he says, for lack of anything else to say about that. Not really sure if the description of 'coiled' is good, bad, or neutral. He'll truck on anyway.
Having entered her space to sign his name in the notebook, he leans back again, her personal bubble restored. "But you're right. It was more of a profession." Although even that doesn't feel like quite the right way to describe it. Piano was the only thing he could ever imagine doing. He hadn't had it in himself to do anything else. With a quick scrunch of his nose, he adds, "My parents weren't happy about that."
A squabble over his chosen profession is hardly the most pertinent confrontation he's had with his parents, but it's a safer one to share. Something so that he can say hey, look, I fight with my parents too—we have so much in common.
— Notably, his incursion into her personal bubble is met with far, far less hostility when it doesn't come as a surprise. When it's anticipated. Her chin lifts; she watches him lean back. She files away the term loop-forward name as though it's some genuine taxonomical category of names from his world.
When her attention drifts back to the page, to the name, she half-considers mimicking the shapes in the space below. Something to practice later, alone, in concentration. For now, she gingerly turns the page. Protecting the artifact.
"I thought yours was a family of artists."
She offered, curious about what was so disappointing about a pianist. Maybe it's not considered a terribly sophisticated instrument, like how Alethi convention tends to look down on drums. Unfarily, for what it's worth.
She's not entirely wrong, though. They are a family of artists, but the medium of art is important, too. Sure, it's fine to dabble in other forms of art—Clea had her sculpture, her harp, her ballet; Alicia had an interest in writing; Verso had poetry and piano. It's always been expected, though, that painting would come first.
"Painters." Painters with a capital P, in fact, although he hadn't always been aware of that fact. Maman had only bothered to give him the painting talents of his predecessor, not the Painting ones. He can depict nearly anything with oil paint and brush, but he can't magically Paint a new world of his own, something you can walk into and live in instead of just look at.
"You'd be surprised how important the distinction."
Again, she takes a correction in stride. Hears; consumes; digests. Although, given her own snub of the visual arts, it's hard to imagine a whole family putting such emphasis on something like painting. Yes, alright, she'd come around on the usefulness of such skills thanks to Shallan. But it still requires a bit of mental adjustment. Stretching out the taut, stuck muscles of her opinions.
Although...
"Painting must have an outsized influence on your society. As a whole."
Because Jasnah hasn't forgotten his story of the Paintress and her association with the Gommage.
"I don't know," he says with a shrug. Jasnah may one day discover that this is his go-to answer when lying. He deceives quite often, but even after a century of practice he isn't all that skilled at it, especially when the person he's lying to is clever enough to have connected those two dots by herself.
"It's a different kind of painting. Anyway"—moving the conversation swiftly along—"I got my first paint set when I was two. It was just expected that I'd follow in their footsteps."
There is no hope in Damnation she's buying that Verso simply doesn't know whether or not painting is a critical, influential mode of expression on his own planet. (Yes, she's still thinking in terms of planets.) Charitably, she assumes he's dodging discomfort over whatever disappointment or derision he'd suffered for not taking the more lauded path. Like, maybe she's been the rude one for pointing out that this thing he wasn't passionate about was actually the polestar for his people. Although why anyone might think that would matter to Jasnah 'God is Dead and Also Never Existed' Kholin, she'll never know.
"—What about when you first sat at a piano?"
More interesting than hearing about a kid forced to partake in an extracurricular he didn't like.
"Too young to remember," is the technical answer; he would sit on the bench next to his mother, leaned against her side as she played idle tunes. It had been just a hobby for her, but he'd been more entranced watching her play than he'd ever been watching her paint.
"But I must have been about five when I started lessons." He hadn't had the fine motor coordination until then, or Verso is sure he would have been taught sooner; although the memories are too old to have any clarity, he's certain he must have begged to learn.
He raises an eyebrow at her notebook. "That's about 95 years of playing the piano, if you're keeping track."
She most certainly is keeping track. And she suspects he doesn't need her to confirm it. Although, she does have the middling grace to avoid noting down the timeline and it's accompanying math. Not because she needs the notes to remember, but because it's soothing — scribbling little anchored thoughts while they talk.
"A century is a long time," she offers. "I suppose it speaks to your mastery of the instrument."
Superficially, about how long he's been playing the piano. A little less superficially, she understands it's a long time to be doing anything. Jasnah has never felt compelled to chase immortality — although she understands some of the mechanics involved in the kind of technical immortality that occurs for those who spend long amounts of time travelling in Shadesmar. Wit had called it time dilation. But the one argument she might one day be compelled to hear involves level of mastery one could attain after so many years.
"A pity one doesn't often find pianos on ships."
Implying, obliquely, that she misses the opportunity to hear him play.
"I was under the impression that you didn't find pianos anywhere here," he points out. Under the impression that his is the only one. Hopefully it'll never need repairs, because no one will understand how it even works.
But he's flattered all the same! It had been nice to play for her; despite the bragging he'd done about his performances drawing crowds, it's been a long time since he played for another human being. Sure, Esquie enjoys the music, but it's not quite the same. Esquie would probably find beauty in it even if all Verso did was slam his head against the keys. Good job, mon ami! The noises you make are so loud!
Hand on his chest: "Well, I'm a firm believer in delayed gratification."
A snort escapes her before she can catch it — quiet, low. Ominous laughter, yes, but laughter all the same. His One Singular Piano continues to tug at her curiosity in ways she refuses to articulate. A device like that ought to be studied. Measured. Replicated. Perhaps Navani could spare an artifabrian or two, once they return.
Conversation pulses in its usual rhythm — briefly cutting, mostly pleasant — until the inevitable break for a disappointing lunch and an even more disappointing exchange with Torreth. Jasnah performs her role with clinical grace: an affectionate touch at Verso's elbow, the light sweep of crumbs from his sleeve, a murmured, "Thank you, gemheart," at exactly the moment it will soothe suspicion.
What she cannot decipher is why the captain keeps giving Verso those pointed, approving little nods. As if some advice of his has already germinated. She files it away for later dissection.
The remainder of the day drags with numbing predictability. A slow circuit of the deck for scant exercise. A handful of brief interviews with sailors about odd spren sightings near the coast. And hours in the cramped cabin refining her maps — punctuated by the occasional, irritated annotation of An Accountability of Virtue.
By sunset, the horizon is streaked copper and pink. She spots Verso seated on a coil of rope, looking only marginally less green than yesterday. Jasnah approaches without hesitation. He's her mainstay, now. A smudge of familiar land in a sea of strangers.
"I spoke with a sailor who I think is actually Yann's uncle,” she announces, voice crisp with purpose. "He claims to have seen a spren the size of a horse swimming beneath the hull last night. Glittering, apparently."
She folds her arms, head tilting with the sharp curiosity. She seems to think this is a fascinating story, worthy of sharing with him. Like, as soon as she'd heard it, her instinct had been to track Verso down before it could spill out of her mouth to someone else.
"He insists it had...whiskers." A beat. "Whiskers! Like a mink."
Her eyes narrow, equal parts skepticism and intrigue.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"Yes, although I've not spent as much time there as I might want to."
— And the last time was the Battle of Theylan Field. The city has done what its could to recover, since then. Mixed results.
"There's a pastry shop," she raises her eyes from the map and meets Verso's. "I try and make a point to visit it when I'm in the city. If I can."
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"Yeah?" He might sound a little bit skeptical. It's hard to imagine Jasnah being the sort of person who indulges in precious little petit fours or delicate tarts. But— "I miss pastries. I used to have this apartment right above the patisserie."
Again, seven decades ago.
"Fresh croissants every morning, and the whole block smelled like vanilla."
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But! We're getting ahead of ourselves.
"Was this before, after, or during your time at the academy?"
Did you think she forgot about that? Nope!
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He laughs. "No, this was during my time at the conservatory." Which he just assumes she'll understand was postsecondary education after the academy, because of course she will. That's how school works.
With an expectant look, he asks, "Did you want to get something to write all of this down?"
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And it happens again. Jasnah seems to subtly thrive under the precise correction of her assumption. Like getting it wrong about the academy is worth it if it means chaining on an education about something else. Something new. The conservatory. Her mouth opens, she's about to ask directly what it is, and then...
Did you want to get something to write this all down?
Her eyes snap to the trunk. Where she's stowed her notebooks — at least, the ones she'd taken with her on their original trip to Kharbranth. Her Verso notebook is back in Urithiru. But she could reorganize the pages later and—
"...Yes."
Simple. Honest and (maybe??) trusting.
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He gestures to the wooden trunk. "...Vas-y, ma étudiante."
And, once she's started gathering her things (but before she's actually even opened the notebook), he says, "The academy is for children. I'm sure you have something like it—it's compulsory to earn an education until you reach adulthood, at which point you would attend postsecondary education or join the workforce."
All said like this is just how it is. He has little concept of how privileged this life is.
"I took the former path, rather than the latter." Of course. He was the 1%.
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Returning, she pushes the map aside and takes a seat. Naturally, this takes her back into his sphere of immediate influence — sitting just inches off from where he's leaning against the desk.
Jasnah rifles the page open, starts with a scribbled not to herself roughly approximating the phonemes he'd said once again in a language she can't speak — while she assumes some quirk of Connection allows him to understand hers — before committing in full to the topic at hand.
"...Compulsory? How is it enforced?"
Huh.
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"It just is." Not a great explanation, he knows, so he adds, "It's the law, but I'm not sure anyone ever tried to fight it."
Why would they? It's not like there was ever anything else to do. Children hadn't needed to drop out to join the workforce then, not like now.
"At least, not when I was around. Things may be... different now." A conceding tilt of the head. "From what I understand, everyone in Lumière is apprenticed at a young age so that the trades can live on after their masters are Gommaged. And instead of university, there's an Expeditioner Academy to attend."
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Jasnah flips to a second, blank page — seemingly employing a system where categorial headers organize different threads across similar-but-not-quite topics. Here, she loosely marks a headline with something akin to gommage / socioeconomic consequences. She jots down a thought or two.
"Here, instruction happens in the home. Up to a certain age. Then, a young girl might apply for a wardship with an established scholar. Social compulsion rather than legal. By contrast, your system sounds positively...Azish."
Complimentary.
Her words function almost like an annotation. As if Verso was a fresh, fascinating text and she was writing in him her marginalia. A brief, comparative note.
"You mentioned a conservatory. How is it different to the academy? One of those...postsecondary spaces, I take it."
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"Postsecondary, yes," he says, encouraging, teacherly in an entirely different way from Jasnah. He might as well be sticking a gold star sticker on her forehead. You figured out how to use 'postsecondary' from context clues! A+!
Now, the conservatory is a little bit more personal, but it's worth mentioning if it keeps Jasnah looking so enthralled with him and what he has to say. "The conservatory is for the performing arts. Music, primarily." So, of course, he'd studied piano. After a second of thought, he deflates a little. "I'm sure it's not around anymore."
There's no reason to dedicate your life to the perfection of an instrument when death is constantly looming. It would have to feel terribly frivolous compared to more practical pursuits.
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Her chin tips. She examines his morose contemplation, leaps easily to the conclusion of its source, and counters: "Hard to say. Music, songs...they are the cultural touchstones that survives hardship and devastation when others don't."
To be clear, Jasnah isn't trying to be comforting. Merely accurate. But she's not not trying to be comforting, either. Admittedly, the litmus test to understand the difference is kinda obscure.
"I'd thought it a — hobby, I suppose." Hmm. She doesn't say I'm sorry, but she does sound a little...rueful. "I didn't realize it was more like a vocation."
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Well. He had crowds. Whether they were filled with adoring fans is questionable, but it hadn't been difficult to draw an audience for his performances. He realizes now that it might have had less to do with the music lovers of Lumière appreciating his talent and more to do with the fact that Aline wanted to keep him happy.
All the same, he jokes, "Please, Monsieur Pianiste, may I have your autograph?"
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Tap, tap, tap goes the pencil lead on the edge of her notebook. She hasn't scribbled anything since an empty header for post-secondary institutions. She's a little stuck on asking herself whether she prefers him grinning or grousing. Both of which, she realizes, she prefers to when he's insincere. Avoidant. Evasive.
Smoothly, before her brain catches up to her wrist, Jasnah turns her notebook to face Verso. She tilts the pencil towards him, like a challenge. Her mouth is a composed line. Her eyes, though! Her eyes are fixed and inquisitive.
Please, Monsieur Pianist, may I have your autograph?
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"Anything for a fan," he quips as he reaches for the pencil, carefully plucking it from between her fingers. It's been ages since he's signed his name, and he briefly worries that he's forgotten cursive entirely, but once he puts lead to paper it all comes back. With a flourish, he signs his name: Verso Dessendre, with skilled—if rusty—penmanship.
It's the first autograph he's ever signed, in case that wasn't clear.
He flips the pencil around, the point facing him as he offers it back to her. "Sixty-seven years ago, that might have been worth something."
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Jasnah's too caught up in that thought process to care or suspect or wonder whether it's his first autograph or his five-hundred-and-first. It was never about the autograph.
"It's so...coiled." She settles on an adjective after considering and dismissing half-a-dozen. Tangled, looped, curling, turning! So different from women's script.
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Having entered her space to sign his name in the notebook, he leans back again, her personal bubble restored. "But you're right. It was more of a profession." Although even that doesn't feel like quite the right way to describe it. Piano was the only thing he could ever imagine doing. He hadn't had it in himself to do anything else. With a quick scrunch of his nose, he adds, "My parents weren't happy about that."
A squabble over his chosen profession is hardly the most pertinent confrontation he's had with his parents, but it's a safer one to share. Something so that he can say hey, look, I fight with my parents too—we have so much in common.
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When her attention drifts back to the page, to the name, she half-considers mimicking the shapes in the space below. Something to practice later, alone, in concentration. For now, she gingerly turns the page. Protecting the artifact.
"I thought yours was a family of artists."
She offered, curious about what was so disappointing about a pianist. Maybe it's not considered a terribly sophisticated instrument, like how Alethi convention tends to look down on drums. Unfarily, for what it's worth.
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She's not entirely wrong, though. They are a family of artists, but the medium of art is important, too. Sure, it's fine to dabble in other forms of art—Clea had her sculpture, her harp, her ballet; Alicia had an interest in writing; Verso had poetry and piano. It's always been expected, though, that painting would come first.
"Painters." Painters with a capital P, in fact, although he hadn't always been aware of that fact. Maman had only bothered to give him the painting talents of his predecessor, not the Painting ones. He can depict nearly anything with oil paint and brush, but he can't magically Paint a new world of his own, something you can walk into and live in instead of just look at.
"You'd be surprised how important the distinction."
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Although...
"Painting must have an outsized influence on your society. As a whole."
Because Jasnah hasn't forgotten his story of the Paintress and her association with the Gommage.
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"I don't know," he says with a shrug. Jasnah may one day discover that this is his go-to answer when lying. He deceives quite often, but even after a century of practice he isn't all that skilled at it, especially when the person he's lying to is clever enough to have connected those two dots by herself.
"It's a different kind of painting. Anyway"—moving the conversation swiftly along—"I got my first paint set when I was two. It was just expected that I'd follow in their footsteps."
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"—What about when you first sat at a piano?"
More interesting than hearing about a kid forced to partake in an extracurricular he didn't like.
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"But I must have been about five when I started lessons." He hadn't had the fine motor coordination until then, or Verso is sure he would have been taught sooner; although the memories are too old to have any clarity, he's certain he must have begged to learn.
He raises an eyebrow at her notebook. "That's about 95 years of playing the piano, if you're keeping track."
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"A century is a long time," she offers. "I suppose it speaks to your mastery of the instrument."
Superficially, about how long he's been playing the piano. A little less superficially, she understands it's a long time to be doing anything. Jasnah has never felt compelled to chase immortality — although she understands some of the mechanics involved in the kind of technical immortality that occurs for those who spend long amounts of time travelling in Shadesmar. Wit had called it time dilation. But the one argument she might one day be compelled to hear involves level of mastery one could attain after so many years.
"A pity one doesn't often find pianos on ships."
Implying, obliquely, that she misses the opportunity to hear him play.
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But he's flattered all the same! It had been nice to play for her; despite the bragging he'd done about his performances drawing crowds, it's been a long time since he played for another human being. Sure, Esquie enjoys the music, but it's not quite the same. Esquie would probably find beauty in it even if all Verso did was slam his head against the keys. Good job, mon ami! The noises you make are so loud!
Hand on his chest: "Well, I'm a firm believer in delayed gratification."
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Conversation pulses in its usual rhythm — briefly cutting, mostly pleasant — until the inevitable break for a disappointing lunch and an even more disappointing exchange with Torreth. Jasnah performs her role with clinical grace: an affectionate touch at Verso's elbow, the light sweep of crumbs from his sleeve, a murmured, "Thank you, gemheart," at exactly the moment it will soothe suspicion.
What she cannot decipher is why the captain keeps giving Verso those pointed, approving little nods. As if some advice of his has already germinated. She files it away for later dissection.
The remainder of the day drags with numbing predictability. A slow circuit of the deck for scant exercise. A handful of brief interviews with sailors about odd spren sightings near the coast. And hours in the cramped cabin refining her maps — punctuated by the occasional, irritated annotation of An Accountability of Virtue.
By sunset, the horizon is streaked copper and pink. She spots Verso seated on a coil of rope, looking only marginally less green than yesterday. Jasnah approaches without hesitation. He's her mainstay, now. A smudge of familiar land in a sea of strangers.
"I spoke with a sailor who I think is actually Yann's uncle,” she announces, voice crisp with purpose. "He claims to have seen a spren the size of a horse swimming beneath the hull last night. Glittering, apparently."
She folds her arms, head tilting with the sharp curiosity. She seems to think this is a fascinating story, worthy of sharing with him. Like, as soon as she'd heard it, her instinct had been to track Verso down before it could spill out of her mouth to someone else.
"He insists it had...whiskers." A beat. "Whiskers! Like a mink."
Her eyes narrow, equal parts skepticism and intrigue.
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look i couldn't find a way to make him taking another card more interesting
FAIR.
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slides back in here
the fun never stops!!
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