recreatable | open post.

"Not artists," he corrects.

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.

Verso grinds his teeth a little.

"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.

Funny! He spent this time speaking to Yann, who'd seemed to think that he was actually coming to reprimand him for sniffing around his wife. Apparently, mentioning that he'd seen Yann speak to 'Hesina' and then asking what was said came across as accusatory. Yann had apologized profusely, but he hadn't shared anything that Jasnah might have said about him. Verso's disappointment must have been obvious, because Yann had then apologized again. It was a whole fucking thing, and it definitely didn't help his seasickness.

Verso had decided to keep to himself and watch the horizon after that.

He brightens a little at Jasnah's approach and subsequent sharing of information, although it's clear on his face that he's waiting for her to say something further. Give a practical reason why she's telling him this, because it's so very unlike her to make conversation for the sake of it. Whatever it may be, the reason doesn't come, so he finally says, "I thought spren were..." He holds his hands close together, indicating something very small. "Little men."

Ivory is his only frame of reference, so he's currently imagining a glittering, horse-sized Ivory with mink whiskers swimming in the water.

Jasnah just stares at him like he just said the dumbest shit she's ever heard. Spren are such a foundational piece of Roshar — perhaps literally so — that she actually struggles for a half-beat to identify how Verso has managed to take such an incredibly wrong turn in his assumptions.

— Somewhere nearby, a little too audibly, Ivory snickers. Shockingly rude of him, really. He normally behaves better than that.

"Spren," she begins cautiously — wondering whether she needs to break it down to even more elementary concepts than she's about to use, "spren are splinters of power. Manifestations of ideas, concepts, natural phenomenon. All things have a corresponding spren. The sea, the wind, this boat." She raps her knuckles against the rail.

To use a non-Rosharan word, they're like spirits. Shaped by perception and emotion and time. Imagine if every item, animal, person, and phenomenon had a kind of soul. That's a spren.

"Some are lesser. Thoughtless. The thousands of ribbons of light you saw in the approaching highstorm were windspren. Flamespren live in fires. Look," she taps him on the shoulder and gestures down at the waves, where the white-breaking caps betrayed the occasional four-legged spren dancing along its edges.

There are spren drawn to strong emotions, too. But those were rarer — reserved for only the most intense of experiences. Or so it's just been decided in order to avoid the awkwardness of including spren in every dang tag.

"Ivory is an inkspren, of a kind more sapient than the lesser spren. Only those higher spren can communicate with humans and form bonds."

Well, this is embarrassing. Good thing you've nerfed them or he'd have shamespren around his head!! Verso looks where she indicates, although it's a little difficult to comprehend ribbons of light being anywhere near the same thing as what Ivory is. (Which, by the way, that laugh was very rude.)

There's no way he'll admit to having any challenge grasping this whatsoever, though. He raises his eyebrows and nods in understanding. "Ah, I see. So those weren't stink lines I saw coming off of you before the bath, just dirtspren."

HE'S JOKING.

She knows he's joking. She knows he's joking. She knows he's joking.

And yet. It bubbles up like a bad habit, a knee-jerk response, a kind of terrible inevitable know-it-all kind of reaction.

"...There's no such thing as dirtspren."

At least, none that she's seen catalogued.

"And Ivory can be human-sized, if he so chooses. He's not limited to..." She mimics his gesture from moments earlier.

Yup. Two corrections for the price of one.

Resisting the urge to say oh, so you're saying they WERE stink lines feels a lot like sitting on his hands to resist touching a hot stove. It's so tempting, but he knows it'll hurt!!

"So maybe there was a giant sparkly spren with whiskers under the hull," he says instead, showing levels of self-restraint that were heretofore unknown to humanity. Very difficult not to pull on Jasnah's metaphorical pigtails. "A shipspren, or sailspren." He still only half-understands what things have a 'spren' assigned to them.

His mouth twitches in amusement. "...Are you just jealous that you didn't see it first?"

— Hey! She felt as if she had stink lines. By some measures of philosophical doctrine, her experience of her own two-day grime is more truthful than the reality of her two-day grime.

"...No." Some of her initial fire dims, averaging out to a cool realism. "The man was more than likely seeing things. Over-tired, or inebriated, or mistaking an unusually large fish for something it isn't."

Don't listen to her, Verso. She's bone-gnawingly jealous that she didn't see it first. If only to have been able to verify its existence instead of now contending with her own skepticism.

This bewhiskered water spren doesn't sound more farfetched than anything else she's just told him, but he defers to Jasnah's judgment. "Probably." Most of these men are probably over-tired and inebriated. Verso's seasickness barely stands out in the morning, since half of them are hungover then.

"But maybe not," he adds. "You might be the first to discover a new variant of spren."

Variant? Species? Subspecies? Something like that.

"What else have you been up to, aside from gathering wild and fanciful tales from uncles?"

"Bartering."

Jasnah turns her back to the sea, crooking both elbows and leaning backwards against the rail. She had a way of making a casual posture look composed. As if she didn't need to be stiff-spine straight in order to still grip the reins of command. Confidence, and the perception of confidence, was key.

"That fellow," she gestured with her chin to a cap-wearing Theylen, "got a letter from his sister before they left Kharbranth, but Torreth was in such a rush he didn't have time to hire a scribe to read it for him. He asked if I would."

She did. And she offered to take dictation for his reply. Although she's certain the older swabbie had no idea what he was talking about, he did try very kindly to compliment her penmanship.

Ugh, it sounds awful to not be able to read. It's the culture here, he knows, but he finds the mere thought of it intolerable. Even putting aside things like fiction and entertainment, he can't imagine involving a stranger in the process of reading and replying to a letter from a family member. Of course, he's exceedingly private and would hate anyone reading a letter penned to him by his sister.

"Mind bartering for a deck of cards next time?"

It's boring as hell here, and it isn't even their last day.

"Cards?"

Jasnah considers. By now, Verso should be well-versed (ha) in the different questioning tones she employs. Sometimes, she repeats a word because it's unfamiliar and she wants him to elaborate. Other times, she knows damn well what he's saying, but is likely questioning him directly. Sometimes it's critical; sometimes it's curious. This time, it's curious.

Slowly, after a pause. "I can try. You might have better luck with Pieces. Although, maybe Captain Torreth has a Towers deck..."

She's only recently started to learn Towers. It's meant to teach military strategy to men in command positions. It wouldn't hurt to keep practicing. Storms, should she have tried to barter for Towers instead?

Girl, he doesn't really know what you're talking about. Pieces sound like not a card deck; maybe some sort of board game? A Towers deck is closer to what he's looking for, although he's not confident that it'll play like what he wants.

"Can you play vingt-un with a Towers deck?"

"Maybe."

Doubtful.

"What's," deep breath, a twist of her tongue, willing the sounds to work, "...vanton?"

"Vingt-un," he repeats, although her pronunciation isn't bad for someone who's only heard it once before in her life. "It's a card game." That much is obvious.

"The object is to create a card total greater than that of the banker's, but without exceeding 21." It's yet again one of those things he struggles to describe to her. It's just a game, something everyone knows how to play. He'd even taught Monoco to play when he'd tired of eternally playing Solitaire. Most of those games ended in (not completely unfounded) accusations of cheating and a duel for honor, though.

"You receive two cards, and you determine whether you'd like to keep your hand as is or take another card. But you only know one of your opponent's cards, so you have to determine whether you think they're closer to 21 than you are."

It would make more sense if he could teach her while playing, but unfortunately, the library in Kharbranth didn't have any decks of cards for him to steal.

"It's just one of those games you play in parlors with friends. Like Piquet or Tarot."

Jasnah's brows lift — not in offense, but in the quiet, razor-keen way she reacts when something is culturally inconvenient yet personally interesting.

"Hmm," she taps one finger — on her freehand — against the railing. A thoughtful, unhurried rhythm. If the player only knows one of her opponents cards, some element of the game relies on random chance. And games of prediction are...frowned upon, in the church. Anything resembling divination, omen-reading, or attempting to discern the future is considered dangerously close to heresy. Fortunately, Little Miss Heretic doesn't mind.

"I should tell you that most Alethi would insist a game that encourages players to infer hidden information and outmaneuver chance is a slippery slope towards prophecy. Some ardents would have apoplexy watching people play over concealed cards."

Instead, most Alethi gambling dens involve a lot of loophole-seeking. Odd, complicated, protected games that involve players wagering on parts of the game that don't skirt too close to prediction.

"Predicting randomness. Estimating the unknown. Choosing whether to risk further loss or hold to what you have." A slow inhale. "It sounds fun."

Ha. Of course Jasnah painstakingly goes over the reasons that playing such a game would be akin to apostasy, right before saying it sounds fun. He finds it's one of the increasingly numbered things he likes about her. That spark of rebellion.

"Well," he says in a lowered voice, so as not to be overheard, "I wouldn't be opposed to engaging in a little heresy with you."

Heh.

"We'd need a proper deck, though, or you'd need to be willing to part with a few pages from your notebook." So that he could do some arts and crafts with them.

Jasnah's expression narrows with the same quiet assessment that always appears when a surprise is unexpectedly pleasant. She lowers her voice to match his, not only for secrecy but because there is a kind of intimacy to be found in scheming together. And this feels an awful lot like scheming together.

"Part with my pages?" She asks. The line is so so so thin between stern and mock-stern. Maybe there's really no difference at all. "You ask for too much, Dessendre."

He never did actually dissuade her from calling him by that name.

"Though if you intend to construct a deck yourself, I expect the craftsmanship to be impeccable. I refuse to be implicated in blasphemy that's poorly made."

Oh, she's giving him all kinds of positive reinforcement right now. What he likes even more than her spark of rebellion is having that spark turned on him; it feels a little like she's gathered up static electricity and then touched him with it. Little prickles from his fingers to his toes. He should be much more concerned about engaging the queen of a nation in what she's informed him are heterodox acts, no matter how harmless they seem to him, but it's hard to muster up the resistance when he has her attention all to himself like this.

He lowers his voice another notch, and although he wouldn't admit it even to himself, it's just to have an excuse to lean in closer to her. "I'll have you know that my blasphemy," he says, amusement tugging at his lips, "is artisanal."

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