recreatable | open post.

Better than I expected is a bit of a backhanded compliment. What did she expect, he wonders, but he tries not to dwell on it too heavily right now. ...He'll dwell on it later, when he's trying to sleep.

"There are... improvements to be made," he admits, endlessly critical of his own work. There's not an imperfection that he hasn't already sniffed out. "But I can work on the backs later."

They're mostly bare, but he has big plans for the intricate patterns he plans to painstakingly draw out on all 52.

Improvements? Oh, now that catches her by surprise. She can see the cards aren't perfect (how could they be, given the tools and materials available to him?) but they are nevertheless a feat. So perhaps she ought to have said so.

Almost pathological about it, she slots the cards she'd been examining back into order within the deck. She knows she feels some kind of way about it, but she resists the urge to investigate what exactly. He may have made the cards, but they paradoxically feel like they belong to her. It's her paper, her inks, her pencils. Maybe they belong to the pair of them together. They are a cornerstone of something bigger, just out of focus.

"You did well." She at long last offers her scant praise. In her mind, it's effusive. "And with so little to do it with."

Jasnah...doesn't return the deck. She holds the cards fast, steady in one hand. She knows it's time to transition into a lesson — to learn how to play the game — but there is first a very important problem they must solve.

One table, one chair, both bolted to the floorboards. One chest, across the cabin, also bolted to the floorboards. She stares — thoughtful — at the narrow bed before shaking her head. Entirely inappropriate.

"Should we..." a rare note of uncertainty, "sit on the floor?"

Coming from Jasnah, it might as well be effusive. You did well. It's hardly anything at all, but it'll still rattle around in his brain for the next 24 hours. After all, that's what this was all for. It wasn't for the love of creation, or even because he was bored and wanted something to do; it was to please her. And he's succeeded, it seems, if only marginally.

He looks at her, noting that small bit of hesitation in her voice. It's very rare to hear her sound anything but confident and commanding; even her questions can sound like statements. There's only a moment of pause before he takes off his coat, folding it far more neatly than he usually does until it's a nice little square of fabric. Then, he places it on the floor, gesturing to it with a flourish.

"A royal cushion for Her Majesty."

Edited 2025-12-04 21:33 (UTC)

Oh. Perhaps she should have expected such a gesture. Yet, it also comes as a surprise. Jasnah would have sat on the floor. She could have sat on the floor. But she's also not about to scold the man for scraping together a bit of comfort and offering it to her. Gift horses, mouths, etc.

"—Obliged." She murmurs, and pauses for a split second while she decides whether to sit first or wait for him to be the first of the two to lower themselves. They'd already endured one stand-off, tonight. And, again: gift horses, mouths, etc..

She gathers the skirts of her havah in one hand, clutches the deck with the other, and eases into a sitting kneel. Once on the floor, she also places down the cards. Tidy, a about a foot directly in front of her. Indicating, subtly (or not so subtly) where she expects him to sit across from her.

Jasnah looks every bit a queen in her prim little kneel; Verso feels like he should try to show some regality as well, out of deference or something like it, but he has all of the body language of someone who's lived in the woods for 67 years. He settles down on the ground, crossing his legs and straightening his spine so that he at least doesn't look like a complete slouch in front of her.

He takes the cards, because despite what she thinks he views them as his first and foremost, shuffling them as best he can. He attempts some fancy shuffle tricks, but the cards are made of regular paper rather than proper cardstock, and it doesn't look nearly as impressive as he wishes it did.

"One normally makes bets during vingt-un," he says, and idly thinks that that's probably frowned upon here, too. "But since you're still learning, we can just practice."

She studies the cards in his hands with a scholar's interest and a woman's private amusement. The little flourish he attempts — was that meant to happen, or merely gravity winning a brief skirmish? Hard to say. She isn't sure which possibility entertains her more.

And then — ah. Gambling. She had sensed it circling the conversation like a skyeel waiting for the right updraft. Vorin doctrine is maddeningly specific on this point: wagers on known qualities are acceptable. Bets on unrealized outcomes are heresy, too close to fortune-telling for anyone's comfort. A completely arbitrary loophole, one that reveals more about the human appetite for convenient morality than about any true principle. But it keeps half the taverns in the Breakaway Market afloat, so who is she to protest.

Jasnah shifts her weight — not restless, simply accommodating the folded coat beneath her knees. With her left hand she smooths a corner of it into alignment, an unconscious gesture of order imposed on disorder.

She almost tells him that even junior scholars used to gamble in the stacks of the Palanaeum — quiet little contests slipped between shelves, staking treats or borrowed texts on the outcomes of logic puzzles. She'd won often, but it had nothing to do with fortune-telling. But the memory lingers on her tongue a moment, then dissolves. It isn't relevant, and it indulges him too much.

Besides, he is the instructor here. He's made an intentional choice to begin without stakes, and she respects the shape of a lesson when she sees one.

So she exhales once. A precise, grounding breath. And then inclines her chin.

"I'm listening."

"Well," he says, "I think the best way to learn something is to attempt it yourself."

A twitch of his mouth, and he adds with a hint of humor, "I'm a hands-on learner." It's the sort of autopilot flirtation that doesn't actually mean anything. It couldn't mean anything, because Jasnah has already proven maddeningly immune to his charms, and she'll be his employer soon, besides.

The shuffling done, he places two cards in front of each of them, face down. Patiently explanatory: "So, we'll both look at our cards, and we'll leave the top card face-up."

Being who she is — and how she is — Jasnah lives in that perpetual borderland between comprehension and application. She hears Verso's casual innuendo; she categorizes it; she discards it. A reflexive flick of mental scalpel. Harmless. Undisciplined. Not worthy of deeper examination. To her, it says more about Verso's impulse control than an indication of anything...more.

At most, it reminds her — unhelpfully — of another person who mistook proximity for invitation. She shuts that door with practiced precision.

So she looks at the cards.

She doesn't wait for his prompting. She leans forward, smooth and decisive, retrieving both cards from the floor. A 10 and a 2. The 2 she recognizes instantly; the 10 takes a heartbeat longer as she counts the small painted sigils, committing them more firmly to memory. Her eyebrows lift a fraction.

"Twelve," she murmurs, the number rolling off her tongue like a problem being rounded into shape. Hard to say whether she doesn't realize she's meant to keep them secret or she knows but simply doesn't because this is (after all) a practice round.

"Show me the part where strategy comes in."

So impatient!!!

"So impatient," he agrees with the narration.

Verso chooses to believe that she understands that her bottom card is meant to be kept secret, or if not, she'll realize it soon enough. Better to let her come to the conclusion herself than possibly embarrass or offend her by telling her immediately. This is a practice round, so he treats it like one.

He flips over his top card, the Jack of Hearts, blissfully unaware that Jasnah is currently seeing the card that he just said could symbolize her ex-boyfriend surrounded by symbols of love.

Still patient in his explanation: "So, my top card is worth ten. The chances of me having another Jack or a ten or a two are lower, but not impossible. Out of the 49 cards left, though, there's only three cards that could make my hand equal to or lower than yours, and there's no card that could make my hand higher than 21."

A beat. He glances at her, a little questioning, seeing if she's still following.

— A little like star-crossed lovers, they misunderstand one another. When Jasnah makes a mistake, she welcomes being informed of it. But such poor understanding goes both ways because, frankly, she has no idea that the weird sharp-but-bumpy symbol is indeed associated with love of any kind.

Nevertheless, somewhere out in the wider Cosmere, Hoid is laughing manically at the dramatic irony.

...But then, watching him explain his cards, she finally does realize her error and she hums, disappointed, and slides the 2 back onto the playing space, facing down once again.

"And...you want to avoid going higher than twenty-one?"

"Exactly right," he says encouragingly. "If you go over 21, you automatically lose—but you'll also lose if your hand is lower than mine at the end, given that I don't exceed 21."

Easy enough for all of Verso's dumb school friends to understand, so he assumes it's trivial for Jasnah and her big brain. Still— "So," he says, pushing the deck forward a little. A subtle hint that she should, in fact, hit and not stand. "Knowing that, do you want to take another card?"

Jasnah doesn't miss the way he nudges the deck forward, but instead of bristling, her expression settles into something more measured — an acknowledgment that she is the student here, and he's guiding her toward the expected move. It is perhaps unexpected, but she makes an excellent student. Shockingly teachable for such a hard-headed person. The circumstances just have to be right.

"...Right," she says quietly, more thoughtful than sharp. "If the goal is to gather information while managing risk, then taking another card seems the most sensible choice."

Her fingertips rest on the edge of the deck for a heartbeat, as if running the logic again in her mind. She isn't nervous, exactly. Just cautious, careful, determined to follow the rules of the system before she attempts to manipulate them.

She draws a card and hesitates — holding it with its face hovering downward.

"Do I share this one?" She asks, eyes flicking up to him, determined not to make the same mistake twice.

It's an interesting shift in their power dynamic, being asked what Jasnah should do instead of having her tell him—command, really. He doesn't mind it; it's a dynamic he's more familiar with, having spent the past 67 years as the preeminent expert on the Continent. Falling headfirst into this world and needing help to navigate it has been... different. Challenging. Feels like he's young again, in a way.

"You can keep it to yourself." A nod to her hand, talking through his thought process. "Since you had a twelve, that means anything but a ten or one of the court cards is a good pull."

He taps his own cards. "I'm going to stand." Then, defining it for her: "I've decided not to pull any more cards."

Canting his head toward her hand again, he asks, "What about you?"

— Well, damnation.

Because when she turns the card toward herself, studying its sigils, she finds another ten staring back at her. Twenty-two. Too far. A clean, unambiguous loss. Her face stays perfectly composed but a small, private muscle behind her sternum tightens. What an inelegant game if one's fate hangs entirely on the arbitrary draw of paper. No systems to exploit, no levers to pull, no way to redirect causality except...

Except.

A beat too late, the realization slides cleanly into place: this isn't merely arithmetic. It's a game of inference. Of manipulation. The cards matter, yes, but the people matter more. What one reveals. What one withholds. What one pretends. She can't salvage this hand. But she can prepare the next.

So she lets the disappointment soften her posture slightly — just enough. A finely calibrated display of ineptitude, the kind that invites underestimation. Let him think she's struggling with such alien rules. Let him misjudge her learning curve, if possible.

In a tone that is a shade flatter than necessary, she asks: "When am I meant to inform you that I've gone over?"

A perfect novice's question. Almost artful in its feigned simplicity.

Unfortunately, Verso is enjoying this reversal in dynamic too much to question her manipulation. He likes being in this position more than he likes being in the position he's so often in since coming to Roshar; instead of being useless and confused, he's knowledgeable, teacherly. Someone who has something to offer instead of just being a drain.

So, he doesn't doubt her for a second.

"Have you gone over?" he asks, before adding, "That's all right. It's just a practice round." Preemptively soothing any disappointment. "We'll tell each other when it happens, since it means the end of the round."

He holds his cards up so that she can see: he'd had a Jack and a seven. Then, setting them back on the deck, he gestures for hers, too.

"Care to go again?"

A soft hum like an admission. She flips her cards in her right hand — she's actually doing most of this card-wrangling with one hand, notably — and shows him her ten, ten, and two. Collapsing the small fan of three, she lays them back on the deck as he indicates.

— A funny urge makes her wish she could float above the moment and watch him more carefully, divorced from the ways in which she needs-must-will interact with him just to keep the conversation (and the game) going. Like how there, just there, he tries to counteract a disappointment he thinks might be there but isn't. Management.

Jasnah adjusts her posture, left hand sitting unused in her lap, and hold out her right.

"Yes."

Simple and direct. Her earnest attempt begins now.

Simple and direct! He notes the unused hand, but doesn't comment on it; if her discomfort when ungloving had been any indication, there's still a feeling of propriety there, even if she wants to pretend that she's rational enough to be above it all. The last thing he wants to do is make her feel ashamed for that.

So, when he shuffles and deals again, this time he places the cards a little to her right, a more convenient location. He takes a look at his cards, then places the top card face-up: a three.

"Want to make a bet?"

Impassive, she eyes both her cards. Today is when a lifetime spent willfully not attracting emotion spren comes in handy — as Jasnah allows herself to look thoughtful, but not swayed.

She flips her top card. A six.

"With what?" Jasnah leaves a finger touching the six, but raises her attention to Verso sitting across from her. "Spheres?"

She has so many more spheres than him. But perhaps they could agree to a limited pool, to make it fair...?

"What do you gamble with back home?"

"Francs, in Lumière." It's been ages since he's held a coin or banknote in his hand, though. Back before the population dwindled enough as to make an unfamiliar face notable, he'd occasionally paid a visit to a favored cafe or boulangerie during his returns to Lumière. The visits to the mainland became more and more infrequent, though, as his presence became more out of the ordinary—everyone in Lumière knows everyone now. The thriving, bustling city where he could disappear into the crowds is gone, and so are his days of spending time in fancy little cafes.

"Chroma, on the Continent." It's the currency all the Gestral merchants use. What use the Gestrals have for Chroma is as much a wonder to the omniscient narrator here as it is to you!

But he's mostly played this game with Monoco, so Chroma has been a rare bet. Neither of them have as much use for it as— "Or embarrassing dares."

Two different currencies. Not so surprising, she supposes, although the one thing all of Roshar can agree upon is the value of Stormlight and spheres. Doubly so, now that in conjunction they can fuel Radiant abilities. Warfare itself has changed with the refounding of the Orders.

She tries not to let herself get too distracted by that garden path. There's nothing she can do or say about it right now, caught on a ship. Unable to own her own name and rank. For now, she files away both words: Francs and Chroma.

"...How embarrassing? An example, please."

Preferably from real life.

Jasnah, if she's observant enough, might notice that Verso is a little impatient—just like he'd been to return to the cabin and play. It hadn't just been merely excitement to show off his work, although that was part of it; it's also, apparently, a character trait. Or personality flaw, depending on how you want to see it. He taps his fingers against his own cards, expelling restless energy.

"You know, like—" He pulls a memory out of thin air. "Loser has to go streaking through the Station." A pause. "Obviously, we won't do that one."

Of course Jasnah is observant enough. But — just like over dinner — she has this devilish little urge to prolong his impatience. To test and tease and make him wait it out a moment more. To test his restraint, perhaps. His self-control.

For once, she doesn't go for the obvious Jasnah-bait (what's a Station? and asks instead:

"You've done that dare?"

Ugh, maybe he shouldn't have shared that particular one. Probably a little too embarrassing. He hadn't cared at the time, though, considering it had only been Gestrals and Grandis there. He might have shown a bit more restraint if actual humans had to see him.

"You just assume I lost?" he gripes.

A beat.

"—I did, but only because Monoco cheated."

"It's a game based partially on chance," she intones, "I have to assume you lose on occasion."

Still! She now has to digest the idea of him, losing a bet, and running naked through a Station. A station for what? Again, she pushes the thought aside. And the thought of him streaking too.

"I need time to think of a suitable dare," she at long last decides. "Next round."

In the meantime? She asks for another card with a crooked come-hither gesture.

He's delighted that she has any interest in this sort of bet at all, honestly. It seems like something she might consider juvenile and foolish; Verso can't imagine Jasnah streaking in the snow, to say the least. Whatever bet she chooses to make, he doubts it'll be anything like the playful and boyish ones he made with Monoco.

Loser writes a 10,000 word essay on a topic of their choice, to be graded by the winner, probably.

Verso slides another card her way, and takes one himself. He glances at it for a brief moment, then sets it face-down.

"When you decide not to take another card, it's called standing," he explains. "And when you do take another card, it's hitting." He raises an eyebrow. "Want to stand or hit?"

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