He was never going to leave her—not hours after her stabbing; it has little to do with any fondness he feels toward her and more to do with the fact that it would be an awful thing to do—but he doesn't say so, just pulls back out the deck of cards, a quarter of them already decorated on the back now, and gets to work passing the time by drawing on them. It's detailed, intricate work, and he often leans in close to etch a design just right. He'd never felt the same passion for art that he does music, but that doesn't mean he dislikes it. Not when he's doing it because he wants to, instead of because he feels like he has to.
Verso works in silence for a few minutes, figuring that although she'd asked him to stay, it doesn't mean she has any interest in hearing him talk. She's probably tired. Half-conscious, still. Not enough blood flowing to her brain to tolerate whatever he has to say.
He does, however, eventually say, "There's a physician a few streets over. You should let him take a look at you."
Idly, she watches him work. Laid up like she is, she only has to turn her head just so to keep a decent vantage on his current activities. Although it does take her a moment to identify what's keeping him busy. Had he looked this intent and absorbed when he'd first crafted their cards?
But eventually the angle of her neck starts to bother her. And with a grumble, she tilts her head in the opposite side as if trying to stretch out a knot. At the same time, she raises her left hand to press into a muscle just there, her posture clearly unaccustomed to half-lying and half-sitting. This motion only serves to remind her that her safehand glove is still caked with dried blood. It crusts and crumbles, and Jasnah sucks in a disgusted breath through her teeth.
So, that's why she's carefully working the glove off her hand when Verso mentions the surgeon. She glances back over at the same time as she's flexing her bare fingers. Remarkably clean, thanks to the glove — which she's laid crumpled in her lap for the time being.
"No," is her plain and simple answer. "If things take a turn for the worse? Maybe, yes. But if someone wants to finish the job, they'll be watching clinics closely."
His eyes only drift over her bare hand for a moment before they return to his work. It's notable, maybe, that she's taken her glove off, but he's not sure what it signifies. If anything. A feeling of comfort with him? (Maybe he's been cousin-zoned so hard that she no longer finds it objectionable to bare her left hand in front of him.) Or, perhaps, she's so tired that she no longer cares.
The surgeon could make a house call for a queen, he's sure, but that would involve admitting that she's a queen—which is another thing he's sure she won't be willing to do. He tables it for now; if she gets worse, she won't have the option to avoid the doctor, because he'll drag her there willingly or not.
There's another pause, silent save for the scribbling of his pencil. Then:
"Want me to wash your glove?" He needs to do his shirt, anyway.
She tracks the point on her wrist where the glove hem had ended, leaving a pinkish smudge on her skin where blood had seeped. It's everywhere, she realizes. Dark, stiff stains in her skirts. Lighter, blush-like smudges tracked elsewhere. Despite having been the first to arrive after her father's assassination, it hadn't been a bloody scene. Gavilar had been killed with a shardblade, and those don't cut the physical body but the cognitive soul. There was no blood. Just burned out eyes.
She supposes it would have been bloody for Elhokar. No one had wanted to tell her, of course, but she had eventually tracked down a witness statement from one of the Bridge Four Windrunners: the traitor Moash has stabbed a spear through the young king's chest once, and then repeatedly through an eye.
She turns her hands around, comparing the dirt on and under her right hand's fingernails to the relative pristine state of her left.
"—Hm?" Verso had asked her something. She waits a second, hoping an echoic memory might fill in the detail. Oh. "Yes. I'd appreciate it."
What a strange paradox it is! To feel a mild jolt of fascination — even at a time like this — because of how mundanely he treats being in the room with her ungloved safehand. Like, his boredom with the idea is half the appeal. Or maybe that's the blood loss talking.
Okay, then. He sets the pencil down and makes his way over to the divan, reaching down to pluck the glove away. It's gone from slick and sticky to flaky and dried now. Deeply unpleasant, he's sure, which is probably why Jasnah took it off in the first place.
He notes the streaks of blood crusting on her skin, so when he heads into the kitchen area to use the sink—provided that sinks exist in Stormlight?? Help—he first wets a cloth and brings it back to her, holding it out.
"Here," he says, handing it to her. "To wash off with."
He absconds to the little kitchenette after that, soaking her glove and his shirt together. He could go back to the sitting room, but sitting casually shirtless near Jasnah while she doesn't even care to look seems like an ego blow that he's not prepared to handle at the moment. She could look now if she really wanted to, if she craned her neck just the right way, but he doesn't have to glance over to know that she isn't. After all, she'd seemed shockingly uninterested in his bathing.
"Jochi has a"—magic pen—"spanreed to contact you," he calls after a moment, thoughtful. Not only is he literate, but he converses with the queen. "He's a friend of yours?"
Jasnah takes the cloth with a soundless exhale — as if the act of accepting help costs her something she refuses to name. She works methodically: fingers, palm, wrist. She even scrubs briefly at her cheek, her forehead, knowing she'd touched her face at some point during the debacle. She doesn't look toward the kitchenette. Doesn't need to. She knows exactly where he is by sound alone.
"A friend?" she echoes, tone dry as she works through how to answer. "Something like it."
She shifts, just enough to brace herself against the back of the divan as she cleans the last of the blood from the inside of her right wrist. Her breaths are shallower now — but controlled. Deliberate. The discipline of someone who refuses to let her own body see her falter, even as it screams for her to slow down even now.
"Jochi is..." She pauses, searching for a word that doesn't imply weakness or affection. The word Veristitalian shouldn't mean anything to Verso, so she avoids it entirely. "A respected colleague. We wrote under the same master."
Another pass of the cloth down her forearm.
"He and I have exchanged arguments for a decade. Philosophy, political theory. He's corrected me when I deserved it. In return, I kept his secret that my sister-scholar was not a sister at all."
A beat. A soft decline of her gaze to the blood on the cloth. Jochi deserves better than being hauled into this mess. Arguably, inviting even Verso into the truth is a step too far.
Of course, what she describes is exactly, precisely, entirely a friend.
Edited (repeated use of the word arguably.) 2025-12-11 21:55 (UTC)
"Exchanged arguments," Verso repeats, pulling his shirt from the water. There's still a faint red stain right in the center, but it's less noticeable than before. He scrubs aggressively at what remains with soap. It's probably never going to come out altogether. A pity; he'd liked this shirt.
"You mean you're pen pals."
She might try to dress it up academically, but he knows a friendship when he sees one. No one keeps up a purely scholarly correspondence for a decade. Even Jasnah.
"I get it." He rubs harder at the stain. "He's your Monoco." No elaboration there.
— Exchanged arguments, tipped one another off about new discoveries, talked crem about other published authors like (ugh) Hessi. Yes, she and Jochi are friends. Two-thirds of a trio, if she's being honest. Ethid will be insufferably wounded to learn she met Jochi in person first.
She's on the verge of clarifying that she and Jochi were only pen-pals — a term she's picked up by deduction, thank you — and that this morning is the first time they've formally met. Not counting those handful of diplomatic visits where she wandered in anonymously to buy bread and assess the man behind the essays. That's why the code phrase had been needed.
But then Verso uses a word she cannot place. She recognizes fragments of his language by now — the soft mon that appears in several of his idioms. But this one feels different. A new configuration. It piques her interest and arouses her curiosity.
"What was that?" She asks, twisting her torso with a faint, pained gasp as she tries to see him in the kitchenette. "Mono—"
The sentence collapses entirely when she realizes he is shirtless.
Her brain stutters. It takes several seconds for her to assemble a reasonable explanation — washing, of course, obviously he's washing his shirt, she'd noticed the blood stains — but in the meantime she is trapped between her upbringing and her intellect. Jasnah Kholin, who once lectured an ardent on the absurdity of modesty codes, now finds herself experiencing an involuntary heat of embarrassment simply because she was not prepared to see those codes utterly violated. As enlightened as she is, she can't quite escape how she's been socialized — to treat a sight like this as a minor scandal.
To look away would acknowledge the reaction. To stare openly would be ridiculous. So she takes the third option: she fixes her gaze on his face with near-heroic determination, jaw set, as though this is all perfectly ordinary and she is definitely not having complicated thoughts about propriety, boundaries, or social norms.
"Monoco," she repeats, controlled, composed, absolutely unwilling to blink first.
Verso turns at the sound of her gasp, eyes meeting hers in a way that's entirely accidental. He wouldn't consider himself modest, isn't shy about a body he's inhabited for a century. He is, however, self-conscious. Always a little too aware of the way he's being perceived. He's certainly being perceived now, but—
Even if she had looked away, it would have meant that she, on some level, felt that there was something exciting—if inappropriate—to look at. If she had stared, well, obviously that would have been flattering. Her choice to treat it as if there's nothing out of the ordinary at all, though, is... disappointing. He wants her to want to look, perhaps foolishly, but it's like he might as well not exist below the neck at all.
He turns his back to her, taking out his disappointment on his poor shirt. Scrub, scrub, scrub.
Jasnah tries — Storms, she tries — to maintain the pretense that there is nothing to see. Nothing to react to. Nothing at all beneath the clean, austere line of her posture. But pain has a way of unmaking facades, and the bandaged side gives a sharp, treacherous throb after about thirty seconds of holding her position.
She inhales sharply and her safehand instinctively presses to her ribs. The motion draws her forward, half-folded, before she can stop herself. None of this is out of interest, she tells herself. Not because the line of his spine is a curious study in hard work, bent over his task. It's all simply because she needs to shift her posture to manage the pain.
The faintest warmth touches her cheeks. Infuriating. Shame and self-doubt.
"Verso." Her voice is calm, but lower than she intends. “Your oldest friend is...a gestral."
She swallows, hissing through another stab of pain as she sits up once more and lets her head fall back onto the divan. No more looking for her, thanks.
As he wrings his shirt out within an inch of its life, he says, "Well, I've been on the Continent for 67 years."
Give or take a few visits back to Lumière. Those hardly count. Those initial visits back had been filled with suspicion, and after that he'd stopped speaking to anyone at all when he returned. In those later visits, he'd just spent all of his time watching this strange Alicia-but-not-Alicia with her foster brother. Maelle, he'd once heard the man call her, voice tinged with fond exasperation. He'd felt horribly jealous in that moment. Once upon a time, he used to talk to Alicia in that tone, too.
But none of that is worth mentioning. Jasnah wouldn't—couldn't—understand. Instead, he focuses on Monoco as he flattens her glove out against the counter to dry.
"And gestrals are immortal, technically." He'd told her before how they couldn't die, not permanently. A quick dip in the Sacred River, and they'd be born again as a patate. A baby gestral.
His point being: of course his oldest friend is a gestral. Every human that could have filled that position is dead.
"But you're right," he says, although she didn't really make a point. "Gestrals can be very annoying."
— Like spren, she thinks. Not for the first time. But now it comes with a pang that runs deeper than what's physical. Some piece of her is missing. Whatever piece used to be filled by Ivory, like plaster over a cracked wall. The hollowness left behind might actually be worse than the hot messy agony of her stomach.
Spren are annoying, too. Even Ivory has his moments.
The cushion of the divan dips as she shimmies lower — just out of sight — as if physically putting the wing-back corner of the furniture between her eyeline and him is ample interference enough. Her two choices are to wallow in premeditated grief for Ivory or fixate on why he's still over there without a shirt.
Instead of heading back into the sitting room while his shirt dries, Verso sits on the kitchen counter instead, legs dangling as he snoops in the cupboard directly behind him. (Thank god Jochi isn't here, because this is very rude.) Nothing but pots and pans. He closes the cupboard.
"Oh, extremely," he says good-naturedly, almost like it's a compliment. Sometimes, Monoco makes him roll his eyes so hard that he wonders if this will be the time that his face gets stuck like that. "But he's still less annoying than most gestrals."
Although that's a bit like being the tallest dwarf. Again, said with deep affection! Despite everything, Verso loves the gestrals. Even though Verso—at least this version of Verso—technically had nothing to do with their creation, there's a near-familial feeling in his chest when he thinks of them. Like that irritating cousin you can't help but adore anyway.
Swinging his legs impatiently: "You know, I taught Monoco to speak human language." He taught Monoco to do a lot of things, but he's quite proud of that one. The only gestral who doesn't speak in weird Minion-esque gobbledygook. "I guess that you could consider me a professor, too."
Jasnah doesn't laugh at his claim. She's learned the hard way that even a mild, scornful chuckle will hurt right now. Doesn't mean she doesn't feel a wave of mild scorn when he gives himself the title of professor. A brace of very stubborn, very well-thought arguments crowd the back of her tongue — up to and including I'll judge your professorship on the strength of your student, thank you — but she just doesn't have the stamina to pick a fight.
So she sinks lower, cushioning her head and trying to find a way to lay that doesn't involve a hand hanging over the couch, or an arm crossed over her wound, or an elbow crooked behind her neck. Unusually fidgety, but her fidgeting is committed out of sight.
"Students usually find that total immersion is the quickest route to fluency."
Okay, so she's picking a fight anyway. Implying outright that if he simply spoke exclusively in one language to this Monoco, the language-learning likely came naturally.
"You miss him, don't you."
Not a question. Although Verso has made it abundantly clear that he's uninterested in returning home, she can't imagine it's easy to leave behind your oldest friend. If this feels like an unusual burst of articulated empathy, that's because it is. She's got Ivory on the mind, and it's making her a little vulnerable. And Jasnah's vulnerability always punches outward.
You've grown soft, Monoco would say, pretending to disapprove. In actuality, he'd be glowing with happiness but too embarrassed to let it show. He and Verso have that in common. Maybe all these years with Verso have rubbed off on him.
"He'd be fascinated by this place." There's so much Verso wishes he could tell him, show him. Experience with him. He wants to know what Monoco would have to say about Urithiru, about Rosharan culture. He already knows what Monoco would say about Jasnah. A little scolding you're getting attached again, to which Verso would argue this time is different. "And he'd love meeting all the humans that aren't going to—"
Die, probably within the next few days, weeks, or months. But he's trying to keep the conversation lighthearted here, something to distract Jasnah from her pain, so he stops just short of saying so.
Jasnah listens without interrupting. That, in itself, is deliberate. She lets him finish the thought he trims back, lets the absence sit where the word die would have been. She is very good at hearing what people refuse to say.
It's...refreshing. The honesty, brief as it is. Unvarnished. She finds she likes it more than his reassurance.
Her gaze drifts upward to the ceiling. Sorta-kinda toward where his voice is coming from. A pale replacement for looking at him, since she's still hiding behind the divan's backboard. She wants to see his eyes when he speaks like this. The set of his mouth. The way he navigates sincerity without spectacle. But instead of acting on that desire, her body remains stubbornly anchored to the divan, pain keeping her folded inward, half out of sight. Still, the intent is there, quiet and private.
"You've seen more of Roshar than most people born to it," she says at last. The words are mild, but there's a note beneath them. Curiosity and appetite. "Urithiru. The Shattered Plains. Kharbranth. This city, if barely."
A pause. Calculated, but surprisingly gentle.
"Where would you show him first?”
Not what do you like. Not what matters to you. She's learned, already, that people often answer more freely when the question is displaced. Her fingers tighten slightly in the damp cloth, now cooled. Her knuckles pale. She waits for something earnest. Something unguarded.
"The library, definitely," comes quickly. It's not a difficult decision. The Continent is full of many things, but its literature is lacking. "Unlike most gestrals, Monoco fancies himself something of a scholar."
Which is why he's Verso's favorite. Not only is he a goofy little roughhouser, but he also enjoys art and philosophy. Of course, it's no wonder. He was created to be the perfect companion for a pretentious little boy.
"But," he continues, "it's difficult to get any real literature on the Continent. Not unless it gets brought over from the mainland."
Or you pilfer Dessendre Manor, the ever-present entrances of which are scattered all over the Continent. He's not sure if he's ready to share the existence of that just yet, though. Maybe ever. Besides, it's not like the doors open for him anymore, anyway.
"Then the training courtyard. Monoco also fancies himself the world's greatest warrior."
She smiles to herself. Kharbranth's library is, undeniably, a crown jewel. Not merely of the Vorin nations, but of all Roshar. A pity, then, that it belongs to King Taravangian and his city-nation. Alethkar has never cared much for grand repositories of knowledge; it prefers its power displayed in armies and banners. In Kholinar, she would have found the shelves wanting if not for the simple fact of her birth. A princess's access. Spoiled, in some respects. Ruined, in others.
...Kholinar. It stings, a little, that she cannot show Verso the city that ought to be the seat of Kholin power. The Windblades rising like titanic ribs from the earth. The red-white-orange strata cutting the skyline into impossible geometry. The roar of the Impossible Falls. The measured quiet of Sunmaker Park. The last time she walked those streets, she was the king's elder sister. If the city is reclaimed — when it is — she will return as its queen.
Verso is still talking, outlining what Monoco might enjoy. Jasnah realizes she's been listening only in fragments, her thoughts orbiting all the places she cannot offer him. A small shake of her head banishes the spiral, and she gathers herself back into the present.
(She is woefully unused to her mind behaving so...fuzzy.)
"Is that so?" She murmurs with dry amusement. "The competition in our dueling lists is quite fierce."
Conversation ebbs and flows after that. She finishes her pastry with dutiful precision. Time stretches. Fatigue creeps in despite herself, answers coming slower, questions trailing off. Eventually, exhaustion claims her, and she slips back into a shallow doze. An irony not lost on her that a gut wound should succeed where insomnia so often ruled.
Verso is left to his own devices until Jochi ascends from the bakery below. He carries a basket braced against one hip, filled with small meat pies and fresh bread. Under his other arm, a bundle of folded clothing, indistinct for the moment. If Verso is still bare-chested, Jochi finally grants him the appreciative glance he didn't get from Jasnah. Unabashed, approving, punctuated with a low chuckle. However, if the shirt has been dried and donned, Jochi merely sets the basket down and asks fondly after his sister-scholar:
"How's our wounded chicken? Just as spitting mad as usual?"
Verso, tragically dressed now (albeit in a still slightly damp shirt) and therefore unable to receive the ogling he was deprived of earlier, glances up from the table where he's still idly sketching on the card backs. Furrowing his brow, he asks, "Chicken?"
For a moment, he has no idea who Jochi could be referring to, because obviously no one would ever call Jasnah a chicken. Not if they valued their life. But Jochi does, and Verso supposes this is just the sort of thing that a decade-long friendship allows you. Monoco and Esquie can call him plenty of things that most people wouldn't dare. Verver, for one.
"She's still breathing," he says with a shrug, glancing over at Jasnah sleeping on the divan. With a conceding cant of his head, he adds, "...And she's alert enough to ask questions."
Jochi sets the basket on the counter. Careful and persnickity, he empties its contents in a tidy row. A few smallish pies, a loaf of bread, a wedge of sow-milk cheese. A bottle of something dark and amber, waggled with a cheery hum. The older man has a marvelous propensity to be both jovial and serious all at once. Like someone took a wizened old teacher and stuffed him into a humble baker. Duality at its finest.
"Good, good." He answers, dusting off his apron with a swat before hanging it by the door. "Can't have her expiring in my apartments. Don't fancy explaining that to the Blackthorn, har har har. Although I've always said Jasnah herself is the scarier one."
He blithely prattles on about things he simply expects Verso to know. As if it's inconcievable that someone travelling this closely with Jasnah Kholin wouldn't know that the Blackthorn is her uncle, albeit by an outdated title.
But at least he prattles quietly once he realizes his friend is asleep. However, walking near enough to realize she's asleep means he also notices her missing glove. A quiet, disapproving grumble. Speaking around the topic, he tosses a roughspun blanket at Verso and suggests he should cover her up so she doesn't get cold. He's a sharp man beneath his friendly persona, so he understands the need to dispense with decorum, but he also clearly has a bit of a protective streak that feels a bit...well, silly.
God, what the fuck is this guy talking about. Verso stares with a glassy-eyed sort of look until Jochi moves on to a more understandable topic: the not-so-subtle implication that he should cover Jasnah's hand. Honestly, he'd forgotten about it as the glove dried and she'd slept. He'd been so focused on the cards that he'd only spared a few glances over her way, instead using the soft sound of her breathing as his indication for how she was doing.
Obediently, he sets his pencil down and stands over Jasnah, covering her with the blanket as gently as he can manage so as not to wake her. While he doesn't know much about the process of healing for a person who isn't as immortally gifted as he is, he does know that rest is an important part of it.
"It's Verso," he says congenially, carefully arranging the blanket so that it covers her from toe to shoulder, hand hidden underneath the fabric. "Sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances." Like as a customer at his pastry shop, for one.
Jochi squints at him for a long, appraising moment once the name is offered. Not suspicion, exactly. More the look of a man rifling through an already overstuffed mental cabinet, deciding which drawer a name like that belongs in. Weighing its sounds. Its edges. Probably wondering what corner of Roshar it might have wandered in from.
"Verso," he repeats, rolling it once on his tongue. "Huh."
A grunt follows. Approval, or something close enough to count.
"No," he says more quietly, "The circumstances aren't ideal." His gaze flicks, briefly, toward where Jasnah lies sleeping, and something in his expression softens, goes tight at the edges. "And I'd rather this weren't how I finally met her face to face."
He steps closer and offers a hand, solid and floury. "Jochi," he introduces himself in turn. It isn't his legal name, of course, but since Verso arrived in Jasnah Kholin's wake, he'll get the baker's nom de plume.
Afterward, Jochi's attention drifts back to the counter. He reaches for a dark, amber-filled bottle from the basket, works the cork loose with a practiced twist, and frees it with a soft, satisfied pop He inhales once, approving, then sets the bottle aside within easy reach. He lifts a second and offers it to Verso.
"Storms. I'm far too old to host a political incident."
Grumble, grumble, grumble.
Then, noticing the spanreed that isn't blinking and therefore has no message waiting: "...Didn't get hold of her mother, did she?"
No one had mentioned Navani when Verso had found him earlier to ask for a spanreed. Jasnah hadn't even mentioned her to Verso. But Jochi correctly assumes Jasnah's target audience all the same.
"Mother?" he asks, and it's obvious in the way his eyebrows raise that he had no idea that Jasnah's mother was who they were trying to contact. Admittedly, he hadn't thought about it too deeply. Contacting Urithiru, she'd said; he'd assumed that meant some sort of staff or advisor. Someone whose job it is to sit around and do nothing all day but wait at her beck and call, maybe.
Mother, though, he hadn't even considered.
Reluctant to make it even more blatant, he schools his expression back to neutrality as he returns to the table. "No, uh, nothing back." He worries his lip. "Is that bad?"
Hmm. Jochi slips into what must be a habit — a quick, intentional weighing of the possibilities.
"Tough to know. Could be there's trouble in Urithiru too. Most likely, Nosy Navani hasn't found all of her daughter's spanreeds, and doesn't even know there's a message actually meant for her."
He shrugs. Clearly, Jochi has a loose relationship with respect for monarchical authority. At least, it's not like the Kholins are his royal family. As for the topic at hand...? It's not a great plan. But he'd been able to understand Jasnah's thinking the moment Verso had come down to the kitchens asking for that particular spanreed. He'd been on the receiving end of one too many of Navani's failed attempts to glean information from Jasnah's spanreed network before; it made perfect sense that the daughter might use the mother's meddling to her advantage. But it was always going to be a gamble.
—Oh. Verso realizes, suddenly, that he's alone (sort of) with someone who has a decade's worth of experience on him when it comes to Jasnah. Who knows things about her he could only guess at. He has a unique opportunity here, if only he plays his cards right.
He pulls out his pencil again, thickening a line here and there as he says, very casual, "'Nosy Navani'?"
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no subject
Verso works in silence for a few minutes, figuring that although she'd asked him to stay, it doesn't mean she has any interest in hearing him talk. She's probably tired. Half-conscious, still. Not enough blood flowing to her brain to tolerate whatever he has to say.
He does, however, eventually say, "There's a physician a few streets over. You should let him take a look at you."
Should, because he somehow doubts that she will.
no subject
But eventually the angle of her neck starts to bother her. And with a grumble, she tilts her head in the opposite side as if trying to stretch out a knot. At the same time, she raises her left hand to press into a muscle just there, her posture clearly unaccustomed to half-lying and half-sitting. This motion only serves to remind her that her safehand glove is still caked with dried blood. It crusts and crumbles, and Jasnah sucks in a disgusted breath through her teeth.
So, that's why she's carefully working the glove off her hand when Verso mentions the surgeon. She glances back over at the same time as she's flexing her bare fingers. Remarkably clean, thanks to the glove — which she's laid crumpled in her lap for the time being.
"No," is her plain and simple answer. "If things take a turn for the worse? Maybe, yes. But if someone wants to finish the job, they'll be watching clinics closely."
no subject
The surgeon could make a house call for a queen, he's sure, but that would involve admitting that she's a queen—which is another thing he's sure she won't be willing to do. He tables it for now; if she gets worse, she won't have the option to avoid the doctor, because he'll drag her there willingly or not.
There's another pause, silent save for the scribbling of his pencil. Then:
"Want me to wash your glove?" He needs to do his shirt, anyway.
no subject
She supposes it would have been bloody for Elhokar. No one had wanted to tell her, of course, but she had eventually tracked down a witness statement from one of the Bridge Four Windrunners: the traitor Moash has stabbed a spear through the young king's chest once, and then repeatedly through an eye.
She turns her hands around, comparing the dirt on and under her right hand's fingernails to the relative pristine state of her left.
"—Hm?" Verso had asked her something. She waits a second, hoping an echoic memory might fill in the detail. Oh. "Yes. I'd appreciate it."
What a strange paradox it is! To feel a mild jolt of fascination — even at a time like this — because of how mundanely he treats being in the room with her ungloved safehand. Like, his boredom with the idea is half the appeal. Or maybe that's the blood loss talking.
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He notes the streaks of blood crusting on her skin, so when he heads into the kitchen area to use the sink—provided that sinks exist in Stormlight?? Help—he first wets a cloth and brings it back to her, holding it out.
"Here," he says, handing it to her. "To wash off with."
He absconds to the little kitchenette after that, soaking her glove and his shirt together. He could go back to the sitting room, but sitting casually shirtless near Jasnah while she doesn't even care to look seems like an ego blow that he's not prepared to handle at the moment. She could look now if she really wanted to, if she craned her neck just the right way, but he doesn't have to glance over to know that she isn't. After all, she'd seemed shockingly uninterested in his bathing.
"Jochi has a"—magic pen—"spanreed to contact you," he calls after a moment, thoughtful. Not only is he literate, but he converses with the queen. "He's a friend of yours?"
no subject
"A friend?" she echoes, tone dry as she works through how to answer. "Something like it."
She shifts, just enough to brace herself against the back of the divan as she cleans the last of the blood from the inside of her right wrist. Her breaths are shallower now — but controlled. Deliberate. The discipline of someone who refuses to let her own body see her falter, even as it screams for her to slow down even now.
"Jochi is..." She pauses, searching for a word that doesn't imply weakness or affection. The word Veristitalian shouldn't mean anything to Verso, so she avoids it entirely. "A respected colleague. We wrote under the same master."
Another pass of the cloth down her forearm.
"He and I have exchanged arguments for a decade. Philosophy, political theory. He's corrected me when I deserved it. In return, I kept his secret that my sister-scholar was not a sister at all."
A beat. A soft decline of her gaze to the blood on the cloth. Jochi deserves better than being hauled into this mess. Arguably, inviting even Verso into the truth is a step too far.
Of course, what she describes is exactly, precisely, entirely a friend.
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"You mean you're pen pals."
She might try to dress it up academically, but he knows a friendship when he sees one. No one keeps up a purely scholarly correspondence for a decade. Even Jasnah.
"I get it." He rubs harder at the stain. "He's your Monoco." No elaboration there.
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She's on the verge of clarifying that she and Jochi were only pen-pals — a term she's picked up by deduction, thank you — and that this morning is the first time they've formally met. Not counting those handful of diplomatic visits where she wandered in anonymously to buy bread and assess the man behind the essays. That's why the code phrase had been needed.
But then Verso uses a word she cannot place. She recognizes fragments of his language by now — the soft mon that appears in several of his idioms. But this one feels different. A new configuration. It piques her interest and arouses her curiosity.
"What was that?" She asks, twisting her torso with a faint, pained gasp as she tries to see him in the kitchenette. "Mono—"
The sentence collapses entirely when she realizes he is shirtless.
Her brain stutters. It takes several seconds for her to assemble a reasonable explanation — washing, of course, obviously he's washing his shirt, she'd noticed the blood stains — but in the meantime she is trapped between her upbringing and her intellect. Jasnah Kholin, who once lectured an ardent on the absurdity of modesty codes, now finds herself experiencing an involuntary heat of embarrassment simply because she was not prepared to see those codes utterly violated. As enlightened as she is, she can't quite escape how she's been socialized — to treat a sight like this as a minor scandal.
To look away would acknowledge the reaction. To stare openly would be ridiculous. So she takes the third option: she fixes her gaze on his face with near-heroic determination, jaw set, as though this is all perfectly ordinary and she is definitely not having complicated thoughts about propriety, boundaries, or social norms.
"Monoco," she repeats, controlled, composed, absolutely unwilling to blink first.
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Even if she had looked away, it would have meant that she, on some level, felt that there was something exciting—if inappropriate—to look at. If she had stared, well, obviously that would have been flattering. Her choice to treat it as if there's nothing out of the ordinary at all, though, is... disappointing. He wants her to want to look, perhaps foolishly, but it's like he might as well not exist below the neck at all.
He turns his back to her, taking out his disappointment on his poor shirt. Scrub, scrub, scrub.
"Monoco. He's my oldest friend."
Scrub, scrub, scrubscrubscrub.
"He's a gestral."
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She inhales sharply and her safehand instinctively presses to her ribs. The motion draws her forward, half-folded, before she can stop herself. None of this is out of interest, she tells herself. Not because the line of his spine is a curious study in hard work, bent over his task. It's all simply because she needs to shift her posture to manage the pain.
The faintest warmth touches her cheeks. Infuriating. Shame and self-doubt.
"Verso." Her voice is calm, but lower than she intends. “Your oldest friend is...a gestral."
She swallows, hissing through another stab of pain as she sits up once more and lets her head fall back onto the divan. No more looking for her, thanks.
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Give or take a few visits back to Lumière. Those hardly count. Those initial visits back had been filled with suspicion, and after that he'd stopped speaking to anyone at all when he returned. In those later visits, he'd just spent all of his time watching this strange Alicia-but-not-Alicia with her foster brother. Maelle, he'd once heard the man call her, voice tinged with fond exasperation. He'd felt horribly jealous in that moment. Once upon a time, he used to talk to Alicia in that tone, too.
But none of that is worth mentioning. Jasnah wouldn't—couldn't—understand. Instead, he focuses on Monoco as he flattens her glove out against the counter to dry.
"And gestrals are immortal, technically." He'd told her before how they couldn't die, not permanently. A quick dip in the Sacred River, and they'd be born again as a patate. A baby gestral.
His point being: of course his oldest friend is a gestral. Every human that could have filled that position is dead.
"But you're right," he says, although she didn't really make a point. "Gestrals can be very annoying."
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Spren are annoying, too. Even Ivory has his moments.
The cushion of the divan dips as she shimmies lower — just out of sight — as if physically putting the wing-back corner of the furniture between her eyeline and him is ample interference enough. Her two choices are to wallow in premeditated grief for Ivory or fixate on why he's still over there without a shirt.
(Because it's still wet, Jasnah.)
"Is — Monoco, um, annoying?"
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"Oh, extremely," he says good-naturedly, almost like it's a compliment. Sometimes, Monoco makes him roll his eyes so hard that he wonders if this will be the time that his face gets stuck like that. "But he's still less annoying than most gestrals."
Although that's a bit like being the tallest dwarf. Again, said with deep affection! Despite everything, Verso loves the gestrals. Even though Verso—at least this version of Verso—technically had nothing to do with their creation, there's a near-familial feeling in his chest when he thinks of them. Like that irritating cousin you can't help but adore anyway.
Swinging his legs impatiently: "You know, I taught Monoco to speak human language." He taught Monoco to do a lot of things, but he's quite proud of that one. The only gestral who doesn't speak in weird Minion-esque gobbledygook. "I guess that you could consider me a professor, too."
It's stolen valor, maybe.
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So she sinks lower, cushioning her head and trying to find a way to lay that doesn't involve a hand hanging over the couch, or an arm crossed over her wound, or an elbow crooked behind her neck. Unusually fidgety, but her fidgeting is committed out of sight.
"Students usually find that total immersion is the quickest route to fluency."
Okay, so she's picking a fight anyway. Implying outright that if he simply spoke exclusively in one language to this Monoco, the language-learning likely came naturally.
"You miss him, don't you."
Not a question. Although Verso has made it abundantly clear that he's uninterested in returning home, she can't imagine it's easy to leave behind your oldest friend. If this feels like an unusual burst of articulated empathy, that's because it is. She's got Ivory on the mind, and it's making her a little vulnerable. And Jasnah's vulnerability always punches outward.
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You've grown soft, Monoco would say, pretending to disapprove. In actuality, he'd be glowing with happiness but too embarrassed to let it show. He and Verso have that in common. Maybe all these years with Verso have rubbed off on him.
"He'd be fascinated by this place." There's so much Verso wishes he could tell him, show him. Experience with him. He wants to know what Monoco would have to say about Urithiru, about Rosharan culture. He already knows what Monoco would say about Jasnah. A little scolding you're getting attached again, to which Verso would argue this time is different. "And he'd love meeting all the humans that aren't going to—"
Die, probably within the next few days, weeks, or months. But he's trying to keep the conversation lighthearted here, something to distract Jasnah from her pain, so he stops just short of saying so.
"Well, he'd love it."
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It's...refreshing. The honesty, brief as it is. Unvarnished. She finds she likes it more than his reassurance.
Her gaze drifts upward to the ceiling. Sorta-kinda toward where his voice is coming from. A pale replacement for looking at him, since she's still hiding behind the divan's backboard. She wants to see his eyes when he speaks like this. The set of his mouth. The way he navigates sincerity without spectacle. But instead of acting on that desire, her body remains stubbornly anchored to the divan, pain keeping her folded inward, half out of sight. Still, the intent is there, quiet and private.
"You've seen more of Roshar than most people born to it," she says at last. The words are mild, but there's a note beneath them. Curiosity and appetite. "Urithiru. The Shattered Plains. Kharbranth. This city, if barely."
A pause. Calculated, but surprisingly gentle.
"Where would you show him first?”
Not what do you like. Not what matters to you. She's learned, already, that people often answer more freely when the question is displaced. Her fingers tighten slightly in the damp cloth, now cooled. Her knuckles pale. She waits for something earnest. Something unguarded.
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Which is why he's Verso's favorite. Not only is he a goofy little roughhouser, but he also enjoys art and philosophy. Of course, it's no wonder. He was created to be the perfect companion for a pretentious little boy.
"But," he continues, "it's difficult to get any real literature on the Continent. Not unless it gets brought over from the mainland."
Or you pilfer Dessendre Manor, the ever-present entrances of which are scattered all over the Continent. He's not sure if he's ready to share the existence of that just yet, though. Maybe ever. Besides, it's not like the doors open for him anymore, anyway.
"Then the training courtyard. Monoco also fancies himself the world's greatest warrior."
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...Kholinar. It stings, a little, that she cannot show Verso the city that ought to be the seat of Kholin power. The Windblades rising like titanic ribs from the earth. The red-white-orange strata cutting the skyline into impossible geometry. The roar of the Impossible Falls. The measured quiet of Sunmaker Park. The last time she walked those streets, she was the king's elder sister. If the city is reclaimed — when it is — she will return as its queen.
Verso is still talking, outlining what Monoco might enjoy. Jasnah realizes she's been listening only in fragments, her thoughts orbiting all the places she cannot offer him. A small shake of her head banishes the spiral, and she gathers herself back into the present.
(She is woefully unused to her mind behaving so...fuzzy.)
"Is that so?" She murmurs with dry amusement. "The competition in our dueling lists is quite fierce."
Conversation ebbs and flows after that. She finishes her pastry with dutiful precision. Time stretches. Fatigue creeps in despite herself, answers coming slower, questions trailing off. Eventually, exhaustion claims her, and she slips back into a shallow doze. An irony not lost on her that a gut wound should succeed where insomnia so often ruled.
Verso is left to his own devices until Jochi ascends from the bakery below. He carries a basket braced against one hip, filled with small meat pies and fresh bread. Under his other arm, a bundle of folded clothing, indistinct for the moment. If Verso is still bare-chested, Jochi finally grants him the appreciative glance he didn't get from Jasnah. Unabashed, approving, punctuated with a low chuckle. However, if the shirt has been dried and donned, Jochi merely sets the basket down and asks fondly after his sister-scholar:
"How's our wounded chicken? Just as spitting mad as usual?"
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For a moment, he has no idea who Jochi could be referring to, because obviously no one would ever call Jasnah a chicken. Not if they valued their life. But Jochi does, and Verso supposes this is just the sort of thing that a decade-long friendship allows you. Monoco and Esquie can call him plenty of things that most people wouldn't dare. Verver, for one.
"She's still breathing," he says with a shrug, glancing over at Jasnah sleeping on the divan. With a conceding cant of his head, he adds, "...And she's alert enough to ask questions."
So she can't be doing too badly.
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"Good, good." He answers, dusting off his apron with a swat before hanging it by the door. "Can't have her expiring in my apartments. Don't fancy explaining that to the Blackthorn, har har har. Although I've always said Jasnah herself is the scarier one."
He blithely prattles on about things he simply expects Verso to know. As if it's inconcievable that someone travelling this closely with Jasnah Kholin wouldn't know that the Blackthorn is her uncle, albeit by an outdated title.
But at least he prattles quietly once he realizes his friend is asleep. However, walking near enough to realize she's asleep means he also notices her missing glove. A quiet, disapproving grumble. Speaking around the topic, he tosses a roughspun blanket at Verso and suggests he should cover her up so she doesn't get cold. He's a sharp man beneath his friendly persona, so he understands the need to dispense with decorum, but he also clearly has a bit of a protective streak that feels a bit...well, silly.
"What's your name, son?" He gruffs and grouses.
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Obediently, he sets his pencil down and stands over Jasnah, covering her with the blanket as gently as he can manage so as not to wake her. While he doesn't know much about the process of healing for a person who isn't as immortally gifted as he is, he does know that rest is an important part of it.
"It's Verso," he says congenially, carefully arranging the blanket so that it covers her from toe to shoulder, hand hidden underneath the fabric. "Sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances." Like as a customer at his pastry shop, for one.
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"Verso," he repeats, rolling it once on his tongue. "Huh."
A grunt follows. Approval, or something close enough to count.
"No," he says more quietly, "The circumstances aren't ideal." His gaze flicks, briefly, toward where Jasnah lies sleeping, and something in his expression softens, goes tight at the edges. "And I'd rather this weren't how I finally met her face to face."
He steps closer and offers a hand, solid and floury. "Jochi," he introduces himself in turn. It isn't his legal name, of course, but since Verso arrived in Jasnah Kholin's wake, he'll get the baker's nom de plume.
Afterward, Jochi's attention drifts back to the counter. He reaches for a dark, amber-filled bottle from the basket, works the cork loose with a practiced twist, and frees it with a soft, satisfied pop He inhales once, approving, then sets the bottle aside within easy reach. He lifts a second and offers it to Verso.
"Storms. I'm far too old to host a political incident."
Grumble, grumble, grumble.
Then, noticing the spanreed that isn't blinking and therefore has no message waiting: "...Didn't get hold of her mother, did she?"
No one had mentioned Navani when Verso had found him earlier to ask for a spanreed. Jasnah hadn't even mentioned her to Verso. But Jochi correctly assumes Jasnah's target audience all the same.
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Mother, though, he hadn't even considered.
Reluctant to make it even more blatant, he schools his expression back to neutrality as he returns to the table. "No, uh, nothing back." He worries his lip. "Is that bad?"
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Hmm. Jochi slips into what must be a habit — a quick, intentional weighing of the possibilities.
"Tough to know. Could be there's trouble in Urithiru too. Most likely, Nosy Navani hasn't found all of her daughter's spanreeds, and doesn't even know there's a message actually meant for her."
He shrugs. Clearly, Jochi has a loose relationship with respect for monarchical authority. At least, it's not like the Kholins are his royal family. As for the topic at hand...? It's not a great plan. But he'd been able to understand Jasnah's thinking the moment Verso had come down to the kitchens asking for that particular spanreed. He'd been on the receiving end of one too many of Navani's failed attempts to glean information from Jasnah's spanreed network before; it made perfect sense that the daughter might use the mother's meddling to her advantage. But it was always going to be a gamble.
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He pulls out his pencil again, thickening a line here and there as he says, very casual, "'Nosy Navani'?"
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slides back in here
the fun never stops!!
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congrats on receiving my 1,000th comment in this post
throwing a party!!
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