recreatable | open post.

"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?"

"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'?"

(Sort of) alone — but easily enough to say the acoustics and layout of the flat is conducive enough to a discreet conversation between two newly introduced strangers.

Jochi takes a swig of whatever ~~wine~~ale he's drinking. Ultimately, his energy is that of your high school friend's gruff awkward dad who's really into WWI history. Rough around the edges, but disastrously nerdy. A tough thing to be in a society that would prefer its men weren't nerds at all.

"Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean any disrespect to the Kholin matriarch. Especially not in front of one of you Cobalt Guard stiffs." So Jochi is simply running with that assumption? Cool. "Jasnah's mother used to sniff around her spanreeds from time to time. You could always tell. Different handwriting. Missing passcodes."

Cobalt Guard. Sure. Whatever Jochi wants to think. Verso still hasn't figured out how Jasnah wants him to play this, and he's reluctant to assume. Seems like she wouldn't take well to him making an ass out of him and her.

His brow furrows at the information. Weird. Aline could be overbearing, but not 'reading his correspondence' overbearing. Exacting standards, yes, a few disapprovals of girlfriends here and there, but never snooping around in his letters. Maybe, though, that was because she knew that there was no part of him that was hidden from her. Not a thought in his head that hadn't sprung from hers first.

"Why would she do that?"

Jochi squints at him. Not unkindly. More with the faint irritation of a nearly septuagenarian who has, for a moment, forgotten that not everyone in the world was already an adult when certain rumours first caught fire.

Back then, they'd been everywhere on the more salacious spanreed networks. Whispers and lurid speculation about Gavilar Kholin's daughter, passed pen to pen with unseemly delight. Outside Alethkar — and, storms, even within it — people had wanted the new conquering king to fall. His daughter's supposed lunacy had been framed as a convenient fracture in his political armor.

Jochi exhales through his nose.

"I reckon she was worried about her," he says at last.

By the time he and Jasnah began corresponding, those rumors had long since burned themselves out, replaced by darker, more immediate ones — this time orbiting the king's brother. But privately? Jochi only knows what he knows because he's good at assembling fragments. Because he listens. Because he reads between lines that were never meant to be explicit. It's not as though he and Jasnah ever spoke of it outright. But he's a Veristitalian, same as her.

"She only ever asked who I was. She wanted to be sure," he adds, quieter now, "that her daughter was exchanging messages with real people."

A pause.

"And not ones she'd invented."

Jochi draws quieter, and Verso's pencil stops its movement so that he can turn his gaze on the man imparting this secret information. Information that, if Jochi's tone is any indication, Jasnah wouldn't want him to know. Of course she wouldn't—he already knows everything about her that she wants him to know. She's made it that way on purpose.

He feels a little pang of guilt for prying, but it isn't strong enough to make him stop.

"What do you mean, 'invented'?"

Jochi exhales, long and slow. He occupies his hands with the bottle for a moment, fussing with the cork, setting it aside, pouring a modest measure into a chipped cup he never offers. A habit. A stall. Incorrigible, really; even among academics, the instinct to contextualize outweighs discretion. Besides, none of this is truly secret. It's all there in old broadsheets and archived speculation, if one knows where to look. Silence doesn't erase ink.

He answers without looking at Verso.

"I mean exactly that," he says. "People who weren't there. Conversations that never happened. Things only she saw or heard." His mouth quirks, not unkindly. "There were nasty stories when she was a child. I assumed it was political crem-slinging. Everyone wanted leverage against Gavilar Kholin. The talk eventually died down, as it always does."

He pauses, then continues more carefully. "By the time Jasnah and I began writing, she was...well. Herself. Sharp. Grounded. If she'd ever been unwell, it was long past. But her mother never stopped worrying. When Navani reached out, asking me to confirm who I was, I realized she was still checking the edges. Making sure the world on the other side of her daughter's words was real."

Only then does Jochi glance toward Jasnah, sleeping fitfully on the divan. Something tightens in his expression.

"I suppose," he says quietly, "that means some part of those old rumors must have been true enough to make her mother's fear linger."

He doesn't know how to react.

Jasnah had mentioned being sick, but he'd assumed— well, that's the problem, isn't it? He'd assumed. And then, dieu, he'd brought up Alicia and all of her burns, likened it to what she'd been through. Jasnah didn't correct his inaccurate assumption, either, which means he must have made her feel too embarrassed to share the truth with him.

Perhaps unfairly, he has a sudden flash of her saying how she detests prevarication.

"Oh," he finally says. "Well, you know how rumors are. Probably exaggerated."

He clears his throat, that little flash of guilt he'd felt for prying turning in to a much bigger flash of guilt. "Is there somewhere to get dinner around here? I'll bring something back for when she wakes up."

Jochi lets the silence sit for a moment after Verso speaks. Not pointed; just...considered. He corks the bottle again with a soft, practiced press of his thumb. Rumours, Jochi thinks but doesn't say. Maybe exaggerated. Certainly misused. And very convenient when someone wants to explain away a girl who doesn't behave as expected. He'd never ask Jasnah outright, but in the aftermath of the Radiant Orders refounding...? He can't help but wonder about the root of those original rumours. He glances at the divan, where Jasnah sleeps, smaller now than her reputation has ever been.

Practical again: "There's a Herdazian stew place two streets over. Hearty. Salty. But the real draw is their chouta. As for the lentil one. Easy on the stomach."

He looks like he's about to say something else — the words are weighed, measured, found insufficient. So, after a shake of his head and a mouthful from his chipped cup, the old baker says: "Go. I'll keep an eye on her. I've got time before the next rush."

Ugh. It feels as if he knows something he isn't supposed to. How does he even begin to broach this subject? Maybe he shouldn't at all. Jasnah won't like that he's learned something about her against her will. And—

One thing at a time. Herdazian stew. Sure. Verso heads to the shop, asks for chowder, and spends five minutes arguing with the man at the counter before they finally realize that it's chouta he's searching for. How was he to know? Jochi had said stew! Regardless, he returns with two handfuls of substantial flatbread filled with lentils and gravy, setting them on the table when he walks in.

"Hey," he says with a couple taps on Jasnah's shoulder to rouse her. Then, gesturing for Jochi to come closer: "We should probably get her upright."

Jochi looks up from the crate he's half-emptied, three books already stacked beside him like contraband treasures. He wears the faintly manic glow of a scholar who has at last discovered a captive audience and fully intends to abuse the privilege. There is a palpable delight in the idea that Jasnah might be confined to his apartments for days. Forced, at long last, to read the works he's needled her about for years.

At Verso's words, he pauses. Sighs. Long-suffering, indulgent.

"Yes, yes. Eating. Breathing. Tedious biological necessities," he mutters, sliding the last book back into its hiding place with visible reluctance. He shuffles over, rolling his shoulders like someone preparing to hoist a sack of flour.

Jasnah — who has been sleeping with the depth of the truly exhausted — stirs at Verso's touch.

It isn't dramatic. No sharp inhale, no startled flinch. Just a low, disgruntled sound in her throat, followed by a faint crease between her brows as consciousness trudges back in, clearly uninvited. Her hair has slipped free of whatever careful order it once held before the attack; dark strands cling to her temple, her cheek. She blinks once. Twice. Her gaze is unfocused, dulled by pain and the heavy drag of having been pulled back.

Then she sees Verso.

For a fraction of a second, something in her expression eases. Not relief, exactly. Recognition. Something known and familiar. Her mouth softens, the ghost of a smile threatening before habit reins it in.

"Hrm," she murmurs instead, voice rough, more vibration than word. "How long did you let me sleep?"

How long was I gone this time?

Jochi snorts as he and Verso help her sit up in earnest. He's horribly fond, even as he needles her. "Awake and complaining already. What a storming joy you are, Jasnah Kholin. You're much nicer over a spanreed, you know. After this fellow's done nothing but look after you..."

As she's brought upright, a quiet, involuntary hiss escapes her. Her left hand drifts instinctive and disobedient toward her abdomen before she stills it with a tightening of her jaw. The hand remains bare. Jochi notices. Of course he does. His mouth twitches; his eyes flick briefly to the exposed hand, then away again, a faint crease of disapproval settling between his brows. He says nothing. But he clocks it, the way one does an unfastened door or a dropped guard.

Jasnah, for her part, has decided not to care. Or, more precisely, she does not have the surplus attention required to care. Verso has made no fuss about her safehand, and so she denies it its power.

Her gaze shifts instead to the table. Flatbread. Steam. The warm, grounding smell of lentils. She exhales through her nose, eyes closing for a heartbeat longer than necessary. When they open again, she looks human.

Exhausted. Frayed. Present.

Still very much alive.

Verso's gaze lingers for half a second longer than is necessary. He likes seeing her unwound and unraveled, more than he should. She looks less intimidating—but not unintimidating—this way, softer and more human. She looks like somebody he could reach out and touch. He doesn't, instead choosing to bring her chouta over to the end table and set her up the way he'd done earlier. A wordless, thoughtless favor.

"A few hours, maybe," he answers, since Jochi has been so unhelpful. Corner of his mouth trending up, just slightly: "You were almost about to set a new record." For 'hours slept'; he knows now that even when she sleeps, it's rarely a full night. They have so much in common!

And, since he's sure she'll want to know sooner or later, he adds, "Nothing on your magic pen yet." 'Magic pen', just because he knows it'll piss her off. He knows what it's called now.

Magic pen? Jochi mouths from somewhere behind Verso, eyebrows arched in scandalized disbelief. Jasnah ignores him entirely, gaze fixed on Verso as she calmly reasserts: "Not magic. Fabrial technology."

Hook, line, sinker. Her brow creases with a flicker of irritation as she rises to his bait.

But then she moves on, adjusting her posture with a muted grunt and edging herself closer to the front of the divan. A careful accounting of pain and leverage. Her eyes track to the chouta in assessment. She starts by tearing off a piece of flatbread soaked in sauce, quietly pleased to find it spiced and savoury.

Behind them, Jochi clears his throat. He produces a jug of water from the kitchenette, sets it within reach, and offers a shallow bow that lands somewhere between courtesy and comedy. Then he begins excusing himself — kitchens to clean, tills to count, apprentices to scold — already halfway gone before the list is finished.

Before he disappears entirely, he adds, "Fresh clothes are on the chair," and, as an afterthought that is absolutely not an afterthought, "And a copy of On the Epistemic Limits of Vorin Determinism if you get bored."

The door closes. The apartment settles.

When they are alone again, Jasnah picks up the loose threads of the conversation as if she never dropped them. "Maybe it's a good thing if we don't hear back. With any luck, the attack was isolated. Directed at me. Nothing that should ripple back to Urithiru." Her gaze drifts somewhere past Verso's shoulder, toward the city beyond the walls.

When she glances back, it's sidelong rather than direct.

"Not the most enjoyable way to spend a couple days in Thaylen City," she allows, starting to imagine the timeline of her recovery without stormlight to speed it. Her mouth draws into a tight line. Worry over Ivory flooding her all over again.

Verso shrugs. "I've had worse weekends." And he has; despite everything, Jasnah is still alive, and he's spending her time recuperating indoors with her rather than out in the wilderness, cold and uncomfortable. Yeah, he's definitely had worse weekends.

He makes his way back to the table so that he might eat his chouta, too. The lentils taste a little different than the Le Puy lentils he's used to, but not bad. A bit spicy, but not enough to upset the stomach. Jochi was right: a good meal for someone recovering from a wound.

"Jochi said you were sending a message to your mother," he ventures, carefully not mentioning that it's because Jochi said Navani might be reading her correspondences. "She'd probably be expecting you back, wouldn't she? Or at least to hear from you?"

Thoughtfully, Jasnah chews. Her appetite has finally found its way home and the first mouthful draws a small, needy grumble from her stomach. She has her mouth full when Verso asks about Navani, so it takes her a moment to finish chewing and swallow before she answers.

She does, however, send a sharp glance toward the stairway where Jochi disappeared back into the bakery. Hmm.

"It isn't unusual for me to take extended research trips to Kharbranth," she says at last. "Give it a few days and she'll begin to wonder. Once I'm...a bit steadier on my feet, we can approach the Merchant Council here in the city. Thaylenah is part of the Coalition of Monarchs. They're allies."

There is a pause, a subtle hitch in her cadence that betrays caution. She is not eager to move too quickly, too publicly. Not yet. She wants to be able to manage the stairs under her own strength before testing her luck further.

But, Jasnah knows, too long and her mother will worry. She has done this to her before. Vanished. Presumed dead. Left Navani to mourn.

Changing the subject — in a way she assumes is not at all conspicuous — she points a finger at the card deck sitting off to the side. "You've kept yourself busy."

It's conspicuous, because it's the same thing Verso does when he wants to avoid a subject. Wow, is it always that obvious when he does it? He can't believe no one ever called him out on it. Then again, he notes Jasnah doing it and says nothing, so maybe he's part of the problem.

He wants to pry further, wants to ask about her mother going through her private letters and the people she fears Jasnah would 'invent', but he doesn't. Can't. It's already obvious how that would end, and it isn't with Verso getting answers. So, he locks the knowledge away until a time at which it can actually be of use.

"Not much else to do here," he answers, shrugging. "Save for read On the Epistemic Limits of Vorin Determinism, and... I figured I should start with Vorin Determinism for Dummies first."

Another bite of chouta. She is, Jasnah notes with faint surprise, making remarkably short work of the meal. A good sign. Or perhaps she simply prefers this to the pastries from earlier. Much like with the stew aboard Torreth's ship, the evidence continues to mount that she is poorly equipped to notice, consider, or source her own meals, yet performs admirably when food is placed directly in front of her. Blind to hunger until it is solved for her. An inelegant system, but an effective one.

Even so, she does not quite finish the wrap. Not because she is full, exactly, but because something else more interesting steals her focus. She leaves it only half-eaten, brushes her fingers clean, and reaches for the deck of cards. She winces at the movement — sharp, localized pain — but it is not enough to deter her. She wants a closer look at the newer card backs.

While she inspects them, her attention lifts only briefly toward Verso.

"Do you need me," she asks lightly, "to define determinism for you?"

If the question offends him, then good. It is a deliberate pivot — a clean, decisive step away from discussing when, why, or how Navani might receive that spanreed message.

The question does offend him! Just lightly, but all the same. His eyebrow twitches, but his scoff is closer to affectionate exasperation than true upset.

"Didn't I tell you that I was the top of my class?" He did, to which she said that meant nothing without knowing the details of his classmates. Whatever. Hopefully she won't remember that. "I know what determinism is."

To prove it: "It's the belief that everything is fixed to happen a certain way." Which is probably very much a Determinism for Dummies description, but hey. He's a musician, not a philosopher. "It's the Vorin part I know less about."

She turns an ace over in her hands. The care in it is unmistakable. The patience in each line, the tiny deviations that only show themselves if you're looking for them. At first glance, they're identical. On closer inspection, each one carries its own small insistence on being different. She finds that...pleasing.

Her gaze flicks briefly toward the book Jochi left behind. "That one was supposedly written during the Hierocracy," she says, more conversational than professorial. "When the priesthood ruled everything worth knowing."

She taps the edge of the card against her thumb as she speaks. "They restricted scholarship. Claimed exclusive authority over scripture and prophecy. That's when all the fuss about masculine and feminine arts really calcified. Knowledge parceled out, roles assigned, and free will became a clerical inconvenience."

She turns to the next card, tracing one of the curlicues with her bare left finger. Deliberate, faintly defiant.

"That book argues against it. Or claims to. I suspect it's apocryphal, but the sentiment is sound: the idea that a life can be reduced to a prescribed outcome is intellectually lazy. Jochi wants to convinced me it's a foundational part of priesthood's undoing, but I suspect it wasn't actually published until well after."

Another small turn of the card. "The irony, of course, is that when the Hierocracy fell, the priesthood lost their freedom. No land. No property. Bound to light-eyed houses as advisors — slaves, really."

Yeah, he knew he should have stuck to Vorin Determinism for Dummies.

He does listen, though, because he enjoys when Jasnah starts going off on a lecture about something most people wouldn't even think about for more than a minute. There's not a lot he actually gleans from it, but that's because it's a lot of information to take in at once. He leaves with the faint idea of a Hierocracy, at least, and that being 'light-eyed' means something. Hm. He'll have to ask Jasnah about that one later.

For now, though, he just says, "You're really into this history stuff, huh?"

Unfortunately, he's way more interested in the person sitting in the room with him at present than anything that's happened in the past. It's not that he minds history, exactly, but when you've been a part of history for the better part of your life, it tends to lose a little bit of its luster.

"When did that start?" The history buff thing. Sorry, he's asking about her again instead of engaging with her in a philosophical discussion.

"Really into this history stuff?"

She echoes the phrasing back at him, a thin edge of strain riding it. Not anger — something closer to weary correction, softened by a trace of fondness she doesn't bother to hide. It occurs to her that he can't be faulted for the mistake. He arrived in a world where Jasnah Kholin already existed as a monarch, fully formed. He never saw the long stretch of years before that title settled on her shoulders.

"I'm a historian by profession, Verso," she corrects him, evenly. "I wasn't always a queen. And I was never meant to be one."

She turns one more card, then sets aside the whole deck. "When I came of age, I actually trained under a specific order of historians. That's how Jochi and I began corresponding."

Jasnah pauses for a moment, then, quieter. Precise.

"History came first."

"I hate to be pedantic," he says even though he doesn't, "but you didn't answer my question."

'History came first' is not an answer. Sure, 'before I became a queen' is a time period, but it's not a very specific one. Besides, he's not asking about when she picked up history as a profession; he's asking about when the passion started.

"Unless you came out of the womb citing history texts," he adds with a wry smile, because he wouldn't be surprised. "What made you interested in history in the first place?"

— She'd find his pedantry appealing if it wasn't currently and incisively directed at her. How tiresome, because she doesn't have the words to explain how sifting through the fact and fiction in historical texts and legends was a natural direction after doing the same within her mind. That there is a kind of control to be found in searching, finding, unraveling, and pinning down the things that are true.

Well. Maybe she has some words to explain it.

"One year, when our fathers were on campaign, my little brother and cousins made me read them this one story almost every night. I got so familiar with it. I figured...maybe some of its characters and events could be corroborated — it's about a king and a ship and a strange island. Sure enough, the king was a real king. But I could never find any evidence of a real ship. Or the strange island."

Elhokar and Adolin and Renarin had fallen upon their fixation with Wandersail shortly after Jasnah's illness. So much of her frustration and helplessness got sewn into that story and investigating its authenticity. Maybe if she could prove it was true, she could...

"Bit of a slippery slope from there."

Satisfied, Verso?

Edited 2025-12-14 15:06 (UTC)

Satisfied. At least for now. He enjoys learning these little tidbits about Jasnah, personal things that let him imagine a young, perhaps more wide-eyed version of her, struck with the desire to make something in a favored story true. It's an almost childlike thing, the hope there, the belief that something amazing could really have happened.

"Yeah," he says with a nod, "I always wanted the stuff in the stories I read to be real, too."

The person who actually made those memories did, anyway. Verso had been made without the knowledge of the Canvas, had to be brutally informed of it, but he wonders if that's how it first came to be: a little boy's desire to live in his stories. "You'll have to lend me the book when we return."

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slides back in here

the fun never stops!!

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