He picks a garnet mark. And Jasnah, unable to help herself, nods in silent approval. How awkward it would have been had he selected a broam and she had to tell him he was carrying a small fortune just to buy some clothing. Of course, it's really Jasnah's fault for having broams in the first place. Royals, eh.
"You're likely right," she concedes. A base-ten system does hold more appeal. Of course it does — for the most part, Roshar does everything in tens. And she also imagines Francs don't have to be left out in a highstorm to be reinfused with stormlight after they inevitably leak it all out and go dun. Dun spheres are still good for currency, of course, but they're also easier to counterfeit. Most merchants require infused ones. Luckily, these are.
"The worth of a sphere is judged on two axes. First, the size of the gem inside." Self-explanatory. "Second, the kind of gem. Because each gem powers a different kind of soulcasting. Emeralds can create grain, and are therefore the most precious. Diamonds, like that clearmark you've got in your hand, are least valuable as they're used in the creation of crystal."
"That seems a little backwards," he says with a wrinkle of his nose, although he does set the diamond back in the pouch. If emeralds are the best, then he'd best not choose that one. A blue one, maybe. Will two spheres be enough? Although he has some idea of how they compare to each other, he doesn't fully understand the purchasing power.
Instead of asking, he just sets the two spheres he's chosen to the side, waiting for Jasnah to look approving or disapproving.
"Isn't crystal more valuable than grain?" Also, how the fuck do emeralds create grain.
"An army marches on its stomach," Jasnah offers. "And you can't feed your soldiers glass."
In most of Roshar, arable farm land is at a premium. Growing any kind of food is laborious. And that's without even factoring in the highstorms. So a great deal of food must be soulcast. That is, an ardent with a soulcasting fabrial — a small device worn on the hand and set with gems — uses that fabrial to change one material into another. The cost is high: gems break over time and, alarmingly, there are terrible side-effects for the soulcaster themselves.
Ah, soulcasting! That word might seem familiar. It is indeed similar-but-not-quite what Jasnah herself can do with access to stormlight. Before the return of the Radiants, soulcasters were the only means to feed large groups of people. Ergo, emeralds are most precious.
"Take a sapphire mark, too," she suggests. Mostly because she would hate for him to be caught short just because she's being stingy with her spheres. What does she know about the going rate of clothing.
Take a sapphire mark he does, sliding all of the spheres into his pocket. Inside, they clack against each other in a way he finds very strange. Then he stands, looking Jasnah over. She looks no more energetic than the day before, but no more fatigued, either. A good sign, he hopes. As long as her condition doesn't worsen, nothing truly bad can happen.
All the same, he asks, "Will you be all right alone?" It'll only be for a little while. He plans on making no detours, even though he'd really quite enjoy taking in the culture. Gesturing to the door with a thumb: "Do you want me to fetch Jochi—?"
The words come out in a jumbled rush. Too quick, almost defensive. As though there is something unexpectedly sensitive about finally spending time face-to-face with her old pen pal, something she was never foolish enough to imagine would happen like this: Jasnah Kholin propped upright by sheer will, fatigued by the simple act of sitting, dark crescents beneath her eyes and not a breath of stormlight left to disguise them.
If she were inclined to overanalyze it — and of course she is — it likely means she has already accepted a degree of vulnerability with Verso that she is not prepared to extend to Jochi. Or anyone else, really.
"I'll be fine," Jasnah adds, more carefully. "What trouble could I possibly get into? Just — leave that book within reach." A small nod indicates the volume on Vorin determinism.
She regrets the assertion almost as soon as it leaves her mouth. Being left alone to convalesce has a sour edge to it, sharper than she expected. The room is bright. The door is unlocked. No restraints. It is nothing like those childhood stints but still, a thin loneliness creeps in at the thought of him leaving, even briefly. Uncharacteristic. Irritating. Enough to tighten the back of her throat.
"Go," she insists, firmer now. Before she can reconsider. Before she can ask him to stay. Let the man have his retail therapy, Jasnah.
"That eager to get rid of me?" he teases, although he knows the truth must be that she feels awful for needing another person around at all. It'll be quick, he reminds himself, as he slides the book nearer to her.
And it is quick; he's a worrywart at heart, and he finds himself worrying the whole time he's out. What if she was right? What if the assassin comes back, right up through the patisserie and into the apartment upstairs? Jochi won't recognize him, but Verso could. He'd remember the set of those shoulders. The boutiquier even points out his dark expression, but he shakes it off and offers him a smile.
Thaylen clothing is a bit— carefree, comparatively. More informal than Lumièran fashion. Verso's far from strait-laced when it comes to these things—he wears his shirts half-unbuttoned so as to look rakish and handsome—but it's an adjustment, to be sure, to pick through vests and knee-length pants to find something a little more familiar to him. He does, eventually, walk out with a shirt and pair of trousers on that are a lot more silky and unstructured than he's used to, but it's worth it to be able to trash that bloodstained shirt.
"The merchant told me I was short a few marks, but he was kind enough to give me a discount," he says as the steps through the door. In reality, the merchant saw an idiot who didn't understand how much money anything was worth and charged him twice the price for everything.
Fifteen minutes of silence. Of enforced stillness. Of the frankly absurd contortions of Vorin determinism. With a sharp, petulant exhale, she abandons the book, letting it fall aside. Her gaze drops to her hands. Both bare. She turns them palm-up, then palm-down. Studies them as if they might offer advice.
They do not. So she does something ill-advised. She stands.
Well. Stands is generous. What she actually does is seize the edge of the endtable and lever herself upright a fraction at a time, hissing softly through her teeth as discomfort blooms along her abdomen. It is slow. Excruciatingly slow. She pauses to breathe, then shuffles forward, trading the table for the back of the divan, the divan for the wall, until momentum (and stubbornness) carry her into the kitchenette.
That is where Verso will find her when he returns. Seated on the floor, back braced against the lower cabinets, knees drawn just enough to be comfortable. She is fine. No fresh blood. No slipped bandages. No dramatic consequences. She has simply run out of steam before making the return journey.
She has, at least, reclaimed her glove. Her left hand is once again properly concealed. Modesty restored. Dignity patched, even if she wore another hole in it in the process.
From the kitchenette, before she can even see him, her voice carries:
"Short a few marks? Storms. Did they import the shirts from Azir?"
"Maybe—" Verso says, because he didn't ask, and then... pauses. No Jasnah on the divan. Huh.
"...Jasnah?"
It at least only takes a moment to locate her, given the nearness of the kitchenette and the direction her voice is coming from. There's two thoughts in his mind upon seeing her: one, this is ridiculous, which he doesn't voice. Two, which he does voice—
"Are you all right?" He crouches down beside her, frowning as he glances down at her abdomen, looking for new blood. She really shouldn't be moving around. That wound is already barely patched up; too much exertion and he fears it'll start gushing again. After he determines that she isn't about to bleed out on the floor, he glances back up at her face. "Did you fall?"
Jasnah refuses to let that fact gain traction. She tracks his entrance into her line of sight with deliberate composure, even as he lowers himself, comes closer, performs that careful visual inventory: checking for blood, for strain, for evidence that her ill-advised walkabout ended in catastrophe. She dislikes the attention. It sharpens the memory of her own decision-making into something uncomfortably precise. Rightly critical.
"No," she says at once, crisp and final. No, she did not fall. Not no, I'm not alright.
She offers no further explanation. Instead, she tilts her head back just enough to assess him in turn. Once. Efficiently.
His new clothes are unmistakably Thaylen and not Azish at all. Like hers, looser through the shoulders, cut for movement most of all. Practical layers. Something about it reads faintly roguish, even adventurous, as though he might step out onto a deck or into a back alley with equal ease. It suits him more than she expects, despite the recent cursed nature of both of those environs. Yes, the silhouette is a little unstructured for her tastes — she agrees with him on that point — but he looks better tidy, she thinks. And no longer covered in her blood.
"You chose well," she adds, approvingly. And just a little like maybe she's hoping she can get away with her hubris by dangling a little praise in his path. It's a gamble.
Verso isn't stupid. He understands on some level that Jasnah is only attempting to distract him with flattery because she feels embarrassed about what she's done. His rational thought and emotions rarely mix well together, though, and he ends up smiling crookedly anyway, pleased. Too fucking easy.
Besides, it's not like he was going to scold her. Maybe give her a mildly disapproving look.
"Right. A controlled descent to the floor, then," he jokes. Gesturing to his shoulders, apparently expecting Jasnah to hold onto them, he says, "I'll help you up."
Jasnah so rarely sees anyone's smile from this close that it takes a beat to recalibrate. Proximity has a way of distorting scale; she finds her gaze drifting despite herself, cataloguing details simply because they're there. Mouth, eyes, the slight asymmetry of the expression. Disorienting. Fascinating. Yes, the flattery had been a gamble. She had not anticipated quite this level of success.
Storms, she wants to correct him. Her controlled descent to the floor had been exactly that: a deliberate decision made the moment she realized she would not make it back to the divan under her own power. A detour. A...tactical pause! The choice to sit and wait for, well...for him. Jasnah keeps all of that firmly behind her teeth. It is not information he needs.
Her attention shifts instead to the offered shoulders. Hmm.
Carefully, almost experimentally, she lifts one hand and sets it against him. Fingertips brush once, twice along the seam of his new shirt, testing fabric and steadiness alike, like tapping stone before committing weight. The hesitation stretches a fraction too long. Then she decides. Her arm follows, settling more fully across the line of his shoulders.
He had been hoping she'd put both of her hands on his shoulders, and then he'd be able to hook his hands under her arms to heft her up. That's not the case, though, and so he recalibrates his strategy.
An arm around her waist, then, so that he can hoist her up and they can stand side-by-side while she hobbles. With his hand firm and steady, it's a clinical and nonindulgent position, even though it has every possibility of being otherwise. Aside from the fact that it would be wrong to use her injury for his own gain, his ego can't take the hit of touching a woman in a way that she would be anything less than enthusiastic about.
On three, he lifts her, wobbling a little from their uneven stance before he manages to stabilize himself. As he takes his first step—their combined first step—back to the divan, he asks, "Why did you need to go to the kitchen in the first place?"
Jasnah screws her eyes shut as they rise. She draws a careful, measured breath and there is a brief pause before she allows her weight to settle fully against him — before she permits herself to accept the help being offered.
Her fingers curl into the sleeve of his new shirt, gathering the fabric in a controlled, anchoring grip. Not clawing, this time. Just firm enough to steady herself — and, with a faint flicker of practical thought, not so tight that she'll be obliged to compensate him once again for torn seams later.
The first step is clumsy. A fraction out of sync. The second is better. Not graceful, but workable. At his question, she exhales through her nose.
"My glove," she admits. No embellishment. He has eyes; he can draw his own conclusions if he cares to spend half a minute doing so.
The truth is that he finds that an unsatisfactory answer. Propriety is not worth risking her wound reopening for. Besides, it's just him and Jochi here, and both of them have seen her bare left hand already. He can't speak for Jochi, but he, at least, wasn't scandalized by it.
"Sorry," he says all the same, "I should have given it back." He can admit that he'd made a mistake there. It just hadn't seemed particularly relevant, and since she hadn't asked after it, it had slipped his mind.
Another few steps. "—But," he adds, "you could have told me about it before I left. You know, when you were emphatically telling me to go."
They likely make a laughable pair. She is a little taller, half-draped against him; he is tucked sturdily beneath her arm, a reliable anchor. She is lucid enough now to notice that this must have been how they looked fleeing through the city streets. And his proximity has begun to feel unremarkable. Familiar. The sort of familiarity that slips in without permission.
"I could have." She concedes it plainly. "But I didn't."
Why not? The question stirs something unsettled beneath her ribs, a pressure system forming where certainty ought to be. Two steps forward, one step back. She had let herself grow unbothered and the pendulum swings self-consciously in the opposite direction. A regression. If she of all people, the notorious heretic, struggles to unfasten herself from these inherited strictures, how much harder will it be for others?
Verso chews on that for a moment, silently moving them along until he can deposit Jasnah safely on the divan. He steps back and gives her another once over; her wound looks no more gushing than before, although he's pretty sure there's still some scant bleeding ongoing. It worries him that she would try moving unassisted so soon, but he's also acutely aware that she'll buck against any chiding so hard that it might as well be encouragement.
So instead, he focuses on the glove. "I'm a good listener," he says, "and I love complicated things."
She is returned once more to her plush, soft prison. Well. Prison is dramatic. Still, she resents the sameness of it: the same angle of viewing, the same angle of sitting, the same angle-of-everything. It has been barely more than a day and already she is restless. Not bored, that isn't it. Frustrated. Irritated. Faintly panicked. Convalescence has always unsettled her. It reduces her world too much. It makes her feel small.
"I know it's...illogical," she says, fingers of her left hand folded neatly in her lap, deliberately ignored. "I've read the primary sources that informed the earliest texts which even hinted that feminine arts must be one-handed. I can tell you the first recorded instance where a light-eyed woman of high dahn was praised for the length of her sleeve."
Hmm.
"And yet," she continues, quieter, "without at least a glove, I feel naked." Her nose wrinkles. "Not having it began to feel a little like if you — or anyone — stripped off all your clothing. If you think about it, trousers are just as arbitrary."
Give or take some practical considerations: warmth, protection, comfort. But that is not really her point. Shame does not become less potent simply because it is invented. And to draw attention to her bare hand that morning, to ask him to retrieve the glove before he left, would have felt like pressing too hard, too fast, against something she is only just beginning to unlearn. She stepped too far; she stumbled back.
"Not just as arbitrary," he points out. "I'd look very silly without them." Donald Ducking before Donald Duck ever came on the scene! Horrific.
But he does kick off one boot and pull his sock off, too, standing there with uneven legs due to the heel of his boot. He looks dumb, and he knows he looks dumb, but— that's never deterred him from trying to make someone feel better before. He's done worse.
"I didn't want to say anything, but where I come from, a man's uncovered left foot is very scandalous." He wiggles his toes. It's obvious he's lying; this time, at least, he's not trying to hide it. "So, now we're even."
Jasnah watches, stone-faced. For one brief, mortifying heartbeat she wonders if he is about to fully undress to prove a point (her point, which is somehow worse) and she leans awkwardly forward, flicking her right hand through the air in a sharp, abortive gesture meant to halt the thought and the act alike—
And then he stops. One boot off. One sock. And that's it. Oh, no, wait...his toes are moving.
Something in her breaks.
The sound that escapes her starts as a soft hum that cracks into a short, sharp laugh before she can stop it. She swallows it down with a cough, knuckles pressed against her lips, shoulders betraying her with another breath of laughter anyway. It surprises her—not just that she's laughing, but how much it hurts to laugh. It causes the next chuckle to cut short, and she sucks in a deep breath instead.
"I'm appalled," she manages at last. "Shocked." A beat, composure fraying again. "I don't — oh, Ash's eyes, stop wiggling them."
All told, it's yet another net loss for her dignity. But he has, undeniably, earned himself a new Alethi epithet for his collection.
"Hey," he jokes, "plenty of people would pay good money for this show." Luckily, he has never been on the Expedition 33 subreddit and learned that there are, in fact, people out there who would pay good money to see his feet.
The wiggling stops, though, and he slips his sock back on so that she doesn't have to look at it anymore. Instead of putting his boot back on, he takes the other one off, instead, setting them beside the divan.
You look pretty when you laugh, he doesn't say, because he's certain it'll be taken the wrong way. He does smile, though, leaning against the end of the divan. "So that's how I get you to smile. You're a toe person."
Wait, she thinks, has he been trying to get her to smile? Or is he simply saying so? Jasnah doesn't let the mystery reach her expression — instead, her smile still lingers. Well, her smile and a shortness of breath courtesy of a gut wound that doesn't much care for belly laughter.
"I'm absolutely not a toe person," she counters — still a little breathless.
Hopefully by now he's got some grip on when her accusations are true-serious and when they're true-playful. This one, a hundred percent, is one of those true-playful accusations. Like somehow even in banter, she can't help but lean a little hard on accurate, consistent rhetoric.
"I'm not a toe person," she sorta laugh-sputters. Caught up in the moment. Feeling entirely too safe after his little demonstration of bare appendage solidarity. "I'm not an — not an anything person."
She laugh-sputters, and his heart sputters that same beat, like call and response. Ah, fuck. Of course, he'd known he was attracted to her; attraction is a familiar feeling, something that requires no emotional input whatsoever and has therefore been a cornerstone of his interactions with others for as long as he can remember. Attachments have historically been doomed before they ever started, so he's spent the better part of 7 decades entirely shut off from the feeling he's feeling now.
A fancy. An interest. A schoolboy crush.
"I guess not," he says, leaning back a little. "I must have made spurious conclusions from confounding variables."
"Believe what you want to believe. Who am I to stop a man when he's set on making his own mistakes?"
It rides that familiar, perilously thin line between a heartless scolding and a heartfelt one. Either way, her scolding is always earnest. The difficulty has only ever been only in whether the listener can distinguish between her attempt to help or harm.
She leans back as well, the base of her skull meeting the plush backing of the divan. A slow breath through her nose. The last of her laughter is brought to heel. Then she angles her head, eyeing him sidelong with something sharp and faintly amused.
"I don't sound like that," she says, needling. Spurious conclusions from confounding variables. "No one actually sounds like that."
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"You're likely right," she concedes. A base-ten system does hold more appeal. Of course it does — for the most part, Roshar does everything in tens. And she also imagines Francs don't have to be left out in a highstorm to be reinfused with stormlight after they inevitably leak it all out and go dun. Dun spheres are still good for currency, of course, but they're also easier to counterfeit. Most merchants require infused ones. Luckily, these are.
"The worth of a sphere is judged on two axes. First, the size of the gem inside." Self-explanatory. "Second, the kind of gem. Because each gem powers a different kind of soulcasting. Emeralds can create grain, and are therefore the most precious. Diamonds, like that clearmark you've got in your hand, are least valuable as they're used in the creation of crystal."
Clear and comprehendible, right? Right.
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Instead of asking, he just sets the two spheres he's chosen to the side, waiting for Jasnah to look approving or disapproving.
"Isn't crystal more valuable than grain?" Also, how the fuck do emeralds create grain.
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In most of Roshar, arable farm land is at a premium. Growing any kind of food is laborious. And that's without even factoring in the highstorms. So a great deal of food must be soulcast. That is, an ardent with a soulcasting fabrial — a small device worn on the hand and set with gems — uses that fabrial to change one material into another. The cost is high: gems break over time and, alarmingly, there are terrible side-effects for the soulcaster themselves.
Ah, soulcasting! That word might seem familiar. It is indeed similar-but-not-quite what Jasnah herself can do with access to stormlight. Before the return of the Radiants, soulcasters were the only means to feed large groups of people. Ergo, emeralds are most precious.
"Take a sapphire mark, too," she suggests. Mostly because she would hate for him to be caught short just because she's being stingy with her spheres. What does she know about the going rate of clothing.
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All the same, he asks, "Will you be all right alone?" It'll only be for a little while. He plans on making no detours, even though he'd really quite enjoy taking in the culture. Gesturing to the door with a thumb: "Do you want me to fetch Jochi—?"
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The words come out in a jumbled rush. Too quick, almost defensive. As though there is something unexpectedly sensitive about finally spending time face-to-face with her old pen pal, something she was never foolish enough to imagine would happen like this: Jasnah Kholin propped upright by sheer will, fatigued by the simple act of sitting, dark crescents beneath her eyes and not a breath of stormlight left to disguise them.
If she were inclined to overanalyze it — and of course she is — it likely means she has already accepted a degree of vulnerability with Verso that she is not prepared to extend to Jochi. Or anyone else, really.
"I'll be fine," Jasnah adds, more carefully. "What trouble could I possibly get into? Just — leave that book within reach." A small nod indicates the volume on Vorin determinism.
She regrets the assertion almost as soon as it leaves her mouth. Being left alone to convalesce has a sour edge to it, sharper than she expected. The room is bright. The door is unlocked. No restraints. It is nothing like those childhood stints but still, a thin loneliness creeps in at the thought of him leaving, even briefly. Uncharacteristic. Irritating. Enough to tighten the back of her throat.
"Go," she insists, firmer now. Before she can reconsider. Before she can ask him to stay. Let the man have his retail therapy, Jasnah.
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And it is quick; he's a worrywart at heart, and he finds himself worrying the whole time he's out. What if she was right? What if the assassin comes back, right up through the patisserie and into the apartment upstairs? Jochi won't recognize him, but Verso could. He'd remember the set of those shoulders. The boutiquier even points out his dark expression, but he shakes it off and offers him a smile.
Thaylen clothing is a bit— carefree, comparatively. More informal than Lumièran fashion. Verso's far from strait-laced when it comes to these things—he wears his shirts half-unbuttoned so as to look rakish and handsome—but it's an adjustment, to be sure, to pick through vests and knee-length pants to find something a little more familiar to him. He does, eventually, walk out with a shirt and pair of trousers on that are a lot more silky and unstructured than he's used to, but it's worth it to be able to trash that bloodstained shirt.
"The merchant told me I was short a few marks, but he was kind enough to give me a discount," he says as the steps through the door. In reality, the merchant saw an idiot who didn't understand how much money anything was worth and charged him twice the price for everything.
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Fifteen minutes of silence. Of enforced stillness. Of the frankly absurd contortions of Vorin determinism. With a sharp, petulant exhale, she abandons the book, letting it fall aside. Her gaze drops to her hands. Both bare. She turns them palm-up, then palm-down. Studies them as if they might offer advice.
They do not. So she does something ill-advised. She stands.
Well. Stands is generous. What she actually does is seize the edge of the endtable and lever herself upright a fraction at a time, hissing softly through her teeth as discomfort blooms along her abdomen. It is slow. Excruciatingly slow. She pauses to breathe, then shuffles forward, trading the table for the back of the divan, the divan for the wall, until momentum (and stubbornness) carry her into the kitchenette.
That is where Verso will find her when he returns. Seated on the floor, back braced against the lower cabinets, knees drawn just enough to be comfortable. She is fine. No fresh blood. No slipped bandages. No dramatic consequences. She has simply run out of steam before making the return journey.
She has, at least, reclaimed her glove. Her left hand is once again properly concealed. Modesty restored. Dignity patched, even if she wore another hole in it in the process.
From the kitchenette, before she can even see him, her voice carries:
"Short a few marks? Storms. Did they import the shirts from Azir?"
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"...Jasnah?"
It at least only takes a moment to locate her, given the nearness of the kitchenette and the direction her voice is coming from. There's two thoughts in his mind upon seeing her: one, this is ridiculous, which he doesn't voice. Two, which he does voice—
"Are you all right?" He crouches down beside her, frowning as he glances down at her abdomen, looking for new blood. She really shouldn't be moving around. That wound is already barely patched up; too much exertion and he fears it'll start gushing again. After he determines that she isn't about to bleed out on the floor, he glances back up at her face. "Did you fall?"
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Jasnah refuses to let that fact gain traction. She tracks his entrance into her line of sight with deliberate composure, even as he lowers himself, comes closer, performs that careful visual inventory: checking for blood, for strain, for evidence that her ill-advised walkabout ended in catastrophe. She dislikes the attention. It sharpens the memory of her own decision-making into something uncomfortably precise. Rightly critical.
"No," she says at once, crisp and final. No, she did not fall. Not no, I'm not alright.
She offers no further explanation. Instead, she tilts her head back just enough to assess him in turn. Once. Efficiently.
His new clothes are unmistakably Thaylen and not Azish at all. Like hers, looser through the shoulders, cut for movement most of all. Practical layers. Something about it reads faintly roguish, even adventurous, as though he might step out onto a deck or into a back alley with equal ease. It suits him more than she expects, despite the recent cursed nature of both of those environs. Yes, the silhouette is a little unstructured for her tastes — she agrees with him on that point — but he looks better tidy, she thinks. And no longer covered in her blood.
"You chose well," she adds, approvingly. And just a little like maybe she's hoping she can get away with her hubris by dangling a little praise in his path. It's a gamble.
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Besides, it's not like he was going to scold her. Maybe give her a mildly disapproving look.
"Right. A controlled descent to the floor, then," he jokes. Gesturing to his shoulders, apparently expecting Jasnah to hold onto them, he says, "I'll help you up."
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Jasnah so rarely sees anyone's smile from this close that it takes a beat to recalibrate. Proximity has a way of distorting scale; she finds her gaze drifting despite herself, cataloguing details simply because they're there. Mouth, eyes, the slight asymmetry of the expression. Disorienting. Fascinating. Yes, the flattery had been a gamble. She had not anticipated quite this level of success.
Storms, she wants to correct him. Her controlled descent to the floor had been exactly that: a deliberate decision made the moment she realized she would not make it back to the divan under her own power. A detour. A...tactical pause! The choice to sit and wait for, well...for him. Jasnah keeps all of that firmly behind her teeth. It is not information he needs.
Her attention shifts instead to the offered shoulders. Hmm.
Carefully, almost experimentally, she lifts one hand and sets it against him. Fingertips brush once, twice along the seam of his new shirt, testing fabric and steadiness alike, like tapping stone before committing weight. The hesitation stretches a fraction too long. Then she decides. Her arm follows, settling more fully across the line of his shoulders.
A small nod. "On three?"
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An arm around her waist, then, so that he can hoist her up and they can stand side-by-side while she hobbles. With his hand firm and steady, it's a clinical and nonindulgent position, even though it has every possibility of being otherwise. Aside from the fact that it would be wrong to use her injury for his own gain, his ego can't take the hit of touching a woman in a way that she would be anything less than enthusiastic about.
On three, he lifts her, wobbling a little from their uneven stance before he manages to stabilize himself. As he takes his first step—their combined first step—back to the divan, he asks, "Why did you need to go to the kitchen in the first place?"
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Her fingers curl into the sleeve of his new shirt, gathering the fabric in a controlled, anchoring grip. Not clawing, this time. Just firm enough to steady herself — and, with a faint flicker of practical thought, not so tight that she'll be obliged to compensate him once again for torn seams later.
The first step is clumsy. A fraction out of sync. The second is better. Not graceful, but workable. At his question, she exhales through her nose.
"My glove," she admits. No embellishment. He has eyes; he can draw his own conclusions if he cares to spend half a minute doing so.
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The truth is that he finds that an unsatisfactory answer. Propriety is not worth risking her wound reopening for. Besides, it's just him and Jochi here, and both of them have seen her bare left hand already. He can't speak for Jochi, but he, at least, wasn't scandalized by it.
"Sorry," he says all the same, "I should have given it back." He can admit that he'd made a mistake there. It just hadn't seemed particularly relevant, and since she hadn't asked after it, it had slipped his mind.
Another few steps. "—But," he adds, "you could have told me about it before I left. You know, when you were emphatically telling me to go."
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"I could have." She concedes it plainly. "But I didn't."
Why not? The question stirs something unsettled beneath her ribs, a pressure system forming where certainty ought to be. Two steps forward, one step back. She had let herself grow unbothered and the pendulum swings self-consciously in the opposite direction. A regression. If she of all people, the notorious heretic, struggles to unfasten herself from these inherited strictures, how much harder will it be for others?
"It's...complicated."
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So instead, he focuses on the glove. "I'm a good listener," he says, "and I love complicated things."
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"I know it's...illogical," she says, fingers of her left hand folded neatly in her lap, deliberately ignored. "I've read the primary sources that informed the earliest texts which even hinted that feminine arts must be one-handed. I can tell you the first recorded instance where a light-eyed woman of high dahn was praised for the length of her sleeve."
Hmm.
"And yet," she continues, quieter, "without at least a glove, I feel naked." Her nose wrinkles. "Not having it began to feel a little like if you — or anyone — stripped off all your clothing. If you think about it, trousers are just as arbitrary."
Give or take some practical considerations: warmth, protection, comfort. But that is not really her point. Shame does not become less potent simply because it is invented. And to draw attention to her bare hand that morning, to ask him to retrieve the glove before he left, would have felt like pressing too hard, too fast, against something she is only just beginning to unlearn. She stepped too far; she stumbled back.
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But he does kick off one boot and pull his sock off, too, standing there with uneven legs due to the heel of his boot. He looks dumb, and he knows he looks dumb, but— that's never deterred him from trying to make someone feel better before. He's done worse.
"I didn't want to say anything, but where I come from, a man's uncovered left foot is very scandalous." He wiggles his toes. It's obvious he's lying; this time, at least, he's not trying to hide it. "So, now we're even."
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And then he stops. One boot off. One sock. And that's it. Oh, no, wait...his toes are moving.
Something in her breaks.
The sound that escapes her starts as a soft hum that cracks into a short, sharp laugh before she can stop it. She swallows it down with a cough, knuckles pressed against her lips, shoulders betraying her with another breath of laughter anyway. It surprises her—not just that she's laughing, but how much it hurts to laugh. It causes the next chuckle to cut short, and she sucks in a deep breath instead.
"I'm appalled," she manages at last. "Shocked." A beat, composure fraying again. "I don't — oh, Ash's eyes, stop wiggling them."
All told, it's yet another net loss for her dignity. But he has, undeniably, earned himself a new Alethi epithet for his collection.
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The wiggling stops, though, and he slips his sock back on so that she doesn't have to look at it anymore. Instead of putting his boot back on, he takes the other one off, instead, setting them beside the divan.
You look pretty when you laugh, he doesn't say, because he's certain it'll be taken the wrong way. He does smile, though, leaning against the end of the divan. "So that's how I get you to smile. You're a toe person."
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"I'm absolutely not a toe person," she counters — still a little breathless.
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Hopefully by now he's got some grip on when her accusations are true-serious and when they're true-playful. This one, a hundred percent, is one of those true-playful accusations. Like somehow even in banter, she can't help but lean a little hard on accurate, consistent rhetoric.
"I'm not a toe person," she sorta laugh-sputters. Caught up in the moment. Feeling entirely too safe after his little demonstration of bare appendage solidarity. "I'm not an — not an anything person."
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A fancy. An interest. A schoolboy crush.
"I guess not," he says, leaning back a little. "I must have made spurious conclusions from confounding variables."
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It rides that familiar, perilously thin line between a heartless scolding and a heartfelt one. Either way, her scolding is always earnest. The difficulty has only ever been only in whether the listener can distinguish between her attempt to help or harm.
She leans back as well, the base of her skull meeting the plush backing of the divan. A slow breath through her nose. The last of her laughter is brought to heel. Then she angles her head, eyeing him sidelong with something sharp and faintly amused.
"I don't sound like that," she says, needling. Spurious conclusions from confounding variables. "No one actually sounds like that."
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congrats on receiving my 1,000th comment in this post
throwing a party!!
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first work tag of the new year...
ditto. 🥂
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