If it's notable how quickly he's become an extension of her, it's notable, too, how quickly he's taken to following her lead. The dynamic has been easy to fall into. She calls the shots, and he attempts to ease her burdens in other ways than decision-making, such as with his so-called patience. Still, there is a moment in which he feels a bit like a leashed hound being taken on a walk.
"I'm not sure," he lies. I don't know, I'm not sure, I can't say. His constant refrain.
"But I do know that he's singular. Esquie is the most powerful being in our world, in fact." Just casually dropping that little fact. "...But he might also be the most lazy being in our world."
Her answered hum is nasal. Captured in the back of her mouth, near the roof, and tinged with an undefined kind of skepticism. Or maybe just yet-again-one-more flicker of disappointment when he can't give her what she wants: answers.
They leave the shaded, cobbled square and Jasnah doesn't need to wait for Verso to indicate their heading. She might have been barely-conscious during their flight from the attack, but the woman has an aggressively keen sense of direction. She picks the right street and, attached to him at the arm, strolls down a well-maintained curb.
"Most powerful?" Uh-oh. We could all see this line of inquiry coming, right? "More powerful than the Paintress?"
More than Jasnah knows. More than she would be able to tolerate, he thinks. If she knew the truth, would she even be able to stomach his presence? She has such a strong sense of right and wrong, stringent and exacting, and he fears he'd fall strictly on the side of 'wrong'.
"Esquie can't get to the Paintress. There's a barrier of pure chroma around her Monolith that disintegrates anyone that attempts to pass through it."
Both he and Esquie would survive the process—or, more accurately, be regenerated after the fact—but they would never make it through. It hardly matters how powerful Esquie is or isn't in comparison to her, then. There's no world in which he could ever even attempt to fight her.
...Oh. Okay. This forces her to adjust her (floating, drafty) definition of chroma. Maybe less like stormlight and more like, like what? She rakes her teeth across her lower lip, committing something to a mental note.
"Must have been painful."
Disintegration. She offers small, empathetic shiver at the thought. Of course, it leads her to the conclusion that this marshmallowy Esquie must also be afflicted with the same curse if they have 1) tried and 2) been disintegrated.
A soft, thoughtless tap of her fingertips on the inside of his elbow. Maybe a sort of there, there gesture, if he squints. It's instinctive and hardly intentional and Jasnah doesn't even realize she's doing it. Her thoughts are still spinning slowly, attentively around the seemingly destructive effect of chroma on human and non-human bodies alike.
Jasnah, please don't try to understand chroma. It's whatever is narratively useful at the time. You'll drive yourself mad.
"Chroma can get corrupted, yes," he says, before wondering if maybe he shouldn't have. The only time that chroma gets corrupted is when a Painter is involved, and there's no good way to explain that. He hurries past it. "—But that's very uncommon."
So. Not even worth dwelling on.
"By pure chroma, I meant— concentrated. There's chroma everywhere in the world, but there's nowhere else where you can find it in such high amounts. It keeps us out, and... keeps her in."
Verso, babe, she's 100% going to try and understand chroma. Right now, her working theory is that corrupted chroma might be something like anti-stormlight? Because, oh yeah, there are different kinds of lights. This is another reason why Navani should be kept away from Verso — all she'll do is bore him with light talk, displacing all that history and philosophy talk Jasnah is putting so much effort into planting like seeds in his mind.
"We would call it a Perpendicularity, here." She offers. "A concentration of power — of Investiture."
"Guess we weren't as creative as you," he teases. "We just called it the barrier."
Well. Verso did. No one else ever knew about the barrier until he told them; each Expedition he'd helped would learn, but there would never be anyone to return back to Lumière and inform the general populace. It grew impressively dull having to repeat the same information over and over again for each new Expedition.
They pass underneath an awning — unfurled, shading over a display of fruit and vegetables. Some, by the look of them, must have travelled very far by ship. Worse for wear, and either too ripe or not ripe enough. Either way, there are just enough prospective shoppers milling around that Jasnah waits until they slowly, gradually, make their way past the shop before she continues.
"Stormlight is a kind of Investiture. Power. Or, perhaps, spiritual energy?" She winces. It's not the best way to explain it. "There are many kinds of Investiture, and stormlight is only one kind. The kind most commonly found here. Like, I think, how chroma is a different kind of Investiture. It's a working theory."
They turn a corner.
"Your piano and your guitar both make music — sound, presumably through vibration." How have they gotten themselves back to cymatics? "Investiture is a little like that. There are many different ways to harness it, depending on one's home world. I've been told one world drinks vials of metal shavings to access the same power."
She leans in, just so, and drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"That's privileged information. The average Rosharan knows storm all about Investiture."
Interesting. And fucking confusing, honestly. Verso's not unintelligent by any measure, but he's not a scholar. These vague, arcane concepts are incredibly foreign to him. It's not an unpleasant feeling, though, this ignorance. What a novelty to have things in the world that are still unknown to him.
His mouth quirks up at her inward lean. "Of course, you're not the average Rosharan." Far from it, he's learned. A sharp-witted, sharp-tongued academic with a rebellious streak. No, he imagines there aren't many like her.
Perhaps it matters less that Verso fully understands the nuances of Investiture, and more that Jasnah feels at ease just enough to speak freely around him. He's become a place to set things down. To store and to vault the grander, less rigorously edited theses that orbit her thoughts on the topic.
"The Queen's Wit. Your predecessor," Jasnah confirms his hiring with a single, economical word, "had access to at least three Invested Arts. Likely four — though I was never able to confirm the fourth." A faint shrug. "Regardless, most of what I know about Investiture beyond Roshar came from him. Each Invested Art is handled differently, and produces different outcomes. Like different instruments."
She returns to the analogy she used moments before, clearly pleased with it. Invested Arts as instruments. It has a satisfying precision. When she eventually commits a small explainer to paper, she suspects she'll use the analogy again. Refined by whatever she learns at Verso's side.
"Ah," he says, trying to remember all of what she's told him about the Wit before. He remembers that she'd explained about his— predecessor. (Okay, then.) From another world-planet-universe; he's still somewhat shaky on the understanding there. Everyone hated him, too, apparently. Clearly, he's very powerful, if he has access to such magics—maybe that's why.
"I see your aim. You find handsome"—literally no one said anything about 'handsome'—"men from other worlds, hire them as your jesters, and use us to fill your knowledge gaps."
Although this man from another world seems significantly less impressive than that man from another world. He can barely infuse his blade with elemental magics, much less use four different kinds of Investiture (again, whatever that is). But could the previous Wit do really, really good shadow puppets?
"I'm not sure I understand why he was hired, though." Or, more accurately, why he'd accept the job. Verso just doesn't have anything better to do. Someone that skilled, though, surely has other things on his plate. "He seems a bit... overqualified."
"Truthfully," Jasnah muses, "I've no idea why he was hired either. I didn't find him. I inherited him along with the throne."
The tone is cool, indifferent. As though the former employee under discussion scarcely matters at all. And why should he? He's no longer on Roshar. Or...she is mostly certain he's no longer on Roshar.
"His overqualifications weren't — still aren't — public knowledge. Not even privileged knowledge, really. I doubt my brother ever understood the sort of creature he kept in his court. But Elhokar found him amusing, so he stayed."
Now, she is convinced Hoid had a deeper agenda involving Roshar. Deeper even than his interest in keeping Odium trapped within the system. He'd clearly possessed a fondness for the planet, but never so much that he wouldn't burn it if higher, loftier goals demanded it. A line Jasnah could not bring herself to cross, despite her own philosophy.
"To everyone, myself included, he was little more than the nuisance one had to endure at the door before entering one of my brother's feasts. A slew of insults was often the price of admission."
Only later (after learning otherwise, after taking the throne) did she find more suitable uses for the man. Drafting a contract with a god, for one. Tapping into an inter-Cosmere intelligence network, for another.
"Occasionally, yes. He would. When he was still the King's Wit."
Jasnah hadn't spent much time on the Shattered Plains during her brother's reign. And when she had been present, she rarely attended the royal feasts. Even so, Wit had always gone easier on his favourites. On her and Renarin. And later, on Shallan. On Kaladin. Jasnah had noticed.
But — perhaps most importantly — Wit's compliments had always bitten deeper than his insults. At least, for her. That’s why I'm so fond of you, he'd once told her. You are poised, you are clever, and you are always ready with a ploy; but when each of those fails you, Jasnah, you are — above all else — paranoid.
Jasnah thinks about what to say next. And how to say it. Like rolling a ball back and forth between her hands, testing how it might land.
"But then he became the Queen's Wit, instead."
He became her sword to draw. Ironic, given Wit's inability to physically harm another living creature. Storms, the man couldn't even eat meat without getting sick.
There's something in her body language, in her tone, that makes Verso wonder if there's a dimension to this that he doesn't yet understand. The briefest of thoughtful pauses before she finishes her sentence, naming him the Queen's Wit instead. He knows it well; it's the same kind of pause he'd make before saying something nominally true that omitted important details.
But to believe Jasnah withholding or untruthful because of a familiar pause would be insane, so he doesn't.
"And it's wise workmanship not to insult your employer," he finishes for her, the only reading of that sentence that he can fully comprehend. "Smart fellow."
Precisely. She nods as though he's hit the nail so squarely on its head. And although she considers expounding — considers explaining how, unlike her brother, she was less enthusiastic about using the Wit for casual insults and instead favoured targeted, political spectacle. But it feels like a topic better reserved for their return. Regardless, she'll leave it to Verso to define how to fulfill the position's brief. Y'know, provided it doesn't reflect too poorly on her.
Jasnah is about to walk them straight past an alleyway at their slow, step-by-step pace when she pauses. Turns her head, eyeing the narrow passage.
"...It's this way, isn't it?" She asks with a jerk of her head toward a storefront whose louvers are angled shut, paint long since peeled away. Uncared for between storms. "I remember those shutters."
It's odd the details that stick with you when you're bleeding out.
Wayfinding happens to be one of Verso's strong suits—a skill borne of necessity out on the Continent; even the gestrals' Ancient Sanctuary in which he made his home had purposeful twists and turns so as to confuse any wandering Nevrons—but he allows Jasnah to lead them. It's her companion they're looking for, so it should probably be her who decides where they do it. They have some sort of spiritual link, or at least they did, and he hopes it'll guide her to where they need to go.
He does, however, take a pause before they head down the alleyway, the very tips of his fingers resting lightly on her arm.
"Hey. Are you going to be okay?"
It had no doubt been a traumatic experience. Being stabbed, bleeding out, being unable to heal herself. The violent separation from Ivory. Anyone might feel some trepidation at returning to the scene of the crime so quickly.
Her first instinct, the one she trusts by default, is to pull a face. To roll her eyes. Of course she will be. She is made of sterner material than the sort to fracture under a little wayward trauma, isn't she?
— And yet. Why has she avoided Shadesmar since being trapped there? Why does she loathe her own bed? Why does she not miss the stately corridors of Kholinar Palace, the very ones she once walked only to find her father dead at their end?
Jasnah closes her bare hand over his and gives a firm, rallying squeeze. Rallying herself, really. Because his question lands more gently than she expects. Comforting. As if few people ever bother to ask her something so plainly human. Are you going to be okay.
"Yes," she says. A promise, measured and deliberate. If nothing else, she trusts her capacity to compartmentalize. "I'll be fine."
And if she isn't? She squeezes his fingers once more, brief but grounding. She's not alone.
...And that is when something flickers at the edge of her vision.
Not light, exactly. More like a pattern out of place. An impression sliding where it should not. A flattened whorl, half-thought, half-shadow, skittering across the brick as if the wall itself has momentarily forgotten how to behave.
Jasnah startles hard enough to draw breath through her teeth. Instinct overrides pain, caution, dignity. Her fingers clamp around Verso's hand and she moves, yanking him with her into the alley despite the protest flaring in her side.
"Ivory?" she breathes, already tracking the disturbance, eyes sharp and unblinking.
"Hey— hey—" he protests as Jasnah starts to move. Too quick, too impulsive. In his mind's eye, he can practically see the wound reopening and begin gushing again, a perfect repeat of the week prior. Same setting, same wound.
It's unlike him to be commanding, especially when it comes to Jasnah, but there are times when one has to put their foot down. "Stop," he says, squeezing her hand and planting his feet, anchoring her to him. "Unless you want to bleed out in this alley for a second time."
Sorry, Ivory, but he has priorities.
"Take it slow." He isn't against following whatever it is that she thinks she sees, but he is against her falling apart to do it. "If he's still here, he isn't going anywhere."
Her grip stays tight, tendons standing out in her wrist, gaze locked past him on a faded barrel where the pattern she witnessed earlier clings, patient and infuriatingly present. There is a sharp, brittle disappointment that she does not bother to soften.
"I know," she says, clipped. Controlled. Frustration bleeds through anyway. "Storms alight, I know."
Her breath is shallow now, anger and pain tangling together under her ribs. She hates this — hates that her body is now the limiting factor, hates that she can see a thread and not be allowed to pull it. Hates that he is right. The moment stretches. Then she exhales, long and sharp, and the tension drains from her fingers.
She yields — not by stepping away, but by stepping back. Back towards him, her shoulder finding his shoulder with the same unconscious trust as when they first left the bakery. The rebounding motion costs her; there's a quiet hitch of breath, a flash of white pain she locks down with practiced efficiency.
"Slow," she repeats, not arguing now. Just conceding. Her eyes never leave the barrel.
The pattern sits there, flattened and coy. The spren isn't Ivory but the other possibilities are enough to make her pulse thrum. It's like a lure. Like a hypothesis begging to be tested. She doesn't draw Verso's attention to the spren, near-camoflauged as it is. Explaining would not make him relent.
Instead, she tightens her grip on his hand again. Not to pull him forward this time, but to steady herself instead.
Verso expects pushback. Perhaps he even welcomes it. Pushback means that she feels well enough to argue. Her capitulation comes as a bit of a surprise; she must know that, rationally, he's right. She'll be no good to Ivory if she's half-dead. It's a pity that Verso doesn't have access to the healing abilities some in Lumière are skilled with, or he'd be happy to let her march forward without a care.
Unfortunately, he has no such skill, so all he can do is allow her to squeeze his hand to gain her balance. It's, ah, a little tight. He grits his teeth and endures it without complaint.
"All right," he says, "when you're ready."
His eyes drift in the direction of her gaze, but he doesn't make out anything. "Did you see him?"
There is no reputation to protect in admitting that instead of Ivory's oil sheen and precise geometry, her attention is caught by something else entirely. Something curved. Recursive. Beautiful in a way that makes her pulse misbehave, skittering half into panic at how fundamentally wrong it appears. A cryptic, if she's not mistaken. And there are half a dozen plausible reasons another Radiant spren might be here. None of them inherently dangerous but none of them hers to disclose.
She risks a glance back at Verso, brief and assessing. Could he see it? Possibly. Possibly not. Jasnah has always been better than most at perceiving the Cognitive Realm, but even so, the pattern is faint and barely there. It's a flattened whorl hidden in the barrel's wood grain, easy to dismiss as a trick of light or an overactive imagination. The kind of thing you would never notice unless you already knew how to look and what it looked like.
Her gaze drops, checking the ground, the orientation of her shadow. It behaves as it should. Pointed in the proper direction. She draws in a steadying breath and asks herself, with sudden, unwelcome precision: Is this actually happening? Perhaps she should ask if he can see it too. Anchor the observation. Confirm that the cryptic isn't something she's conjured alone, a phantom born of blood loss and stress and absence and—
Not relevant, Jasnah. Focus.
"Maybe," she finally says, and it's a half-lie at most. "At any rate, I saw something."
Her voice stays level. Casual. Deliberately unremarkable. One step forward. Then another. Only as far as their linked hands allow, the space between them resolving into a measured tether. Two arm-lengths of permitted distance.
Without looking directly, she subtly adjusts her posture, letting her attention slide just enough to keep the barrel and the flattened, pulsing whorl clinging to it in the corner of her vision. Close enough to track. Not enough to betray exactly where her eyes want to go.
Something. Verso thinks again of Jochi's quiet admittance of Jasnah's mother's fears. That she'd made up her correspondents in her head. Is the 'something' she's seeing real, or is it an image conjured by her own mind? He doesn't dare say anything that would suggest so.
Instead, he simply moves along with her, allowing her their wingspan of free rein while carefully stepping behind her. Perhaps presumptuous, given his lack of knowledge of spren, he suggests, "Maybe... you should call out to him." Maybe Ivory is alone and scared, and he just needs to hear her voice. "That's how I located Monoco under that building."
Jasnah glances back over her shoulder, across the short span between them and their joined hands. Her tongue presses to the back of her teeth, turbulent, every line of her posture broadcasting the effort it takes not to say don't be an idiot — particularly when the idiot in question has no real framework for spren at all.
But she reins it in. She has been operating on an assumption: whatever happened to Ivory, it happened in the Cognitive Realm, across a boundary her thoughts and voice couldn't reach once she lost access to stormlight. That assumption has served her well enough so far. But it's still an assumption. And her frustration, however well-informed, is a poor substitute for data.
So, instead of cursing him out, she gives Verso a grudging nod.
"—Ivory?" she calls. The name comes out stiff, awkward. The alley answers with nothing but city-noise. Footsteps somewhere distant, the creak of ship-masts, canvas snapping lazily in the breeze. No voice. No familiar, precise presence brushing against her mind.
But in the corner of her vision, as if answering a question, the cryptic peels itself off the barrel. Not all at once. It rolls, flattening and unfolding as it slips down onto the cobblestones, a shadowy seethe rippling over stone. Responding, she thinks. To Ivory's name.
Her stomach tightens. Why? Ivory loves to warn her about cryptics. They were trouble. They loved lies. They fed on them. Speak one untrue word at a gathering and seven will cluster around you, humming until your ears ring. Even Design — Hoid's spren — had barely been tolerated by Ivory. And Design, in turn, had barely tolerated him.
A cold, sudden panic cinches beneath her ribs. Jasnah stops dead in her tracks. Is this Design? Would that make this day better or catastrophically worse? The thought of the former Queen's Wit reappearing here, of all places, after vanishing so neatly from her life, is almost laughable. Almost.
"Ivory," she tries again. Louder. This time, more command than question. And the little cryptic responds, rolling deeper into the alley.
She starts forward once more, her grip on Verso steadying even as her attention locks onto the flicker-trick of light skating ahead on the ground. Something only she can see. Something she is now unmistakably following.
And without turning back, she adds, almost idly, as if the words have only just occurred to her. Mild, measured, maybe-praise: "You might be onto something."
Jasnah gives him such a look that he expects to be on the receiving end of a lashing from her razor-sharp tongue. His knowledge of spren—and most everything in this world—is lacking compared to hers, and he braces himself for being told just that, and to stay silent unless he has an educated theory to share.
It doesn't happen, though, and in fact she gives him a nod of acknowledgement before, surprisingly, giving his idea a try. He's not certain it will work. He doesn't even fully understand if Ivory is here physically or only as some spiritual remnant. It's a better alternative than standing around hoping he'll appear, though, so he figures it must be worth a shot, no matter how foolish it might feel.
She calls out, and through their linked hands he feels the thrum of anxiety underneath his thumb, at her pulse point. Something has happened, although he can't tell what. She takes a step forward and he follows, thinking in some distant place in the back of his mind how their responsive steps aren't that different from the waltz.
"Did he respond to you?"
Edited (department of redundancy department) 2025-12-31 20:36 (UTC)
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"I'm not sure," he lies. I don't know, I'm not sure, I can't say. His constant refrain.
"But I do know that he's singular. Esquie is the most powerful being in our world, in fact." Just casually dropping that little fact. "...But he might also be the most lazy being in our world."
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They leave the shaded, cobbled square and Jasnah doesn't need to wait for Verso to indicate their heading. She might have been barely-conscious during their flight from the attack, but the woman has an aggressively keen sense of direction. She picks the right street and, attached to him at the arm, strolls down a well-maintained curb.
"Most powerful?" Uh-oh. We could all see this line of inquiry coming, right? "More powerful than the Paintress?"
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More than Jasnah knows. More than she would be able to tolerate, he thinks. If she knew the truth, would she even be able to stomach his presence? She has such a strong sense of right and wrong, stringent and exacting, and he fears he'd fall strictly on the side of 'wrong'.
"Esquie can't get to the Paintress. There's a barrier of pure chroma around her Monolith that disintegrates anyone that attempts to pass through it."
Both he and Esquie would survive the process—or, more accurately, be regenerated after the fact—but they would never make it through. It hardly matters how powerful Esquie is or isn't in comparison to her, then. There's no world in which he could ever even attempt to fight her.
"Trust me, we've tried."
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"Must have been painful."
Disintegration. She offers small, empathetic shiver at the thought. Of course, it leads her to the conclusion that this marshmallowy Esquie must also be afflicted with the same curse if they have 1) tried and 2) been disintegrated.
A soft, thoughtless tap of her fingertips on the inside of his elbow. Maybe a sort of there, there gesture, if he squints. It's instinctive and hardly intentional and Jasnah doesn't even realize she's doing it. Her thoughts are still spinning slowly, attentively around the seemingly destructive effect of chroma on human and non-human bodies alike.
"...Pure chroma. Is there impure chroma?"
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"Chroma can get corrupted, yes," he says, before wondering if maybe he shouldn't have. The only time that chroma gets corrupted is when a Painter is involved, and there's no good way to explain that. He hurries past it. "—But that's very uncommon."
So. Not even worth dwelling on.
"By pure chroma, I meant— concentrated. There's chroma everywhere in the world, but there's nowhere else where you can find it in such high amounts. It keeps us out, and... keeps her in."
no subject
"We would call it a Perpendicularity, here." She offers. "A concentration of power — of Investiture."
no subject
Well. Verso did. No one else ever knew about the barrier until he told them; each Expedition he'd helped would learn, but there would never be anyone to return back to Lumière and inform the general populace. It grew impressively dull having to repeat the same information over and over again for each new Expedition.
"What is Investiture, exactly?"
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They pass underneath an awning — unfurled, shading over a display of fruit and vegetables. Some, by the look of them, must have travelled very far by ship. Worse for wear, and either too ripe or not ripe enough. Either way, there are just enough prospective shoppers milling around that Jasnah waits until they slowly, gradually, make their way past the shop before she continues.
"Stormlight is a kind of Investiture. Power. Or, perhaps, spiritual energy?" She winces. It's not the best way to explain it. "There are many kinds of Investiture, and stormlight is only one kind. The kind most commonly found here. Like, I think, how chroma is a different kind of Investiture. It's a working theory."
They turn a corner.
"Your piano and your guitar both make music — sound, presumably through vibration." How have they gotten themselves back to cymatics? "Investiture is a little like that. There are many different ways to harness it, depending on one's home world. I've been told one world drinks vials of metal shavings to access the same power."
She leans in, just so, and drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"That's privileged information. The average Rosharan knows storm all about Investiture."
no subject
His mouth quirks up at her inward lean. "Of course, you're not the average Rosharan." Far from it, he's learned. A sharp-witted, sharp-tongued academic with a rebellious streak. No, he imagines there aren't many like her.
"—Where did you learn all of this, though?"
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"The Queen's Wit. Your predecessor," Jasnah confirms his hiring with a single, economical word, "had access to at least three Invested Arts. Likely four — though I was never able to confirm the fourth." A faint shrug. "Regardless, most of what I know about Investiture beyond Roshar came from him. Each Invested Art is handled differently, and produces different outcomes. Like different instruments."
She returns to the analogy she used moments before, clearly pleased with it. Invested Arts as instruments. It has a satisfying precision. When she eventually commits a small explainer to paper, she suspects she'll use the analogy again. Refined by whatever she learns at Verso's side.
no subject
"I see your aim. You find handsome"—literally no one said anything about 'handsome'—"men from other worlds, hire them as your jesters, and use us to fill your knowledge gaps."
Although this man from another world seems significantly less impressive than that man from another world. He can barely infuse his blade with elemental magics, much less use four different kinds of Investiture (again, whatever that is). But could the previous Wit do really, really good shadow puppets?
"I'm not sure I understand why he was hired, though." Or, more accurately, why he'd accept the job. Verso just doesn't have anything better to do. Someone that skilled, though, surely has other things on his plate. "He seems a bit... overqualified."
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The tone is cool, indifferent. As though the former employee under discussion scarcely matters at all. And why should he? He's no longer on Roshar. Or...she is mostly certain he's no longer on Roshar.
"His overqualifications weren't — still aren't — public knowledge. Not even privileged knowledge, really. I doubt my brother ever understood the sort of creature he kept in his court. But Elhokar found him amusing, so he stayed."
Now, she is convinced Hoid had a deeper agenda involving Roshar. Deeper even than his interest in keeping Odium trapped within the system. He'd clearly possessed a fondness for the planet, but never so much that he wouldn't burn it if higher, loftier goals demanded it. A line Jasnah could not bring herself to cross, despite her own philosophy.
"To everyone, myself included, he was little more than the nuisance one had to endure at the door before entering one of my brother's feasts. A slew of insults was often the price of admission."
Only later (after learning otherwise, after taking the throne) did she find more suitable uses for the man. Drafting a contract with a god, for one. Tapping into an inter-Cosmere intelligence network, for another.
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Jasnah hadn't spent much time on the Shattered Plains during her brother's reign. And when she had been present, she rarely attended the royal feasts. Even so, Wit had always gone easier on his favourites. On her and Renarin. And later, on Shallan. On Kaladin. Jasnah had noticed.
But — perhaps most importantly — Wit's compliments had always bitten deeper than his insults. At least, for her. That’s why I'm so fond of you, he'd once told her. You are poised, you are clever, and you are always ready with a ploy; but when each of those fails you, Jasnah, you are — above all else — paranoid.
Jasnah thinks about what to say next. And how to say it. Like rolling a ball back and forth between her hands, testing how it might land.
"But then he became the Queen's Wit, instead."
He became her sword to draw. Ironic, given Wit's inability to physically harm another living creature. Storms, the man couldn't even eat meat without getting sick.
no subject
But to believe Jasnah withholding or untruthful because of a familiar pause would be insane, so he doesn't.
"And it's wise workmanship not to insult your employer," he finishes for her, the only reading of that sentence that he can fully comprehend. "Smart fellow."
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Jasnah is about to walk them straight past an alleyway at their slow, step-by-step pace when she pauses. Turns her head, eyeing the narrow passage.
"...It's this way, isn't it?" She asks with a jerk of her head toward a storefront whose louvers are angled shut, paint long since peeled away. Uncared for between storms. "I remember those shutters."
It's odd the details that stick with you when you're bleeding out.
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He does, however, take a pause before they head down the alleyway, the very tips of his fingers resting lightly on her arm.
"Hey. Are you going to be okay?"
It had no doubt been a traumatic experience. Being stabbed, bleeding out, being unable to heal herself. The violent separation from Ivory. Anyone might feel some trepidation at returning to the scene of the crime so quickly.
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Her first instinct, the one she trusts by default, is to pull a face. To roll her eyes. Of course she will be. She is made of sterner material than the sort to fracture under a little wayward trauma, isn't she?
— And yet. Why has she avoided Shadesmar since being trapped there? Why does she loathe her own bed? Why does she not miss the stately corridors of Kholinar Palace, the very ones she once walked only to find her father dead at their end?
Jasnah closes her bare hand over his and gives a firm, rallying squeeze. Rallying herself, really. Because his question lands more gently than she expects. Comforting. As if few people ever bother to ask her something so plainly human. Are you going to be okay.
"Yes," she says. A promise, measured and deliberate. If nothing else, she trusts her capacity to compartmentalize. "I'll be fine."
And if she isn't? She squeezes his fingers once more, brief but grounding. She's not alone.
...And that is when something flickers at the edge of her vision.
Not light, exactly. More like a pattern out of place. An impression sliding where it should not. A flattened whorl, half-thought, half-shadow, skittering across the brick as if the wall itself has momentarily forgotten how to behave.
Jasnah startles hard enough to draw breath through her teeth. Instinct overrides pain, caution, dignity. Her fingers clamp around Verso's hand and she moves, yanking him with her into the alley despite the protest flaring in her side.
"Ivory?" she breathes, already tracking the disturbance, eyes sharp and unblinking.
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It's unlike him to be commanding, especially when it comes to Jasnah, but there are times when one has to put their foot down. "Stop," he says, squeezing her hand and planting his feet, anchoring her to him. "Unless you want to bleed out in this alley for a second time."
Sorry, Ivory, but he has priorities.
"Take it slow." He isn't against following whatever it is that she thinks she sees, but he is against her falling apart to do it. "If he's still here, he isn't going anywhere."
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Her grip stays tight, tendons standing out in her wrist, gaze locked past him on a faded barrel where the pattern she witnessed earlier clings, patient and infuriatingly present. There is a sharp, brittle disappointment that she does not bother to soften.
"I know," she says, clipped. Controlled. Frustration bleeds through anyway. "Storms alight, I know."
Her breath is shallow now, anger and pain tangling together under her ribs. She hates this — hates that her body is now the limiting factor, hates that she can see a thread and not be allowed to pull it. Hates that he is right. The moment stretches. Then she exhales, long and sharp, and the tension drains from her fingers.
She yields — not by stepping away, but by stepping back. Back towards him, her shoulder finding his shoulder with the same unconscious trust as when they first left the bakery. The rebounding motion costs her; there's a quiet hitch of breath, a flash of white pain she locks down with practiced efficiency.
"Slow," she repeats, not arguing now. Just conceding. Her eyes never leave the barrel.
The pattern sits there, flattened and coy. The spren isn't Ivory but the other possibilities are enough to make her pulse thrum. It's like a lure. Like a hypothesis begging to be tested. She doesn't draw Verso's attention to the spren, near-camoflauged as it is. Explaining would not make him relent.
Instead, she tightens her grip on his hand again. Not to pull him forward this time, but to steady herself instead.
"A moment," she murmurs. "Then we move."
Slowly, together.
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Unfortunately, he has no such skill, so all he can do is allow her to squeeze his hand to gain her balance. It's, ah, a little tight. He grits his teeth and endures it without complaint.
"All right," he says, "when you're ready."
His eyes drift in the direction of her gaze, but he doesn't make out anything. "Did you see him?"
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There is no reputation to protect in admitting that instead of Ivory's oil sheen and precise geometry, her attention is caught by something else entirely. Something curved. Recursive. Beautiful in a way that makes her pulse misbehave, skittering half into panic at how fundamentally wrong it appears. A cryptic, if she's not mistaken. And there are half a dozen plausible reasons another Radiant spren might be here. None of them inherently dangerous but none of them hers to disclose.
She risks a glance back at Verso, brief and assessing. Could he see it? Possibly. Possibly not. Jasnah has always been better than most at perceiving the Cognitive Realm, but even so, the pattern is faint and barely there. It's a flattened whorl hidden in the barrel's wood grain, easy to dismiss as a trick of light or an overactive imagination. The kind of thing you would never notice unless you already knew how to look and what it looked like.
Her gaze drops, checking the ground, the orientation of her shadow. It behaves as it should. Pointed in the proper direction. She draws in a steadying breath and asks herself, with sudden, unwelcome precision: Is this actually happening? Perhaps she should ask if he can see it too. Anchor the observation. Confirm that the cryptic isn't something she's conjured alone, a phantom born of blood loss and stress and absence and—
Not relevant, Jasnah. Focus.
"Maybe," she finally says, and it's a half-lie at most. "At any rate, I saw something."
Her voice stays level. Casual. Deliberately unremarkable. One step forward. Then another. Only as far as their linked hands allow, the space between them resolving into a measured tether. Two arm-lengths of permitted distance.
Without looking directly, she subtly adjusts her posture, letting her attention slide just enough to keep the barrel and the flattened, pulsing whorl clinging to it in the corner of her vision. Close enough to track. Not enough to betray exactly where her eyes want to go.
If it moves, she'll know.
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Instead, he simply moves along with her, allowing her their wingspan of free rein while carefully stepping behind her. Perhaps presumptuous, given his lack of knowledge of spren, he suggests, "Maybe... you should call out to him." Maybe Ivory is alone and scared, and he just needs to hear her voice. "That's how I located Monoco under that building."
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But she reins it in. She has been operating on an assumption: whatever happened to Ivory, it happened in the Cognitive Realm, across a boundary her thoughts and voice couldn't reach once she lost access to stormlight. That assumption has served her well enough so far. But it's still an assumption. And her frustration, however well-informed, is a poor substitute for data.
So, instead of cursing him out, she gives Verso a grudging nod.
"—Ivory?" she calls. The name comes out stiff, awkward. The alley answers with nothing but city-noise. Footsteps somewhere distant, the creak of ship-masts, canvas snapping lazily in the breeze. No voice. No familiar, precise presence brushing against her mind.
But in the corner of her vision, as if answering a question, the cryptic peels itself off the barrel. Not all at once. It rolls, flattening and unfolding as it slips down onto the cobblestones, a shadowy seethe rippling over stone. Responding, she thinks. To Ivory's name.
Her stomach tightens. Why? Ivory loves to warn her about cryptics. They were trouble. They loved lies. They fed on them. Speak one untrue word at a gathering and seven will cluster around you, humming until your ears ring. Even Design — Hoid's spren — had barely been tolerated by Ivory. And Design, in turn, had barely tolerated him.
A cold, sudden panic cinches beneath her ribs. Jasnah stops dead in her tracks. Is this Design? Would that make this day better or catastrophically worse? The thought of the former Queen's Wit reappearing here, of all places, after vanishing so neatly from her life, is almost laughable. Almost.
"Ivory," she tries again. Louder. This time, more command than question. And the little cryptic responds, rolling deeper into the alley.
She starts forward once more, her grip on Verso steadying even as her attention locks onto the flicker-trick of light skating ahead on the ground. Something only she can see. Something she is now unmistakably following.
And without turning back, she adds, almost idly, as if the words have only just occurred to her. Mild, measured, maybe-praise: "You might be onto something."
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It doesn't happen, though, and in fact she gives him a nod of acknowledgement before, surprisingly, giving his idea a try. He's not certain it will work. He doesn't even fully understand if Ivory is here physically or only as some spiritual remnant. It's a better alternative than standing around hoping he'll appear, though, so he figures it must be worth a shot, no matter how foolish it might feel.
She calls out, and through their linked hands he feels the thrum of anxiety underneath his thumb, at her pulse point. Something has happened, although he can't tell what. She takes a step forward and he follows, thinking in some distant place in the back of his mind how their responsive steps aren't that different from the waltz.
"Did he respond to you?"
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first work tag of the new year...
ditto. 🥂
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