She repeats. Half-lost, half-suspicious. Yet again, she senses something amiss. Like a bridge that's just a few feet too short to cross the chasm. A slant; a hitch; a problem. She doesn't know where. Or how. All she'd done was explain to him that — as far as she's concerned — he is about the become the single most critical individual in her court. The one variable upon which she can rely. It's a massive ask. Too massive, maybe.
Maybe the responsibility is scaring him off.
Jasnah suddenly leans forward, elbows on the desk. Fingers tented at her chin, bare against sleeved.
"If your mind has changed..." That's okay. "Tell me."
"No," he protests quickly, because what could he possibly say? Yes, I've changed my mind; I don't want to be your employee, I want to be your friend. That's the only thing that could make this more intolerable. Scooting the chair back— "No. I'm just... embarrassed that I didn't know."
A kernel of truth. This whole experience may be the most humiliating thing that's ever happened to him, and he's been eaten and shat out by a Nevron.
"Just, uh— egg on my face, huh?" She probably doesn't know what that means. He doesn't elaborate. Instead, he remembers belatedly the whole reason he'd come here in the first place: to bring her a message, as an employee does. He pats his pocket and unearths it, setting it on her desk. "Letter for you. I'll leave you to your reading."
Jasnah watches him retreat into himself like armour hastily buckled into place. Too quick, too sharp. It bothers her more than she lets show.
"Verso," she deploys his name in two careful syllables, but without raising her voice. Just enough to stop him (she thinks) if he's going to be stopped. "As I said — it was my fault. I should apologize for not explaining..."
Jasnah sees the envelope. Properly, this time. Sitting like a sleeping chasmfiend on the corner of her desk. The outer paper is addressed in a very distinct script. One that makes her mouth go dry. Storms alight, she thinks in silence as she reaches — slow, so as not to betray her apprehension — for the letter.
She does a relatively fine job at asking, idly, as she works the paper out of the envelope.
"I don't know," is the automatic reply, because he'd really like to avoid getting stuck in here for any longer than he has to, and because 'I don't know' is his standard lie when he can't think of a better one. It's only a moment later as, standing and pushing the chair in a little, he says, "The man you fired, I think. He wasn't from here."
Or maybe he was from here, but he left here? Verso doesn't know. Neither Jasnah nor the man himself has shared much about him.
"Something about politics. A group that doesn't like you." With a gesture toward the paper, he adds, "It's all there, I'm sure."
And just like that, she looks tired. Tired beyond just the dark smudged under her eyes from sleeping less in two nights than she'd usually slept in one lazy afternoon on Jochi's divan. She really, really dreads what could have been so important that it had hauled Hoid back to this system. She was certain she wouldn't see him again. Not ever.
And, when she considers the predicament, she supposes she didn't see him. Bully for him — finally keeping a promise.
Jasnah unfolds the letter and scans it. Quick — one hand in the air to stall his departure, should he choose to obey it.
Thaidakar has noticed you again. Take care.
(Which earns a grumpy scoff and an idle hand at her side, kneading the healing skin that's already doing better with the surgeon's oversight. A little late on that one, Hoid. Thanks.)
On a completely unrelated note: the new man has some worrying literary opinions. You are very good at sharpening people, but you're less good at noticing when they're already raw. Be kinder.
That last part looks scribbled in. The ink is a wholly different colour. She refolds the letter with a sharp, crisp crease.
Edited (forgot a period. and also fussing with contractions.) 2026-01-30 03:17 (UTC)
As he watches her read, Verso can't help but analyze her face. A little tight, a lot exhausted. He feels the urge to ask if she's all right, if she wants to talk about what she just read, but—
He doesn't. Better to pull back and sever this attachment now before he makes even more of a fool of himself. He'd had the right idea before, keeping his distance from people. A new world doesn't change the fundamental facts.
"I should have mentioned it earlier." Instead of trying to have a heart-to-heart like an idiot. "My apologies."
A restless shifting of his feet. "I'll leave you to your... contemplation." It's an unsubtle may I be excused now?, perhaps the first time he's ever not jumped at the chance to spend more time with her.
Kinder — in this case — proves to be its own mistake. She looks up and catches the restless energy in him, the careful, second attempt to excuse himself without quite saying it. And she relents. What is kind, she decides, is not insisting. What is kind is letting him go.
She still hasn't fully shaken the earlier remark about academic discussion — how it landed, how it lodged — and she knows herself well enough to recognize that she has nothing to offer him right now beyond a front-row seat to her pulling at her own hair while she tries to stitch diplomacy back into place with Kharbranth.
As if on cue, the spanreed blinks again at the corner of her desk. Patient. Unrelenting.
The adjustment will be difficult. For her, too. She has grown accustomed to him being there — right there. The quiet certainty of another presence in the room, a shadow breathing in time with her in the shared dark. The thought of sharing the darkness with no one leaves an unexpected hollow behind her ribs.
But she doesn't show it.
"Of course. Go," she says instead, measured and permissive, as though she is granting something rather than losing it.
It is better this way. The last two weeks were indulgence. Necessary, perhaps — but indulgence all the same. Distractions she cannot afford, now that the world has begun, once again, to demand her full attention.
So it's a full week of Coalition meetings, military strategy conferences, and dinners that follow. She leaves it to Verso to navigate how many he chooses to attend — two steps behind her and to the right — or not. When he is there, she seems to use him to break tension. Leaning on him to lead small-talk on the margins of these events. Twice, she invited him to play guitar over dinner with Queen Fen and her consort — provided he agreed. It's an awkward feeling-out of boundaries.
But it's that full week later, long long past when most of the tower, that she sends him a single spanreed message. Gambling that he'll be awake.
The week is— fine. As fine as any week he has, at least. The past couple of weeks were an anomaly, a sudden and unexplained increase from baseline—but not a new baseline. He understands that now, and he spends the week slowly rebuilding the shell that he'd let degrade since meeting Jasnah, making sure all of his soft, vulnerable areas are fully covered. It's not hard; he used to live like this all the time. It doesn't feel good, really, but it does feel familiar, and that's enough.
He does everything that's asked of him—shuts up when Jasnah doesn't want him heard, entertains when she does, makes pleasant, surface-level conversation. He doesn't ever delve close to the depths of discussion they would have at Jochi's or on the ship—that was a mistake, and one he intends to learn from—but it's amiable and engaging enough, his attitude perfectly agreeable.
By the end of the week, his feelings have cooled enough—or he's at least managed to wall them up enough—for him to feel quite little at the message. There's no jump of excitement in his chest, no fluttering feeling in his stomach like a schoolboy with a crush. After decades suppressing his emotions to survive, it's not so hard to suppress them to continue to tolerate life here in Urithiru. If anything, it's just embarrassing he didn't do it sooner.
It's late enough that he wonders if they should discuss his hours, but he pens a short intent to meet her back, then packs the deck of cards away in his pocket. Does it bother him that she blurs the lines between 'work' and 'social call' like this? It would, if he were letting things like that bother him anymore. He's not, so it doesn't. Not at all.
After meeting Jasnah on the Cloudwalk, he settles at a small table next to the railing so that he can shuffle the deck. It's still just as hard as it was the first time. While shuffling, he catches a glimpse of the queen he'd sketched to look like Jasnah. Quel embarras.
"I've been meaning to get some proper cardstock," he says. "I'd like to redo them." For a multitude of reasons. He holds up the Jack of Spades, eyeing its not-quite-perfect lines critically. "You can tell this one was drawn on a moving ship."
The last few days have been wholly — exhaustingly — defined by three discussion points that refuse to stay confined to the coalition table. They spill into dinners, into corridor ambushes, into low-voiced sidebars in borrowed studies. First: serious doubts, now bordering on allegations, regarding Taravangian's loyalty to the coalition of monarchs. Second: a rare and time-sensitive opportunity to reclaim territory in Herdaz. Third — and most devastating — because of the first two, any attempt to reclaim Alethkar has been shelved indefinitely. Kholinar included.
If Verso has been paying attention during these long, grinding days, he'll already know how deeply that last point has lodged under her ribs. And if he hasn't? Then she likely reads as she always does in public now: distant, displeased, difficult to approach. It's possible he hasn't seen her smile since they returned to Urithiru. Other heads of state at the table could lapse into gentle ribbing and laughter, and she continues to stay stormy.
Even here, perched beside the sheer drop of the tower's outer wall, she is stern and preoccupied. Jasnah would have preferred to summon him to her study — except she'd found the desiccated husk of a strange cremling behind a shelf earlier that morning, and has since talked herself out of trusting even that space. Knowing what she knows about the Sleepless and their spy hoards. Her gaze flicks, now and again, to the periphery of where they sit. Watchful and wired thin. And likely too, too tired.
No one in the coalition knows there is something wrong with her Radiant powers. No one but the surgeon knows how much of her recovery has been accomplished under her own steam and without much stormlight. And no one but Ivory knows how stalled she feels — trapped at something that feels uncomfortably like her first Ideal.
Still, she makes herself focus. The decision to reach out to Verso at all had taken hours of internal argument. It was Ivory, finally, who'd broken her stalemate. Distraction is. Frustration is, he'd told her, irritatingly gentle. Lean on him. As you already have.
So Jasnah sits across from Verso now — immaculate, composed, hair pinned — and tries not to interrogate the simple, unsettling truth of why she wanted him here. Only that something has been missing. Something she wants back, even if she hasn't named it.
When he mentions redoing the cards, her mouth creases despite herself. The instinct to refine, to improve, is not a bad one. She shares it. And yet something in her tightens at the thought of replacing the familiar deck with something sturdier. Something unused.
She reaches across the table and, with two fingers, lifts the Jack of Spades from his hand. The corner is bent — a stubborn flaw from one night at Jochi's end table when they'd tried, unsuccessfully, to flatten it. Every game after that, they'd both known instantly whether the other held the Jack.
"If you do," she says quietly, "I'd like to keep this one."
"I was hoping to burn the evidence of my shoddy work," he says, half-joking and half-very serious, "but I suppose the Jack can be pardoned for his crimes against art."
Reaching out, he gingerly plucks the Jack out of her grasp with his index finger and thumb before sliding it back in the deck to be properly shuffled. Not like it'll matter, since it's an obvious giveaway which one it is, but it's the principle of the thing. As he finishes shuffling, he preempts the question of what game they'll play and deals out two cards for her, two cards for him. Face down.
There's no discussion of gambling tonight, at least not from his end. He peeks at his two cards and then says, "I'll hit," reaching out to grab another card from the deck.
Her brows crease. And her fingers tighten around nothing — a quick, thoughtless instinct to protect the deck from his half-threat. Jasnah's eyes drop to his hands, to the cards, to the practiced method he's developed for shuffling even with the thinner, flimsier paper. She's had a privileged seat to that progress. She remembers the first night they played — back on the ship — and how much trouble the notebook page cards had given him.
Then game by game he got better at shuffling them. Adjusting what must have been habit for a stiffer set to something gentler, more fluid, for these makeshift rectangles. Tonight, you'd never know they weren't exactly as they were meant to be.
Jasnah lifts the corners of her cards — noting in silence that despite the shuffling she got stuck with the identifiable jack all the same — and delays her choice.
The work had been done quickly, first out of excitement for something to show her—he'd been so giddy and restless to show her, like a child holding their finger painting up for their parent to see—and then out of boredom, a need to fill the time while she convalesced. The workmanship is... it's fine, but it could be better. A lot better.
"Rudimentary, then," he replies. With proper cardstock, a nice ink pen, and some paints, he could make them look exactly like a card you might buy in a shop in Lumière.
But Jasnah would classify them more like a start or a beginning. And then they grew into something else: an emotional root structure that held together whole nights. And when he's done with this deck, she'll keep it for herself. Lock it up with all the other nice things she doesn't let herself have.
"Why are they both still face down?" She points at his cards. She points at her cards. And she makes a fuss about something entirely unimportant because it's a release valve she desperately needs. "Surely, I can't choose whether to hit or stand without that point of data."
It's how he'd taught her to play. Originally. If this is some variation, she doesn't know it.
—He'd been running on autopilot, just going through the motions without paying the sort of close attention he has during their games in the past. She doesn't need to know that, though. Probably not the sort of job performance she's looking for.
Verso laughs a little at the half-accusation, bemused. He is an inveterate cheater, but it's not like she knows that. Not like he's ever cheated when playing with her.
"If I wanted to cheat, don't you think I would have been a bit more crafty?" Another tap of his cards. "Stand."
Cheating. Only upon this fresh accusation — if it even can be called an accusation for Jasnah to think for a moment he mightn't be the cheating type — does she raise her attention and meet his eyes. Maybe the little spark of laughter eased something between her shoulders.
Jasnah doesn't dare hit again. So, sliding her fingers under her remaining cards, she flips them to reveal a sum total of sixteen. Oh. She's playing a cautious game.
Verso looks at the sixteen, eyebrow trending up slightly. Unusually cautious for her. She could have pulled a card with a value of five or lower and cemented her victory. But since she didn't, he turns over his cards to reveal a ten, a six, and a two.
"If I was going to cheat, I would have made sure I had a more decisive victory," he points out, before gathering up their cards. He wouldn't have expected her to stand on a sixteen. "Again?"
Each day this week — in every council meeting and dinner-turned-negotiation — Jasnah has been the one to say aloud that they'll need to de-prioritize Alethkar in favour of other efforts. Especially if Dalinar insists on keeping his word to the Mink and sending reinforcements to Herdaz sooner rather than later. Coldly, callously, she has argued against a push on what ought to be Alethi territory because the numbers simply don't make sense.
Maybe it's hard not to read the characters on the cards like troop numbers. Lives, committed or not. It's making her feel risk averse.
Hmm. He reshuffles the deck, dealing out two cards for each of them. With a pointed look, he turns one over—an eight. With only a cursory look at the other, he says, "I'll stand."
Jasnah reveals her top card. A four — nothing to get excited about. And he manages to make his call before she even does the mental math. Of course, that makes her assume that he's got something good. Something high. A ten or a face.
And she's got — hmm. She does hit, frowns at her third card, but stands nevertheless.
"Go on, then," she gestures for him to reveal first.
And he does reveal his cards: on the other side of the eight is a seven, for a total of fifteen. He's adjusted his playstyle to hers, immediately trending more cautious rather than following his natural instinct. It'll be more entertaining for her if they're on a level playing field. "Your turn."
— Well, this is awkward. On the assumption that he'd already secured himself a lofty number, she's as good as given up after her third card. Jasnah eyes her hand, delaying a moment longer before splaying them out. Four, eight, three.
She also pulled fifteen.
"Is there such thing as a tiebreaker in vingt-un?"
Edited (can't spell my own dumbass language) 2026-01-30 17:22 (UTC)
Oh. Wow, she's really off her game today; even with him purposefully handicapping himself, she still only managed fifteen. His nose twitches, corner of his mouth tugging down for just a moment. There's a question on the tip of his tongue—what's going on with you today?—but he swallows it.
"Typically, it results in a draw. No win or loss." He reaches out to gather up her cards again. "But it's fair enough to say that a tiebreaker goes to the queen, I think."
One-handed, she elides her cards together and gently lifts them from the table with the edge of her nail. Then — pinched between her index and middle fingers — she offers them back. Another stark difference between their time spent hiding out in Thaylen City and now: she's no longer enjoying the relative mobility afforded by a gloved safehand rather than a sleeved one. Still, she deftly makes do.
Tiebreaker goes to the queen. If only all stalemates could be solved so tidily.
"I don't know of many games that allow for draws," she comments. Tone dark.
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She repeats. Half-lost, half-suspicious. Yet again, she senses something amiss. Like a bridge that's just a few feet too short to cross the chasm. A slant; a hitch; a problem. She doesn't know where. Or how. All she'd done was explain to him that — as far as she's concerned — he is about the become the single most critical individual in her court. The one variable upon which she can rely. It's a massive ask. Too massive, maybe.
Maybe the responsibility is scaring him off.
Jasnah suddenly leans forward, elbows on the desk. Fingers tented at her chin, bare against sleeved.
"If your mind has changed..." That's okay. "Tell me."
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A kernel of truth. This whole experience may be the most humiliating thing that's ever happened to him, and he's been eaten and shat out by a Nevron.
"Just, uh— egg on my face, huh?" She probably doesn't know what that means. He doesn't elaborate. Instead, he remembers belatedly the whole reason he'd come here in the first place: to bring her a message, as an employee does. He pats his pocket and unearths it, setting it on her desk. "Letter for you. I'll leave you to your reading."
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"Verso," she deploys his name in two careful syllables, but without raising her voice. Just enough to stop him (she thinks) if he's going to be stopped. "As I said — it was my fault. I should apologize for not explaining..."
Jasnah sees the envelope. Properly, this time. Sitting like a sleeping chasmfiend on the corner of her desk. The outer paper is addressed in a very distinct script. One that makes her mouth go dry. Storms alight, she thinks in silence as she reaches — slow, so as not to betray her apprehension — for the letter.
She does a relatively fine job at asking, idly, as she works the paper out of the envelope.
"Who asked you to deliver this?"
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Or maybe he was from here, but he left here? Verso doesn't know. Neither Jasnah nor the man himself has shared much about him.
"Something about politics. A group that doesn't like you." With a gesture toward the paper, he adds, "It's all there, I'm sure."
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And, when she considers the predicament, she supposes she didn't see him. Bully for him — finally keeping a promise.
Jasnah unfolds the letter and scans it. Quick — one hand in the air to stall his departure, should he choose to obey it.
Thaidakar has noticed you again. Take care.
(Which earns a grumpy scoff and an idle hand at her side, kneading the healing skin that's already doing better with the surgeon's oversight. A little late on that one, Hoid. Thanks.)
On a completely unrelated note: the new man has some worrying literary opinions. You are very good at sharpening people, but you're less good at noticing when they're already raw. Be kinder.
That last part looks scribbled in. The ink is a wholly different colour. She refolds the letter with a sharp, crisp crease.
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He doesn't. Better to pull back and sever this attachment now before he makes even more of a fool of himself. He'd had the right idea before, keeping his distance from people. A new world doesn't change the fundamental facts.
"I should have mentioned it earlier." Instead of trying to have a heart-to-heart like an idiot. "My apologies."
A restless shifting of his feet. "I'll leave you to your... contemplation." It's an unsubtle may I be excused now?, perhaps the first time he's ever not jumped at the chance to spend more time with her.
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She still hasn't fully shaken the earlier remark about academic discussion — how it landed, how it lodged — and she knows herself well enough to recognize that she has nothing to offer him right now beyond a front-row seat to her pulling at her own hair while she tries to stitch diplomacy back into place with Kharbranth.
As if on cue, the spanreed blinks again at the corner of her desk. Patient. Unrelenting.
The adjustment will be difficult. For her, too. She has grown accustomed to him being there — right there. The quiet certainty of another presence in the room, a shadow breathing in time with her in the shared dark. The thought of sharing the darkness with no one leaves an unexpected hollow behind her ribs.
But she doesn't show it.
"Of course. Go," she says instead, measured and permissive, as though she is granting something rather than losing it.
It is better this way. The last two weeks were indulgence. Necessary, perhaps — but indulgence all the same. Distractions she cannot afford, now that the world has begun, once again, to demand her full attention.
So it's a full week of Coalition meetings, military strategy conferences, and dinners that follow. She leaves it to Verso to navigate how many he chooses to attend — two steps behind her and to the right — or not. When he is there, she seems to use him to break tension. Leaning on him to lead small-talk on the margins of these events. Twice, she invited him to play guitar over dinner with Queen Fen and her consort — provided he agreed. It's an awkward feeling-out of boundaries.
But it's that full week later, long long past when most of the tower, that she sends him a single spanreed message. Gambling that he'll be awake.
Meet me on the Cloudwalk. Bring the cards.
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He does everything that's asked of him—shuts up when Jasnah doesn't want him heard, entertains when she does, makes pleasant, surface-level conversation. He doesn't ever delve close to the depths of discussion they would have at Jochi's or on the ship—that was a mistake, and one he intends to learn from—but it's amiable and engaging enough, his attitude perfectly agreeable.
By the end of the week, his feelings have cooled enough—or he's at least managed to wall them up enough—for him to feel quite little at the message. There's no jump of excitement in his chest, no fluttering feeling in his stomach like a schoolboy with a crush. After decades suppressing his emotions to survive, it's not so hard to suppress them to continue to tolerate life here in Urithiru. If anything, it's just embarrassing he didn't do it sooner.
It's late enough that he wonders if they should discuss his hours, but he pens a short intent to meet her back, then packs the deck of cards away in his pocket. Does it bother him that she blurs the lines between 'work' and 'social call' like this? It would, if he were letting things like that bother him anymore. He's not, so it doesn't. Not at all.
After meeting Jasnah on the Cloudwalk, he settles at a small table next to the railing so that he can shuffle the deck. It's still just as hard as it was the first time. While shuffling, he catches a glimpse of the queen he'd sketched to look like Jasnah. Quel embarras.
"I've been meaning to get some proper cardstock," he says. "I'd like to redo them." For a multitude of reasons. He holds up the Jack of Spades, eyeing its not-quite-perfect lines critically. "You can tell this one was drawn on a moving ship."
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If Verso has been paying attention during these long, grinding days, he'll already know how deeply that last point has lodged under her ribs. And if he hasn't? Then she likely reads as she always does in public now: distant, displeased, difficult to approach. It's possible he hasn't seen her smile since they returned to Urithiru. Other heads of state at the table could lapse into gentle ribbing and laughter, and she continues to stay stormy.
Even here, perched beside the sheer drop of the tower's outer wall, she is stern and preoccupied. Jasnah would have preferred to summon him to her study — except she'd found the desiccated husk of a strange cremling behind a shelf earlier that morning, and has since talked herself out of trusting even that space. Knowing what she knows about the Sleepless and their spy hoards. Her gaze flicks, now and again, to the periphery of where they sit. Watchful and wired thin. And likely too, too tired.
No one in the coalition knows there is something wrong with her Radiant powers. No one but the surgeon knows how much of her recovery has been accomplished under her own steam and without much stormlight. And no one but Ivory knows how stalled she feels — trapped at something that feels uncomfortably like her first Ideal.
Still, she makes herself focus. The decision to reach out to Verso at all had taken hours of internal argument. It was Ivory, finally, who'd broken her stalemate. Distraction is. Frustration is, he'd told her, irritatingly gentle. Lean on him. As you already have.
So Jasnah sits across from Verso now — immaculate, composed, hair pinned — and tries not to interrogate the simple, unsettling truth of why she wanted him here. Only that something has been missing. Something she wants back, even if she hasn't named it.
When he mentions redoing the cards, her mouth creases despite herself. The instinct to refine, to improve, is not a bad one. She shares it. And yet something in her tightens at the thought of replacing the familiar deck with something sturdier. Something unused.
She reaches across the table and, with two fingers, lifts the Jack of Spades from his hand. The corner is bent — a stubborn flaw from one night at Jochi's end table when they'd tried, unsuccessfully, to flatten it. Every game after that, they'd both known instantly whether the other held the Jack.
"If you do," she says quietly, "I'd like to keep this one."
The whole deck, really. Not just the card.
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Reaching out, he gingerly plucks the Jack out of her grasp with his index finger and thumb before sliding it back in the deck to be properly shuffled. Not like it'll matter, since it's an obvious giveaway which one it is, but it's the principle of the thing. As he finishes shuffling, he preempts the question of what game they'll play and deals out two cards for her, two cards for him. Face down.
There's no discussion of gambling tonight, at least not from his end. He peeks at his two cards and then says, "I'll hit," reaching out to grab another card from the deck.
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Then game by game he got better at shuffling them. Adjusting what must have been habit for a stiffer set to something gentler, more fluid, for these makeshift rectangles. Tonight, you'd never know they weren't exactly as they were meant to be.
Jasnah lifts the corners of her cards — noting in silence that despite the shuffling she got stuck with the identifiable jack all the same — and delays her choice.
"The work isn't shoddy."
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"Rudimentary, then," he replies. With proper cardstock, a nice ink pen, and some paints, he could make them look exactly like a card you might buy in a shop in Lumière.
He taps her cards. "Hit or stand?"
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But Jasnah would classify them more like a start or a beginning. And then they grew into something else: an emotional root structure that held together whole nights. And when he's done with this deck, she'll keep it for herself. Lock it up with all the other nice things she doesn't let herself have.
"Why are they both still face down?" She points at his cards. She points at her cards. And she makes a fuss about something entirely unimportant because it's a release valve she desperately needs. "Surely, I can't choose whether to hit or stand without that point of data."
It's how he'd taught her to play. Originally. If this is some variation, she doesn't know it.
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And. Well. Jasnah does flip her jack. And then, leaning forward, grabs another card to add to her hand — presumably choosing to hit.
But then she has to go and ask: "Did you forget or were you trying to cheat?"
No eye contact.
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Verso laughs a little at the half-accusation, bemused. He is an inveterate cheater, but it's not like she knows that. Not like he's ever cheated when playing with her.
"If I wanted to cheat, don't you think I would have been a bit more crafty?" Another tap of his cards. "Stand."
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Cheating. Only upon this fresh accusation — if it even can be called an accusation for Jasnah to think for a moment he mightn't be the cheating type — does she raise her attention and meet his eyes. Maybe the little spark of laughter eased something between her shoulders.
Jasnah doesn't dare hit again. So, sliding her fingers under her remaining cards, she flips them to reveal a sum total of sixteen. Oh. She's playing a cautious game.
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"If I was going to cheat, I would have made sure I had a more decisive victory," he points out, before gathering up their cards. He wouldn't have expected her to stand on a sixteen. "Again?"
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Maybe it's hard not to read the characters on the cards like troop numbers. Lives, committed or not. It's making her feel risk averse.
Nevertheless, she taps the table.
"Again."
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And she's got — hmm. She does hit, frowns at her third card, but stands nevertheless.
"Go on, then," she gestures for him to reveal first.
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She also pulled fifteen.
"Is there such thing as a tiebreaker in vingt-un?"
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"Typically, it results in a draw. No win or loss." He reaches out to gather up her cards again. "But it's fair enough to say that a tiebreaker goes to the queen, I think."
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Tiebreaker goes to the queen. If only all stalemates could be solved so tidily.
"I don't know of many games that allow for draws," she comments. Tone dark.
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