elsecall: (185)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 11:39 am (UTC)(link)
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."

The whole deck, really. Not just the card.
Edited 2026-01-30 11:41 (UTC)
elsecall: (050.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 03:05 pm (UTC)(link)
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 isn't shoddy."
elsecall: (208)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Rudimentary, then.

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.
elsecall: (077.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
It should really have ended there. She could have left well-enough alone, flipped her jack, and proceeded to play the game. As expected.

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.
elsecall: (014.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 04:12 pm (UTC)(link)
"For all I know, you could be awful at it."

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.
elsecall: (011.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

Nevertheless, she taps the table.

"Again."
elsecall: (92.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 04:58 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
elsecall: (119.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 05:21 pm (UTC)(link)
— 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)
elsecall: (119.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 05:40 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
elsecall: (185)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 06:05 pm (UTC)(link)
She hesitates.

Somewhere further along the Cloudwalk, there's a gentle rustle of wind through stone corridors. And a slightly less gentle clink-and-rattle of spheres bracketed and locked in lamps along the outer wall. Inconvenient, really, to use one's currency for lighting.

Jasnah picks something on the far right of his fanned out collection of cards — studying it as she turns the card towards herself.
elsecall: (194)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 06:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Jasnah one hundred percent — without a doubt — does not believe in mind-reading. At least between two non-spren. But she goes through the motions, she pictures the card as instructed, and doesn't allow herself to get too too distracted by those shuffling techniques.

What? It's always worth watching someone do something well. Even in the heat of a strategic crisis, she appreciates skill.

He proffers his guess and — without confirming or denying aloud — she simply says: "Again."

Because of course his slight-of-hand landed on the right card. And because she's determined to catch how it's done the next time.
elsecall: (021.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-01-30 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Close-up magic is — quite obviously — a masculine art.

She watches his hands with rapt attention. This time, she doesn't let herself get waylaid glancing at eyes or listening to his words. And she thinks (she thinks!) she catches something off about the way he cuts the deck. Or the fact that he cuts it at all instead of riffling straight into a shuffle.

Jasnah's head drifts to the side in a thoughtful tilt. She takes the card (her card!) and their fingers brush but barely as she does. She examines the card itself, wondering whether (like the jack of spades) it too has some tell-tale bruise or scar.

"When did you learn this?"

Alone, on the continent? Before, among others? In all the brackish, miserable awkwardness of the past week she's forgotten not to lead with an interrogation.

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