[ she doesn't stand on ceremony. once he's within the oathgate's perimeter, jasnah gives ivory a deft twist within mechanism's keyhole — again, stormlight within the control room flickers. the energy expenditure is less when a knight radiant of a higher ideal uses the gate, but it still requires some light to function. ]
— Is that so? The claim can't count for much without adequate understanding of the class size, the average scores within it, and so on. I could say the same thing about my dancing lessons. Rather easy to be the best student in a cohort of one.
[ jasnah reclaims ivory and dismisses his sword shape — disappearing from her hand just as quickly. he reassembles as a tiny ink-black figure hidden in the fold of her collar. like an insect, if an insect was a spirit-creature who could also become a sword.
if that all seemed rather anticlimactic...? well, fair enough. oathgate travel is instantaneous and seamless, virtually imperceptible to the passenger. but when they step out of the control room, the previous plaza is gone (along with the giant city-tower) and they are instead on a patchwork plain of plateaus. in the middle-distance, a ring of circular encampments. ]
[ Verso blinks a few times at the sudden shift in scenery as they step out, somewhat disoriented by the change. It's a good disorientation, though. The feeling of experiencing something unexpected, something brand new. He glances back at Jasnah, smiling crookedly. ]
Ingenious. Lumière could have benefitted from something like this.
[ Would have saved a hell of a lot of time on those Expeditions, anyway. How many times did he have to trek all over the damned Continent? ]
We used to have trains for long-distance travel, but nothing so instantaneous.
[ And even the trains stopped functioning after the Fracture split Lumière from the rest of the Continent, with no one there to keep them running. Verso has a great many disappointments, but what became of the trains is one of his bigger ones. He'd adored them when he was younger, and admittedly, he still does.
Uncertain if Jasnah has ever even heard of a train before, he adds, ] They're vehicles that run on tracks, powered by steam.
Edited (used 'change' twice in the same sentence, smh) 2025-11-09 03:29 (UTC)
[ — ah, there it is. a tender flame of pride when she sees his crooked smile. jasnah's not proud of herself for doing something so simple as turning a key in a lock. hardly! but it's difficult not to appreciate the wonder someone else feels when they witness this ancient piece of technology function smoothly, beautifully, effectively. in moments like this, she recognizes that she loves her planet.
all the more reason to protect it fiercely from external threats. ]
Steam? [ huh. she can fuzzy-logic her way to a how and a why, even if she doesn't immediately understand the peculiars. the thoughtful not that follows communicates a measure of gratitude for how he explained himself. ] Fascinating. What happened to them?
[ used to, he'd said.
as she asks, she strikes out towards one of the narrow permanent bridges connecting one plateau from an other. deep chasms sit between plateaus, and without the web of bridges it would be impossible cross all the way to the encampments without a windrunner to literally fly you across. ]
[ He does feel a bit like the annoying little tagalong she'd painted him to be when she'd invited him to come, following behind her with no real idea of where she's going, what they're doing. It's an uncommon thing, to not be the one in the lead. ]
Oh, uh.
[ This is one of the few things Verso has never had to explain to anyone. Even little children in Lumière must know of the Fracture, the singular most world-changing event in their universe. Certainly the most world-changing thing that ever happened to him. ]
There was a... natural disaster, of sorts. [ Nothing natural about it, but it seems the easiest way to explain. ] The mainland broke off from the rest of the continent.
[ Flung into the sea, really. Nearly seven decades ago now, although he can still remember it like it was yesterday. ]
There were search-and-rescue efforts in the ruins, but the Fracture brought up dangerous creatures onto the Continent. It was safer to build up defenses around Lumière rather than try to reclaim it.
[ her palm itches. she wishes she had pen and paper — and a desk — to jot this down. but she understands how these conversations happen more naturally when they occur organically: walking side-by-side...or, almost side-by-side. he's right to feel a little put out. she's not a considerate walking companion. ]
What, the entire landmass?
[ her brow furrows to imagine it. ironically, they're currently traveling across a similarly inexplicable site: no one quite knows what caused the plains to shatter, only that it must have been something big, something powerful, and something intentional. when seen from the sky, the patterns are symmetrical. not unlike the cymatics she described two days ago. ]
Just...gone?
[ her steps slow. she's keeping better pace, now, but it's obviously because she's invested in what she's learning. ]
Storms. [ a rare curse. ] I take it that technology and civilization paused. O-or, regressed? [ ... ] If the "trains" are still gone.
[ uh-oh. she's got that...spark of curiosity to her once again. ]
[ Oh, so that's how he impresses her: by talking about history. Luckily, he's a walking history textbook. There isn't a single thing that's happened in Lumière that he wasn't there for. ]
Not gone, exactly, just— [ Verso holds his palms together, then parts them. ] Imagine a... violent crack in the earth, and the city floating off into the ocean.
[ A shrug. ]
Nowhere for the trains to go after that. We built a shield dome around the city to protect it from wandering Nevrons [ —the dangerous creatures, she can probably glean from context clues— ] but most wouldn't dare set foot on the Continent after that. It would have been certain death.
[ silently, she hopes ivory is listening (and remembering) well from his hiding place in her collar. it's just as likely the inkspren is tuned out of the conversation — contemplating who knows what, a cognitive league away from jasnah and verso. or she wonder whether she can convince the man to recite it all over again that evening, sitting on the other side of her desk. ]
Ah.
[ she understands, accepts, and adjusts the error in her assumption. not a disapperance, but a schism. perhaps similar to how these plateaus have split apart from one another, leaving chasms — just at a much, much, much larger scale. ]
— Most wouldn't?
[ her curiosity is naked, driving like a bare dagger toward whatever twist in the recounting interests her best. ]
Most, [ he confirms, not exactly bothered by the questions but a bit uncertain how to explain it all. It's complicated. More complicated than even most people in Lumière realize; he'd given up on trying to convince them of the truth a long time ago. There's no reason to tell Jasnah the full truth, either, not when everyone who's ever learned it has turned on him. ]
Some did— do. They have these Expeditions each year. People volunteer to go out to the Continent.
[ His tone and expression have significantly sobered now. ]
[ a one-way trip. the concept settles, eerie, in her thoughts. her attention drifts along the plateaus, wondering fuzzily in the direction of a place called the Honour Chasm. a place where world-weary soldiers and bridge slaves went to end their suffering, tired of the grinding slaughter. tired of the bridge runs. she makes a mental note to triple-check the legalese she's using to abolish slavery in alethkar, ensuring bridgemen are included in the amendment.
— then, her attention snaps back onto verso. ]
So, why do they volunteer? [ ... ] Do they seek glory... or an ending?
[ Glory. There's nothing glorious about the Expeditions. They're the desperate last attempts of a dying people, an eleventh-hour effort to stave off the despair of certain death. Maybe it makes them feel less helpless to be doing something, even if they know the efforts are futile. Verso can relate to that. ]
'For those who come after.'
[ It's a parroting of the Expedition slogan. The words make him feel tired. ]
There's... [ A brief moment of hesitation. ] An event every year—the Gommage. A woman paints a number on the Monolith across the sea. They call her the Paintress. [ He calls her 'Maman'. ] Everyone of that age... fades into nonexistence. Disappears in a flurry of flower petals.
[ The smell of roses makes him a little ill. He lingers by the edge of a bridge, eyes on the deep chasm below. L'appel du vide. ]
The number is lesser each year. [ 100, at first. It's been 67 years since then. ] The Expeditions seek a way to stop it. To stop her.
[ A deep breath, and then he visibly shakes it off, like a dog that's gotten too worked up. He glances back Jasnah's way. ]
Depressing, huh? Now you see why I'm so dark and tortured.
she ignores the immediate parallels — taln — that spring to mind. that reaction is a scholar's reaction, eager to draw delicate strings between one phenomenon and another. desperate to sift truth from pattern and universality from shared hardship. the paintress strikes jasnah as terribly...shard-like. but if she allows herself to sink into that line of inquiry, it would disrespect the primary source. him. ]
Every year.
[ she echoes, and makes no secret of eyeing him. measuring him. it suddenly occurs to her that she doesn't know his age — a gap in her knowledge that felt utterly negligible up until this moment. she listens between his words: a number, everyone of that age, and the number is lesser each year. a count down?
her lips purse. she stands four steps in on a bridge, reluctant to rush him along. they have time enough, she knows, before the storm is forecast to hit. ]
They sacrifice themselves. For the greater good.
[ — a thought experiment made plainly, painfully real. she may be a utilitarian, but she can grieve the cost of her principles when she hears them. ]
— Have they ever come close? To stopping her.
[ she doesn't actually expect him to know the answer. kinda seems like it would be impossible to measure, given the nature of these expeditions. ]
[ Verso feels the urge to defend the Paintress, ridiculous given that Jasnah has never met her and never will. It's the same urge he feels every time, the urge he followed only a few times before he learned that it only put a target on his back. The Paintress is a creator, not a destroyer; the number she paints is merely a warning to the people that she can still save, her newest creations remaining while the older ones are ripped away. The Gommage is another's work entirely—her husband, her true husband rather than the artificial creation that Verso once called 'Papa', torturing her with destruction to convince her to leave the false world she's cocooned herself in.
She wouldn't leave, not as long as Verso still existed in the escapist world she'd concocted in the face of her grief. He wonders if his absence has finally convinced her to do what his presence couldn't. With a sick churn of his stomach, he considers the possibility that she simply made him again. A replacement for a replacement. Eminently interchangeable.
[ — ironically, without the whole text available to her, jasnah's brief reply is shaped first and foremost by what she assumes he expects to hear: what a pity that no one has rendered this great, terrifying power impotent! or else just a single word acknowledgement of how much additional suffering has been thrown at a presumably insurmountable problem. good effort after bad.
...was this how the heralds thought, she wondered, when they left the last of their number to be tortured alone on braize? one single plug made of human pain and tenacity, keeping the desolations at bay.
coolly, thoughtfully, jasnah continues asking questions as she turns her back and continues over the bridge. ]
What was the most recent number? Before you arrived here.
[ 'Pity'. It's a rather chilly reply, all things considered, but it doesn't rankle. He's spent years trying to comfort people distressed by their inevitable death by the Gommage—or by Nevrons, or by his father, if they're unlucky—to the point where it almost feels like a relief for someone to regard it so clinically.
He trails after her, always a few steps behind, dawdling both to take in the surroundings and choose his careful words. ]
[ a moment of silence as she tries to conceive of a life bounded by a mere thirty-three years. jasnah is a scant few years older, but it's impossible not to think about the progress made in those few years alone. she thinks about the irrationality that must settle in when you feel the sands of time burying you quicker and quicker.
— she felt it, just once, with a dagger between her ribs and a sea of endless beads beneath her body. death didn't stick, not for her, not then. but how different it must be to experience creeping mortality on the scale of a civilization.
storms. she wants so badly to ask the next logical question. he can't be too far off the number himself, surely? she's grateful to be turned away from him so he can't see the way she chews the interior of her cheek just to keep from asking it.
instead, waiting at the far end of this bridge: ]
You're a middle child. Your older sister—?
[ it's an easy conclusion to draw from the careful cards he's dealt to her. the simplest assumption, giving what she knows (and doesn't know.) ]
She'd been imbued with the same immortality as the rest of the Dessendres, but that doesn't mean she's still here. The woman wearing her face had met them at the Monolith, killed his comrades, told him everything he'd never wanted to know. You're not real. None of this is real. She hadn't minced words. Called them Aline's fake family, the one she invented to escape the fact that her son's charred corpse was buried six feet underground. She'd been disgusted by Verso's existence, but she'd found Clea even more repugnant—is this really what my own mother thinks of me? Painted over her with the Dessendre magic, corrupted her into a monstrosity. Took away Verso's favorite person in the world. Death would have been kinder.
[ no, the specifics hardly matter one iota. jasnah has no reason to question the assumption that clea was taken by this gommage or one of its counter-expeditions, but even if she did...? a dead sister is still a dead sister.]
I'm sorry. Truly.
[ she doesn't need to explain how she carries a similar wound. two days ago, she outright explained the quirk of succession that put the crown on her head, even if her dead sibling had been the younger one.
jasnah doesn't look uncomfortable or awkward or anxious in the maelstrom of this conversation. she inhabits the narrow space between impassive and attentive — the kind of empathy that doesn't make it about itself, but simply leaves space. ]
— Tell me, how does Lumière honour its dead?
[ at first blush, it feels like a change of subject. in reality, she's inviting him to grieve safely by explaining something adjacent to this emotional trap she's sprung on him quite by accident.
...but also maybe she can't help her slightly inappropriate curiosity. ]
[ They'd never really honored Clea's loss. The Dessendres have never been good at accepting unpleasant reality. Instead, it had acted like a catalyst: Renoir had begun whispering all sorts of things in his ear. She wants to destroy our family, he'd said, and Verso hadn't yet realized that destroying something so poisonous might be a good thing. He'd planted seeds of doubt, accused everyone of being one of the real Clea's creations. Even that woman you're so fond of.
He shrugs. ]
Bury them, if you can. [ To have a body for burial is lucky. The Gommage disappears people as if they were never there to begin with, and Expeditioners are never seen again. Verso's done his fair share of lone funerals, though. ] Say a few words.
[ Arms crossed over his chest, he peers down at the chasm below again. ]
Don't worry, I'm not about to start crying. Enough deaths, and you get used to it.
[ when it comes down to it, what right does jasnah have to mourn her dead when she does not hesitate to kill others — provided the death serves her principles, of course. her hands have only hesitated once, over dear sweet renarin, and even then...
a crunch of her foot on the plateau. they don't have far left before they reach the first proper warcamp. but for a moment, she pauses at his side, glancing down into the shadowy chasm depths. ]
The enemy we fought on these plateaus preferred to leave their dead where they fell. [ she peers down, as if she could pick out bones in the darkness. she can't. ] And highstorms would wash the bodies away. All that's down there are Parshendi bones.
[ tentative, she puts a hand — the right one, ungloved — on his elbow and nudges him back to their path. ]
Well, bones and the odd chasmfiend. We don't want to be caught out here by one of those.
[ she's a knight radiant, yes, but she's not really a fighter. ]
[ One lingering glance downward, picturing the collection of old bones below, and then he follows her lead, stepping away from the edge.
It feels as if he's made what was supposed to be an enjoyable day out into something unpleasant. Lumière's history is dark and depressing, and while he doesn't mind playing into the tormented soul persona if it appeals, Jasnah doesn't seem the type to enjoy playing caretaker to a sad man. So: ]
Maybe, maybe not. [ In response to encountering a chasmfiend. He can guess at what it is well enough by the name. ] Don't worry, ma reine, I'd protect you.
[ he nudges her and her eyes roll. her response is dry, dry, dry: ]
Of course. Terribly, dreadfully impressed.
[ sarcasm aside, she does wonder how he might handle himself in a crisis. not enough to linger long enough to engineer one, naturally. but it's also not like she can boldly ask for a spar or play-duel. for one, outside her armour, her own skills aren't nearly good enough. there was that one time she ran ruthar through the neck with wit's sword, but that victory was mostly chalked up to surprise. (and she did have renarin waiting just outside the tent to heal the odious man before he actually died.)
if a chasmfiend appeared, and if it seemed as though her plate and blade were not enough, she'd elsecall them both into shadesmar — the cognitive realm, an eerie shadow of the physical — and then they would have to solve a whole new slew of problems. the cost she risks for not traveling with the cobalt guard on her heels.
she points across the next plateau with the same hand she'd used to alert him back to the path. ]
Before we found the tower, those encampments you see ahead of us were the beating heart of Alethi society. More influential even than the capital seat of Kholinar. One warcamp for each of the ten highprinces, a palace for my brother, and a marketplace.
[ each one built into crater, with the exception of the pinnacle palace rising from a nearby hill. ]
[ It's all very different from Lumière. Although it's been years since he's been to the mainland, he can picture it with vivid clarity. The cobblestone streets, the opera house, the patisserie he used to love. Wooden planks bridging from the roof of one building to another, apartments with balconies overlooking the square. Idyllic and cozy.
He clasps his hands behind his back as they walk, eyes following her hand. ]
[ the whole area grew out of a quirk of incompetency and political discord. glorified army barracks, soulcast into repeatable patterns, where power gathered organically. decisions were made in the pinnacle palace that altered the course of the alethi people forever. maybe her uncle, dalinar, was right to so often pester her into returning... ]
I make a point to visit with some regularity. Now.
[ most of her people have wisely moved to the tower, but some operations still function out of the shattered plains. forestry, for example, at the foot of the unclaimed hills. and there is a decent garrison maintained, for security reasons. not all radiant orders were loyal to the coalition, and so the oathgate on the shattered plains must be guarded. ]
But before we found the tower? When the warcamps were at their height? [ during the war of reckoning. jasnah shakes her head. ] I was busy abroad. I was only a scholar, then, and not a queen.
[ well. scholar and princess. but only the pedantic are keeping track, right? either way, it didn't seem helpful to hang around the shattered plains. her loud voice would have only undermined her brother's rule. the best thing she could do for alethkar's throne was get far, far away from it. ]
[ Verso might appear somewhat distracted, icy eyes wandering to fully take in the environment, but he's listening. It's just that he's also considering what all of this might mean for him—he'll outstay his welcome sooner or later, and perhaps this is the sort of place he could get low-level work as a foot soldier or laborer. That, or he'll have to live off the grid again, foraging for meals and constructing poor-quality huts. It would be rather lonely without the Gestrals and Esquie to keep him company, though. It had been lonely even with them, much of the time.
His gaze makes its way back to Jasnah after a moment. ]
It's difficult to imagine you as 'only' anything.
[ If she was a scholar, certainly she'd be a preeminent one. She doesn't give the impression of doing anything halfway. ]
Did you enjoy traveling? [ Or did she wish she was here, the whole time? ]
[ he's not wrong, but she won't be the one to say it aloud. even her arrogance has its limits. but as one of the better known scholars of her time, jasnah was the target of many ambitious young women hoping to become her ward and learn under her — she denied nearly all of them. she rarely had the patience. ]
I enjoyed my work. [ even if it was the one ward she did take on who ultimately made good on jasnah's research efforts to find the tower city of urithiru. ] And Alethkar is known for many things, but none of them libraries. So, I travelled.
[ it doesn't answer his question. not exactly. ]
— I could give or take the travel itself. [ and she now has a distinctly unpleasant association with sea voyages. ] But I enjoyed witnessing, with my own eyes, something other than Alethi warfare.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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— Is that so? The claim can't count for much without adequate understanding of the class size, the average scores within it, and so on. I could say the same thing about my dancing lessons. Rather easy to be the best student in a cohort of one.
[ jasnah reclaims ivory and dismisses his sword shape — disappearing from her hand just as quickly. he reassembles as a tiny ink-black figure hidden in the fold of her collar. like an insect, if an insect was a spirit-creature who could also become a sword.
if that all seemed rather anticlimactic...? well, fair enough. oathgate travel is instantaneous and seamless, virtually imperceptible to the passenger. but when they step out of the control room, the previous plaza is gone (along with the giant city-tower) and they are instead on a patchwork plain of plateaus. in the middle-distance, a ring of circular encampments. ]
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Ingenious. Lumière could have benefitted from something like this.
[ Would have saved a hell of a lot of time on those Expeditions, anyway. How many times did he have to trek all over the damned Continent? ]
We used to have trains for long-distance travel, but nothing so instantaneous.
[ And even the trains stopped functioning after the Fracture split Lumière from the rest of the Continent, with no one there to keep them running. Verso has a great many disappointments, but what became of the trains is one of his bigger ones. He'd adored them when he was younger, and admittedly, he still does.
Uncertain if Jasnah has ever even heard of a train before, he adds, ] They're vehicles that run on tracks, powered by steam.
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all the more reason to protect it fiercely from external threats. ]
Steam? [ huh. she can fuzzy-logic her way to a how and a why, even if she doesn't immediately understand the peculiars. the thoughtful not that follows communicates a measure of gratitude for how he explained himself. ] Fascinating. What happened to them?
[ used to, he'd said.
as she asks, she strikes out towards one of the narrow permanent bridges connecting one plateau from an other. deep chasms sit between plateaus, and without the web of bridges it would be impossible cross all the way to the encampments without a windrunner to literally fly you across. ]
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Oh, uh.
[ This is one of the few things Verso has never had to explain to anyone. Even little children in Lumière must know of the Fracture, the singular most world-changing event in their universe. Certainly the most world-changing thing that ever happened to him. ]
There was a... natural disaster, of sorts. [ Nothing natural about it, but it seems the easiest way to explain. ] The mainland broke off from the rest of the continent.
[ Flung into the sea, really. Nearly seven decades ago now, although he can still remember it like it was yesterday. ]
There were search-and-rescue efforts in the ruins, but the Fracture brought up dangerous creatures onto the Continent. It was safer to build up defenses around Lumière rather than try to reclaim it.
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What, the entire landmass?
[ her brow furrows to imagine it. ironically, they're currently traveling across a similarly inexplicable site: no one quite knows what caused the plains to shatter, only that it must have been something big, something powerful, and something intentional. when seen from the sky, the patterns are symmetrical. not unlike the cymatics she described two days ago. ]
Just...gone?
[ her steps slow. she's keeping better pace, now, but it's obviously because she's invested in what she's learning. ]
Storms. [ a rare curse. ] I take it that technology and civilization paused. O-or, regressed? [ ... ] If the "trains" are still gone.
[ uh-oh. she's got that...spark of curiosity to her once again. ]
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Not gone, exactly, just— [ Verso holds his palms together, then parts them. ] Imagine a... violent crack in the earth, and the city floating off into the ocean.
[ A shrug. ]
Nowhere for the trains to go after that. We built a shield dome around the city to protect it from wandering Nevrons [ —the dangerous creatures, she can probably glean from context clues— ] but most wouldn't dare set foot on the Continent after that. It would have been certain death.
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Ah.
[ she understands, accepts, and adjusts the error in her assumption. not a disapperance, but a schism. perhaps similar to how these plateaus have split apart from one another, leaving chasms — just at a much, much, much larger scale. ]
— Most wouldn't?
[ her curiosity is naked, driving like a bare dagger toward whatever twist in the recounting interests her best. ]
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Some did— do. They have these Expeditions each year. People volunteer to go out to the Continent.
[ His tone and expression have significantly sobered now. ]
It's a one-way trip.
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— then, her attention snaps back onto verso. ]
So, why do they volunteer? [ ... ] Do they seek glory... or an ending?
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'For those who come after.'
[ It's a parroting of the Expedition slogan. The words make him feel tired. ]
There's... [ A brief moment of hesitation. ] An event every year—the Gommage. A woman paints a number on the Monolith across the sea. They call her the Paintress. [ He calls her 'Maman'. ] Everyone of that age... fades into nonexistence. Disappears in a flurry of flower petals.
[ The smell of roses makes him a little ill. He lingers by the edge of a bridge, eyes on the deep chasm below. L'appel du vide. ]
The number is lesser each year. [ 100, at first. It's been 67 years since then. ] The Expeditions seek a way to stop it. To stop her.
[ A deep breath, and then he visibly shakes it off, like a dog that's gotten too worked up. He glances back Jasnah's way. ]
Depressing, huh? Now you see why I'm so dark and tortured.
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she ignores the immediate parallels — taln — that spring to mind. that reaction is a scholar's reaction, eager to draw delicate strings between one phenomenon and another. desperate to sift truth from pattern and universality from shared hardship. the paintress strikes jasnah as terribly...shard-like. but if she allows herself to sink into that line of inquiry, it would disrespect the primary source. him. ]
Every year.
[ she echoes, and makes no secret of eyeing him. measuring him. it suddenly occurs to her that she doesn't know his age — a gap in her knowledge that felt utterly negligible up until this moment. she listens between his words: a number, everyone of that age, and the number is lesser each year. a count down?
her lips purse. she stands four steps in on a bridge, reluctant to rush him along. they have time enough, she knows, before the storm is forecast to hit. ]
They sacrifice themselves. For the greater good.
[ — a thought experiment made plainly, painfully real. she may be a utilitarian, but she can grieve the cost of her principles when she hears them. ]
— Have they ever come close? To stopping her.
[ she doesn't actually expect him to know the answer. kinda seems like it would be impossible to measure, given the nature of these expeditions. ]
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She wouldn't leave, not as long as Verso still existed in the escapist world she'd concocted in the face of her grief. He wonders if his absence has finally convinced her to do what his presence couldn't. With a sick churn of his stomach, he considers the possibility that she simply made him again. A replacement for a replacement. Eminently interchangeable.
Somber: ] No. I don't think so.
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[ — ironically, without the whole text available to her, jasnah's brief reply is shaped first and foremost by what she assumes he expects to hear: what a pity that no one has rendered this great, terrifying power impotent! or else just a single word acknowledgement of how much additional suffering has been thrown at a presumably insurmountable problem. good effort after bad.
...was this how the heralds thought, she wondered, when they left the last of their number to be tortured alone on braize? one single plug made of human pain and tenacity, keeping the desolations at bay.
coolly, thoughtfully, jasnah continues asking questions as she turns her back and continues over the bridge. ]
What was the most recent number? Before you arrived here.
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He trails after her, always a few steps behind, dawdling both to take in the surroundings and choose his careful words. ]
33. It was Expedition 33.
[ Title drop, roll credits, etc. ]
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— she felt it, just once, with a dagger between her ribs and a sea of endless beads beneath her body. death didn't stick, not for her, not then. but how different it must be to experience creeping mortality on the scale of a civilization.
storms. she wants so badly to ask the next logical question. he can't be too far off the number himself, surely? she's grateful to be turned away from him so he can't see the way she chews the interior of her cheek just to keep from asking it.
instead, waiting at the far end of this bridge: ]
You're a middle child. Your older sister—?
[ it's an easy conclusion to draw from the careful cards he's dealt to her. the simplest assumption, giving what she knows (and doesn't know.) ]
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She'd been imbued with the same immortality as the rest of the Dessendres, but that doesn't mean she's still here. The woman wearing her face had met them at the Monolith, killed his comrades, told him everything he'd never wanted to know. You're not real. None of this is real. She hadn't minced words. Called them Aline's fake family, the one she invented to escape the fact that her son's charred corpse was buried six feet underground. She'd been disgusted by Verso's existence, but she'd found Clea even more repugnant—is this really what my own mother thinks of me? Painted over her with the Dessendre magic, corrupted her into a monstrosity. Took away Verso's favorite person in the world. Death would have been kinder.
He steps up next to Jasnah. ]
She's gone, yeah.
[ Do the specifics really matter? ]
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I'm sorry. Truly.
[ she doesn't need to explain how she carries a similar wound. two days ago, she outright explained the quirk of succession that put the crown on her head, even if her dead sibling had been the younger one.
jasnah doesn't look uncomfortable or awkward or anxious in the maelstrom of this conversation. she inhabits the narrow space between impassive and attentive — the kind of empathy that doesn't make it about itself, but simply leaves space. ]
— Tell me, how does Lumière honour its dead?
[ at first blush, it feels like a change of subject. in reality, she's inviting him to grieve safely by explaining something adjacent to this emotional trap she's sprung on him quite by accident.
...but also maybe she can't help her slightly inappropriate curiosity. ]
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He shrugs. ]
Bury them, if you can. [ To have a body for burial is lucky. The Gommage disappears people as if they were never there to begin with, and Expeditioners are never seen again. Verso's done his fair share of lone funerals, though. ] Say a few words.
[ Arms crossed over his chest, he peers down at the chasm below again. ]
Don't worry, I'm not about to start crying. Enough deaths, and you get used to it.
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[ when it comes down to it, what right does jasnah have to mourn her dead when she does not hesitate to kill others — provided the death serves her principles, of course. her hands have only hesitated once, over dear sweet renarin, and even then...
a crunch of her foot on the plateau. they don't have far left before they reach the first proper warcamp. but for a moment, she pauses at his side, glancing down into the shadowy chasm depths. ]
The enemy we fought on these plateaus preferred to leave their dead where they fell. [ she peers down, as if she could pick out bones in the darkness. she can't. ] And highstorms would wash the bodies away. All that's down there are Parshendi bones.
[ tentative, she puts a hand — the right one, ungloved — on his elbow and nudges him back to their path. ]
Well, bones and the odd chasmfiend. We don't want to be caught out here by one of those.
[ she's a knight radiant, yes, but she's not really a fighter. ]
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It feels as if he's made what was supposed to be an enjoyable day out into something unpleasant. Lumière's history is dark and depressing, and while he doesn't mind playing into the tormented soul persona if it appeals, Jasnah doesn't seem the type to enjoy playing caretaker to a sad man. So: ]
Maybe, maybe not. [ In response to encountering a chasmfiend. He can guess at what it is well enough by the name. ] Don't worry, ma reine, I'd protect you.
[ A nudge of his elbow against hers. ]
You'd be impressed.
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Of course. Terribly, dreadfully impressed.
[ sarcasm aside, she does wonder how he might handle himself in a crisis. not enough to linger long enough to engineer one, naturally. but it's also not like she can boldly ask for a spar or play-duel. for one, outside her armour, her own skills aren't nearly good enough. there was that one time she ran ruthar through the neck with wit's sword, but that victory was mostly chalked up to surprise. (and she did have renarin waiting just outside the tent to heal the odious man before he actually died.)
if a chasmfiend appeared, and if it seemed as though her plate and blade were not enough, she'd elsecall them both into shadesmar — the cognitive realm, an eerie shadow of the physical — and then they would have to solve a whole new slew of problems. the cost she risks for not traveling with the cobalt guard on her heels.
she points across the next plateau with the same hand she'd used to alert him back to the path. ]
Before we found the tower, those encampments you see ahead of us were the beating heart of Alethi society. More influential even than the capital seat of Kholinar. One warcamp for each of the ten highprinces, a palace for my brother, and a marketplace.
[ each one built into crater, with the exception of the pinnacle palace rising from a nearby hill. ]
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He clasps his hands behind his back as they walk, eyes following her hand. ]
Do you spend much time here?
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I make a point to visit with some regularity. Now.
[ most of her people have wisely moved to the tower, but some operations still function out of the shattered plains. forestry, for example, at the foot of the unclaimed hills. and there is a decent garrison maintained, for security reasons. not all radiant orders were loyal to the coalition, and so the oathgate on the shattered plains must be guarded. ]
But before we found the tower? When the warcamps were at their height? [ during the war of reckoning. jasnah shakes her head. ] I was busy abroad. I was only a scholar, then, and not a queen.
[ well. scholar and princess. but only the pedantic are keeping track, right? either way, it didn't seem helpful to hang around the shattered plains. her loud voice would have only undermined her brother's rule. the best thing she could do for alethkar's throne was get far, far away from it. ]
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His gaze makes its way back to Jasnah after a moment. ]
It's difficult to imagine you as 'only' anything.
[ If she was a scholar, certainly she'd be a preeminent one. She doesn't give the impression of doing anything halfway. ]
Did you enjoy traveling? [ Or did she wish she was here, the whole time? ]
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I enjoyed my work. [ even if it was the one ward she did take on who ultimately made good on jasnah's research efforts to find the tower city of urithiru. ] And Alethkar is known for many things, but none of them libraries. So, I travelled.
[ it doesn't answer his question. not exactly. ]
— I could give or take the travel itself. [ and she now has a distinctly unpleasant association with sea voyages. ] But I enjoyed witnessing, with my own eyes, something other than Alethi warfare.
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