A wrinkle in her understanding of him. A crack, filtering a cold-white reality that she can't quite reach. She's close enough to taste it on the air of their conversation. As if maybe, the right question with the right pressure would reveal all.
He isn't afraid to die. Jasnah wonders — does she believe him? And regardless of whether she does, what must that absence of fear feel like? She 'died' once, and sometimes in the half-seconds before she should fade asleep she wakes up gasping, remembering the blade lodged between her ribs. Never again, she promised herself.
Idly, her freehand fidgets and settles protectively against her side.
"— Why conceal it?"
Asked like a woman desperate to hear a good reason. Objectives must be weighed against methods. Actions must be weighed against motives.
"That's a little uncharitable, don't you think?" is probably the most pushback he's given her yet, although there's still a lightness to it. "Did you want me to share what I ate for breakfast, too?"
His argument: does it really matter? She only knows what an Expedition is in the first place because he told her. Surely that has to count for something in the way of 'openness' and 'honesty'.
"...I wasn't concealing anything." Not exactly. Omitting something isn't the same as concealing it. A lie with a fancy name is still a lie, the Clea-of-his-mind says. "There are just things that are— complicated." A beat. "And personal."
One lie too many, she said. Earlier. When Verso had probed after the final sin that ended her romance. Trouble is, it wasn't only a romance. It had been a carefully chosen and tended alliance. Peel away the heart and body, and there was still a meeting of minds. And she could never feel quite...steady, even so, given the nature of the partnership.
— There was one night, he'd knelt by her desk and gifted her the contract language they needed to bind Odium. As he plotted the protection of Roshar with her, he'd dip into a poetic technique he'd invented on the spot. He'd promised to stop, he'd acquiesced to her request to be serious for once, and yet he couldn't help himself from sneaking it in. Again, again, again. As if ordinary conversation was somehow too boring for him to follow, and he needed some additional challenge to make it worth his attention. And that behaviour only compounded.
It isn't fair to Verso — or anyone else in her life, for that matter — how much more distrustful she's become in the wake of those wounds.
Jasnah exhales, sitting back with suddenly lax posture. She pinches the bridge of her nose. "I apologize, I..."
Verso relaxes his posture, too, relieved that she isn't about to poke and prod and try to forcibly remove things from him that he isn't ready to share. He wonders if maybe she might be able to accept some of it— certainly not all of it, but maybe some of the less incriminating parts. His long life, to start. Unlike so many others, she might actually find it to be... if not a good thing, then at least an interesting thing. Some scientific topic to delve into.
He picks nervously at a loose thread on his trousers as he thinks it over. If she doesn't find out about it now, she'll surely accuse him of concealment if she finally does. Then again, maybe she doesn't ever have to find out at all. Maybe he could just keep things going like this, pretending the last 67 years never happened.
"—The Gestrals, right." A couple disoriented blinks as he pulls himself out of rumination, and then he's back on topic. "They're a lot like children. They're incredibly competitive, and they love to fight." They'd loved Verso, loved that they could hit him as hard as they wanted and he'd keep coming back. "They have this big arena in the village just for holding martial tournaments."
The standoff subsides. As he speaks, her gaze stays fixed upon Verso with a drawn-out, deliberate attention that feels like a hand closing around his chin. She studies him. Studies the way his fingers worry the loose thread, the slight tension at his temples. It's as if she's sorting him, edging him into a category she has not yet named. Then, as though pivoting a lantern to illuminate a different angle of the room, her focus shifts. Jasnah's pen is in her hand once more.
"Describe them more precisely," she says, fingers drumming once against the cover of her journal. "You said they were wooden — and yet alive. How does their vitality manifest? Locomotion? Speech? Do they grow? Repair damage? Consume?"
Her eyes flick — not to his fidgeting hands this time, but to the hastily sketched chart in her notebook. Characteristics, ordered one by one.
A doze additional questions thrill at the tip of her tongue. Are they born wooden or do they become so? Do they call themselves alive, or is that Verso's interpretation? The hypotheses unfold effortlessly: cognitive beings inhabiting a physical substrate? A paradox of Investiture? Or perhaps — more alarming — a reflection of the cataclysm visited upon his world, creating resilience beyond biology, endurance beyond flesh. But she says none of this. Not yet.
Verso listens to Jasnah's myriad questions with a sort of long-suffering patience. It's not the first time he's been quizzed about something unfamiliar to most people, and it probably won't be the last. The Gestrals are just a legend to the people of Lumière, a fairy tale for children, and when the Expeditioners come over to the Continent they're always inevitably bursting with questions about what they'd believed were mythical beings. Meanwhile, to Verso, they're just the vaguely annoying creatures whose village he lives outside of.
"I'm not sure how they talk. They don't seem to have mouths, or any other facial features. I guess it comes from inside of them."
A little boy's creation, poorly thought through. It was a different Verso who'd painted them into existence, but this Verso can still wager a guess at his thought process. I don't know, I just thought it would be cool.
"They don't have needs like a human does. They don't need to eat, or drink, or sleep—although they sometimes choose to nap." Or snuggle with their human best friends. "As for repairing damage—"
He really starts to unravel that loose thread. "A Gestral can never really die. They live forever." Tone even and casual: "Do you have anything like that in this world?"
Jasnah writes. Not hurriedly, not with excitement—simply with the inevitability of someone who recognizes information that deserves to be preserved. A single, clean header at the top of the new page: Gestral Physiology — Preliminary Observations. Indented subnotes follow, each line crisp and angled with purpose. No ornamentation. She wastes ink on nothing she cannot defend.
Occasionally, she draws a razor-thin underline beneath a detail she intends to interrogate later. A narrow margin column gathers her quiet annotations: Possible analogues? Shadesmar? Dead-but-not? And whenever he hesitates — even slightly — she marks it. Hesitation is data.
She never looks up. But she hears everything. When he finally asks whether anything similar exists on Roshar, she taps a fingertip against the hesitation mark in her margin.
"Immortal entities," she echoes. "Without bodies as we understand them. Without needs. Without decay. Conscious. Enduring. Capable of interaction. You may find this surprising, but the concept is not entirely foreign. Roshar has beings called spren — manifestations of forces, emotions, ideas. They do not eat or sleep. They do not age. They do not die in any conventional sense, though they can be... diminished.”
Jasnah is clearly weighing some argument against herself. How much does she share, in the pursuit of joint answers?
"You may have noticed them around the tower. Flickers of colour. Shapes shifting in sunbeams. Glimmers on the wind."
Her eyes flick — just once — to the empty space where Ivory sometimes lingers. She had dismissed him from the alcove long before Verso returned.
"Most spren cannot communicate at all. Except Radiant spren. Radiant spren bond Knights."
Then, softly, deliberately:
"Verso," his name again, spoken with surfeit of caution, "if I show you something, you must promise to be on your best behaviour."
Um, this is not exactly where he'd been hoping to go with that particular line of questioning—he'd more been trying to glean whether she might find someone undying to be a horrible abomination against the natural of order of things—but Verso is adaptable, so he follows her along that mini-lecture as best he can. Besides, she's said Verso again, and it gives him that same warm, tingly feeling from earlier.
"Aren't I gentlemanly?" he asks, echoing back to the winehouse. He was soooo mannerly.
She doesn't warn him further. Warning suggests she believes he might panic. She simply decides, quietly, that he's ready, and lifts her hand. A thin ribbon of stormlight escapes her skin, swirling toward her palm like mist pulled along a tide-line. It condenses, tightens, gathers shape. Edges sharpen. Angles emerge and a small dagger materializes in her grip. Midnight black, reflective only at the very edge of the blade. Stormlight continues to coil lazily around it, as though trying and failing to cling to its surface. Condensing, misting, condensing again. Her thumb grazes the blade — a gesture that is not affectionate, but deeply familiar.
"And Ivory," her voice softens, addressing the dagger. "You behave, too."
A ripple runs along the dagger. Ivory, she knows, is a shy creature. He used to expresses anxiety around other humans. But things were different then, and she'd needed to keep their bond a secret. Now that the Radiants have truly returned, he's gaining his confidence step by step. So the metal softens — not melting, but unmaking, like ink dissolving in water. The blade collapses into liquid shadow, reforming beside her on the table in a swirl of darkness.
A figure steps out. Small, carved from lines of shifting black oil. His features are sharp and elegant, like a calligrapher's flourish. He executes a stiff, formal bow. Hinged from the waist, impeccable in posture, stiff as a reed.
"Jasnah," Ivory intones, voice echoing like ink dripping into a deep well. "The ardent is watched. Suspicious is." The small figure trails off as he realizes they aren't alone in her alcove.
Jasnah arches a brow. "Ivory," she says, "Verso is my guest."
A pause from the spren. Not trusting. Not hostile. Just...unimpressed. "Hmm," Ivory hums, straightening with an exaggerated patience. "I shall refrain from calling him foolish until further evidence is."
Ivory might be (rightfully) unimpressed, but Verso (also rightfully) very much isn't. When the little creature emerges from the dark pool of liquid, his eyes light up in a way that Jasnah undoubtedly has not seen before. There's an almost boyish whimsy to it, earnest in a way he rarely is, nonperformative and, for the moment, unworried about how it might look to anyone else.
"My god," he breathes, grinning ear to ear. He's surprised, he realizes, which is a wonderful and entirely foreign feeling. It's been so long since there's been anything in life that didn't feel agonizingly rote and predictable; the last time he was astounded by something was decades ago, when everything on the Continent had still felt brand new and marvelous, when the Gestrals and Grandis and Esquie had been enough to excite him. Seeing this strange and astonishing creature appear before him, he feels—if only for a brief moment in time—impossibly and amazingly young again.
On his best behavior as promised, Verso extends just one finger, his index, for Ivory to shake. "Charmed to make your acquaintance, mon petit monsieur."
She watches him — really watches him — as delight unfurls across his face like sunrise over a coastline she's never seen. His whole posture changes: open, bright, unguarded. The boy he once was, the one she didn't know existed, flickers through him like a lantern behind thin paper. Something in her stomach tightens. Not sentimentality, but recognition.
But outwardly? Only the faintest adjustment of her expression. Her gaze sharpens to a rare, precise warmth, the kind she gives only to truths that surprise her in ways she cannot dismiss.
"Careful," she murmurs, voice low and gliding, "he'll decide you're tolerable if you keep staring at him like that."
Not teasing. Not exactly. Just...observant. And maybe definitely a little bit teasing. She glances at Ivory, then back to Verso, cataloguing every second of wonder like a priceless data point.
Ivory studies the extended finger like it's a diplomatic offer from a rival kingdom. A long, drawn-out silence. A tilt of his head. A soft huff that somehow manages to sound like hmph. Then, he steps forward with utmost ceremony and places one perfectly composed, impossibly delicate inky hand onto Verso's finger with a single, stiff shake.
"Yes," Ivory declares, withdrawing his hand with dignity intact. "Acceptable, is.”
He withdraws his finger, placing his hand in his lap, schooling his expression back to something a bit more restrained. Like retreating back behind a barrier. It isn't conscious—much of his behavior isn't—just habit, survival instinct. Still, there's a (now more subdued) smile playing on his lips, impossible to suppress.
Looking from the very discerning inkspren to the very discerning woman he's bonded with, that smile grows a little more crooked. "You two are quite similar." He can picture Jasnah doing just the same thing: staring with a judicious gaze, then finally declaring acceptable.
A pause, then he furrows his brow in thought. "Has he been here the entire time?" he asks Jasnah, before turning his attention back to Ivory. "Have you been here the entire time?" What, exactly, have you overheard?
"Privacy, is." Ivory insists — appearing perhaps a bit offended by the implication that he's been hanging around, listening. Jasnah chuckles dryly, knowing that while Ivory was most certainly somewhere else during their conversation today, he's been present for others.
Ivory marches back across the table. When he reaches the edge, as he steps off, he vanishes from the air and reappears up on Jasnah's shoulder. She tilts her head, presumably to receive a guarded whisper from the little spren.
And with that, he disappears in earnest. Shy indeed.
"He doesn't need to be nearby for me to — summon him. And I find it useful to have him elsewhere." Listening, but she doesn't say it aloud. "It makes me wonder whether your Gestrals are similar constructs. Fragment of the powers of creation, having gained sentience over time."
"Maybe." Verso shrugs, noncommittal. "They've just sort of... always been around." Since before humanity, since before him. Since this world was just a playground for a little boy and his sister, a place to meet strange creatures and have wondrous adventures. Maybe that's why there's a part of him that still longs for that sort of thing.
He scrunches up his nose. "Did I piss him off?" He'd disappeared pretty fast!
Ivory had vanished the moment Verso's attention landed too squarely on him, and Jasnah doesn't bother hiding the faint exhale that passes for amusement.
"He wasn't offended," she says, tone even. "Ivory is...cautious. Most inkspren are. Their history with humans is complicated, and not without reason."
She considers the depth of history lesson her explanation might require.
"Long ago, bonds between our kinds were more common. But... something happened. Oaths were broken. Some spren remember that. Some are the offspring of those who remember." A small, almost fond tilt of her head. "Ivory errs on the side of wariness. To him, every stranger is a potential risk until proven otherwise. He risked a lot when he came to me seven years ago."
She glances at Verso then, briefly, measuring.
"Give him time. He warms to people slowly. But he does warm." A hint of wryness touches her mouth. "You're hardly the first person he's fled from. Nor will you be the last."
He warms to people slowly. Verso thinks but decidedly does not say, so he takes after you, then?
"Yeah, betrayal can really erode the ability to trust." He can relate to that feeling, understand the wariness. Entirely hypocritically, there's a legion of people he's been that same traitor to—but fortunately, they won't have any issues trusting again; they won't be doing anything again, ever.
She answers him without flinching, but there is a shift — something quieter in the way her voice settles, as though the air itself understands that what she is about to say carries weight older than the library they sit in.
"Special isn't the word I'd use," she says. "Necessary, perhaps "
Ivory once described her as a stone. Stable, he'd said, compared to other humans.
"Do you remember reading about the Recreance?" she asks. "A single day, ancient now, when the Knights Radiant laid down their oaths. They abandoned their charge...and in doing so, severed the bonds that sustained their spren."
There is no drama in her tone. It is too grave for that. Too factual.
"When a spren's Radiant breaks their oath, it does not simply wound them. It doesn't kill them. Not exactly. But it's as close as they come to death. Thousands of spren fell that day. Their last moments were filled with betrayal."
A pause. Just long enough for him to feel the shape of those consequences. So yes, Ivory is wary. Most inkspren are. They have earned that caution.
"He approached me despite that history. Despite his kin urging him not to. He saw what was coming. He chose to bind himself to me long before it was wise to do so."
Ivory did not choose her because she was special. Rather, he judged that she was the lowest risk option. She does not intend to prove him wrong.
"Other spren can be more...personable. Honorspren are particularly gregarious."
Well, Verso chooses not to linger on the concept of breaking oaths and last moments filled with betrayal. It makes something in his stomach twist, makes him feel a little ill.
"Mm," he acknowledges, although he isn't particularly swayed by her very practical, very utilitarian view of things. Although Verso is certainly the sensible type, he can't dismiss emotion out of hand, either. Obviously—he's a musician, and he feels it all so very deeply. "Do you want to know what I think?"
Doesn't matter. She's going to hear it anyway.
"I think that he took a risk, and you showed him that there are people still worth trusting. I think that does make you special."
When she speaks again, her voice has lost a fraction of its usual polish, the edges softened by something quieter, warmer.
"Trust is not an emotion I give lightly," she says. "And not one I expect from others. But Ivory...disagrees with me on occasion."
As if on cue, a faint ripple of shadow gathers at her shoulder. The briefest shimmer of inkspren presence before it slips away again. Not a full appearance. More like a shy acknowledgment.
"He wishes me to tell you," Jasnah continues, "that your interpretation is...acceptable."
She betrays a hint of amusement. Subtle, but undeniably fond.
"I have done what I can to honour his risk If he finds something admirable in that..." She lifts one shoulder in a quiet, unguarded shrug. "I suppose I will not insult him by disputing it."
Then, a softer note — rare, fleeting: "Nor will I dispute you."
It hangs between them for just a heartbeat before her composure settles back into place, refined and precise.
"But special or not, trust must be maintained. Ivory's. Mine. Anyone's. It is work. And work rarely flatters."
"You're right, trust is work," he acquiesces. Verso knows well how hard it can be to build up trust. Even with decades of experience cultivating it, it's still a difficult thing to grow. Maybe he's just inherently untrustworthy.
"But I've been looking for a job, if you recall." A faint smile, the play on words for her amusement alone. He leans back in his chair, regarding her with a slight tilt to his head. "What do you think of my chances of hire?"
His indirect, meandering way of asking, could you trust me?
Jasnah studies him for a long, deliberate moment. Long enough that Verso might wonder whether shecs weighing his words, or weighing him. Or both.
"Your chances are...decent,” she says at last. No flourish, no smile — just calm, reasoned judgment. "I do not offer trust easily, but I do not waste potential when I see it."
Her gaze sharpens, thoughtful.
"You described yourself as an Expeditioner before. That title carries a great many implications. But very little clarity." She folds her hands, bare over sleeved. "So before I decide precisely how to employ you, I want to know what that means. The skills. The training. The...expectations."
A soft tilt of her head. Curious.
"What does an Expeditioner do? And more importantly, what do you believe you do best? Outside of waltzing."
"An Expeditioner—" Verso pauses for a moment, visibly contemplative. The Expeditions are such a fact of life in Lumière that it's difficult to explain to someone who doesn't have all the context. "Navigates the Continent. Dashingly vanquishes monsters." A quirk of his lips, at that. "And searches for a way to reach the Paintress in her Monolith and defeat her."
As he'd said before, that's the whole goal of these Expeditions. Find the Paintress and kill her. End the Gommage, or so Lumièrans believe.
"But mostly, it's just setting things up for... those who come after." For those who come after, the Expedition slogan. "For example, Expedition 69 left behind handholds on the cliffs to make climbing easier for future generations." They'd known they wouldn't be the final Expedition.
"I guess my skills lie in"—babysitting Expeditioners, showing them where to go, making sure they don't instantly die—"navigation. And survivalism. Knowing which mushrooms are poisonous, and which just taste bad." From prior experience.
Jasnah listens as though she's assembling a lattice: slotting each of his skills into structure and counter-structure, eliminating what is irrelevant, sharpening what remains. When she finally speaks, it's with the calm clarity of someone drafting strategy, not offering praise.
"Navigation," she begins. "That has value. Urithiru is not fully understood. It has more than a hundred stories; its forgotten passages collapse and reopen; even our scholars disagree on the safest routes between sections. It isn't quite like wildnerness terrain, but you'd adapt."
A soft scribble, like an idle thought, before she continues.
"Survival experience suggests field competence. I could assign you to accompany research parties — those who travel into the Plains, or the Herdazian border, or any of the unclaimed lands. There, we lose people not to blades, but to ignorance."
Another possibility presents itself.
"And there is the Cobalt Guard. Someone whose whose first instinct is to assess a situation, not react blindly to it, would be useful in their number. Someone capable of anticipating danger and acting without political hesitation."
She lets that settle. Three clear shapes. Three potential futures.
Then, more softly, more deliberately: "But those are merely the applications I can imagine. I'm not interested in placing you where you'll resent the work." She leans in, even as he leans back, signaling her genuine inquiry. "What would you find fulfilling? Where would your abilities be more than simple labour?"
"I don't know. Guess I've never really thought about... fulfillment."
That doesn't seem a thing within his reach. It certainly hadn't back in Lumière or on the Continent. Even before the trouble began and the truth came out, he'd always felt a nagging sense of wrongness. He still feels that wrongness, bone-deep now, seeped into the marrow. There's no fulfillment to be found here, just existence.
"I used to want to be a—" He cringes a little, because this is embarrassing. "Famous composer." Not merely a 'composer'. Specifically a famous one. Universally beloved by fans.
"But," he adds, since she'd already dismissed the idea of putting him up on a stage, "it looks like the 'court musician' position is closed."
...Her knuckles rap against the table. Biding time, buying the space to think. It's complicated. The Coalition, of which Alethkar is a central participant, is at war. Beyond that, war is coming for the whole planet. It's — difficult to justify putting anyone in positions that aren't martial. Practical. Additive.
She'd described to him, once, a role that was something like a court musician: a jester, a storyteller, a sword. An emotional shield, of sorts, for the monarch. Carefully, cautiously, she did not link that position to the man they'd discussed earlier.
"The seat of the Queen's Wit remains vacant. I don't see why you'd want it but — it's the closest we come to any kind of artistic patronage during these times."
Is she...wincing? Maybe like she feels as though to outright offer it could actually offend him.
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He isn't afraid to die. Jasnah wonders — does she believe him? And regardless of whether she does, what must that absence of fear feel like? She 'died' once, and sometimes in the half-seconds before she should fade asleep she wakes up gasping, remembering the blade lodged between her ribs. Never again, she promised herself.
Idly, her freehand fidgets and settles protectively against her side.
"— Why conceal it?"
Asked like a woman desperate to hear a good reason. Objectives must be weighed against methods. Actions must be weighed against motives.
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His argument: does it really matter? She only knows what an Expedition is in the first place because he told her. Surely that has to count for something in the way of 'openness' and 'honesty'.
"...I wasn't concealing anything." Not exactly. Omitting something isn't the same as concealing it. A lie with a fancy name is still a lie, the Clea-of-his-mind says. "There are just things that are— complicated." A beat. "And personal."
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— There was one night, he'd knelt by her desk and gifted her the contract language they needed to bind Odium. As he plotted the protection of Roshar with her, he'd dip into a poetic technique he'd invented on the spot. He'd promised to stop, he'd acquiesced to her request to be serious for once, and yet he couldn't help himself from sneaking it in. Again, again, again. As if ordinary conversation was somehow too boring for him to follow, and he needed some additional challenge to make it worth his attention. And that behaviour only compounded.
It isn't fair to Verso — or anyone else in her life, for that matter — how much more distrustful she's become in the wake of those wounds.
Jasnah exhales, sitting back with suddenly lax posture. She pinches the bridge of her nose. "I apologize, I..."
I know I go too far at times.
"Tell me more about the Gestrals. Please."
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He picks nervously at a loose thread on his trousers as he thinks it over. If she doesn't find out about it now, she'll surely accuse him of concealment if she finally does. Then again, maybe she doesn't ever have to find out at all. Maybe he could just keep things going like this, pretending the last 67 years never happened.
"—The Gestrals, right." A couple disoriented blinks as he pulls himself out of rumination, and then he's back on topic. "They're a lot like children. They're incredibly competitive, and they love to fight." They'd loved Verso, loved that they could hit him as hard as they wanted and he'd keep coming back. "They have this big arena in the village just for holding martial tournaments."
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"Describe them more precisely," she says, fingers drumming once against the cover of her journal. "You said they were wooden — and yet alive. How does their vitality manifest? Locomotion? Speech? Do they grow? Repair damage? Consume?"
Her eyes flick — not to his fidgeting hands this time, but to the hastily sketched chart in her notebook. Characteristics, ordered one by one.
A doze additional questions thrill at the tip of her tongue. Are they born wooden or do they become so? Do they call themselves alive, or is that Verso's interpretation? The hypotheses unfold effortlessly: cognitive beings inhabiting a physical substrate? A paradox of Investiture? Or perhaps — more alarming — a reflection of the cataclysm visited upon his world, creating resilience beyond biology, endurance beyond flesh. But she says none of this. Not yet.
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"I'm not sure how they talk. They don't seem to have mouths, or any other facial features. I guess it comes from inside of them."
A little boy's creation, poorly thought through. It was a different Verso who'd painted them into existence, but this Verso can still wager a guess at his thought process. I don't know, I just thought it would be cool.
"They don't have needs like a human does. They don't need to eat, or drink, or sleep—although they sometimes choose to nap." Or snuggle with their human best friends. "As for repairing damage—"
He really starts to unravel that loose thread. "A Gestral can never really die. They live forever." Tone even and casual: "Do you have anything like that in this world?"
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Occasionally, she draws a razor-thin underline beneath a detail she intends to interrogate later. A narrow margin column gathers her quiet annotations: Possible analogues? Shadesmar? Dead-but-not? And whenever he hesitates — even slightly — she marks it. Hesitation is data.
She never looks up. But she hears everything. When he finally asks whether anything similar exists on Roshar, she taps a fingertip against the hesitation mark in her margin.
"Immortal entities," she echoes. "Without bodies as we understand them. Without needs. Without decay. Conscious. Enduring. Capable of interaction. You may find this surprising, but the concept is not entirely foreign. Roshar has beings called spren — manifestations of forces, emotions, ideas. They do not eat or sleep. They do not age. They do not die in any conventional sense, though they can be... diminished.”
Jasnah is clearly weighing some argument against herself. How much does she share, in the pursuit of joint answers?
"You may have noticed them around the tower. Flickers of colour. Shapes shifting in sunbeams. Glimmers on the wind."
Her eyes flick — just once — to the empty space where Ivory sometimes lingers. She had dismissed him from the alcove long before Verso returned.
"Most spren cannot communicate at all. Except Radiant spren. Radiant spren bond Knights."
Then, softly, deliberately:
"Verso," his name again, spoken with surfeit of caution, "if I show you something, you must promise to be on your best behaviour."
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"Aren't I gentlemanly?" he asks, echoing back to the winehouse. He was soooo mannerly.
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"And Ivory," her voice softens, addressing the dagger. "You behave, too."
A ripple runs along the dagger. Ivory, she knows, is a shy creature. He used to expresses anxiety around other humans. But things were different then, and she'd needed to keep their bond a secret. Now that the Radiants have truly returned, he's gaining his confidence step by step. So the metal softens — not melting, but unmaking, like ink dissolving in water. The blade collapses into liquid shadow, reforming beside her on the table in a swirl of darkness.
A figure steps out. Small, carved from lines of shifting black oil. His features are sharp and elegant, like a calligrapher's flourish. He executes a stiff, formal bow. Hinged from the waist, impeccable in posture, stiff as a reed.
"Jasnah," Ivory intones, voice echoing like ink dripping into a deep well. "The ardent is watched. Suspicious is." The small figure trails off as he realizes they aren't alone in her alcove.
Jasnah arches a brow. "Ivory," she says, "Verso is my guest."
A pause from the spren. Not trusting. Not hostile. Just...unimpressed. "Hmm," Ivory hums, straightening with an exaggerated patience. "I shall refrain from calling him foolish until further evidence is."
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"My god," he breathes, grinning ear to ear. He's surprised, he realizes, which is a wonderful and entirely foreign feeling. It's been so long since there's been anything in life that didn't feel agonizingly rote and predictable; the last time he was astounded by something was decades ago, when everything on the Continent had still felt brand new and marvelous, when the Gestrals and Grandis and Esquie had been enough to excite him. Seeing this strange and astonishing creature appear before him, he feels—if only for a brief moment in time—impossibly and amazingly young again.
On his best behavior as promised, Verso extends just one finger, his index, for Ivory to shake. "Charmed to make your acquaintance, mon petit monsieur."
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But outwardly? Only the faintest adjustment of her expression. Her gaze sharpens to a rare, precise warmth, the kind she gives only to truths that surprise her in ways she cannot dismiss.
"Careful," she murmurs, voice low and gliding, "he'll decide you're tolerable if you keep staring at him like that."
Not teasing. Not exactly. Just...observant. And maybe definitely a little bit teasing. She glances at Ivory, then back to Verso, cataloguing every second of wonder like a priceless data point.
Ivory studies the extended finger like it's a diplomatic offer from a rival kingdom. A long, drawn-out silence. A tilt of his head. A soft huff that somehow manages to sound like hmph. Then, he steps forward with utmost ceremony and places one perfectly composed, impossibly delicate inky hand onto Verso's finger with a single, stiff shake.
"Yes," Ivory declares, withdrawing his hand with dignity intact. "Acceptable, is.”
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Looking from the very discerning inkspren to the very discerning woman he's bonded with, that smile grows a little more crooked. "You two are quite similar." He can picture Jasnah doing just the same thing: staring with a judicious gaze, then finally declaring acceptable.
A pause, then he furrows his brow in thought. "Has he been here the entire time?" he asks Jasnah, before turning his attention back to Ivory. "Have you been here the entire time?" What, exactly, have you overheard?
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Ivory marches back across the table. When he reaches the edge, as he steps off, he vanishes from the air and reappears up on Jasnah's shoulder. She tilts her head, presumably to receive a guarded whisper from the little spren.
And with that, he disappears in earnest. Shy indeed.
"He doesn't need to be nearby for me to — summon him. And I find it useful to have him elsewhere." Listening, but she doesn't say it aloud. "It makes me wonder whether your Gestrals are similar constructs. Fragment of the powers of creation, having gained sentience over time."
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He scrunches up his nose. "Did I piss him off?" He'd disappeared pretty fast!
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"He wasn't offended," she says, tone even. "Ivory is...cautious. Most inkspren are. Their history with humans is complicated, and not without reason."
She considers the depth of history lesson her explanation might require.
"Long ago, bonds between our kinds were more common. But... something happened. Oaths were broken. Some spren remember that. Some are the offspring of those who remember." A small, almost fond tilt of her head. "Ivory errs on the side of wariness. To him, every stranger is a potential risk until proven otherwise. He risked a lot when he came to me seven years ago."
She glances at Verso then, briefly, measuring.
"Give him time. He warms to people slowly. But he does warm." A hint of wryness touches her mouth. "You're hardly the first person he's fled from. Nor will you be the last."
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"Yeah, betrayal can really erode the ability to trust." He can relate to that feeling, understand the wariness. Entirely hypocritically, there's a legion of people he's been that same traitor to—but fortunately, they won't have any issues trusting again; they won't be doing anything again, ever.
"You must be very special to him."
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"Special isn't the word I'd use," she says. "Necessary, perhaps "
Ivory once described her as a stone. Stable, he'd said, compared to other humans.
"Do you remember reading about the Recreance?" she asks. "A single day, ancient now, when the Knights Radiant laid down their oaths. They abandoned their charge...and in doing so, severed the bonds that sustained their spren."
There is no drama in her tone. It is too grave for that. Too factual.
"When a spren's Radiant breaks their oath, it does not simply wound them. It doesn't kill them. Not exactly. But it's as close as they come to death. Thousands of spren fell that day. Their last moments were filled with betrayal."
A pause. Just long enough for him to feel the shape of those consequences. So yes, Ivory is wary. Most inkspren are. They have earned that caution.
"He approached me despite that history. Despite his kin urging him not to. He saw what was coming. He chose to bind himself to me long before it was wise to do so."
Ivory did not choose her because she was special. Rather, he judged that she was the lowest risk option. She does not intend to prove him wrong.
"Other spren can be more...personable. Honorspren are particularly gregarious."
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"Mm," he acknowledges, although he isn't particularly swayed by her very practical, very utilitarian view of things. Although Verso is certainly the sensible type, he can't dismiss emotion out of hand, either. Obviously—he's a musician, and he feels it all so very deeply. "Do you want to know what I think?"
Doesn't matter. She's going to hear it anyway.
"I think that he took a risk, and you showed him that there are people still worth trusting. I think that does make you special."
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"Trust is not an emotion I give lightly," she says. "And not one I expect from others. But Ivory...disagrees with me on occasion."
As if on cue, a faint ripple of shadow gathers at her shoulder. The briefest shimmer of inkspren presence before it slips away again. Not a full appearance. More like a shy acknowledgment.
"He wishes me to tell you," Jasnah continues, "that your interpretation is...acceptable."
She betrays a hint of amusement. Subtle, but undeniably fond.
"I have done what I can to honour his risk If he finds something admirable in that..." She lifts one shoulder in a quiet, unguarded shrug. "I suppose I will not insult him by disputing it."
Then, a softer note — rare, fleeting: "Nor will I dispute you."
It hangs between them for just a heartbeat before her composure settles back into place, refined and precise.
"But special or not, trust must be maintained. Ivory's. Mine. Anyone's. It is work. And work rarely flatters."
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"But I've been looking for a job, if you recall." A faint smile, the play on words for her amusement alone. He leans back in his chair, regarding her with a slight tilt to his head. "What do you think of my chances of hire?"
His indirect, meandering way of asking, could you trust me?
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"Your chances are...decent,” she says at last. No flourish, no smile — just calm, reasoned judgment. "I do not offer trust easily, but I do not waste potential when I see it."
Her gaze sharpens, thoughtful.
"You described yourself as an Expeditioner before. That title carries a great many implications. But very little clarity." She folds her hands, bare over sleeved. "So before I decide precisely how to employ you, I want to know what that means. The skills. The training. The...expectations."
A soft tilt of her head. Curious.
"What does an Expeditioner do? And more importantly, what do you believe you do best? Outside of waltzing."
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As he'd said before, that's the whole goal of these Expeditions. Find the Paintress and kill her. End the Gommage, or so Lumièrans believe.
"But mostly, it's just setting things up for... those who come after." For those who come after, the Expedition slogan. "For example, Expedition 69 left behind handholds on the cliffs to make climbing easier for future generations." They'd known they wouldn't be the final Expedition.
"I guess my skills lie in"—babysitting Expeditioners, showing them where to go, making sure they don't instantly die—"navigation. And survivalism. Knowing which mushrooms are poisonous, and which just taste bad." From prior experience.
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"Navigation," she begins. "That has value. Urithiru is not fully understood. It has more than a hundred stories; its forgotten passages collapse and reopen; even our scholars disagree on the safest routes between sections. It isn't quite like wildnerness terrain, but you'd adapt."
A soft scribble, like an idle thought, before she continues.
"Survival experience suggests field competence. I could assign you to accompany research parties — those who travel into the Plains, or the Herdazian border, or any of the unclaimed lands. There, we lose people not to blades, but to ignorance."
Another possibility presents itself.
"And there is the Cobalt Guard. Someone whose whose first instinct is to assess a situation, not react blindly to it, would be useful in their number. Someone capable of anticipating danger and acting without political hesitation."
She lets that settle. Three clear shapes. Three potential futures.
Then, more softly, more deliberately: "But those are merely the applications I can imagine. I'm not interested in placing you where you'll resent the work." She leans in, even as he leans back, signaling her genuine inquiry. "What would you find fulfilling? Where would your abilities be more than simple labour?"
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That doesn't seem a thing within his reach. It certainly hadn't back in Lumière or on the Continent. Even before the trouble began and the truth came out, he'd always felt a nagging sense of wrongness. He still feels that wrongness, bone-deep now, seeped into the marrow. There's no fulfillment to be found here, just existence.
"I used to want to be a—" He cringes a little, because this is embarrassing. "Famous composer." Not merely a 'composer'. Specifically a famous one. Universally beloved by fans.
"But," he adds, since she'd already dismissed the idea of putting him up on a stage, "it looks like the 'court musician' position is closed."
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She'd described to him, once, a role that was something like a court musician: a jester, a storyteller, a sword. An emotional shield, of sorts, for the monarch. Carefully, cautiously, she did not link that position to the man they'd discussed earlier.
"The seat of the Queen's Wit remains vacant. I don't see why you'd want it but — it's the closest we come to any kind of artistic patronage during these times."
Is she...wincing? Maybe like she feels as though to outright offer it could actually offend him.
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tosses u a midnight before bed tag.......
delightful.
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